Ha no Ie Stage 10: Pray

    It was nearly an hour on the dot since their loss of audio communication that Sanjuro, still at the monitor station, witnessed a bruised and bloody Sora stumble out of the dark hallway and collapse on his knees, a real-life panting coming through over his mic.
    "What's happened?" Sanjuro asked, standing to his feet. He moved to help Sora up, but the Twin Blade rejected the assistance and pulled himself up unaided.
    "The Staircase... It... Kite and the others are still..."
    Sanjuro's lips formed to frame the question "How?" but he noticed Sora's gloves, or rather what remained of them. They had been torn apart, and the skin beneath them was equally shredded, deep bloody gashes simulated by a mapped skin texture. One of Sanjuro's students had come into class one afternoon with palms like that, having lost his grip of a rope during P.E. in a very dangerous game of tug-of-war. Not quite as bad as this.
    Sora, for his part, appeared terrified. Apart from the situation --which seemed to be worsening by the minute-- Sanjuro sensed that a twinked character like Sora, who probably hadn't seen a drop in HP in years of play, now seeing his HP in the red was like a very significant rug getting pulled out from under him.
    "Do you need curatives?"
    "No," Sora rasped, coming to lean against a wall. He busied himself for a few moments with restoring his stats, although the sigh meant in relief that followed was anything but. He threw his head back to rest on the wall with a dull thump. "The rope didn't work."
    "It pulled you up."
    "Part way. Before it broke. Then when I got to the top of the Stairs and tried to get back, that fucking creature had come across it. Shredded it. The markers we left on the walls were all clawed off. I tried to replace them, but who knows if Kite and them will..."
    "Sora," Sanjuro said soberly, "you need to go back in."
    Although nothing physical transpired with his character model, Sanjuro had the distinct impression that Sora shuddered. "...No..."
    "You need to go back in," he stressed. "For them."
    Sanjuro had never had much interraction with Sora, but what he witnessed then he could describe as nothing but sincere desperation.
    "I... can't..."
    The Heavy Blade stifled a wince. Did this guy think it was easy for him to say this?
    "You're the only one who can," he said, laying the statement flat like he was setting a hand of cards down on the table, face-up for all to see, a simple fact without lies or agenda to attach to it.
    He was normally slightly shorter than Sora, but the angle at which Sora rested against the wall forced his eyes up to make contact with Sanjuro's, a pained expressioned that as yet went unmatched. And in those dark red eyes, Sanjuro saw more than Sora probably realized he showed.
    He understood now.
    But there was no other way.
    "Please, Sora," he said. "There's no one else."
    Sora clenched his teeth. "What about you?"
    "You're already involved."
    The Twin Blade seemed to sink even lower against the wall. "...What if I don't want to be?"

    After Sora had departed back down the hallway, Adamantine reappeared from behind a corner.
    "I didn't catch most of that," Adamantine said to Sanjuro, as the latter resumed his post by the channel nodes. Sora's monitor was the only one working clearly; the images for the other three, while functioning, fuzzed in and out.
    "He's scared," Sanjuro told her, seating himself. "Justifiably, I think."
    "Not enough to motivate you to go in with him, though?"
    "It's hard to put into words, or at least in English, but... It seems to me that the only ones that should enter that place are those prepared to follow it to its conclusion. You wouldn't know this playing on the American servers, but over here it's often stressed that you if you can't commit yourself totally to something, you're better not to commit in the first place."
    "But playing guardian, that's not any committment at all?"
    Sanjuro didn't deign to answer that remark of hers, so he changed the subject. "So what did you find out about your computer?"
    "First, that computer techies don't like getting roused at lunch time. But I guess I should have figured that one by now. As for the run-down, it seems I overloaded a couple boards and busted my fan and internal cooling system, but the hard drives were all right so it's okay."
    "Internal cooling system?" Sanjuro repeated. "That's a little weird. I didn't know comps had something like that."
    "Sure. It's not actually a new technology. It's this sort of cable with liquid coolant, spreads the workload with the fan. Back in the day they were a common fixture for overclockers, 'round the turn of the century and all. They're pretty standard in all computers now."
    "Do you think," Sanjuro mused, "that this dungeon causes the computer to overwork the cooling system, fan included? That would explain the cold that the other four have talked about."
    "I got a pretty chilly blast when my system went up in smoke," Adamantine said after some thought, "but I don't think it's possible to get that cold from a small band of liquid coolant. It would have to be working at something like 1000% output, and even if it could get up to that somehow, it'd bust instantly."
    "Huh."
    "Something else on your mind?"
    "Nothing really, just that it struck me just now that all we have for any of this are conjectures. We haven't been able to verify anything one way or another. We know as much about this house now as when we started."
    "You want directionless conjecture, I've got another one to try on for size."
    "Shoot."
    "I took a look at that bit of code I got hit with earlier," said the Long Arm, resting her javelin on a shoulder. "Showed it to my tech friend, the one who fixed my console up, too. And then his friends. Just to verify. We found something really strange."
    "What?"
    "Apparently the incept date for that code dates back to the mid-ninteen seventies."
    "...What? But, there weren't even computers back then."
    "Not as we know them now." Adamantine shrugged. "The technology wasn't too advanced; what filled several rooms of MIT then we fit into a pocket calculator today. The internet, too, has been around a lot longer than most people realize."
    "It's not necessarily a fact the house goes back that far, though," Sanjuro cautioned. "Creation dates are easily forged in computer documents."
    "I know, I mentioned that to the techs. But they all agreed that the date was probably accurate, not because of the file factsheet, but because of its actual properties. In fact, they said that 70s was the latest it could probably have been made, because of what they saw. See, the coding language that was used goes way, way back.
    "You know it isn't just the nature of data that's changed in programming, right? The means of coding it has changed as well. Different programming languages were used for the first usenets than we use today to network computers. Likewise the code for games has changed countless times. The code for the first videogames was not the code that made The World. But that's where the dilemma is. According to the techs, what we're seeing in the house is done in the most basic of computer codes, but strung out so far for so long that in the end, its complexity of data equals what would have been needed to make a World map."
    Sanjuro sat in silence as he absorbed this information.
    "So..." Sanjuro managed, "Kite and the others are basically walked around inside a big Pong game?"
    The two Americans exchanged looks.
    "Yes and no," Adamantine said, cringing a bit. "It's so much code that no human, or work force able to be assembled at that time, could have been able to create it by hand, and even if it could there's no way there could have been enough processing power in the entire world's computers then to be able to handle it successfully. More than that, according to some of the folks I spoke to, the source code is a dynamic randomizing processor, which I think means they can't figure out how it works. They just know that it makes the code keep reassembling itself. For what purpose..."
    "I think it's pretty obvious what the purpose is," Sanjuro said darkly, reverting instinctively to Japanese. Adamantine's understanding of the language seemed to be up to snuff in this regard; she lowered her gaze and fell silent.
    Behind them, the monitors flickered and reeled.

    When they had found themselves at the foot of the Staircase, Kite, Moonstone and Elk knew better than to try to ascend.
    The room they had been forced into was indistinguishable from any yet visited in the house, and its exterior dimensions could not be gauged by the meager power of their light source. Tossed flares did not yield anything but small dots of stars in the darkness, hanging in perceived space until their power ran out.
    Debates were raised on whether or not to explore this new area, and Kite quashed them each time, pointing out that even though Sora was not responding to PMs or even pings, his data was still available on Elk's status screen, and it even showed he had recently replenished his HP and SP. This, to Kite, translated as hope.
    "Even if he is still online," Elk protested, "what makes you think he'll come back for us?"
    "Give it some time," Kite said, already seating himself. He hunched forward and crossed his arms, curling into himself. "What else are we gonna do? You said before even a hard reset won't work here. We don't have much choice."
    He was aware, vaguely, of the other two PCs exchanging glances. Then, seeming to concede defeat, Moonstone sat down opposite his team leader, and Elk quickly followed suit.
    And there they waited.
    Eventually, Kite said, "If you guys are hungry, you can go get some lunch."
    "I hadn't noticed..." Elk murmured, seeming a bit surprised at himself. "Time just doesn't seem to pass the same in here..."
    "...Should eat. Regardless," Moonstone pointed out. "For health."
    "Yeah. I guess." The Wavemaster nodded. "You too, Kite?"
    Kite had heard his mother from outside his door earlier calling him to lunch, but he had ignored her. "Someone should stay to keep watch. I'll eat a bit later."
    Elk nodded again, a little more unwillingly. Just after Moonstone had paused, and before he had initiated the function himself, he said, "Don't push yourself too hard, Kite."
    "I wasn't aware I had the option," Kite replied to a frozen character model.
    Something tinkled by his feet, and caught the light.

    "By the way," Sanjuro said, pulling away from the monitor view seconds before he would have caught the glint of gold in Kite's projection, "what gave you the idea to hack the map, anyway? I thought we'd agreed it couldn't serve any purpose."
    "Oh, that," Adamantine replied dismissively, lounging against an adjacent crate. "Sora asked me to. At least I think that was the point he was trying to make. Have you ever heard his take on English?"
    "Only once, and that was enough," Sanjuro answered, smiling weakly. "What do you mean, he asked you?"
    "As in, he asked me." She shrugged.
    "Well, was it just some sort of suggestion, or..."
    "He mentioned something about how you guys had paid me for it, so I figured, why not? Seems kind of stupid in hindsight... You're a teacher too, you know we're not well-paid, and computer parts are expensive to replace..."
    But Sanjuro needed further clarification. "Let me get this right. Sora asked you, as in twisted-your-arm kind of asked you, into hacking the map?"
    Adamantine caught the Heavy Blade's expression.
    "You think he knew what it'd do?"
    "You have to remember that Sora's no stranger to hackers. He was the errand boy for Helba for a while, among his more illustrious net roles."
    "I knew that, but I guess I hadn't considered what that might mean." She cocked her head to one side. "You suspect him of something."
    To which Sanjuro could think of no reply. He returned to the screens, in time for a familiar sight to come into view.

    Sora pointed a crude polygonal flashlight down the spiralling steps. No shapes appeared out of the darkness from this illumination, as much as he willed them to manifest.
    He knew, because Kite had known, that a bottom lay down there somewhere. Whether Kite and the others had reached it, or they were still along the stair, ascending or descending, he could only guess. If it was the latter case, then the message he had sent would have been completely lost on them. Gone right past, probably.
    Swallowing, Sora let his feet take him down the first step, then the next. This much presented little difficulty for him, but when he moved his thumb to push the analog stick forward for a third time, he began to shake. The fourth step proved a near impossibility.
    By the fifth he immediately jerked back and ran back up, shaking his head.
    Sora waited until the cold sweat had abated and his heart had calmed down to a normal pace before he PMed Sanjuro.
    >>Sanjuro, are you getting this?
    >>Crystal clear. What's the matter? You started heading down but then you stopped.
    >>If I go down, I don't know how long it is before the ping delay starts to hit, and then messages won't come in at all. And I don't know if I have any chance of reaching them, said Sora, thanking some deity that his rationalizations sounded a lot saner in writing than they had in his head. >>So I'm just going to hang out here and keep trying to call. You still have video feed?
    >>Barely. They're mostly static now, which I don't understand. If Adamantine's right, we shouldn't lose visual unless their actual geographic location had changed. But that's impossible.
    >>I think that word's rendered officially obsolete here, Sanjuro.
    >>In any event, said Sanjuro, ignoring the wisecrack, >>sticking at the top of the Staircase seems about as good a plan as any. Let me know if you can make contact. I'll keep you posted on the video.
    >>Yeah. Let me know if you see anything weird.
    Which, Sora reflected, might well be obsolete here too.

    "What is it?" Elk asked, upon his and Moonstone's return from lunch.
    Kite held the object up under the glow of Elk's staff. Held between thumb and forefinger was a single gold piece, a GP, currency of The World. The face he held up to the light bore an embossed dragon, but through it someone had etched a rough "S", leaving no questions about its origins.
    "I thought about it a bit, and if we can assume Sora threw this upon reaching the top of the Stairwell, and it took around fifty minutes to land... well..." Kite grimaced. "I don't even have to throw a calculation at you, do I? It's obvious we're an impossible ways down."
    It seemed as if by some communal instinct that the three players all felt their gaze drawn to the Staircase above them, its looming spiral disappearing into shadow before even a hint of an end could be found.
    "...Up there still?" Moonstone mused.
    "Who knows? You think he'd have tried to PM, but I think that can't reach us here."
    "Where is here, now?" said Elk.
    "I wish I knew," Kite said. "I really do." He realized belatedly that the others' eyes were on him. "... What is it?"
    "Whatever might be happening," Elk said, with a level of seriousness Kite did not often encounter in the Wavemaster, "staying here won't do anything. We'd planned to make it to the bottom of the Staircase anyway, even if we didn't think it'd mean not being able to get back up. Since we're here, we should move forward."
    "No, we-- I--" Kite caught himself and stopped, sighing. Elk was right, of course. Even if it did seem foolish to go ahead without a full team, or a means to get back safely, they were here and they could fulfill their elected objective. So that was what they should do.
    "You're right," Kite said eventually, inclining his head. "We're not done here yet."
    They elected a reasonable direction to head in, and after setting down neon markers and tying the start of the second reel of rope to the bottom Stair, they headed off-- but not before Elk asked, "Kite, you did go and get lunch, right? Because we can't stop for a while."
    "Oh yeah," Kite lied. "Right after you guys. Don't worry. Moonstone, what's our time?"
    "...12:35."
    "Let's wrap this one up quick if we can," said Kite. "I have homework to do yet tonight."
    He admitted to himself that this even sounded superficial to him.
    At a cursory glance one would be hard put to distinguish between this level of the house and the one they had just come from. The ashen color of the walls had not changed, and the rooms were just as randomly aligned. However, as they soon observed, it was much colder here, and the rate at which their HP fell, even with the hack scripts, had more than tripled.
    Once in a while they would hear the growl, but the sound would be much farther off than before. It seemed, almost, to have given up on them for the time.
    Or perhaps it was just stalking at a distance.
        Down twenty meters, through a door to a four-way room, the left path, left again, a right.
    Stopped for a neon marker for each, logged, took a few screencaps at some interesting structures.
                Forward for ten meters, then left for another fifty. Through a set of four doors, right to left, right to left, right to left, right to left.
    Marker. Beacon. Screencap.
        Thirty meters, then a dead-end room, back up to find a new door that hadn't been there before. Locked, the growl acting as punctuation to the end of Kite's try with the handle. Back to the room they had just come from to find a new corridor, fifty meters in length.
    The further they walked down the corridors of their chosen path, the more certain Kite became that it was all well and good to call that growl nothing but the walls turning all around them when you could step back and view it from a distance, like in the Holloway Journal. But here, now, in this place, it was nothing to discern and dissect, let alone dismiss. It was not an absence of light and the grinding of rock walls as they shifted.
    This was a creature darkness.
    And it was a predator.
    "You guys," Kite found himself saying, almost without realizing, "what have we walked into?"

    "Sorry," said Sanjuro, "did you say anything in the past twenty minutes? I was AfK at the store."
    "You're fine leaving the monitors unwatched like that?" Adamantine inquired, unpausing herself. She had minimized the window to catch up on some of her grading.
    "You were here in case the world started ending," said Sanjuro, with a shrug. "No updates, then?"
    "Sora's pinged in a few times. I ponged but I didn't say anything. Do you think he's trying to lure us?"
    "I doubt he'd be so subtle. Besides, I'm still pretty sure that regardless, he's seriously scared by that place."
    "Is this just a Japanese thing?" Adamantine said sourly. "All this sensitivity and vague insight of character? You talk about him like he's some scared little boy."
    Suspicions of the Twin Blade aside, Sanjuro had worked hard for a sense of propriety and wasn't about to lose it over one little secret, juicy as it may have been. He rolled the statement off him instead. "Comes with working with kids, I guess. Don't you get the same?"
    "Unlike you, I'm a bona fide professor. So what if it is a community college?" She shrugged, lounging back.
    "Well, just that they act like ten-year-olds instead of actually being them, I guess," Sanjuro answered promptly, with a wry smile. It faded quickly; his fatigue was growing too immense to be abated by the other PC's conversation now. "Brb. I'm going to go check the news feed."
    "Sure."
    Adamantine barely had time to settle into the next of her students' incredibly boorish essays on the influence of Goethian literature in Wegener's theory of continental drift when Sanjuro returned, unfreezing and standing upright almost so quickly in succession that the two commands got jumbled and he tripped over himself.
    "Read this," he said urgently, PMing her the URL. "NOW."

    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    Sora sighed He had set an autoscript, but it had stopped functioning after around twenty minutes, and he hadn't been able to figure out why. Repeatedly sending a ping request was putting a nasty cramp in his hands, and it prevented him from multitasking.
    Theoretically he should be doing his homework, but plans for that had more than slightly fallen apart. Stacks of paperwork sat in his lap like dead weight. Every time he set his eyes to them their text swirled and spun into gibberish. He frequently felt nauseous even attempting to write.
    He reflected, mournfully, that this would make him seem like a lazy student, one for whom scholastics did not come easily and the body was made physically sick by the effort. His mother could often be quoted citing "Americanization" for "such a drop in standards."
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    It should be easy for him. It had been easy before. But after the Data Drain, his brain had, as he'd put it, "gotten fuzzy."
    It was not amnesia. It would have been better if it had been.
    Instead, just like his eyes, his memory had begun to blur around the edges.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    "Oh," he said abruptly. "It's 42^(1/3)."
    His system kindly told him that the last of his ping requests had all timed out.

    The three explorers stared at the hole in the wall.
    Moonstone, in a fit of frustration, had begun attacking the wall, seeming overcome with the question of what might lie on the other side. Although Kite and Elk initially attempted to dissuade and, more drastically, to bodily pull him away before he raised hell up from unexpected places, when his foot finally managed to punch out a good-sized chunk they moved forward to help, prying away loose crumbles around the widening space.
    But what lay beyond was nothing but another room, and after that another, and another, and for the first time the three wondered if perhaps the house, in its ability to shift its interior, in truth had no real exterior to breech.
    It was nothing but more rooms and hallways, forever and ever, ad infinitum. Which raised the question of whether there might actually even be an end to reach in this place.
    "But that's impossible, right, Kite?" Elk asked, no attempt to hide the desperation in his tone. Since entering here the others had grown more and more accustomed to treating Kite as something of an expert on the dungeon, or at least their source for all things mathematical, and surely this fit.
    Kite nodded hollowly. "Right. Logistically, if nothing else."
    Inwardly, Kite was thinking different things. Specifically, something from astronomy.
    It was a well-known fact, thanks to Einstein, that space was curved, but very few people knew that it was curved inversely. That was to say, if a sphere is to be taken as a self-contained universe of curves, then the physical universe was exactly its opposite in terms of results. It literally went the other way, differentiating itself in such a manner that it did not, in fact, turn back in on itself, but just kept going, while not necessarily becoming infinite. This meant basically that if one were to head out in one direction in space, you would never get back to where you were.
    Could the same, then, somehow have come over here? Kite had heard of a videogame from the early zeroes that had attempted to realistically replicate space exploration, which meant literally hours spent flying in one direction without encountering anything. Criticisms over its value as a game experience aside, rumors abounded that even nearly a decade later, no one had come forward saying that they had fully documented its contents.
    And what of The World, with its purportedly infinite stages?
    How could you reach the end of something that had no end?
    "Like the sum of infinite sigma notation series," he said aloud, without thinking.
    "What?"
    "Huh? Nothing," Kite answered, oblivious to the looks from his teammates.
    He tried the door that they had come to. Most of the doors down here were locked, but this one turned readily at his command. A door in any other dungeon would mean loading a different part of the map, but this was instantaneous, as always.
    Kite, consciously, did not notice the shift when he stepped over the threshold into the new room, but something in his bones stirred, making them rattle. He did not notice it until his viewscreen went completely black.
    In the space of a blink Elk's and Moonstone's flashlights were on him, drowning him a high-intensity search light. He winced, shielding his eyes enough to make out two points of light held in trembling hands.
    "...Light went out," Moonstone said unsteadily, or as much as he had ever displayed the emotion.
    Kite looked over his body. It was true, the glow of the element-up spells and Rig Saem were gone, and the flashlight he had held in hand had gone dead without warning.
    "Weren't these supposed to last forever?" He did a quick check of his inventory as well. "Some of the curatives are gone too..."
    "Come back," Elk pleaded, as if calling to someone from across a vast chasm, not a person maybe four feet in front of him. Moonstone and he stepped aside to admit Kite back into the hallway, although it had no effect on Kite's condition.
    "Don't worry about it," he assured them. "I'll just run the scripts again. It'll only take a second."
    "...Not the problem," Moonstone stressed.
    "It wasn't supposed to go out at all," Elk clarified. "I checked it before I ran it and it doesn't even have a termination function. The only way it's supposed to get disabled is if you log out."
    "But it's not a problem--"
    "Kite," Elk insisted, "it is a problem. Don't you know what this means? Either that American lady isn't as good as Sora and Sanjuro said she was, or it won't matter if it she is."
    "You mean..."
    "The house is playing by different rules, Kite."

    >>Hey. Is anyone there?
    Sanjuro had set Sora's incoming mail to appear as on an IRC window, displayed above the monitors, so that Adamantine could see and respond when he wasn't there. Such as right at the moment, while Sanjuro was frantically trying to place calls to The Los Angeles Times.
    >>Hello?
    >>Hey, come in already.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    >>Ping.
    <<I'm here already, Adamantine snapped back.
    >>Adamantine?
    <<No kidding.
    >>j00r 5y5 4-0k d3n? he inquired. ((Is your system all right now?))
    <<No thanks to you.
    >>w4|-|+ j00 m34n b3j3 +|-|4+?? ((And what's that supposed to mean?))
    <<Was there something you needed? she asked, scowling. <<Because otherwise we're supposed to keep this line clear. It's supposed to be an admin channel, you know. You know how busted we could get if a sysadmin found us on here?
    >>n0 5p34k4 d4 en9|_15|-|, he tried to assure her. ((Don't worry, they don't speak English.)) >>+|-|0 3j3 d0 h4\/3 50m3+1n9 ph0r j00. j00r (r4(|<5 n0 \/\/0r|< j0. ((Actually, I do have something for you. Namely, that your cracks aren't working.))
    <<What do you mean? Admantine demanded, growing defensive. <<They always work.
    >>B34(0n br0|<3, r0p3z br0|<3. |-|P-5P ph4|_|_1n9 5+1ll. |_19|-|+5 |)3j31n9. pr0llj \/\/0r53 ph0r |<1+3-+4(|-|1. ((Beacon's broken. Ropes are breaking. HP and SP are still falling. The lights keep dimming. And that's just for me; it's probably worse for the others way down there.))
    <<I don't believe you.
    >>WTF?
    <<I don't care what Sanjuro says. I think you're trying to get us in there with you. It's not going to work.
    >>d4 |-|3ll 4r3 j00 0|\|?? ((What are you talking about?))
    <<Don't worry, I'm not gonna be your enemy or something, I'm not that cruel. I'll help out like a good girl and see you all get out in one piece. But no more baiting like that or I'll call it quits here, Sanjy too, and you'll be on your own.
    <<Now, she said in conclusion, <<keep this line free unless it's important, okay, honey?

    The dead tracer clattered on random steps on its way down the Stairwell.
    Sora reflected, belatedly, that that might not have been the best choice, if Kite and the others were still waiting at the bottom.
    Though judging by how much it seemed to be shattering along the way, maybe it would reduce the impact somewhat.
    He did not hear it hit bottom.

    As they travelled further, it became increasingly difficult to keep their HP above dangerous levels. The recharge spells Adamantine had provided them with had ceased working completely, and the "poison" that acted upon their characters without protection was accelerating.
    It was reaching late afternoon outside the game. For the first time it seemed to strike them how quickly the day grew dark in winter. And with this acknowledgement came other considerations, namely, that they had effectively made zero progress, and they would soon either have to hard-reset to escape the dungeon or put their computers on Standby overnight. When Elk had done the latter by himself, when he had awoken he found his surroundings had changed. The three weren't certain whether the same could possibly occur to all three of them at once, but there was the creature to consider also, which had been drawing closer over the past few hours, almost imperceptively.
    On the other hand, like Elk, they worried what might happen if they tried to extract themselves from the game by force. More than before, there was the concern for what would happen to their character models if they didn't end the scripts properly by correctly logging out. Adamantine hadn't gone over potential consequences.
    More than that, the feeling that had become lodged in Kite's bones had refused to go away. A small inkling, and only that yet, that a hard reset wouldn't be enough.
    And then they started to hear singing.

    "Californians," Sanjuro said with disgust, resurfacing. "May they never accuse us midwesterners of being slowgoing."
    "You missed the show," Adamantine said brightly. "Sora was trying to get us to come in after him. Said his equipment wasn't working."
    "Are you so sure it was?" Sanjuro asked without interest, his character model's movement stuttering a little as his hands met and left the controller in the act of setting down an impromptu dinner.
    "I like to think I'm proud of my work for a reason," Adamantine told him stiffly. "I might not be a tech guru but The World I know inside-out. I've never had a crack malfunction on me, not once. It was so obviously a ploy."
    "Don't be so enthusiastic in your distrust. There's limits to that sort of thing."
    "So I shouldn't care that for all I know, that guy had every intent to kill me? Hell, if Eruku and that other guy hadn't jumped in it might've gone all the way, I don't even wanna think about it."
    "But like as not, for right now we need to cooperate with him. He's our relay inside the maze. If Kite and the others can make it far enough back up the Stairs, Sora can get in contact with them. We've got to hope for that."
    Kite's, Moonstone's, and Elk's monitors were by now nothing but television snow. Sora's view was still functioning, but randomly phased out into static every ten to thirty minutes.
    "And if we can't trust him as far as we can throw him, even to get Kaito and the others out?"
    "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, though, I've got a verification."
    "It's no typo, then?"
    "None whatsoever. Which means, given what I've heard from Kite about Tsukasa, stranger things may be afoot than we're even able to realize."
    "Y'mean..."

SACRAMENTO, CA - (REUTERS) A young man earlier presumed dead is now reported comatose but in stable condition at Sutter Memorial Hospital. The man, 23, whose name was not released but is said to go by the online alias Kirby_Wax, was found unconscious next to his computer monitor at his house several weeks ago while presumably playing the online computer game The World. This follows roughly one year after a rash of incidents left The World's future in jeopardy as the game was blamed for the health problems and comas of over a dozen young adults worldwide. The game's maker, CC Corp, declined comment, but stressed that The World remained as stable as ever and users should have no fear that recent events will affect play.

Concurrently, the other gamer to have been found unconscious after playing The World, a high school-aged boy going by the online alias of Holloway, has been reconfirmed as dead by Iowa authorities and the boy's family, who reassured reporters that he was buried last week.

    I know you, Kite thought, keeping his flashlight trained on the thing huddled on a ledge some twenty feet beyond them. Elk and Moonstone were likewise fixed on the figure, who had not reacted to the glare, to greetings, appeals, threats, or the mention of his name.
    "Kirby_Wax," Kite peristed.
    "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba. Ba. Daa. Ba-ba," was the only reply, a nonsensical murmur, as the Wavemaster rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around his knees.
    "...Broken," said Moonstone, in something approaching disgust.
                                                                                    "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                                           "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                                                                                                    "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba..."
    "What does this mean?" Elk asked, eyes wide in horrified fascination. "That he's here, after all this time..."
    Kite glanced over at the younger partymate. That diminuitive form, the pale skin, languid hair, watery eyes... And the answer came to him so suddenly that he wondered why it had taken time to process.
    "Tsukasa," Kite said, looking back at the curled-up muttering creature. "He's like Tsukasa was. Trapped."
                                                                                                                                                        "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
    "Tsukasa was different," Elk said uneasily. "She, at least, was..."
    "We can't leave him here," Kite told the others firmly, before the idea could even manifest for them on its own.
    Moonstone inclined his head. "...Right."
    "But where do we take him?" said Elk.
    "Up," Kite answered simply. "Consider the rest of the mission aborted here and now. This takes priority, d'you hear me?"
    "Yes, but... What if we can't? Get back, I mean?"
    Kite tried ponderously on the rope strung out behind them. It was still as taut as they had first pulled it. "All right so far. But I'm not going to tempt fate."
                                                    "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                                        "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                            "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
    Working together from items in their inventories, the three were able to construct a makeshift stretcher. Kirby_Wax, or whatever it could be called now that took his form, did not offer protest when he was lowered down from his ledge onto the small bed, though Kite couldn't shake the feeling that he was being very intently watched. They tied him down with some of the rope from the last of their rope cranks --Elk's, because they were using Moonstone's to trace their path-- and made sure he was secure before setting off.
    The World based a lot of its inner game mechanics, the ones not known by the casual user, off the old Dungeons & Dragons model allowing for bonuses and penalties depending on individual stats that went far beyond STR and CON. One particular stat, Bend Bars Lift Gates (BBLG), helped determine maximum weight allowances in accordance to a character model's actual capacity to perform not only those specific actions but anything that required controlled output of strength and endurance.
    Twin Blades were on the lower end of the BBLG stat, though they had no casual way of knowing this. So even working together to lift the stretcher containing Kirby_Wax, the two Twin Blades, Moonstone and Kite, found themselves suddenly under a massive amount of strain, as they made their way back the way they had come.
    Through corridors and passages, small rooms and large halls. Elk stayed out in front, seeming calm in the assurance that a retraced path wasn't half as dangerous as forging a new one, and with his glowing wand tucked under an arm to provide just enough light, he manually rewound Moonstone's rope, leading them back from whence they'd come, or presumably. The unspoken fear was that they might not end up anywhere near their point of origin. Or that they might not get very far at all. It seemed that since picking up their new charge, the creature was becoming more vocal, and had started following at a closer distance.
    In much the same way as a lion will follow closer to his prey when he sees one of them is injured.
    The three pressed onward.
    "Do you still see Sora?" Kite asked him, as they walked.
    "He's dimmed, like he's paused or something. But he's still there," Elk answered.
    "I want you to start pinging him. And don't stop, not until you get a response."
    "I'd started five minutes ago," the Wavemaster admitted sheepishly.
                                "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                            "Ba. Daa. Ba-ba."
                                                        "I killed them. Holloway and Jed. I killed them."
    Kite, who held the front of the stretcher, and Elk looked over their shoulders at the prone figure.
    "What did he say?"
    "He said that he killed them, his teammates," said Kite, shivering a little. "At least, I think so. It's funny," he added, not to Kirby_Wax, "but the other two said the same thing, that they were responsible for the others' deaths."
    Elk, who had had to plow through the Holloway Journal in the original English, seemed to resent a little that Kite had been able to absorb so much more data from the website, but said nothing.
    "...An illusion?" Moonstone asked. "Deception of this place."
    "No, I don't think so," said Kite. "Any hallucinations you'd find here are the ones you bring into the house. More and more it seems like the only true property of this place is the darkness."
    "'The darkness is nothing. It is impurities one brings into it that make it a nightmare.' That is what you believe?"
    "What's that? The style sounds familiar. You quoted it from somewhere?"
    "Ryo Sakuma. New book."
    "I haven't picked that one up yet..."
                                                            "Killed them. Oh god. God forgive me."
                                "Forgive me."
                                                                "For give..."

    Sora was not a hacker, nor was he often employed by one. His association with Helba, and later Tsukasa and Kite, had only served to compact his reputation as a despicable Player Killer in The World, but they gave no definition to his character, to say nothing of capabilities.
    It was unfortunate that Sora was one of those that likes to perpetuate his own myth. He might not have been a hacker of any variety, but his self-imbued mystique convinced people otherwise. Perhaps irreversibly.
    A good reputation takes mere seconds to ruin, but a bad reputation will keep turning up like a cat on your front porch.
    Even years after he had ceased in wrecking havoc in The World, Sora was still known as a PC to be avoided in games. He was still on the administrators' blacklist, the graylist, and probably a lot of other warning lists he wasn't even aware of. "Benefit of the doubt" was not a concept existing in Sora's personal universe.
    And for what? Over a few PKs? Meeting with some unsavory folk, most of whom he would never hear from again? He had effectively gained nothing out of the experience, and lost everything. Where's your equal sign now, Kite? I didn't get a single plus out of the deal.
    Helba had only ever taught him one hacktrick that he considered at all useful.
    It was a white sheet.
    He propped his crude polygonal flashlight up on top of his rope crank and cast the light onto the sheet, projecting a circular stage light. The white sheet was supported by nothing in the same way the immovable rod of Adamantine's was supported by nothing. It was fixed to the spot by the same means as the walls and floors of the dungeon itself.
    "...And then the mighty strongman --rawr-- leapt out from the bushes," he went on, twiddling thumbs to simulate the flexing biceps of a bodybuilder on the screen, "and grabbed Mister Dragon by the tail and swung round and around, until --fwip-- Mister Dragon was soaring up, up and away in the sky --fwoosh--" here the flapping of two pairs of fingers, a wormy pinky for a tail, "and out of sight. But then Tim the Enchanter said..."
    In this way he toiled away the idle minutes, while hoping, vaguely, that he was weirding either Sanjuro or Adamantine out through the video feed. It was as much as they deserved for being curt with him, at a time like this.
    He was really sure that had been Adamantine on the ping reply, in which case she had probably been hanging out for a while. Adamantine was not his favorite person at the moment.
    Shadows continued to dance in the circle of light.
    "...And so the valiant warrior bounded off into the sunset for the distant land, to rescue fair maiden fron the clutches of an evil Mister Monster --grrwrll-- but to the brave knight's surprise, when he got to the nightmare castle he discovered that the fair maiden was actually a young prince, and the mighty strongman, wanting to do nothing that might tarnish his jealously-guarded masculinity --rawr--, left the prince to die and went off and 'saved' some bitch in a pub instead. The end."
    He stopped ponderously, watching his best impression of a horned wizard in a buxom babe hang in shadow on the white screen. He sighed.
    "You can't get a very good angle from where I'm looking, can you?"
    Sora contemplated for a moment trying out something Mia had showed him once, in regards to hacking one's character model. Sora had never gone in much for artificial character adaptation, a fact that puzzled a lot of those that knew his reputation, but this particular trick seemed almost appropriate at the moment. And certainly morbid enough.
    And before he knew it, giggling, he had broken into song.

A sharp growl interrupted him mid-dramatic pause, and he spun around in the direction of the noise, and screamed back at it, once, then again, then cackling maniacally as his own shouts were the only things given in reply.

    "What the hell is he doing?" Adamantine wondered aloud.
    "This is getting pretty twisted," Sanjuro said, eyes fixated on the screen as Sora turned his detached head around to show his own headless body. "I'm not so sure he's just doing it to irk us, either."
    "What's he singing?"
    "Ignore the words for a moment and just listen to the melody."
    Adamantine closed her eyes in concentration for a few seconds. Then, grimacing, she snapped them open. "That movie? I didn't know something like that even got over to Japan."
    "Actually, it was a lot more popular over there than it was here," said Sanjuro, smiling weakly. "If you remember the Kingdom Hearts franchise, you'll know that the first game incorporated Nightmare Before Christmas as one of its featured game worlds."
    "Kingdom Hearts," said Adamantine, brow furrowing. "That's that one Disney-Squaresoft series they were starting to make at the turn of the century, isn't it? About fighting little critters made out of shadows or something? With a main character named..."
    "...Sora. Yeah."
    "If I were to say 'it's a small world after all'..."
    "I'd kill you."
    "Right."

    The next time Kite's team stopped, it was when the tattered end of a rope slid across the floor in Elk's effort of winding it.
    "I can't be certain," said Elk, examining the torn edge in the wandlight, "but it doesn't look like it was a clean snap."
    "Not a bladed cut, either," Kite concured. "I had a neighbor once who kept a dog that chewed through things like that."
    "What do we do now, Kite?"
    The three, as one, showed their lights in the direction from which the rope had come, until it disappeared down an unfamiliar looking hallway. All reference was gone from this place; they were navigating blind again.
    "...I don't know," said Kite. "I guess, just try to keep going believing we'll get there somehow."
    "And if it doesn't want us to?" Moonstone asked.
    "Then it'll be harder. No ping reply from Sora yet?" he said to Elk, who shook his head. "I keep thinking there are other means of finding where he is..."
    "Oh!" Elk burst out. "The tracers Adamantine programmed for us. They should home in on him."
    "Good thinking," Kite told him, nodding. He'd forgotten about those completely. "Use that."
    But the tracers were, quite simply, gone. Irrevocably absent from each of their inventories, no matter how tightly scrutinized.
    "Elk," Kite said slowly, "when you were in here alone, did you notice your items disappearing?"
    "I don't know," said the Wavemaster, a timbre of uncertainty in his voice now. "I thought I was going through healing items too quickly, but..."
    Other items, they found, had disappeared as well. And despite all sense and the assurances of Adamantine, their supposedly infinite curatives were slipping down to dangerously low levels.
    "Maybe... maybe the house can't support illegal data... But in that case, Kite, you're..."
    Kite's character map was illegally hacked, just as he had told Adamantine, at the hands of Aura. Before this had been a fact of curios, but now, suddenly, it seemed to take on a much more pressing significance.
    "And this guy, too," Kite added, wide-eyed, hefting Kirby_Wax in his stretcher. "Tsukasa told me that when she was trapped in the game she was recognized by system processes as illegal data. So, it should apply to him as well..."
            "All dead. All dead," Kirby_Wax was burbling in English, unheard or ignored. "I killed them all."
    Elk trembled. "What are we gonna do now? We've lost everything."
    "This isn't over yet. We're still here, we're still able to do something." Kite stood upright, posture so straight it put Moonstone to shame. "So let's keep going."
    Even as he said it the last light sputtering from their dying flashlights and Elk's wand was dimming into darkness. And though this was a familiar process and all three were ready to go to renew the hackscript, as the last light died Elk took a shaky breath. Following the return of the stark light, paling their faces to a sickly yellow-white and casting weird shadows around their eyes, the Wavemaster exhaled.
    As he did so, a sharp cloud of crystalized breath escaped his lips.

    All the monitors but Sora's had now completely blacked out.
    "I don't understand it," Adamantine muttered, fiddling around with the program. "I set it to a minimum-point relay, it should be communicating via the most direct route. They'd have to be on Mars for the signal to blink out like that."
    "It could be that they disconnected themselves voluntarily. Just a single wire," Sanjuro pointed out. But he conceded, inwardly, that the action seemed too synchronized to suggest this. Which called into question what else might have taken place. "Oh god. I know the international charges would have killed us, but I think we should have all exchanged phone numbers, at the very least. This was very poorly organized."
    "Hey, I helped all I could."
    "I'm not criticizing you," Sanjuro said in apology, wondering, as he had for the past few hours, if he was actually conversing with a teenager. "But our lack of foresight might have just turned deadly."
    He turned his attention to the viewscreen bearing the IRC linked to Sora. Adamantine had wiped the conversation conducted earlier, so Sanjuro had no idea what its former contents might have been. As a result, he did not hesitate before typing,
    >>Come in, Sora. This is Sanjuro.
    <<Oh. You again, huh?
    >>What?
    <<You got some sort of sick fascination in your life? Well, whatever. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I'm not moving until those guys come back up.
    >>There's a problem.
    <<Oh, is that so.
    >>We've lost video on them, completely. We had nothing but static for a while but now it's just dead. Kite and Moonstone are still on my status screen but they're grayed.
    <<I've still got Elk. Same gray, though.
    >>I want you to ping them, see if you can get a response.
    <<I've been pinging for a couple hours now; I don't need someone like you to tell me.
    Sanjuro grimaced. For the first time since Adamantine's revelation, he was rethinking his assumption that Sora had had some sort of negative intentions in mind at all. It seemed right now that the resentment Sora was harboring for him and Adamantine was more than a little justified.
    But then Sora added, <<You know, you could come in here and help out or something for once. Just a thought.
    Sanjuro took his hands from the keyboard, and swiveled around in his seat to glance at Adamantine.
    "That'll do it," she said darkly.

    Fucking adults.
    Fucking fucking adults.
    He didn't care what Kite had to say about swearing appropriately, this had gone way over the line. He gets sent here, encouraged into this goddamn place, then the next thing he hears is that, sorry kid, we don't trust your sorry ass to loan you five yen, much less help you out in a fucking awful situation.
    Sora knew, with what remained of his rational mind, that there had to be some foul play afoot, but damned if he knew how or why.
    Weighing heavier at present was the idea of giving up his post, to find his way back to that fucking room and show them what happened when people like him got pissed off. It didn't matter at the moment that he had spent the past year working to disassociate himself with that sort of crowd, that just seemed to compact with the irony. This seemed only an invitation to prove those jackasses right.
    He even went so far as to stand up, head still tucked under an arm, and took a few steps away from his make-shift base back along the rope line he'd made back from the entrance. But he got no further than a few feet before he stopped, frozen in place, and then immediately ran back. The next four attempts were met with similar failure.
    He just couldn't. As much as he wanted to.
    "I think I hate you, Kite," he said to the darkness, neverminding the echo. "You don't get it. I never had a choice.
    "Especially when you said I did."

    They found small tatters of ropes at the corner of a hallway, and later a larger chunk before a doorway. Occasionally they came across one of their markers, gouged out of the wall in the way Kite's arrow etchings had been. But the appearance of the scratched stone had a regenerative quality to it, like living coral, replenishing what had been lost in order to remove the offending presence.
    Kirby_Wax was getting heavier. It was no longer a figurative statement.
    Just when they felt that progress was being made, the three explorers would find themselves at a dead end, forced to retrace their steps back up to several hundred meters and set out in a different direction. Sometimes the rope only served to lead them astray.
    The dull ache Kite had first experienced in his bones had manifested into a sort of nausea that encompassed his whole body. The expenditure of heat, in this cold environment, had the effect of a slow-acting poison, knawing away at his endurance.
    Here, now, in this place, Kite recognized that his exploits as a character in The World were in point of fact nothing but the actions of a character designed specifically for the purpose of fighting and enduring hardships. Few actual humans were. When actual lungs were drawing the breath that powered your legs, games became a different kind of beast.
    In what remained of his rational mind, Kite knew that Elk, Moonstone and he were unique in their self-aware state. They were aware of themselves as trapped in the game, just as the house seemed aware of itself as a house, setting them apart from entities like Kirby_Wax or, earlier, Tsukasa, who had come upon the realization only slowly and with skepticism.
    At the same time, there were still sensations there that wouldn't go away: the muscles in his arms as if they were maneuvering a game controller, the strain on his pupils as his eyes stared into a 3D visor display. He was still conscious, in the real world, playing this game as it existed for most people.
    They called this liminality, the property of being on the threshold between two states of existence. It was used to describe Buddhist monks on the cusp of enlightenment.
    Kite didn't want to know what would happen if he stepped over the edge.

He didn't have the capacity to ask whether it was the same for the other two, for fear that it wasn't.

    Moonstone, for his part, seemed to be thriving in this environment. Obsessed with training in the real world, it seemed almost as if his life had been leading up to this moment, to brave these kind of conditions. He was soon leading the pack while Kite and Elk struggled to pull Kirby_Wax along with them --the stretcher had long fallen apart-- and the two were pleading with him to slow down while they caught their breath.
    Items pulled out of their inventories evaporated in their hands. The few flashlights they did manage to make were dying faster and faster. It had become impossible to even keep HP above half level, and while before that had been nothing but a number and a colored bar, now it meant so much more. It meant fingers numb with frostbite, dizzying vision, aches and sores, cramps and strained muscles, slight limps in their step.
    The tears seemed to freeze in Kite's eyes before they were able to fall. Between the pain, his growing fatigue, and the terrible situation, the world was just coming apart all around him.
    What could they do now? What was there to do? Any longer in this place and the house would have them completely, he could feel it. The creature was right behind their backs; if he were to turn around now, he would be able to see it with his own eyes.
    But he could not turn around.
    They walked down another passage, yet another, all infinitely similar.
    'You are in a set of winding passages, all alike.'
    It was right behind them, he could almost feel it on his neck, he felt that edge just before the start of an object, that aura of static, singing his skin...
    Keep running...
    More passages. More doors that wouldn't open, to find, at last, one that did, and to take it without question of where it might lead.
    His heart pounded and ached, the deep throb of novacaine coursing through his veins, fuzzing everything out of focus, turning off the sound...
    Sora... Sora, the things that plague you in the night, things I can't even begin to imagine, they're here in this place, aren't they? And now they come for me.
    He was so tired... they had gone over two hundred kilometers before they had encountered Kirby_Wax, and how long was the way back now?
    So tired...

Fall forward into sleep.
Into the nightmare that forever deprives you of light.

    Sora had constructed for himself what could be conceived as a miniature base at the head of the Stairs. He maintained a constant stream of flares to keep the light as prolific as possible, and turned the volume up until his headphones were picking up every pop and hiss of static.
    But now all that was gone, except the static and a single, dying flashlight.
    >>Ping, he said.
    The ping was one of the oldest internet tools. It worked by means of sending out a call to a remote host in order to verify whether or not the host was working correctly, and a ping response could determine physical distance, lag time, and a host of other factors. It got its name from the sonar used by ships at sea, whose processes were similar.
    Bats used sonar as well, to navigate dark caves when no other creature would have managed.
    <<Request timed out, the error message admonished, when the message had failed to go through.
    >>Ping.
        <<Request timed out.
            >>Ping.
                <<Request timed out.
                    >>Ping.
                <<Request timed out.
            >>Ping.
        <<Request timed out.
    >>Ping.
        <<Request timed out.
            >>Ping.
                <<Request timed out.
                    >>Ping.
                        <<Request timed out.
                            >>Ping.
                                <<Request timed out.
                                    >>Ping.
                                        <<Request timed out.
                                            >>Ping.
                                                <<Request timed out.
                                                    >>Ping.
                                                        <<Request timed out.
                                                            >>Ping.
                                                                <<Request timed out.
                                                                    >>Ping.
                                                                        <<Request timed out.

                                                                                        >>Ping.
                                                                                            <<Request timed out.
                                                                                                >>Ping.

                                                                                            <<Request timed out.
                                                                                        >>Ping.
                                                                                    <<Request timed out.
                                                                                >>Ping.
                                                                            <<Request timed out.
                                                                        >>Ping.
                                                                    <<Request timed out.
                                                                >>Ping.
                                                            <<Request timed out.
                                                        >>Ping.
                                                    <<Request timed out.
                                                >>Ping.
                                            <<Request timed out.
                                        >>Ping.
                                <<Request timed out.
                            >>Ping.
                        <<Request tiemd out.
                    >>Ping.
                <<Request timed out.
            >>Ping.
        >>Ping.
    >>Ping.

    Kite knew he had to be disoriented, for there were two things wrong with his vision. The first was that the Stairway, in their absence, had squashed down to a distance no more than 150 feet. The second, was that Sora stood at the top of it, staring down at them, with his head held out at arm's length in his hands.
    He about fainted on the spot, but Moonstone stopped him from falling over.
    "What are you doing?" Elk demanded up at their fourth member.
    "AIYAI!" Sora shrieked, regretting turning the volume of his headphones up so far. After toning it down, he said, "You guys are all right!" He sounded almost embarassingly relieved.
    "What's wrong with your head?"
    "Huh? Er..." The disembodied head grinned nervously. "Sorry, I almost forgot..." He ducked out of sight for a second, and when he came into view again, his head was attached. "Psych-out games, you understand... Who's down there with you?"
    "An American The World player," Moonstone explained, still supporting the shorter Twin Blade. "Trapped here before us."
    "We're going to have a tough time lugging everything up by ourselves," said Elk. "Come down here and help us."
    But even at the distance of a hundred feet, Sora paled at the prospect of having to approach the Stair. "Hnh, no, I..."
    "Come on!" Elk pleaded. "We don't know how much time we have here!"
    "W... Just wait a second..." Sora stammered. "I'll..."
    "Sora! PLEASE!"
    But Elk's partymate was already out of sight.
    "I can't believe it," Elk growled. He was not a person to often exhibit anger, but the strain was getting even him to the end of his endurance. "We should have believed Tsukasa and her people. He really is no good."
    Kite, in all this, had been too zoned out to inject his own remarks in the conversation, but he still heard all of what was said. When Elk's words hit him, Kite felt his stomach turn.
    Everyone thinks that about you still... do they...

    >>SANJURO!
    <<What?! What?!
    It was past four AM in South Dakota. Sanjuro, who was on his second day without sleep, was not performing at full capacity. He calmed himself before continuing.
    <<What is it?
    >>Kite and the others! I see them!
    <<You're serious?
    Sanjuro glanced at the video feeds. They were still dead. Was Sora just putting him on?
    >>They have someone else with them. Moonstone says it's some American that got trapped in here.
    "He'd have no way of knowing about the news story," Sanjuro said to Adamantine, who read the conversation over his shoulder. "It wouldn't have reached international news so quickly."
    >>Get in here fast, at least one of you! Help me out!
    For a moment, Sanjuro's hands hesitated on the keyboard.
    "No," Adamantine insisted. "It's a trick. Somehow, it's a trick. Don't fall for it."
    >>No, Sora. We're not going in.

    Ten minutes expired without a shift in the darkness above them. Elk, frustrated, tucked his wand under an arm and began preparing to carry Kirby_Wax up on his own. The futility of this effort was so great that Kite forced himself out of his stupor, dragging himself over to the bottom step to help Elk to carry him.
    "I knew it," Elk was muttering. "I just knew it."
    "Don't be so harsh," Kite said weakly. "Sora's..."
    He felt the pain, dully, as the plank crashed down on his head. But his senses were numb still, he couldn't feel full sensations yet, so the effect was lessened. He still rubbed the top of his head, looking upwards.
    A plank of wood attached to the rope crack had been cast down into the circle center of the Staircase, descending down to meet them. Sora appeared at the head of the stairs, peering over at them, lengths of rope looped over a shoulder and clasped in both hands.
    Sora had not descended down onto the Staircase to help them. But he had found something better.
    Elk was the lightest, so he was fixed onto the pulley-swing first, ascending upwards in increments, his glowing wand sailing up like a bottle rocket in the darkness.
    Kirby_Wax was next, only not the first because it was agreed Sora could not haul him up by himself. They slung his form upon the taut rope, pushing fingers to form tight fists around it and grasp it tightly. His eyes, still glazed, stared into nothing. He did not even sing now. But Kite forced a reassuring smile for his sake, whether he saw it or not, as he was pulled up into the air.
    Moonstone offered the plank to Kite next, but Kite shook his head. He struggled to explain in terms of captains and ships, but settled for "I'm the leader, remember?" and this, it seemed, sufficed. So the strong Moonstone was the third to ascend on the pulley.
    >>Sora, Kite said, in a private PM.
    <<Kite, was his response. Was it sincere or sarcastic? He couldn't tell. Either was gratifying.
    >>I'm glad you were here.
    <<You're delirious.
    At thirty meters up, the rope
                                               s

    Moonstone had nearly had to physically hold Sora down after they had exited the dark hallway.
    "We have to go back!" Sora was shouting. "We have to go back for him!"
    "The Stairway was expanding again," Elk was trying to tell him. "If we stayed in that place much longer, none of us would have gotten out!"
    Elk knew it was awful of him, but a small part of him felt relief. Upon exiting the black corridors into Sanjuro's command center, he seemed to have reverted back to reality once more. He even chanced to remove his visor for a second just to see that it was true.
    Kirby_Wax had been put into the charge of Adamantine, trying to get some sort of information out of him, but he had gone back to singing the song no one could understand.
    "Goddammit!" Sora raged. "What the hell are you people thinking?! He's the reason any of you are here at all! We can't just leave him!"
    "Sora," Sanjuro said quietly, the kind of solemness in his voice that doesn't require volume to cut across others' shouting, "did you cut the rope?"
    "What?!"
    "Everyone knows you don't like Moonstone. Granted we only have your camera feed to rely on, but from what we saw, the Stairway didn't start stretching until after the rope broke."
    "...Yes," Moonstone verified. "That is true."
    He had been able to swing his body off to one side and hit the adjacent wall when he'd begun to fall, and sprint up the rest of the way when the Stairs begun to elongate. It had nearly not been fast enough.
    "I didn't cut the rope!"
    "You had your blades out," Elk pointed out.
    "It-- The monster was--"
    "You wanted to fight the creature? With those?" Sanjuro inquired, enunciating the words such that it sounded much more ridiculous in speech than it had in Sora's head.
    What was everyone's problem? He was innocent! He considered, maybe, that he had brushed the rope with his blade a little in the back-and-forth, but he was sure that wasn't it. All the items were disintegrating in that place. And what did it even matter?
    "Why are you caring about this? Why does this matter now? The longer we wait..."
    "Sora," said Adamantine, not lifting her eyes from Kirby_Wax's prone form, "you were the one to tell me to hack the map."
    All eyes were on him then. Questioning. Accusing. He shrank under their stare.
    "What does..."
    "You knew what would happen if I did."
    "No! I just--!"
    "You knew what would happen," Adamantine stressed. She addressed his teammates, brow furrowed with the obvious effort of the foreign language. "Sora knew. He knew. Since entering, he's luring tried, many times, to draw us into that place. He uses the house against us. He thought to kill us all."
    Sora laughed, or tried to. It was an outrageous accusation. No one was going to buy that, not after he...
    But the eyes that watched him had only hardened their expressions.
    A cold chill settled in Sora's stomach; his face paled. No...
        No. Please...
            Don't do this to me...
    Not now...
                            I come so far and my record is still going to haunt me?!
    In a burst of strength, Sora pushed out of Moonstone's grip and broke for the doorway. Several PCs lashed out to grab him, but it was too little too late. He disappeared into the maze.

    At once Sora sunk down on his knees, scarcely without realizing. He was too late. How far down was it now? Or was it not so far, just enough that Kite had been left alone and the creature had...?
    What do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I...
    "KITE!" Sora shouted down into the void. "You son of a bitch, Kite! You better show up right now or--"
    A switch clicked. Sora found himself shielding his eyes.
    Through the glare Sora discovered the Staircase had sunk down to a mere 10 feet deep, and Kite still resided below, sitting on the bottom step, pointing the light upwards. Apart from this action he was hunched forward and visibly withered.
    He could have easily climbed, Sora thought, standing up, as Kite pulled the flashlight's attention elsewhere, off to the side, leaving only a hint of himself illuminated. Was he waiting...?
    "I got a strange PM..." Kite said eventually. It wasn't malice, exactly; it sounded more as if the rug had been pulled out from under him, and that this was not the first time tonight. "From Adamantine."
    "Come on," Sora said anxiously. "Get up here. We'll talk about it later."
    "Can't," Kite said dully. "Every time I take a step, it goes up about a hundred feet. Can't figure out a way around it. Was thinking you might know."
    "Do you really think I have my hand in anything here?" The words stung to utter them.
    "No," Kite sighed, turning his eyes away as if dejected. "I think Adamantine and Sanjuro are paranoid out of their fucking minds. It's not just this part of the house that can drive someone nuts left to stew about something. But she's right about the first part, isn't she?"
    "I didn't know it would harm her," Sora said strongly, perhaps harsher than necessary. "You've got to believe me. I just-- I wanted--" He crashed on ahead before sense and propriety could stop him. "I saw, okay? And I just wanted her to-- go somewhere else for a few minutes, all right?!"
    The next time that Kite looked up, the resentment was gone from his expression. Sora wasn't sure what the expression was.
    "You're like a little brother sometimes," Kite said.
    Sora, despite himself, turned red. "Hey--" But he soon gave it up. Instead he found the remnants of the rope left over from their previous rescue effort and lowered it down.
    He let Kite climb only as far as arm's reach. Then he extended his hand.

    Emerging into the dead-end room, Kite was greeted by two things. The first was in the shape of his teammates, who seemed suddenly at a loss to explain themselves given Sora's recent actions. The second was the loss of the sensation to be felt there, to return to his chilly bedroom with his sweat-covered controller held firmly in cramped hands.
    He could be imagining, but it seemed that there still lingered, for a few seconds, the sensation of Sora's hand on his wrist, transfering over just for a moment into the real world before it vanished completely.
    "Listen," Kite said, when he had recovered. "We're going to wrap this up now, probably for good. So thanks everyone for all you did, and I know it's not over, but it's over for us.
    "Soon as I can I'm petitioning the sysadmins to get this place taken down, or at least blocked. After all that's happened and everything we've seen, Lios has no reason not to listen to us. I don't want any of you to come near this dungeon again, no matter what happens. This goes for me too. Some paths are just too dangerous to tread.
    "But if I could point out," he added sourly, casting eyes in the direction of Sanjuro and Adamantine, the first of which looked guilty, and the latter cringed, "that no matter where you are in The World, trust is important. I thought, at the outset, that that was one thing that wouldn't have to be questioned. But I'm ashamed of myself too, for almost believing that other people's opinions should take priority over my own beliefs. I don't care if that sounds trite.
    "That's all. The end. There's nothing to see here anymore, folks."
    Working together, Kite and Sora pulled apart the crates that had served as Sanjuro's command post, and set them up in front of the doorway, sealing it off completely, but not before he saw that Elk and Moonstone were on the other side blocking that entrance as well. It was a temporary solution, they knew, if anyone coming by would be curious enough to investigate what lay beyond these boxes, but for the moment it was all the reassurance they needed.
    "We should leave Kirby_Wax in the charge of the sysadmins," Kite continued, as the six were making their procession out of the dead-end room with aforementioned Wavemaster in tow. "Things are different from the days with Tsukasa; there shouldn't be any fear or misunderstanding on their part. We'll let them do what they can to revive him. This is out of our hands. More than we were asked to do."
    There were no disagreements, but mostly because they were afraid to speak now. But tired also.
    But before they had even exited the dead-end room by its normal hallway, they heard it.
    It started as a dull roar, as like an ocean wave drawing to the shore. As it neared it took on a more animal timbre, growling and rolling over itself as it shook the very foundations around them, even triggering the force feedback in many of their controllers. And the knowledge flashed across all of their faces so fast there was no doubt, that the sound was coming from directly behind the door-- until it stopped, abruptly, before it would have hit.
    Adamantine's immovable rod, once used to hold their guiding rope and accidentally left behind in the desire to leave, fell and clattered to the ground in the following silence.
    And then, after an even longer pause, there came a knock.
    It boomed with the force of a small atomic bomb, rattling walls and floor and ceiling and the bones of each occupants, and the crates that held it back shuddered and cracked.
    Then, it came again.
    Again.
    "Oh my god," someone said, who knew who, drowned out as the fourth pounding shook the very air around them.
    And then, the sounds ceased. Several people even began to untense, and then gasped in shock as without warning,

                                                                                                                                                   the floor by the threshold of the doorway burned ash-black, and began to drop into the foundation, a growing gap forming under the makeshift door.
    It may have been by someone's order, or by some communal instinct, but either way, as one, the six occupants of the house broke into a run.
    No one had time to notice the glitch that flashed across their screens as they fled through the door.
                                                                        Sora and Elk emerged on the third floor, though it took a moment to realize this. No one aside from Kite had explored much of the normal areas of the house. This was a square room with two doors affectionately called the "children's room" for its sparseness and cramped size, residing very near the room with the Gott statue, though at the moment it was not the thing on their minds.
                                    Kite, Moonstone, and Sanjuro walked into a hallway on the second floor. Turning around to go back, they found no door behind them.
                                                                                                                            Adamantine, dragging Kirby_Wax along beside her, found herself by the third-level stairs. She had not explored the house at all since being invited here, and the only staircase she had been made familiar with in this place was the one with the capital S. She started to panic.

The walls around them, placid gray, were smearing with charcoal black, running across the walls and floors and ceilings like an ugly rash of mold.

"What's going on?!" Adamantine shouted at no one, dragging the prone Kirby_Wax behind her.

the floor
                falling
                            out
                                    beneath
                                                  them.