I circled back around to the backside cabin. I took a long path. There was no sign of anyone, player or Straggler. The cabin lights were off and the windows were shuttered. Old Man Akers was probably inside waiting out the horror that was going on in his backyard.

I heard voices on the other side of the cabin.

I slowly made my way around, making sure to keep away from open clearings where I could be easily seen.

“Let’s just leave,” a man’s voice said.

“It would be faster if we drove,” a woman said. It was Kimberly. She was still there.

“We don't have the keys. Let's just walk down the road. We'll be out of here in 30 minutes. It'll all be over,” another man said.

“No, it'll be fine,” Kimberly said. “I had to write an article on car thefts on campus. I learned how to hotwire a truck just like this one. Won't take more than a second.”

She had just used Convenient Backstory.

I heard the sound of the pickup truck’s door opening and quickly shutting, followed by the clunky thunk of an old-fashioned manual car door lock.

I moved around until I could get a view of what was happening.

Kimberly sat in the cab of the truck. She was fiddling with something under the dash. Even from a distance, I could see that she was nervous, scared. I truly wanted to believe that she was my friend. That she had actually entered the forest with me but my mind wouldn't help me find that conclusion.

I was a distance behind the truck, looking at her through the back window. I remembered seeing shovels and other tools in a compartment in the back of the truck. If I could only get over there, I could grab one.

But could I even use it? Stragglers couldn't be attacked until they attacked you. Not a bad way to test for a Straggler, if a little risky.

Two men were with her. Had they been there before?

I didn't get a good look.

I recognized one of them. I had seen his face on his driver’s license. It was Edgar Barns, one of the missing hikers. I suspected that meant the other man was his brother. I looked at their names on the red wallpaper to confirm my suspicions.

The Barnes brothers stood outside the truck. Edgar was by the driver's side door and Norman was by the passenger side. It was crazy to think that they had managed to survive in the forest for so long without their packs.

Did they know about the Stragglers?

“What’s taking so long?” Edgar asked.

Kimberly cleared her throat, “I'm just trying to loosen this panel so I can start the truck. It'll only take a minute.”

Edgar moved his hand to the door handle. “Just let me in; let me try.”

Kimberly responded with a note of fear in her voice, “I got it. It'll be done soon.”

“We don't have to take the truck,” Norman said. “We can just walk. We follow this dirt road it couldn't be more than a couple of miles until we're free and clear.”

Kimberly stopped fiddling with the panel under the dash. “You know what I think I want to go find Anna.”

“We don't need Anna,” Edgar said. “We need to get out of here just the three of us.”

They started to pull the handles on the doors, trying to force their way into the truck.

“We really just need to leave,” Norman said. “Please.”

I couldn't see Kimberly’s face but she sounded like she was… I couldn't put my finger on it. The magic of the forest prevented me, but if I had to guess she might have sounded confused maybe even scared but with my addled mind, I was having difficulty putting that together.

Was one of them Straggler? Were they all Stragglers? In my mind, it felt possible that none of them were and they were just all so afraid that they were acting strange.

“I would just really like to go,” Kimberly said. “Will you… will you let me go?”

There was a brief silence.

As if it was against their will, the brothers said one after the other, “No.”

Suddenly, it was like a shroud had been lifted. I saw before me two Stragglers attempting to persuade Kimberly into leaving the forest with them.

They had unwillingly revealed themselves.

Kimberly had a trope called A Hopeless Plea. It forced captors into revealing whether they would release her. She'd gotten it during the Astralist storyline. Truthfully, I couldn't think of a good use case for such a trope; it seemed mostly like it was designed to mock her.

But she had found a way to make it useful. How much of this had been her plan? Putting herself in a position where the two men would trap her so that she could get them to reveal themselves. Logically, the trope would only work on the Stragglers. By revealing that they would not release her, they had outed themselves and simultaneously exonerated Kimberly.

I could see all three of them clearly now. Kimberly was my friend. The Barns brothers were Stragglers.

Kimberly moved her hands under the dash. The truck roared to life.

From the other side of the clearing, three figures emerged: Anna, Camden, and Nicholas.

Anna was holding one of the shovels from the back of the truck. The three of them jumped into the back, pushing the Barns brothers as they went. The brothers tried to get in with them, but they were pushed away.

Had this all been a trap to weed out some Stragglers?

I looked at the plot cycle. Not only was this likely a trap, but it was also the Final Battle. I had missed it dodging Stragglers in the forest.

Kimberly put the truck into gear and backed up away from the Stragglers. She was moving toward me, backing the truck in a circle so that she could turn around. The others hunkered down in the bed of the truck.

Any second, they were about to drive down that dirt road leaving me behind.

I ran after them. I yelled, but the roar of the truck must have masked my scream. I was in trouble. I needed some way of signaling them. I considered throwing my Walkman at them. I reached into my pocket and found the camera.

In a last-ditch effort to get their attention, I started firing off flashes. The camera was doing its best to keep up.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

Kimberly slammed the brakes.

I ran up to the back of the truck and grabbed onto the tailgate. No sooner were my feet off the ground than the truck took off again.

I pulled myself into the back.

"You had better be real," Anna said.

We drove until we were out of the forest.

The Plot Cycle switched to The End.

Suddenly, we were back in front of a campfire.

Anna, Kimberly, Camden, Dina, and I had all made it.

Antoine was gone.

I tried to figure out how that had happened. My mind was clear now that we were out of the forest. Anna, Kimberly, and I had escaped together. We all made it.

Dina had been a Straggler and had been replaced by Roberta the NPC lawyer. She made it.

But Camden and Antoine had a group of three as well with Roberta. Roberta was replaced by Dina. Antoine must have been replaced by that man in the climbing gear who, surprisingly, was not actually a lawyer.

Dammit.

I looked around at my friends. They were all coming to the same realization. We had left him behind. Kimberly was crying.

"That doesn't sound that scary," one of the teenage NPCs said after Old Man Akers finished his story.

"You don't think so?" Akers said. "Well, if you want scary, I think we have time for another story."

“This story takes place nearly ten years ago,” Old Man Akers said. “Back when a local investment firm funded a huge operation to reopen the mine on the southeast side of the property. They would soon figure out why it had been closed in the first place.”

I was staring at the place Antoine had been sitting. His baseball bat was still there. The realization dawned on me that we would have to play through each story minus the players we lost along the way. This one might end up being more complicated than I originally thought.

Suddenly, I was in the very back seat of an SUV. These were back-to-back.

I looked around.

Anna and Camden were in the middle seat. Kimberly was upfront.

Driving was a man in his early thirties. He had well-groomed brown hair and a cocky smile. He was wearing a brand-new thick button-up shirt, the kind you might see on a blue-collar worker, but this guy didn’t come across as blue-collar. His hands well-manicured.

I could tell because his left hand was on the steering wheel and his right hand was on the center console, his fingers intertwined with Kimberly’s.

She looked shocked to find herself holding hands with him, but she didn’t say anything. She looked back at us, trying to maintain her composure. She had been crying around the campfire. Now, she had a bright face full of makeup.

The thing is, I recognized the guy driving.

It was Nicholas.

I had only seen him twice and only for a brief moment each time. Nicholas was the Straggler that had replaced Antoine in the forest, leaving him trapped there. This story was set eight or nine years before that story though.

“You guys feeling lucky?” Nicholas asked.

We all said yes, though we weren’t quite sure what getting lucky would mean for us that day.

I looked around at each of my friends to see what our roles were in that story.

Kimberly was Nicholas’s fiancé and the daughter of the main investor and partner in Nicholas’s mining operation.

Camden was his lead geologist and mine engineer whose research had led the firm into pursuing the endeavor.

Anna and I were Nicholas’ employees.

Except, we weren’t. We were really working for a group called S.T.P. or Stop The Poison, an environmentalist organization protesting the dig site on Aker’s property. We were undercover, trying to get proof that Nicholas’s company was using dangerous and polluting extraction methods in their mining operations.

There were some layers to this one.

“I can almost taste it. Gold, Amethyst, Sapphire. The find of a lifetime,” Nicholas said.

Camden, who was flipping through a thick folder filled with scientific graphs and walls of text, said, “I’ll remind you that a find of this… abundance is one that should be taken with a grain of salt.”

Nicholas shook his head. “You told me that, but I just can’t imagine that Ehbert Mining would fabricate all of their reports.”

Camden looked like he had more to say but held his tongue.

“You can confirm their readings when we get there. There is no way they would lie about the property. Not when they are dealing with someone as notoriously litigious as my father.”

“Will do,” Camden said. He looked back at me and gave me an exasperated look.

“Look, honey,” Nicholas said, “The local baristas got here before we did.”

At first, I wasn't sure what he was talking about. However, as we pulled up onto Akers’ property, we were passing a dozen or so protesters holding signs. There were signs saying things like “There is no safe mining” and “Save the animal refuge.”

The protesters had blocked off the entrance to the property.

“You capitalist pigs are going to poison the drinking water of dozens of protected species. Find it in your heart to change,” a woman yelled.

I recognized the voice.

I shifted so that I could get a better look at who it was that was screaming at us.

It was Dina. She wore a button on her shirt with the letters S.T.P. She was a part of the same organization that Anna and I were, though she was obviously not undercover.

An egg hit the windshield of Nicholas' SUV.

“Those motherfuckers,” he said.

“Here let me wash it off for you,” one of the protesters, an older man with long hair said. He splashed a bucket full of dirty scummy water onto the windshield. “This was taken from near your mine down in Clearlake. You expect to do that same thing to an animal sanctuary?”

“A sanctuary?” Kimberly asked.

Camden flipped through his folder. “There's a designated animal refuge to the east. That's what all these environmentalists are concerned about.”

"Pfft," Nicholas muttered.

An animal refuge to the east, a haunted forest full of Stragglers to the west. This mine was right in the middle of all the action.

Eventually, we were able to make it through the gate and onto the property. The mine was at the back, far past where we had sat around the campfire, to the right of the forest where Old Man Akers' cabin was.

When we got there, there were already a dozen or so work trucks and a multitude of people running around getting things ready. There were lots of workers ready to get into the mines as soon as they were opened up.

As we drove closer, we were driving downhill further and further until eventually, we got to the place where the mine's entrance had been carved out of the earth. There was no mountain above it as I had always pictured mines to have. It was just dug down into the earth. The rocks that the cavern entrance was carved into were solemn and gray.

Old support beams were being replaced by newer struts of both metal and wood around the entrance.

As we got out of the SUV, Nicholas yelled, “Why am I standing in mud?”

A worker with a white hard hat, one of the higher men on the totem pole I assume, approached and said, “Just got the draining system online. Things got a little wet. It rained a lot last week.”

“Is the mine flooded?” Nicholas asked. He had clearly not thought far enough ahead to consider this possibility.

“The mine is sealed,” Camden said. “Unless groundwater seeped in at a higher rate than usual, the inside of the mine should be dry, mostly. This assumes the maps you gave me are accurate. If not, we can drain it, though the budget and schedule will take a big hit. There are more details in the report.”

Nicholas looked annoyed at this comment.

As we approached the mine, we stopped off at a truck and put on hard hats and bright neon vests. I could see how excited Nicholas was to get into the mine.

He would have to wait. Old Man Akers walked over to us and approached Nicholas.

“Please reconsider,” Akers said. “You do not know what you're getting yourself into. What lies beneath the surface on this land ought to stay there.”

Nicholas was having none of it. “Well, it's not going to. I own it.”

He pulled out a folded stack of papers. They were longer than ordinary paper and far more ornate.

“I've told you this 100 times. I have the mineral rights to this land for the next-” he unfolded the paper and read through it, “-93 years out of a 150-year leasehold. What's in this mine is not yours to keep.”

Old Man Akers shook his head in disappointment. “The mine was sealed for a reason."

“Yes,” Nicholas said. “And it's being opened for a better one."

“I cannot help you,” Akers said.

That wasn't strictly true. He could tell us what was in the mine, but that didn't seem to be his modus operandi.

Akers turned tail to leave, but before he did, he looked at me, Anna, and Camden. “How much is he paying you to follow him to your doom?”

He didn't stick around for a response.

Off-Screen.

Nicholas walked around ordering people to do this and that. He didn't seem entirely too knowledgeable about the process or the operation but you could tell that he really liked being in charge.

My friends gathered around to get some information. I explained to them all of their roles.

“That explains this,” Anna said, retrieving a small, discreet film camera from her pocket. “I was wondering why I needed it.”

I checked my pocket. I had one too. They were small cameras nothing but a button and a flash bulb. Comparable in size to the telephone receiver.

“Any tropes?” Camden asked.

“Not that I can find,” I said. “Whatever the monster is here it must be inside the mines.”

“My report says that this mine makes no sense,” Camden said. “It says that this whole thing is impossible. Dozens of different types of jewels were reported along different strands inside the mine. My official recommendation was that they didn't pursue this operation. Nicholas and his father were the ones that pushed it through. I have some documentation on that.”

He held up the folder containing all of his character's scientific information. “I think there's something more going on with them. Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Where is his father?” Anna asked.

We all shrugged.

“Well, maybe that's something that his fiancé should ask him,” I suggested, looking over at Kimberly.

Kimberly rolled her eyes. “I don't even know if my tropes will work on him,” she said. “Get A Room and Pregnancy Reveal both require me to have a romantic interest. Can I use an NPC for that? If I do, do I have to pick that one?”

Truthfully, I wasn't sure whether they would work. I had always pictured her using those on fellow players. “It's worth trying,” I said. “The audience shouldn't know the difference.”

Kimberly got quiet for a moment. “He's the one who… left Antoine in the forest, right?”

Anna nodded her head.

“I didn't even realize,” Camden said.

“Just try to find out what you can,” Anna said. “I understand if you don’t feel comfortable.”

Kimberly nodded.

“It looks like things are about to start,” Camden said.

The workers were gathering around the entrance to the mine. A large yellow crane had been constructed above the entrance. Huge cables were wrapped around something near the opening of the mine.

On-Screen.

We moved closer for a better look. The entrance to the mine had been sealed shut by what looked like concrete, rebar, and huge pieces of timber. Thick metal cables were attached to the seal. Men with drills had been chipping away at the seal, breaking it down until it could be hauled away. They were almost through.

“Here we go!” Nicholas yelled.

Kimberly walked up beside him. He put his arm around her. “Almost there,” he said.

There was a large earth mover with a jackhammer attachment up near where the concrete seal was. It was working on breaking the concrete while the crane up above drew its cables tight. I could hear the physical strain in the metal. The jackhammering echoed all over the property.

Crack!

Something had burst. Suddenly, the concrete seal came flying out of the entrance of the cave, being hauled up into the sky by the crane.

As it did, a large chunk of the concrete swung over and crushed the earth mover from the side, almost injuring its operator.

As the seal was being lifted away, a burst of wind blasted forth from inside the mine. It was one of the strongest gales I had ever felt.

But the wind itself wasn't what shocked me the most.

What shocked me was that the burst of air sounded almost like a scream.