The next day, I watched as the day shift people came back and started their routines all over again. I was tired in a way that I hadn’t been in a long time, and yet, I felt like I couldn’t sleep. I was the wrong kind of wired. I was afraid to miss anything.

The day began with breakfast for the patients. I didn’t know most of their names or code names—that information is above my pay grade—but I have come up with a list based on my own observations. Father, Son, Daughter (Bethany), Teen Boy, Old Guy, Old Lady, Middle Aged Woman twins, and Mid-Thirties Woman were our prisoners (patients).

They were each given so many different colored pills with their breakfast that I might have thought it was candy, if not for the NPC nurses that stayed to watch them swallow every last one of them.

Old Guy didn’t complain about a thing. He seemed genuinely happy to have nurses and other staff serving him and asking him about his day. He also had a large jigsaw puzzle set up on the table in the room that he had nearly finished, along with a dozen more boxes of puzzles on a shelf. The rest of the shelf contained books and he even had a record player.

Old Lady was not so congenial. When Anna and Kimberly interacted with her, she called them both Jasmine.

“Dammit Jasmine, I told you I don’t want to answer no more questions.”

“Jasmine, get me my peach tea, they said if I took the tests, I would get peach tea.”

She spent most of her time knitting herself clothes that she would wear to accessorize her white medical gown.

I didn’t know how long those two had been there, but they were not new.

Kimberly was doing some sort of therapy exercise with Middle-Aged Woman and Mid-Thirties Woman when the topic of why they had been brought in came up.

“I don’t know why they blamed me,” Middle-Aged said. “That dog terrorized the whole neighborhood… It could have been anyone.”

She stared down at the ground as she said this, her eyes on the verge of tears.

“At least they gave you a reason,” Mid-Thirties responded. “I was just grabbed off the str—"

A voice came over the intercom. “Do not allow the patients to relive their trauma. This would be detrimental to their treatment. Follow the instructions as written, please.”

Kimberly gave a half-hearted thumbs-up to the camera. She was playing her character as anti-authoritarian, apparently.

She then led the two women in a discussion of their fears and feelings. I decided to tune out. I would have to ask Kimberly if anything interesting happened.

When I first arrived, I assumed that everyone was at the facility because of one recent event. After having eavesdropped a little, I knew that to be untrue. There were multiple. I didn't know how many.

It took me hours after the night shift to get to sleep, but when I crashed, I crashed hard. I slept until 6 in the evening. I could have kept going but I woke up hungry and a quick glance at the screens told me that my friends were in the mess hall.

I fast walked all the way there, eager to tell them about the distortion on the screens from the night before and to find out any important information they might have discovered. The needle of the plot cycle was moving so incredibly slow that I would normally say it was nearly First Blood, but at the rate it was moving we likely had plenty of time.

As I was quickly walking into the mess hall, I was suddenly On-Screen. Unable to tell my friends the news candidly, I decided to solve a different problem.

“I am starving,” I said as I passed by them and purchased two meals from the vending machines, a sub sandwich and a rice dish of ambiguous origin.

When I got back to the table, I saw that Antoine’s arm was around Kimberly and they were smiling at me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I’m pregnant,” Kimberly said with a bubbling joy. She was a good actor. I don’t think I could announce a fake pregnancy with half that enthusiasm.

“What? No way!” I said with a smile. “So the family tree grows by one. Congratulations”

Kimberly was my cousin in this storyline. It made sense for me to be excited.

“I hate that I found it out while I was here,” Kimberly said. “KRSL is watching us. They probably knew before I did.”

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“Just now,” Kimberly said. “There are pregnancy tests in the medical center.”

Carousel sure did think of everything.

“That makes more sense,” I said. “I thought you were going to tell me they sold those in the vending machines too.”

We made idle banter and talked about baby names. The whole time, I was thinking about something else entirely.

Kimberly’s Grit.

Pregnancy Reveal boosted a player’s Grit upon revealing they were pregnant. The logic was that pregnant characters are more sympathetic and the audience wouldn’t want to see them die or get hurt. What interested me was the degree that her Grit had been buffed.

points.

Her Grit went up a huge amount from that one trope. That seemed like a lot. I was not super familiar with the trope yet though. Still...

That must have been excessive.

Was her performance so good that the buff was maxed out? Was her Moxie so high that the buff scaled up to match?

I couldn’t really put my suspicions into words so I dropped the line of thought.

Eventually, we went Off-Screen.

“I didn’t think it was going to end,” Kimberly said. “There is something really strange going on here. Like, stranger than the obvious.”

The others agreed.

We took turns exchanging information with each other about what we had found.

Kimberly and Anna talked about their conversations with the patients. They had all complained of one thing: insomnia.

“That can’t be true,” I said. “I watched them all night long. They were sleeping just fine.”

“That’s what they said,” Anna responded. “They were always asking for sleep meds so that they could get some shut-eye.”

Strange.

“Maybe the cocktail of drugs they’re on has something to do with it,” I suggested.

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

“I… have some bad news,” I said. I told them about the Distortion and the two enemy tropes I had seen, Anyone Can Die and A Knock at the Door.

That was a potent combination in this setting.

I wondered how Anna would take that. She had always been safe in the knowledge that she would survive every storyline.

She got quiet.

“So, whoever is closest to it gets killed?” Camden asked.

“Sounds like it,” I said. “Though it may have other tropes that I couldn’t see from a distance.”

Camden had his own information to share.

“There is a genetics lab on one of the other floors,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what they do, but it has something to do with this floor.”

“What do geneticists have to do with supposed trauma patients?” Antoine asked.

No one had a good explanation other than, “These aren’t really trauma patients.”

Antoine hadn’t found anything yet. He did have one interesting observation though.

“None of our security procedures are related to the patients. We are not supposed to touch them. All of our training is for dealing with irate employees and outside intruders,” he said. “I thought that was odd.”

So did I.

Of course, eventually, the conversation turned back to me.

“So what do you think it is that we’re dealing with?” Kimberly asked.

"I'm working on it," I said. "You'll know when I know. I can only use Cinema Seer once or twice if I want it to work well. I don't want to waste it before I know anything for sure."

That wasn't what they wanted to hear.

"Well get on it," Anna said. "Every time I turn a corner here I feel like I'm in danger."

I felt similarly.

The problem with this story wasn't that I didn't have any idea, it was that I had too many ideas. Ghosts, Demons, psychic phenomena, they were all in play still. Not to mention, KRSL could be behind it. Evil corporations have been villainous in many horror movies. Who's to say they weren't the main culprit here? We just didn't know enough.

We finished our food and separated. I had to get to work, as did Antoine, who had the night shift tonight as well. Kimberly, Camden, and Anna had to get to bed.

The events of the previous night repeated again. The same employee who complained about not having enough time to finish her duties had the exact same complaint again. However, she gave up sooner and with slightly more concealed disdain for her supervisor.

All of the day shift employees were off the floor by 7:30.

At 8:00 my shift began. I went through all the normal checks for audio and video. Everything was working.

Then my watch began.

The first four hours were not exactly riveting. I watched as all the patients settled down to sleep. That night, they all slept soundly. I wondered if they would still complain about insomnia in the morning.

At midnight, Antoine began his first walk around the floor. This place was seriously big. I knew that just from looking at the number of monitors that it took to see the entire floor, but I didn't really understand how large it was until Antoine started walking around it. It took him an hour to do a single lap.

Every time he would come to a door, he would buzz me on the intercom and ask for me to open it. I would oblige. Eventually, I just started unlocking the doors as he walked toward them.

When he was about three-quarters of the way done with his tour, he started to slow down. He was walking strangely, he almost looked… afraid. I looked around the screen to see if there was something that he was seeing, but there was nothing in the direction that he was looking.

He walked up to a white intercom box and press the button.

“Can you talk to me?” he asked. His voice sounded like he was breathing hard. At first, I wondered if the distortion that I had seen the night before had somehow snuck up on him and was having some physiological effect on his body.

But then I realized.

He was just having a hard time walking around alone. The Stragglers' Forest was still taking its toll.

“Yeah sure,” I said. We were risking breaking character if the camera was on, but if he needed someone to talk to, I had no choice but to help him.

“What's the temperature like out there?” I asked.

“It's fine,” he answered.

“They have me freezing in here,” I said. “I have to wrap myself in a blanket just to sit here.”

He didn’t respond.

“So you're coming up on a junction,” I said. “If you go left you'll eventually circle back to the mess hall area. If you go right, you'll find a bunch of conference rooms and eventually get to the patient wing.”

Antoine had a map that he carried with him. He checked it and said, “I have to check the patient area.”

I flipped the switch that would open up the door on the right. “Go right ahead. The path is clear for a while but you need to take the next left turn.”

Antoine nodded.

He walked along the path. I followed him on the monitors, flipping on the audio switch for each sector as he passed. I continued talking to him, I didn't really have anything to say but I don't think it mattered. I think he just wanted to hear someone's voice, even mine.

As he walked toward the patient wing, it reappeared.

Right in front of one of the patient common areas, the camera distorted.

This was really bad timing. Antoine would be in that area soon. For a moment I considered sending him in that direction just so that he could get a quick glimpse of whatever it was that was causing the camera to malfunction, but of course, that would have been a terrible decision given his current state.

“Antoine,” I said, “Go ahead and take the next right. I'm opening the door for you.”

Antoine stopped and checked his map. “I'm supposed to be going straight here.”

I didn't know if he was On-Screen. Just in case, I needed to play it in character.

“Go ahead and take the next right. We're having a camera malfunction. I was hoping you could come take a look.”

On-Screen.

Antoine did as I asked. He turned right and I quickly locked the door behind him.

“Is the camera malfunction still happening?” Antoine asked nervously.

“Just keep going straight,” I said.

Elsewhere, the distortion could be seen wandering from monitor to monitor. There was still no sign of what was causing the distortion on the camera. It wasn't exactly following Antoine yet but it was walking parallel to him.

As he walked, the distortion would move to the nearest door that would connect it to him, but it couldn't go through it. Soon though, there would be a junction that Antoine had to cross through that the Distortion could get to.

“Take a left here,” I said to Antoine.

The distortion changed monitors in a way that tracked Antoine's movement.

If that thing learned to go through doors, Antoine was a goner.

I continue to guide Antoine one room at a time. I started to whisper into the microphone, worried that it was my very instructions that were drawing the distortion in the direction of Antoine.

I had an idea.

I flipped on the audio switch for a camera that was on the opposite side of the floor. If I could lead it away from Antoine, he would be home-free.

“Antoine come over here can you hear me come over here,” I said into the microphone.

The distortion didn't move, not at first.

“That's right Antoine stay right here.”

The distortion moved monitors. It was heading through the rooms and hallways that were accessible to it in the direction of my voice.

At first.

With the sudden turn, the distortion started moving across the monitors back in the direction of Antoine. It was like it was running.

I flipped the audio back to Antoine. “Keep going straight and take the next right,” I said. “Get a move on, will ya? Come see me in the surveillance room.”

Antoine continued to move in my direction. I opened all the doors that he needed on his path and closed them as he passed through.

The distortion got to the nearest room it could but was stopped again by a door that blockaded it from the rest of the floor. As it got there, the bars on the audio meter for the room with the distortion, spiked. Once. Twice.

It was beating on the door.

Antoine was almost to my room.

I quickly moved to my door and started to unlock the manual locks. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the audio meter spiking in the room with the distortion.

As soon as I had my locks undone I ran back to the monitor and flipped on the speaker.

I heard it tapping on the door, slowly getting louder with each thump.

Antoine got to my door. I opened it for him and allowed him inside. I closed the door behind him and locked it.

“What's going on?” he asked.

I showed him the screen where the distortion was.

“I can't see anything what's wrong with it?” He asked.

“I can't see anything either… it was just odd.”

“What is that noise?” he asked.

Thump.

Thump.

He didn't know how to react at first. He was still messed up.

“You need to get this equipment checked,” Antoine said nervously. “You had me thinking there was a tiger chasing me.”

He was trying to stay in character as best he could. It was hard to judge how freaked out his character would be at that point. After all, Antoine knew there was something there to kill us, but his character didn’t.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just had this weird feeling… Something you need to know about our family if you’re going to be a part of it. We act on our instincts.”

Antoine nodded. “Yeah, Kimberly said the same thing. Man, you got me freaked out.”

He started breathing in and out deeply.

He forced a laugh. “The plumbing is knocking around and you think I’m in danger.”

We both chuckled, though we kept an eye on the monitor.

Luckily, Carousel had mercy on us and, after a few moments, we were back Off-Screen.

“It's trying to get out,” I said. “It was trying to get…”

I stopped. I didn’t want to freak him out.

“To me?”

I nodded.

“What kind of monster is invisible on camera and can’t walk through a closed door?” Antoine asked.

“Sit down,” I said. “This is going to take a while. There’re so many answers to that question.”

We sat and talked about possibilities as we waited for the distortion to go away.