Laura was collecting up the slightly dented cans when Caroline poked her head in the door.

  Caroline turned and yelled to someone behind her. “She’s in here! She found the kitchen!” She turned back to Laura. “Hey, lady—” She stared around the room. “What the hell happened in here?” There were still streaks of blood on the floor in addition to half a dozen cans rolling around.

  Graham and the young man they’d been talking to followed Caroline in. They all surveyed the damage.

  “We had a little pest problem,” Laura said.

  “Oh shit,” Caroline said, grabbing her shoulder. “You’re almost a level 2 now!”

  “You can see that?” Laura said, surprised.

  “Yeah, I added you in the system. Go to your menu down where it says party.”

  Laura pulled it up and saw a pending notification.

  You’ve been added to party “The B Team” by Caroline S. Click “decline” if you’d like to leave.

  Caroline had also added Graham and the young man, who was named Nate. Laura could now see that all of them were still Level 1 and that their experience bars were empty. Caroline had one extra designation hovering next to her name: Magic.

  “You used your stat points already?”

  Caroline poked around the wire racks at the cans of food. “Ugh, beans,” she said. “Yeah, I did it as soon as the system let me. Back when I thought I’d get to go in with the first group.”

  Nate had gone straight to the fridge and was now gathering eggs, butter, and cheese on the counter.

  “Yeah I thought I was dying,” he said casually to Graham as he pulled down a skillet and cranked the knob under a burner to light the stove. Clearly he was continuing some story he’d been in the middle of telling them.

  He cracked eggs into the pan using one hand then grabbed a pat of butter. “I thought it was another sick joke from this place.” He flipped the eggs by flicking the pan and then sprinkled in some cheese. “Turns out I don’t need my insulin here. My blood sugar was freaking 57 when I checked it. Insulin almost killed me, go figure. I had to use all my glucose tablets and wolf down a chocolate bar." He dumped a perfectly formed omelette out on the plate. “Still, habits die hard. Can’t really beat eggs you know?”

  He split the omelette with Caroline, who sat cross legged on the tile floor. She scooted to one side to avoid a streak of rat blood.

  “Do you know how much it sucks to be working in a kitchen and not to be able to taste as you’re cooking?” Nate said, taking a large bite. “Throws my blood sugar readings all off.”

  That likely explained the burns on his arms. “Have you worked in a kitchen like this before?” Laura asked.

  “Pretty similar. I’ve been working at Mira as a sous chef, and was actually here getting the lay of the land about a potential promotion. Adventureland was looking to go more upscale for their newest restaurant. Themed but tasteful. They’re wanting to go after more of the DINK set, you know?” He demolished the rest of his omelette.

  “Are you good at estimating at scale? Like do you have a sense of how many people the food in here will feed and for how long?”

  Graham looked at her.

  Nate shrugged and set his dish in the sink, then started poking around the kitchen. He closely inspected the fridge, the deep freeze, and opened some large bins on the shelves.

  “You’re assuming people will agree to divide it fairly,” Graham said. “You may be overestimating once panic sets in.”

  “Assuming they get around to panicking,” Laura said, thinking how little sense of urgency there had been by any of the rest of them to do anything but hole up in their rooms.

  Graham chuckled. “There’s always panic once reality starts to set in.”

  “Could be worse,” Nate said, tipping the open bins to show sugar, rice, and some other basic staples. “There’s a good bit of frozen meat in the walk-in and we got a lot of rice and pasta. Canned tomatoes, beans, stuff like that. We’ll be out of the really fresh fruits and veggies in a couple days, but overall for a little over a dozen people…maybe at least a month’s worth?”

  Graham inspected the door to the kitchen. “No clear way to lock it. Anyone will be able to take anything.”

  Caroline looked worried. “Should we grab some stuff now and keep it in our rooms? Just enough to make sure nobody wipes it out.”

  “And then the next person will do the same thing and take even more.” Graham said.

  “We have to at least pretend to trust each other at this point,” Laura said. “Don’t we?”

  “I think you’re missing the easiest solution here,” Nate said, pulling out some onions and grabbing a knife. He started chopping the onions. “Just act like everything’s normal. People love a bit of normal, especially when shit’s hitting the fan.” He nodded over to a small whiteboard on the wall where staff wrote down any internal notes on it. “Grab that down will ya? Write on there ‘vegetarian chili, burgers, salad’ and prop it up by the door.”

  Laura grabbed the white board and Graham began copying the menu out in pristine lettering.

  “We should probably also do an inventory,” Nate said as he cranked open a can of tomatoes. “Mark the lines on the bins and all that. Get a quick sense of what’s here so we’ll notice if it starts to disappear.”

  They all went around, marking levels on food bins.

  “Maybe it’ll regenerate tomorrow?” Caroline said hopefully as she drew a line on the canister of flour. “I mean, you can’t take anything for granted around here, right?”

  While they were prepping, a middle-aged man in a zip-up fleece poked his head into the kitchen. He ignored them and started rummaging around the shelves. Without looking up from his workstation, Nate pointed at the sign in Graham’s hands. “Dinner will be ready at 6. Spread the word if you want.”

  “Do you work here?”

  “Seems I do now.”

  “Look, my aunt needs something now. She’s not going to want vegetarian chili or whatever the hell you’re making. So I’m just going to grab something out of here for her.” He went over to the fridge and yanked it open.

  Caroline pushed the fridge back closed again. “Listen, dickweed. Dinner’s at 6.”

  The man briefly sized her up but didn’t look in the mood to wrestle her for it. He beat a hasty retreat but Laura had a feeling he’d be back.

  When Laura and the others came back the next morning, the food hadn’t regenerated. But the rats had.

  They quickly settled into a routine. Laura and Graham took point on either side of the door and threw cans to clear the rats while Caroline stood back and acted as a spotter since she wasn’t able to use her magic.

  The dinner had gone over decently well, so their small group now threw themselves into making all three meals in addition to conquering the kitchen daily. People began congregating in the continental breakfast area at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They mingled, pressing their noses to the windows (no one ventured back out onto the boardwalk), but made no moves to do anything other than clumping into a group for as long as the feeling of comforting normalcy lasted. Then everyone retreated back to their rooms.

  The level 3 rat reappeared on the third day. Its health bar was topped off again, but by that point both her and Graham were able to work together to kill it within minutes. Laura dealt the killing blow and that seemed to give her a proportionately bigger share of the experience from the kill. Both of them were now level 2.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Only 1 point?” Laura said, when she saw the announcement in her menu. “We got 3 when we started.”

  “We’ll have to be fairly strategic then,” Graham said, examining the menus.

  Laura put her point into constitution. Right now she had the ability to take out most of the rats with one or two well-placed shots. What she wanted was to protect herself from one of them sneaking up on her. Graham, who’d also chosen the long range fighter build, put his point into intelligence.

  Several more days passed. Laura got a “congratulations, you’re 9 weeks pregnant!” notification from the system just to really add salt to the wound.

  Now it was day eight. Nate and Caroline were starting lunch while Graham wrote on the white board, as he now usually did.

  The amount of missing food had decreased with their regular meal plans, but it hadn’t stopped entirely. So their plan of “fake it until you make it” was working, but not perfectly. How long until things cracked completely?

  There was still no word from inside the parks.

  How long could it possibly take? Of course it would be slower going—a person could walk across the parks easily in one day, but they typically weren’t actively fighting off things that were trying to kill them—but the more time stretched on the more she struggled not to worry that something had gone very wrong.

  Laura hovered near the door of the kitchen while Caroline handed Nate supplies from the fridge.

  Laura opened a few drawers, poking around the items inside, then quietly pocketed whatever looked useful. She wasn’t trying to be surreptitious but she also didn’t want to needlessly draw attention to herself.

  She excused herself from the kitchen saying she needed a bathroom. As far as the others knew she was just nauseated and needed a break from the food smells.

  She wandered down the hall, opening doors to various rooms. She found a staff bathroom, then moved on until she found a laundry room. In the far corner was a small pipe white sticking out of the wall with a screw on cap. Below it was a manhole cover. Bingo.

  She’d been wondering about the fact that they still had running water ever since Graham had mentioned it. It had shown no signs of slowing down, so clearly something was still getting in.

  The manhole cover was way too heavy for her to lift on her own so she wasn’t even going to try. She unscrewed the cap on the pipe instead. The smell was immediate. She gagged and covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve. With her eye pressed right up to the opening of the pipe, she could just about see…nothing. It was way too dark to see anything.

  She took her phone out. She pulled out the butcher’s twine that she’d snagged from the kitchen and wound it around the phone as securely as she could. She started recording and made sure the flash was on before she fed her phone into the tube. The tube angled down until it connected to another vertical pipe. The phone swayed and banged into the sides as she let out a bit more twine, lowering the phone down through the vertical section of pipe. After a moment the phone bumped to a stop. The line went slack in her hands.

  Shit, had she hit the bottom of the sewer already? There hadn’t been any splash that she could hear.

  She yanked on the twine causing another thud as the phone smacked into the side of the tube. She reeled the phone in. It was dry.

  She restarted the footage. It showed nothing but flashes of the pvc pipe and a glint of something below as the camera swung around. But as it went down a few feet it was stopped by something. It turned into a static picture staring back up the pipe. When the phone started going up again it swung around and she got the briefest glimpse of it—more of that same fog barrier that was at either end of the boardwalk.

  Warning: Attempted circumvention of game requirements.

  An individual penalty has been incurred. Attempts to circumvent the game again will cause a game wide penalty.

  The phone clattered to the floor as the message flashed across Laura’s vision. Her heart raced. Her fingers felt numb from adrenaline as she grabbed for her phone.

  A video appeared, floating in the middle of the room. It was her, from minutes earlier, seen from behind crouching down and lowering her phone into the open pipe.

  “It appears some of you are now testing for other exits.” The floating man’s voice accompanied the video.

  The image changed to a diagram showing that the “dome” of fog was in fact a sphere that entirely encircled the parks and hotels. The view moved underground to the sewers and focused in to show water trickling through, but anything larger—for example, a fly that it zoomed in to display—still slammed into the barrier. “I applaud your curiosity, but believe me this isn’t part of the game. I have no interest in you attempting to tunnel out or do anything except experience what we’ve created exactly as I’ve explained it to you. However, your engagement has been taken as a sign that you may appreciate being a more active participant!”

  Transportation occurring in 3…2…1

  God, Danny, I’m sorry. I really tried to play it safe.

  There were trees everywhere. A layer of red and yellow leaves carpeted the ground and some shriveled leaves still clung to the branches and rattled when the wind blew. Behind Laura was a wall of fog, and in front of her was a seemingly endless stretch of trees. The faintest dirt path wound into the forest.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” said a voice next to her.

  It was Brett, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Behind him was a tiny sleeping spot camouflaged between two large rocks. He had a backpack full of food next to it.

  There was a giggle in the woods, and he picked up a rock and chucked it as hard as he could at the sound. There was a rustling as whatever it was ran away.

  “Where are we?” Laura asked Brett. Her heart was hammering.

  “In the parks.”

  She yanked up her map. Most of it was still obscured but an area around her was now clear. It showed the little dirt path next to them marked “path to Witch’s Hollow”.

  “Yeah, this place is way bigger than it used to be,” Brett said, stacking a few more rocks near his knee.

  “Where is everyone else?” Laura asked. She dreaded that he’d say he was the only one left.

  “That Oliver guy is a real tool. Wouldn’t listen to any of my ideas. Just kept doing his own thing. Now he’s trying to find a way around the maze thingy that we were supposed to go through to get to the next section of the park. I told him we could take it, but he wanted the easy way around.”

  Her head jerked up. “They’re what?” Laura flashed back to giving them tips of the fastest ways through the park. They had to have gotten those warnings, right? “Message them! Tell them—”

  Brett shook his head. “Can’t. They kicked me out of their party. So I came back here to see if anyone else was going to come through that I could go with instead. Maybe there’s some way to still message them but I don’t know how.”

  There was another giggle.

  “What is that?” Laura said.

  “Mobs,” Brett said before whipping another rock at the sound in the woods. He didn’t clarify more than that.

  Warning: Attempted circumvention of game requirements. Player actions have now incurred a group penalty.

  Brett looked at Laura. “Guess they tried for that shortcut after all. Douchebags.” Somehow that struck Laura as the pot calling the kettle black.

  “WOW, that didn’t take long!” The floating man’s voice reverberated in Laura’s head. “Yet again you all tried to figure your way around instead of going through. What would be the point of that? This isn’t a puzzle, we’ve made it quite clear. Here, I’ll make it even easier for you.”

  Glowing dots appeared on the map.

  “Anything marked on the map with a dot is non-negotiable. Come on everyone, we worked hard on this! For those of you who seemed to have trouble finding the maze, we’re transporting you directly to the center. You’re welcome.

  “Now this is a pilot program, so I did expect some growing pains. And we do have a few tweaks up our sleeves. Maybe you all just need more motivation to fully engage with the experience!”

  The view switched to a familiar area—part of the original park, Adventure Islands. It was at the far end from where Laura was now. And there, on the far side of the sphere, was a glowing door. “Here’s the exit! Doesn’t that look inviting? I’m sure the only thing better than seeing it in person will be getting to see your loved one again.”

  The view changed to pictures flashing one after another of person after person. None of them were familiar to Laura. Each had the same background behind them. It was Adventure Islands.

  Oh god no.

  The next picture was Danny. Laura dug her fingernails into her hand so hard she felt blood.

  The last picture had a large red X through it. “Joel, I’m sorry to say since you were the one who actually tried to actively circumvent the maze, your loved one has been terminated.

  “For the rest of you, don’t worry,” the floating man said, “they’re not awake at the moment. They’ll just be nice and safe, waiting for you all to come get them.”

  “Hey, what the hell! I wasn’t even doing anything!” Brett yelled.

  “Oh, and in case you get any ideas of sitting tight and just waiting for you all to be rescued…”

  A video appeared showing the response outside of the sphere. Dozens of emergency vehicles were crowded around it. The video cut to firefighters backed by some kind of armed response trying and failing to get through the sphere. One firefighter hacked at the wall of fog with an ax. On his fourth whack the energy of him hitting the wall magnified and bounced back on him, flinging him backwards like a rag doll. The order was given for everyone to withdraw. The video cut to what seemed to be a live view of a static ring of vehicles that had formed around the sphere. They seemed to be on standby, uncertain how to proceed.

  “Good luck, and have fun!” the floating man said.

  The video cut out.

  Another alert blinked insistently in the left corner of Laura’s vision. She numbly pulled it up.

  Party notification (setup):

  Lucky you! You have a choice to make. Leave your current party The B Team, or bring them in with you? To bring them in, simply select “yes” to remain in this party.

  Please note, if you exit this message without choosing an option, you will be automatically removed from this party. You will not receive this option again.

  Laura looked at Brett, rummaging through his backpack. She’d need all the help she could get. Brett’s former group was now presumably stuck in the middle of the maze, and who knew where the group from the Boardwalk Suites had ended up. That left a party of two, hardly healthy odds to make it very far.

  But what kind of person would she be if she dragged other people in with her?

  The woods stretched out in front of her.

  She clicked yes.

  The man in the fleece jacket poked his head in the kitchen. His aunt as usual had been badgering him to grab her something else to eat since just after breakfast.

  “Hello?” he said. No one answered.

  He went to the shelves and poked around for more crackers to bring back upstairs. Maybe some cheese to go with them.

  Shit, was there really no one here?

  He paused with a container halfway open. Then he shut it again.

  A pot of broth was bubbling on the stove, and a pork chop sat abandoned on the cutting board next to it, only half prepped.

  He checked the fridge. He wiped a streak of rat blood off the white board, then wrote up a new menu and got to work.