I hated being this far into a storyline and still not even knowing who the principal antagonist was. We had some ideas, of course. Anna’s daydream interactions with a kindly older woman told us a little bit, but I really wanted to lay eyes on the big bad. I wanted to know what they were and figure out how they worked.

But all I could do was sit and listen as Cassie talked about the stories in the fairy tale book she had acquired.

“That’s will o’ the wisps,” she said as she held the book open to an illustration, fresh from reading through it. “They trick travelers on the road, making them think that they’re following torches or lanterns, but in reality they’re being led off into the middle of nowhere.”

“I haven’t seen any torches or lanterns,” Antoine said. “We are where we are because it is where we were instructed to be, until we decided to go chasing after some monster or whatever that was that took Camden.”

“I’m not saying that it’s literally a will o’ the wisp,” she said. “Look at this, another one. Sirens. They’re like mermaids, but they sing to lure in sailors so that they smash their ships against the rocks. Don’t you see what I’m saying?”

We knew a bit about sirens.

“I haven’t heard any singing,” Antoine said.

I gave him a quick glare, trying to warn him off the heavy skepticism that had been Camden’s role until he was taken, because I worried it might have been what got him targeted, if not his savvy.

Antoine seemed to understand my meaning.

“Look, I’m open to the idea that there is something out there, but unless you can look inside of that book and tell me that there is some creature that sends Morse code through the airwaves or that can control radios or whatever we’re saying is happening, then I don’t see how a fairy tale book is useful here.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. She was doing her best to make up for the last storyline where her contributions were cut short. In this story, psychics had real power, and she intended to take a bit of the spotlight.

“Here’s another one,” she said as she flipped through the pages. “It’s about fairies who lure in travelers just as it’s about to rain, promising them shelter, but then they get trapped in other worlds and can never go home. Look, I’m not saying that any of these creatures are what’s to blame. I just think it’s awfully interesting that our ancestors were so afraid of monsters trying to lure them away from their campfires at night.”

Antoine didn’t have a response. Neither did Anna, who had spent much of her time On-Screen with a face of longing. Whatever it was that was calling to us was promising her a reunion with her character’s parents, from what I understood. She had to play the part, although I wasn’t sure exactly which direction she could take that. Was it a flaw that she so desperately wanted to find a place where she belonged?

“The dark forest, the distant seas, caves, twisting back roads. I see a theme here,” I said. “You’re saying that our ancestors were afraid of the unknown, of places that hadn’t been mapped or populated. But we do have maps, right? Tons of them. And back at headquarters, they have satellite images. I hear they even have images from before the war.”

“You heard wrong,” Cassie said. “They don’t know any more than we do. They’re not just keeping us in the dark about things for fun. They do it so that we never realize exactly how little we know about the outside world. Dozens of maps that contradict each other. Satellite images with huge pieces censored, all of it locked away behind passwords that have long been forgotten. Nobody knows what’s out there, and pretending like people at headquarters do is foolish.”

She slammed the book shut and then rolled over under her thin survival blanket, hugging the book like it was a pillow.

“It’s going to be morning in a few hours,” Antoine said. “We need to get some sleep, and then we need to decide what we do next.”

I thought for a moment as I lay on my back and stared up at the roof of the tent.

“We can’t go back. I wouldn’t even know how to find the way,” I said. That was good in a way. It meant our characters couldn’t just walk away from the danger. It was also a bad thing because it meant our characters were being passive, that they had no choice but to carry on.

“We can’t stay here,” Anna said. “Whatever it was that took Camden could take us.”

“That’s not exactly an argument for moving forward either,” I said.

How familiar was it that we were once again in a position where there were no right moves, no intelligent play, no obvious choice. The only question was which wrong choice we wanted to make.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Once we went Off-Screen, we had a few hours to rest before we had to start filming again, and we took advantage of it. I really didn’t like the narrative position we were in, being pushed by forces on one end and pulled by forces on the other. The Arbiter wanted us to go on this journey so that he could get credit for establishing contact with another terradome. His career was on the line. On the other side, whatever mystical force pulled us forward, it clearly wanted the worst for us, too.

If we continued down this path as sheep, there was no way we could survive. We needed to find a way to choose to move forward instead of being manipulated.

I thought about this for hours before I finally fell asleep, and when I awoke, I was already On-Screen.

Say what you will about the future communist scientists of this storyline, but they did know how to make an automatically deploying tent. That thing was hardly bigger than a bedroll, and it could extend itself up to a medium-sized tent in seconds, and then shrink back down just as fast.

I wondered if we could take it with us after this storyline.

Morning came, and with it came new pathing data. I wasn’t sure whether these armbands of ours worked on GPS or pinging off radio towers, but they seemed to know where we were and quickly got us back on the main road. An hour later, they led us off the main road and sent us on a multi-hour journey until we eventually found ourselves back on that very same road. We had once again walked in a big half circle. We had been On and Off-Screen the whole time.

Now that we were back, we were solidly On-Screen.

“That’s it,” I said.

“What’s it?” Antoine asked.

“Look down at your feet,” I said. “This is that same black asphalt we were just on, not two hours ago. It sent us out into the boonies and then back to this road again.”

Antoine made an exaggerated display of looking at the road and sizing it up to confirm my conclusion.

“So what?” he said. “We had this explained to us. The computer is learning about the routes.”

“The computer has to confirm which map we’re on out of thousands of different maps it has,” I said. “Do you really think this is the most efficient way of doing that? I know that the war had a lot of misinformation, but do you really believe this is the best way to find the right one? How does that make any sense?”

“It was in our training,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I have an alternate theory,” I said. “I think that we were sent way out of the way because there was something that we were not meant to see. Heck, maybe I’m stupid. Maybe there’s like a radioactive crater that we’ve been manipulated to avoid. But if that’s the case, I want to see it. It’s like they want us to make this trip with our eyes closed.”

“Well,” Cassie said, “why don’t we just go take a look? It couldn’t take that long. Not if we go straight down and straight back.”

Antoine looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t.

“All right,” he said, “but when we don’t find anything, we just follow our pathing from then on, and I don’t want anyone here complaining about the beeping when we go off course.”

Anna looked hesitant, but ultimately complied. She was going to have to figure out how to make her character stand out. Sure, she had less practice, and being postered had really affected her, but if we couldn’t get our Final Girl to take charge, the party of promise might be doomed.

So we followed the main road back in the direction we had just come. It didn’t take very long, and we were Off-Screen the entire time until we got right to the middle of that big half circle we had just taken, the place that we had been forced to avoid.

On-Screen.

“There’s nothing here,” Antoine said. He was lying.

It was a big, empty portion of road. I was expecting maybe a building with signs of life, or maybe some sort of monster that our secretive government knew existed and decided just to steer us around.

“Maybe it’s a little further,” I said.

“We can see a mile in that direction,” Antoine said. “How much further could it be? We’re almost back to where we started.”

“Just a second,” Anna said, as she began fiddling with her ArGIS unit. We had been dealing with it the entire backtracking trip. We had to turn the volume off every time the alarm sounded, telling us we were going in the wrong direction.

After she had gone through several of the menus, she pushed a button, and my ArGIS unit started going off again. But this time it wasn’t warning about going in the wrong direction. It was just a ringing sound. I quickly pressed the mute button on my unit.

Anna had used the function to call nearby units. It might have been useful in the dark, but it didn’t even allow communication. It just made someone’s device start ringing. At first, it wasn’t clear why she had done it, but then it turned out she was right on the money.

Once Cassie, Antoine, and I had muted our devices, a faint ringing could still be heard on the side of the asphalt road.

“Listen,” Anna said.

“No way,” Antoine said as he ran toward the sound.

The thing that we hadn’t noticed was covered in dust and dirt, almost lost to time.

The truth was, we had seen it the moment we arrived, but we were On-Screen so we couldn’t talk about it. We needed a clever way to introduce it to the audience, and stumbling on it seemed uninspired. Luckily, Anna had a great idea.

What we found was a body, dried and picked clean from the look of it, but still an identifiable body.

“Is it a soldier?” Cassie asked. There were a bunch of missing soldiers, after all.

“No,” Antoine said. “It’s a civilian. Soldiers aren’t supposed to come out this far. Their job is to guard the terradome and outposts.”

We each looked down at the body and then examined our own jumpsuits. The skeleton was dressed exactly like us. It even had an ArGIS exactly like ours.

“Look at the direction he’s facing,” I said. “He was heading back toward Culver’s Bay.”

“But this doesn’t make sense,” Antoine said. “The only reason a civilian would be out here is the same reason we’re out here.”

“But that’s not possible,” Anna said. “We are the first squad to be sent out on this mission, right?”

Cassie started to laugh.

“That’s what you get for believing the government,” she said.

“No,” Antoine said. “Why would they lie about that?”

“Because it’s hard to get new volunteers when the old volunteers keep dying on the side of the road,” I said.

We stared down at the skeletal remains of one of our own and saw in them our future, possibly.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep