“That was unexpected,” Borys said.

  “What happened to the road?” Felicia exclaimed.

  “It’s still… somewhere, I think.” I thought about what had happened. “Borys filled it with magic. That let me see where the space was, and I… detached it.”

  “I didn’t come close to filling the whole thing though,” Borys said. “I could tell there was plenty more to go.”

  “Yeah, but you filled up this end, which was the relevant part,” I said. “It’s still there, but we don’t have to go through it to reach the next step.”

  “You know,” Borys mused. “If that was a… spatial tunnel, it could have led anywhere. There was no reason for him to put that door right in front of us.”

  “There are two reasons,” I countered. “First, Axel has been hinting that we’ll need Theurgy to do something to the portal. He wants me to be practising the skill. And second, there's no way he could pass up the chance of sending us on a long, worthless trek, only for our destination to be a couple of feet away.”

  “True enough,” Borys admitted. “What’s our next step?”

  “Toby, you’re up,” I said, carefully ignoring how he flinched when I looked at him. “Do we just knock, or what?”

  “Um, I—I don’t know. We weren’t given any special instructions.” Toby looked nervously at the door.

  I looked as well, and though were still a little distance away, my vision was better than his. I could see that there was no door handle, but there was what looked like an intercom button. There was an obvious camera in the corner above the door, and two suspicious panels on either side.

  I guess we’ll just have to risk it. No, wait…

  I had a spell for this.

  [Phantasmal Emissary]

  Since I could make it look like whoever I wanted, I made it look like Toby. I even remembered to change its description to match him.

  I wasn’t sure if that would be necessary, I didn’t think the monsters in there had [Identify], but there wasn’t any extra cost.

  I walked the fake Toby up to the door and hit the intercom button.

  “Hello?” I said, “Can I come in?”

  There was a long pause. Then the speaker crackled to life.

  “Who is this?” it said.

  “I’m Tobias Braston, from the Ravenford facility,” I said.

  “From Ravenford? That facility was abandoned two years ago!”

  “I know. I stayed on as a caretaker until I caught the virus.”

  In the background, I could hear someone saying “Wait, what?” but the main voice had other concerns.

  “How did you get here on your own?” it asked. “There’s no way you could—”

  Then another voice broke in. “Did you say you caught the virus?” It exclaimed.

  “Yeah, but I got better,” I said. “Some people cured me.”

  At that point, someone must have covered the mic, but they didn’t turn it off. I could hear them arguing, but I couldn’t quite make out the words.

  Eventually, someone must have won. “How did you get here alone?” the first voice asked.

  “I’m not alone, there's a bunch of people with me. They wanted to see if there was anyone left here.”

  “What about the zombies?”

  “Oh, they don’t bother you if you’re immune,” I lied. I figured if I was intriguing and confusing, they’d have to let me in, just to see if I was telling the truth.

  There was an argument about it, but my side won.

  “You’d better come in, and bring your friends,” the second voice said. “The first level is abandoned, but if you make your way through, we’ll meet you at the gate.”

  The door slid open.

  “Thanks!” I said, “I’ll go tell the others!”

  I headed back out of range and cancelled the spell.

  “Doors open,” I said, “Let’s not waste any time.”

  “Did they ask about the survivors?” Borys asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t get the impression that they were needed.”

  “So what are they for then?” he asked in Polish. “Surely there was some reason—some game reason—we needed to keep them alive?”

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  “New theory,” I said. “Their purpose is to fuck with our heads.”

  He snorted. “They certainly do that,” he agreed.

  We went forward, into the tunnel and then through the door, into the facility. It was… decidedly unimpressive. It did look as if it had been abandoned for years, but there was also a lot of damage. There had been fighting here. The bodies had been cleaned up—or eaten—but there were smashed light panels, bullet holes in the walls and a distinct lack of furniture that wasn’t broken.

  There were signs that some of it had been fixed at some point and then broken again.

  We’d come through an empty reception area, complete with an overturned counter. Behind that was what had been a generic office environment. Some of the desks were broken, some were missing.

  A distorted voice drew us further back.

  “Kghhk… can you hear me?”

  When we got closer, we could see that the voice was coming from a flatscreen monitor. It looked like someone had pulled a teleconference setup out of a meeting room and set it up as a freestanding console in the corridor, kept safe behind a thick plastic shield.

  A shield with cracks in it, I noted.

  There was a woman on the monitor, looking down at the camera as if she was on Zoom. She had short, neatly trimmed hair and was wearing a clean blouse.

  “Ah, there you are,” she said. “How many of you are there?”

  “Uh… thirteen,” Toby said, once I’d nudged him.

  “So many…” the woman muttered. “That’s too many for the lift, you’ll have to go down in bunches of six. Don’t be alarmed when the lift comes up. They’re just a security precaution, and they are completely under control.

  “What are?” Toby asked, but even as he did so, the lift dinged and the doors slid open.

  Two zombies stepped out. Everyone tensed, but these weren’t ordinary zombies. They were wearing a uniform, a sci-fi-looking vest and pants made out of some kind of flexible plastic. They also wore helmets that covered their heads completely. From the lenses on the front, I assumed that they contained cameras. Despite having most of their zombie-like features covered up, the clammy flesh of the exposed arms left no doubt as to what they were. And if there was, [Identify] had the answers.

  The woman had said that they were controlled, so I had to assume that the cameras were linked back to the controllers. They saw what their minion saw.

  “If the first six can get in the lift,” the woman said.

  “I don’t like this,” Borys said quietly in Polish. “Splitting us up like this…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said in the same language. “Distract them for a moment, will you?”

  I stepped out of the view of the cameras, zombie-cams included. It was easy enough with everyone milling about. Once I thought myself safe, I cast [Invisibility] and [Phantasmal Emmisary].

  My companions figured out what I was doing. The survivors gave “me” a startled look. From their perspective, I’d disappeared and reappeared a little way away, like a slow teleport.

  “Will that work on zombies?” Borys asked.

  Zombies used some kind of lifesense that was outside of [Illusion Magic] spells, at least any that I had.

  “No, but it will work on cameras,” I said, then back in Latorran, I called out, “First six down are me, Sarotheil, Travis, Evan, Toby and Rachel.”

  “Why we gotta be first?” Travis asked. He was looking at my image, trying to figure out what had happened. Or he was wondering what happened to my aura of [Charisma], which normally made him do whatever I wanted. I couldn’t use it through the Emissary.

  “Just do it,” Borys rumbled. “She knows what she’s doing.”

  Travis jumped and took two steps towards the lift before he scowled, realising what had happened. Borys wasn’t a [Charisma] build, but just as I was able to overpower the survivors physically, Borys could overawe them with his relatively puny [Charisma].

  We all trooped into the elevator. At least everyone here knew what one was. Sarotheil might be an exception, but he was committed to the role of playing human. As long as the other humans didn’t ask questions, he wouldn’t.

  We descended… not very far. The trip was longer than I would expect for one floor… maybe two or three. The doors opened up into a room… or was it a wide corridor? With no other options, we stepped into the room. There were four armoured doors along the side walls and another elevator on the opposite wall. All around the room were vents, which suddenly started spewing white smoke.

  “Gas!” Travis yelled panicking.

  It filled the room quite quickly, blocking visibility. It worked quickly too, the survivors dropping like flies. Sarotheil was unaffected, of course, but laid down quickly as soon as he realised what was going on.

  I kicked him, gently. “Get over here,” I said, drawing him over to the corner. I used [Static Image] to cover us with a wall. It wouldn’t fool anyone in the room, but I thought it would be good enough for cameras. Especially with this white fog everywhere.

  The lift headed back up, and the gas started to get sucked out of the same vents it had come in by.

  “We’re ready for the next batch,” the woman said upstairs. Downstairs, one of the doors opened, and more cyber-zombies marched in. Four of them headed straight for the unconscious survivors while two of them scanned the room in a fairly good imitation of confusion.

  Upstairs, we were taking our own sweet time getting into the lift, thanks to a quick [Sourceless Sound] message from yours truly. The lady didn’t complain, as she still hadn’t cleared up downstairs.

  I had my Emissary tap Sarotheil on the shoulder and pointed. “Take them out,” I said. He nodded amiably and stepped out of the image.

  I followed the other four. They hadn’t reacted to our appearance and were still carting the unconscious bodies of the survivors out. They were using a different door from the one they had come in, which I found mildly interesting.

  The other thing I found interesting was that they hadn’t reacted to my approach at all. The other two had—one of them had headed towards me before being intercepted by Sarotheil. Was it because their visor cameras only faced forward and they didn’t know where I was? Or were they still following the previous order and it didn’t include any actions concerning me?”

  Whatever the reason, I made it into the next room without issue. The ripping and tearing sounds from behind me suggest that some other people—or things— might have some issues. I ignored them.

  This room had several gurneys that the survivors were being placed on. It also featured a doctor, or at least a man wearing a white coat.

  “Hey! You’re not supposed to be here!” he said. I forgave him for his inaccuracy. He probably meant that I wasn’t supposed to be awake.

  I had included a gun when I made fake Tobias. I pointed it at the doctor. It couldn’t do anything to him—I doubted it could even fire—but he didn’t have to know that.

  “Take me to your leader,” I said.

  He looked at me, at the gun, and then at the zombies.

  “You don’t control them, do you?” I stated. “The ones who do are a little distracted—Oh, there they go.”

  The transition was instant. One of the zombies had finished loading his cargo onto the gurney. The other three just dropped their load before all of them spun around, heading back to the first room.

  “You can’t do this,” the man said. “Control will have noticed, they’ll send more.”

  “I think we’ll take our chances,” I said. “Is there a manual control for the lift?”

  He didn’t answer, but his eyes flicked over to a box on the wall.

  “Thanks,” I said. I kept the gun pointed at him while I moved over to it. A quick glance revealed that it was very simple. I pushed the button, just as Sarothiel entered our room.

  The doctor jerked as if he’d been about to try something, but he aborted his movement and just stared in terror at the new arrival.

  Sarotheil was in high spirits. “That was fun!” he declared as he entered. I glanced at him and did a quick double-take before I returned my attention to the doctor.

  “Sarotheil,” I said. “Your head is twisted the wrong way around.”