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Description
The Facility
Present Day

The hallways blurred around Ireny as she raced further into the depths of the building, staying close to the ground and in the shadows. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she wasn’t sure it mattered all that much, either.

Basic tactics, really. The more distance she put between herself and Leafy, the better. Sure, there might be security cameras everywhere, but the people watching the feeds were only human, right? Attentions could be divided. And if they were busy watching her, they wouldn’t be watching Leafy.

She didn’t like playing the decoy. She’d always considered herself one of nature’s vice-presidents, the sort of person who could look important without actually having to accomplish anything except occasionally put her foot in her mouth. Being a decoy involved dedication, and courage, and a whole bunch of other things she was fairly certain she lacked.

But right now she was angry, and she figured that had to count for a lot.

She’d have to fight her next opponent. She was dead certain of that. If she started kicking up a fuss and trying to sabotage everything in sight again, they’d know she was running interference for someone else. After all, none of her characters had the technological know-how to do much more than make a few small explosions. Walking back into the lion’s den after she and Leafy had just escaped it, though--that would raise a few eyebrows. She wouldn’t fool anyone, but hopefully she’d confuse them enough to keep them distracted.

Ireny frowned down at her watch. All that remained was to find her next opponent, whoever they were, and try to stay in the game. With any luck, they’d put up a good fight.

Her fur bristled suddenly, and her muscles tensed. Something was coming. Inhuman, from the smell of it. An animal of some kind. Larger than she was. Probably not edible--at least, not to a weasel. But fightable? Definitely.

No, she thought, and silenced that part of her brain with a visible effort. This wasn’t going to happen again. She was going to remember who she was. What she was.

By the time the cat padded silently into view, she had clambered up to a security camera, which was rapidly becoming one of her favorite hiding spots. She clung onto it with all four paws and peered down at the cat, wide-eyed, as it approached her hiding place. Then, abruptly, it stopped, sat down, and began to wash itself.

She’d seen that cat before, she thought wildly, as it finished one paw and started methodically on the other. You didn’t see blue-and-white ragdolls all that often, especially when you were severely allergic and stayed away from cats as a general rule. But where?

The cat stopped mid-lick. It set its paw down slowly, deliberately, and stared directly up at her. Ireny held her breath, frozen.

“I’m a cat,” it said. “Meow.”

Then it sauntered off down the hall.

Ireny’s eyes narrowed, her thoughts running sluggishly behind the lightning-quick reflexes of the weasel, all of which were screaming for her to attack. Something weird was going on here, and she couldn’t figure out what.

But she could hear new footsteps now. Someone else--someone human--was running down the hallway toward her.

She’d be a sitting duck on the security camera. Ireny leapt lightly onto a nearby fire extinguisher and curled herself around the handle, putting her paws around the pin. If it was the Secretary, or the Janitor, or--Leafy had mentioned a Doctor, too--

But it wasn’t any of them. It was Nichol Bellasseau.

Part of her said: Don’t be silly. How could it be him? Of course you think it’s Bellasseau. You have characters on the brain. It could be any short heavyset old guy with a mustache and suspenders who looks like he’s been seeing Beethoven’s hairstylist.

But hadn’t she drawn him enough times to know? Hadn’t she written him enough times to know?

He was carrying two people, one slung over each shoulder like they weighed nothing at all. One of them was Bram.

The weasel in her sat up and sniffed the air at the smell of drying blood, but that wasn’t what drew her attention. As Bellasseau drew closer, Bram’s arm came into view. It dangled limply, charred into near-unrecognizability, and her stomach turned at the smell of cooked flesh.

Her fur was standing on end again, albeit for a completely different reason. Bellasseau’s killed them! she thought wildly, immediately, but that was a stupid thought. Of course it wasn’t him in that body, it was Scarlette, and she wouldn’t have killed anyone. Besides, the desperate expression on his face was pure Scarlette. At least, she was pretty sure it was. Desperation wasn’t an emotion she’d often seen on Scarlette’s face.

He didn’t appear to have noticed her yet, but he was only a few feet away now. Ireny took a deep breath.

“Scarlette?” she said, in a voice that shook more than she wanted it to. Bellasseau stopped dead in his tracks and looked wildly around. “Over here! On the fire extinguisher!”

“Ireny?” said Bellasseau hoarsely, still looking for the source of her voice, and wow, okay, that was weird, she’d never actually assigned a voice to him before, but somehow he sounded exactly like he ought to. “Is that--”

She clambered onto the handle of the fire extinguisher and stood up, against all the weasel’s instincts. “Hi, Scarlette,” she said. “So, um, I’m a weasel now.”

Bellasseau stared at her. She stared back.

“Ireny,” he said again.

“Yep,” said Ireny, and indicated the unconscious people in his arms. “Do you need help with those? I mean, let’s be real, I can maybe manage a finger, but I feel like I should offer. Real friends help you hide the bodies, and all.”

Bellasseau didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. He just stared at her, and Ireny felt the long tendrils of fear reach around her gut and twist, hard.

And then his face changed.

It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere behind his eyes. They lost that desperate, hunted look and turned quiet and calculating instead. He straightened a little, and readjusted his grip on the two unconscious bodies. Whoever was in there now felt at home in that body. Whoever was in there now owned it. Ireny had to resist the urge to take a step back.

“Miss Ireny,” he said, “if that is indeed you in there. Miss Scarlette finds herself indisposed at present. It might be best if I speak to you instead.”

“What,” said Ireny. Her voice sounded tinny and off to her ears, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just because she was a weasel. “How--but you’re--”

“--Nichol Bellasseau, yes,” said Bellasseau calmly. “I understand you’re familiar with me. Ordinarily I’d find it a liability, but for now I think we can agree it saves time, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about? What have you done with Scarlette?” Ireny demanded, uncomfortably aware that her voice had risen an octave. “And what happened to Bram and this other guy? And what do you mean by ‘indisposed’? Can she hear me in there? Scarlette, don’t freak out, I’m coming to get you--”

Bellasseau held up a hand. Ireny’s jaw clicked shut.

He had a stare like a bloody gimlet. It wasn’t impossible to resist, she knew. She’d written characters who could. But she hadn’t brought any of them with her, and she sure as hell wasn’t one of them herself. This man has killed people, she thought, and I make short jokes about him on a regular basis.

“Listen to me,” said Bellasseau, in the voice of a man entirely used to command.

Ireny listened. She didn’t have much choice.

“Scarlette’s in here,” he continued, and indicated his head with a finger. “She can hear you. She has her own reasons for not speaking to you. I’m obliging her. If you’re her friend, as you say, the least you can do is respect that.”

“But,” said Ireny, and didn’t say: but you’re not real. You can’t just--take over like that, right? You can’t just, just become the person who created you, reduce them to a voice inside their own head--

“Now,” said Bellasseau relentlessly, “I’m going to do as Scarlette asked and deliver these two gentlemen to the infirmary.”

“The infirmary?” Ireny blurted out. “You’re going to leave them with the people who run this place? You think that’s a good idea?”

Bellasseau shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “We don’t trust them, either. But we’ve been to the infirmary, and if nothing else, they seem to have a vested interest in keeping the contestants unharmed.”

Ireny felt her mouth go dry. She thought, inexorably, of Leafy. “Physically unharmed, anyway,” she said.

“Physically,” conceded Bellasseau, with a humorless twitch of his moustache. “You don’t have to come. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But if you do, and if you’re reasonable, I can fill you in on what’s been happening. Perhaps she might even decide to take control again. It’s up to you.”

That settled it. “I’m coming,” Ireny said, and leapt off the fire extinguisher. “Hell if I’m letting any of you out of my sight.”

---

Leafy went over the readout on her goggles one more time, but the information she was seeing didn’t make any more sense the fifth time around. She took a deep breath, frowned as much as her plushy face would allow, and scrolled back to the top. Maybe she wasn’t looking at this the right way.

So. Here was the data she’d acquired when she’d hacked the security camera feed. If she pictured it as a sort of river, with information streaming outward from the camera in various branching distributaries, did it become any clearer?

One of those smaller branches had to lead to the Secretary’s office. That much was clear. There were four others besides it. One went to the Doctor, maybe, and one to the Janitor, and...who else was there? Two more people, at least, but that still left the main flow of information, leading up to the roof, where it dissipated into--nothing. It wasn’t even a broadcast.

So the signal leading to what ought to have been the Publisher’s base of operations was--what? A fluke? A red herring? If the Publisher wasn’t in the building, then where were they hiding?

Leafy’s frown deepened. The more she thought about it, the more questions arose. She didn’t like it at all.

And then there was the matter of her watch. By all rights, it should have shut down the moment she’d lost the round, shouldn’t it? Escaping the arena like that had been largely symbolic. So why had they let her? Why could she still switch in and out?

Because they wanted her to, she realized. It was the only sensible answer, even if she didn’t know why. Not yet.

So they wanted all the contestants’ watches working. Or most of them, anyway. But why? What was the sense in it? Did they think people were just going to stand down and not argue about having lost a round? Okay, Leafy had to admit she hadn’t seen any other fights breaking out, so on some level it had to be working, but it still didn’t make any sense.

Unless--and here was where she started getting uneasy--they wanted people to keep using the watches. What for? Entertainment value? Or were they all beta testers for something bigger? The thought of it almost made her switch back to regular ordinary Leafy and throw the watch away entirely.

She shook her head. Just because Cutie didn’t need sleep didn’t mean she didn’t, either. Maybe this entire situation was getting to her. Maybe she was getting paranoid.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling the watches were the key to all of this.

She took a deep breath, tried to crack knuckles that weren’t there, and settled for squashing her paws together.

Right. Time to dig deeper.

---

“So let me get this straight,” said Ireny as she scampered along beside Bellasseau. “There’s some kind of...goo, or something, in the watches, and that’s what characters are made of, and if your watch is broken in the wrong way it just...takes over you? And turns you crazy?”

“That seems to be the case,” said Bellasseau. Over his right shoulder, Bram stirred faintly but didn’t wake.

“Oh my god,” said Ireny. “Are you goo? Right now?”

Bellasseau stared down at her.

“Sorry,” said Ireny, subsiding. “But if it’s true, I guess it explains a lot. Something must’ve gone exactly right when J broke my watch. Split the barriers between characters exactly, or something, so the watch can’t tell who’s who anymore.” She paused. “Well. When I say right, I mean being a talking weasel is probably preferable to being a soulless goo monster.”

And it explained why she was confusing her characters’ thoughts for her own, whereas Scarlette could hear them clear as day in her own head. Barriers breaking down, she thought, and resisted the urge to shudder. Hearing voices was one thing. Losing bits of yourself without even noticing, that was another. It wasn’t as if anyone but Flannery would’ve been useful in her head, what with her other two characters being a nonverbal weasel and a werewolf loser who’d probably spend the entire time complaining about her taste in sports teams, but she would’ve traded what she had for that in a heartbeat.

She looked down uneasily. She didn’t feel like goo, and surely conservation of matter ought to have applied, oughtn’t it? But what was that Clarke had said, about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic? She figured it had to apply here.

If she’d been human, she would’ve rubbed her temples. As it was, she settled for an annoyed flick of her tail, and kept on racing after Bellasseau.

She hadn’t signed up for any of this! Not for almost dying, and having sharp things thrown at her, and finally running into a familiar face only to find said familiar face didn’t even want to talk to her anymore.

What the hell happened? she thought. Aloud she said, “So who else did she bring with her?”

Bellasseau didn’t seem to think it was weird being someone else’s creation--or, if he had, he’d gotten over that particular existential crisis fairly quickly in favor of business, which seemed more likely--so the question had to be worth a shot. He glanced at her, calculating for a moment (could she be trusted? She hoped to god Scarlette was saying yes) before he turned his attention back to the hallway in front of him.

“Jia and ARC-OS,” he said at last.

Ireny blinked. “Jia like the octopus?”

“Precisely.”

She grinned at the mental images this presented. “I’m going to bet most of the people here weren’t prepared to deal with that, huh?”

“I can’t say,” said Bellasseau evenly. At her quizzical glance, he snorted. “I’m not stupid, miss. The two of you are both still in the tournament, are you not?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re giving me information I couldn’t already--”

“Scarlette might have indulged you,” said Bellasseau, “but I can’t take that risk. As far as I know, only four contestants remain. You might be pitted against us this round.”

Ireny stopped short and put up her paws. “I know, but you’ve got to be kidding me, man, I’m not about to fight her over--”

“We’re here,” said Bellasseau.

Ireny looked up. Above her a pair of double doors loomed, not unlike the ones which had led to the Cafeteria. They smelled faintly of antiseptic, and the cold, clinical scent she had come to identify with very nearly all places of healing. Her fur had started to bristle again; she ignored the feeling, and slipped through the doors as Bellasseau nudged them open with a foot.

Dozens more feet immediately occupied her field of view, along with squeaking wheels and the rustle of privacy curtains being drawn and pulled back. Around her, the air filled with the quiet murmur of the staff and the electronic whirr and beep of machines. The lights shone brighter here in the infirmary, and the shadows fell more harshly; Ireny felt curiously exposed, even as she bobbed and weaved to stay close to Bellasseau’s briskly moving shoes.

This place isn’t right, she told herself firmly. None of this is. Just because they want to keep you alive...

“Two new patients,” Bellasseau was saying to a man in--a fez, yes, really, okay, that was a thing that was happening. “Or I should say one new patient, and a repeat offender, no thanks to you lot.”

The man in the fez didn’t even look up from his tablet. “Leave them on the stretchers. We’ll take them from here.”

Ireny would have made some sort of sarcastic comment, but it was tricky pulling that kind of thing off from a height of a couple inches. Bellasseau, on the other hand, had clearly been here before, and he only nodded once before dropping Bram and the other guy (LE?) onto two unoccupied stretchers and stepping back.

In the light of the infirmary, Bram’s arm looked even worse than it had out in the hall, and Ireny fought back an involuntary grimace. Okay, she didn’t know the guy well--one OCT a while back, and they hadn’t even been matched up against each other--but it was still weird to see him here, in the flesh, and injured to boot.

“They’re gonna have to amputate, aren’t they,” she said to nobody in particular. “Arm like that, what are they gonna do, grow him a new one? Not that I’d put it past them, or anything, but...”

Bellasseau didn’t answer.

Ireny glanced at him, but he was gone, and where he had been standing was a pale-faced young woman in scrubs--

“Scarlette?” said Ireny in a tiny voice.

Scarlette looked down at her. Stared. Stared for a while longer. There were dark circles under her eyes, and some of her hair was escaping her braid. She looked like someone who hadn’t properly slept in a few years. Maybe more, if Ireny was any judge.

It’s okay, she wanted to say. It’s okay, I have a plan, we’re going to figure out what’s going on and then take this place down brick by brick. But the words wouldn’t come. They couldn’t come. Anyone could be listening in.

“Scarlette,” she said instead. “It’s me. Ireny. Hi?”

“Oh my god, Ireny,” said Scarlette shakily, and burst into tears.

Description
The Facility
Present Day

The hallways blurred around Ireny as she raced further into the depths of the building, staying close to the ground and in the shadows. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she wasn’t sure it mattered all that much, either.

Basic tactics, really. The more distance she put between herself and Leafy, the better. Sure, there might be security cameras everywhere, but the people watching the feeds were only human, right? Attentions could be divided. And if they were busy watching her, they wouldn’t be watching Leafy.

She didn’t like playing the decoy. She’d always considered herself one of nature’s vice-presidents, the sort of person who could look important without actually having to accomplish anything except occasionally put her foot in her mouth. Being a decoy involved dedication, and courage, and a whole bunch of other things she was fairly certain she lacked.

But right now she was angry, and she figured that had to count for a lot.

She’d have to fight her next opponent. She was dead certain of that. If she started kicking up a fuss and trying to sabotage everything in sight again, they’d know she was running interference for someone else. After all, none of her characters had the technological know-how to do much more than make a few small explosions. Walking back into the lion’s den after she and Leafy had just escaped it, though--that would raise a few eyebrows. She wouldn’t fool anyone, but hopefully she’d confuse them enough to keep them distracted.

Ireny frowned down at her watch. All that remained was to find her next opponent, whoever they were, and try to stay in the game. With any luck, they’d put up a good fight.

Her fur bristled suddenly, and her muscles tensed. Something was coming. Inhuman, from the smell of it. An animal of some kind. Larger than she was. Probably not edible--at least, not to a weasel. But fightable? Definitely.

No, she thought, and silenced that part of her brain with a visible effort. This wasn’t going to happen again. She was going to remember who she was. What she was.

By the time the cat padded silently into view, she had clambered up to a security camera, which was rapidly becoming one of her favorite hiding spots. She clung onto it with all four paws and peered down at the cat, wide-eyed, as it approached her hiding place. Then, abruptly, it stopped, sat down, and began to wash itself.

She’d seen that cat before, she thought wildly, as it finished one paw and started methodically on the other. You didn’t see blue-and-white ragdolls all that often, especially when you were severely allergic and stayed away from cats as a general rule. But where?

The cat stopped mid-lick. It set its paw down slowly, deliberately, and stared directly up at her. Ireny held her breath, frozen.

“I’m a cat,” it said. “Meow.”

Then it sauntered off down the hall.

Ireny’s eyes narrowed, her thoughts running sluggishly behind the lightning-quick reflexes of the weasel, all of which were screaming for her to attack. Something weird was going on here, and she couldn’t figure out what.

But she could hear new footsteps now. Someone else--someone human--was running down the hallway toward her.

She’d be a sitting duck on the security camera. Ireny leapt lightly onto a nearby fire extinguisher and curled herself around the handle, putting her paws around the pin. If it was the Secretary, or the Janitor, or--Leafy had mentioned a Doctor, too--

But it wasn’t any of them. It was Nichol Bellasseau.

Part of her said: Don’t be silly. How could it be him? Of course you think it’s Bellasseau. You have characters on the brain. It could be any short heavyset old guy with a mustache and suspenders who looks like he’s been seeing Beethoven’s hairstylist.

But hadn’t she drawn him enough times to know? Hadn’t she written him enough times to know?

He was carrying two people, one slung over each shoulder like they weighed nothing at all. One of them was Bram.

The weasel in her sat up and sniffed the air at the smell of drying blood, but that wasn’t what drew her attention. As Bellasseau drew closer, Bram’s arm came into view. It dangled limply, charred into near-unrecognizability, and her stomach turned at the smell of cooked flesh.

Her fur was standing on end again, albeit for a completely different reason. Bellasseau’s killed them! she thought wildly, immediately, but that was a stupid thought. Of course it wasn’t him in that body, it was Scarlette, and she wouldn’t have killed anyone. Besides, the desperate expression on his face was pure Scarlette. At least, she was pretty sure it was. Desperation wasn’t an emotion she’d often seen on Scarlette’s face.

He didn’t appear to have noticed her yet, but he was only a few feet away now. Ireny took a deep breath.

“Scarlette?” she said, in a voice that shook more than she wanted it to. Bellasseau stopped dead in his tracks and looked wildly around. “Over here! On the fire extinguisher!”

“Ireny?” said Bellasseau hoarsely, still looking for the source of her voice, and wow, okay, that was weird, she’d never actually assigned a voice to him before, but somehow he sounded exactly like he ought to. “Is that--”

She clambered onto the handle of the fire extinguisher and stood up, against all the weasel’s instincts. “Hi, Scarlette,” she said. “So, um, I’m a weasel now.”

Bellasseau stared at her. She stared back.

“Ireny,” he said again.

“Yep,” said Ireny, and indicated the unconscious people in his arms. “Do you need help with those? I mean, let’s be real, I can maybe manage a finger, but I feel like I should offer. Real friends help you hide the bodies, and all.”

Bellasseau didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. He just stared at her, and Ireny felt the long tendrils of fear reach around her gut and twist, hard.

And then his face changed.

It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere behind his eyes. They lost that desperate, hunted look and turned quiet and calculating instead. He straightened a little, and readjusted his grip on the two unconscious bodies. Whoever was in there now felt at home in that body. Whoever was in there now owned it. Ireny had to resist the urge to take a step back.

“Miss Ireny,” he said, “if that is indeed you in there. Miss Scarlette finds herself indisposed at present. It might be best if I speak to you instead.”

“What,” said Ireny. Her voice sounded tinny and off to her ears, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just because she was a weasel. “How--but you’re--”

“--Nichol Bellasseau, yes,” said Bellasseau calmly. “I understand you’re familiar with me. Ordinarily I’d find it a liability, but for now I think we can agree it saves time, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about? What have you done with Scarlette?” Ireny demanded, uncomfortably aware that her voice had risen an octave. “And what happened to Bram and this other guy? And what do you mean by ‘indisposed’? Can she hear me in there? Scarlette, don’t freak out, I’m coming to get you--”

Bellasseau held up a hand. Ireny’s jaw clicked shut.

He had a stare like a bloody gimlet. It wasn’t impossible to resist, she knew. She’d written characters who could. But she hadn’t brought any of them with her, and she sure as hell wasn’t one of them herself. This man has killed people, she thought, and I make short jokes about him on a regular basis.

“Listen to me,” said Bellasseau, in the voice of a man entirely used to command.

Ireny listened. She didn’t have much choice.

“Scarlette’s in here,” he continued, and indicated his head with a finger. “She can hear you. She has her own reasons for not speaking to you. I’m obliging her. If you’re her friend, as you say, the least you can do is respect that.”

“But,” said Ireny, and didn’t say: but you’re not real. You can’t just--take over like that, right? You can’t just, just become the person who created you, reduce them to a voice inside their own head--

“Now,” said Bellasseau relentlessly, “I’m going to do as Scarlette asked and deliver these two gentlemen to the infirmary.”

“The infirmary?” Ireny blurted out. “You’re going to leave them with the people who run this place? You think that’s a good idea?”

Bellasseau shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “We don’t trust them, either. But we’ve been to the infirmary, and if nothing else, they seem to have a vested interest in keeping the contestants unharmed.”

Ireny felt her mouth go dry. She thought, inexorably, of Leafy. “Physically unharmed, anyway,” she said.

“Physically,” conceded Bellasseau, with a humorless twitch of his moustache. “You don’t have to come. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But if you do, and if you’re reasonable, I can fill you in on what’s been happening. Perhaps she might even decide to take control again. It’s up to you.”

That settled it. “I’m coming,” Ireny said, and leapt off the fire extinguisher. “Hell if I’m letting any of you out of my sight.”

---

Leafy went over the readout on her goggles one more time, but the information she was seeing didn’t make any more sense the fifth time around. She took a deep breath, frowned as much as her plushy face would allow, and scrolled back to the top. Maybe she wasn’t looking at this the right way.

So. Here was the data she’d acquired when she’d hacked the security camera feed. If she pictured it as a sort of river, with information streaming outward from the camera in various branching distributaries, did it become any clearer?

One of those smaller branches had to lead to the Secretary’s office. That much was clear. There were four others besides it. One went to the Doctor, maybe, and one to the Janitor, and...who else was there? Two more people, at least, but that still left the main flow of information, leading up to the roof, where it dissipated into--nothing. It wasn’t even a broadcast.

So the signal leading to what ought to have been the Publisher’s base of operations was--what? A fluke? A red herring? If the Publisher wasn’t in the building, then where were they hiding?

Leafy’s frown deepened. The more she thought about it, the more questions arose. She didn’t like it at all.

And then there was the matter of her watch. By all rights, it should have shut down the moment she’d lost the round, shouldn’t it? Escaping the arena like that had been largely symbolic. So why had they let her? Why could she still switch in and out?

Because they wanted her to, she realized. It was the only sensible answer, even if she didn’t know why. Not yet.

So they wanted all the contestants’ watches working. Or most of them, anyway. But why? What was the sense in it? Did they think people were just going to stand down and not argue about having lost a round? Okay, Leafy had to admit she hadn’t seen any other fights breaking out, so on some level it had to be working, but it still didn’t make any sense.

Unless--and here was where she started getting uneasy--they wanted people to keep using the watches. What for? Entertainment value? Or were they all beta testers for something bigger? The thought of it almost made her switch back to regular ordinary Leafy and throw the watch away entirely.

She shook her head. Just because Cutie didn’t need sleep didn’t mean she didn’t, either. Maybe this entire situation was getting to her. Maybe she was getting paranoid.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling the watches were the key to all of this.

She took a deep breath, tried to crack knuckles that weren’t there, and settled for squashing her paws together.

Right. Time to dig deeper.

---

“So let me get this straight,” said Ireny as she scampered along beside Bellasseau. “There’s some kind of...goo, or something, in the watches, and that’s what characters are made of, and if your watch is broken in the wrong way it just...takes over you? And turns you crazy?”

“That seems to be the case,” said Bellasseau. Over his right shoulder, Bram stirred faintly but didn’t wake.

“Oh my god,” said Ireny. “Are you goo? Right now?”

Bellasseau stared down at her.

“Sorry,” said Ireny, subsiding. “But if it’s true, I guess it explains a lot. Something must’ve gone exactly right when J broke my watch. Split the barriers between characters exactly, or something, so the watch can’t tell who’s who anymore.” She paused. “Well. When I say right, I mean being a talking weasel is probably preferable to being a soulless goo monster.”

And it explained why she was confusing her characters’ thoughts for her own, whereas Scarlette could hear them clear as day in her own head. Barriers breaking down, she thought, and resisted the urge to shudder. Hearing voices was one thing. Losing bits of yourself without even noticing, that was another. It wasn’t as if anyone but Flannery would’ve been useful in her head, what with her other two characters being a nonverbal weasel and a werewolf loser who’d probably spend the entire time complaining about her taste in sports teams, but she would’ve traded what she had for that in a heartbeat.

She looked down uneasily. She didn’t feel like goo, and surely conservation of matter ought to have applied, oughtn’t it? But what was that Clarke had said, about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic? She figured it had to apply here.

If she’d been human, she would’ve rubbed her temples. As it was, she settled for an annoyed flick of her tail, and kept on racing after Bellasseau.

She hadn’t signed up for any of this! Not for almost dying, and having sharp things thrown at her, and finally running into a familiar face only to find said familiar face didn’t even want to talk to her anymore.

What the hell happened? she thought. Aloud she said, “So who else did she bring with her?”

Bellasseau didn’t seem to think it was weird being someone else’s creation--or, if he had, he’d gotten over that particular existential crisis fairly quickly in favor of business, which seemed more likely--so the question had to be worth a shot. He glanced at her, calculating for a moment (could she be trusted? She hoped to god Scarlette was saying yes) before he turned his attention back to the hallway in front of him.

“Jia and ARC-OS,” he said at last.

Ireny blinked. “Jia like the octopus?”

“Precisely.”

She grinned at the mental images this presented. “I’m going to bet most of the people here weren’t prepared to deal with that, huh?”

“I can’t say,” said Bellasseau evenly. At her quizzical glance, he snorted. “I’m not stupid, miss. The two of you are both still in the tournament, are you not?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re giving me information I couldn’t already--”

“Scarlette might have indulged you,” said Bellasseau, “but I can’t take that risk. As far as I know, only four contestants remain. You might be pitted against us this round.”

Ireny stopped short and put up her paws. “I know, but you’ve got to be kidding me, man, I’m not about to fight her over--”

“We’re here,” said Bellasseau.

Ireny looked up. Above her a pair of double doors loomed, not unlike the ones which had led to the Cafeteria. They smelled faintly of antiseptic, and the cold, clinical scent she had come to identify with very nearly all places of healing. Her fur had started to bristle again; she ignored the feeling, and slipped through the doors as Bellasseau nudged them open with a foot.

Dozens more feet immediately occupied her field of view, along with squeaking wheels and the rustle of privacy curtains being drawn and pulled back. Around her, the air filled with the quiet murmur of the staff and the electronic whirr and beep of machines. The lights shone brighter here in the infirmary, and the shadows fell more harshly; Ireny felt curiously exposed, even as she bobbed and weaved to stay close to Bellasseau’s briskly moving shoes.

This place isn’t right, she told herself firmly. None of this is. Just because they want to keep you alive...

“Two new patients,” Bellasseau was saying to a man in--a fez, yes, really, okay, that was a thing that was happening. “Or I should say one new patient, and a repeat offender, no thanks to you lot.”

The man in the fez didn’t even look up from his tablet. “Leave them on the stretchers. We’ll take them from here.”

Ireny would have made some sort of sarcastic comment, but it was tricky pulling that kind of thing off from a height of a couple inches. Bellasseau, on the other hand, had clearly been here before, and he only nodded once before dropping Bram and the other guy (LE?) onto two unoccupied stretchers and stepping back.

In the light of the infirmary, Bram’s arm looked even worse than it had out in the hall, and Ireny fought back an involuntary grimace. Okay, she didn’t know the guy well--one OCT a while back, and they hadn’t even been matched up against each other--but it was still weird to see him here, in the flesh, and injured to boot.

“They’re gonna have to amputate, aren’t they,” she said to nobody in particular. “Arm like that, what are they gonna do, grow him a new one? Not that I’d put it past them, or anything, but...”

Bellasseau didn’t answer.

Ireny glanced at him, but he was gone, and where he had been standing was a pale-faced young woman in scrubs--

“Scarlette?” said Ireny in a tiny voice.

Scarlette looked down at her. Stared. Stared for a while longer. There were dark circles under her eyes, and some of her hair was escaping her braid. She looked like someone who hadn’t properly slept in a few years. Maybe more, if Ireny was any judge.

It’s okay, she wanted to say. It’s okay, I have a plan, we’re going to figure out what’s going on and then take this place down brick by brick. But the words wouldn’t come. They couldn’t come. Anyone could be listening in.

“Scarlette,” she said instead. “It’s me. Ireny. Hi?”

“Oh my god, Ireny,” said Scarlette shakily, and burst into tears.