Chapter Ninety-Seven: Close and Personal with Mr. Red Rock
I searched for Grace for so long that I started to suspect that there was a trope interceding in my ability to find her. While Grace did have an ability that buffed my Grit in order to assist me in getting important information back to her, extra Grit wouldn't guarantee that I would be able to find her.
As the plot cycle ticked closer to Second Blood, the urgency started to increase dramatically. That wasn't the only thing increasing though. There were sorcerers roaming up and down the halls, looking for some sign of an intruder, a Mr. Evergreen. I felt in my gut that if I slipped up even a bit, they would nab me.
Luckily, I had been pulling off my Oblivious Bystander strategy quite well up to that point, and none of the Society members on the lookout had so much as tapped me on the shoulder. I theorized that the mask helped. Oblivious Bystander activated rarely but always helped me escape any awkward questions. I was just glad that it was working given the odd situation.
As I went along one of the familiar hallways on the first floor, I saw two faces that I recognized. Technically, I only saw one face that I knew: Cristobal. But I recognized Mr. Red Rock as well.
They were whispering to each other. I couldn't tell what they were talking about, but it was clearly important, as they were having quite an intense conversation.
They were headed in a direction that I had actually spent some time looking around: the hallway with the Aquarium Room. Anytime I had a chance to look over there, I took it. I had searched the room when I was with Mrs. Cloudburst but had come out with nothing.
I knew it was significant. It was an important filming location according to my Location Scout ability. Something had to be going on there; I just had to figure out what.
I decided to follow them.
Oblivious Bystander did all of the hard work for me as I pretended to listen to whatever tape was on my Walkman. I had to go slower than them to make the act believable, but it got the job done.
As I expected, when we turned down the hallway with the Aquarium Room, that was the door they entered. I followed right behind. The room was tinted blue-green because of the aquarium water. Almost everything else was exactly as I remembered it: with vast couches and pillows. This room also had cabinets filled with curiosities.
One thing had changed.
The stone wall on the far side from the entrance had opened up. It was a secret passage. Even from the doorway, I could see that it was a stairway going down. My interest piqued.
The question was whether I dared to look further.
With Second Blood quickly approaching, I realized that caution wasn't going to bear much fruit. I was a goner soon anyway. Might as well learn something.
Besides, I had a plan for Second Blood.
I snuck over across the Aquarium Room and slowly made my way down the dark stairway to the room below. At first, I thought I had found a secret passage leading into the Cask Room, which could explain how the murder was committed, assuming the magical seal did not affect it.
I wasn't exactly right.
As I made my way down the stairs, I started to hear groans and crying. The sound of it put a panic in my chest. Up until that point, I tried not to think about where all the bodies had come from that the Society members had been using as puppets.
Now I knew.
As I got to the edge of the staircase, being careful not to go all the way around so that I couldn't be seen, I ducked my head over and saw the cages. They were filled with people. Most of them were young and attractive, just as the Society members desired. Some were comatose, standing limp like a puppet with its strings cut. Others still had some free will and cowered in the corner of the cages, crying but lacking agency otherwise.
No wonder this place was a filming location. That was the most horrifying room in the entire mansion.
I eventually worked up some bravery to try and peek around further to see what Cristobal and Mr. Red Rock were doing, but as I did, I felt a familiar static in the air. The same kind of magic seal that had protected the Cask Room from unwanted visitors was at work in this room. I knew that if I moved forward anymore, I would find out exactly what those seals did. I doubted Mr. Gray Amber had permission to go in that room.
I realized I had even more information to tell Grace and the others, so I turned and, as quietly and quickly as possible, made my way back up the stairs. I had picked the perfect time, too, because moments after I turned tail, I heard the two of them coming back up behind me.
Was it possible for me to leave the secret stairway and get across the room without them seeing me?
I didn't think so. The room was huge.
As soon as I came into the blue light of the Aquarium, another idea struck me because I saw the champagne bottle that Mrs. Cloudburst had brought there when we were exploring the mansion together. I ran to my left and grabbed the bottle, then fell back onto one of the plush couches, burying myself partially in the large pillows.
I closed my eyes and propped the champagne bottle up next to my hand, pretending to sleep. It was at that moment it dawned on me there might actually be some use to my Out Like a Light trope, but I hadn't brought that.
As soon as I was settled onto the couch, pretending to be in a drunken stupor, Cristobal and Mr. Red Rock emerged from the stairway.
I put my best acting chops into that power nap. I couldn't tell whether or not Cristobal and Mr. Red Rock spent time examining me, or if they just strolled out of the room, but I did hear the entrance to the stairway closing.
I waited there for as long as I could bear before opening my eyes, doing my best to maintain the facade of being drunk when I did.
They were nowhere to be seen. Chalk another one up for Oblivious Bystander.
I was running out of time. I needed to get the info I had about the power struggle between the three sorcerers who ran the Society, and I needed to do it quickly.
The knowledge that Mr. Midnight had considered leaving the Society to start his own was not the complete picture, I knew, but we didn't need perfection. We just needed a motive.
As I emerged from the Aquarium Room, I saw people walking in the direction of the ballroom at a rushed pace. I decided to follow. A large group of people had gathered outside a room that I wasn't familiar with. I couldn't see what they were so interested in.
Fearing that one of my fellow players had succumbed to Second Blood, I checked the plot cycle, but that wasn't the case. We were still in Rebirth by a slim margin.
I listened for the news of what had happened to travel to the back of the crowd.
“A body stuffed in a closet,” one of the women said. “At least this time it was only one of the hosts. Can you imagine if another one of us had died?”
"Who was it?"
"Their mask was missing. We don't know yet."
It couldn't have been one of my teammates. That would have triggered Second Blood. But why else would someone get murdered?
Chris.
He had a trope for hiding bodies. He could have killed someone who got too close to uncovering our presence.
But where were my teammates?
That question was soon answered. They were inside the room. I wasn't sure what the sequence of events had been. Had they been caught with the body? It was possible they had just gone back in with the crowd. From what I could see on the outside, it didn't look like they were suspects, but I could see them across from the doorway, huddled together. All accounted for.
“This is it,” Cristobal cried out from inside the room. “This is the last time that the sanctity of this holy place is mocked. No one here will leave until we have discovered the culprit.”
Perhaps I was just imagining things, but Cristobal actually did look confused about what had just happened. If Chris was right and he was the killer, it would be pretty confusing for him when a second body turned up that he had nothing to do with.
The plot cycle was a hair's width away from Second Blood. I didn't have time to work my way over to Grace. The temperature was rising, in a manner of speaking. If Second Blood didn't trigger soon, there was no telling what Carousel might do.
I thought about what I needed to do. My character needed to trigger Second Blood.
Ever since I learned the premise of the story after the murder, I had started forming a contingency plan for what I would do at Second Blood. Given all the lore I had learned and my knowledge of the tropes at play, I had a course of action worked out.
It was time to enact it.
I either needed to go to the Cask Room or the Aquarium Room. I chose the Aquarium Room. I then looked around until I found the trigger that would open the secret door. It turned out that it was a rock jutting out from the wall. I pressed it, and the door opened.
Next, I did something that I had been dreading ever since I learned the magical power of the masks.
I took mine off and stuffed it into the cushions of one of the couches in the Aquarium Room. If I was caught wearing that mask, they would identify me as Mr. Gray Amber. They might realize which people had arrived with Mr. Gray Amber, and my team would get caught too.
I needed anonymity. Ironically, the only way to get that was to take off the mask.
I then ran down the stairs until I felt the static of the magic seal.
And I kept moving. My character did not know about the magical seal. I did. He would have acted on the opportunity to check out the lab while everyone else was distracted and then got caught by it.
As anticipated, before I got too far into the room, I was incapacitated and lying on the floor, a drooling mess. It was like I had been tased.
I didn't have to stay there for too long because a humming sound started to emanate from the location of the seal, and within minutes, Cristobal, Mrs. Midnight, and Mr. Red Rock were bearing down upon me.
Before I could get another villain monologue, I passed out from the pain.
I woke up feeling numb all over my body. I wasn't in the little secret laboratory with the cages of mind slaves. As far as I could tell, I was at the foot of some stairs in the Cask Room. The problem was that these were not the same stairs that I had walked down earlier.
There was a secret path into that room. For a moment, I thought I had solved the murder. A secret path to the Cask Room would be the perfect way for a killer to get in and out undetected.
But then I felt the familiar static coming from the room. It felt like the same seal that protected the main entrance to the Cask Room also extended over here. I got excited for nothing.
I was also dismayed to see that Second Blood was not over. The needle rested on it. It was triggered when I was caught, but there was more to come.
Mr. Red Rock and Mrs. Midnight held my left and right arm, respectively.
“Oh, look who’s awake,” Cristobal said. “Don't you worry. I intend to find out why it is that you are here, but before that, I have a job for you.”
I coughed aggressively. That seal had tested my buffed Grit considerably.
“I'm not a hard worker,” I said, trying to sound confident and quippy. Unfortunately, my throat was sore, so I wasn't certain if what I said came across that way.
“Then this is the perfect job for you,” Cristobal said. "You see, we are in search of a killer. We thought you might help."
He turned away from me.
“Mr. Red Rock, if you could find someplace comfortable for your host. I will need your services elsewhere,” Cristobal said.
Mr. Red Rock did as instructed, giving a nod toward Cristobal. He then turned and headed back up the stairs.
Mrs. Midnight stayed next to me, and though I felt I could overpower her just from the looks of her, I sensed that she was powerful in other ways.
Cristobal walked right through the electrifying seal that closed off the secret passageway from the Cask Room as if it wasn't even there.
“Wait. How were you able to get through the seal without the consent of the members?” I asked, as much out of curiosity as out of a desire to delay the inevitable.
“Me? I am Cristobal. I am their benevolent leader. I am their beloved savior. I gave them eternal youth.” He smiled. “I have this magnificent immortal body. They worship me. Why would they not consent for me to enter the Cask Room any time I wish?” He started to laugh. Mrs. Midnight joined him.
He turned and continued in the direction he had been traveling. I saw him pull something out of his pocket, but I couldn't tell what it was. He went up one of the rows, the one labeled with the color red, and walked down to one of the casks. I couldn't see which one, but I had a guess.
Then he came back toward me, holding a small glass flask filled with a green liquid similar to the liquid that all of the Society members' real bodies were floating in. It was at that moment that I realized that all of the plumbing coming out of each of the casks had little outlet valves that had meant nothing to me before, but I realized at that moment they were for procuring a small amount of the liquid inside the cask.
Knowing that Mr. Red Rock was back upstairs and that Mrs. Midnight and Cristobal would stop me if I tried to run in that direction, I did the only thing that I could think of that might have some chance of helping. I ran toward Cristobal, right into the seal to the Cask Room.
A vibration sounded like the other seal had.
My incapacitated status started to go off, and I felt myself become powerless to move. My only hope was that Society members would be alerted to the seal going off and might start barging down the stairs from the main entrance. Perhaps if they saw what Cristobal was up to, it would be helpful in some way. It was a stupid idea, I realized right afterward, as everyone at the party was evil.
Cristobal grabbed my arm and threw me back away from the seal. I landed on the ground hard.
“Come, my love,” Mrs. Midnight said. “Let us be done with this.”
“At once, my dear,” Cristobal said.
He approached me with the vial. We were in Second Blood. I knew that there was no avoiding it. Yet I struggled in vain with every fiber of my being.
Perhaps the only thing that prevented me from panicking was that this was part of the plan, more or less. I just had to hope that I understood everything correctly.
Cristobal grabbed my jaw. He was very strong. I didn't know if that was because of his magical abilities or simply because of his actual physical strength. It didn't matter. I couldn't fight back.
He brought the vial to my lips and started to pour it into my mouth. The liquid felt and tasted like bile.
As soon as it touched my throat, I could feel my natural instinct to vomit being overcome by a tingling sensation. The liquid began to ooze down my throat without me even having to swallow.
By the time the vial was empty, my status on the red wallpaper had changed to Infected and Written Off, in addition to Captured. I kept focusing on the Written Off light, hoping and praying that my theory had been correct.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the light blinked. It only did it every 10 seconds or so, but it was enough to tell me that I was on the right track. It sucked that every single bit of that after I ran into the laboratory was Off-Screen.
My body went numb.
Then, it started moving on its own.
“Red Rock,” Cristobal said. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” my mouth said.
I felt myself fading.
I was a passenger.
The Finale had begun.
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