Arc II, Chapter 60: The Empty Frame

I froze in place. Never before had Casting Director thrown me a curveball like that.

Ramona Mercer.

She was one of the victims of the original Centennial disaster. What kind of link must she have to this storyline and the Throughline itself? I knew who the Mercers were, or at least, I knew that the family could summon a psychokinetic, parasitic poltergeist. I didn’t expect them to be connected to the Throughline or, at the very least, the Tutorial.

Why was Casting Director telling me information about an NPC? It had never done that before. It sounded like this was an escort mission. That could be tricky.

As I considered this, I realized one thing further: if Ramona Mercer had called the fire department, that meant she must have been nearby.

I put my head on a swivel and surveyed the crowds of looky-loos who watched the factory burn.

There were dozens of them.

Only one of them was looking at me.

She was a tall woman, I would say. She had dark hair with a streak of red. She dressed practically in a jacket and jeans with Carousel brand Converse all-stars.

I saw nothing for her on the red wallpaper except for a frame with lights, like the one where a player poster was meant to go. No tropes, hidden or otherwise. Not plaques with names on them.

The absence of information was revealing in itself. Something was very strange about her.

I walked toward her slowly.

She walked toward me.

As we got closer, I recognized her face from the flashback from Jedediah Geist’s story.

I kept looking over toward Antoine and Isaac in the car, hoping they would see what I was doing.

Eventually, we met in the middle. I slowed a bit so I would still be visible to the car. At a glance, I saw Antoine had gotten out and was watching us.

“Ramona Mercer?” I asked cautiously.

She didn’t confirm or deny it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said. “You’re not the director who drives Carlyle Geist to the factory. He’s shorter and has a ponytail. You’re dressed like him, though…”

She was gripping something in her jacket pocket. I expected it to be a weapon, so I spoke calmly and slowly.

“I’m not the director,” I said. “I’m just playing his character.”

Saying that was enough for her to take a sharp inhale.

“You and the others, the plotters, you’re all just…?” she asked, hoping I would fill in the blank.

I looked back toward the car with Antoine and Isaac.

“Those two are like me,” I said, pointing toward them.

“I was watching you,” she said. “You didn’t say the things they normally say.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t know what’s on the script. We have to guess.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Did Mr. Dyrkon send you?” she asked.

She knew about Silas Dyrkon. We might have been on to something.

“More or less,” I said. “He hinted someone like you might be here. You want to go to the Centennial, right?”

She nodded her head.

It sounded like we needed to talk.

I convinced her to go against her better judgment and go with us to the diner. She was afraid of us. I didn’t blame her. We were probably as alien to her as she was to us.

“What is she?” Antoine asked me when she entered the diner before us.

“It almost looks like,” I said. I was hesitant to continue that thought.

“She looks like a player with a missing Archetype poster on the red wallpaper,” he said, completing the thought. “Doesn’t look like an NPC.”

I had never seen that exact format before. There was the axe murderer who didn’t show up on the red wallpaper at all. Outsiders could hide details of their information, but some of it leaked through if you had good Savvy or Moxie.

A blank frame where a poster should go? That was new.

We entered in and sat with her at a corner booth.

“So,” she said. “Tell me what we have to do. I’ve been waiting years for this.”

I somehow got elected emissary, so I answered, “We’re in a storyline. Or a trap, as Jedediah’s ghost called it.”

Her eyes went wide. “You know about that? Oh damn, this is really happening.”

It couldn’t have been that long. She didn’t look any older than she had in the flashbacks.

“You want to get to the Centennial,” I said. “We escort you there. I think that’s the mission.”

She nodded but didn’t speak for a moment. She was clearly waiting for more.

“That can’t be it,” she said. “You’re not going to explain what’s going on?”

I looked at Antoine. He shrugged. He was still in a funk.

“Tell us what you think this is,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you what I know.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hold on,” she said. “Mr. Dyrkon said that you would arrive to show me the way, assuming he was talking about you. So, enlighten me. I don’t know anything.”

We had to break out of the contest for who knew the least. I decided to start.

“This is the Game at Carousel,” I said. “Everything here looks real, but it’s fake. We’re all playing the game. Maybe even you are, assuming you aren’t a part of it.”

“Game?” she asked. “I’m talking about the time travel, which of course, isn’t really time travel.”

She didn’t know about the game, but she did know about something.

“Okay,” I said. “Time travel. You know that this storyline is set in the past.”

“Set in the past,” she repeated. “The factory is. It’s not burned down anymore. I guess it is now, but you know what I mean. The Geists are alive again. Trust me, I checked. It’s definitely them, as far as I can tell. Every time I come here, the same events play out. I always intervene because I’m supposed to. Then, a few hours later, nothing. I can’t get past today.”

She took a deep breath.