Play of Shadows

2.7: Three's a Crowd

No one screamed.

It happened too quickly. The player was gone before any of them could react, pulled into the floor in the mermaid's embrace.

There was a lull, a collective intake of breath.

Then shouts of fright and panic, spreading in a ripple from where the player had sunk like a stone into a pond.

Frances strained forward. His feet dragged through cement that melted like butter left out in the sun, squelching in deeper with every step. Soon, he was in up to his calves.

"The floor is lava," a teen exclaimed.

Francis snorted. He glared around the room, picking out the players' positions and possible exit routes. The closer to the statue they had been before the mermaid took a dive, the deeper they'd sunk. A few unfortunate souls were but bobbing heads.

"No one move!" the girl with the bleached highlights shouted, right into Frances' ear. "Remember your quicksand training!"

The kids stopped their uncoordinated flailing. The adults followed their lead, and soon the room was filled with fleshy statues trying their best to maintain a fixed pose.

"Haven't encountered quicksand in a while. It used to be all the rage in VR," Michael commented offhand.

Frances slanted him an unimpressed look. As he did, he caught movement, then heard the clack of a cane over solid ground. "How'd he get out?" he demanded.

"He wasn't in the danger zone," Michael told him.

The hall where the siren held court was circular in shape. The statue stood at its center, but the actual exhibit stretched out in diameter, leaving only a thin ring of tiled floor around a basin of grey cement. When the siren came to life, so did the pond in which the statue lived.

Frances recalled the man with the cane poking at smaller statues protruding from the floor. He hissed a curse under his breath.

A shout rang out, as if on cue. A woman struggled to shake off the small, webbed hands that pulled at her arms, trying to force her further into the cement. She was already in waist-deep. Fortunately, there were other players nearby and they managed to keep her steady. The woman ended up with gashes down her arms where clawed little fingers dug in, but remained standing.

The tug-o-war ended with a bale of turtle shells poking through the floor, each about the size of a palm. The creatures glared up at the players with flinty eyes. They clacked sharp, curved beaks in irritation and slipped back under the surface, leaving not a ripple behind.

"Kappa," the fidgety teen shout-whispered happily. He tugged at the girl with the bleached hair, pointing. "Did you see them, sis? So cool!"

The girl patted the boy's head, feigning an exasperated sigh. "Focus, Danny. It won't be so cool when it's our turn."

Danny ducked his head in embarrassment. "They weren't the real deal, anyway. That's not how kappa drown people in stories." The boy then muttered something about intestines and rear ends that Frances sorely hoped he'd misheard.

The room quieted again, but it was an unhappy sort of quiet, fraught with tension. The players discovered that they could only walk forward, deeper into the muck. They couldn't turn back. Even those caught right at the edge where the cement turned into tiled marble couldn't take that final step onto solid ground.

Svetlan was not alone in escaping danger. There were two other players on the sidelines, one woman and one a man. The woman paced at the periphery. The man tapped a familiar bat against the floor, looking bored.