Maddie rushed out into the hall. “Tyler — Tyler, look at me.” She grabbed his face, turning his head toward hers. His head went where she put it and stayed there. “He’s freezing.”
“Sit him down,” Levi said. “Get him back in the lounge by the fire.”
Maddie led him. Tyler went where she took him, sat where she sat him; he didn’t acknowledge it when she placed a blanket over his shoulders. His hands settled on his knees and stayed there.
What the fuck is out there?
Levi looked at Asher, unsure of what to say or do. They needed more information.
Then Tyler spoke, his voice flat and empty:
“It wasn’t a deer.”
Nobody moved. Tyler’s hands stayed on his knees, his eyes on the fire or on nothing, and he didn’t say anything else.
18
Glimpsing the Final Boss
Itwasn’tadeer.
“We need to find the staff,” Levi said, standing near the bar with Asher and Zoe. “Or find something that tells us where they went. There’s got to be an office, records, something.”
“There are only two floors, so it shouldn’t be difficult,” Zoe said. “We split up, everyone comes back in an hour with something useful. If we’re lucky, one of these rooms will have a number to contact forest rangers?”
Levi’s stomach turned.Splitting up is how people die.
But Levi had nothing. No map, the journal he carried across three games was gone, and all he had was a mystery woman’s itinerary and a key… He needed to find something or they were all going to sit in this lounge until the fog found a way in and did to each of them what it had done to Tyler.
“Pairs,” Levi said. “Nobody goes alone. Zoe, you and Elliot take the ground floor — the office, the front desk, anywherethat might have paperwork. Jasper, stay with Maddie and Tyler. Keep the windows closed. Keep the door locked.”
Owen looked up from his book. “Should I —”
“Stay here,” Levi said. “Stay with Jasper and help keep an eye on things. If something changes outside, you’ll probably know better than any of us what is happening.”
Owen nodded, a small smile forming on his face. “Got it.”
The staircase carried them from the lounge’s warmth into air that was at least ten degrees cooler. Asher was in front of him as they entered the hallway, his body a shield and his hand tight on Levi’s. A few of the wall sconces were flickering and dim, but those could have been like that before the fog. The strangest thing about the hall was the number of doors left open.
They moved slowly, opening doors gently, listening for sounds of…anything really. It was eerily silent. The first open room was empty—bed made, towels folded, window latched. The second was the same.
The third had a suitcase open on the luggage rack with clothes folded inside. There was a phone on the nightstand, but when Levi pressed the button, nothing happened. It was dead. The bed had been slept in and left in a hurry, the covers thrown back, a pillow on the floor.
“Someone left fast,” Asher said.
“Or didn’t finish leaving.”
The fourth room’s door was ajar. There was a maintenance uniform hung on the back of a chair, some type of worn military surplus boots by the bed, laces still tied like they had been kicked off. A mug sat on the desk with something dried and dark in thebottom. The window was latched, but the mechanism was old and loose.
“They didn’t drive down the mountain in this,” Levi mumbled, double checking the latch. He couldn’t see the shapes in the fog from this high up, but something displaced the fog in front of the window briefly, making it swirl and shift. Something big. Levi glanced back at Asher to see if he had seen the shift.
Asher was looking at the boots, his head tilted, and his eyes looked far away, like they were staring through the boots.
“Asher?”
Asher blinked, then his gaze snapped to Levi’s face as his mouth settled into his usual smirk—the one where Levi felt like Asher was three seconds from attempting to lick him. “No,” he said. “They didn’t.”
They moved down the hallway. The fifth room, the sixth. A supply closet — cleaning products, spare linens, rolls of grey duct tape. The hallway turned at a junction and where the light was dimmer, one fixture dead, the rest casting uneven pools. Only two doors were open in this hall, one that said “Medical” and the other further down the hall with a sign Levi couldn’t read.
