Iliya pressed the button on the World Game Room app, initiating his final challenge. This button was the one with a snake coiled up, as if the square button was a basket to hide in. At the time he was in his bedroom, unsure of what to expect. This was a one person challenge. Would it take place in his room, or would it take him somewhere else? He waited until his roommates were gone just in case it was happening in their apartment. The last thing Iliya wanted was to hurt them.

He tapped his fingers on the desk anxiously, waiting for something, anything to happen. After a few minutes there was a polite knock on his bedroom door. The drumming of fingers stopped. Iliya took a deep breath. He stood up and opened his door.

Behind it was a Moderator who looked exactly like the one from his second game, the escape room one that Wolf ended in seconds by punching through the door. The Moderator was dressed in an old fashioned police uniform, like something from a Sherlock Holmes drama. It was neatly pressed, and a gloved hand was still raised in the air as if the Moderator was about to knock again. The hand had seven fingers.

“Your hand should have five fingers,” Iliya’s mouth moved before his brain could comprehend the stupidity of correcting a Moderator.

However, just like last time the Moderator simply cursed softly. “I always get something wrong,” it muttered. Two middle fingers slid down, back into the palm. The other fingers migrated together to evenly fill the space. The Moderator then looked at Iliya and squinted. “Haven’t you played this game before?”

“No, sir,” Iliya said.

The Moderator looked up, down. “Wait a second.” It took out the tablet and widened it. “Red, red, where have I… Oh!” Recognition filled his eyes. With a flick of the wrist, the tablet shot off to the side. “You!”

“Me?” Iliya sheepishly asked. He didn’t know Moderators could switch games. He resolved to try and make better impressions on any that he ran into.

“You!” The Moderator repeated, and pointed at Iliya. His eyebrows tensed together. “You and your friend! You broke my game!”

“Technically, it was just him?” Iliya offered. “I was more than happy to play in your escape room.”

“He punched through the reinforced door!” Oh. That was new information.

Iliya hummed. “The door was reinforced? That’s impressive.”

The Moderator ran a hand down his face. “You know what? Fine. Whatever. It wasn’t you. Just, please cooperate? Please?”

This poor guy. “I’ll do my best,” Iliya promised though his best was no guarantee.

“Alright. Follow me then-” the Moderator turned around and prepared to open the door when Iliya interrupted him.

“Sorry to bother you and delay the game,” Iliya started with a charming smile, “but how did you switch to this game? I assumed Moderators were assigned to their games.”

The officer sighed. “You’re technically right. There’s two classes of games- Survival and Mystery. Moderators don’t design games, we just try and make sure they run smoothly. So we either take forms that make sense with the game or Moderators with a certain look are assigned to games.”

“You didn’t really answer my question,” Iliya said, forgetting that he had literally just decided to get on the good side of Moderators.

“I’m getting there,” the Moderator waved. Iliya didn’t really expect this guy to indulge him, especially after that last game with Wolf, but maybe he appreciated the short break in between games. The guy was clearly irritated and deserved a rest. “The escape room and the game you’re about to play are Mysteries. Since you and your buddy messed up my escape room, I had to move to my other room while the space gets recalibrated.”

“I see.” Iliya did not see. “So us coming together again is just luck?”

“Haha, no.” The Moderator scowled in the direction of the tablet. “Someone upstairs just thinks they’re funny. But the joke’s on them! I got the wimpy one! I’m sure you’ll be easier to deal with than door-punch.”

Clearly the Moderator either did not know or had forgotten about Iliya’s run in Feed the Kitten. Or how his monster summon ate the head of the antagonist of the circus game he finished the day before. Iliya did not plan on reminding it. “I won’t be punching through any doors, if that’s what you’re wondering about,” Iliya avoided the question.

However, the Moderator’s shoulders dropped in relief. Guess he took it as Iliya saying he wouldn’t physically destroy the game space. That could possibly be a mistake on its end. Iliya would have to see the mystery before deciding. “Good. Great. It’s a start.”

“You know, Wolf started the same game today. Think of it this way- you’re lucky to have me.” Iliya tilted his head and attempted to look as cute and non threatening as possible. “I don’t have any combative abilities.”

The Moderator narrowed its eyes, suspicious. It pinched the bridge of its nose with the hand that once had seven fingers. “Let’s just get this started. Follow me, kid.” The Moderator turned around and opened the door to Iliya’s bedroom. Just like the game that had started at Wolf’s place, the apartment that should have been beyond the door was gone.

“Wow,” Iliya exhaled, eyes wide. He had been transferred to another world. The room beyond the door was small, and looked like a normal office building aside from a series of screens taking up one of the walls. On each screen there was a different animal or enclosure. The room itself had a few desks, and a lot of chairs placed randomly about the room. It looked lived in- coffee mugs sat half filled on desks, and there were frames with family pictures. Calendars featuring different animals lined one wall. There were two doors aside from the one Iliya and the Moderator just came in from.

“Here we are,” the Moderator said. It crossed its arms and leaned against one of the walls. “By now I’m sure you get the gist of what’s going on. In our game, all you have to do is correctly identify the murderer of this woman.”

The Moderator handed over a manila folder. Inside, there were a few documents Iliya knew would be important. “That’s it?”

“You have two hours to complete this challenge. Once you’ve decided on your answer, come talk to me. You get one shot at it. If you don’t answer after the two hour mark or get the answer wrong,” the Moderator winked at Iliya, “punishment time, baby.”

Iliya felt the keen urge to roll his eyes. He was barely able to restrain himself. “If that’s all, I’d like to begin now please.”

The Moderator gave Iliya a thumbs up, and Iliya’s phone vibrated with the notification that his game had officially begun. The two hour clock was starting to count down.

Immediately, Iliya slid open the manila folder. Inside there was a missing poster for a woman named Mercedes Colomba. Her photo revealed her to be a fairly young woman with brown skin and dark brown hair. She was estimated to be about five feet tall and around one hundred and ten pounds. According to the poster, she had a few identifiable tattoos: a birdcage opening to let out a flock of birds on her ribs, some triangle designs on her ring and middle finger on her right hand, a lion head on her thigh, and an ouroboros winding around her wrist.

Iliya turned to the second page that was given to him in the manila folder. It was a missing person’s report filed by Mercedes’s mother. Apparently, Mercedes and her mother had a phone call every night. When Mercedes failed to answer her mother’s call on Friday at seven pm, she worried. When Merecedes did not answer again on Saturday, she panicked and contacted the police. The last people to have seen Mercedes were her coworkers, who remembered her leaving their workplace around five pm.

The final sheet was a list of names belonging to Mercedes’s coworkers. As indicated by the office, they worked at a zoo. A few names in particular were highlighted, making Iliya think that they might be people of interest in the case. He didn’t look too closely at them yet since he didn’t have any context, but he was able to locate Mercedes on the staff registry.

Mercedes was a zookeeper who worked with reptiles. That explained the snake imagery.