1

As with every successive floor, the twelfth was the largest, spanning one hundred feet in a perfectly square shape. Damon landed on the cracked limestone and glanced back at the opening. It didn’t close after him.

Harper jumped in next and sauntered up to him.

“I see what you mean,” he said. “No distinguishing marks.”

As the others leaped into the room, the two leaders walked to the wall in front of them, avoiding heavy streams of water that squeezed through gaps in the stone and the soil. They reached the surface on the east side, where the concentration of water was the greatest. Damon grabbed a handful of wet mud and pulled it from the wall, exposing more of the orange stone that the room was constructed from. Harper did the same, quickly tossing the earth aside when she saw that it was overpopulated with worms.

“Maybe if we uncover enough of this, we’ll see a sign or something?” Damon suggested as the other teammates approached separate sections of the four walls.

As the others worked, Angie stood in the center of the room, studying the ceiling. There seemed to be four rows of thick bricks that comprised the ceiling. Following the seams, Angie walked to the northern section of the room and began digging away earth from the middle of the wall.

2

She pulled a thick piece of compacted earth away, revealing more orange stone. “Maybe we’re supposed to dig our way out,” she suggested to a few laughs from the other teammates. They knew it would not be that easy.

Angie dug her fingers under another section of soil. Worms wiggled against her skin. Unlike Harper, insects did not creep her out. Something bit her, and she removed her hand to see an enormous beetle clamped onto her middle finger. “Ouch,” she said quietly, then smashed the insect against her armor. She burrowed under the earth again and pulled. A two-foot-square segment of mud and moss flopped onto the floor.

She examined the uncovered section of wall. Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Maybe the mud is a switch,” Harper suggested. “We remove all of it and then something happens.” There were a few grunts and murmurs from the team, indicating it was a plausible premise.

As water sprayed and streamed over her head, Angie pulled another section of earth away. Still more orange stone. She worked her way down now, squatting close to the floor. She excavated another piece of soil, this one wetter and stickier, a product of the water saturation. As she tore away more, a swarm of the huge beetles fell onto her hand. They skittered away from her skin, dropped onto the floor, and raced across the tops of the darkened green lights before being swept away by the streaming water.

“Ugh,” she muttered and felt a chill run through her body. Okay. That got to me, she thought, then grabbed another large section of earth. This one pulled away so easily that Angie tipped over onto her back, falling into the muddy water.

“You okay?” Damon called over from sixty feet away.

“Oh, yeah, nothing hurt but my pri—”

Tremors suddenly rocked the entire room. As the walls started moving unexpectedly, shouts of alarm rang out.

Still lying on her back, Angie saw two black eyes open from the stone surface six feet above her. Under those soulless eyes, horizontal sections of the wall parted, revealing a large stone mouth. Angie’s feet were braced against the upper lip of the unknown creature. As that section of wall moved up, she slipped into the large black-and-white void of the monster’s mouth. Oh my god, it’s a glitch, she thought. She tried to kick away from it, but one foot slipped deeper into the quantum vacuum

“No!” she screamed.

Abruptly, a gravitational pull hauled her body more forcefully into the glitch. The floor has tilted, she thought, gazing around the room. No, that wasn’t right. The others were still upright. And they were running to her. Zack, who had been the closest to her, was ten feet away. Damon was the same distance behind him.

The magnetic force drew more of her body into the gaping mouth. Her legs were completely swallowed by the void now. She looked for something she could brace her palms against, but the sides of the monster’s mouth were out of her reach.

She extended her hands toward Zack and screamed, “Help me!”

He dove for her, clutching her wrists. His legs backpedaled furiously. “Hang on, Ang,” he groaned as his face strained with effort.

Her waist slipped into the black mouth. If this thing closes its mouth, I’m dead, Angie realized, then immediately thought of Jackson. She could feel the glitch invading her body. Her legs tingled, and the muscles in her torso started spasming.

Damon reached her. He grabbed her shoulder with one arm and braced his hammer against a section of the tremoring wall. That stopped her descent momentarily—until the beast roared. The entire north wall shifted sideways. The stone face drove Angie twenty feet across the room. Damon lost his grip on her as his hammer bounced away onto the unmoving floor. But Zack hung on, swinging with the monster.

“Get me out of this, Zack,” Angie pleaded, and the orc continued to pull against the force.

Damon sped across the floor and grabbed her again. Angie could feel bruises forming where the orcs were clutching her, but none of that mattered. She peered at the glitch. The invasive black and white bits were spreading over her stomach like a winter’s frost. Her HP total, which remained unchanged during the attack, turned to gibberish along with the rest of her stats. She looked back at Damon in desperation. Tears were streaming over his mangled cheeks, and the same desperation was reflected in his eyes.

He reached over her and into the glitch, hoping to pull her body back. His forearm disappeared into the black void. A sharp, staticky buzz rang out as an intense heat enveloped his arm. He yanked his hand back. His steel glove was gone. Small red tendrils, like worms, squirmed over his flesh, burrowing into his skin. He brushed them away with his other metal glove.

“Hang on, baby,” he said, then shot his arm in again.

He grimaced like a man holding his hand over a fire. He grasped blindly in the void, trying to find Angie’s body, but he couldn’t feel anything solid. Where her waist should have been was just dead space. He withdrew his hand, and now hundreds of the red tendrils were tearing through his flesh. The battle armor that had covered his right arm had vanished, leaving only twisted strands of metal below his shoulder.

As a fireball pounded into the monster’s stone face above her, the glitch pulled Angie inward, up to her shoulders. As her lungs passed into the desolate void, she hitched for breath. More spells slammed into the wall monster, but they had no effect. Jordan leaped onto its face, finding purchase with his extended claws. He drove his sword into the beast’s black eye. The blade swooped in, cutting through it with no resistance. He pulled the weapon back and saw that it was severed, glitched, and now useless.

Still gasping for breath, Angie looked up at Damon. She tried to tell him that she loved him, that she was sorry she was hesitant about starting their life together. But no words came out, just an anguished, “Ungh.”

Tingles burst across her chin, and she knew that her time was almost up. She wished for death, fearing what might lie on the other side of the black barrier. Angie focused on Damon’s eyes, loving their hazel color for the last time. Then the glitch engulfed her forehead and her vision went black.

The orcs still clung to her extended arms, which seemed to still have life in them. They remained relentless to the end, but were powerless against the glitch. Angie’s arms dipped further into the void. Damon squeezed her hand and, sobbing, told her that he loved her. Then Angie disappeared completely.