“How are we on maps?” KC asked as Rose quieted down, and he hoped she was getting some rest before she had to claw her way out of that thing.

“A map now is pretty much impossible,” Bri replied as he unzipped his second duffel bag and pulled out a box of chocolate chip cookies. He shoved the bag closer to KC, waving a hand over it in offering. “We can’t see anything or calculate speed. At least with the wagon, Cat was able to calculate the speed when Rosie was sitting outside of it, so we have a better idea of how far she travelled from the path in the woods. But this thing, we have no fuckin’ clue what it even is or how fast it can go.”

KC picked through the bag of prepackaged unhealthy snacks, spotting one of his favourite candy bars and plucking it free. “Thanks,” he said as he tore into it. “Who’s Cat?”

“She’s in my group chat,” Bri said, tagging her in the conversation so he could see on his screen. “She was making spreadsheets and shit right when this thing started, I think she believed in it before anyone else.”

KC shoved half of the candy bar into his mouth, chewing the nougat and caramel on one side. He could practically hear Rose’s voice calling him a fucking caveman, and stifled a laugh, not wanting to spit crumbs all over her keyboard. He clicked over to the group chat he was still in with Bri and his friends, plus Pogo.

KittyCattish: You pinged?

KCxbone: Bri was just telling me you were making maps what have you got

KittyCattish: Ugh trying to, I can show you what I’ve drawn up so far but it is not even close to accurate this is SO hard

KCxbone: Yeah I know but it’s better than nothing, if we can get a bit of a lay of the land it could help Rosie navigate

A series of jpegs popped up on the screen, and he blew them up, studying them. They looked like they’d been hand drawn on a tablet hooked up to imaging software, complete with colour-coded legends. The first one showed the woods, where Rose had spawned, where the tree was that she’d hidden, and which way she’d gone before meeting up with Rhizaid. The second one was of Rhizaid’s house—or museum, whatever it was—showing the corridor of cages, the large room she’d met the King in, and back down the other way where the warehouse had been, complete with rough calculations of the warehouse layout.

The third was a zoomed-out map with the spot Rosalyn had been tricked into the wagon in the center. Here, Cat had drawn a large circle around it, and then fainter thinner-lined circles inside and outside of that one as a buffer zone for areas that were within her estimated distance they’d travelled while Rose had been in the dark.

Spawn and the forest surrounding it were inside that circle, about halfway from the edge to the center, and she’d greyed that out as unlikely that Rhizaid’s place would be over there. That still left a lot of possibilities as to where it was in relation to spawn.

KittyCattish: Hopefully she meets some friendlies that can give her an idea of where she is, or she can find a map or something

KCxbone: Thanks for this, are there any other calculations you’re working on?

KittyCattish: Lots of shit that probably won’t be helpful LOL but I can send you a link to a folder with some sheets

KCxbone: Great yeah thanks

“She’s a whiz,” Bri said through a mouthful of cookies. “And insane, dude, one of the environment spreadsheets is all the types of stone she could see.”

KC shook his head in awe, unable to respond verbally due to the sheer volume of caramel gluing his mouth shut. As he continued to chew, he glanced back over at the streaming software. They’d hit ninety-thousand viewers and counting. He could barely pick out words in the whirling chat anymore, and even donation messages were coming with a lot of frequency. Hashtags were trending, people were coming in that didn’t even seem to be affiliated with video game streaming at all, they’d just heard about this crazy shit on socials and came to see what all the fuss was about.

A donation message flashed across the screen from Bri telling people to chill out with the donation messages so that important ones to Rose didn’t get buried.

“You said you’re eighteen?” KC asked, finally swallowing the last of his mouthful.

The kid on the floor nodded, not looking up from his five screens.

“How the hell are you affording all these donations at eighteen?” KC shook his head.

“Crypto,” Bri quipped.

KC wrinkled his nose. “Of course,” he muttered, taking another, smaller, bite of his candy bar. He startled as his phone buzzed across the desk, letting out a little bleat. Heart pounding, he snatched it up, brow furrowing as his screen declared he had an incoming call from an Unknown Number. He declined it immediately, double checking the little switch on the side of his phone that kept it on silent. He hadn’t even had the vibrate function on in years. He hated notifications that made noise, and phone calls?

“Who the fuck is calling you?” Bri asked, apparently on the same page. KC imagined that for someone even ten years younger the thought of an actual phone call in lieu of a text of some kind was unheard of.

“Telemarketer, probably,” he said, shaking his head, but before he could set his phone back down on the desk, it bleated again, this time a text message lighting up his screen.

Kurt Christopher Delaine, answer the phone immediately.

“What...” KC breathed, heart rate tripling as he stared at the words in disbelief. The only person who had this number who knew his full name was Rose, and she couldn’t be calling him for obvious reasons. Who else could have...he glanced down at Bri, who had managed to find out Rose’s private information and show up at her doorstep.

“Holy shit, she’s made the news, dude,” Bri said, eyes widening as he stared at one of his screens. “Multiple places. ROSIERAINBOW TAKING THE INTERNET BY STORM,” he read, and then pointed at another headline. “#SAVEROSIE TRENDING, IS THE POPULAR STREAMER REALLY IN DANGER?”

KC watched links pop up in multiple chat windows on his screens, a few in donation messages, and then his gaze fell back down to his phone as it began to ring again. Unknown Number.

He kept Bri firmly in his periphery as he punched the Accept button and raised the phone to his ear.

“Kurt Christopher Delaine, this is Agent March.” The voice was no-nonsense, and KC’s bones turned to ice. “What are the technical specifications of the computer in Rosalyn’s office?”

KC’s breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t help but glance up at the streaming window, his face up there, completely drained of colour. “I...” he stammered, and then took a deep breath. “I want a lawyer.”

“What the hell?” Bri asked, his head snapping up like he’d been slapped.

“Mister Delaine, you do not need a lawyer. You are not in any trouble,” Agent March, if that’s who they really were, said. “I need the technical specifications of the computer running the game.”

KC continued to stare dumbly at the camera. They must be watching him, right? They must have caught wind of what was going on, and wanted to, what, investigate for themselves? Who were they, anyway? Agent? Did Canada even have Agents?

Was this person even in the country? The stream was all over the world, it could be—

“Mister Delaine.”

“Sorry, this is...just...this is a lot,” he admitted, rubbing his face with his free hand as if he could massage sense back into his brain. “Why...who are you?”

“That is of no consequence to you. My people are already inside the network. But I require an external set of hands for what I need to accomplish.”

“Who the fuck is that?” Bri demanded, eyes wide as saucers. KC didn’t know if he could hear anything that was being said on the other end, but the kid was clearly picking up on the agitation in the room.

“I don’t want to fuck with the setup,” KC finally said. “I don’t want to lose the stream.”

“I do not want that either,” the Agent said. “I just need you to tell me the technical specifications of the machine.”

KC relaxed a touch, his shoulders slumping the tiniest bit, but something niggled at the back of his brain. Time felt like it was slowing down, everything moving sluggishly, and he blinked slow and languid, his eyelashes seeming to flutter forever...

The niggling thought hit him full force. “If you’re already in the network, why do you need me to tell you the specs?”

“What?” Bri cried before tearing the ethernet cable from his closest laptop. “Fuck!”

KC’s heart hammered as the stream chat slowed down to a crawl, ticking until it came to a stop on RosiesWhore87 dropping a bunch of fire emojis.

The screen went black. Then the front door exploded.