Eirlys folded over a post-it note labelled ESCAPE as the counter popped out of her hand. Until she knew how the showrunners got their information, she couldn’t risk them acting against her plans.

It looked like they manually reviewed proposals and rejected them if they went against the ‘spirit of the rules’. After all, if the system was immune to exploitation, they wouldn’t have needed to call up Connie and Faust to complain.

— It stood to reason, then, that there had to be a loophole. Some proposal she could submit that wouldn’t seem like it gave them an advantage, but did. If she were caught trying to pass it, though, things would probably get even worse than the Greer situation had.

— Eirlys swore to get her back, whatever the cost.

“Fine,” Faust was saying. “Like you said, I’ll figure out how I feel about the truth once I learn it. A crushing dose of reality never hurt anyone. Only... Tarquin?”

“What?”

Faust leaned in, pressing his eyes right up against his teammate’s. “If you ever lay a hand on me again, I will take my needle and I will sew up your fucking eyes.”

“Goodness,” said Tarquin, putting a good ten feet between them.

“Faust!” Haralda slammed her fist onto the podium, making it rattle. “I will not entertain those sorts of threats in this civilised chamber. Do we need to step outside for some fresh air?”

— Haralda: a threat if left unchecked. While the teacher had gotten things running smoothly, her authority ultimately relied on people never calling her bluff.

— Eirlys had been on the lookout for a good opportunity to do so. Anything to gain a little more ground.

“Nah,” said Faust, flatly, as he nursed the mark on his face. “Sorry, Haralda. I’m normally such a nice person, god knows what just came over me. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.”

“Yes, let’s.” Haralda glared at him down her nose. “Very well. All those in favour of creating a portal to those on the other side of the phone?”

— Eirlys put her thumb up.

— The crackling energy seemed to be made of the same substance as the word count. Oddly, neither of them produced any heat.

7👍 — MAJORITY REACHED

There was an abrupt change in pressure and a rushing of wind, like the time Eirlys opened her front door during a tornado. Her hair whipped behind her head, tousled.

Along the perimeter of the chamber, the lanterns snuffed themselves out, expelling a thin trail of smoke that smelled like birthday candles. Eirlys’ screen burst into static, then snapped off. She tried to orient herself by looking at the 70,000 door, but even that had stopped glowing. For all intents and purposes, the only thing left visible in the world was the word count on her hand.

Next to her, Saheel yelped. Across the room came similar cries from Connie and Faust. All was quiet save for the sound of desperate, heavy breaths.

“Our father, who art in heaven…” Saheel chanted to himself.

“What the devil is going on?” came Tarquin’s panicked voice. “We voted to open a portal, didn’t we?”

THE CENTRE, croaked Kari.

— Hearing someone like that in a chamber darker than the night sky was enough to send shivers down Eirlys’ spine.

— But fear was unproductive. All phenomena had a reason.

She squinted, and amongst the swirling miasma of visual distortion managed to make out a shape like a large gong that seemed to be darker than everything else.

— The portal? Whispers poured out of its depths.

“What the fuck?” shouted Connie, audibly hopping around, her boots clomping on the marble. “Something’s grazing the bottom of my leg, man! Something’s down there!”

Eirlys touched her hand to her shoe, and sure enough, small particles were brushing against it, not dissimilar to a cloud of insects. In the blue light of the word count, the shape of the fragments seemed inconsistent.

— It tickled.

“A-ha,” said Haralda, clicking in a button to activate the torch on her phone. She swept the beam across the room, revealing a floor covered in little shards of marble. But the portal defied her attempts to illuminate it, devouring the photons whole, blotching out the centre of the chamber like a stain on reality.

One by one, the others clicked on the torches, save Kari, who was only identifiable through the glare off their pupils.

“Oh boy, that’s a tooth,” said Faust, holding up one of the shards.

— A molar, to be precise.

“We assumed the tower was made of marble,” said Eirlys, crunching her foot around in the bone. “But…”

“Ah, FUCK!” screamed Connie, waving her torch around in an attempt to light everything up. “Jesus… whose idea was it to just leave Greer there? That scared the absolute shit of me!”

— Don’t look at Greer.

— It was all Eirlys’ fault, though. Now these odd fragments were riding in on the wind and piling over her teammate’s corpse, like blossom.

THE UNDERWORLD, announced Kari. Thankfully, Tarquin was training his torch on the child. LAND OF THE DEAD. I GLIMPSED IT IN THEIR EYES WHILE THEY BREATHED THEIR LAST.

Eirlys thought about it, then frowned and said, “How would that have looked different to regular darkness?”

YOU SAY I KNOW NOTHING OF LIFE. WELL, YOU KNOW NOTHING OF DEATH.

“Hmm.”

— If nothing else, it represented a possible avenue of escape.

“Right,” said Haralda. “This wasn’t exactly the motion we passed. Should anyone wish to close the portal, I won’t judge you.”

Saheel procured two crucifixes from some secret compartment in his robe and promptly dual-wielded them. “I don’t know. This seems awfully dangerous.”

“We have to at least investigate, don’t we?” asked Tarquin. “I’m willing to take the risk if it means getting back to my family.”

“Damn straight,” said Connie. “If this tower really is made out of bone, I sure as hell don’t want to waste any more time standing in it.”

“Are you absolutely sure it’s safe?” asked Saheel. “We ought to take precautions. If you get lost in there, or worse — trapped — how exactly are you going to get out?”

“We’re already trapped, aren’t we?” said Tarquin. “How could it be any worse in there?”

They stood for a while and stared into the negative space of the portal while a thousand hushed voices whispered, and an endless stream of bone fragments streamed out.

“Gee, I can think of a few reasons,” said Faust.

Eirlys said, “Dangerous? Yes. But we can still pass motions if others are in different locations.”

“Hang on, though, Eirlys, are you guaranteed there’ll be a phone signal in there?” asked Saheel. “We can’t just assume it’ll work like in here.”

— Saheel seemed to have a gift at finding ways to catch Eirlys out. Before, she’d just thought him paranoid, but now she was starting to realise how much of an asset he could be.

“Good point,” said Eirlys. “So we vote to create seven communications devices that are always connected.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to vote to get some light in here, either,” said Saheel. “Why not give them floodlight capabilities…”

“...Or the ability to turn darkness into light?” asked Eirlys.

“Wow,” said Faust. “Look at you two go.”

“See what happens when you don’t rush into things?” said Saheel, miming yet another crucifix. “All those in favour?”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to be cautious, could it?” asked Tarquin.

— The energy from Eirlys’ thumb streamed out towards the portal as she raised it, melting away into the darkness like snow on a roof.

— It felt like… it felt like she was feeding it.