Chương 403: Book Eight, Chapter 70: The Widow

Antoine was a fugitive. I had to wonder how he was holding up. This was a complication that we had not foreseen, but it could be a welcome one, potentially. There was a reason why players might want to use the Femme Fatale advanced archetype to begin with. Diffusing the danger of something really big across several subplots was a strategy to survive. It was also a strategy to spread your forces thin and fail in the Finale. The question was who had sent her here, and whether we could adapt.

I leaned forward and furrowed my brow.

"Are you trying to tell me that Antoine Stone, Dr. Antoine Stone, is somehow behind the disappearance of your husband?"

"Yes," she said. I took a deep breath.

"You understand how that might seem like a bold claim."

"I do," she said. She was sharp and unmovable.

"Okay," I said.

"Why are you coming to me with this?"

"I went to the police and they were useless. I didn't dare go to the press. You know how they loved to mock my husband. The way I see it, you are the only person with the skills and credibility to both find out the truth and report it. Antoine Stone has a long history of "losing" his companions on his so-called expeditions. It's time someone spoke the truth on the matter." I saw where this was going. I was the Private Eye.

"What is the truth?" I asked.

"You know the game as well as any," she said.

"No one becomes a world-famous explorer by sharing credit. Maybe you should check the news lately. Interpol is on the lookout for Mr. Stone. I suppose you already knew that." She nodded to the wanted poster on the wall behind me again.

"He's suspected in the disappearance of over a dozen individuals."

"He's wanted for questioning," I said.

"And these people weren't exactly above board. We're talking about smugglers and black market antiquities dealers here. There are more than a few underworld figures who might have orchestrated this."

"Even so," she said, "I can pay you to find out whether what happened to my husband was foul play or just bad luck." I scratched my head. I didn't need a confrontational back and forth here. This was a basic setup scene. I took out a notepad and started writing on it. Roxy watched me. I let the silence fill the scene with only the sound of my pen scratching.

"Tell me," I said.

"Where exactly did your husband go missing?"

"He was traveling in some ruins off a trailhead near a small town called Carousel," she said.

"Have you heard of it?" I looked up at her, and then I glanced out the window. Was I in Carousel, or was there a small town called Carousel? I needed to be careful with the language.

"That's actually a pretty common place name," I said, "but I think I can look it up. Go on."

"I can give you the exact coordinates. Andrew told me where he was going, and he told me that his original team had gotten lost or had some other complication, and that he was hiring Antoine Stone to help guide him out and help his people on their way to the Sunken Cradle." I dropped my pen intentionally onto the desk. She stopped talking for a moment and then asked, "What? Why aren't you writing?"

"The Sunken Cradle?" I asked.

"You're telling me that your husband went missing looking for the mythological underground city filled with treasure from all of antiquity, that Sunken Cradle?"

"Yes," she said.

"Andrew had been looking for it for quite some time, and he was confident that he had found it." I took a deep breath and picked my pen back up, expressing just how ridiculous this should be.

"A week later, Antoine Stone and a couple of his compatriots emerged from the jungle with a bag full of gold and jewels and a thin story about my husband getting killed in a tunnel collapse. The local government refuses to go to the site or even recognize that the ruins existed. I need you to go find out what happened and, hopefully, if you can, maybe rescue him."

"You believe that your husband might still be alive after six months?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Andrew was always good with mechanics and technology, on top of being a brilliant medical doctor. I will tell you this in confidence. My husband was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago. All that smoking finally caught up to him. It had spread rapidly. He built himself an apparatus to replace his lungs and other affected organs and limbs. The truth is, he was more machine than he was man, enclosed in that device, but he refused to die before he had found the Cradle.

That device could keep him alive in circumstances where a regular man might die, you see." I found this a true surprise. We were talking about some sort of retro sci-fi technology. I really didn't expect that.

"Are you looking for proof of life or proof of death?" I asked coolly.

"Inheritance is stalled while a person is missing, isn't it? Life insurance, too. The courts won't declare him legally dead until he's been missing for, what was it, seven years?" Roxy barely contained a scowl.

"I love my husband, Mr. Lawrence. I want to know what happened to him. It doesn't matter whether you believe me. It only matters if you're willing to do what it takes to find him." I leaned back in my chair and considered her offer.

"The tragic fate of an expedition to the legendary Sunken Cradle," I said.

"I can see the appeal. But you understand, I will require full funding. This will not be cheap, and the final product is mine. The film I shoot is my intellectual property, and I will release any footage I take as I see fit, regardless of how it makes your husband look."

"I told you," she said.

"All I care about is the truth." I stared her down, and we did our best to do that mutual understanding look that characters can do. It would be a good foundation for her inevitable betrayal. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I suppose time is of the essence," I said.

"Let me move some things around and see what I can find, get back to you if I'm able to make the journey to this Carousel."

"No," she said.

"No?" I asked.

"I'm going with you. It's my money. I want to see with my own eyes what happened to my husband." Of course.

"Very well. Just know that when my team and I are tracking down a story, we move at the pace of the story, not the speed our benefactors might desire."

"I'll have no trouble catching up. Andrew married me for our shared interests," she said as she stood. I stood as well and shook her hand across the desk.

"My people will be in contact," I said.

"Can you be ready by tomorrow?" she asked.

"I can be ready tonight," I said, "as long as the funding is there."

"Oh, it will be," she said as she put her sunglasses back on and turned to leave the room. Before she opened the door, she turned back to me and said, "And it's five years, by the way."

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"You said seven years to legally declare a missing person dead. It's actually only five," she said. Then she opened the door and let herself out of the room. -"Could you get me the folder on Carousel, you know, the little town in the jungle?" I asked my secretary over the intercom a few moments after I went Off-Screen.

"It's on the desk behind you," she responded. I turned around, and my character did have a second desk up against the wall, and there was a folder sitting right on top where there hadn't been one before. Inside it, there was a small brochure for a little town hidden in the jungle, though it didn't say where that jungle was. All sorts of mystical things were alleged to happen in that place. It looked like Carousel was playing its favorite kind of town in this one while simultaneously being a big city.

I looked through the information and then found my character's little black book of contacts and flipped through it to see if I would find any familiar names or notes that would tell me what I was supposed to do. I did find one. Camden Tran, an old army buddy who worked in private security. He was a mercenary, more like. Camden must have been pleased to find out that was his role.

Normally, he was cast as a researcher or scientist, but as he gradually accumulated more Strategist tropes, Carousel recognized his combat abilities. I gave him a call. We were both still Off-Screen, so we could say whatever we wanted.

"Camden?" I asked.

"Let me guess," he said as soon as he heard my voice.

"You need someone with guns to help keep you safe in the jungle."

"How'd you know?" I asked.

"Me and my guys are here waiting for you at the airport. Come on, get a move on," he said.

"Alright," I said.

"You be careful with whatever firearms your character has."

"I'll try," he said.

"Although this flamethrower is a real pain to use." I laughed.

"Sounds like you might end up enjoying this one. Be there soon." The next sequence of Off-Screen scenes was quite awkward. I basically just walked out of the building, followed by my support staff, including a cameraman and someone who must have been like a producer or an assistant or something. She had my passport was all I knew.

And then I went to the place my driver's license said was my character's home, taking a taxi to get there, and then, once I had clothes more appropriate for the jungle, I took a taxi to the airport. It was strange, wandering around a big, lively city knowing that all of it was just a show for me. Once I got to the airport, things started to get more normal. NPCs were ushering me onto a private jet, where I found Roxy waiting, dressed for the jungle herself.

"I was wondering if you would ever get here," she said when we went On-Screen for a bit to establish things, and then the airplane took off, and we were Off-Screen until it landed five minutes later in a jungle. Camden met us on the runway, where we shot some footage of hugging like old friends and teasing each other. It wasn't till we were Off-Screen that he even acknowledged Roxy's presence.

"You have to be kidding me," he said.

"Wish I was," I said.

"Alright, whatever," he said.

"Uh, so these are army guys. They're here to protect us. I'm sure they'll do a fine job. They'll die bravely."

"Of course," I said. He started leading us over to where some off-road utility vehicles were waiting for us. As we climbed in, he commented, "Have you noticed that the needle isn't moving at all?"

"Yep," I said. The plot cycle was perfectly still.

"Do you have any thoughts as to why?" he asked.

"It would seem really weird for the first part of the sequel to be a rehash of the original. I mean, this is the entrance to the Cradle that Antoine blew up, right?"

"Yep," I said.

"You have a lot to say on the matter, huh?" he asked.

"I think we're doing this because we need to gather all that documentation that I summoned, you know, the documentation from the original expedition." He rolled his eyes.

"So this is some sort of easter egg hunt, just finding a bunch of paperwork and clues we already know?" Roxy and a large, gun-toting man who looked like her bodyguard got in the back of our vehicle, while Camden's army men got in the other one. We didn't exactly know where to go, but it was easy enough to figure out. Carousel only staged the route to the trailhead. There were no NPCs anywhere else. We just sort of followed the signs of life all the way out of town.

Occasionally, Carousel would get some footage of us, but it didn't really care what we had to say, for the most part. We drove on until we found the trailhead, and then we kept going as far as we could until we found a large bridge that had gone out, and that was the end of the fancy jeeps. From there, we had to take a rope bridge on foot and continue on the trail. Mostly, we were Off-Screen.

I wasn't sure how much of this Carousel was going to use at all, but at some point in time our characters would have to reference having come out here.

"I'm thinking this is a sort of clear-the-hero's-name plot," I said.

"Like The Fugitive," Camden said.

"Yes," I said, "and it looks like we're the US Marshals in that metaphor, trying to prove that Antoine's a bad guy. Or maybe we join up with him."

"Right," he said, "and where does the actual plot to the story fit into all this, you know, with the big bad thing under the ground?"

"We'll squeeze it in somewhere," I said. And so we marched, worried that our time was being wasted. But then we found the body, and we didn't go Off-Screen for thirty more minutes. It was a man's body, handcuffed to a tree.

"I told you," Roxy said as our expedition circled around the horrific site.

"I told you there was foul play involved." My cameraman was getting as much footage as he could. Camden and I got close to the body and began examining it as best we could. My character was a documentarian who went into war zones. His character worked private security for situations exactly like this. We would both have some expertise in what we were looking at.

"No injuries that I can see," Camden said.

"There is here," I said, pointing to the man's wrist.

"He broke his hand trying to get out of the cuffs."

"Poor guy," Camden said. He squinted at the man and then said, "Does this look weird to you? This man appears to have nearly skeletonized, but I don't see any signs of predation." He was right. The man had rotted until his skin wrapped his bones like a mummy's, but no animal had even chewed on him. No rats, no bugs, nothing at all.

"Look at this," Camden said, using a fixed-blade knife to move aside the man's button-up shirt and expose his rotten belly.

"Gross," I said.

"What am I looking at?"

"There's something in his stomach. A strange shape. Look at that, something poking." I saw what he was talking about. The part of the guts that looked the most like a stomach had something inside of it that poked out of it unnaturally, creating an edge that caught the eye. Camden had a sharp knife, so it was easy enough for him to figure out what it was. He slit open the stretched, degraded stomach, and something shiny popped out.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked. Camden carefully balanced the small metallic object on the end of his knife as he lifted it up for Roxy and me to see. It was a key. A handcuff key.

"Did he swallow the key to his own handcuffs?" Roxy asked.

"Why would he do that?"

"Maybe he was forced to," Camden suggested. We stared at the man, his arms bound around the trunk of the tree.

"He definitely tried to escape afterward," I said.

"He tried breaking these branches. So what, maybe he could climb the tree and get his arms free?"

"He was desperate," Camden said.

"We should bury him," I said. Camden nodded to his men, and they quickly got to work as we went Off-Screen.