Could one of these people actually be Murmur?
“You know you’re not supposed to talk about the game,” Easton said in a very slight Indian accent. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
I liked her immediately.
“Is that what you’re doing here? Playing the game?” I asked.
Darla took a seat at the table and looked nervously over at Easton and Hugh.
“Oh, we’re not playing,” Darla said. “We’re a kind of…a support group, for those who used to play.”
“Darla, what are you doing?” Hugh demanded.
“It’s okay. We’re among friends,” Easton said.
“Are you sure?” the Colonel asked.
Easton stared at Chloe like she was trying to make up her mind. “You two are friends, aren’t you?”
“We are, yes,” Chloe said.
Easton turned her attention to me.
I nodded. “Friends,” I said.
The Colonel and Alberto grumbled their displeasure.
“Well, you see,” Easton continued, “the game has a way of swallowing your life, and what we’re doing here is trying to keep our explorations…contained. Supporting one another and making sure we don’t…”
“Spiral out of control,” Jenny added.
“Exactly,” Easton said. “The game has become far too dangerous. So we meet here to keep one another…safe.”
Judging by the way the others looked to her before they spoke, I had the feeling Easton might be the leader of the group.
“But you are playing?” I looked directly at Easton as I asked this question, but her eyes betrayed nothing.
“No,” Hugh said. “We’re just…comparing possibilities.”
“We get together to discuss a few rabbit holes and try to figure out one or two puzzles. We solved quite a few during the ninth iteration,” Darla said.
I continued to look over at Easton Paruth, but her face remained expressionless. Was it possible this woman was actually Murmur? She seemed so…nice.
“What are you working on now?” I asked, turning my attention to Darla.
She smiled as she spoke, clearly excited. “It’s pretty cool, actually. A new video was just released on YouTube and we found a hidden—”
“Darla!” Jenny interjected. “What the fuck?”
“It’s okay,” Easton said, glancing over at Jenny, who quickly averted her gaze. I was right. Clearly, Easton was in charge here.
“Somebody found a hidden level in a videogame called Zompocalypso,” Easton said. “We’re just trying to ascertain whether it’s safe to explore that mystery, or if it might be a trailhead connected to Rabbits.”
“So if it was connected to Rabbits, you’d want to avoid it?” I asked.
Easton just smiled.
“Zompocalypso? Isn’t that the Fortnite rip-off?” Chloe asked.
“Well, that description is a bit reductive,” Hugh said, clearly a fan of what was definitely a shitty derivative version of Fortnite. There was no way Hugh was Murmur.
“What’s special about this hidden level?” I asked.
“It contains an image—a collage of symbols and numbers, obviously clues of some kind, but we’ve been unable to figure out exactly what it all means,” Easton continued.
“Can we see it?” I said.
“I don’t see why not,” said Easton, “if the entire group is in agreement.”
There were whispers around the table.
“We could step outside for a moment, if that would be better,” I offered.
“That might be for the best,” Easton said. “We’ll call you back in.”
Chloe and I stepped outside, onto the front porch.
“You wanna take off?” she asked, once the door had closed behind us.
“What? Why would we do that?”
“We can just play Zompocalypso ourselves. We can easily find that secret level,” Chloe said.
I’d been thinking the same thing. We would almost certainly be able to find that hidden level on our own, especially now that we knew it existed.
“Come on,” Chloe said as she started walking down the steps. “There’s no way any of those people are Murmur.”
But I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t feel like Easton’s being completely honest,” I said.
“You think she’s playing the game,” Chloe said.
“I do,” I said as the door behind us opened with a slow wooden creak.
“You guys can come back in now,” Darla said.