Shuddering creaks emanate from the construct. It doesn’t move at all, but it sounds like it’s trying its damndest to. This doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to be part of the quest, but the messenger’s still treating it exactly like one. Maybe the uncertainty is the point.

  “Can constructs even feel pain?” I wonder aloud. “Don’t you need nerves and a brain for that? Like… well…”

  I motion in Euro’s direction. Jumble glances over her shoulder, opens her mouth into an ‘o’ of understanding, and nods.

  “Without specific modifications, a construct like this shouldn’t be able to feel pain. Just thinking for themselves takes a lot of modifications, too, so… I guess I don’t know what this is.” She steps back and crosses her arms. “This quest gets more and more confusing by the second.”

  “Agreed.” I chuckle. “If this is part of the quest, then I’d bet the thing is trying to tell us that constructs are… what? Sentient? That they can feel things? But it’s doing it by sending preselected messages that only come from specific questions.”

  Jumble nods. “The quest is definitely trying to get sympathy for the constructs, that’s for sure. Does that mean we should feel that sympathy, or that we should definitely not feel sympathetic because it’s the quest that’s purposely making them suffer? This place is… off… to say the least.”

  That could be the understatement of the year. I’ve already met a construct that thinks for itself, but that only happened because I gave it a coin infused with fake shellraiser. Before that it was just a simple quest-giver. There’s no way the quest would do that for a construct, so… why is it doing this? Just to advance whatever the narrative for the subquest is supposed to be?

  I exhale through my nose and shake my head. “Let’s just keep at it. We’ll know soon enough if the thing is actually alive, or if it’s just playing to the quest’s specifications.”

  “Sure! Do you want a turn to poke at its teeth?”

  “Do we have any idea what its sinking teeth are supposed to do?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Then we leave it alone for now. Right after I check one more thing.” I walk around to the construct’s back, where the wound looks exactly the same as before. “C’mere. I need another set of eyes on this thing.”

  Jumble hurries over and leans in to get a closer look at the wound. “Yep, it looks like a fake wound to me. Like someone bad at practical effects trying to do gore makeup.”

  That was my initial impression, too, and Jumble rubbing her fingers around the edges of the wound does nothing to dissuade it. Even if it is a ‘tutorial’ anomaly like Jumble thinks, then there should be another oddity along with it–something in the wound that’s like the pressable teeth. I scan the wound with my awareness, picking at it as closely as I physically can, but it just… looks like something tore out a chunk of this thing’s plastic and smoothed out the wound.

  “So… anything?” I ask.

  “Mm, not really. It’s weird, but that’s it–weird and nothing else.” Jumble pats the construct on the back and steps away. “I guess we could try to feed something through its mouth and see if it hits the wound. By the looks of it, it should cut right through the construct’s esophagus.”

  “Seems like it’d work. Got anything to feed it?”

  Jumble shakes her head. “I was kind of hoping that you would.”

  “Well, I can use one of these.” I summon a coin and roll it through my knuckles. “As long as the thing’s throat is straight enough, I can make a stick that’ll go right down.”

  “Works for me!” Jumble makes room for me, then opens her Class Card. “Tell me what happens. I’m going to go see if Euro found anything yet.”

  I flash her a thumbs-up as she hurries back to Euro. She smiles wide and returns it to my back, her eyes lingering on me for a few seconds before she sighs and enters the bedroom. Still acting a little weird, but it’s a weird I can live with. I flip my coin into my palm and envision a shield that fits perfectly down the construct’s open mouth like an endoscope. Magic swirls around the coin as I bring it to the construct’s mouth, place it on its tongue, and flare the spell.

  The shield appears in a burst of salt, extends down the construct’s throat, and keeps going. I feel it go down with my awareness, the connection bringing the tube further and further into the thing’s body. Instead of hitting a wound like it should, the thing just keeps going. Further and further and further until I feel my shield reaching the end of its malleability. The thing’s easily over thirty feet long at this point. And it’s been travelling in a perfectly straight line since the initial dip at the back of the throat.

  I lean back to make sure I didn’t just spear the thing through. Unless it made my shield intangible and invisible, that didn’t happen. Meaning the thing’s body definitely isn’t normal. Maybe now’s when we’re supposed to start pressing teeth? I tap the first one I saw Jumble squish down with my mind razor-focused on my shield.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Nothing. I quickly press all the others, which do exactly the same for me. I scratch my cheek and huff at the sudden stalemate; the construct’s body is some kind of altered space. But what’s the reason for that? It has to be something to do with the quest, but… hrm. There’s no way phasing doesn’t play a part here, but… how?

  I summon my Class Card and tap it against my forearm. “The messages we’re sending it… maybe the way they’re being triggered is some kind of variant on phasing. We can’t see its responses unless we send the right messages, which is kind of similar to how we have to stand and look in the exact right places for phased things.”

  “It’s a good theory.” Pearl says. “But how are you going to use it?”

  My mind races for an answer, but none of the theories I initially come up with are good enough to say out loud. We know there’s a secret room here. Phasing could be the way we’re supposed to find it, and if that’s the case, then all these anomalies could be our key to finding the right place to stand and look.

  Or… huh. The construct isn’t standing in the exact same place as before. Maybe–yeah, yeah, that’s it!

  “We aren’t the ones who’ll be phasing the room in.” I say excitedly. “We’re making the construct phase the room in!”

  Jumble sticks her head out of the doorway. “Really?”

  I nod confidently. “Pretty damn sure. Each anomaly makes it move a little, so if we find all of them, it’ll definitely be in the right place for the room to phase in.”

  “Cool! All we need to do is find them, then!” She grins and points back into the room. “We’ll get right back to it. Good luck with your search!”

  …Yeah. Still gotta do this, I guess. With my excitement dulled more than a little, I roll up my sleeves and turn back to the living room. Just because the table was an anomaly, it doesn’t mean it’s the only one in here.

  “Shelby, I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything else here.” Pearl says. “I know you’ve only been looking for thirty minutes, but there really isn’t that much to pore over in here.”

  I want to tell her she’s wrong, but deep down I know she’s right. There’s nothing here that I haven’t turned over in one way or another–including the rugs on the floor and the fabric on the walls–and my awareness tells me there isn’t anything I’m missing. Seems like Jumble and Euro haven’t found anything, either.

  “Yeah, I know.” I dust off my hands with a sigh. The construct stands there inert, since we had to undo the damage to send new messages. “Feels really weird that we haven’t found anything else, though. There isn’t actually that much shit in this place to dig through.”

  Jumble steps out of the bedroom, Euro hot on her heels. “I know, right? Like, we should’ve found something by now.” She says before she turns the corner. “Our plastic pretender here is definitely hiding more than a few things, but unless we’re just really bad at searching, they aren’t anywhere we can find them. At least apartments don’t have attics, right? That’d make it way harder to search.”

  She giggles to herself, but those giggles slowly die out as a frown takes their place.

  “Um, we can’t leave here, right?” She looks down at the ground. “It’s completely impossible to get through any of these walls, right? We definitely already tried that, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure I tried the outer wall.” I say without an ounce of confidence. “But just to be sure… give it another shot.”

  Jumble nods and spins on her heel to press her hand on the wall next to the construct. The pattern forms to let her out of the room, but a notification flashes over my eyes right as it’s supposed to open.

  You cannot leave the subquest grounds until completion or forfeiture.

  If you forfeit, you will once again lose access to your messenger function.

  “So we can’t leave this way. But what about…” Jumble bends down and puts her hand on the ground. “This can’t work, right? We’d still be leaving the quest grounds, right?”

  The pattern on the floor finishes without a single word from the quest. Air whooshes through the newly opened door as we all stare at it, dumbfounded. Jumble leans down further and swishes her hand through the opening, then sticks her entire upper body through the hole. A gasp of disbelief followed by a groan heralds her full return to the room. She locks eyes with me, then taps Euro on the shoulder.

  “Can you go check the bedroom one last time? I need to know we’re not missing anything.”

  Euro raises an eyebrow, but nods and leaves anyway. Jumble watches them go until they round the corner, then fervently motions for me to join her at the edge of the hole. I quietly step over to her, but my awareness can feel what’s down there before she can.

  An empty space as big as the entire apartment. Save for one three-foot wide and eight-foot tall cylinder hooked up to plastic cables that pulse and shiver with magic. Jumble shimmies away to give me more room, and I stick my head down into the… under-apartment to get a better look around.

  It’s exactly like my awareness showed me. Plastic wires, a tank filled with liquid, and an otherwise empty room. But… it almost looks like there’s something floating in the liquid. That must be what made Jumble gasp.

  “I need to get a closer look.” I whisper.

  Jumble nods. “I’ll keep the door open just in case. Just… be quick, okay? I don’t want Euro to see this before we can make sense of it.”

  I nod back, slip my legs over the edge, and hop down. Bent knees absorb the impact, and I glance around for anything that might’ve triggered by my arrival. Nothing’s obviously out of the ordinary, so I keep my awareness on edge as I walk over to the tank. The murky liquid inside burbles at my approach, something inside twitching and spasming as the sound of crackling electricity grows increasingly louder.

  Far too quickly I’m staring into the liquid from inches away. Paindne symbols dance over the glass separating me from the thing inside, spelling out things that I can’t make heads or tails of. Pearl quietly reads them out under her breath, and from the sound of it, they’re… notes.

  “Subject 112,009: cause of injury: electrostatic shock. Body preserved to study how this injury affects simulacra created from a post-injury brain’s information.”