“‘Subject struggled immensely until he lost consciousness. I continued on until he died. This can be ruled out as a failure, though it will not be long before I make a better breakthrough…’”

  Nik had been reading each and every one of the notes they came across aloud, that one included. They had hoped that it would give them some kind of information that they could use. All it did was make them sure that they didn’t want to stay in this place any longer than they had to.

  Clover knew that, whoever had done all of this, he wasn’t here now—some of the earlier notes proved it. Still, she constantly found herself looking over her shoulder, or trying to fight an overwhelming sense of dread. “How could he do something like this..? He obviously knows what it’s doing to those people. He just doesn’t seem to care, unless it has to do with the results of the experiment itself…”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of people like this before,” Nik remarked. “Rumors of them, at least. Scientists who are too desperate to prove their hypotheses to care about the ethical parts of their research, or even what they were doing this for. In all those stories, though, they were caught before they could get too far. Or they happened long enough ago that no one really thought about it anymore. But this guy… he was active more recently than those that are just forgotten about, and he definitely never got caught. He didn’t stop because of any kind of external pressure, either. It sounds like he tried to do an experiment on himself after he ran out of other subjects, and it… didn’t go well. In the slightest.” He scoffed. “Not like that kind of guy deserved a nice end to begin with.”

  “So the results were just worth whatever means he had to do in order to get them..? I just don’t get how someone like that hadn’t been noticed by anyone else before. I mean, you’ve seen—or I guess I should say, heard—the kinds of things my town talks about. If there was so much as a single unexplained disappearance, or one sighting of some weird guy, I would’ve thought everyone would know about it.”

  “None of these have dates to them, the bulk of what happened could’ve been several decades ago.” He shrugged. “The old lady mentioned how it was something that she noticed as a kid, right? Maybe that’s when he got all of the people who were here.”

  “I was getting the impression that they didn’t all come at the same time, though, and some were definitely a lot younger or older than others. They couldn’t have all come at such a short time from one another.”

  “This is probably a stretch, but maybe no one thought it was that important to think about for too long. You know, it was something that was the talk of the town for a summer or two, and then everyone forgot about it.”

  “That’s what I would think, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that everyone talks about stuff that happened decades ago. Pretty much everyone knows the stories the old woman tells about her childhood, or what the mayor did when he was younger, or that one girl who ran away to Qizar. I don’t get why those stories, which are pretty much just as relevant as these peoples’ would be, are still remembered when disappearances aren’t.”

  “You said you didn’t recognize any of the names, right? What if they’re just not from your town? Wouldn’t that explain why no one talks about them?”

  “Yeah, except we seem to know gossip from all over the kingdom, and we’ve heard of plenty other serial disappearance cases that happened much further away. Unless this scientist found these people all around the kingdom, or maybe even from Qizar, then I don’t think there’s a chance that someone wouldn’t know something about it.”

  “Maybe we’ll figure it out if we look around a little more. If we could find a concrete date or two, that should let us put everything else into perspective. And if we’re really lucky, we might find something that could solve this thing a whole lot quickly.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  They reached another note, so he stopped to read it. She knew from the moment he saw his expression, however, that it wasn’t something she wanted to know the content of.

  “What… does it say..?” she prompted nervously. She didn’t want to look over to read it for herself. The sense of dread she was getting was already almost too much for her. “Is it something about the scientist? Or his victims?”

  “I think it’s a pretty good sign that we’re supposed to be his newest ones,” was the first thing that Nik said. He scanned the paper over at least three more times, as if he needed to be sure that it meant exactly what he thought it did. “It says that this place has some kind of defense mechanism in it. No one, except for him, should be able to figure out how to get past. It’s ’a test of the body and soul,’ according to this note, and it definitely sounds like it’s going to live up to that reputation.”

  “What is it, then?” Clover beat down a growing sense of panic. “I didn’t see anything weird while we were getting here. I definitely don’t think we hit any obvious triggers…”

  “It says something about changing the area, but… that shouldn’t be possible. Not unless this guy has magic. I… think it might be possible with magic, anyway. Can’t say I know anything about it aside from the rumors, for obvious reasons…” He shook his head. “There’s a chance, though, that this is all just an elaborate joke or something.”

  “Do you really think it could be..?”

  The pause before his response was enough of an answer, and it only made her fear their current situation that much more. Nik was supposed to be the fearless one. What did it say about their predicament, if even he clearly had some reservations towards what they were about to try?

  “I don’t know,” was his honest answer. “We’re not going to, though, unless we try. I think it’s about time we leave this place anyway. It shouldn’t be that hard to retrace our steps from the beginning. We’ll know if there’s trouble if we don’t pass any similar things, or if we do and we still don’t seem to be making any progress.” Mostly to himself, he mumbled, “If only this room was small enough to be lit completely… we could’ve used the light to judge where the walls were. Too far in now, though.”

  He led the way back through the path they had come from. At first, it seemed to turn out just the same, as the first couple of machines they encountered seemed to be the same they passed before. When Clover started to notice small differences—less or more marks on something than there had been before, a note placed in an alternate part of the machine—she didn’t say anything about it. Maybe she was just misremembering it. That had to be what it was, right? If it wasn’t, then she would’ve thought Nik would say something, too.

  Unless he was just as in denial as she was about the mess that they had just walked into.

  With each step, she wished more and more that they hadn’t decided to go here. All of the stories about the place, no matter how varied or fanciful they seemed, should have been the first sign that something like this would happen. The others who had traveled here before them seemed to understand the dangers; they stayed for three days to explore everything outside, perhaps give a glimpse inside, and then realize this wasn’t a place they should be, and left. But of course the two of them had chosen differently. Of course they were called in by the mystery, and stayed trapped in the promises of what it would offer.

  Now she just had to fight the fear that they weren’t going to make it back out.

  They walked a little further, passing the same things that they had before, just slightly different. And then she saw something that filled her with a bit of hope, even if she felt like they shouldn’t have reached it yet.

  “That’s the wall, isn’t it?” she asked, gesturing in front of her. “Seems like it, anyway. I don’t remember that many papers being placed on it before, but it’s not the only change that may or may not have happened, so…”

  There was a small clink, but she didn’t pay attention to it immediately. What she did notice, however, was the lack of response from her friend. They’d been walking side by side before this, close enough that they only had to look over to see one another.

  “Nik?”

  But when she looked over, she saw no one. Just the candle holder, sitting on one of the metal machines. That must’ve been what made the noise. Why had Nik put it down, though? If he’d wanted her to grab it, he would’ve just asked her to.

  “Nik?”

  Once again, there was no answer.

  And she had to consider the possibility that, somehow, he had left—and now, she was alone.