Laura was lying down. The air was slightly musty, and dim. She was lying on some of the softest pillows and mattress she’d ever felt, but the blanket was slightly scratchy. An air conditioner rattled on somewhere nearby.

  Laura jolted up.

  She was in a hotel room. Even though the air was musty, it was a decently nice hotel room from what she could see. Everywhere smelled the same this close to the ocean.

  Laura grabbed for her phone to check the time. It was past 3 o’ clock. She'd missed her appointment.

  How had she gotten here? Were time gaps some kind of weird pregnancy symptom she’d never heard of?

  Her call log showed no new incoming calls and no outgoing calls since the one to her mom. The call to her mom had lasted barely a minute.

  Laura scrambled out of bed and snapped open the curtains. There was the ocean, still reassuringly there. And several stories below, the boardwalk also very reassuringly stretched out to either side under blue sky. But at the far ends of the boardwalk everything abruptly stopped at two walls of gray fog. She thought of the gray pictures on her camera roll.

  There were no people on the boardwalk, just some gulls turning lazy circles in the sky.

  Was the fog some kind of weird weather event? (She was very carefully not wondering how she’d suddenly found herself in a hotel room with no memory of getting there.) She tried to check the weather but got an error message. She had no wifi and no cell signal. The hotel room phone had no dial tone. The branded note pad next to it had the name The Coastal Inn at the top.

  Danny would worry eventually, but not until at least dinner time. Would her doctor’s office have called him when she didn’t show up to her appointment? People missed appointments all the time. It was far more likely they’d just leave a message on her phone to reschedule and that would be it.

  Her parents on the other hand were almost certainly already worried. She’d called them out of the blue then had barely gotten a sentence out before the call had presumably been cut off.

  She’d have to go down to the lobby and see if they had a working phone.

  Laura went over to the door and pressed her eye to the peephole. The hallway was empty too. The only sounds were the air conditioning unit and the screaming gulls outside.

  She weighed an urge to search for a makeshift weapon. What if she ended up creeping the hallways of a perfectly ordinary hotel wielding a chair leg? She’d need to see something more obviously wrong before she’d resort to that.

  Laura swiveled the knob slowly, as soundlessly as she could. She poked her head out into the hallway.

  A moment later, a door creaked open to her right and another head poked out into the hallway. A perfectly normal, slightly weedy looking man in glasses looked back at her from a few doors down.

  “Oh thank god,” he said. “Do you, ah—this might sound strange. Do you have any idea how you got here?”

  Her stomach dropped.

  “No.” She stepped out fully into the hallway. “I have no idea.” A shared sense of relief drew them both into the hallway. “I was just heading downstairs to see if they’ve got a working phone in the lobby. Yours doesn’t work does it?”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked as they walked towards the elevator.

  “I was in Adventure Islands, and then I woke up here. Nothing in between,” he said. “I’m Joel by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

  She shook it. “Laura.”

  It was an oddly mundane action that anchored her for a moment while they waited for the elevator. Whatever this was, they were in it together for now.

  The lobby looked perfectly normal except for the fact that it was also deserted. All the lights were on, the arm chairs and tables looked freshly wiped down, and the little adjacent snack kiosk was fully stocked. Sure, late September might not be the most bustling time of year here, but she would have expected someone—a couple little kids in bathing suits dripping across the floor, or at least an employee at the lobby desk.

  Laura peered over the front desk counter. The employee phone was just within reach. After waiting several minutes for a hotel staff member to appear, Laura rang the bell on the counter.

  “There's no one there,” said a voice behind them. Laura and Joel spun around.

  Behind them stood a compact middle-aged man in a sports shirt and sneakers. He pointed down a side hallway. “We're all in the conference room.”

  We?

  Laura glanced at Joel, who looked just as confused as she was.

  “Does anyone have a phone that works?” Laura asked. The man shook his head. “Not even the desk phone?”

  “Good luck. Already tried that. No dial tone.” The man turned to walk back down the hallway. Joel looked at Laura, then trailed after him. As they walked away she heard the man introduce himself as Oliver. “We haven’t seen anyone else outside,” Oliver said to Joel as they headed down the hallway. “As far as we know this is it.”

  Laura hung back and quickly double checked the phone. It was in fact dead. Dialing 9 did nothing. She even tried 911 just in case, but the phone may as well have been a plastic kid’s toy.

  This must be some kind of major outage. But the lights were all still on, so not a power outage.

  Laura hurried to catch up with Joel and Oliver. As they got closer to the open door at the end of the hallway, Laura could hear the murmur of people.

  Someone had pushed aside all the conference tables and arranged the hotel chairs into rows facing the small raised stage at the back of the room. Oliver went to stand up on stage. Next to the stage was a white board that had been positioned to face the room. On it was written:

  No, the phones don’t work (internet either).

  Yes, we tried going through the fog. It’s like solid rock.

  Note: Don’t piss off the seagulls.

  The last was underlined twice.

  One person sat crying in the corner. Another one was pacing. Two others seemed to be distracting themselves by trying to get a projector working. The rest of the roughly two dozen people in the room were sitting scattered throughout the chairs. None of them seemed to work for the hotel.

  They took a seat towards the front next to a surprisingly unphazed looking older woman clutching a large backpack. She leaned over to them and said, “You slept through it too, huh?”

  “Slept through what?” Laura said.

  “That’s what I thought. Hey, Caroline!” The woman shifted the backpack to her feet and waved over a young woman with jet black hair who looked barely older than a teenager. She wandered over with a cell phone clutched in one hand. In the other hand she had some kind of meat pastry that gave off a savory smell that made Laura feel a small wave of nausea. Caroline took a big bite from the pastry before tossing the woman the phone.

  “We’ve been passing this around,” the woman said, indicating a video paused on screen, “to catch people up to speed. They’re trying to get it going on the projector so we can all watch it again. A lot of us were too walloped the first time around to take it in.” She was about to hand Laura the phone when someone near the projector yelled, “Hey, pass it here! Pass it here! We got a cord!”

  The phone was diverted and the group around the projector started fiddling with plugging it in.

  Laura looked at the group, and then at the rest of the people sitting around the room. “Hey,” she said to Joel, “have you noticed anything odd?”

  “You mean besides everything?” He waved a hand around.

  “Where are all the kids?”

  Joel looked around. His brow wrinkled.

  “It’s a theme park,” Laura said. “You’d expect there to be a bunch of kids here right?” She raised her voice. “Was anyone here with kids?”

  A few people raised their hands. “My cousin,” one person said. “My grandkids,” said another.

  “Where are they?” Laura asked. “Are they here at the hotel?”

  They shook their heads.

  Oliver said, “I was here with my sister and nephew. They weren’t here when I woke up and I can't find them anywhere.”

  An image popped up on the screen behind Oliver. “We got it!” one of the people near the projector said. Oliver stepped to the side to give a clearer view. A hush fell over the room.

  The recording started mid sentence. It was a POV shot of someone sitting in bed in a room that looked identical to Laura’s. The camera was pointed towards the foot of the bed, where a man was floating several inches off the floor. It was the man from the entrance gate, the one who’d asked Laura if she had any children.

  “I thought it was some kind of new thing the parks were doing,” someone behind her whispered to their neighbor. “Pretty stupid right?”

  “…you all have made a fascinating industry out of fear,” the man was saying. “Horror movies, haunted houses, bungee jumping, sky diving…” he smiled. “…theme parks. So welcome to the next level. Adventureland Parks 2.0, if you will.”

  (At this point the camera shook slightly as the person recording launched something from off camera. A pillow passed right through the man. “What the actual fuck?” someone off-camera said.)

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Had this same figure appeared to everyone? It felt like a pre-recorded presentation. Laura pictured herself snoring loudly, the man hovering at the foot of her bed and relaying his spiel while she lay completely oblivious.

  “You all presumably came here looking to experience something fantastical,” the floating man continued, “something extraordinary. Something that scares you. We’ve taken all that and turned it up a few notches.”

  An image now appeared floating in the middle of the screen. The person filming yelled a surprised, “fuck!” and punched their hand through the image. It didn’t seem to do anything to it. At the top in a font clearly meant to invoke excitement floated the words, “Now with 100% more danger!”

  A rotating series of clips showed in succession: a pirate stabbing a sword through a screaming woman, an animated scarecrow disemboweling someone with a scythe, and—a little anticlimactically—a rat biting at someone’s ankle.

  “There is only one exit,” the man said. “To get there you’ll have to experience the entirety of what the parks now have to offer.

  Laura’s stomach dropped.

  A map zoomed out to show “you are here”, with a dot over the hotels and boardwalk. The rest of the map was presumably of the parks, but it was almost entirely obscured by fog. The only landmark visible was a glowing dot labeled “exit” that sat at the far end.

  Well, fuck.

  “So long as at least one group—and I would recommend you take a group—makes it all the way through to the exit, we’ll consider this event a success and you’ll be released.

  “We’ll be monitoring your experience. Good luck!” The floating man vanished. The video ended.

  Everyone sat in silence.

  “So yeah,” Oliver said. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

  The topic of survival had come up surprisingly often between her and Danny. Her job sometimes meant camping in remote areas for days at a time. Before she’d leave on a trip she would always visibly double check her gps device and emergency locator beacon. More than once Danny had said to her, “Please just try not to be one of those people who just can’t sit still and ends up dying because they wandered right past the people meant to rescue them. Isn’t that the advice—just stay put until you’re rescued?”

  Oh Danny, Laura thought, picturing the map and the glowing exit dot. That advice is for when somebody might actually be coming to rescue you. And when you don’t know the way out.

  She felt another wave of nausea. The room felt overly warm.

  “I’m going to try to make it to the exit,” Oliver said. “Anyone else is welcome to come with so long as they can hold their own. I won't be carrying anyone. If you're too scared or old, I can't help you.”

  That ruled out at least half the people in the room.

  One guy in a bright orange shirt said, “Wait a minute, what's going on? Are we all going to have to fight those things from the video? That pirate and that scarecrow thing?

  Someone towards the back of the room said to Oliver, “Are you crazy?”

  “I mean, we’ve mostly got a bunch of old people here,” orange shirt continued. “No offense,” he said to the older man sitting next to him.

  “It’s up to you if you want to go in,” Oliver said, presumably addressing the room. “I mean, you heard what he said. Someone has to make it to the exit or we’re all stuck here.”

  Preferably a group, the man had said.

  Laura’s overly sensitive nose picked up another whiff from Caroline of whatever meat she was eating. Laura felt the surge of saliva that was the next stage of nausea warning signs. Not now. She quickly forced herself to swallow a few times in a row, which sometimes staved it off.

  “Hang on,” Joel said. “You didn’t answer the question. Are we supposed to be fighting something? Are we going to have any weapons or anything?”

  The people getting slaughtered in the video had been holding a sword and a pitchfork respectively. Where were they supposed to get something like that?

  “Look,” said Oliver. “I watched the same video, I only know what you all—”

  The floating man appeared again at the front of the room. Oliver jerked back from the man and stumbled down off the stage. This time the man wasn’t floating. In fact, his feet were sunken slightly into the raised stage, cutting them off around the ankle. It was clear that however he was projecting himself here to talk to them they were still working out the kinks.

  “The higher-ups have informed me that you’re still confused,” the man said, cheerily. “Do you always have this much of a learning curve? That doesn’t bode well for you.”

  Caroline stood up and threw her pastry at the figure, and yet again it passed right through.

  “Hmm, you are all slow on the uptake,” the man said, still smiling. He turned to look directly at Caroline. “You know that didn’t work last time.”

  A ripple passed through the room as everyone realized this wasn’t some kind of recording.

  “In just a moment you’ll be connected to the park’s system,” he said. “This should clarify things for you. You may find it familiar; we modeled it after the fighting games many of you like to play—another lucrative source of entertainment. You may see the pattern here.”

  Laura felt a piercing pain in her head and squeezed her eyes shut at the deafening high pitched tone she heard coming from between her ears. Her nausea surged.

  “Sorry about that,” the man said. “We’re not entirely used to your physiology. There, you see, that should be working now.”

  When Laura’s eyes opened again there were multiple displays towards the outer edge of her vision lightly overlaid over her view of the conference room. She swiveled her head around. The displays followed no matter where she looked. The upper corner said Menu. When her eyes focused on it, more words popped up in the center. It listed options like Stats, Skills, Items. Towards the bottom of the list it said Click Here for More.

  “You all now have access to your menus. You also have an initial set of points you can distribute into whichever stats you’d like. Just navigate to the stats section of your menu. Make sure you read those descriptions first! To get more stat points, you’ll need to level up. And for that you need Experience! When you get enough experience, you go up a level and you get more points to put into your stats.”

  There was a bar up in the opposite corner from the menu labeled Experience. It was currently empty and read 0%. Next to the bar it said Level 1.

  Ominously, another bar labeled Health was now displayed down on the right side. It currently was full.

  “Hint—you generally need to kill something to get experience! The stronger it is compared to you, the more you’ll get. And what the hell, we’ll also toss in a few tickets to start, just for getting through this orientation.”

  A little counter in the bottom left corner of Laura’s vision marked Tickets jumped from 0 to 5.

  “I can’t tell you too much more than that. It’s about the experience of the thing after all! You can learn by doing.”

  “Where are Sofia and Teddy?” Oliver demanded, looking murderous. He rubbed one ear and examined his hand like he expected blood.

  “We kept no children here, no carers of children, and no employees—only unencumbered adults who were here of their own free will for their entertainment. We’re not monsters!” the man said, without clarifying further what they were. “Oh and good for you for noticing that detail!” The man was talking directly to Laura now. “An extra point to you!”

  They must have been observing us this whole time. Laura’s skin prickled. Her hands grew clammy.

  “Oh and one more thing.” He scanned the room with a knowing smile. “Watch those weaknesses. This place will eat you alive.”

  Laura threw up.

  The man disappeared again. This time felt a bit more final.

  A man in the back shot up out of his chair. “Fuck that,” he said. “Good luck to you. There’s no way I’m dealing with that,” he said, jabbing a finger at the stage. Then he booked it out the door. Several more people stood up and shuffled out, including the one who’d been huddled in the corner crying. (No shock there.)

  Only a small handful of people stayed behind. Oliver, Joel, and Caroline, along with the guy in the orange shirt and an older man wearing glasses and a button-down shirt, all clustered together near the stage. They started wrestling a table over in front of the white board while Laura sat and recovered.

  Laura had nothing to clean up her vomit. She slumped back against her chair, her stomach muscles still quivering with small aftershocks. The older woman sat down next to her and offered her a bottle of water, a small towel, and a ginger chew out of her backpack. A small identification tag on the handle said “Agnes” and had a series of abbreviations after it.

  “Thanks,” Laura said. The water helped clear the taste of bile from her mouth. She wiped the clammy sweat from her face.

  “I’ve worked in an ER for almost twenty years,” Agnes said. “You tend to be prepared for anything.” She looked around and laughed. “Almost anything I should say. Here I thought seeing a guy with a leg impaled by a broken croquet mallet was the weirdest thing I’d ever see.”

  “You know,” Laura said. “I always made sure I was prepared too. Whenever I was really in the middle of nowhere I took a PLB, GPS, bear spray. I always figured if I was ever fighting for my life it would be out in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t expect it here.” She took another sip of water and slipped the ginger chew in her pocket for later. “I may not know how to fight but I know how to be resourceful. And I know these parks like the back of my hand. And yet I know the smart thing for me to do right now is stay here. What a waste.”

  Agnes patted her on the knee. “Buck up buttercup. Now why don’t you toss that towel down on your vomit before the smell starts to spread.” She got up and joined the others gathered around the table.

  Laura threw the towel down on the stain, then gravitated towards the others. She stood towards the edge of the group, and studied the white board.

  “I’ll look around here for anything we can use,” the guy in the orange shirt, whose name was Brett, said to the group.

  “Make sure you grab any first aid kits you see,” Agnes said. She had dumped everything out of her backpack onto the table and was starting to sort through it.

  Brett nodded and then headed out into the hotel.

  Joel stood off to the side, gaze slightly unfocused, his eyes flicking back and forth like he was reading something.

  Laura pointed at the last sentence underlined on the white board. “So what’s the deal with the gulls?”

  The older man raised his hand. “Ah, apparently they attack anyone who goes outside.” He had a small gash on his forehead. “Not necessarily the most deadly, but it took quite a lot of dodging around to get to the far side and get a closer look at the fog.”

  Okay, mental note for anyone going into the park then, thought Laura.

  Oliver went and picked up a microphone stand from the corner of the stage and gave it a practice swing. He fiddled with the stand’s height adjustment knob.

  “You have any fighting experience?” Laura asked Oliver.

  “No,” he said, taking another swing. “I played tennis.”

  “Ah. Well maybe you can outrun them then?”

  He laughed. “I'm retired. I just coach now. And I never was much good at running.” He set the microphone stand down. “How about you? You sick?”

  “Pregnant.”

  He blew out a breath. “My condolences.”

  Caroline shot him a look. “What the fuck, man. What the hell’s wrong with you.”

  Laura just laughed wryly.

  Brett came back with an armful of the complimentary water bottles from the hotel lobby, dumped them on the table, and left again.

  “Look,” Oliver said. “I get why you aren’t coming. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole personally. All it takes is one good hit to the stomach. You might be okay, but…” he trailed off awkwardly. Agnes made busy work of loading things back into her bag. “I get it is all I’m saying. Word to the wise though, I’m not sure any of us are going to have much of a choice after a bit.”

  Laura’s stomach muscles twitched again. “What do you mean?”

  “Why would they go to the trouble of trapping us here if just staying here was an option?”

  “Maybe it is an option for some,” Laura said. “It’s just that someone has to go in.”

  “Yeah.” Oliver cracked open one of the water bottles and took a sip. “What you want to bet that food starts to become an issue? Tons of food kiosks in the park, assuming they haven’t fucked with them. How much food you think is stored here?”

  He slid several more water bottles to Agnes to add to her bag. “You all may find you’re coming in too, sooner or later. I’d rather get a jump on it while I’m still well fed and rested.” Agnes tightened up the straps on the bag and nodded at him.

  Caroline jumped in. “I’m going too.”

  Oliver shook his head. “If you want to go on your own, be my guest. But keep acting like you were earlier jumping the gun throwing pastries willy nilly, and you’re going to Leroy Jenkins us all to death.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Who’s that?”

  Laura stifled a laugh.

  “Well I am prepared to go,” the older man said, “although I worry I’d end up being more of a liability. I just held my own against that seagull,” he laughed, touching his forehead.

  “Hey, look,” Laura said, turning to Oliver. “I’m a regular here. Like ‘have a season pass’ type of regular. I could help give you some of the most direct ways to cut through the park. This place is set up like a maze to make it seem even bigger than it is.” She awkwardly shifted to the side as Brett dumped a first aid kit and a tire iron on the table. She cleared her throat. “I imagine you’ll have a better chance if you can move through as efficiently as possible. It’s the least I can do.” It did literally feel like the least thing she could do.

  Oliver nodded.

  Brett picked up a shovel he had leaned against the table and handed it to Oliver. “Found that in a janitor’s closet.”

  Oliver took it from him and hefted it, giving it a test swing. “A little big, but it’ll work.”

  “Or we have this,” Brett said, offering him the tire iron.

  “Now we’re talking.” Oliver took it from him with a grin.

  “Uh, listen,” Joel finally piped up from the sidelines, “I’ve been looking through the system menus a bit, and I think we should be figuring out who’s going to do what. We really don’t get a lot of points to start with so we should make sure we’re spreading out what people are putting them into.”

  “Let’s just focus on the first step,” Oliver said. “We’ll get in there and get a sense of what we’re dealing with. Hard to come up with a game plan without more info.”

  Joel opened his mouth again but was interrupted by a scream outside.