There was glass everywhere.
That was Ann's second impression of the room. The first was a lurch of gut-twisting, scalp-numbing terror and the very real expectation of plummeting down a great height and breaking her skull against one of the glass cages down below.
A second passed. Ann remained suspended above a glass maze, like a bird perched on a branch stretched over a cliff. She realized that she must be in another painting. Or, given her vantage point, perhaps a mural etched into the ceiling. The discovery wasn't exactly reassuring.
Her fear dulled. Curiosity took its place and if Ann had been entirely herself, she would have noticed the peculiar vividness of each emotion, the thoroughness with which they colored the world around her. But she was a painting scrawled across a wall, so she did not. Her eyes tracked the players moving below her with starved focus, counting heads. Ten, twelve, thirteen - twenty. Twenty-one with K, but K wasn't a player.
K might not be K at all, Ann remembered. The thought slipped out of reach before she could follow it through, spin it into something that mattered.
The room was lit by soft, shimmering light. There were no lamps or candles or windows in the cavernous hall. Only glass, and murky water behind it. Water that shimmered with flashes of moonlit scales.
It didn't take the players long to realize where the danger lurked. The glass walls that fenced them in from were not walls at all but aquarium tanks in varying shapes and sizes, strewn about in no apparent pattern. The paths that formed between them snaked around the room. Some led to dead ends, others merged with each other and looped back to the original entry point. A glass maze.
And as for what hid behind the glass - well, the first player to catch sight of bulbous eyes and sharp teeth certainly had a guess.
"Monster! There's a monster inside!" the girl screamed. Her voice bounced in a fractured echo, sounding both close and far away.
Water rushed in Ann's ears. It sounded very much like laughter.
The other players converged on the tank, keeping their distance as they peered into the murky water. There were weeds and dirt and stones floating about. The shadow of something living was nearly impossible to make out except when the creature moved, or blinked its large, luminous eyes at the players.
"Cicada Manor Aquarium is home to the largest indoor collection of submarine life in the country. The specimens on display are rarely seen by human eyes. It is your great fortune to be here today."
K sounded as enthused as the players looked. He had the tour-guide drone down-pat, Ann thought.
The players watched K as raptly as the things in the water watched them. The glass was not to be touched, K told them. There was a plaque mounted on each tank, describing the creature within. They were free to explore but had to proceed to the next exhibit within the hour, or the tour would end prematurely.
"Where's the exit?" A scrawny, curly-haired teen asked.
Ann frowned, mind turning sluggishly. The boy looked a little young to be in the instance. So did his friends, clustered close around him like a clutch of baby chicks.
"At the other end of the hall," K told them.
"And how do we get there?" another tween piped up.
"This part of the tour is self-led. You are welcome to explore."
K waved elegantly at the room at large. The players followed the motion, taking in the dimly lit labyrinth. Panes of glass as far as they could see and more that they could not.
"So, we have to find the door. That's it?" Frances asked. He sounded and looked impatient, shifting in place, dark head turning this way and that as he took in his surroundings.
Ann snorted. Always so eager to dart into danger; Frances' game moniker was Hound, which Ann found a perfect fit - probably not for the reasons Frances had chosen it, but still.
"I suppose we would need a key to open the door," Michael said when the silence stretched.
Ann's wandering gaze focused again. Irritation bubbled up, coloring her cheeks and nails and lips red. She didn't notice. The itch under her skin, however - that, she felt. It made her restless.
"Yes," K agreed.
There was another moment of quiet, water lapping at stone and glass.
"Do you have the key?" Michael was forced to ask.
K made a show of patting at his pockets. "Oh, no," he intoned, expression flat, "I seem to have misplaced it."
"How unfortunate." Mr. Glasses muttered. Ann caught a smirk before it slipped from the man's face, like a shark fin popping out of view.
"The key should be in this room. I would be most grateful if you locate it before the tour is over," K continued, either ignoring on unaware of the dark looks aimed his way.
There was no point in asking what would happen if they did not.
The players gathered together, the five or so disparate groups converging to discuss a strategy and a way forward. Michael and Frances remained at the outskirts, talking between themselves but listening to the others. Mr. Glasses made a short circuit around the nearby tanks. He ended up standing next to K - whether by design or accident, Ann wasn't sure. She eyed them with detached curiosity before shifting her attention to the larger herd.
"-split up, it's not safe!" one of the teens was insisting.
"What else can we do? We've got to find the way out, and we've got to find the stupid key, and we've only got an hour. Who knows how big this place is!" a girl sighed, throwing her arms out to encompass the room.
Ann did. She saw the entire chessboard, every piece, every black square. She knew precisely which way they had to go but couldn't - wouldn't? - tell.
Ann shook her head with a frown. That wasn't right. She was supposed to care. She was supposed to help - wasn't she?
She decided to try. "Go right," she called.
The players looked up, like puppets with their strings pulled. They didn't look grateful. Mostly scared and a little confused. Probably on account of the creepy laughter echoing in the dark.
"What was that?" someone asked.
Ann wanted to know that herself. It was her voice, she could tell, but it wasn't doing what she wanted it to do. She hadn't even known she could do supervillain laughter.
It was actually kind of cool. In an abstract, unhelpful sort of way.
Michael was frowning, looking vaguely suspicious. Ann wondered if he'd recognized her voice. Was the paining in the atrium in her likeliness, too? She smiled, pleased to think that she might have spooked the man.
"Alright, two groups. One goes left, one goes right," Frances barked.
The group split up reluctantly. One side was almost entirely baby-faced. Michael and Frances stuck together, in the other camp, because Michael would never join the weaker team and because Frances operated under the illusion that Michael was a saint who'd sacrifice himself for the good of others and therefore needed Frances to watch his back at all times. It was the thief leading the blind and Ann would find it hilarious if it also didn't make her teeth ache with anger.
Mr. Glasses did end up tailing team teen-spirit down the path that split left. Ann was fairly certain the man was part of the rescue crew. He certainly acted with the confidence of a veteran player. She settled back into the wall, somewhat mollified. The mural cooled back to softer tones around her.
The two groups moved slowly at first. Cautious, still unsure of the instance and its dangers. Players peered into the tanks they passed. Sometimes, something would peer back out at them. Startled cries rose here and there, but even those tapered off eventually. Michael and Frances and Mr. Glasses maintained a focused vigil. The other players, Ann noted with some concern, quickly grew disorientated. They started walking in circles or into each other. On one occasion, a kid in Mr. Glasses' group tripped into an aquarium that stuck out of the floor at knee-height. He dunked in head-first and didn't go under only because Mr. Glasses managed to grab the back of his hoodie and reel him back out.
"There's - there's a room," the kid spluttered, pale-faced but more lucid than he had been before his impromptu attempt at scuba, "Down there! Like, with a couch and everything!"
Ann lurked just above them. She discovered that she could move - or slide, more accurately, given that she was now operating in a 1-D environment - across the ceiling, and used that newfound freedom to follow the players as they scouted the room.
"Hmm," Mr. Glasses said. His glasses flashed ominously.
"Do you think the key might be in one of the tanks?" one of the others piped up.
The cane clinked against metal. Mr. Glasses was tapping against the plaque mounted on the side of the aquarium his teammate had just disturbed. "What does it say?" he asked.
The boy in the wet hoodie peered down at the sign. "Open exhibit. Oh, are we like, allowed to touch this one?"
"Apparently," Mr. Glasses drawled.
The kids reanimated, losing the zombie-like cadence they'd been sporting for much for the walk. In the end, one of them raised a hand, chest puffed out.
"I can go in! I'm in the swim team at school, I can look around for a while, no trouble!"
The kids all looked at Mr. Glasses for directions. Mr. Glasses looked back placidly.
"If you want," he said.
"You've played before, haven't you? It's, um, most of us haven't. What do you think we should do?" one of two identical girls asked. Her twin - and the rest of the little group - looked at Mr. Glasses expectantly.
Mr. Glasses didn't shift in place, but the stiff way he suddenly held himself spoke of very much wanting to.
"Two of your companions should keep watch. Don't go deeper than they can reach. If anything moves while you are in there, break for the surface immediately," he relented at last.
Ann snickered under her breath. The man was obviously not relishing being thrust into the leader role but really, what did he expect when he decided to babysit the kiddos?
There was a splash. Farther away, and accompanied by a shrill scream. Mr. Glasses and his group looked toward the sound, but they couldn't see past the tanks and tanks of glass and water and darkness in the way.
Ann could. Ann saw the flash of a pale hand disappearing in ink-black water, heard the gurgle of a drowned cry.
"She touched the glass," a man wailed. He was trying to reach the tank; the other players held him back, tried to reason, but he kept on shouting. "You said the key might be - so she looked, she lost her balance - Why did you let her? Why?"
The water inside the tank churned, turning darker and darker. Ann looked at the distraught man, at his quiet companions. There was no sound from within the tank.
"Fuck this," Frances snapped.
"Don't!" Michael said, but it was too late - Frances had already vaulted up, kicking off the thick glass wall of the tank to reach the raised edge. He pulled himself over with impressive nimbleness, muscles bulging, then leaned in with the momentum in preparation to dive in on the other side.
The surface of the water broke. The player who had fallen under reached out with a gasp, lips blue and eyes bulging.
Frances grabbed her flailing arms and pitched back, pulling the woman out with him. Michael and the others rushed to support them both and help them down. The man who had first drawn attention to the woman's disappearance gathered his companion close and cried.
"No key," the woman gasped once she drew enough breath to talk.
The group gathered themselves and pushed forward. The reunited couple fell to the back, the woman walking slowly on shaking legs. She looked up, just once, straight at Ann.
And she smiled.