“Which way are we going to run?” Kym asked as we inched into the tree line. “Wait, what am I saying? Whatever we pick, you’ll run the wrong way.” She fell in behind me. “You pick a direction, and I’ll follow you. Just remember that you’re faster.”

  “Which is good news for me and bad news for you.”

  “Yes. I am aware of that,” she said dryly. “Thank you for the reminder.”

  I grinned as I peered around the trunks and occasionally up through the foliage. Lord only knew what might drop down from those branches. Whatever it was, it would probably be worse than a snake.

  “Nooo!”

  Filled with panic, the voice came from the right.

  I paused and felt Kym’s hand touch the middle of my back.

  “Don’t forget to check your surroundings,” I whispered, glancing in the opposite direction of the voice and back again.

  “Ten-four,” she replied. We’d played “army” with my brothers often enough growing up. With them, an ambush was always imminent.

  “Oh no, oh God, oh no.” A portly man ran through the trees, waving his hands this way and that as though the branches were reaching for him. When one did touch him, he cried out and tried to bat it away. “No!”

  He didn’t notice us. His bare feet slapping the dirt trail, he ran by us with a terrified expression.

  A wet snort came from our right. One of those large toads shuffled around a trunk and headed straight for us. At the same time, another one waddled out of a bush and in the direction the man had run, doggedly following him. It was going too slow to say it was chasing him.

  “Ah! What in the hell?” Kym said as I turned. Time to run.

  Instead, she surprised me and launched forward. She kicked, and her foot struck the side of the monster with a force born of years and years of high-level soccer. She grunted, her body twisting with the follow-through.

  The creature squealed and lifted off the ground, as though about to sail away, but then poofed into nothing with a fart noise.

  “Did I literally scare the crap out of it or what?” Kym said, pivoting.

  I snickered as I glanced at the other one. It had stopped twenty feet away and turned to look at us, its large mouth open, revealing rows of pointed teeth.

  “Run or fight?” Kym asked.

  “I was prepared to run the last time.”

  “Dude, you’re the one with the sword.”

  “I am not trying to clunk a monster with a wooden sword. Might as well use a stick.”

  “Might as well.” She started forward.

  “You don’t even have a stick!” I jogged after her. I couldn’t very well run in shame when she was facing down the thing.

  “You do. C’mon, run around to the side. Get it to turn on you, and I’ll kick it.”

  “What if it chomps me?”

  “When did you become such a scaredy-cat?”

  “Since I was abducted by a U-ap and thrown in some fantasy land with nightmare toads!”

  She eased around the toad, taking one side while I took the other, never one to walk away from a bad time. The monster faced her first, and being a very good friend and accomplice, I rushed in and clubbed it on the side of the head with my sword.

  It poofed out of existence with another fart noise.

  “Oh.” I stared at it dumbly. “That was easy.”

  “Yeah.” Kym came closer to inspect the spot the creature had been. “It’s like a video game. Is that what they’re doing? Throwing us into something like a video game?”

  “Are they called video games anymore?”

  “Probably not. I’m only thirty and already I’m considered old by some of these twerps. My parents weren’t considered old until fifty. It’s crap.”

  “Maybe because you use the word ‘twerp.’”

  She rolled her eyes before gesturing me forward.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Go.”

  “You have the foot of doom—you go.”

  She shoved me in front of her. “You always go first. Speaking of way-outdated words that we got from our parents, weren’t you just telling me to buck up? You need to buck up. C’mon. This seems doable.”

  Apparently, Kym had needed a taste of danger to get her bearings. It was my turn to catch up.

  I took a deep breath, did as she said, and started walking.

  “No.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “That way. You’re going the way we came.”

  “Oh, right.” Like I knew that.

  Headed the correct way—apparently—we encountered three more people running in terror and two more toad monsters. Each monster acted exactly like the other, a hop or wobble and a quick demise graced with a fart noise. The aliens clearly had a sense of humor.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I did not find any of this funny.

  In a while, the dirt path we were following widened and the air shimmered in front of us.

  “What is this, do you think?” I stopped in front of it, careful not to touch.

  “I don’t know. Poke it with your sword.”

  I laid the sword on the ground, tip pointed toward the shimmery wall of air, and kicked it with my toe.

  “Oh yeah, good idea.” Kym pushed closer to see.

  The blade touched the wall and vanished.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I figured it would be something awful.”

  “The air wall on the other side of the field was transparent and solid. Nothing happened when I touched it. So, this isn’t a barrier. This is something else.”

  “Clearly, since you didn’t disappear.” I chewed my lip as I backed away. “Let’s walk along it and see how far it goes.”

  We did, tramping through bushes and going around trees, nothing native to the scenery reacting to that shimmering air. Clouds continued to race across the blue sky, but the sun didn’t change position.

  I wondered if that was some sort of sanity test. I’d heard when a person was subjected to constant dark or a room with no cues as to time’s passing, it could negatively impact the brain. Their sense of time would slip, and their internal clock would get wonky. Long enough, and it could break down a person’s sense of reality, cause hallucinations, and who knew what else.

  Then again, I’d gotten that from TV and movies. I wasn’t totally sure it was real. Maybe these beings weren’t either, or this was an experiment to find out.

  “Look!” Kym pointed ahead of us.

  A shape edged around the tree and inched up to the shimmering air. We’d been walking for a while at this point, having seen no monsters or other people. The only thing that changed was the landscape and paths, and that was just placement. It was like an endless strip of land and wall.

  A woman of about fifty, give or take, stopped in front of the wall, staring at it. She had dark skin, tight braids streaked with gray, and a fairly fit body. She glanced behind her, probably looking for monsters, and then around. She noticed us with a startled twitch.

  “Here.” I stepped aside and moved Kym in front of me. “I’ve been scaring people for some reason. Maybe she won’t take off running if you approach her.”

  “Hey.” Kym waved and started forward. I knew she’d have a wide, disarming smile on her face.

  The woman hesitated, staring hard. She glanced around again before looking back. Her body language screamed nervous.

  “We’re abductees, too!” Kym pointed at herself and hooked a thumb back to me. “We were having a drink in downtown Chicago. Afterward, we headed home our separate ways and here we are, meeting up again against our will.”

  The woman’s shoulders relaxed slightly. She brought her hands up to pick at her nail.

  Fifteen feet away from her, Kym stopped and pointed at the wall. “What’s the deal with this, do you know? We put the tip of a sword against it, and it vanished. We’ve been following it for quite a way, but there’s no break. Or…different plants or anything. You’re the first person we’ve seen since we started walking along it.”

  The woman took a deep breath, relaxing that much more. “I don’t know,” she finally said, and licked her lips. “I’m… I was…”

  Panic laced her eyes.

  I stepped from around Kym with my hands out. “It’s okay, we’re all scared. This is less than ideal. But I think it would be better if we worked together and tried to figure it out.”

  Her dark brown eyes darted between Kym and me, and her shoulders started to inch up again.

  I took a step back. What the hell was it about me that made everyone so jumpy? If this happened in real life, I’d get a serious complex.

  “There isn’t anywhere else to go,” she finally said. “I’ve been all around this place. There is the field where I woke up—”

  “Me too.” Kym raised her hand. I did as well.

  “An invisible wall wraps around the field except for this sparkling wall. I threw a wooden knife at it, and it sailed straight through.”

  “Number one, good thinking.” Kym gave her a thumbs-up. “Smart. Number two, where are you guys getting the weapons?” She hooked her thumb my way again. “Hers was thrown at her from another…er…resident.”

  The woman shrugged jerkily, anxiety hindering her movements. “I found it. It was on the trail.”

  Kym and I turned simultaneously to look into the trees. Was someone holding it when one of those toad creatures chomped on them?

  Though, if that had happened, there’d probably be blood. And body parts.

  Unless those were instantly cleaned up. Who knew with this place?

  Kym was probably thinking the same thing, because she shuddered.

  “I’ve triple-checked,” the woman said. “I’ve been ambling around here for a long time. I didn’t want to go through this wall.”

  “Do not blame you,” Kym said.

  “I watched the tree line for a while, trying to decide what to do.” The woman wiped perspiration from her forehead. “I didn’t see anyone in the field, but suddenly they appeared at the tree line. Just appeared out of nowhere, like magic. Walking, too. They were in motion. A whole bunch of people like that, flocks of them.”

  “Yet I distinctly woke up in that field,” I murmured.

  The woman nodded. “A few ran back into the field, being chased by one of those creatures, and I could see them in the field just fine.”

  “So…the abductees must be invisible when they first get put in that field,” I reasoned, “and somehow the tree line makes them…visible.”

  “This place might break my brain,” Kym grumbled, putting a finger on her temple.

  “We’re dealing with a level of technology that we probably can’t even grasp,” the woman said. “It is so far above our own, I don’t know how we can ever…”

  Panic creased her features again.

  I put up a hand. “As Granddad always said, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way to cheat the system.’”

  Kym glanced back at me. “I used to think it was a really bad idea that your mom let your granddad babysit us, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “It was definitely a bad idea, yes. Absolutely. And yet, yeah, here I am using his words of not-quite-wisdom.”

  “You guys really are friends.” The woman slightly popped a hip, relaxing even more. “And you got picked up individually?”

  “Yup,” Kym said, and I nodded, adding, “Around the same time, though. It takes me a little longer to get home than her. Not sure if it was one ship or two.”

  “And you found each other in here, huh?”

  “Thank God I got turned around, huh?” I asked.

  Kym shook her head in that way that said I was a lost cause. “It’s a miracle she finds her way home.”

  The woman turned back to the wall. “I reckon this is the only way. This place seems like a holding area of sorts. That tree line made people appear—the trees marked the line. This shimmery wall is probably a portal or something to the next place. We can’t stay here forever. I can’t imagine they would allow that.”

  I grimaced. That was a very smart take, and very scary.

  Kym turned to look at the wall as well. She gave me an uncertain glance. “I do not want to step through that. I have a phobia of the unknown, you know that. Kick a nightmare toad? Okay. Step through a magical wall erected by aliens with no idea what is on the other side?” She shook her head adamantly. “You might have to push me.”

  I stepped closer and took her hand. “We’ll go together. We’ll step through together. If we have contact, hopefully we’ll come out the other side together as well. If not, it’s fine. We’ll find each other. We found each other here, and we’ll find each other there.”

  Her eyes darted, uncertain and scared. In a moment, she swallowed and nodded.

  “We’ll find each other,” she said.

  “Usually, a moment and dialogue like this is reserved for lovers, preferably with a hot dude, but I guess you’re all I’ve got, so it’ll have to do.”

  She spat out a laugh. Shaking her head, she turned back to the wall. “I’d take you rather than some dude any day.”

  “You say that now, but wait until you meet your mysterious walking red flag. You’ll dump me in a moment.”

  “Obviously, yeah, but I was planning to leave that as a surprise.”

  I chuckled and rolled my head, gearing up. In this situation, I didn’t exactly love the unknown, either.

  Movement drew my notice. The woman was walking closer, her gaze imploring. Without a word, she stopped next to Kym and held out her hand.

  Kym took it without hesitation. “I’m Kym,” she said.

  “Cadence,” the woman replied.

  “Quinn,” I said.

  Her gaze flicked my way. “I think it’s smart to stick together. See you on the other side.”

  We all faced the wall. No one moved.

  “Quinn, that’s your cue,” Kym said out of the corner of her mouth. “You’re the brash one. You gotta initiate.”

  I sighed and then took a deep breath. I held it for a moment, then stepped forward.