Bit late today as my mother broke her foot and I had to rush her to hospital. Didn't know it was broken at first, obviously, so that was the diagnosis. Anyway, been there 4 hours because every time they were about to see us someone came in with heart problems, or bleeding, and had to be seen to first. It is what it is. Got the chapter done anyway.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 39

The hangovers had just about faded by midday, though they pretty much prevented any meaningful progress until they had. Blake and Jaune sat at tables nursing their heads and feeling sore all over. Blake had not experienced many hangovers in her life. There was plenty of drinking in the White Fang, usually some pre-raid for nerves and courage and then more after to celebrate and wash away the guilt, grief, or adrenaline. As the leader, Adam had rarely drunk so as not to be caught unawares and she, as his girlfriend, had therefore been spared a lot as well. The hangovers had never been this bad in the few times they had drunk with the rest.

"Do you think the hangover is worse because it's an anomaly?"

"Quite possible," said Jaune. "I'm not sure how much actual alcohol, if any, we drank, so it could be that it's mimicking hangovers based on incomplete information, or it could be that we did drink a little and it heightened the toxicity." He pinched and massaged his temples. "Or it removed out inhibitions and we really did drink enough to almost suffer alcohol poisoning."

"So, basically, we have no idea."

"We have no idea. Us being blackout drunk is a fairly effective safety mechanism for the anomaly. We could have found it and we wouldn't remember it come morning."

It wasn't just a lack of recall that bothered her the most; it was the absolute hole in her memories. Even in drunks there was usually some degree of muddled recollection. You might remember the start of the night, or a few scenes, or coming home. There was nothing in this case. They approached a place sober and they woke up in their hotel. They didn't know if that place had done this, or if it was somewhere else, or if someone had come in and caught them. They didn't even know if this was a targeted attack or just something that caught anyone and everyone.

"Hello there," said a tired and croaky voice. "Are you Mr and Mrs Arc? I was told you were looking for me."

Balding, middle-aged, but with the kinds of laugh lines that likely made him a riot with the kids, the man was soft in the way a long-married man might be. There were rings under his eyes, however, and his chin had some unkempt stubble that didn't really suit him. His clothing was tatty and in desperate need of a wash and press.

Jaune brought his head up blearily. "Mr Sprucewood, is it? I thought you were going to meet us for breakfast."

"I meant to. I apologise." The man drew a chair back and sat. He looked relieved to be off his feet. "I slept in late. Last night… I don't…" He sighed. "Forgive me, I was out drinking and lost track of the time. I only just woke up fifteen minutes back and rushed down here as best I could."

"It's fine. We had a rough night ourselves. So, Mr Sprucewood. We've been sent here by your wife to check up on you."

"Ah, my Melissa." Some genuine warmth broke through his hungover state. "I wish she could be here. I miss waking up beside her, but the kids needed to go to school. You know how it is, work beckons and all that. I should be done soon. I just need to finish my architectural sketches."

"You've been fired," said Jaune. Bluntly, in Blake's opinion. She kicked him under the table but he nodded to the man, telling her to watch.

"I will be fired if I don't finish my work. Luckily, everything is on track."

"You've been here weeks over schedule, Mr Sprucewood. Your company has been trying to get in contact with you and decided to let you go when you didn't respond. Your wife hasn't been able to reach you, either. Where is your scroll?"

"My scroll? Blasted thing ran out of power and stopped working after just a day or two here. You don't get proper construction like you used to. Substandard materials, or cheap labour. One or the other."

He wasn't answering the questions. He might not even be perceiving them. The scroll probably died after the first week or two, or more, but he hadn't realised. Was he losing his memories? No. He still remembered his job, his wife, and his children. The only memory he was losing was his sense of time, which wasn't unlike what they had. Except that she knew they'd been here two days now. Or had they? What if she was wrong and they'd been here two months? Blake reached for her tea and took a long drink to calm her nerves.

"Can I ask what your normal workday is like, Mr Sprucewood?" asked Jaune.

"I suppose that couldn't hurt. I wake up early, or as early as I can, and I have a shower, breakfast, the usual. I then go out to walk around San Valeo. I like to get a good look for the area and think from the point of view of a tourist. What draws the eye? Where is the gaze naturally resting? Are there any positive views or negative eyesores? I then sketch the area and sketch out some ideas for exaggerating the former or disguising the latter. I try to get three areas done per day but sometimes I'm faster or slower. It really depends. I tend to eat lunch out, then come back for dinner and a light drink before bed."

"A light drink," said Jaune. "Didn't you say you were out drinking rather heavily last night?"

The man paused, leaned back, frowned. "I… I guess I did, didn't I? A little unusual of me, but work can get stressful and the weather here…" He shook his head. "It's miserable when it rains. All foggy with the salty air. There's not much to do but drink." He pushed back, then, and made to stand. "Is that all you needed me for? I'm sorry to talk and run but I haven't had that shower yet, nor breakfast, and I feel absolutely awful."

"We're done," said Jaune. "Thank you for your time and enjoy your breakfast."

The man smiled wearily and stumbled back to the main staircase, gripping the banister as he dragged himself up. There weren't many other people in the hotel at this time; only the boy behind the bar, who was napping by the looks of things. His face was rested in his arms and his back moved up and down with each breath. Once Mr Sprucewood was out of range, Blake spoke.

"Is it his perception of time that's been warped, or is it blocking things in his head?"

"Hard to say. This obviously isn't a temporal anomaly because time has been passing outside San Valeo, but we're aware of how long we've been here so he should be as well. It's strange that his symptoms are different to ours."

"Except for the blackout drunk part."

"Except for that. Yes. But is the alcohol part of the anomaly or did the anomaly just make us consume alcohol? I don't think it's predatory."

"Because it could have killed us if it wanted to." It reminded her of the Guardian Weaver except that this time she was a little more experienced and could piece it together herself. Jaune nodded, satisfied with her suspicion. "So, it isn't intentionally harming people but alcohol poisoning is still a thing. To say nothing of Mr Sprucewood being stuck here for weeks on end. People could use their life savings without every realising."

In a way, it was the perfect tourist trap. There were people who would take advantage of that if they could, wouldn't they? Ramp up prices, hook people in, then drain them dry. Blake tried to think of who would benefit in that situation, and the very hotel they were in came to mind. The place didn't look like it was doing all that well, however. It was ramshackle to say the least.

"The boy behind the counter didn't get drunk," said Blake. "Suspect?"

"Maybe," answered Jaune, "but it can be dangerous to jump to conclusions too quickly or we'll convince ourselves it's him. He might just be too young to drink, or his job prevents him going to where the anomaly uses its power. Also, him having it would imply a human intelligence, but then this isn't that. It's much too unsubtle. Most intelligent anomalies try to stay hidden."

"Fair point. What now, then? Do we go out and investigate? You saw how that went the last time."

"We can't stay inside and do nothing, either, or we'll never find the anomaly. We should make it a point to retire to the hotel early, though. Before anyone starts drinking heavily and the partying begins."

"Yes." Blake stood. "That's definitely a good idea. We'll be team sober."

Jaune smiled back. "Team sober for the win."

/-/

Blake's eyes cracked open. Her cheek lay on a valley of soft and warm skin, and the underside of Jaune's chin lay before her. It was dotted with bitemarks and her lips felt raw enough for them to have been hers. She was in her underwear, as was he, and she was draped out atop him.

"Team sober for the loss…"

"Hngh." His face scrunched up. "B-Blake…?"

"The anomaly got us again."

He brought an arm up, then thought better of it. His cracked and burning limbs could still burn her, but they never did the cloth of the bed, which was fortunate given he'd not be able to wear clothing if they did. Instead, he lay there and let her extricate herself from the situation, averting his eyes as she slipped back over to her clothes. There was only one popped button on the blouse thankfully; Jaune's shirt didn't even have tears in it this time, so she'd either been more restrained or more able to get his clothes off while drunk.

She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.

"Do you remember anything?" asked Jaune.

"Nothing. Not a damn thing. Didn't we say we were going out early? It wasn't even one in the afternoon."

"We can't have started drinking straight away. We'd be dead if we drank from one until whatever time we came back to the hotel. Or we'd have passed out earlier in a ditch somewhere. There must have been something in between us going out and us being roped into drinking." He groaned unhappily. "But I can't for the life of me remember it."

"It's been three days, right? Three days and two nights so far."

"Yeah. I…" Jaune frowned and reached for his scroll, then flicked through to the calendar. His breathing eased out. "Yeah, it's been that. At least we're not losing days like Sprucewood is. That's a relief."

"We can't keep going out like this, though. We're not getting any closer."

"I know. I think…" He groaned again, rocking forward to cup his face in gloved fingers. "I think we need to one last time, but with more forethought. If we can't remember anything then maybe we can record it."

"Body cameras? That's not a bad idea. Can we get them delivered here?"

It wasn't an issue bar for a day's delivery time. Worried, she and Jaune locked themselves in their room that night and stayed awake most of it, staring out the window and waiting for their minds to muddy. Oddly, they didn't. There was no drunkenness and no loss of memories that night, which proved…

Blake wasn't sure what it proved. That alcohol was needed? That the anomaly couldn't – or wouldn't – target people in the hotel? Or was it just that they needed to be outside and roaming around to get caught in its effects? There was no knowing. But on the morning of the fourth day the boy behind the counter, when roused, blearily informed them of a parcel.

"I-I'm sorry," said the boy, yawning. "D-Didn't get much sleep."

"How many hours do you work?" asked Blake. "You're here during the day and night."

The boy smiled weakly. "I mean, how many hours do I work? You're the only guests we've had in weeks, ma'am. I mostly sit behind here reading comics or playing games."

"You don't drink, then?"

He looked uncomfortable. "My old man drank himself to death, ma'am. I wouldn't do my mom wrong by getting into that."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It was ages ago and I'm in a job. More than most around here can say. I keep telling mom we should move to the city but, well, she still loves dad and doesn't want to move away from where they lived their lives."

That felt unfair to Blake. To her, it felt as though the parent should care for the child and make little sacrifices for their sake, not hold to a dying tourist resort and force her son to stay and look after her even though he'd have few job prospects and little in the way of a social life. Then again, who was she to criticise? If it weren't for Jaune then she'd have never contact her own family. Blake signed on the parcel and brought it back up to their room where Jaune was going over something on his scroll.

"Cameras have arrived."

"Good. I've reached out to the council for a quick report. I've asked them to get onto the company Sprucewood worked for and pretend he's still hired. They're going to send him a letter demanding his immediate recall from San Valeo citing some excuse or other."

"You think that'll work?"

"It might. And if not then it's more evidence for us to work over. I have to admit I'm curious to see his sketches as well – or if he's sketching at all. I don't think he'd hand over that without some kind of say-so from his bosses, though."

Probably not. He still thought he was here on the job, and that material belonged to his employers even if he was the one drawing it.

"Cameras, then," said Blake. "And I really hope we don't do anything stupid tonight while we're using them."

/-/

Blake woke up in the hotel bathroom. In the bath. No water, fully clothed, stinking of booze, just… laid there with her shoes propped up on the wall and her head at the bottom of the tub. Dully, she realised she'd have drowned if there actually was any water. It was frightening. Jaune was in the main room on the bed, and he was topless again. Blake roused him by tossing his shirt over him, then picked up his jacket to look for the camera. The screen was cracked. "Shit!"

"It's okay," slurred Jaune. "J-Just the screen. Footage should still b-be fine."

The temptation to view it then and there was powerful but Jaune was right to tell them to sober up first and get their heads in the game. She wouldn't be able to focus hungover, but a few hours later, with a proper meal in her and her headache receding, she felt much more in the mood to sit down with a laptop on the bed next to Jaune and watch through the footage. Hers first, since her screen wasn't cracked and was much more likely to be clear.

The footage began with them in their hotel room testing it out. This, Blake remembered, and leaving after, but not much beyond that. They tested the footage, talked a little about their plan, then headed downstairs in the hotel. The camera caught a few stragglers eating and drinking, including Sprucewood and the boy behind the counter, who was eating his own meal on the woodwork. They walked out the door onto the pier with the murky sky turning to evening, and the water still and reflecting the dimming light.

"Where to?" asked Blake in the footage. "The bars? Just wander around?"

"Let's just see where our feet take us," said Jaune.

"I don't remember any of this," said Jaune, in the room beside her. "Do you?"

"No. My memory pretty much stops the second we walked out the hotel. Everything from this point on is gone." Her eyes narrowed. "But we sound cognisant. We're in complete control of ourselves. We're not drunk, either.

They were walking side by side on the screen so Blake's camera view was of the path ahead, which appeared to be a left-turn out the hotel and then a slow meander down the pier. A lot of the storefronts were boarded over or shut, but a few bars and eateries here and there were open. They walked past all of them, discussing the economic state of the place, and making guesses on how busy it might have been in its prime. Again, perfectly normal conversation with no hint of strangeness or ideas as to how they ended up with no memory of it.

The light on the cameras grew dark as the sun set. Flickering lights came on automatically. Once, it must have been a neon wonderland, but since most of those had shut off it now looked like little candle lights in the dark. The one or two well-lit places for every four or five shrouded in black.

"It's gloomy out here," said Blake. "I wouldn't feel safe being a woman walking out alone."

"I don't know if it'd be any safer when it was busy to be honest," said Jaune. "Places like this, with all the drinking and drugs, tend to be where bad decisions are made. Even if 99% of people are here to party and have fun, there'll always be the 1% who aren't afraid to spike someone's drink or take advantage of them."

"Gee. Thanks for the mood booster."

"I'm just saying." He laughed on screen. "Besides, I doubt there are even a hundred people out tonight. This place is flat-out abandoned. Which, to be fair, is a good thing for us. This anomaly would have been found by now if more people were suffering memory loss."

Their candid conversation aside, nothing stood out. It was hard to see much given the angle of the camera on Blake's chest, but the street did look empty. They moved on, eventually coming to a bar that seemed just a little livelier. It wasn't lit by neon, but by normal lights and it looked like the kind of place less for tourists and more for locals. The well-kept secret, as it were, where everyone could just hang out and not have to worry about weird tourists.

"Shall we?" asked Blake.

The Jaune on the screen turned to face the camera, or her. His eyes were aimed above it after all. "I'm less than thrilled at the idea but I suppose we have to, don't we? Not much point taking footage if we don't play along."

"Maybe the cameras are blocking the anomaly anyway. I'm perfectly aware of what's going on. No memory loss at all."

"So much for that," said Blake.

"It's still a good point. We were fine at that point. We had memories at that point. That means whatever affected us probably wasn't on the main pier." Jaune tapped his chin. "Maybe it's in this bar we're headed into. Let's see how much we drink."

The footage showed them entering and sitting down on a pair of tall stools by the bar. There was a woman behind, hair to her shoulders, arms bare and heavily tattooed. She looked to be in her late-twenties or early-thirties. Attractive in a rough sort of way.

"Don't recognise you," said the woman. "You just moved in?"

"We're part of the council's revitalisation project," lied Jaune.

"Oh, that thing." The woman smiled, genuinely excited, which made sense since her livelihood depended on it. "We all didn't know if we were dreaming that up when we heard. It's great news, though. Imagining San Valeo being that popular again, and me having snapped this place up cheap. I'll make a killing. Maybe I should invest in some of those shut-down storefronts as well. Anyway, what can I get you?"

"Beer please," said Jaune.

"Something light for me," said Blake.

The Blake in the room nodded. "I must have wanted to avoid getting drunk. I'm not sure it's her behind this either. Same reasons you gave for the boy at the counter, but she'd benefit from things with Sprucewood going well. It doesn't make sense for her to sabotage that."

"No. I agree. It doesn't look like we were tricked into heavy drinking, either. You're nursing that drink like you want it to last all year." Then, as he teased about that, the camera caught the Jaune in it quietly tip his beer into a nearby plant pot. Jaune flushed.

Blake grinned. "You were saying?"

"W-Well, I'm just being professional. Ahah. So, we definitely didn't get drunk."

It was true. The two of them on screen retired to a booth and talked shop. They kept it quiet, and avoided words like "anomaly" so as to maintain the secrets of ARC Corp. Instead, they talked about Sprucewood, about the bar, and mostly about looking out for one another and making sure neither of them got drunk. It lasted for a full hour. An hour of them sitting there, ordering another drink, failing to drink those bar a sip or two, and then eventually deciding to leave the bar. The little clock on the corner of the screen told her it was 22:15 when they decided that. They picked themselves up, looked one last time around the bar, then stepped back out into San Valeo.

The world was lit bright neon.

"What!?" shouted Blake, leaning in.

Jaune did as well. The streets were well-lit, the buildings flashing with light, and the streets were… the streets were full. Full of people. Except… not people. Blake's mind struggled to make sense of what her eyes were seeing, because she was sure the figures were shadowy and insubstantial, but at the same time her brain kept filling in the gaps.

It was like when you saw a sentence with a word repeated or missing and your brain just kept reading it as it should be instead of noticing the mistake. It was the same here. It took a lot of concentration to stop seeing smiling faces on the people that were, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than shadows. Those shadows moved around them, even stepping aside as if they too could see Jaune and Blake. And they in turn gave way for the figures, picking up their pace as they jogged back to the pier.

But it was when Blake heard her own laughter on the recorded footage that she knew something had gone wrong. Her screen turned, and Jaune was there, smiling with more joy than she'd ever seen on him. It made her throat tighten, not only because of the expression, but because of the realisation that he could make it – and that she'd never once seen it. The Jaune on the screen stepped toward her, and her camera lurched toward him as she threw herself into his arms. The screen spun, Jaune spinning her, and then the view was his suit and shirt as their chests pressed close. Blake squeezed her eyes shut at the wet noises just above the screen, even if they both knew what those were.

Eventually, they parted. Too slowly in her mind. There were kisses and then there were eons spent in another's mouth, and this was definitely the latter. The screen showed her moving, angled back enough that she could see her hand holding his and dragging him along. She brought him to a brightly-lit storefront like a carnival game, where fake guns shot cork at targets to try and make them fall. They played, with Jaune being useless but her shooting accurately and winning a prize. It was a happy looking stuffed bear that fell through her fingers as she tried to take it, passing through her digits like smoke and landing on the floor. Neither of them, nor the shopkeeper, seemed to notice, and they soon moved on.

They played at a few more stalls, they punched punching bags, rattled pinball tables, bought and ate candy-floss that didn't seem to exist and was smoky insubstantial pink light their teeth bit through. Blake even wiped a finger across Jaune's lips on footage, then paused with her fingertip in his mouth, before winding her hand in his shirt and pulling his face down again for yet another game of hide the tongue with her only known hiding place being his mouth. The Jaune beside her stayed quiet, stern, unaffected and unembarrassed by what he was seeing. Blake wished she had half the mental fortitude because she was squirming.

The two of them, drunk not on alcohol but on what she could only call "party spirit" continued along the pier, laughing and moving with crowds of shadowy people, posing on the dark pier overlooking a beach filled with trash and appearing to have the time of their lives. Then, something changed. The crowds were still there, the lights were still there, but the footage began to corrupt. It flickered and turned grainy, but then it warped as well. Shifted forty-dive degrees clockwise, inversed, flipped, turned upside down, was stricken by grey lines like stuck pixels in vertical bars. At one point the camera, on her own chest, somehow showed her own face, grin stretched wide and eyes vacant, her cheeks flushed bright red. Then it was back on her chest again and looking outward.

The footage ended almost immediately.

"That… That was…"

"No." Jaune leaned in. "Rewind it. Here. Look."

He brought it back to the brief moment when the camera had shown her own face, an essential impossibility since it had been on her chest frames before. He adjusted the timer slightly, then saved a print screen and opened that up in another document.

Jaune then zoomed in, which turned the image a little blurry due to pixelation. Sadly, the "enhancing an image" trope she'd seen on too many police dramas did nothing. A camera's resolution was still just that and all this did was blur the lines of her face. It was so close that making out detail was close to impossible, but vague blurry shapes could be seen. Jaune tapped her left eye, her iris and pupil, in which was a reflection.

A reflection of… something.

Something spindly and tall. Something blurred, but with two glowing yellow square pixels that might have been eyes. Something that she had seen face-to-face but could not remember. Blake felt cold. Clammy. She had to remind herself that it likely wasn't hostile because it could have hurt people if it wanted to. Like Timothy, this… this thing might be more curious of her than threatening. That didn't make it any easier to accept.

Jaune then played his footage and jumped to the end, ignoring all the before – which she was thankful for because she didn't want to see his point of view for her throwing herself at him. When it got to the pier, his camera malfunctioned as hers had, going crazy and refusing to take video, before the screen seemingly cracked on its own, glass shattering down the middle and distorting the image. His camera, instead of looking at his face, instead looked at the bottom of the shallow water of the beach. At seashells laid alongside bottle caps, and of a jelly fish that on closer inspection was a plastic bag. It was as if Jaune was floating face-down and drowning in the water.

And then he was back on dry land with a cracked screen and distorted footage looking at her, as she looked back at him with drunken excitement. Their hands joined and they walked back into the crowd of shadowy figures again, to drink, and sing, and dance, and to remember nothing. Jaune pushed the little x to close the recording down, and then leaned back.

"It's an active creature," said Blake.

"It seems that way but… why? How? We were affected before we ran into whatever that was, from the moment we stepped out the bar, and all those people. Were they real? Another dimension? Or were they echoes of past visitors."

"You think we crossed dimensions? Seriously?"

"Not crossed. More like… the lines between ours and another became thin enough to see through. For a moment. I could be wrong but the other option is even stranger. To think that a memory of San Valeo in the past would become tangible and overtake the minds of people here." He considered, then added, "Though that would make sense as understanding why our memories have gone missing. They were supplanted by something else, and when that something vanished our memories went with them."

"And the creature?"

"The creature was impossible to record footage of, but the anomaly itself was not. Why? Why were we allowed to record video of the shadow people but we couldn't of the anomaly? It should be both being impossible to record, or neither. All or nothing. That makes me think it could be wholly unrelated, which is another can of worms."

"So," said Blake. "We have a tourist attraction that literally comes alive at night and traps everyone in the glory days of twenty years ago. And the one behind it is either roaming around looking at the people it catches, or worse, there's a second anomaly confused at what's going on coming to inspect – and we have no idea what its motivations are, or whether it might be dangerous. Is that it?"

Jaune sighed. "That sounds about right."

"Wasn't this supposed to be an easy job?"

"There's no such thing as an easy job in ARC Corp. I'm going to have to call Ruby and ask her to check in on and feed Timothy. I've got a feeling we'll be here for a few more days yet. On the bright side, this probably exonerates the boy working the hotel. He's inside, and the anomaly only hit us when we stepped outside the bar. Whatever it is, it can't affect people stuck inside. Same as when we spent last night indoors and weren't affected."

"It didn't take us in the afternoon either. It was only after the bar. You think it's time related?"

"Seems likely. It's a nightlife, after all. We were fine when we first arrived here as well. That was early in the day. I think we should be fine to wander around so long as we get back to the hotel before a certain time. We know seven is safe, so we'll time for that."

"And what will we do in the meantime?"

"I want to check out the beach," said Jaune. "That anomaly showed my camera a view of the water. That didn't feel like an accident when the effort of it cracked my camera a moment later. It's possible it was trying to communicate with us."

They came from the deep! And they came… to partayyyy!

Next Chapter: 6th February

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