MULTIVERSE: Confront her

“Hey,” you say, squaring yourself and putting your hands on your hips. You want this person to believe that you are not bothered by the knife in her hand. That should give her pause.

She turns, startled.

It’s Professor Austen. You’re surprised, and for a second you aren’t sure what to say.

She just busted in here through your kitchen and grabbed a knife? There’s only one person she can be after: Lisey.

Or you.

This was a mistake, you’re sure of it.

“Listen,” she says quietly, face serious. And she reaches toward you, but not with the hand holding the knife. “You have to get everyone out of here.”

“Why?” you ask, finding it hard to look away from the knife. That lamp won’t do you any good now. You take a step back.

“Because she’s here, and I know that she has a gun,” Professor Austen whispers urgently.

“Who?” You frown. “Sissy?”

“No. Sissy’s gone.”

You swallow, horror filling you. “What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything. It’s Mavis. She’s trying to make this go away.”

You balk. No shit. Of course Mavis wants to make it go away, but she’s not the one holding a knife.

“You have to trust me. There’s no time,” Professor Austen says, moving toward you.

Trust her? If she thinks you’re in danger, why hasn’t she called the police? Did she cut the phone line? Why not ring the doorbell? And what does she mean that Sissy’s gone? You have questions. So many questions.

And you’re in trouble if you’re alone and she tries to do something with that knife. You look down the hallway past her, wishing someone would stick their head out and see this.

Trust her?

Or ask more questions?

Notes on this timeline: this was a hugely consequential couple of choices. If we trust Professor Austen, she becomes a powerful ally—a disproportionately powerful one, but it would take a huge amount of guts and nerve to trust her. I knew the probability of that was low because the readers have shown a clear preference for more cautious choices. The idea here was that a reader could at least potentially remember that Mavis tried to get our evidence and talk us out of it AND I at least tries to surprise readers, and decide to take a chance.

If we ask more questions, we waste too much time and Mavis shoots her in the back as she’s talking to us.

If we trust her, that opens the climactic sequence that can potentially end in the house rather than the woods. It leads to a situation where we have everyone except Lisey accounted for, and a decent chance of escaping, but the reader still has to locate and extract Lisey. Lisey is in Jenny’s room, just like she was at the beginning of the story. If the reader guesses that correctly, that’s the optimal route. If not, there are more opportunities for attacks and casualties as Jenny searches.

No matter what, Mavis attacks in Jenny’s room and there’s a struggle, but the reader probably has between 1 and 3 mercy mistakes at this point because either the French Girl or Roxy will show up to help, and potentially Professor Austen as well.