The Question

The Banquet Hall had never looked less like itself. The tables—usually scattered in ones and twos, letting even the shyest girl find a nook to eat in peace—had been shunted into one improbable row, end to end, the center of the room cut by a single white-linen runner that ran its whole improbable length. The Mildred staff had outdone themselves, laying out the buffet in shapes Andy didn’t know the names for: domes of fruit, precise ranks of deviled eggs, little battalions of smoked fish with lemon shields and parsley armor. Every place setting had a napkin folded into a perfect origami animal, which Andy suspected was a gentle dig at his old college habit.

It was almost noon, but the room still smelled like sunrise: pineapple, yeast, and a salt note from the sea just outside the windows. Andy hovered in the entry, his own place set at the very center of the run, and watched as the women entered one by one, each breaking the symmetry in her own way.

Emily was first, drifting in with the air of someone who’d lost track of time, her hair a pink-and-gold curtain, barely keeping pace with her own steps. She hesitated at the door, and circled around to a spot near the middle, directly opposite where Andy would end up. She caught his eye, smiled a small private smile, and picked a seat, tucking her knees up on the chair in a way that turned her nudity into a soft joke, the sweep of her hair landing perfectly across her chest.

Norah arrived next, her heels hitting the tile with a deliberate tick, tick, tick. She sized up the table, then walked its entire length before sitting, as if searching for a weakness. She selected a chair two down from Emily and sat with a grace Andy didn’t remember her having the first week, hands folded over the napkin instead of reaching for her coffee. The dark red scarf around her neck was the only color she wore today, and it looked almost ceremonial.

Marissa slipped in on the hush, her hair still damp at the ends, her blouse deep blue and unbuttoned just enough to showcase the cleavage her transformation had pressed on her. She moved with the same detached calm as ever, but Andy caught the subtle way her eyes never left him, tracking every motion as if waiting for a cue.

Katherine came in quietly, the way she always did, as if she were still getting used to the fact that a room would let her. She found a chair near the middle, folding her hands in her lap with the particular stillness of someone who had spent a long time watching the world from a fixed point and was only now learning to be inside it.

Chloe and Dawn came together, their hands linked, Chloe in a cardigan the color of milk, Dawn in a yellow dress so bright it looked like a dare. They slid into the seats at the end nearest the windows, whispering quietly to each other, Chloe’s cheeks already pink before the meal even started.

Sam entered next, swinging Thrustworthy over one shoulder like a very dangerous umbrella, then propping it against the far wall with a wink. She eyed the table, gave Andy a thumbs-up, and plopped into the chair next to Norah, grabbing a pastry before anyone else could.

Liesa and Emi wandered in together, Liesa’s skirt tight enough to threaten a wardrobe malfunction, Emi wearing a t-shirt that had once been Andy’s, knotted at the waist to fit her smaller frame. Liesa’s hips swayed even as she walked, a byproduct of whatever transformation compelled her to move like she was in a perfume commercial. Emi’s four lower arms were tucked in close, her upper pair fidgeting with the hem of the shirt, all nerves.

Erin took her place directly beside Andy, her mint-green skin almost fluorescent in the morning sun. She sat very straight, breasts perched atop the edge of the table, arms folded tight across her chest. She didn’t speak, but Andy saw the small twitch at the corner of her mouth, like she was holding back a hundred comments and picking which one to throw first.

Riley slipped in next, quiet in a way that felt chosen rather than natural, and found a seat at the far end without looking at anyone. She pulled her chair in close, both feet flat on the floor, hands in her lap—the body language of someone who had learned to take up exactly as much space as she needed and not one inch more.

Laura entered next, her two bodies moving in perfect sync. They didn’t so much walk as materialize, one taking the empty seat to Andy’s left, the other to his right, bracketing him without a word. Each wore the same severe black dress, the same placid expression. They settled simultaneously, hands folded on the tablecloth, a mirrored stillness that felt less like sitting and more like anchoring.

Myra came in just after, and the room seemed to notice her before Andy did. She didn’t hesitate at the door the way the others had. She walked the length of the table with a kind of unhurried attention, as if she were reading it, and chose a seat near the middle, two chairs down from Riley, settling in with the ease of someone who had long since made her peace with being watched.

Claire was last. She drifted in with a notebook clutched to her chest, her cat ears tipped forward and scanning for conflict. She took a seat directly beside one of Laura’s bodies—the one on Andy’s right—nodding once to him, then started writing at once, the pen skimming across the paper in a soft, even whisper.

Andy waited until everyone had found a seat, letting the room come to a full hush. The only sound was the hum of the sea outside and the small, synchronized breathing of a dozen women trying not to blink first.

He stood, not because he liked speeches, but because this time, he wanted the shape of the thing to be right.

He said, “Thank you all for being here. I know I asked you to do this instead of the usual whatever-you-want. I need to say some things, and it’s better if I don’t have to do it in six different rooms.”

He paused, looking for a place to rest his hands, and settled for gripping the back of his own chair.

“This isn’t a normal lunch. There’s things coming up that I can’t… wait to tell you. The wedding is in three days. The thing with Ereshkigal—” he tripped over it, the word still unfamiliar, “—the debt, what’s on the other side, we’re out of time to guess.”

He scanned the faces, trying to read how much he’d already lost them. Marissa’s lips were a thin line, Norah’s eyebrows arched, Claire scribbled in her notebook without looking up. He saw, almost at the same time, Liesa tilt her head in a soft question, and Katherine shifted her stance so her body faced him directly.

Sam broke the silence with a mouthful of croissant. “Is this the kind of talk where you want us to shut up, or is it better if we ask questions as you go?”

Andy smiled, a little. “Questions help. I just want to get through the shape of it first.” He closed his eyes, found the starting point. “The easiest place to start is with the First Gate. Because nothing else I need to say is going to make sense without it.”

He tried to explain it the way Claire had laid out for him two days earlier. “The First Gate is not a door, not a real one, but it’s the place where the first Hosts were made, and a lot of the gods, too. It’s not a real place, exactly. Or, it was, but it no longer exists… except that somehow it can still be reached, although we don’t yet know how. Arabella may be a path to it. But the point is, it can be crossed. When you cross it, if you’re chosen for it, you don’t just come back different. You come back as a god.” He heard himself say the word, and it still didn’t sound real.

He kept his eyes on the table. “And not a minor god, either. Arabella told me yesterday that if I cross it, I’ll inherit her actual power. That’s… a lot. She said it's enough to make Producers sweat.” Katherine's hands flew to her mouth. Sam's fork rang against her plate as she set it down without finishing the bite, muttering. He looked up at the rest of the faces around him, and there was no laughter in any of them.

He said, “The reason I’m telling you this now is because it doesn’t just affect me. I wish it did. But according to Claire—” he nodded at her, and she didn’t look up from the notebook—“if I do this, it brings the harem with me. If you’re bonded, you cross too. Permanently. Whether or not you wanted to.”

That made the room twitch. Norah’s eyes went sharp, Liesa blinked, and for the first time since sitting down, Marissa’s fingers stopped tapping on her glass.

He said, “That’s what I wanted to say first. Before the next thing. There’s more, but—” He let the sentence die, then started over. “Claire only has fragments of what the Gate actually does. Nobody’s come back from it to explain. Or at least, no one has put it on paper. I don’t know what it costs. I just know it’s permanent. And the only way I could even think about saying yes is if every single person here says yes, too.” He looked at each in turn, meeting their eyes, except for Myra, who met his with unfocused hazel-green and said nothing.

He watched the table go stiff, the news passing down the row like a line of dominos you could feel but not see. Liesa and Norah both stared at their hands, Chloe bit her lip, and Sam, for the first time in recorded history, just kept chewing. The absence of a joke was almost a joke by itself.

He said, “That’s the first thing. But there’s more. It’s all connected, and you’ll see why. And it’s not just theory—there’s stuff I’ve seen.”

He took a breath, steadying himself. “Yesterday, I tried something I shouldn’t have.” He looked at Claire, who was already writing, and at Erin, who sat so straight it looked like she was holding the rest of her body at attention. “I used a few cheat codes, from my Console Gift, to hack into the system and see what was coming. It was something I did back at the birthday party, with Tracy, and I figured it could give us some additional information. It knocked me out. I mean, really knocked me out—Erin was there to help revive me, thankfully.”

At the edge of his sight, he saw Erin’s cheeks flush, but she didn’t say anything.

He went on: “Erin brought what I saw to Claire, hoping she could make sense of it.” He nodded to Claire, who glanced up for the first time, ears perked, eyes wide behind the glasses.

He said, “Claire? Do you want to explain, or should I?”

She wrote, then turned the notebook to him. The handwriting was bigger than before, a sign that she wanted him to actually read it for the table.

He read, “‘What Andy saw was not a fixed sequence of the future. It was more like a set of possibilities—a map, not a calendar. I believe some of the vision fragments are things that only happen if we get something wrong between now and the wedding. They may not be possible unless we screw up. There are branches, and some can be avoided.’”

The silence after Andy finished reading lasted almost a full minute. Even in a room this size, with a dozen women and enough food for a wedding banquet, it didn’t so much as creak. Only the sea outside, and somewhere, a fork scraping butter off a roll—Sam, unconcerned.

Claire wrote something else, quick and precise, then passed the notebook down the line. Erin read it first, then flipped it so Andy could see, and he read for the group: “‘There are exactly eight fragments. They’re not evenly spaced. Most are clustered near the present, but the last one—’” He hesitated, then continued: “‘—the last one seems the most important, because it is the only one that doesn’t connect back to any others. If that one happens, the rest do not.’”

Andy set the notebook down, face open for the first time since he’d started.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll do this the way Claire wanted. I’ll describe what I saw. Then you can ask anything.”

He scanned the table for a starting point. Chloe’s hands trembled in her lap, Dawn’s ears were canted forward, waiting for a threat she couldn’t see. Marissa just watched him, expression gone clinical—taking readings, ready to triage.

He said, “The first vision was Sam.”

Sam perked up, glancing at Thrustworthy. “You don’t say.”

He nodded. “You stood in the middle of a sun-blasted plaza, with a nine-foot sword—Thrustworthy, I’m guessing—and you faced off against a bearded man with eyes like gravel. You looked alive in a way I’d never seen, like the sword was less a weapon and more a kind of… extension. The guy was scared of you. He tried to fight, but you laughed and basically knocked him through the pavement.”

Sam’s grin went nuclear. “Hell yes. Did I win?”

Andy shrugged. “The vision ended before I could see. But you never even looked worried. Like you’d been waiting your whole life to use it.” He glanced at the sword propped against the wall. “That’s why I asked Arabella to get you that. It seemed like you had things well in hand, in the vision.”

Sam flexed her arm, muscle popping, then elbowed Norah, who rolled her eyes but said, “I always said you’d be a gladiator if it came down to it.”

Sam looked at Claire, then back to Andy. “Who was the guy? Not that it matters, but—”

Andy shrugged. “I didn’t get a name. It wasn’t about him, it was about you.”

Sam fist-pumped, then set the croissant down for once. “Calling dibs on him when he shows up.”

A ripple of laughter, nervous but welcome, ran the length of the table. Claire wrote something in her notebook, but didn’t pass it on.

Andy continued, “The second fragment was a desert. No, not a desert—a wasteland. Sand the color of bones, sky all bruised and old. It was just… ruins. The Hotel was gone, or broken. Everything was falling apart—columns, stairs, chandeliers just hanging from nothing.” He tried to remember the feeling. “I was alone, walking. I was wearing a suit, but it was dusty and torn. I just kept walking, looking for something. I think I was searching for something, something I was sure wasn’t there.”

Emily let out a tiny, involuntary sound, then tucked her knees up tighter, hair falling in a pink waterfall to hide her face.

Liesa asked, voice careful: “Was there any sign of us? Or was it really just you?”

Andy shook his head. “Just me. The only thing left was a palm tree. Dead, but still standing.” He hesitated, feeling the way the silence pressed in, and added, “It felt like I was the only one left who remembered why we were here in the first place.”

Myra shifted in her seat, tails flaring outward. “Was there a reason you couldn’t stop walking?”

Andy blinked, surprised by the question. “I don’t know. It was like I couldn’t rest, or stop, or even die. Just walk and remember. Towards a glint of blue. That was all that was left.” He let it sit, then moved on.

“Third vision: the Hollow Garden. Every single one of you was there—I could tell by the shapes, the way you stood, the hair. All in dresses. But when I tried to look directly at any face, it went soft, like a photograph left in the sun.” He paused. “It felt safe. Not happy, but safe. Like a room where everyone already knew the worst of it. And then I counted, and I noticed—Laura, Myra, and Riley were missing.”

Myra’s tails drew slowly inward, curling against the chair legs.

Riley set her fork down. “Missing how? Like we weren’t invited, or like something happened to us?”

Before Andy could answer, Marissa said, quietly, “The Garden is where they put the ones who can’t be brought back. Or who have nowhere left to go.” Nobody argued with her.

Andy said, “It didn’t read as a punishment. More like everyone was holding vigil. Like nobody had left because leaving felt wrong.”

Claire’s pen was already moving. She didn’t pass the notebook—just turned it in place so Andy could read it from across the table. He read aloud: “’The three absences may not be independent. Cross-reference with the fifth fragment.’”

Myra said nothing. Her fingers had gone white at the knuckles.

Andy pressed on, “Fourth one was weird. I was in a room full of books, walls lined with glass, but none of the spines had names. Across from me, a woman in a dark robe with a mesh veil. I never saw her face, but it kept changing. She talked, and I listened—she talked about law, about how when you do harm on someone else’s orders, you’re still the one who pays. That even when you act for someone else, the law writes the debt to your own name. She said the ledger isn’t a single column, it’s a web. She kept talking about how marriage isn’t just two people, it’s a net of debts and obligations. Even people who never talk to each other are tied together if they’re part of the same marriage.”

He paused, waiting for someone to react.

Norah broke in, “She’s saying the harem is one giant marriage, and if you hurt one, you owe all of them.”

Andy hesitated, “That’s what I took from it. Even if someone’s gone, the debt gets transferred to whoever’s still left.” He tried to remember her exact words. “She also said there’s never been a name for love in the ledger. That it’s never counted, not a debt or a payment, just something the world goes around. Unless you hold enough of it in one place, and then it gets so big it starts to matter.”

Chloe’s face was pink to the tips of her ears. She looked at Dawn, who smiled and covered her hand, squeezing tight.

“Did you know the woman in the vision?” Chloe asked, softly.

Andy shook his head. “No. She didn’t sound like Arabella, but she had the same energy. Like she’d seen everything before, and she was just waiting for me to catch up.” He caught the way several faces looked at Arabella’s empty seat at the head of the table, then away, fast.

He went on, “Fifth fragment: desert again, but this time, there were four women kneeling in the sand. Arranged in a triangle, with two of them close together, and one each at the other corners. Hands behind their backs, like they’d been tied. The air shimmered with heat, and in it, I saw Laura—both bodies, faces locked in the same awful pain. The other two were there, but I couldn’t get the faces.” He tried to swallow the memory. “There was a man walking among them, and he just… poked, prodded, pressed on old wounds. Every time one of you tried to reach for the other, something yanked you back.”

Laura didn’t move, but both bodies tensed, the muscles in her forearms standing out.

Erin's jaw tightened; she'd heard Andy’s description yesterday, but hearing Andy say it out loud, in front of everyone, was different. “That's not a vision,” she said. “That's a torture chamber.”

Andy nodded. “That’s what it felt like. He wasn’t hurting anyone for the sake of it. He was looking for something else. The man’s face kept changing—sometimes it reminded me of Laura’s father, sometimes of a man I saw in the Garden of Glass. But always big, always mean, always black-bearded, always trying to widen the gap.”

Liesa’s hand went to her mouth, and for a second, she looked like she might be sick.

Andy said, “They kept trying to reach each other, and every time they got close, something ripped them back. That’s what the man wanted. The space between Laura’s bodies interested him.”

Claire scribbled a note, but didn’t pass it; her knuckles were white.

Andy pressed on, voice tighter. “Sixth fragment: a beach at dusk, all of you present. You stood in a loose crescent, with Laura—both bodies—at the center. At the edge of the water was Mildred, but she looked different. She had a hunger to her, eyes flicking from one of you to the next. I saw Arabella, too, standing to the side, but not alone: there was a woman with her, tall, terrifying, black hair, eyes like oil. She made everyone else look small.” He took a breath. “It felt like there was going to be a confrontation. Like this was the moment before everything changed.”

Emily said, “Was the scary woman Ereshkigal?”

He shrugged. “She looked a bit like Anna, and Arabella told me she and Ereshkigal are twins. Either way, she was the only thing Arabella looked nervous about.”

Dawn’s ears flicked flat, and she swallowed.

Andy continued, “Seventh vision: a small room, rocking chair by a window, Laura’s mother sitting there, hands folded, just rocking and watching the garden. I was in the doorway, holding a piece of paper, and she just waited. There was so much quiet in it, but not peace. She never said a word, just kept waiting for me to deliver the news. I knew it was something she’d never want to hear.”

He looked at Laura, who didn’t move, but both faces had gone soft and damp at the edges.

Chloe said, “Do you know what the letter said?”

Andy shook his head, “I never got to open it.” He paused, and looked around the table.

“This is the last vision. It’s the one Claire said was most important, because it doesn’t branch to the others. If this one happens, it means we failed.” He set his hands flat on the table. “I was on the footbridge from when we were kids. The boards were old, thin, worn silver by years and weather. The river ran black and slow. The world around it was old, trees bigger, river smaller. Decades in the future, maybe. But me? I was unchanged. Still myself, not a day older than when I first came here. I waited at the midpoint of the bridge, and I had the sense I had been coming back for decades. Just waiting. For Laura. I waited so long that I stopped believing anyone would ever come. I just stood there, with the ache of missing her.”

He didn’t look at Laura. He looked at the water glass in front of him and let the silence say what he couldn’t.

Marissa’s breath caught; Andy heard it even over the shuffle of napkins. Dawn’s ears pressed flat to her skull, and her hand found Chloe’s under the table, fingers squeezing until the knuckles blanched. Myra exhaled in a hiss, tails rigid as antennae, and blinked hard, eyes full of things she’d never let herself say.

Sam said, “That’s the future if you get it wrong, right? If you lose her.”

Andy nodded, not trusting himself to answer.

Emi said, “Does it mean she dies?”

Andy shook his head. “I don’t know. All I know is that, in that future, I never saw her again.”

Both of Laura were perfectly still, hands curled in the same position, one on each side of Andy.

Riley’s voice, low and certain, cut through the hush. “If that’s the version you’re scared of, then don’t let it happen. Fight like hell, even if the Law says you can’t.”

Andy nodded, once, and felt the shape of the moment settle around the table—a sense that the future wasn’t fixed, but brittle, and maybe just breakable enough to let them through if they chose it together.

He let out a breath and said, “That’s everything. I don’t have any answers, not for real. But now you know as much as we do about the visions.”

Andy waited until the faces around the table stopped flickering between horror, sadness, and that peculiar kind of calculation people do when they’re trying to fit themselves into a new, terrifying context. Once the eyes met his again, he said, “There’s one more thing I need to say. I picked now because it ties back to what happens if the debt doesn’t go to Laura. Who’s left if it skips her.”

He looked down the table, past Riley and Myra, then back again. “Part of what I’m about to say is news to some of you, but not to them. I promised I’d only do this in front of everyone if you two were okay with it.”

He looked directly at Myra. “Still want me to do this?”

Myra, who had held herself in a posture of alert stillness since the vision talk, nodded. Not casual, not heroic—just necessary. Her tails braced against the chair, and her mouth pressed flat. “Do it,” she said. Her voice was low, but the table heard it.

Andy’s gaze slid to Riley, whose arms were crossed so tight her knuckles were white. She nodded too, a beat after Myra. “Go,” she said. “No point hiding it.”

He exhaled, not relieved but resolved. “Some time ago, Laura and I went to the Hollow Garden. I meant to keep a promise to a woman from there whom I had met at the Fifth Challenge. But when we found her, her reaction wasn’t what I had expected. Turned out, she knew Laura. She had watched them… watched them retrieve her body from the river, sixteen years ago. And I realized… realized she was Laura’s aunt. It opened the doors for… for a lot of information.” He glanced at Laura, whose faces—both of them—had gone expressionless, like she was holding herself just this side of numb. “Laura, Myra, and Riley are all Greg’s daughters. Greg, perhaps the worst Master Arabella ever hosted. Same father, different mothers, all of them past Contestants, from a season thirty-one years before any of us ever came to the island.”

He let the words land.

Sam's reaction was instant. "I knew about Laura,” she said, shooting a look between Myra and Riley. “I didn't know it went three deep.” She let out a low whistle. “That's a hell of a family reunion, isn't it?” She shot a look at Myra, then at Riley, then at Laura. “I mean, I had it bad, but you three are a Greek tragedy with sequels.”

Emi made a tiny “o” with her mouth, then blinked hard as if she’d surprised herself with the sound. “Wait. All of them?” She looked at Myra, then at Riley, then at Laura, as if double-checking her math. “So, you’re sisters? Actual sisters?”

Riley’s voice came out flat: “Half-sisters. That’s how it works.”

Dawn, who hadn’t said a word since the visions, let out a soft, sharp breath. She reached over, found Chloe’s hand, and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not sure who she was even talking to.

Andy let the table process it, then kept going. “Sarah Williams is Laura’s mom. Marie Williams is Myra’s mom—you all met her a few days back, when she came up from the Hollow Garden.” He nodded to Liesa and Sam, who’d been there. “The two women are sisters. Which makes Laura and Myra not just half-sisters, but cousins as well.”

Marissa’s eyes widened. “That’s why she looked so familiar,” she said, almost to herself. “Marie. When I saw her, I thought she could’ve been Laura’s aunt.”

Andy nodded. “She is. And then there’s Sandra. She was part of Greg’s season, like Sarah and Marie. But she’s not related to either of them. Sandra is Riley’s mother.” He paused. “They’re all alive, by the way, in the Hollow Garden. Sarah has been catatonic since the day Laura died. Arabella said she barely speaks, barely moves, just sits in a chair and waits.”

The table went even quieter, if that was possible.

Emily asked, “Why did Arabella tell you all this?”

Andy said, “Because she was able to punish Greg. The show has a cardinal rule—no one who passed through this place can cause grievous harm or death to anyone else who passed or was born of this place. She said Harem Hotel is a place for love, not death. He broke it, in a roundabout way, when Laura died. So Arabella was able to take the women away from him, move them to the Hollow Garden, and sever the bond. She did something horrifying to him, so bad that she said death has forgotten his name. Greg’s gone, as far as I know, and the women are free—except for what the show did to them, and what the world did to them after.”

Katherine, whose body language always spoke louder than the words she could never say, reached across the table and placed her hand on Andy’s. She pressed it there—warm, grounding, and absolute.

Myra, who’d been rigid as a statue, exhaled so hard her whole frame trembled. She reached across, found Laura’s hand, and took it in both of hers. Her tails curled forward, wrapping around the chair leg as if holding the moment in place.

Across from them, Claire had opened her notebook. She let the room breathe for a moment, then pushed it toward Andy and gestured for him to read. He glanced down, then back up at the table. “She’s saying the parentage is the reason we need to talk about the debt. Greg’s bloodline is what the Law uses to find its way. Laura is the primary target, but the chain doesn’t stop with her—it moves. Claire’s been working out whether there’s a way to interrupt it before it does.”

He looked at Claire, who nodded once and flipped to the next page. Andy cleared his throat. “’A mortal debt can only be paid with a mortal life of the same kind. Laura, unless someone sacrifices themselves for her. If the target becomes divine, the debt cannot reach her. The same applies to Myra and Riley if they ascend. The Law has no jurisdiction over gods.’”

He paused to let that land. Dawn’s shoulders sagged, her ears going up in actual relief. Across the table, Emily let out a quiet “Oh thank God,” and pressed her palms together as if she was praying.

Sam grinned, leaning forward on her elbows. “So that’s it, then? We walk across the finish line, take a group photo, and nobody gets thrown into the pit?”

Claire was already shaking her head, her pen moving before Andy had finished the question. She passed the notebook, and Andy read the next part aloud:

“‘If the debt cannot be collected from the original target, the Law will move to the next person in the chain: blood relatives, or spouses. If Laura, Myra and Riley are out of reach, the Law will seek her mother, or Marie, or anyone else in that line. In that scenario, Laura, Myra and Riley wouldn’t even be able to offer themselves in exchange.’”

The room went still. Myra’s tails snapped rigid behind her, fanning out like a pair of warning flags. She opened her mouth, then closed it, unable to say what needed to be said.

Andy kept reading. “‘This may be the loophole Arabella was hoping for. The debt cannot be destroyed, only transferred. The aim might never have been to make it vanish, only to prevent it from landing on Laura, or on the family Andy has built for himself since then.’”

Marissa let out a long breath, the sound almost a whistle.

Emily asked, “So it doesn’t really go away. We’re just passing it on to someone else.”

Andy nodded, a chill in his heart. “That’s what it sounds like. The Law is like a river. Block one channel, it finds the next weakest point.”

Sam said, “That’s dark as hell. But also weirdly… fair?”

Norah made a face. “If that’s what you call fairness, you have some twisted sense of balance.”

Dawn’s hand found Chloe’s again, squeezing tighter than before. “But it means we can save her,” she said, voice small. “If we do the ascension, and she’s protected, then maybe we can figure out a way so that her mother won’t have to take the hit either. Or maybe there’s a way to block it again. We just have to keep trying, right?”

Andy couldn’t answer, not yet. He watched as the words circled the table, each woman working through the calculus of guilt and relief.

When the silence had stretched almost to breaking, Andy let out a slow breath. “There’s no more theory,” he said. “No more predictions. The only thing left is the question, and I’m asking it now: Knowing all of this—what Claire said, what we’ve learned—would you be willing to go through with it, if I find the FIrst Gate? If it ever comes to that.”

He tried to hold all their gazes at once, failed, then settled on Chloe, because her answer was always the easiest to guess.

Chloe said yes before he even finished. “Of course. I already decided.”

She looked at Dawn, and Dawn nodded, tears already prickling at the corners of her eyes. “Me too,” she said, her voice shaking. “It’s not even a question.”

Andy nodded, moved on. Claire looked up, caught his eyes, and wrote a single word in the center of her page: Yes. She held it up, then underlined it, as if there could be any doubt.

Erin was next, and her answer was just as fast. “Yes,” she said, voice strong, but her eyes lingered on Myra rather than on Andy. “If you’re going, I’m with you.”

Norah’s answer was a beat behind, but only because she was working up the nerve to say it without sounding weak. “Sure,” she said. “Try to top that, older sisters.” She shrugged, but her hands were balled up so tight the knuckles whitened.

Sam grinned. “I’m not about to be the reason this all falls apart. Also, if we get to mess with Producers on the other side, I’m in.”

Liesa was slower. She turned her water glass in her hands, looking at it as if it might show her another option. Then she looked up at Andy, and the answer was soft, but unambiguous. “Yes. I want to stay.” She offered a half-smile, and for a second the old warmth was there.

Marissa’s turn. “I decided already,” she said. “None of this changes things.” She didn’t explain further; there was nothing more to say.

Katherine was next to Andy. She didn't reach for his hand this time. She just nodded, once, hard enough that her whole upper body moved with it, and held his eyes until he nodded back.

Emily blurted her answer, a little too loud, and flushed at once. “Yes!” She ducked her head. “Sorry. Yes.” She didn’t try to take it back.

Emi, softer than the rest, said, “Of course,” as if the question barely needed asking, and reached over to squeeze Emily’s hand. The gesture was gentle, but the fingers wrapping around Emily’s wrist made it oddly final.

Andy looked at Myra. He didn’t have to ask, but he did anyway, because this was the place where every answer mattered, where every voice still needed its own air, even the ones he already dreaded.

“What about you?” he said, softer than before.

Myra didn’t answer right away. Her mouth opened, then closed. Her tails went rigid against the chair legs, then wound slowly around the spindles and held there, a stillness that looked like it cost more than moving would have. Her hands were flat on the table, pressing down, like she was holding the table steady instead of the other way around.

“If I say yes, I'm safe. So is Riley, and so is Laura,” she said finally, quiet enough that the table leaned in without meaning to. “But the debt doesn't disappear just because she's out of reach. It goes looking for whoever's still in reach behind her. My mom. Aunt Sarah. Someone in Harvey who's never even heard my name. And once I've crossed, whatever happens to them happens without me. There's nothing left I could do about it. You said it yourself, it's permanent.”

She stopped, then started again, steadier. “Nobody's found a way to protect my mom, or Sarah, or anybody down that line. Not yet. And I don't know if anyone will, given how little time remains.” Her voice went flat, not shaking, just flat, the way it did when she was holding something down by main force. “So no. Not like this. Not while I might still be some part of an answer nobody's found yet.”

Andy searched her face for anything as simple as relief and didn't find it, only a stillness that had nothing peaceful in it. Her tails hadn't moved in almost a minute. He didn't know what she meant by might still be some part of an answer, and something in the set of her jaw told him not to ask.

He nodded, and it cost him. “I get it,” he said. “I do.” He watched her fingers grip the table's edge, nails biting into the wood, and understood, with a certainty that settled cold behind his ribs, that whatever came next, the vote had already ended right here, before anyone else got the chance to speak.

He turned to Laura, and the world went very still. He braced for the worst, and it was already in her eyes.

She started to speak, and for an instant Andy thought it might be the same yes she had given him before, days ago, when all of this was still theoretical, when it was just a story they could rewrite at any time. But the moment passed, and both of her faces—the one next to him, the one at the other end of the table—froze at the same time. Their lips parted, then closed, then parted again. “No,” she whispered, and the sound doubled, both voices faint and wet at the edges. “My mom broke when I died. I’m not keeping myself alive just to hand her a death sentence in my place.” Both bodies sat with hands flat and still on the table, knuckles pale, fingers splayed. “I’m sorry.”

The answer hit Andy harder than he wanted to admit, even though he’d already lived this moment in every possible configuration. He felt the blood drain out of his skin—the way it always did when a muscle spasmed or an old injury flared. A weight, heavy and cold, settled behind his ribs and stayed there. He didn’t argue. There was no way to shape the facts, no magic sentence that could rewire the math. He let it be, and he let it hurt.

He didn’t look up right away. He stared at the water glass he hadn’t touched since lunch started, and the world narrowed down to just that: the glass, the way it caught the sunlight, the ring of condensation turning the white cloth darker and darker, the slow-motion drip that kept happening even after there was nothing left to drip. He found the smallest comfort in the ordinariness of it. Then he realized the quiet had changed, that there was a different kind of attention in the air. Everyone else was watching him—waiting to see if he’d fight it, or break, or do the only thing left and accept.

He looked up, and at the other end of the table, the two Lauras were watching him too, perfectly still. He thought about what it meant, that she’d finally put herself first, but only so she could put someone else above her. He wondered if that was what had always drawn him to her, or if it was just the only kind of answer she knew how to give.

He turned to Riley last, because hers was the variable, the coin still spinning in the air. “What about you?” he asked, and his voice was different now—gentler, or maybe just tired.

Riley took a moment before answering. She was staring at Andy—not at her half-sisters, not at the table—like she wanted to see if he would flinch. “I’m not leaving them behind,” she said, and her voice was a lot steadier than he expected. It wasn’t a performative answer. There was no drama or self-sacrifice in it, no grand gesture; just a simple, unassailable fact. He could see the outline of the Third Challenge in her eyes, the memory of what she’d chosen that day, and what she was planning for next time.

He nodded, and for a moment, it almost felt like the room itself was breathing with him.

Andy let it stand, and this time, he didn’t reach for a speech or an explanation. The future was a blank page. And for the first time, he could feel the weight of all the answers on it, like a thousand hands pushing him forward.

It was Chloe who broke the stalemate, her voice a little too bright for the room. “What if you just add them to the harem?” she said. “Sarah and Marie, I mean. You did it with Katherine. Maybe you could do it for them, too. Wouldn’t that keep them safe?”

Emi perked up at the suggestion, six hands tensing, every eye on Andy. “Is that possible?” she asked, hope bubbling at the edges.

Andy wanted to answer, but Myra beat him to it. “It’s not just my mom and Laura’s,” she said, voice steady, “there’s a whole branch in Harvey. An aunt, Kelly. A cousin, Shannon. Our grandparents—James and Dorothy. People who’ve never even heard of any of this, who don’t even know we exist yet. They’re good people, Andy. They don’t deserve this.”

Laura nodded, both bodies perfectly still. “She’s right. We saw them, during Myra’s day trip. It’s not theoretical. The Law would just keep moving until it found someone left to pay.”

Emi sagged, the logic hitting her all at once. “So even if you saved Sarah and Marie, the Law would just… skip to the next name?”

Sam shrugged. “Add them to the harem, too. The more the merrier.”

Andy shrugged, feeling the weight of it. “I don’t know if I can even do it after the game ends,” he said. “Or if it would work the same way. But even if I could, I’d have to be there in person, and I don’t know if the Gift even works outside this place.” He looked at the table, at the uneaten food, the napkins starting to wilt at the edges.

Myra murmured softly, “If we could guarantee everyone was safe—every single one—I’d do it in a second. But I don’t know how. Nobody here does.”

A few seats down, Norah toyed with her fork, spinning it in slow, deliberate circles. “So we’re back at the start,” she said. “One of us says no, and the whole thing falls apart.”

Andy nodded, but didn’t repeat it. His own rule was the only thing keeping them from walking into a disaster together.

On the table, Claire’s pen moved again. She wrote: There may be another option. One nobody has tested. Then, after a long pause, added: The Console Gift let you update someone’s status to put her in the harem even after elimination. The logic might run backward, too. You could, in theory, unbind someone—remove the connection entirely. But I do not know if it would work, or what it would mean.

Andy read it, felt the air go cold. “That would mean—what? Making someone not part of the group, at all?”

Claire nodded, face grave.

Katherine’s face went strange, the skin at her jaw working like she was chewing through a memory. She looked at Andy, then at Laura, and her whole body radiated something like terror. It wasn’t for herself.

Emily, barely audible, asked, “Does that mean you could just send someone away?” Her hair fell forward, and her hands fidgeted in her lap. “For good?”

Sam cut in before Andy could answer. “That’s not a solution. That’s just… exile. Nobody deserves that, not here.” She shot a look at Andy. “Em’s question deserves a real answer. Not just a maybe.”

Andy shook his head. “I never asked Claire to look for this. I don’t like it. And even if it worked, I’m not sure I could live with it.”

Nobody replied. There wasn’t a fix. Not a real one.

When lunch broke up, it did so without any of the usual scramble for seconds or lingering around the dessert tray. The women drifted off in twos and threes: Norah and Sam to the Archive, Marissa and Liesa to the garden, Chloe and Dawn to the reading room, Emi and Emily to their suite. Only Andy and Laura stayed, each in their seats, not touching the food, barely looking up.

The Banquet Hall emptied, sunlight crawling across the white linen like a clock no one wanted to wind.

---

The Banquet Hall, once emptied, felt even larger than it had before. The room’s cathedral scale was a trick of design, but the silence—and the echo of what had just happened—made it feel like the inside of a bell that had only just stopped ringing. The table, lined end to end with plates and cups and untouched food, now looked less like a place to eat and more like the aftermath of some failed negotiation between gods. Andy sat at the midpoint, hunched forward, arms braced on the table. Across from him sat Laura—both of her—occupying adjacent chairs, hands folded and heads inclined toward each other, as if holding a private council even in the absence of sound.

The women had left in drifts, some in pairs, others alone, all with the same unsettled gait as people leaving a funeral where the deceased had not actually died, but instead lingered, half-haunting the air behind them. Even now, Andy could see the traces they left: a smear of lipstick on a napkin, the faintest scent of Chloe’s almond shampoo, the pressed shape of a tail in the velvet of a chair that was already cooling in her absence. He was tired in a way that was less about sleep and more about the collapse of some inner scaffolding that had, until this lunch, held his future together.

Neither he nor Laura made a move to stack plates, or even reach for the half-warm coffee cooling in front of them. The air was thick, humid with everything unsaid.

Andy’s hand rested on the stem of his water glass. He hadn’t taken a single sip since the lunch began, but he found himself circling the rim over and over, the motion more nervous tick than thirst. He replayed the last hour again, line by line. Laura had said no, and she would keep saying it for as long as saying yes meant her mother or Marie paying instead. Which meant that when the Law finally came looking, she would offer herself the moment it did, and refuse anyone who tried to stand between her and it, the same way she always had. He had no version of this left where she wasn't the one at the center of it.

Helplessness had a texture, he thought; it was the same cold, granular feeling as the time he’d missed Laura’s call and then realized she would never make another one, the same way the world sometimes broke and there was nothing anyone could do but let it break and hope that, eventually, you learned to hold the pieces.

He glanced at Laura, who sat with both hands folded, but her right hovered low and tight over her stomach. He hadn’t meant to look there, but it was impossible not to. The fact of it—the child, their daughter—was a weight only the two of them knew, and it meant her answer had never been only about her own life. If the Law came for her the way it now seemed certain to, he had no idea whether it would take the child along with her, or spare her, or something in between. Nobody he knew had ever had to ask that question before, and there was no one left for him to ask now.

Neither of them brought it up. The knowledge hovered, thick as the air.

The Banquet Hall’s enormous windows were uncurtained, letting in a slant of afternoon sun that streaked across the linen and illuminated the dust motes kicked up by the day’s motion. It was a good room for drama, a bad one for grieving. At the far end, a Mildred in pristine white cleared the remaining platters in silence, never looking in their direction, careful not to disturb the two of them. Before she moved on, she set a fresh pitcher of water at Andy's elbow, though no one had asked for it, and didn't wait to be thanked. The etiquette was deliberate; staff, in this place, always knew when not to interrupt a moment.

When the silence had gone on too long, Andy reached for Laura—not physically, but with the part of himself that always tried to check if she was okay. The old connection, the one that used to let him feel the shape of her emotion, was slower to answer now. What came back wasn’t nothing, but it was dimmer than before. Like someone had closed a window between them, muffling the light.

He realized, with a sick lurch, that this could lead to the version of the future Claire’s notes had warned about. The one where he and Laura crossed in the same space, but not in the same life.

He asked, “Are you alright?” Voice soft, afraid of the answer.

Laura didn’t answer right away. She looked at him for a long time, her eyes so blue and glistening it hurt to hold the gaze. Then she shook her head, just a fraction, and said, “I don’t know.” Her voice was softer than his. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

He nodded, and let the silence close over them again.

There was a kind of comfort in being able to sit with her in that way, no matter how bruised the moment. It hadn’t always been like this: back in their actual lives, or what passed for them, Andy remembered the last time they’d really talked about a future—a few months before Laura had died, when they were still thirteen and the world was the size of a three-bedroom ranch in northern Illinois. They’d drawn a map in Sharpie on the back of an old pizza box: which college towns they’d move to, which states they’d visit, which secrets they’d keep. For years after, Andy had kept the top of that pizza box, even after it had been through three apartments and a breakup. He didn’t know why he’d brought it, but it was the kind of thing you didn’t throw away, out of hope or out of superstition.

He wondered, now, what his thirteen-year-old self would think of this table, this woman, this daughter neither of them were ready for.

Laura leaned her head against his shoulder, a little heavier than usual. He set his glass down, hand still touching hers. Neither of them moved.

For a long time, they just stayed like that: unmoving, unspeaking, two lost souls clinging to each other in a room that wasn’t built to hold the future they’d been given.

He found, after a while, that he didn’t want to move. Not because he liked the feeling, but because moving would mean letting go, and letting go felt like the first step in a story he wasn’t ready to write an ending for.

Outside the windows, the light shifted. Shadows bled from the garden’s edge, stretching fingers across the table until they pooled in the center like a spill that no one would ever clean up. At the far end of the room, the Mildred finished resetting the place settings for dinner, her shoes making no sound on the tile. She paused at the doorway a moment, watching the two of them without seeming to, before she let herself out through the kitchen doors, closing them behind her with a hush. Andy and Laura were alone.

He tried to think of something to say that would comfort her, or him, or both, but every script failed. Anything he’d say would only shrink the moment, reduce it to something that could be boxed and put away, and this was one of the few times in his life he wanted the feeling to stay as large as it was.

He remembered, then, the time he’d watched his dad sit at the table for hours after a fight with Andy’s mom. His dad, always stoic, always looming and remote, but that day he’d just sat there, looking at nothing, while Andy watched through the gap in the hallway. It wasn’t a pain he’d ever understood as a kid, but now he did. The pain that comes with failing to save someone you love, even when the reason you failed was because there was no saving to do.

He exhaled, a long, slow breath, and felt Laura’s hair catch at his sleeve. The sensation was barely more than static, but it was enough to make him believe, for a second, that none of this was real, that all of it—the Banquet Hall, the Hotel, the world beyond—could be wished away with a strong enough will.

But they were here. And there was no wishing it away.

He could feel Laura’s emotion, the way it moved under her skin, even if it reached him only as a faded echo. She was not grieving, exactly; she was bracing for the cost her mother and her family would pay, absorbing the weight so no one else would have to. It was an old trick, one he recognized from years before, from the time she’d locked herself in the bathroom for three hours so her mother wouldn’t hear her crying. He’d never figured out how she could hurt like that in silence, but maybe that was what drew him to her in the first place.

They sat for another ten minutes, maybe twenty—Andy lost track, because the outside world had narrowed to only the square feet of linen in front of him, the pressure of Laura’s hand, the quiet. At some point, she lifted her head, but did not pull away. She just watched him, studying the side of his face with the same careful intensity she’d used the first time they dissected a frog together in eighth grade.

She said, not as a question but as a statement, “You’re not going to stop.”

He answered her honestly. “No.”

She sighed. “Why?”

He didn’t know what she meant, not entirely, but he looked at her and put all he had in his eyes. “Because I don’t want to stand on that footbridge, decades from now, and miss you the way I missed you when you were gone the first time.”

There was an ache, not in his chest but in the base of his skull, a slow medicinal burn that told him he was going to have a headache for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week. The only fix for it would be to walk, or to work, or to find one of the others and lose himself in whatever problem she needed him to solve. But for now, he remained.