CYPHER

Witch-hunt

" Come with me ".

May turned around and began to walk off the streets , Blade followed her and Dean did too , after picking up his earlier discarded backpack .

She stuck to the sidewalk , looking carefully at each house they passed .

Eventually , she stopped in front of an average looking suburban house with an overgrown garden of poppies and hydrangeas .

She turned around while pointing at the house .

" Here , let's check out this place ".

Blade nodded and Dean remained unresponsive , their words about the game still grating heavily on him .

They crossed the flower bed and headed for the door , there was no porch , gate , fence or security of any form .

May turned the door knob and pushed the door but it wouldn't move .

She took a step back and kicked the door but the door did not budge .

" Anyone have any sharp objects ? Pins ? Needles ? "

She sounded frustrated as she asked and Dean noticed her hand itching towards the pistol that rested in the strap on her thigh .

Blade pulled out another one of his grenades and eyed the pin that rendered the grenade just a metal can for now .

Dean left them and moved to the side of the house , the windows were large enough to fit through .

He looked around and found a wrench that lay amongst the flowers .

He hit the window with the wrench , breaking the glass and began to use the end of the wrench to push out the pieces of broken glass .

" What the hell , Dean ? "

Dean turned to see May and Blade , May was staring at him like he was dumber by the second while Blade was looking around , his eyes travelling over every single detail that surrounded them .

" Did you even wonder why I didn't shoot the door down or have Blade blow us a hole through ?! "

She was yelling now but Dean honestly did not care , he needed to sit and listen to what they had to tell him about the game .

" What she is trying to say is that the Golems are very sensitive to noise and heat signals , so try to keep the noise to the absolute minimal of decibels if you want to survive the next few minutes ".

Blade was still looking around as he talked .

Dean looked between the two of them and just turned around .

He pulled himself up the window and crawled into the house .

The window to floor distance was shorter Inside , so he got off the window smoothly .

He was in a kitchen that was still in peak condition , almost as if the owner had just gone to work or grocery shopping and he was breaking and entering .

Technically , he was still breaking and entering .

Dean walked to the front door .

The door had seven different latches attached from behind it , no amount of kicking or trying to pick the lock would have worked .

Dean went through the latches and pulled the door open .

May's face and body had been pressed to the door , she stumbled in with a smile on her face .

Blade came in and turned to check out the door first , he whistled when he saw the number of latches .

" Must have been a really scared person that lived here ".

" Or a really cautious one ".

May commented as she stared at something in the small closet that had been reserved for hanging coats .

She walked Into the coat closet and came out a moment later wearing a long , wine coloured leather coat .

She was also holding a compound mechanical bow , the type that looked too fancy to actually have any uses .

Blade whooped loudly as he hurried over to May and grabbed the bow .

He began to look over it , his fingers splaying over the bow like it was a long lost lover .

" Think our landlord was into fortnite ? Could be merchandise he purchased as a fan . That could only explain the bow that has never been used and hidden in the closet so the wife doesn't, maybe see? ".

May talked about this fortnite like it was something they ought to be conversant with .

Blade shook his head , he seemed to disagree with May's opinion .

" Our landlord was not just a fan , he considered Fortnite his world . The bow has been used but it has been taken care of so well that it's not obvious . Someone that gives this much care to this bow definitely lived alone ".

Why were they calling the unknown man their landlord ?

And what was even Fortnite ?

The list of things that Dean did not know was piling up pretty fast .

" What's Fortnite ? ", Dean inquired .

May and Blade abruptly stopped their purring over the bow and turned to face him .

Their expressions told him that it was another thing that being unaware of made him appear very strange .

" It is almost crazy how you do not know what Fortnite is when you literally assume yourself to be in Fortnite . Hey , you could be our landlord , Who knows? ", May stated .

May was clapping and laughing now , her initial indignation forgotten . She honestly moved on too fast .

Blade looked between them and shrugged like he had decided to take on the bulk of the job .

" Fortnite is a game . One of those really advanced ones that real gamers would rather exist in than in their actual realities ".

Dean pulled out one of the kitchen stools and sat on it .

Fortnite was a game , that made sense .

" May ? "

May paused her snooping and turned to look at Dean , surprised that he had used her name .

Dean was holding out another kitchen stool for her .

" Why did you want to know what my Patron told me ? ", Dean asked .

May slapped her head and ran into the kitchen , she grabbed the stool and sat down .

" Sorry , I can be quite forgetful . So , what do you owe your Patron ? ", May asked .

Dean blinked , owe ?

He barely knew Alec and definitely did not owe him anything ?

" I owed him nothing ".

May turned to Blade , Blade shook his head and she nodded like she had understood what Blade was trying to say .

" I owe my Patron money , Blade does too and so does most of the people in the game .Then , there's people like you who join for the chance at winning but I'm sure there's probably really few of you ".

Dean thought about it for a second , why would there be only few people that had joined for the reward ?

This was the first time he had heard reward painted in such a negative light .

" Is there a problem with joining for a chance at winning ? "

May and Blade exchanged another glance and this time Blade answered his question .

" No , there shouldn't be .But , when the chance of winning is slim to none , basically a zero chance , it becomes a problem ".

Dean looked between both of them .

All of the information was pouring into him and through him as if he was made of quick sand , he could not hold on to any of the Information .

He had so many things he needed to answer but they could not be phrased .

So he asked the dumbest question and the only thing he could think of.

" Why are we here then ? "

May sighed and suddenly she looked exhausted and older , far beyond her age and her laughs .

" My mum auctioned my organs for sale and there are already buyers that have paid and she has also gambled off that money too , so when I was approached with a chance to play a game where I would be chased around by metal contraptions trying to kill me , I took the chance . If I lose ,then I will die here ".

" I would be dead already if I had not agreed to this last resort . But on the off chance , that I do win , I would ...."

She stopped talking then and Dean thought that she might have been too sad to continue but when he looked at her eyes , he realized that she was not sad , she had long accepted her fate .

She had stopped talking because she had never imagined winning the game or what she would do if she won .

She had long given up .

Blade put his arm around her and smiled widely .

" Everyone here is here because they signed off the lease on their lives , they have no where else to be . So why are you here when you have no idea what this place is even supposed to be ?"

" The Patrons , Are they the ones that approached you ?"

May shook her head , her red lips widened .

She looked nothing like someone that had just talked about how her organs had been distributed out .

" Not exactly , you never meet them directly probably to keep their identities hidden but I'm guessing you know your Patron ?"

Dean nodded .

" Yes , he told me it was just a game I needed to win . He told me we would be partners and that's all ".

Blade and May chuckled .

" Well, he is not exactly wrong , you are partners . It is just that he is up there and will only get disqualified , down a whiskey and forget about the game when you die here ".

" I can not die here ! ", Dean proclaimed loudly .

If he did , Jaymie would die in pain .

The pain of him never returning and her already failing heart .

He looked on to see the shocked looks that May and Blade were giving him .

" I see now , your Patron promised you someone outside ", She stated .

May observed him quietly as she said this , she was right again .

" At least , now you will be more careful since you know that death here is just as valid as death outside ", She added .

She laughed and got up from the stool , rushing up the stairs to Snoop more .

Blade followed after her .

Dean watched them leave .

It made sense now , his theory on the game was finally complete , even the punchline had been delivered .

The perfect punchline for a game of this magnitude .

Dean had thought the punchline would be the golems that killed indiscriminately but they weren't .

The punchline was the players of the game .

If they all had stories like May's , then they had no life back home to look forward to , they had nothing to lose so they would do anything because winning granted them new life .

And amidst all of these people that wanted new life , Dean wanted to win to return to his old life .

Dean understood the game now.

It was a massive witch hunt .

The aim of the game would be to survive the other players , the golems were not the threat here .