Holden

I expect you to take me out to the nicest place in town after what you put me through. (Message Sent)

Chelsea: There are no nice places in town. I'd have to drive us up to Portland. Which I would... if that's what you really want.

Holden grinned at his phone.

What about a burger, beer, and good conversation? (Message Sent)

Chelsea: Good conversation with...?

A pretty girl. (Message Sent)

Chelsea: Block 15?

I'll pick you up at 7 (Message Sent)

Chelsea: I'll pick YOU up at 7

Holden sent Chelsea his address, and then leaned back in his work chair, stretching out his arms. It was only four, and all he had to work on were a handful of emails from old professors who had forgotten how to reset their passwords. Chase played some uninteresting MMO that ran like shit on the school desktop, so Holden stole one of Angel's Twizzlers from behind her back and watched over her shoulder as she dug into Dr. Dupont's files.

He'd let her copy the contents of the hard drive after she wouldn't stop begging. Given she always completed her work within the first couple hours of her shift, she'd spent the bulk of the week reading through files and narrating to Holden what she'd found.

Dr. Dupont had run lots of analyses on chemical components of melting glacier ice. There were many big words like ablation and parametrization and perfluoroalkyl. One of her studies was literally about dust accumulating on ice and was about as boring as watching dust accumulate on ice. But Angel found it all interesting and had been glued to one of Dupont's analyses since ten o'clock this morning.

Angel suddenly jerked her head up, tapping her chin in thought. "You know what we should do?"

"I'm afraid to ask," Holden said.

"Hack Dupont's socials." Angel snatched her phone from the table, her thumbs flying across the keyboard.

"Whoa whoa whoa. Hack her? Like her Instagram?"

"Yes, Holden. Like her Instagram."

"Why?"

"So we can see if she's okay, duh."

Holden rubbed his forehead. "I know I'm not a genius—"

"Understatement."

"—but you can't just hack someone. Dr. Dupont is smart. I'm sure she didn't set her password as Iheartgeomorphologylol."

"We'll just buy her leaked passwords from a data broker. Easy peasy!"

"Angel, no."

Angel huffed. "You know, Holden, real detectives think outside the box. You disappoint me."

"Why don't you just... I don't know... try friending her like a normal person?"

Angel glanced up at him. Holden stared at her.

"Fine-uh," she finally said, resting her elbow on a book left on the table. The spine read Without a Trace: The Story of the Deadswitch Five.

Holden tapped her arm and pointed to the book. "Can I see that?"

Angel pushed the book toward him and continued staring at her screen.

Holden read the inside flap; the book was about the group of hikers that had gone missing, including Naomi Vo, the woman resembling the dead body Dr. Dupont had found. "Where did you get this?" Holden asked.

"I bought it from this place called a bookstore. Fascinating concept."

Holden flipped through the pages. "Did you read it?"

"Twice."

"Can I borrow it?"

"For a week, then I'm charging interest."

Holden reached the glossy pages at the back and paused, studying photos of the hikers in their early twenties. He tapped his finger on a photo of two women in front of a snowcapped peak.

Avery Mathis and Naomi Vo summiting Mount Hood,the caption read.

He remembered Avery Mathis from his early college years, but back then she was Avablade, the hot gamer and YouTuber who all the neckbeards wanted to hate-fuck. He'd known she had disappeared, but it hadn't clicked in his head that she and Naomi were a part of the same group until now.

Holden had watched some of Avablade's videos back in the day. She was gorgeous, but she also played extremely dark, difficult games. She was funny too and had a habit of falling out of her chair during jump scares.

Holden's college roommate used to have Avablade playing on the monitor in their apartment several hours a day, so Holden was familiar with many of her VODs by proxy.

She had disappeared during the summer. His roommate had been backpacking Europe, so Holden had missed all his lamentations. But he'd seen one of her gameplays that summer, hadn't he? He only remembered because the game had been so weird.

Holden pulled the browser up on his desktop and started typing in the search.

avablade last game

He found the answer after skimming through a handful of gaming articles and returned to the search.

avablade out of the woods

The first result was the original video from her channel. He popped in his earbuds and clicked on it.

In the small box at the top of the screen, Avablade sat in her gaming chair. The room behind her was dark, as she usually had it, with pockets of violet ambient lighting. The lighting matched her signature oversized headphones. Her blonde hair fell perfectly straight over her shoulders.

The larger screen was the main menu of the game. In front of a black background, the branches of pixelated trees slowly wavered back and forth. There were no settings or options, only a start button at the very center of the screen.

"Hey, wildcats, this is Avablade, and you and I are gonna try and get Out of the Woods."

Holden turned up the volume and leaned forward.

"Now, this is an early alpha edition. The game isn't on Steam yet, so I'm super lucky to be a part of a small group of early players."

That was weird. The whole point of a developer giving streamers an early version of a game was so their subscribers would go purchase it or put it on their wishlist.

"There are only three things I know about this game." Avablade held up a finger. "One, it's super scary. Two, it's difficult enough to make Dark Souls players weep. And three, the dev let me know there's a massive twist at the end, so if you're not into spoilers, go watch Kaxsonate or something. I think he's playing through Skyrim for the millionth time.

"But if you're in it for the long haul, buckle up. I will fall off my chair at least a few times this run."

Avablade clicked Start, and Holden stole another one of Angel's Twizzlers while she wasn't looking.

The game began in a small village in the middle of the woods. Avablade played the main character of the butcher's daughter. As she went about the village making sales to the other villagers and tending to the slaughterhouse, the tutorial taught actions like how to talk to NPCs and use a weapon. The game was clearly indie, but the rendering proved beautiful and a little disturbing. Meat in the slaughterhouse swung on hooks and dripped crimson pixels. Forest shading cast a creepy perma-twilight over every individual structure. The subtle and eerie soundtrack mixed well with the ambient sounds of footsteps, door creaks, and wind through the trees.

As the tutorial and first in-game day ended, Avablade summarized the story so far for her fans.

"So every villager I've talked to is clearly freaked out by the surrounding woods for undisclosed reasons. I mean, they're freaked about everything—winter, getting sick, their dumbass village children. Maybe parasites from these tasty meat slabs I'm selling have wormed into their brains and are making them paranoid.

"I'm digging the vibe so far. Super spooky. And I definitely want to know what is in the woods. My interest is hooked."

Holden paused the video, opened another tab, and searched:

out of the woods game twist ending

He dug unsuccessfully through the first page before coming across an ancient Reddit post:

Obviously it sucks about Avablade going missing, but man I really want to know what the twist ending was. Anyone have more info?

The replies were unhelpful.

Holden tried searching just out of the woods game and clicked on the Wikipedia link.

Out of the Woodsis a survival horror video game developed by Cold Alpine Studio. The game was never released in full, the alpha version only sent to six influencers. The story takes place in a village within a mysterious forest, where the main character is chosen by the townspeople to escape through the woods and discover what is beyond the forest.

The status of the game is currently unknown, as are the whereabouts of the developers.

Holden scanned the page for more details. The plot summary was taken from Avery's VOD. According to the article, she was the first to record gameplay and didn't make it through the entire game. By the time it gained traction with the other players—after her disappearance—the game threw errors as they tried to install it, crashing their expensive rigs repeatedly. From the sound of it, none of them ever succeeded in getting the game to run.

Holden scrolled to the bottom. John Lawson's book, the very book that sat in his lap, was one of the article's references. But before he could pick it up and flip through the pages again, his phone buzzed.

He checked the caller ID.

California Institute of Technology

He hit accept and pressed the phone to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Holden?"

"Yeah?"

"This is Callie Eisenberg from Geo and Planetary Sciences at CalTech. I'm calling you back. Sorry for the late response."

"It's been like three weeks."

"Four, actually. Again, super sorry. Our admin is on maternity leave, and you know how things get. Anyway, I wanted to let you know we don't need the data on the drive."

Holden reeled. "You... you don't?"

"Oh, no, central admin has all the study files they need, and Dr. Dupont and Dr. Yarrow have their own separate databases."

"So Dr. Dupont's okay?"

"Okay? I mean, yeah, she's fine given the circumstances. Our department is closely knit, and we weren't expecting to lose one of our own. It's definitely a hard thing to go through. Such a tragedy."

Isaac.

"Do you know her personally?" Callie asked.

"I—uhh—no. I'm IT at OSU and cleaning out some of our hard drives. Found her notes from a study."

"Gotcha," Callie said. "She's been out in the field, which is why she personally couldn't take this call."

"I understand."

"If you could destroy the files for security purposes, that would be great. Otherwise, we need nothing else at the moment."

When Holden ended the call with Callie, he tried not to feel deflated. Of course Dr. Dupont was fine, and of course CalTech already had all the study files. This wasn't some mystery to be solved. He wasn't a "DaVinci Code," or whatever the hell Angel had called him.

Angel... Maybe she was onto something.

Holden scrolled through his apps and opened Instagram. He didn't need to hack Dupont or even friend her to find the last picture she was publicly tagged in.

A handful of accounts popped up when Holden typed in Dupont's name. The most promising handle, DrDee411, had a squashed CLIF Bar with a thumbs-up next to it as the profile pic.

Holden searched "DrDee411." Only a few rows of photos popped up, the newest one time-stamped a couple of months ago.

Dupont stood on a stage in front of a PowerPoint presentation with her hands on her hips and a cheesy grin on her face. The slide behind her had a picture of an erupting volcano, Mountain Fountain in meme text beneath it.

@DrDee411 coming at us with all the important scientific terms. #lectureseries #caltechlectureseries #scienceishot

Two months ago, Dr. Dupont presented at a seminar. She made puns about volcanoes and grinned like a dork.

Lauren had asked Holden what he was hoping to find, and this was it. The good ending at the end of his quest. Siena Dupont was fine. She really was completely, perfectly fine.

So why did he feel disappointed?