Page 9 of Anchor

Mud.

“Through the gates,” said Poppy, stuck between a smile and a frown because she had no idea how to react just now. “You came out through the gates with another player.”

Another player.“Which other player?” Because it was Taland. The other player was Taland—he’d walked me through the Drainage to get to the fucking gates.

Poppy shook her head, eyes wide and lips parted, getting paler by the second. “I don’t…I don’t know, Ro. I didn’t care to check his name.”

There went my thoughts again, crashing onto one another. My mind was a chaotic mess within the second.

“Is he…did he…did he survive?” My voice shook. I reached for the glass of water in her hands just to do something.

“I think so,” said Poppy, and I’d just brought the rim to my lips when I stopped again.

“You think so or you know so?”

“I-I-I?—”

“Poppy, is the player dead?!”

Yes, I realized I was freaking her out. I realized how I must have looked to her, but the thing was that I didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t have cared less about how I looked or sounded. All I cared about was Taland.

“No, he’s not,” she finally said, and it felt better than water. “He’s not dead. They said,the twosurvivorswho made it out of the gates—he’s not dead.”

My heart thundered in my chest. “Where is he?”

Had they taken him back to the Tomb? Had they chained him, dragged him from the City of Games?

Poppy shrugged, and she was almost afraid to do so. “I don’t…I don’t know, Ro. I don’t know. I didn’t care to check.”

“His name,” I whispered. “What was his name?”

“Collins, I think. His last name was Collins.”

Collins.

My ears rang once more. I brought the glass to my lips and finally took another sip of the water. Collins wasnotTaland’s last name.

“Rora, are you okay? You’re scaring me,” Poppy said, and any other time I’d have probably felt bad about it.

“I need my laptop,” I said now. “I need my laptop right now.”

“But you need to rest first. You need to lie down and eat and?—”

“Laptop, Poppy,” I cut her off. “Bring my laptop—it’s right over there on my desk. Go.” Very unlike me to order Poppy—that was usually her thing—but I couldn’t help it, couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Go!” I urged her again when she remained on the bed and watched me with those eyes wide, glossy, like they were full of unshed tears.

Finally, she moved.

Finally, she grabbed the laptop from my desk and brought it to me, and of course the battery was dead, so she had to go get the charger, too, and plug it in behind my bedside table. Those couple of minutes before the laptop came to life might have been some of the longest minutes the world has ever gone through.

Then I opened my browser.

Poppy climbed on the bed with me. My hands were shaking so badly that I barely managed to type two words on the keyboard correctly.

“Want me to get that?” she said, but she didn’t need to bother. The first suggestion of the browser wasThe Iris Roe 2024.

Suddenly a million images of my face filled the screen and I flinched.

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