The detective nodded, grabbing her phone. “You need to be careful Erin. Look for a new job. Hell, find a new city to live in. You are getting too close to the narrative. Get away, as fast as you can.”

Erin frowned. “Sorry. It’s not that easy sometimes.”

Detective Grant scoffed, “Please, Erin, people say that all the time, lying to themselves. It is that easy. Leave the story, or die.”

“I can’t leave my mother here, and she has no one else. I will look around for another job, though I suspect I already have too many strikes against my name.” No one would willingly hire someone whose name showed up as a close friend to a puppet.

Let alone that Erin was going to be hanging out with more Protagonists on Friday. 

The other woman gave up, resigned in the manner of someone who’s had this conversation before. “Well, Erin, it's been nice knowing you. You will probably end up an NPC before the end of the month if you don’t leave.” The difference between puppets and Non-Protagonist Characters was that most puppeting was temporary. Being an NPC was permanent, like Janette. “Unless you go live with your mother, stay home and don’t work inside city limits. You could escape that way. Is her comfort more important than your life?”

 “I might as well kill myself if I hide away on a luddite farm. That’s no solution.” Erin didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to be here.

The detective considered, carefully, before saying, gently, “Well, if you don’t think you can escape, better dead than read, I say. But you might be able to find a job doing something small, unobtrusive, like a fast food worker.” 

“The police found my name already linked to a puppet and sharing an office with an outright Protagonist. No one here has any delusions as to their chances of easily finding another job at any company. The only reason Divinilogic doesn’t fire me is because they’d be worried I’d turn into some puppet two-bit villain.”

“You sound like all those others I’ve written reports on before now. Tomorrow, a year from now? ”

Erin was amused at the inane turn of their conversation, but was by no means laughing. “Studies have shown that people who try to escape from Plot around them get killed for that Plot as much as twice as often as people who keep their head low.”

The detective raised her eyebrow. “And what university published that?”

Erin rolled her eyes. “You know it wasn’t published. That’s how narratives work even, or rather especially, around Protagonists. The soldier that runs from the fight dies first. The scaredest teenager is slashed by the monster before the final act. Cowards die. I have a better chance if I keep my head low but held high.”

The detective shook her head as she stood, putting her phone back into her pocket. “You must not have been reading that paper close enough. It also says that people who don’t try to escape become NPCs three times as often as they don’t. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be killed.” Unspoken was her disappointment, but her voice dripped in it, as if Erin had already decided to side with the Protagonists.

Erin stood as well. “I’d say you are deluding yourself if you think being a detective gives you better odds.” Law enforcement was nearly the highest risk profession in the world. Erin tried to keep the frustrated nasty tone out of her voice. 

The detective flashed a sanguine, toothy grin, not friendly in the least. “It was nice talking to you, Erin. You have a good day.”

Erin levered the door open, letting outside light in. “Thank you for sharing with me. You have a good day too. You don’t need me to show you to the door?”

The woman’s smile had faded but didn’t vanish as she said no less harsh, “We’ll be fine.”

Erin watched Detective Grant step out of the conference room and head towards the elevators without a word. The officer, whose name she’d forgotten already, raised his eyebrows at Erin, who just shook her head and shrugged.

The officer’s expression turned sour but said pleasantly, “Have a good day. Best of luck.”

“You too,” she said, offering a wane smile. He didn’t deserve her enmity, as much as Detective Grant rubbed her the wrong way.

He followed the detective and Erin let go of the tension she’d been holding. Running her fingers through her hair, she went back into the room and plugged the camera back into power.

Sloppy work from the detective, leaving suspicious mistakes like that lying around. Tyson wouldn’t be bothered with investigating a little nothing like an unplugged teleconference room camera, probably.

But the Cavalry superhero group had at least two, two and a half, detective/investigation heroes on it. The Ferret and Alleyshadow were often digging into mysterious goings on, mundane and mystical respectively, and Tyson’s Silverknight himself was known to be a jack-of-all-trade’s hero, and found himself in a wide variety of Plots.

Erin was not going to work any later to make up for the visit of the police. As far as she was concerned, it was on the clock. She got back to her desk and signed in, eager to get a few last things done before she left.

Beast Hunter, Erin could ignore as just a coincidence, Tyson and Janette, she could not. Now linked to Ennui, Erin Razor wondered how long it would take for other people to catch on.

An hour later, Erin found out that everyone already knew. The email was from Isabel. It was short, even curt, as it requested that Erin organize Greg’s desk, identify everything work related, and pack up all of his personal things for security to take out later, before the end of the day, if she could. It was Erin’s highest priority.

After reading the email, she glanced out her cube’s little doorway towards Isabel’s cube, which was barely a raised voice away. There was nothing personal in that email. Glancing back at the screen, she frowned. 

Maybe Isabel was affected by Greg’s suicide. Maybe it was just an off-day. Maybe Isabel, who always had the time to visit and chat, just didn’t feel like coming by today. Did someone from the police department already leak that she was linked to Ennui? Or was lunch with Janey enough?

Erin tried not to lie to herself. She was being quarantined already, as everyone assumed Erin Razor was the Plot’s next victim. 

Greg’s desk was more or less exactly as Erin remembered it from Friday. She might have been one of the last people to see him alive. 

More than a little dejected, she went to the mailroom to find a pair of empty boxes that used to hold printer paper that people didn’t ever throw out. 

A couple hours later, she went back to her desk, logging in just to record her time and check for any emergencies. She was out of the office by five, well after most everyone else who had a choice on a Monday in Meridian City. Monday and Thursday nights were dangerous. She felt for all the service industry workers who had to stay in the city during an event night. Let alone all those who lived there.

Leaving the city this late was slower than usual, and she was used to eating at three, not seven. She even started making food before she undressed into a loose comfortable shirt and some sweatpants. She ate dinner while she checked her email for server concerns. After that, she went to bed a little later than she wanted without checking the news. She slept worse than she had Friday, waking up every thirty minutes or so, worried she’d shut off her alarm.

Tuesday morning came with more Plot news. She normally got up at  two AM to check the online news. She rolled out of bed at one this morning. 

The news on the forums consisted of a host of new exploits, like how Beast Hunter made a huge discovery in his spirit hunt, linking it to some out-of-town villain no one recognized immediately. The Rave - a trio of twenty-something super heroes - stopped a new drug from hitting the streets. A trickle of minor crime being stopped by various superheroes and the Cavalry investigating a break-in to a pharmaceutical company, suspected of being linked to that new supervillain that attacked the water treatment plant.

She usually loved to learn what places got hit the night before, find patterns, places to avoid, and Plot threads to keep an eye out for. If she was better informed that a particular superhero was seen on some street several times, she tried to avoid it. She’d been lazy last week, with Beast Hunter. She wouldn’t make the same mistake so soon after.

She didn’t want to do anything as overt as quit her job, but she wasn’t afraid to admit she did peruse job listings as well, hoping to avoid Tyson and his Plot. It was a fantasy that she’d find another job now, but she could hope. 

It wasn’t until she was strapping on her helmet to ride into work that she realized she’d forgotten to do research on Rex Magnum. Greg’s suicide and the shadow of Ennui had completely knocked the thought of some new Protagonist straight out of her head.

Determined not to let Protagonists and her world ruin it, she decided to go to the coffee shop as was usual on Tuesday for her. True to her worry, the place was nearly vacant. The smoothie machine had replaced a rack where they used to sell coffee beans. Like Erin herself, the coffee shop was tainted by association with Plot.

There was the same cashier at least, appearing more tired than usual, and a little lost in his cleaning. When Erin had entered the coffee shop, he glanced up from where he was mopping, surprised. He began to put mop away as he said, “One second.”

“No hurry.” Erin was a little early today, having abandoned her usual pretense of a schedule. There were a couple of older folk in the shop, one in a suit and with a newspaper, the other playing on a tablet with a keyboard attached. No one else in line, no one else here.

The clerk washed his hands, as Erin asked, “Just you today?” She didn’t see the second person usually needed to meet the demands of a good coffee shop in the middle of town on a weekday.

He studied the dark coffee shop for a moment himself, as if contemplating the omens. “What? Oh... yeah. Been slow since Friday… Oh, you were here then, weren’t you?”

“Unfortunately so.”

“Yeah. No one else wanted to come in for a P-Day especially.” He meant Plot Day. In Meridian City, Plot Days were Monday and Thursday nights from about 8 PM to 4 AM, with a little room for variety. It was different for different cities. Big cities like New York City and Duwamps had three Plot days a week. All three in New York were during the day too.  

Common theory reasoned that the Plot wanted to keep things consistent so the Protagonists knew when they should be available.

Erin knew it helped her and other normal people, so they didn’t have to go truly mad at new chaos every day. None of the Protagonists ever commented on it, so it must have been one of those acceptable fourth-wall-breaking things. Or maybe they don’t notice days of the week.

“Yeah, but if you start avoiding everything, then you might as well go live on a farm, and I’d rather have my coffee than have to shovel manure all day,” Erin answered.

“For sure. I think people are worried we’ll become some sort of Protag haunt, after B.H. stopped by, and a member of the Rave came by on Saturday. Don’t matter either way for me. Got to pay the bills, stringed or not. Anyway, the usual?”

Erin confirmed, and took a few moments to sit down and glance at her phone, to putter around on the forums online to see if there was general consensus that the coffee place was ruined, or if it was just a temporary thing.

Before long, though, she ended up burning that extra time before work, and had to make her way back to the office. Via terse emails that Tuesday morning, she learned that she would need to organize Greg’s work too, so she was more than busy enough all day, sorting through what Greg had been doing.

It made some sense. She had cleaned out his desk.

But everyone avoided her gaze for the rest of the week.