“Addy. Hey, Addy. Hey, stop ignoring me!” I grabbed her by her shoulder and suddenly she twirled around to face me. We were standing under the willow tree, whose crown was now just blackened twigs.

  Addy did not look at all happy to see me.

  “Do you know why I’m angry?” she asked. “Because you’re here. This is a convergence event, the real thing. We don’t use them for training, not that you can understand even that much. Experts get sent in to fix it before whatever’s trapped here can get out.”

  “Experts like you?” I asked.

  She scoffed. “Not even. I’m still in training.”

  Still in training, and still she managed to cut one of those big spider-crabs down while in the middle of a crowd?

  “Well, I know that a wizard dropped you off in my lap after beating you black and blue,” I counted off the top of my hand. “I know your sword shapeshifts at least as much as you. And anything pink is evil. Say, do you know why the wizard claimed you’d save the world one day?”

  “Stromboli doesn’t know shit! He’s a meddling, pretentious smartass who thinks that just because he’s the world’s seventh least incompetent diviner that means he has the right to act like he owns my future!” She growled and kicked one of the tiny creature’s corpses. A good chunk of lawn and dirt went with it. “It’s not the first time he’s tried to make a name for himself with ominous and vague predictions. I’m not the only weretanuki they apply to. I have a whole clan on the other side of the world. But no, goddamn Stromboli knows best…”

  She grouched and cursed, trampling a line in the dirt.

  So hey, wizards were unreliable sources at best, and dicks at worst. Good to know. I wasn’t exactly convinced that he lied to me just for the laughs. Maybe he does think highly of this volatile magical weretanuki girl, maybe he was just pretending to. Luckily, I don’t need to borrow his opinions. I’m plenty motivated already.

  Addy stalked back and forth, chewing on a finger. Next thing I knew she was right up in my face, jabbing me in the chest. “Here is what’s going to happen: There will be an evacuation zone. I don’t know where, but there always is at least one. You will enter that evacuation zone. You will defend it. You will stay there until this whole thing blows over. Is that clear?”

  What? Why?

  She tried to tear herself away but I grabbed her wrist. “No. No, it is not clear. What evacuation zone? What dome? Addy, what the heck do you mean by the… dome…?”

  Addy pointed up and my gaze followed hers. There in the sky the sun was still half-eclipsed by the rent in the space-time fabric. Next to it was the pink planet peeking through — shit, I just looked at it. Except it didn’t hurt? Sure, it itched at the back of my mind, but that was miles better than bleeding from my eyes.

  Custodians can look at eldritch things, got it.

  The fractal coral structures repeating over its surface were almost beautiful. “I don’t see anything.”

  Addy paused. “Right. You still have a baseline Sense stat.”

  She stared at me before grabbing me by my wrist and tugging me across the football field before stopping somewhere in the middle.

  “Um, Addy?”

  “Stretch your hand out.”

  She grabbed it, leading me across the football field and into the beginnings of the nearby woods.

  "Move forward."

  Confused, and a little bit disturbed, I took one step forward and felt my foot bonk into an invisible something. A force was pushing back against me. It felt like a million electric ants crawling over my hand, ready to electrocute me at any time. There was a slight depression in the grass that went left and right as far as I could see, and a tree bisected right down the middle. A small mimic was curled up next to it, seemingly zapped to death.

  [Creektin Containment Barrier]

  Recommended Custodian level: LvL 22

  Custodian limit: 3/3

  Estimated contained mimic biomass: 550 tons

  Additional modifiers: Pending assessment…

  Estimated time until containment breach: 6 days, 23 hours

  [Charge the dome’s neutralization features by removing a portion of total threats. Varying charge levels allow various modes of threat removal, with higher cost causing less collateral damage. All options guarantee total mimic destruction below lvl 50 equivalent strength. Threat level is measured by weight. It is recommended to complete evacuation before triggering any of the features below.]

  Thermo-nuclear autoclave: 3.23/50 tons

  Antimonic acid rain: 3.23/80 tons

  The Wild Hunt: 3.23/140 tons

  My eyes grew wide. “It’s all metric.”

  “That’s what you focus on?” Addy asked, exasperated.

  “I’m joking, I’m joking.” My coping method of choice. “So we’re trapped in here? The mimics are too, which seems a lot worse for them since we can blow it all up once the dome is charged. And we have less than seven days until a containment breach, whatever that is. Okay. Okay.”

  A mildly terrifying idea, considering what we were trapped together with. I could feel the hyperventilation coming at me hard and sharp. This was clearly not a problem I could hug away. It was on an entirely different scale.

  I turned to Addy, hoping for any modicum of reassurance. But she just looked grim-faced, muttering to herself, pacing in circles.

  “This won’t be a second Capua. I won’t let it. Do the math, c’mon… All I need is to…” Suddenly, she froze in place. “We’re screwed.”

  “We are?” I squeaked.

  “I’m not built to handle a convergence event on my own. I can take out the big critters. Maybe. I’ll need more levels. And you,” she muttered, turning to me. “I can’t protect everyone while I’m at it. You’ll slow me down. You’re new and inexperienced. ”

  I blinked. “Did you just call me a noob?”

  “If you were twenty,” she said, ignoring my interjection, “maybe thirty levels higher, then maybe, maybe we could consider working together, or splitting up to cover more ground. However, you don’t know shit, you don’t have any gear, and you have never charged a spell in your life. You don’t even know how the shop works.”

  “Shop?” The moment I said it a window popped up in my vision, followed by several highly intrusive pop-ups spider-webbing out of it.

  [Lost a leg? Leg-Up cheap & quick auto-installing prostheses will get you running from any beasties, nasties, and alien invaders in a jiffy.]

  [Healing potions, healing potions. Real* troll blood at 1/8th concentration. - 50 points per cup, choice between vial, injector, and inhaler included. *DO NOT* go beyond recommended dose.]

  [Get your Smith & Smither hard iron here. Quality work and good prices for mid-range enchanted weapons. For commissions, message David.]

  My eyes flicked back and forth between categories — heavy weapons, medical, beachwear, toys, gacha corner — before landing on underwear.

  [Soulbound* underwear (F): Slightly enchanted. For everyday use in every circumstance an agent can find themselves in. Prevents awkward scenarios after respawn. 12 Soulcoins]

  [*Soulbound items can be teleported to the owner from any distance free of charge. Soulbound items are more resistant to wear & tear and can be repaired more easily than conventional objects.]

  Even though it cost about a third of my current coins I bought it immediately, and was miffed to discover that buying things also had a timer.

  [Package arriving in: 1 min]

  Order by thought, delivery by teleport.

  “Oh my god it’s so convenient,” I whined.

  I’d barely needed to think about it and now I was twelve soulcoins poorer.

  Addy snorted. “What, first time you’ve had a microchip implanted in your brain?”

  “Oh my god it's in my brain!” Right, that was much more convenient than teleporting whatever information this was directly inside of me. It probably did that too, or maybe it just connected to the internet. I probably had wifi now. Mobile hotspot-girl Samantha, rolling out!

  I grabbed the smaller girl by both shoulders and began shaking her. “Addy, what is this, why is this, please tell me it has an incognito mode and child safety. I positively, absolutely cannot be trusted with a digital shop in my brain.”

  Addy stared at me in confusion. “You’re weird. Put some clothes on, then go and find someone else to babysit you.”

  “Wha—babysit?”

  “I know why you’re here, Sam, I know why the system is throwing you at me. It thinks I’m slacking, it think’s I’m weak since I can’t fly, that I’m not good enough. That I need a-a, an emotional support Custodian.”

  “—Is that like a friend in Custodian terms?—”

  “—And it's right, you know? I’ve spent all my life running from coast to coast putting out one fire after the other, but no matter what I do I just can’t seem to make much headway on anything.” She stared me in the eyes. “But I will make it one day. And I don’t need help, not from a wizard’s prophecy, certainly not from you, not anyone else’s. So leave. Go do whatever you want to do. I’ll handle this on my own, somehow.”

  She turned to leave as I was still stewing in the wall of issues she’d just dumped on my butt.

  This… is less than ideal.

  I caught up, turned her around to face me, slammed another two hands into the tree behind her as I looked her in the eye.

  “I will not leave you. Going out alone got you killed. Regardless, not being strong enough got me killed.”

  “There were civilians. I couldn’t use half my spells.”

  “—not the point! Teaming up will help us both, but I need you to play ball with me, not against me.” Truer words had yet to be spoken on this football field. Forcing her here and now was likely to end in her rejecting me further. I should soften the blow, offer some cheese to get her out of her lonely mousehole. “Think of me as your silly spidery sidekick. I’ll follow along with whatever orders you give, as long as that means we’re working together. If that is alright with you, of course.”

  Her face quickly flushed crimson. Oh crap, she was angry as hell, why was she angry, was she was going to say no—

  Addy huffed, her face suddenly morphing into a forced saccharine smile. “Will you really do whatever I say?”

  “Um, yeah? You have the experience.” I shot her my best grin and thumbs up, which turned into three thumbs up and one hand desperately trying to form a fist. “I’m here to help!”

  “Then put some damn clothes on!”

  A cardboard box materialized out of thin air and hit me on the head. “Ack!”

  My underwear. Right. That stuff. I played back the interactions of the last minute in my head and oh boy, haha, whoops.

  Maybe she didn’t flush out of anger but because I was practically pinning her to the wall. That’s… good? Good to know she swings that way I guess?

  Wait, no, stop it Sam. You’re not here to romance magical girls. You’re here to fix them.

  I scrunched my forehead. “Help. I’m here to help them.”

  “You ready yet?” Addy asked from around the other side of the tree.

  “I’m done,” I said, standing up proudly. The description had really undersold this stuff. It was so sporty and inoffensive that I could have worn it on the track and nobody would have blinked an eye at it. It was soft and offered mundo support, perfectly adhering to everything. Magical underwear was the best.

  “Congratulations, you have done the bare minimum,” Addy deadpanned.

  “The other clothes were so freaking expensive,” I groaned.

  “Did you exclude the soulbound tag?”

  “I… guess I didn’t.” When I did, the prices fell from double digits to one or two soulcoins, max. I bought an entire outfit for one soulcoin, which the system immediately superimposed onto a 3d model of myself.

  Shopping like this was so cool. It probably scanned my body to get those proportions, specifically without consent, but it sure was convenient. “I am starting to think that privacy really is overrated. Wow, they have everything in here.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Everything in the world,” Addy said. “Whether it’s in an Amazon warehouse, a questionably sane tinkerer’s lab, or a secret government stash, it’ll find its way to you.”

  “... are we paying money to have the system steal gear for us?”

  Addy shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe some top egghead in The Society knows exactly how The System works, but nobody could tell you how it makes every little decision. It’s a matrioshka doll of AIs inside a black box. All it does is what it’s always done, which is grow more efficient year by year at supporting us in defending Earth. That means using your enemies as currency, your emotions as fuel, and relying on mundane technology to communicate instead of more reliable, but astronomically expensive telepathy.”

  “How comforting.”

  She grinned an evil grin. It was very un-magical-girly.

  I swallowed any further questions and worries because yay, all of my stuff was already being teleported in. Running shoes were an absolute must, so I got some top-shelf stuff from whoever for exactly one soulcoin. Then there were pants. Mobility was going to be chief, and summer was only going to get warmer. Cargo pants were a necessity; I was anticipating that storage space was going to come in handy. Finally, a sleeveless top, with adjustable straps to accommodate my arms. I couldn’t wear anything with sleeves due to obvious many-armed reasons, but hey, there were worse fates.

  Glad it's not winter.

  “Say, I noticed that my stat sheet is different from when I was up in orbit. It says I have six Body, but I only put three points into it. Can you maybe help me figure that out?”

  Addy paused, but then tromped over and started flicking through the little letters hovering in front of my face at a practiced pace.

  Her brows furrowed. They did that a lot. “You have an essence? Already? How!?”

  “A what now?” She booped a thing and that thing did a thing. “Could you maybe slow down a tad so I can follow what you’re—”

  [Huntsman spider Essence]

  Tier 1

  Rarity: Uncommon

  Growth: +1 Body

  Ability: [2] abilities

  “—doing. Oh wow.” The window was glittering with green sparkles as if it was trying to tell me I just got a rare pull. Which was a total lie. It was clearly just uncommon. “That’s, uhhh, something.”

  “Something that shouldn’t be possible, unless… The big spider. You took the friggin’ big spider’s essence.”

  “... yippie?”

  “No! Not yippie! I was trying to get that for, for…” she flailed her hands before sinking down in defeat. “It doesn’t matter. Two extra hands wouldn’t make me much more effective anyways.” Then she turned a side eye to me. “I forgot to ask, but are they…”

  “Totally, irrevocably, unapologetically cool? Heck yeah they are! I can juggle so many balls, er, if I knew how to juggle. And huntsman spiders! They’re amazing! Did you know that spiders of the Sparassidae Family don’t build nets? They prowl for insects and small vertebrates with speed and strength. They have a grasping reflex with their mighty limbs, which in hindsight explains why I want to hug you so much. Can I hug you?”

  “No.”

  Dammit.

  Addy paused, seemingly confused by my overwhelming arachnid knowledge. “You’re… alright with turning half spider?”

  “I mean, yeah. Spiders are cool. Er, but my hands are kinda hard to control individually. I think my nerves might be a bit crossed. I’d complain to whoever laid the wiring but, uh, that’d be a bit unthankful.” I leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “Why, should I be worried about the transformation? Is turning into a spider person bad for your health? I didn’t reduce my lifespan to that of a huntsman, did I? I’m planning to live for longer than two years, y’know.”

  She stared at me for a moment and then snorted.

  “Was that a laugh?”

  “Was not.”

  “It totally was.”

  “Oh my god, what are you, five?”

  “Girl, I’m a solid ten out of ten. A nine. An eight, if you’re into tall, short-haired yappers. Otherwise, I’m a solid seven.”

  I shot four fingerguns at her.

  Addy’s left eye twitched. Was that a good sign, was she a fan of my antics? No? Maybe she noticed that I was kind of freaking out over here, and that comedy was my only coping mechanism.

  “We don’t have time for this. The System probably only explained half of itself to you, and since it’s your strongest tool, I’ll explain the rest.” She cleared her throat. “There are nine planets besides Earth that house alien life, all of which have cultivated some form of latent magic until it suffused their entire biosphere. When a convergence event happens, it is because these planets have aligned in a way that allows unfathomable streams of energies to flow between them. This makes travel between planets possible, even accidental, and since Earth is the only planet without any innate magical talent, it acts as a funnel.”

  That was… a lot to unpack. “So what you’re saying is vampires are aliens.”

  “Humans too. You’re not exactly a non-magical species. Some humans become wizards, if rarely. Which, mind you, isn’t a good thing. The Pink Planet used to go by a different name that has since been forgotten to time. Due to how mimics seem designed rather than naturally occurring, the theory is that the civilization that used to live up there accidentally consumed itself by creating a self-replicating, hyper-adaptive universal predator."

  “Why in the everliving heck would they do that?”

  “They’re idiots,” Addy deadpanned. “Or arrogant. Or maybe a wizard got lazy. Maybe mimics are the endpoint of evolution. Either way, they’re gone now, and their planet is the color of evil.”

  Huh. Well, that proves one resolution of the Fermi Paradox. The birth of intelligent civilizations enables the creation of ways by which to end said civilization permanently. Though, we’ve kind of known that since the 40s and 50s. A nuclear exchange would recolor most of the earth’s continents in entirely different colors.

  “So, Earth is the crossroads between planets. Seems like a good place to be if you want to trade a lot. Or go to war.”

  “War, trade, migration, abduction, invasion, subversion, diversion. Earth’s a big place which couldn’t defend itself as one until recently. Some civilizations have decided to exploit this in the past.” Her face grew grim. “Some invasive organisms too.”

  “And that’s where we come in, I assume?”

  She gave me a curt nod. “To defend earth, all her children must unite. The system gives us a boost by providing a framework for building a pyramid of magic. At the bottom there are stats. Stats increase your basic ability in the four main sectors: Body, Sense, Mind, Soul. Then a tier above are the Essences, which are concentrated forms of magic rarely found inside creatures with inherent magic. Essences provide scaling stats per level as well as active spells or passive abilities depending on the type of essence. You gain a slot for an essence every five levels until level twenty, then every ten until level fifty, then every twenty-five levels.”

  “But you don’t start with one?” I hedged.

  “No. Which is why it’s weird that you already have one.”

  “Probably ‘cause my soul got blended with an alien spider. Can I hug you now?”

  “No.”

  Dammit.

  “Ooh, what’s the highest level anybody’s gotten?” I was really getting into this, and so was Addy by the looks of it. Talking as an authority on things you knew just felt good by nature.

  “That would be Custodian Magical Guy, who reached somewhere around one-hundred-and-ten last year. He talked about the benefits of infusing potions with your own blood for enhanced potency in the Cautious Custodian magazine. Personally, I’m skeptical.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised Custodians have a monthly newsletter.” Nobody ever said The Society had to eschew modern technology for vibe’s sake. They had a website, they probably had blogs and… trusted pizza delivery-persons. “But seriously? Magical Guy?”

  “He’s an ancient vampire. It’s a direct translation from ancient Sumerian. Everyone hates his nickname, including himself, but The System hands them out once you reach level 30, so what’s he supposed to do?” Addy said. “I reserve the right to laugh at you if it calls you something ridiculous like spidergirl or the four-armed wonder.”

  “I’m sure being sued into oblivion isn’t conducive to saving the world.” Speaking of, back to the important stuff. “And I level up by doing what?”

  “Training, killing monsters, refining your ECC. Emotional Crystal Core. It’s for casting spells. It’s also inside your brain.”

  “It really is like a videogame,” I muttered before my brain caught up to the last bit. “Wait, did you say spells?”

  Addy nodded. “Lastly, and finally, spells and transformations. Transformations give you huge bonuses, but those are incredibly rare finds, usually only on rare essences or above.”

  “Like your weretanuki form?” I hedged.

  Addy just stared at me with a blank face. “I am a weretanuki. Shapeshifting is what I do, and I’m a lot more comfortable in my big form than this.”

  “Awww, what’s there not to like about it?” I asked.

  She gestured at herself as if I was supposed to understand that her totally-not-magical-tanuki-girl form was an affront to god himself or, barring that, to some sort of common sensibility.

  “It’s not very effective.”

  “I think you did a good job with this transformation. It’s very cute.” I cupped my chin, nodding to myself as Addy made a sound like a spluttering helicopter. Mayday, mayday, weretanuki down!

  She caught herself, but barely. “ANYWAYS. Spells. Spells are what make every build unique. Passive spells are always active and don’t need any emotional upkeep. Active spells use a specific mix of emotions as fuel. The more intense the emotion, the faster it charges. They’re like batteries, so once you’ve charged one you can keep it ready until you need to activate it. Some spells can hold multiple charges. Most spells require you to chant their name to activate them.”

  I hummed in appreciation as I brought up my stat sheet again. I had exactly one passive spell and one active spell. First, the passive.

  [More Arms] - Passive

  You gain an extra pair of arms. Gain another pair of arms every [150] points in Body. Total strength gain is divided up between all arms.

  That explained the extra arms. It didn’t say how I was going to better control them but hey, everyone had to start somewhere.

  And then the spell, my first and only one.

  [Arms & Arms Proficiency] - Joy

  Charges: 0/1

  Charge cost: Minor

  Increases proficiency with weapons of all kinds by [1.5%] per point in Body. Increases ability to control multiple arms at once by [3%] per point in Body.

  “Huh. That isn’t very flashy.” But it was fitting. More proficiency and control, the two things I was missing in my life, haha. Magic for the win.

  “Sure isn’t,” Addy said. “I’m afraid to ask, but what’s your joy-con at?”

  “My what?”

  “Your joy efficiency. The conversion rate of that specific emotion into magical energy. Emotions grow with you as you experience them. The more familiar you are with that emotion, the higher the conversion efficiency. ”

  “Oh. Uh, system?”

  [Joy conversion efficiency: 12%]

  That was… a number. Woah Samantha, hold your insightful comments. Next you’re going to tell yourself that the things in front of you were called words.

  “Twelve percent? Describe it to me in terms I understand?”

  [You, Samantha Rubens, are a novice agent. You have not trained in emotional management or magical affinity training. Your childhood was dominated by joy, fear, and sadness. You feel surprise, trust, and anticipation moderately. You have a notable lack of anger. Your disgust is non-existant.]

  “I’m afraid to ask, but… how do I compare to the average Custodian?”

  [Average Custodian ECC efficiency: 110%]

  [Average untrained human ECC efficiency: 12%]

  [Overall magic rating: D-]

  “That’s not very good,” I groaned. I thought I had a varied childhood. I felt love and fear and joy, all at different levels at different times. But no, apparently I didn’t feel hard enough. Now I was a tenth as effective at creating magical charge as the average Custodian.

  “It really isn’t,” Addy concurred. “Frankly, I have no clue why the system chose you among all people, and now and here, of all times and places. Your joy is almost as inefficient as mine.”

  I laser-focused on Addy so fast I could hear my neck creak.

  That was really, really bad. For Addy, specifically. Custodians probably reached triple-digit conversion efficiency through some sort of extensive training regimen. Addy had gone through the training and was still as bad as me. Either she was a slacker — highly unlikely — or she simply neglected joy because… it wasn’t necessary for her build?

  Yeah, sounds about right.

  “What’s your spread like?” I asked, then, because it was kind of personal, added: “You don’t have to tell me. But I won’t blab.”

  “You should know if we’re going to be working together,” she said, standing straight with practiced professionalism. “I’m a buff-tank. I buff myself so I can fight in melee and distract shit. I’m big on anticipation and fear. Some anger too.”

  And the rest of the emotions, well, it was left unsaid, but she didn’t deal much in joy, surprise, or trust. That confirmed a whole lot and left me with even more questions, questions that could wait for later because oh my god I had magic. It was subtle, it was pragmatic, but above all, it was mine.

  Look mum, I’m a magical girl. Spider. Thing.

  The thought of Lily’s face if I ever revealed my four arms by dramatically tossing away a cloak hiding them made me cackle inwardly.

  Finding the mental switch that diverted present emotions towards one spell or the other was surprisingly easy. They were open by default. Under Addy’s instruction I found it after a minute spent ruminating on how happy I was to feel the soil under my feet, the grass between my toes, to feel alive. With a mental flick, I felt the connection to my only active spell sever. With another, the channel opened, and something like liquid joy flowed out of me into the shape of a spell, a spell which I couldn't see nor feel, but which Addy assured me was very much there.

  The spell had been charging off of my happiness from exploring this odd videogame-esque system for a while now.

  [83% charged]

  [92% charged]

  [Arms & Arms proficiency: Charged - 100% Joy]

  All it needed was a mental flick of the switch and a yellow magic glow suffused my body, snaking up and down my limbs before settling in like a glowing tattoo.

  I wiggled my arms, and waggled them too. My control over them felt precisely 18% better than before, if I did the math correctly. What’s more, when I picked up my piddly pistol, a small voice in the back of my mind told me that yes, this was indeed not a great weapon, but there was room to improve on my own side as well. I shifted my grip, and suddenly my piddly pistol felt a lot more comfortable in my hands.

  Addy watched me intently as I did cartwheels and jumping jacks before flicking an arm forward. The second one on the same side only followed half of the way. It was progress. Even better, all this physical activity had a welcome side effect.

  [29% charged]

  “I’m so happy from casting it that I’m almost a third charged up again. Magic is awesome!”

  “Joy mages are weird,” Addy muttered.

  “The effect isn’t even over,” I said with a grin. “Hey, if I get my Joy efficiency to thirty percent I could probably keep this spell running indefinitely. Assuming I’m feeling as happy as I am now.”

  “Wow. Cool.” Her mouth said one thing but her tone said another.

  I waggled my eyebrows. “Jealous?”

  “Maybe. It’s a lightweight spell. Most Custodians have a few running in parallel at all times.”

  “Excuses, excuses. You’re just jealous of all the friggin’ hand-magic I can do!” She retreated as I wiggled twenty fingers at her. “Maybe you should’ve become an envy mage.”

  She huffed and turned away. “Alright, enough horsing around. The portal in the sky hasn’t disappeared yet which means we still have a job to do.”

  “Like what, closing it?”

  “Like killing the mimics before they can break containment, or return through it with critical intel on earth. They used to be small, formless globs of tar during the first encounters in the eighties. Then they learned about spiders, crustaceans, a whole lotta insects. Now, every convergence event has a bunch of those big teleporting warforms and other nasty ones too. On the flipside, the convergence rift doesn’t stay open for more than an hour. After that, they have to deal with what they have on the ground.” She nodded towards the restaurant and the smoking corridor leading to showers and lockers. “Now c’mon, I need to get my phone back, and my clothes. I’ve had those since forever.”

  “Wow. How long was that ago?”

  “Ten years,” she said.

  My spell ran out just as I was mid-cartwheel, causing my handstand to turn into a catastrophic jumble of limbs.

  Ten years ago I was almost eleven and still figuring out which bugs I wanted to have in my collection. Ten years ago, the AI craze was just about to be halted because of the first large-scale AI terror attack on human soil.

  Ten years ago, Addy was nine years old. And even if she wasn’t fighting monsters I didn’t even know existed until today, she was learning how to.

  Oh god, she’s a child soldier.