Chapter Twenty-Two: Wanting to Go Home

  When we tiptoed over to peer between the tree trunks next to Bear, I’d had a plan. We’d observe the gators, and I’d use [Analyze] to see how tough they were. We’d assess the situation and then we’d take action. Maybe we’d back away for a minute to quietly discuss our approach before beginning to fight.

  I’d forgotten who my companions were.

  Zelda was having none of that shit. She took one look at the gators, then lunged. Bear, who’d been showing an unusually sensible level of caution, didn’t hesitate to follow. And Riley, the usual leader of the pack, couldn’t resist, of course. If his packmates were fighting, he was fighting, too.

  I might’ve screamed, but honestly, I didn’t have time. Zelda used her [Size is Just a State of Mind] ability and was suddenly huge. She grabbed the biggest gator by the back of its neck and shook it like a chew toy.

  Riley gave a single bark, then yanked one of the smaller gators by its tail, dragging it out of the fray. Bear bit down on another’s snout, going straight for the kill. I waded in with my shovel, finishing them off with solid smacks to their heads.

  It was revolting. Gator guts spilled onto the dirt, and by the time it was over, only the biggest gator’s body was still in one piece. Zelda had broken its spine with her first strike. The shaking afterward had just been gravy.

  Alma didn’t scream either. She watched the fight with a grim smile curving her lips. When the gators were just meat, blood, and body parts, she said in a tone of deep satisfaction, “Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes.”

  She stepped off her tangle of tree roots with the grace of a debutante entering a ballroom. That mode lasted about two seconds.

  JJ hurled himself at her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her off the ground in a hug that would have been a Category 5, if hugs were categorized like hurricanes.

  Bear nosed the remains. The body parts disappeared, and the loot popped into existence on the leftover blood and gore.

  Loot? Good loot? Bad loot, my dog apparently decided, her disgruntlement clear as she turned her back on our rewards and began exploring the bases of the trees.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. The hug JJ was giving his mom seemed like it might last for a while, so I checked out the loot. Some leather, some teeth, both labeled crafting materials, and a little black cube.

  I picked up the cube and turned it over in my hand. It felt lightweight, more like plastic than metal, though I couldn’t tell what it was made from. A faint blur around the edges, though, felt like it might be my mana sight at work again. Was this cube magical?

  I tapped [Analyze].

  Item: Mana-based Power Source

  Type: Component

  Quality: Common

  Condition: New

  Description: A mana storage module designed to extend the operational capacity of compatible energy weapons.

  How interesting. Useless to me at the moment, but I’d be willing to wager real money that this little cube worked with the device in Alma’s hand.

  JJ finally let go of his mom. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were bright, and his face held such unguarded relief and love that I had to look away.

  For someone caught in his circumstances, he’d been remarkably upbeat. I hadn’t realized how much of that had been a mask. Or maybe not a mask, but a performance. He’d been holding himself together, but it had cost him.

  “Mama, this is Olivia. Olivia, my mother, Alma Jessup.” The introduction was surprisingly formal until JJ slung an arm around his mother’s shoulders and said, “Did you lose weight, Mama? In the, like, four hours since I last saw you?”

  His mother backhanded him in the stomach.

  “Oof.” JJ gasped, doubling over like she’d actually knocked the wind out of him.

  “Oh, oh!” Alma’s eyes widened. “Sorry, baby, sorry. That was… I got stronger. It’s been—” She shook her head. “It’s been a ride. A hell of a ride. But you should know better than to comment on a lady’s weight. Who the hell raised you, boy?”

  He straightened, rubbing his abdomen. “That’d be you, bad manners and all.” He grinned at her, and for a second, tightened the arm around her shoulder so that he was drawing her a little closer. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe she was there without the physical reinforcement.

  I couldn’t quite believe it myself. When I’d chosen Rift #whatever to be my second rift, it had been because there were people inside.

  Okay, admittedly, I hadn’t realized I could choose any rift anywhere. I’d figured I’d be hiking to the rift entrance, so I hadn’t wanted one too far away from home. But I’d picked this one instead of one that was closer because I thought the people inside it might be in trouble, and that if they were, I might be able to help them.

  Inwardly, though, I figured I’d be too late. Or that they’d be fine, video game pros, loving the System the way Jack did.

  Instead, they had been in trouble. If I hadn’t come, JJ would be drowning in mud, and his mom would be trying to outlast the gators.

  This reunion was my doing.

  Joseph Campbell might have said, “Be the hero of your own story.” Probably he didn’t, though, and some idiot on the internet just claimed he did because it’s a stupid cliché. I mean, obviously, you have to be the hero of your own story. You are your own central character, after all.

  But you’re only a true hero, an actual hero, if you play that role in someone else’s story. And I had long, long since given up on that job. I’d been the trainwreck, the tragedy, the lost girl, the bitter regret. Even the manic pixie dream girl.

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  But hero? Yeah, that ship had sailed. Middle-aged women with messy mental wiring and complicated histories weren’t heroes.

  Except to our dogs, of course.

  And maybe, well…

  Before I could follow that thought much farther, Alma was stepping toward me, away from JJ.

  “You a hugger? Can I hug you?” she demanded. “’Cause child, I am so glad to see you and them dogs. Y’all are better than a breath of fresh air, and I been needing one of those somethin’ fierce.”

  I took an instinctive step backwards. If you’re surprised to discover that I’m not a hugger, you probably haven’t been paying attention.

  An immediate pang of guilt hit me, though. I was being rude. She wasn’t trying to assault me, just offering gratitude. And she was probably traumatized, maybe even in need of comfort herself. How socially inept was I?

  Alma, though, waved off my motion without a second of hesitation. “Lemme just hug a dog, then,” she said, looking around at them as if trying to decide on her target.

  I chuckled, almost breathless at the speed with which this woman moved. “Zelda, Bear, Riley.” I named them for her, pointing even though she wasn’t looking my way.

  “Bear’s the scary one,” JJ volunteered.

  “Bear’s the scary one?” she responded skeptically. “Y’all named a little ball of fluff Bear? Were you thinking, like, koala or something?”

  Fluff? Bear? Little? What?

  And then I followed her gaze. She was looking at Zelda, not Bear.

  She thought Zelda was the scary one.

  JJ caught on at about the same time. He barked with laughter. “Ha. Yeah, okay, maybe you’re right. Did she really get huge or was that me losing my mind?”

  “She has an ability called Size is Just a State of Mind. It lets her get bigger for several seconds,” I explained.

  “Dogs with magic.” Alma shook her head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Speaking of which, I think I have something that belongs to you.” I held the cube out to her.

  “To me?” She took it gingerly, as if it might bite, and examined it with equal caution.

  “It’s a mana battery for a weapon,” I explained, nodding toward the device in her hand. “Like that one, I think. The big gator dropped it.”

  She stared at me, and then started swearing under her breath again. Less of the f word and more damning the universe and whoever was running it.

  She waved her weapon around in the air, cube clenched in her other hand. “This thing has some kinda cooldown or warm-up, I don’t know which. I can fire three, maybe four times, then I gotta wait for it to charge up again. Or cool off, whichever.”

  I couldn’t use [Analyze] on the gun while she was waving it around, but if it used something like a mana battery, maybe it normally recharged from ambient mana in the air. You’d use the power up and then it would collect more. The cube might let you use it for longer. Or maybe it would make that flash of blue light stronger, more damaging.

  “I been standin’ there trying to kill that big fucker for hours. The small ones die easy, but they just kept coming back. And I couldn’t hit the big one fast enough or hard enough to take him down. Hours. Hours! And now I get a fucking battery?” She shook her head.

  “Better late than never?” I suggested cautiously.

  “Hate to say it, but the way things are, you might need it again,” JJ said. “In fact, we maybe oughta try and get a few more of ‘em. They were saying on the ‘net that real guns are misfiring. Not to rely on ‘em to stay safe. If we could get a supply of these things…” He poked at Alma’s weapon.

  “No,” she said sharply. “We ain’t doing that.”

  “But they went down easy, those methhead dudes. I was real surprised when one punch took out the little guy who got me.” JJ put his hand over the burn mark on his t-shirt.

  “Because—” Alma snapped, then stopped. She took a breath. It was like she was holding herself back. In a gentler voice, she said, “Did you see what they were called when you got the message about experience?”

  The last word held a bitter twist to it, and I could see her swallowing, her cheeks hollowing like maybe she was fighting the need to vomit.

  “I… no. Shit was happening so fast. You’d disappeared and I was busy trying to find you.” JJ put a light hand on his mother’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Juveniles,” Alma said, her voice as soft as I’d heard it. “That’s what it said, honey.”

  JJ’s hand didn’t tighten on her shoulder, but he stilled.

  “Did ya’ think they were methheads because they were skinny and missing teeth? Nah. They were kids. Seven-year-olds, maybe, just losing their baby teeth. The one I... He cried. Or maybe she, I don’t know. I couldn’t understand a word they said, but I think they wanted to go home. Or maybe they wanted their mama.”

  Alma looked up, away from both of us, eyes on the sky, trying to stop the tears from coming. She wiped one away with an angry finger. In a stronger, harsher voice, she added, “But if the kids carry guns, I don’t wanna know what’s gonna happen when their parents come looking for them.”

  Silence.

  JJ’s eyes were distant, as if he’d gone somewhere else in his mind. Alma put a hand over his on her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to look at him. Maybe she didn’t want to see the expression on his face.

  It wasn’t completely quiet. Bear was rustling around in the underbrush and Riley’s tags were jangling as he scratched an itch. I had a moment to hope he hadn’t picked up some weird alien fleas, but that was just my excellent disassociation skill hard at work.

  I was trying to avoid thinking.

  I didn’t want to think. Mostly I didn’t want to feel. What words did I have to offer to someone who’d just learned they’d murdered a child? Even an alien child.

  “I can close the rift,” I said quietly.

  Alma met my gaze, her eyes steady. “That’d be good if you could, I think.”

  “The rifts are opening because of mana. The System, or the multiverse, or whoever’s running this mess is trying to bring Earth into some kind of new magical balance that’s environmentally healthier. Fix the broken climate, right? But they open up in places where mana is needed, so a new one will probably show up in the same area,” I said. “Maybe in a couple of weeks. It’ll be different inside, though, and it won’t connect to the same world.”

  I felt like I was going into Lecture Mode: let me teach you everything I learned in my rift tutorial, fellow survivors! But I desperately wanted to get that look off JJ’s face. It was a mix of shock, grief, and guilt that made me wildly uncomfortable, like I was witnessing a tragedy in slow motion that I could do nothing to change.

  “I’m guessing folks who let their kids run around with deadly weapons wouldn’t make the best neighbors, anyway. Maybe the new rift will have, I don’t know, giant spiders. Toxic butterflies. Fun monsters, you know?”

  I did not remotely believe giant spiders would be fun. They were just the first words that popped into my head and they flew straight out of my mouth with no filter in between.

  “Yeah.” JJ’s voice was husky. He cleared his throat and blinked a couple times. “Giant spiders. Loads of fun.”

  “Okay, so.” I put my hands together in a soundless clap, then clasped them together like an anxious public speaker as I looked around. What did we need to do?

  “The leather and teeth, those are crafting components. When you get access to a System store, you’ll be able to sell them, or if you run into someone who takes a crafting class, they might be able to use them. We should probably gather them up.”

  I was talking too fast, which is usually one of the first symptoms of a manic episode for me, but this didn’t feel like mania. I was just uncomfortable. I desperately wanted to be home, curled up on my sofa, snuggled under the blue cashmere throw that had been part of my life for as long as I could remember.

  “Got it.” JJ knelt and began gathering the loot. There wasn’t much of it, so it only took a minute or two for him to stuff it all in his new backpack. Alma looked like she wanted to ask questions, but I whistled for the dogs and began checking them over, dabbing at bits of gore on their fur. Polite distraction or ill-mannered awkwardness? Potato, po-tah-to.

  Zelda licked my hand, impatient with my fussing. She was done here.

  Honestly, so was I. I’d done what I came here to do. Why did it feel so bad?

  Thanks for reading!

  Next chapter: Wednesday, February 25.