I can hear Ryder’s shouts calling for his dad and brother even before Nancy and I get into the house. And like I figured when I saw the open doors, the house has clearly been ransacked. A vase of flowers is upended on the floor, the porcelain shattered in an arc away from a small front hall table. A beautiful abstract painting is hanging at a weird angle on the wall. A trail of something dark—mud? Worse?—stains the paisley rug at the front door.

  “I don’t like this,” Nancy whispers.

  “Me neither.” I close the door behind me.

  There’s more evidence that someone’s been through the house as we head further in. Drawers left haphazardly open, pens scattered on the floor, papers ripped and draped over chairs.

  But soon the threat of danger eases off. I don’t think whoever did this is still in the house. The air has a stale, quiet quality. My theory is that someone started at one end of the development and made their way through, taking whatever they thought was worth taking. Who knows what that means—money or jewelry to some, maybe, though that doesn’t seem the priority to me. I take myself into the kitchen and scope out the food that Ryder’s family had left behind.

  The fridge door is hanging open and the kitchen smells like spoiled milk. Nancy clears off one of the kitchen chairs and perches lightly on the edge of it.

  “He’s going to be crushed,” Nancy says as I let the cupboards slam behind me. One for dishes, one for mugs, one for—aha, one with pantry items.

  “He’ll survive all the better for it. Never wondering what-if.”

  Nancy hums, but says nothing one way or the other.

  I start to pull things from the cupboard. “There’s been talk about whoever survived from the government doing a sort of census thing, to take stock of who survived. Collect names. Reunite family and friends. Honestly, though, I don’t trust it.” I turn from the cupboard and look at Nancy. “And maybe it makes me a bitch, but if this convinces him that they’re gone—if this means he won’t want to go into the city for this census—then good.”

  Nancy nods. “I don’t think that makes you a bitch. I think it makes you smart.”

  “Thanks.” I turn back to the pantry. I collect the things that look useful into my inventory. “I still hate that it’ll crush him.”

  Ryder finds us in the den a few minutes later, looking somewhat dazed as he walks in. There’s a desk in one corner and Nancy’s going through the drawers, though I’m not sure what she hopes to find. Ryder spots me on the couch and comes directly to me, curling up into my side. I drape my arm around him. “No one’s here, huh?” I ask delicately.

  He shakes his head.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” I say, making small circles with my hand against his shoulder. “But you still have us.”

  “I’m a—I’m a—I’m an orphan,” he manages to blurt out, and he starts crying again in earnest. I move my hand up onto his head, feeling like crying myself.

  “Hey, hey,” Nancy says, coming around the coffee table and sitting on Ryder’s other side. She takes his hand. “That might be true but it doesn’t mean you’re alone. Jane and I are orphans now, too. It doesn’t matter. We’re each other’s family now.”

  I look over Ryder’s head at the other woman. My first date with Alex lasted seven hours—that’s longer than I’ve known Nancy so far. And yet, I trust her more than I think I ever trusted Alex.

  And Alex never actually ended up, legally, as my family.

  “And we’re not going anywhere,” I add, leaning in to kiss the top of Ryder’s head.

  Ryder nods again, and I can feel a dampness on my shirt. I want to take his pain away. I want to make it better. I suppose all I can do is distract him and hope that someday it does.

  “What do you say you show me and Nancy your room? We can pack your clothes or toys. Do you still play with toys?” I go for playful, but Ryder just looks up at my balefully. “Maybe we can even find a way to stick your whole bed in our inventory.” Ryder’s intake of breath is sharp. “So you don’t have to sleep on the couch in the basement.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You can fit a bed in our inventory?” Nancy asks, her eyes widening with possibilities.

  I chuckle. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The idea seems to have pulled Ryder from his emotional breakdown, too, because he’s sitting back up, palming away the tears. “I can keep my bed,” he realizes out loud. He jumps up. “I can keep my bed!”

  He goes dashing back toward the curving staircase in the front of the house.

  “Ah, to be nine,” I say.

  ***

  We don’t take Ryder’s bed. We take Ryder’s entire bedroom set.

  Rather than packing a suitcase with his clothes, Ryder just puts his whole dresser, contents included, into his inventory. And his bed. And his bedside table. And his desk. And his bookshelf.

  Nancy grumbles, kicking herself that she didn’t do the same, already talking about driving back out to her house and getting the rest of her stuff in the same way.

  We also take blankets, pillows, knick-knacks, and family photos, all stuff that has sentimental value to Ryder. I want us to honour his family, not push them away. All our families, really.

  Everyone.

  We also take every single book in Ryder’s house. After all, with no movies or TV shows anymore, we’ll need all the entertainment we can get.

  Once back at my house—our house, I guess; the Safehouse—we go through some trial and error to figure out how to recall the large items from our inventory in a way that places them where we want them. Soon the big basement room starts to look like a place someone could actually live. We organize Ryder’s bedroom set in one corner, creating a cozy sleeping space, and use an oversized, worn-in brown leather armchair from his house and the ivory fabric couch that was already down here to square off a little living room. Another corner becomes a little work nook, his desk and bookshelf filling up the space.

  Some of my family’s belongings, some of his family’s treasures, and suddenly the place is a comfortable place to live.

  There are some things that I’m starting to worry about, long-term concerns about food and cooking, about keeping the house warm as we get closer to winter. It’s only another six weeks, maybe two months, before snow becomes a genuine concern in Canada.

  But Nancy and Ryder are celebrating the new digs, so I don’t bring it up.

  I do, however, bring up something else that’s been eating at me.

  “I think we need to reevaluate how we train,” I say, standing beside the couch where Ryder and Nancy are organizing throw pillows and blankets.

  Ryder plops right down on the couch, tossing one of the blankets over his legs. He glances between me and Nancy, the picture of innocence.

  “Explain,” Nancy says, slowly lowering herself down beside him.

  “In a traditional video game, you level up by getting experience points, which you get from fighting the bad guys and completing quests. Right?” I ask the last part to Ryder, our resident video game expert.

  “Right,” he replies. “Which is why we went out to find the monsters this morning.”

  That was just this morning? I push past the way that makes me feel and nod. “Right. But we’re not in a traditional game. The way we get stronger, get better, is by putting our Rank Tokens into our stats. We don’t get Rank Tokens from fighting monsters.”

  Ryder’s mouth slowly opens as he listens.

  “How do we get Rank Tokens?” Nancy asks.

  That’s right—she wouldn’t really know. “Our Rank indicates how much we’ve evolved. How much the magic has affected us. So each time we’re hit with one of the magic surges, we reach the next Rank.”

  “The magic surges give us Ranks, new Ranks give us Rank Tokens,” Nancy says, figuring it out aloud.

  I nod. “And spending Rank Tokens makes us stronger. We shouldn’t be going after monster fights to level up. We should be chasing the magic surges.”

  “But I want to fight monsters,” Ryder says, dejected.

  “Oh, we’ll have to fight monsters,” I say. “This morning, where did we find all those monsters? Clumped together. And what happened at that spot, where the monsters clumped?”

  Ryder’s face brightens. “Oh, the magic surge! That you used to fry the fox!”

  It’s so nice when the student understands.

  Nancy hums. “So the monsters have an inkling of where a magic surge is going to be?”

  “That’s my theory.”

  “Which means we’ll have to hunt down monsters, find the nesting grounds, and dispose of them before the magic surges.”

  “So that we can take the surge for ourselves!” Ryder finishes.

  “Exactly.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Nancy says, fidgeting with the cuff of her sweater.

  “Then it’s a good thing we have a Healer,” Ryder says, leaning over to poke her in the side.

  “There has to be a less dangerous way,” she says, dodging his poke.

  Ryder drops his arm and shrugs. “So ask the Game,” he says.

  I exhale, lowering myself to sit on the coffee table. “I didn’t even think to do that,” I mumble. “I have an extra Rank Token.”

  “Um, Jane,” Ryder says. “You have multiple Rank Tokens.”

  “I do?” I suppose I haven’t checked in a while. I call up my profile.

  And I’m very glad that I’m already sitting.

  You: Party Leader Jane

  Race: Human

  Class: Fighter

  Secondary Class: Magician

  Level: 2

  Rank: 6

  Statistics:

  Mental [4]

  Physical [2]

  Magical [2]

  You have 4 unused Rank Tokens

  “How—” I start to say, but I have no way to finish the thought. The new Party Leader label, the number of unused Tokens, even the Rank itself. It’s… a lot.

  “The magic surge in the battle this morning,” Nancy says, the thought dawning on her. She grabs one of the throw pillows from the couch and chucks it at me, “the sustained exposure to it.”

  I catch the pillow. “Must have levelled me up a few times.”

  “It also nearly killed you,” Ryder points out. “So I don’t think we should try that again.”