“I am going to die.”

Spread-eagle on the hard ground, Todd listens to the sounds of metal dragging and early morning voices with his eyes closed shut against the perpetual white light.

“Hunghhhhrphhhhh,” reply Jingshu and Abigail.

By this point, the teens are too tired to carry or drag a training mannequin, not apiece. Before Todd had collapsed, they had taken to wrapping, one on either side, under the armpit and dragging them by the heels together.

“Thanks for your help, guys,” Todd croaks.

“Unghhhhnrgh,” they respond.

Todd pictures the copper, tin, and iron men in his mind. Constructing a landscape from images and figments, he takes stock of the total count: how many have been positioned, and how many are left to be. Ciforre had said there were a hundred of them, and after carrying a good fifty he certainly had found evidence of that. In fact, now it amazes him how clear his recollection is, a snapshot not just fit to guess but to count from. His memory and imagination had never really been so clear before.

“We’re almost done though, right?” He tries again. He lifts his head and opens his eyes to see Jingshu begin to dip in the knees, strain on his pockmarked face.

“Ow. You’re dropping your side, I need to – okay that’s better. Okay, go.”

The black metal of the man-sized figurine is as dull as it is heavy. “You’re doing an iron one?” Todd asks in surprise. “You can wait for me, I’ll help with the Iron.”

The girl replies impatiently. “It’s the last one, we’re almost there anyways.” Her curly brown hair sticks to her face and her cheeks puff out with exertion.

Strange, he’d thought there’d been at least two more figures to move. Unable to find a reason to argue, Todd lays back on the ground until the screech-squeal of metal ends.

“Hey, Abigail. Abigail right?”

“Sure.”

“I got a weird question for you.”

“Okay.”

“I noticed you haven’t used any bad words. Do you... ever use obscene language – you know, like curse words?”

“I know what bad words are. And no. I try not to, it’s tacky. Why?”

“I was just wondering. It’s just that so far, all the women I’ve met in the Tutorial are like, foul mouthed, spitfire, fighting… badasses I guess. Like even Élena.”

“Who?”

“The floral dress lady who beat Teo up with a boot.”

“Uh... sure.”

“I dunno, I was just wondering if they were all like that.”

“Uh, no. Like what? You mean like Officer Bernice running around with a sword like a crazy person?” The girl scoffs. “That doesn’t count. She’s a cop.”

“What about Nayira or Candra?”

“Who? No we’re not like that. Most girls are normal. Normal girls don’t fight monster bugs or get super excited about lightning bolts. Magic should only be for getting people you like to like you, and getting people to hate who you hate.”

“Oh.”

She shrugs. “I guess, or to get rich.”

“I see. So not to get too deep or whatever, but why’s my view of women so skewed then?”

The girl huffs and rolls her eyes. “What am I, your therapist? None of your friends are normal because normal girls don't want to hang out with you.”

There could be some truth to that. “Ouch?” Todd concedes.

“First of all, you're weird. Like, this? This has been a weird question. Second, you're really rude to the pixies. Like, what’s even up with that? And like lastly... no offense, but you kinda cry a lot.”

“I don’t,” Todd sputters. “Do I?”

“Like, you are crying,” Abigail looks down her nose at him. “Right now,” she asserts.

Todd wipes at his eyes and he’s only 75% sure that it’s sweat. But that’s not his fault! “Come on,” he protests, “I got stabbed in the leg, and hit in the head with a rock. I probably strained my back too.”

The boy Jingshu, who’d been silent so far, makes a subdued but unsympathetic gesture. “Eh,” he contributes.

“See? Nobody likes a guy who complains all the time.”

Todd sinks back to the floor, watching the unchanging, empty black sky. He starts to recall faces from his past, to reconsider the way he’d presented himself to them; starts to examine how he might have disappointed them before they, him.

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The reflection is broken when approaching footsteps precede Joe and Candra’s upside down faces leaning over him. “Hey there, Drips. You been at this a while, how’d you get roped into this one?”

Todd raises his voice enough to carry. “Thank you Abigail. Thanks Jingshu,” he says. “You can go now. The coroner is here to pick me up.”

“Bye kids,” Joe chuckles. “Thanks for keeping our little ray of sunshine company.”

Jingshu nods and pulls his baseball cap further down over his face, but Abigail practically swoons. “Oh it’s no problem, Joe. I’m happy to help, Joe. If you need anything at all, Joe.” Finally before she runs out of air, Jingshu grabs her by the sleeve to pull her away.

“Yep, bye kids!” Candra cheerfully dismisses them, before her tone and demeanor sours. She reaches a hand down and Todd takes it, lifting him up to a seated position. “I literally don’t know how you do it, Joe,” she grumbles before stooping down next to Todd. “Christ, if I was that obvious when I was her age, I think I’d die of fucking embarrassment.”

“Oh come on, they don’t know better,” Joe admonishes her. The tall young man steps closer to examine one of the copper dolls, rapping his knuckles against its skull. With his height and build, he actually makes the thing look small in comparison. Joe dips his head towards the retreating teens. “They seemed nice,” he observes. Then he looks down at Todd’s leg with its yellow-clear discharge. He neutrally inquires, “did you ask them to help?”

Overlooking the purpose of the question, Todd sits up further. “No, Ciforre roped them into helping. I think she’s got them ranked as mage candidates, and she wants to start keeping them close by.”

“Mage candidates.”

“Yea, I think she’s grooming Cultivators to focus on magic powers. Elemental stuff, like me or Randall.”

“So why wasn’t Randall helping?” Candra points out.

Unhappy with the first conjectures that strike him, Todd decides it’s best to change the subject. “Ahhh... he’s probably busy. So what’s up? What have I missed?”

----------------------------------------

Accompanied by his friends, Todd limps over towards a cluster of twenty members of the closest thing that subsection four has to leadership. The leg has been getting worse this morning, not better, and he’s aware of how poor a showing his uneven gait is making. So he grits his teeth and corrects his posture before taking a place in the circle.

“I’m sorry this took so long to get organized everyone,” Nayira begins, looking a little uncomfortable to be speaking for the group. “I wish we could wait for the Alderman to get back, but we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Murmurs of approval trickle through the listeners.

“I think we all know what the first order of business is,” Nayira sighs, “we’ve been putting it off long enough.”

“The missing people,” nods a middle aged man that Todd doesn’t recognize.

“That’s right the – I’m sorry, missing who now?”

More murmurs, but less approval. The words ‘missing people’ sets a worm of nausea in Todd’s gut, and it looks like the same can be said of the others. The man squirms under the sudden attention.

“Well, it’s just that old lady Chu Mei has been asking around. She couldn’t find Auntie Fa Mai Lin last night. And neither of them had heard from Mister Yong yesterday either.”

A long silence descends.

“I don’t know who any of those people are,” Nayira blurts out, and in outrage Dr Chowdhury pinches her viciously in the hip. “Ow.”

“Forgive us,” the doctor glares at the woman at her side. “This is the first we’re hearing of it. I know that we have some struggles with communication here, are we sure these individuals are missing?”

A few creative denialist possibilities are raised over the next few minutes, but the man is insistent. The argument is overall brief, but without a witness at hand the absences are difficult to substantiate and thus easy to dismiss. Maybe if the discussion was being moderated, it might have been productive. But an absence of leadership makes for a disorderly traffic jam.

Joe raises his hand during a lull in the discussion, and near the end of everyone’s collective wits. “I’ve got a question. Where’s Alderman Donnellson?”

“Why he’s been transferred,” purrs a disembodies electrostatic voice.

Since the first day of the tutorial, the alleyway gates that dip into the center-sides of the perimeter of the courtyard have gone unused. Partly, it had been a matter of the gates being forgotten in a mess of stranger, more threatening events; but mostly it had been due to the… practical manner in which they had been used on that first evening. Now, a bright light is shining from the close counter-clockwise gate, that light rises white in a flowing pillar and curls up underneath the arch. It breaks and rejoins like a tongue of flame, and then Aefore emerges at its base out from the gate with skin swirled in crimson and gold.

“I am so sorry to have worried you,” the pixie croons, her voice carrying impossibly far while she slowly floats in their direction. “Mister Donnellson has a niece – somewhat removed, but still family. My sisters and I discovered that she is present and resident in a nearby subsection... within this very tutorial. I offered him the opportunity to join her.”

Joe crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes. “Is that so.”

“When were you going to tell us?” Officer Bernice demands.

Todd thinks for a moment and raises his hand. “Can I check if I have family here too?” Then the other questions die out to make room for this one.

Aefore cuts him off before any of the other get their hopes up. “There are only twelve subsections in this instance, twelve groups like this one. I am afraid that if we have not already approached you, it is very likely that your families will not be within reach.”

Bernice raises her voice again, her first question having been ignored. “Well where will they be then?”

Aefore tilts to the side and slips out of the way. Behind her, a bakers-dozen strangers in martial gis step out from the alley behind her. Disoriented, they follow her in a loose cluster towards the leadership circle. Aefore holds out her hands to guide the two groups together. “There are multiple instances,” she explains. “Each is roughly the size of this one, and so it is not unreasonable to think they are simply in another location.”

Todd looks at this new group of strangers, but he isn’t struck so much by how they appear so much as by what they are carrying. One of the men in this new group is fairly average in appearance, but in his arms he is carrying an ugly looking cat. The animal has short downy hair, with large ears and a narrow rat-like head. It peers up at the plaza and then dismissively curls back into the man’s arms. But the woman next to him nearly stops Todd’s heart.

The woman appears to be in her late twenties, her head swiveling as she searches the plaza somewhat frantically. Over her shoulder, a cloth sling is jury rigged into a carrier and she grips it carefully in front of her. Todd cranes his neck to see if she’s carrying what he thinks…

“Of course,” Aefore announces loudly, “I do recall a certain rare treasure which would allow a person to transfer between tutorial instances entirely. If one of you were to discover such a prize… you would have the power to transfer anywhere in the Tutorial.”

Todd frowns. How typical of Aefore to entice them with a story of a reward like that. It doesn’t escape him how impractical a treasure would be if it could only transport once. His mom and dad wouldn’t be in the same instance, not after they’d been divorced. So what would he have to do, pick one or the other?

He desperately hopes they’re safe, but doesn’t get much time to dwell on it because Candra and Joe suddenly cry out in joy. Startled, Todd looks over and sees a chicken-bone skinny girl his age. He doesn’t recognize her face, or her sharp upturned nose, but he does recognize her hat. Memphis Stomp Police, it reads.

The name of Joe’s intramural soccer team.