Melmarc had heard the word before. Player. But it was a scarce word. If his memories were serving him well, he’d only heard it once before. Most of the things that came out of portals were just called intruders. It made it easier to remember. He knew there were different kinds of Intruders but couldn’t say he’d ever thought much on it.

At six all he knew was that they were the bad guys that always came to their world to do bad things. He didn’t really care much for the distinction; they were all Intruders to him. But he wanted to know the person that had tried to kill his mom.

“What’s a Player?” he asked.

Tonight his father was showing too many emotions. He had smiled at least three times, had frowned—at least what went as a frown for him—and had hesitated. This was the most emotional, he had ever seen his dad.

Now, his dad showed hesitance again. Uncertainty.

His father didn’t speak for a while, and Melmarc thought he had pushed too far. But he wanted to know, and there was no other way to know than to ask. Adults got to ask questions all the time, so why not kids.

“Dad?” he pressed.

His father’s jaw tightened slightly. It could’ve been anything, but Melmarc interpreted it as a sign of contemplation.

So he waited, and hoped, and waited. Time seemed to stretch, testing the limits of his patience, pulling it like an elastic band. Melmarc held on to hope.

And hope did not fail him.

“A Player is a special type of Intruder,” his father said slowly, picking his words like a chef picks their beans. “They are… humans.”

That surprised Melmarc.

“There are humans beyond the portals?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

Again, his father frowned.

“They are like humans,” he corrected. “A humanoid species from a world beyond the portal. Some people theorize—say—that they are us, but not us.”

“And they came for mom? Why? Is it because she’s a Delver… like you?”

“Yes. But they didn’t come for your mother. She just happened to be around when they came. The Player that attacked your mother has been here before. Unlike most Intruders, they are calculated.” He paused. “Do you know what calculated means, Mel?”

Melmarc nodded. “It means to choose what you do wisely.”

“I guess you can put it that way.” His father nodded before continuing. “Players are calculated, and because they are calculated, it makes them one of the harder Intruders to fight. It makes them unpredictable sometimes. And since they are very much like us, it means they know us too well.”

The lights above their heads that illuminated the room flickered mildly, making his father stop. He raised one finger to Melmarc.

“Just a moment,” he said. Then he got up from the side of the bed, walked up to the door, and opened it.

He put his head outside, looked from one side to the other.

“Is everything alright?” he asked someone Melmarc could not see.

Whatever response the person gave was only loud enough for his father alone to hear. It didn’t surprise Melmarc. His parents were Gifted, but they weren’t just Gifted, they were Delvers, people chosen by the world, given powers that placed them well above other humans. Their job was to go into portals and do portal things. And when portals ran out of control, their jobs became to fight the Intruders that came out of portals.

Which begged the question: How had the Players gotten all the way to civilization without being stopped?

After a brief exchange of words in a conversation Melmarc couldn’t hear, his father stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him.

He turned to find Melmarc waiting expectantly.

“This is a high-end medical facility,” he explained. “And they just brought a Delver in.”

Amongst the things his father stood out from other people for, using descriptions instead of nouns was another one of his habits. Instead of school, he said educational institute. Instead of hospital, he said medical facility.

Instead of cry, he said shed tears.

Their mom said it helped him remember what was where. If that made any sense.

“Is he going to be alright?” Melmarc asked.

“Are they going to be alright,” his father corrected simply. “When you don’t know the gender of a person being spoken of, the pronoun ‘they’ is the correct choice.”

Melmarc nodded and corrected himself. “Are they going to be alright?”

His father retook his position on the side of Melmarc’s bed, and it dipped under his weight. His classmates said that Delvers weighed far more than normal adults, but he always found it hard to believe. If they weighed as much as his friends said, then they wouldn’t be able to use normal chairs or lay in normal beds. They would break them.

When his father was comfortably positioned, only then did their conversation continue.

“I did not get to see the Delver,” his father explained. “But I’ll check in the morning. Hopefully they’re fine. They just came from a Chaos run, so it’s anyone’s guess. They just hooked the Delver up to some of the equipment and it caused a surge… made the lights go out. I’m guessing the person’s an electric type.”

Melmarc nodded.

He had more questions, but he didn’t want to deviate from what was more important. His mom always said it was important to handle what was first first, before moving on to the next thing.

“What happened to the player that attacked mom?” he asked, hoping the short distraction had not caused his father to lose interest in the subject.

His father closed his eyes. It wasn’t tight, but there was something wrong about it. It was… too closed, if that was a thing.

Melmarc had never seen the expression before, and he wished Ark was awake to see it, too.

They had made a game of sorts out of their father’s expressions. Guessing, predicting, anticipating them every time. Over the years, the game had taught them to spot only one, the face their father made when he was contemplating on a subject that had to do with conversations, mainly how best to say something.

But this was not it.

Melmarc could only imagine how many ideas Ark would come up with if he saw this one. Was he angry? Was he tired? Did he finally want to take a poop? Melmarc almost chuckled. That last one was always an option Ark added simply for the fun of it.

Then his father opened his eyes and the expression was gone.

“The player made it back into the portal,” he said. “The others didn’t make it to your mother in time.”

“But he didn’t kill her,” Melmarc said, holding onto that sliver of good news as he’d been doing since he’d found out. “Mom survived.”

“Yes.”

“And she’ll be fine, right?”

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His father nodded, but it was a slight thing, barely noticeable. It was too insignificant to pass for an answer, and Melmarc didn’t know how to feel about it. His father probably didn’t want him to notice, but kids saw a lot more than adults thought, there wasn’t a child that didn’t. They saw most of the things adults forgot to hide and a few of the ones they tried to hide.

But what differentiated them from adults was that most children didn’t understand most of the things they saw. When it came to their father, Melmarc and Ark did their best to at least try and understand them.

It was their game, but it was also one of their connections with their father.

Melmarc’s eyes looked down. He watched his hands fidgeting again, stared at the blue sheets covered in little yellow fishes as long as his thumb.

“Will she be fine?” he asked in a quiet voice. The moment the words were out of his lips, a small part of him hoped his father hadn’t heard it.

But of course he had. His father was a Gifted. His human abilities were beyond any normal person. It took him a moment to answer, but he did.

“I don’t know, buddy. The doctors are doing the best they can.”

Melmarc nodded absently.

A part of him had wanted to know. But now that he knew, he wasn’t sure how he felt. He didn’t like it, certainly, but that was not enough. There were more. There was a part of him that was happy his father had told him the truth, and a part of him that was sad his father had told him.

“Mel.”

Melmarc raised his head.

“Your mom is alive,” his father said. “I visit her every day, and every day she’s alive.”

“What of the portals?” Melmarc asked.

His father was a Delver, his job was to close portals when they opened.

Sometimes a portal could be open for days, or weeks. Melmarc had never heard of a portal that had been closed in less than half a day. And those that were closed within a day were rare, like full expressions on his dad’s face.

“The country can handle the portals without me for a while,” his father answered. “For now I do the things I can do, and make out time to see your mom every day.”

Melmarc nodded, not that he knew the details of what his father was saying.

There were times when his parents could be gone for days. Whenever that was supposed to happen, uncle Dorthna came to spend time at the house. He wasn’t really their uncle, not biologically, but they called him uncle. He was simply a friend of their parents. A Gifted but not a Delver.

So whenever uncle Dorthna showed up at the door, they knew work would take their parents for a long time. But it was never too long. The longest they had ever been gone for was two weeks, and that had happened only twice.

Mostly, it was for just a few days.

So Melmarc couldn’t understand what his dad was saying. His parents had never spent more than four consecutive days at home unless they were on a holiday, and Ninra said their holidays were no more than two weeks every few months.

Still, he nodded, accepted that his dad had stayed for three weeks unhindered.

“He used a type of light on mom,” Melmarc said suddenly. “It was big and bright and white. He used it to hurt her.”

His father nodded. “He did.”

“Why?”

He watched his father’s contemplative expression slipped on. His father looked to the side, stared at the brown curtains.

“Because your mother is strong,” he said finally.

“But she’s not the only Gifted in town.” Melmarc had heard a few things about that night, nothing certain, but enough rumors to know that was not the whole answer. “There are other Gifted around. Jennina’s dad was around. And Ton’s mom, too. Ton’s mom is strong, really strong.”

Melmarc had taken an Iguana Ark had found on their front yard a few months before, and their parents had allowed him take care of it. Nobody had expected any of the children to bring anything truly special, then Ton had brought his mom.

It had been the best show and tell ever.

Melmarc’s dad simply nodded along as he spoke, waiting patiently, listening aptly.

When Melmarc was done, he said, “Ton’s mom is not your mom. The person that fought your mom had friends that wanted to do bad things. He knew your mom was going to stop them so he tried to stop your mom.”

“Couldn’t Ton’s mom stop them?” Melmarc asked.

His father shook his head. “She could not.”

“What of Jennina’s dad?”

“He could not. You know that the Delvers are different, right?”

Melmarc nodded. Everyone knew that.

And it wasn’t just the Delvers. The Gifted as a whole were different, and amongst them only a few went on to be Delvers. The Delvers were the Gifted that chose to not only register their classes and skills with the government but also agreed to work towards closing portals, either with the government or independent companies.

The government and these companies took them and paid them a lot of money because it was a risky job. So while all the Gifted registered their classes and skills with the government, not all Gifted were Delvers.

As for the difference between the Gifted, it was their classes and ranks. Naturally, they were many times stronger than ordinary people, but amongst themselves things differed more.

Some of them were skilled with what were called Strength based classes. They were more on the physically domineering side of strength. The Agility type classes gave the Gifted speed and dexterity. And the Intelligence type classes were the ones that actually looked like they could work magic. Most of their skills looked like something from a wizard comic.

It was a common take on the Gifted that you could expect a Strength type to break down the house, the Agility type to get away quickly, and the Intelligence type to dazzle you while packing a punch.

Ton’s mom was an example of a Strength type. She’d told them the name of her class but Melmarc couldn’t remember it.

There were outliers, though. Gifted who belonged to one class but had other perks. Like a Strength type Class could probably smell really well or hear really well. There was a popular Delver who could hear a pin drop over ten kilometers away and another that could smell the rain before it fell.

Some of them could even fly, or shoot lasers from their eyes like in the comic books. There was a Delver amongst the Intelligence type Classes that people called Dragon-Knight who could breathe fire from her mouth, like an actual dragon.

Melmarc and his brother could never really decide if Dragon-Knight was really an Intelligence type or a Strength type. If she was an Intelligence type then the fire would be magical, and if she was a Strength type, the fire would be pure fire.

She had said at the beginning of her career that she was an Intelligence type, considering she had an actual familiar. But as her career evolved, some things happened to called that into question.

His father nodded, drawing Melmarc from his contemplations.

“That’s good,” he said as he nodded. “Ton’s mom is something called an augmenter. Most of her skills allow her increase how strong she is. And Jennina’s dad, Mr. Ilya, uses his skills to make fire not hurt him.”

“So he’s fire resistant?” Melmarc said.

His father nodded. “Yes, Mr. Ilya is fire resistant. But while they are strong, they wouldn’t have been able to stop the Players.”

“So he fought mom because mom is strong?”

“Yes.”

It never occurred to Melmarc that being strong could put you at risk. It had never occurred to him that there could be a day when his parents could go out and never come back.

“He would have left her alone if she wasn’t strong,” he mumbled, looking down again, thinking. “But if you are weak you get bullied.”

He stopped fidgeting with his fingers and placed them on the sheets. Countless tiny yellow fish stared at him from the sheets.

“Don’t be weak so that you don’t have bullies,” he said after a while. “And don’t be too strong so that bad guys don’t break into your house.”

“Or you could be strong enough that they wouldn’t even dare.”

Melmarc looked up abruptly. There was something in his father’s voice, something hard. He’d heard it in adults in movies from time to time, even in normal adults. But never in his father. When he looked at his father, he found him staring at nothing.

His eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying. Just staring. But his jaw was hard, and his bottom lip quivered slightly.

“The weak get bullied,” his father said in so low a voice that Melmarc could barely hear him, “so we protect them. But you need to be strong to stop a bully.”

“But if you’re strong when a crime is happening, the criminals target you,” Melmarc said.

“So you get stronger.” His father still wasn’t looking at him. “Very strong. So strong that they won’t want to come to your house and fight you. So strong that they won’t come to your house when you’re not around and attack your wife.”

Is he crying?

A single tear crawled down his father’s left cheek. His father didn’t bother to clean it so Melmarc reached forward with the hand that didn’t have the drip in it and cleaned it.

“Dad?”

At first his father didn’t answer him. He simply stared out into nothing. It worried Melmarc so he tried again.

“Dad?”

His father took a deep breath, then let it out in a slow sigh.

He looked at Melmarc as if he’d forgotten he was there and his toneless expression returned. “The ambulance said that when they found you and your brother, the two of you were together. That is good. You and your brother should always protect each other. Protect your sister, too, just the way she will protect you. Even if you are Gifted or not, you should always care for each other. It’s what good people do, and it is what families do.”

Melmarc hadn’t even considered the possibility that he would not be gifted. Not everybody gained skills, he knew this. But he’d just always thought he would be one of those that did. His mom and dad were Gifted so it just seemed normal that he and his brother and sister would be Gifted.

“I might not become a Gifted?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

His father’s eyes softened. “Not everybody gets to be a Gifted.”

It was a simple answer, yet it scared Melmarc. The possibility of not being a Gifted had never crossed his mind. He even had skills he always wanted.

Hearing that he might not be was a new worry.

His father watched him, as if he could see into his mind, then continued. “For every ten thousand people there is one gifted, Mel. Not being gifted is what is normal. Normal people are not gifted.” He paused, contemplative. “Not being Gifted is also good.”

Melmarc could hear everything his father was saying, but he wasn’t listening. The Gifted were strong, and there was no argument that could change that. It was like arguing that his head was stronger than a tree. But that was a lie, no matter how many times he hit his head on a tree, it would always hurt.

I might not get any skills, he thought. I might not become a Delver.

His hands trembled again and reminded him of the time he’d spent hiding in the closet with Ark while someone tried to kill their mom. The possibility that he might not be like his parents pressed down on him, and suddenly his scar started to hurt again.

The doctors had been wrong. They’d said it was completely healed.

“Mel?”

Melmarc looked at his father. He had a lot of things running through his mind, a lot of things to say. Only one came out.

“But I want to be a Delver… like you.”

For the first time he saw his father’s face fall. It was the heaviest expression he’d ever seen on his face.

And it was painful to look at.