[Player Log Start]

[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]

[Level: 1]

The original plan was to go from Asadullah’s Sub-Level to Ben’s directly. But, the moment Asadullah came back, she knew that something had gone wrong.

“We need to head back.” He warned, fur on end, “Terry got into the Sub-Level at the same time as me and caught Burks’ attention. We need to go help him. And Hygeia. Before the Harbingers caught up.”

“Goddammit.” She hissed, letting him go. Asadullah nearly flopped onto the ground, so she had to wrap her arms around his shoulders to keep him upright, “Come on, Asad, keep it together. How long has it been since you’ve eaten.”

“Must have slipped my mind during the whole blowing up and breaking down various facilities across the Tracklands.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She sighed, looking around to see if there were any zombies in the area. There wasn’t any cover available to them, so they had to keep an eye out as she sat down and pulled out the Console and accessing the Inventory. A pack of halal cold-cuts and slices of bread appeared in front of them, and she nudged it towards him.

Asadullah blinked at it for a second, and then reached forward and began to eat. Tearing hunks of bread out desperately and shoving it into his mouth. In less than a minute, he had demolished the whole meal, wiping the crumbs off his mouth sheepishly, “Okay, now we go.”

“You’re going to throw up if you start running so soon after eating.” She warned, “Sit for a moment and let it digest.”

“Zombie approaching, ten o’clock.” He warned, ears twitching, “Making good time, too.”

She sighed, throwing her head back, “Fine. But pace yourself. We don’t have time for you to fall sicker than you’re insisting on becoming.”

“I’m not stupid.” Asadullah insisted, but the argument couldn’t continue as something rustled in the background. And then another, in a slightly different direction. And then more. The zombies had caught onto them, and it was time to split.

“Come on.” She directed, pulling Asadullah along with her in a quick march back to Hygeia. The Compass on the Console was pointing to the right, just slightly off-base from the place they were standing right now. It was close. Temptingly close. She just needed to finish this, and they would be so close to starting the Boss Battle and finally wrapping things up.

But they needed to prioritize. And delay the end for longer. That’s just how things worked for now.

On the way to Hygeia, they took the time to stalk more zombies, killing them as quickly as possible. Bit by bit, the Exp points racked up, slowly being saved up in the Stat page. She even managed to get used to applying her Abilities. Especially Climbing. She got a lot of use out of that one.

Healing, on the other hand, was something she needed to get a better handle on. It was going to be their biggest helper in all this. Because obviously, even after they got the zombie problem fixed, Ben was going to help the others along in their quest to save all dimensions. She didn’t know what Tench’s choice was going to be, but there really wasn’t any other option for her. She had to stand by them.

“You keep mentioning this Boss Battle.” Asadullah noted, taking out a slow-moving rotter that was sneaking up to her shoulder, “What exactly is it? I don’t have video games back home so I don’t get it.”

“It’s like… when you’re clearing a Level. Or doing a challenge.” Ben said slowly, trying to explain a concept that was so simple to her, “And then, when you’re just at the end, you expect it to get really, really hard all of a sudden, right? That’s the Boss Battle.”

She didn’t talk about how there is usually meant to be a snazzy enemy leading that battle, or any of the other minutia that was typical for games. That would only confuse him. And this wasn’t exactly the typical game, was it?

Ben pointedly refused to think about the Harbingers.

Hygiea appeared in the distance, and wow, had its walls always been so flimsy looking? She didn’t like the look of those barriers. They didn’t scream of safety the way they had when [Party(Main)] had first arrived. Or maybe that was just her anxiety acting up and she needed to let it go. Yes, that’s right. Calm down, Ben, and let it go.

They marched up to the walls, waving up at the lookouts who stood stiffly at their posts.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Hey!” She called up, “Mind letting us in?”

“Did you find any of that loot you were talking about?” The lookout called back.

“What does that have to do with letting us in?” She demanded, “Come on, man, just crank open the doors first before throwing around accusations.”

The lookout scoffed derisively, turning to crank the entrance door open.

“And as a matter of fact, we did find stuff.” Ben added, handing them a bag filled with the fruits of their Inventory. A full ten slots had been emptied to sate their curiosity, so they better be satisfied with what she had to offer.

The lookout’s eyes lit up, and more of the people on guard duty gathered around to gasp over the fresh fruit and still-cold ice cream they had pulled out just an hour ago from the Console’s infinite depths. Asadullah nudged her with his elbow, silently prompting her to ask them something else, though it took a few moments of silent, energetic eye contact to understand what he meant.

“Right, how are our friends doing?” She asked, looking around, “I don’t see them right now, so I hope they have made themselves useful to our up-and-coming society.”

“They got arrested on suspicions of bringing a child in here on false pretenses.”

“What?” She wished she was surprised about them getting arrested, but it was more shocking about which crime they were being charged for. And the fact that this place had a judicial system.

“Yes.” One of the helpful people nodded, “After Terence Glasgow disappeared, we considered the possibility that they had brought him to Hygeia under duress and this was his attempt at ‘making a break for it’ so to speak.”

Right. Yeah. Because Terry had already done his Sub-Level. The absolute prick.

Asadullah’s eyes were as wide as dinnerplates in alarm, and Ben had to intercede before he could start firing off questions of his own.

“Where’s Terry now?” She asked, guessing correctly that that would be Asadullah’s main priority. If they were still under arrest, then that could only mean that Terry hadn’t made it back safe, and that was all kinds of a disaster.

“Oh, he reappeared earlier today.” The lookout responded with very little worry, “Everything turned out just fine. Except for the Monroe girl, who did a jailbreak approximately seven hours into captivity. We let the others go. She’s still in lockup.”

Goddammit Vera. Ben would have sighed, but at this point, she didn’t have the energy for it. Of course this had to happen right now. At least she wasn’t critical for any ongoing missions of theirs, otherwise it would have been a disaster that would fracture any trust the people of Hygeia had in them.

“Are we still in the caravan you gave us?” She checked, and when he nodded, she turned around, “Well then, I’ll talk with the others about this. Do we get visitation rights for Vera?”

There was a moment as the lookout’s eyebrows scrunched together as they tried to figure out what they meant, before the dots connected on the nickname, “Oh, yeah. You’ll be supervised but… it’s open air, so you won’t even notice that someone’s listening in. It’s totally alright for you to talk to her.”

“Thanks, er…” She gestured towards him, asking him for a name. He simply looked blankly back, as if he wasn’t even processing her words. They stood there for ten excruciating seconds before Ben shoved her outstretched hand into her pocket and strode back into the direction of where their caravan had been.

The first thing she saw when she opened the door was Tench, sprawled across the couch and reading from a medical journal. Then there was Jared, who was playing Uno with Michael, and every so often would throw a random card into a wall, as if trying to get it to lodge itself in the wood. But of course it didn’t work. The cards were flimsy paper.

And then there was Terry, sitting at the coffee table, watching intently as some sort of thick, white fungus grew inside a mason jar, completely swallowing up a glove that had been placed inside it.

“Urgh, what is that?!” She gagged, looking at it, “Terry, you can’t put that in here.”

“It’s capable of breaking down skin, fat, and muscle tissue in minutes.” Terry told her excitedly. She doesn’t know what he was trying to achieve by that statement, but it was not working.

“Oh, we’re definitely not keeping it in here.” She insisted, “You must have some sort of non-mason jar containment for it, right?” On closer inspection, there were even holes in the lid, an easy escape route for this deadly fungus. No fucking way was she going to agree to be kept in the same place as that.

“Aw, c’mon, Ben. Have a heart.” Jared simpered, throwing a red Reverse card out of the pack, “We’ve almost made our peace with it, so it won’t take long to win you over, too. He’s the Cure-Maker!”

“And you better start creating a cure for maneating fungus, or its not allowed near sleeping people.” She insisted.

“Forget all that, where did you get this?” Asadullah asked, sitting down across the coffee table to look at the spore-covered glove with interest.

“In the greenhouse. It was a booby trap from Burks. Until I tamed it.”

Now that tidbit made people sit up and take notice. And for good reason too, because what the fuck?

“Dude, you knew that was a trap and you still let it in?” Jared asked, “That’s just stupid.”

“It’s mine now.” Terry insisted, “Only eats the things I want it to eat. But don’t touch it. That’s not a good idea, either.”

“Yes, glad we could establish that.” Tench nodded, dry as bone. He sighed and turned to Ben, “Forget about the stunt Terry pulled. You heard what Vera did?”

“Yeah. Ended up in lockup for breaking out.” Ben agreed, “Was there anything more to that?”

Tench nodded, hesitant, “She came rushing back. In that tunnel-vision she gets some time? Yeah, that’s how they finally noticed she was gone. But she was trying to give us a message. A warning. Some info she’d picked up by… actually I don’t know how she found out, but she did somehow.”

“Stop playing coy and spit it out.” Asadullah frowned, impatience getting to him.

“She told us…” Jared took a deep breath, “That Hygeia was going to fall within the week. Kept rambling about how that would be the Boss Battle and how we needed to step up the pace and then… then we lost her.”

Ben’s heart fell to her stomach.

It wasn’t true, she wanted to rationalize. Just paranoia. A bout of anxiety maybe.

But she knew. Verity would never make a claim like that unless she was absolutely certain.

[Player Log End!]