I was released into an orange alcove, the wall dotted with strange patterns that might have looked nice to an alien but just looked weird to me. I turned around to see an arena about 100 feet wide with a raised section in the middle. Other alcoves lined the edges, each holding another man, woman or…

Holy shit, there was a little girl in the alcove across from mine.

She looked about four years old.

She looked nervous.

Scared.

By the time I realized what I was doing, I had already run across half the arena.

A wall of sparkling electricity popped into being ahead of me, too close for me to evade. My muscles spasmed as I came into contact with it, but my momentum carried me forward. I started to fall, but an instinctive Healing Touch cleared the damage in time for me to turn it into a roll and come back to my feet.

Another appeared in front of me, but I was moving more warily now and dodged aside. “What the hell? Who’s doing that?”

No one answered, but now that I was running away from the center, rather than toward it, nothing else impeded my journey.

I reached the other side and leaned up against the little girl’s alcove. She shrank back. Belatedly, I realized how I looked, a masked and helmeted man yelling and charging toward her.

I dropped down on my haunches, pulling my scarf down and pushing my goggles up to reveal my face. “Hey, are you okay? Do you have any grown-ups you know here?”

She scooted away from me, pressing her back against the wall behind her, not answering.

Meghan would be better at this. I could connect well enough to older kids, but I didn’t have her ability to instantly win the trust of small kids and toddlers. Usually, it didn’t matter - if I saw the kids often enough, I could take my time getting to know them, and if I didn’t see them too much, their wariness of me was something I could laugh about. That wasn’t the case here.

“I bet you’re being a good girl and not talking to me because I’m a stranger,” I suggested.

There was a tiny, almost imperceptible, nod. Man, she looked so much like a little Micah. I mean, her physical features weren’t the same at all - she was a girl, her skin was darker - but her mannerisms! The suspicious look she was giving me reminded me so much of my oldest when he'd been preschool-aged.

“Smart!” I gave her a big, friendly smile. “You don’t have to talk to me. I just want to stand right here. If anything tries to hurt you, I can protect you. Is that-”

I was interrupted.

Transfers complete. To permanently claim a prize, maintain exclusive physical contact with its token for 75 seconds. The challenge will end when all prizes have been claimed. If you do not wish to compete, remain in your alcove. The prize tokens will appear in 13 seconds.

Shit. I’d already left my alcove.

Oh well.

I looked at the little girl one more time. “Is that okay?”

Her response was quiet, little more than a whisper. “Okay.”

I stood directly in front of her as I assessed the rest of the arena. Some people were huddled back in their alcoves, looking alarmed. Others were glancing around with narrowed eyes and aggressive postures. I'd say it was about 50/50 between nervous people and belligerent ones.

There were two other kids, both boys in their early teens. Could I do anything to help them? They-

Something was happening in the middle of the room. Blue and orange objects were appearing, presumably the prize tokens. They weren’t coalescing out of mist the way the monsters did, but rising up through the ground, as if the seemingly-solid floor was water.

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

Each was a ball about the size of a cantaloupe. Large, stiff, handles stuck off in multiple directions, holding the central orb above the ground.

Big. People won’t be able to hide that they’ve taken one. And those handles… it’ll be easy to snatch a prize away from someone with lower strength.

About half the room began moving the moment the prizes started appearing. They hadn’t even fully emerged before a man and a woman, each moving at near my own speed, were wrestling over one. A heartbeat later, the woman gave up and turned to grab a different prize, only for a massive gust of wind to rock the area, knocking both speedsters to the ground and sending the prize orbs bouncing toward me.

I didn’t move, other than to kick an orb back into the center. The action hurt! The handles might be slightly springy, but my toes felt like they’d connected to a rock. Eh, oh well. I had faith that my bones weren’t broken, and a Healing Touch removed the bruising. Worth it, to keep the fighting away from the kid.

In the initial moments of combat, people pulled their punches, aiming abilities at stomachs or legs rather than heads or hearts, hitting people with the flat of weapons rather than the edge.

The prize I’d kicked away was grabbed by a skinny woman, who turned and ran back toward an alcove. A man tackled her, yanking the orb from her hands and holding it out of reach.

“No!” she screamed. “You can’t! We need the Shop! The one near us broke, and we’re out of food and water!”

“I need it too!” he snarled.

“Give it back! It’s mine!

“No!”

The pair continued to wrestle for a few seconds, and then the man went limp. I didn’t see what had happened until the woman stood, backing away from the man’s corpse with a prize orb in one hand and a bloody Shop-purchased dagger in the other. Blood drained from the back of the man’s neck to pool on the ground around him.

“Oh my god, she killed him!”

“The prizes give water?!”

Not everyone noticed what had taken place, but the woman had been loud, and the words ‘food and water’ had attracted attention. A few of the people who’d been sitting on the sidelines jumped into the fight, and the fight itself got nastier.

I glanced back at the little girl behind me. Her face was buried in her knees.

Good. She doesn’t need to see this. All these starving people, killing each other for…

The thought made me pause. She was a skinny little kid. Some kids were. But was she… too skinny?

I crouched down, keeping my eyes on the melee in front of me. “Hey, are you hungry?”

A tiny hand grabbed the back of my shirt. “Do you have snacks, Mr. Stranger?!”

I winced. I’d worded that poorly. “No. Sorry. I just… wanted to make sure you have food at home. Or, uh, wherever you were before you came here.”

“Oh.” I could feel her slump, extra weight tugging down on the back of my shirt. “We ate Max and Bear’s food today.”

“Max and Bear?”

“Our doggies. Malia said they didn’t mind sharing.”

Before I could ask who Malia was, the little girl continued, seemingly unable to stop the words from spilling out. “Malia is my big sister. Mom went to the grocery store a long time ago and usually it takes a long time but it’s been days and years and I’m worried because if we eat Max and Bear’s food all up, what will they eat? So if you have some more food please share it to me right now.”

I hesitated for a minute, keeping my eyes on the fight in front of me. “Is Malia… has your big sister been fighting monsters?”

“We both have! And Bear and Max. But not Bear and Max as much anymore because they can’t fight the jelly monsters good and they get real hurt and I have to heal them a lot and a lot.”

So… they probably had Money. “Listen… do you know what Blueprints are?”

“Yeah. I bought a light and Malia bought a new door for our house.”

“From what the people fighting are saying, I think one of the prizes might give a Blueprint for a Shop that will sell food and water. It costs a lot of alien Money, but if you buy it, you can buy food and water for 1 more Money each. I can try to get one for you, but it will probably be dangerous. I’ll do my best to protect you, but… It will definitely be scary, and you might get hurt.”

It broke my heart to say it, but there wasn’t much choice. Sitting in the alcove seemed reasonably safe, but if she went home to eat dog food, or the dog food ran out… what would she do? I regretted never placing my own Shop down. I’d been keeping it, thinking I could put it down when I got home, but if I could have handed it to over in that moment, I would have.

The girl grabbed my hand. I saw her peek around my side, then flinch back. Her little hand tightened on my fingers.

I was focused on the fight once more, not expecting any response from her, when she finally spoke.“Please get me one, Mr. Stranger. I will be brave. Max and Malia and Bear need food.”