Chapter 110: Hard Decisions

Allen had contented himself with allowing Matt to tell the story for so long, it caught me by surprise when I heard the crackle of his voice changer again.

He said, simply, “Survive.”

Silence all around the table. You could hear a pin drop, or a person breathing, even if they weren’t wearing a device that amplified the sound.

“Huh.” I raised an eyebrow. “That’s... not quite what I expected.”

“I told you,” he said. “I’m doing what needs to be done.”

“No, I get that part. I didn’t think you were going to say you wanted to conquer the world or something. You’ve got the whole ‘hard man making hard decisions’ thing going on.”

I watched Lena out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t mouth, “while hard.” If I’d doubted that she remained scared shitless behind her streamer smile, the fact she let a trope go by without its traditional mockery proved it.

Because our creepy stalker was, among other things, apparently an obsessive fan of hers?

Or because, like me, she’d started to grasp his perspective on the wider Third Eye situation?

Either way, I gave her wrist a squeeze.

Allen pushed his laptop back and folded his arms. “If you get I’m not the bad guy here –” Hell of a leap on his part, but I didn’t correct him. “– then what’s even your problem?”

“Just ‘survive?’” I shook my head. “I figured you’d at least claim you were going to save the world.”

His head drooped until the peak of his cloak covered the upper eye hole on his mask. Whatever he said, his voice changer output it at the same volume. But everything about his body language and the hesitancy with which he spoke told me he whispered his next line:

“I can’t.”

Jan reached out to him again. This time he didn’t drive her back with a look and she massaged his arm.

The others all lowered their eyes. Even Matt’s smirk fell away.

Hell. Even Lena tensed beneath my touch.

I guess my scowl probably stood out.

Jan certainly seemed to think so. As soon as she saw my expression, hers’ hardened. “What?”

“It’s just,” I said, “between Allen’s win at all costs attitude, his habit of collecting strong players like Pokemon, and the fact he really did think he and Phantom could beat Lena and I? I figured he had more faith in his strength.”

“It’s not about strength,” Jan said. “If Allen isn’t the most powerful Third Eye player yet, he will be soon.”

“Could be,” I said. “I think OdysseyZZ might have a few things to say about that.”

I thought Jan had glared at us before, but her previous expressions looked downright sunny compared to the venom in her eyes when I mentioned Omar’s username. If looks could kill...

With the right Third Eye technique, maybe they could.

“That jitbag,” she hissed. Had I heard that word before? No. Did context clues lead me to conclude it was complementary? Also no.

Maybe she put too much bile into her voice and some of it came up her throat, because she cut off with a hacking cough.

Allen looked her way.

She held up her hand. Two coughs later, she got the fit under control and gulped down a breath. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He waited while she steadied her breathing, then said, “Remember. OdysseyZZ will get his.”

Jan wiped at her mouth. “Yeah.”

“That will help you survive?” I asked.

Allen’s gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.

I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m not trying to bust on you. Honest. I’m trying to understand. For all I know, you legit do need to protect yourself from OdysseyZZ. If he threatened you, that’s got to be scary as hell. Especially if he’s got a Key of his own.”

I’m not saying I chose my words specifically to sound sympathetic while reminding Allen of how shitty it felt to be on the receiving end of a teleporting stalker.

Wait, no. That was exactly how I chose my words.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

What I got instead turned out to be even more interesting, though.

“He’s got a Key, all right,” Allen said. “Ain’t his.”

“Meaning it’s yours?” When his head twitched in something like a nod, I added, “How did that happen?”

“Because,” he said, “I started out stupid enough to ask for help.”

“So that’s what you meant,” Lena said. “About how you’d never trust somebody again.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “You trusted the wrong person, and that sucks, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anybody else. Hell, if you’re going after Omar, we’re literally on the same side! You should’ve asked for our help, not attacked us.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Allen banged his fist on the table. “You’ll help now because you’ve gotta, so I don’t have to trust you. Any of you!”

“Okay,” I said.

Lena shot me a glance.

I didn’t dare nod to her, but I hoped the steady rhythm of my hand massaging her wrist would convince her to let me take point on this one.

I probably don’t need to say, but I didn’t find anything about our situation “okay.”

Claiming that I did seemed to calm Allen down, though. His fists unclenched and he leaned back a little in his chair. Not relaxed, exactly, but no longer tensed like a cornered predator.

More than anything, I wanted to ask him how Omar had taken a Key from another player.

If Omar had conned Allen into leading him to a Key and Allen just blamed him for taking it and then not giving back whatever they’d agreed upon in exchange, fine. Shitty behavior on Omar’s part, but not even as bad as things we knew he’d pulled. I couldn’t bring myself to side with the stalker and kidnapper against the conman.

If, on the other hand, Omar could actually steal Reactants, Refinements, or whatever the Key was? That presented a new and awful twist. We knew he claimed to be able to give Reactants to other people. Taking them away might use the same mechanic.

We needed to know if it was possible. We needed to know how to resist it.

But above all, at the moment, we needed Allen to stay calm enough to explain what drove him to pull his crap. Continuing to harp on Omar struck me as a bad way to make that happen.

It was my own damn fault for picking at what sounded like a hole in Allen’s survival ethos. He rubbed me the wrong way, but this was too important for me to rub him the wrong way.

For now, I let the subject drop. I thought Allen might return to his explanation, but the only sound coming through his voice changer was his breathing.

Of course, he didn’t seem to be the only one who knew what was up.

“You said it’s not about strength, Jan,” I said. “Please, tell me. Why doesn’t Allen think he can save the world?”

“Don’t ask her,” he said.

Because he didn’t want an account that would contradict his own? That wasn’t the vibe I got.

Sure enough, Jan said, “Not talking about it won’t make me forget.”

Allen’s mask tilted away from her. “Fine.”

She looked down the table at me. “Didn’t he let you see it?”

“The city in his Realm, you mean?” I asked.

She nodded.

“We saw it,” I said.

“It was super spooky,” Lena said, “and, like, I’m sure if we tried to stay the night, those creatures would hunt us down. Did you guys get stuck in there or something?”

“Or something.” Her head dipped and she pressed a fist to her mouth. I thought she might start coughing again, but after a pause, she continued. “That’s not the point. It’s Allen’s Realm.”

“And...?” Lena cocked her head. “Do you get this, Cam?”

“I’m starting to,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes. “You want to share with the class? ‘Cause I am officially lost.”

“You guys can stop me if I get any of this wrong,” I said.

Allen and Jan both seemed content to let me shoot my shot. So did the captives.

If I’d misunderstood what they were getting at, I was about to sound like a total dumbass.

God, I hoped I was about to sound like a total dumbass.

“We can’t say for every Realm we visited,” I said, “because we don’t know the players they’re associated with. But every time we have known who the Realm belonged to, whether it was yours, Lena, or Miguel’s, or any of the ones people have posted about on the wiki, their Realm always captured a moment in their lives that Third Eye considered important to them. Not just as players, but as people. Right?”

Lena nodded. “I mean, Miguel didn’t agree that it was that important to him, but it was obviously made from his memories, yeah.”

Nadia spoke up. “Mine was the same way.”

“And mine,” Ramon said.

Matt, Gerry, and Bob all shook their heads. Matt spoke for the three of them. “Either not every player gets a Realm, or none of us have found ours yet. Still, it’s fair to say you’re on the right track, Cameron. None of us have seen or heard of one that clearly isn’t personalized.”

So far, my much longed-for dumbassitude eluded me. I swallowed. “The cityscape we saw. I didn’t recognize it, but am I right that you did, Allen, Jan?”

“It’s... it was... Philly,” Jan said. “You can tell from the skyline.”

I couldn’t, since I’d never been there, or even had cause to look at a picture of it, but it was obvious the two of them knew the town well.

How would I feel if I saw Denver’s corpse moldering like that?

I would feel like doing anything I could to stop the vision from becoming a reality.

I wished I could ask – I wished I could demand – to know why Allen didn’t feel the same about his hometown.

Trouble was, I already knew.

“Since I’m pretty sure someone would have mentioned if the city of Philadelphia got reclaimed by nature twenty or thirty years ago,” I said, “there’s no way that Realm could be a vision of your past.”

“Yeah.” Allen’s voice changer couldn’t quite hide the raggedness in his voice. “Almost there. You know how this ends.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” I said. “How it ends.”

Jan squeezed her eyes shut.

On the bright side, I wasn’t going to feel like a dumbass.

Hooray.

“You’re saying Third Eye Productions didn’t pluck that vision from your past.” I took a deep breath. “They pulled it from your future.”