Chapter 43: Awakening

I understood what Lena meant, of course.

Solo players had stopped reporting Mask’s invasions because after they lost, none of them were in a position to do so.

Why? Were they gone? Were they dead?

At minimum, they’d been silenced.

Maybe I should’ve countered with a more comforting explanation. I’m sure I could’ve come up with one if I reached hard enough.

Maybe I should have dashed off a one-liner to convince her that between the two of us, not only were we not in danger, but we’d find a way to stop Mask from hurting anyone else.

What I actually did was shudder once and squeeze my eyes shut.

I was just too tired for anything else. Tired, among other things, of being afraid.

No matter how exhausted Lena and I felt, I didn’t think we could fall asleep. So it came as quite a surprise to me when I felt the tension in her embrace ease and heard her short, choppy breathing level out. Would’ve been even more of a surprise when I dozed off, except that, for obvious reasons, I wasn’t in any condition to notice.

I’ve never been the kind of person who remembers his dreams. It would shock me if that night, they didn’t include looming shadows, guttering flames, dying salamanders, and legs shattering on impact.

Real restful stuff.

Whatever I’d dreamed about, I woke soaked with sweat. Nightmares, or just heat? We’d tumbled into bed and hadn’t bothered with a blanket, but in such close confines, the temperature had soared.

My eyes snapped open. Which shouldn’t have changed what I saw, because the only light should have come from the electronic display of Lena’s rarely-set alarm clock. For a moment, though, I felt certain I could see a broad, curving line in the air, glowing like dying embers in a campfire.

When I blinked, the impression was gone.

I still felt movement against my chest, though.

I snapped all the way awake.

Lena groaned at my back and started to roll over. I caught her arm so she wouldn’t fall off the edge of the bed. She mumbled, “What the what?”

Then she bolted upright. “Bernie!”

I flopped onto my back and fumbled for the lamp.

By the time my fingers found the switch and remembered which way to turn it, the sight that greeted me was Lena crushing the newly patched plushie version of Bernie into a hug. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but the lips I saw between the kisses she peppered his head with were curved in a radiant smile. When her shoulders shook, it was from laughter as much as sobs.

For a while, I just laid there and watched her.

Eventually, unnecessarily, I took out my phone and peered through the Third Eye filter.

Bernie’s broad tongue lapped Lena’s face. He left trails of fire behind each lick, but they didn’t seem to burn her. He didn’t exactly wag his tail the way a dog would; instead, his whole back end vibrated in a happy wiggle, shifting from one rear leg to the other.

For her part, Lena’s wings wrapped all the way around both Bernie and I, covering the whole bed like a tent. Her wings and her arms and her smile were the whole world. What more could anyone want?

Bernie, apparently, astonishingly, seemed to want a little more. He wriggled around and gave my face a lick. I couldn’t see it, because he’d come too close for my phone’s camera to capture, but I felt heat and pressure and wetness slither up my cheek all the way to my hairline.

I closed my eyes and reached out to hug him, and since I wasn’t looking, the vague impression of weight settled into a very huggable plushie.

“Welcome back, little guy.” My voice broke halfway through the sentence.

The three of us cuddled together. The only sounds were our breathing and Bernie’s occasional happy burbles. We didn’t need to speak.

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Except that wasn’t true, was it?

I buried my face against Bernie’s head to hide that my smile had slipped.

This moment felt like the Third Eye experience in microcosm. Waking from a nightmare to a dream. You still had to endure the nightmare to get the dream, though, and how sure were you which was more real?

I didn’t know. What I did know was that I had no intention of raising the question to Lena just then. Her smile hadn’t faded a bit, and glowed just as brightly without the need for any filter.

It remained even when she lay back down, her head sagged, and her eyelids drooped.

I stretched over Bernie to kiss the air over her hair, then, with the most exquisite care I’d exercised since the last time I’d tried and failed to paint a miniature, I reached up to shut off the lamp.

I don’t remember much after that, waking or dreaming, so I guess I fell asleep fast and rested better than I had earlier in the night.

Longer, too. When I finally yawned and stirred and blinked myself awake, Lena’s clock read 9:12. With the lamp off and the bedroom door shut, the clock offered the only light. A curse if you wanted to wake up at the crack of dawn.

In other words, a blessing.

Without discussing it, Lena and I had rearranged our schedules when we started playing Third Eye. We’d gotten up early the first day, excited to try out the game and scared of falling into the bottom 1%. After that, it became a habit.

Waking up at nine or ten or later felt like a return to normalcy. It could’ve stood to wait one more day, though. I knew Benji would’ve already left for work, so we wouldn’t have a chance to talk to him about the previous night’s revelations.

Since we’d already missed the opportunity, I decided to let Lena sleep in. No way I could extricate myself from the bed without waking her, so I just scooped my phone up from the bedspread and scrolled through my usual checklist of sites.

A few new lines on Erin’s Discord, but just small talk. Nothing about Mask or any other Third Eye developments.

Nothing new about Mask on the Invasion Report, either. I winced when I realized that included any new entries from last night. Even though I’d visited the site when Erin suggested I, well, report the invasion, I’d gotten so caught up in fretting about what I found there that I’d failed to make my own post.

I’m not going to say how long it took me to correct that oversight, agonizingly tapping out words on my phone’s keypad and canceling just about every AutoCorrect when it misunderstood a Third Eye term. Anyway, it took me long enough that I felt Lena begin to stir before I finished entering tags.

I rushed through the last bits of info I could think of and posted the report, then switched to my camera.

Lena sat up, yawned enormously, stretched. Her wings unfurled until their tips touched the far corners of the room, flexing as her shoulders did. She blinked the sleep from her eyes and smirked at me, which was about when I realized the light from my phone illuminated my face. Apparently, my expression amused her.

“How long have you been staring?” she asked.

“Never long enough,” I said.

A hint of freckles, but she turned her nose up.

I might have contented myself with staring a lot longer, but Bernie stirred and clambered up on her. She scooped him into her arms as he licked her face. Together they half-fell, half-danced off the bed.

With my path clear, I stood up, too. “I’m going to get a pot of coffee brewing.”

“Good call. Be right out!”

I found one already brewed. Benji must’ve run it before he left for work. Even if it meant that what remained in the pot would be burned and lukewarm, I was glad to not have to wait for it. I washed out a couple of our foam cups and filled them.

Lena joined me at the counter. When I looked away for a second, I found Bernie had appeared at her side.

She destroyed what remained of her coffee’s taste with enough sugar to coat a breakfast cereal. She asked, “What’s on tap for today?”

“Great question.” Overwhelming question. Just contemplating it wearied me all over again. Something – determination or the first hit of coffee or a great night’s sleep or my HP – allowed me to push past the exhaustion. “Scouting.”

Lena nodded. “We’re falling behind.”

“Looks that way,” I said.

We might’ve lost two-on-one against Mask. Whatever advantages we’d had, they’d clearly passed their expiration date.

“I want...” I hesitated. “I want to take a risk.”

Lena’s eyebrows raised. “Isn’t that my line?”

I chuckled. “Guess you’ll have to be the voice of reason.”

“Unlike with the spooning, I don’t think that’s going to work out.” She grinned. “What’s the risk?”

“Couple things,” I said. “First of all, I think it’s pretty obvious that the people on top are playing full time. Whether that’s experimenting, scouting, or PVP. At least until the tournament, how do you feel about living on credit so we can do the same?”

“Pretty freaked out. It would be great for the videos, great for the tournament. So it would pay off like crazy if all that comes through. If not...” She swallowed, hesitated, then gave a single harsh shake of her head. “You’re right. It could be life or death either way. At least betting everything on Third Eye has a higher upside.”

I wasn’t sure if that was wishful thinking on our parts, but I nodded anyway.

“What’s the second thing?” Lena asked.

“I want to stop putting off the scouting trip we’ve known we should take for a long time.”

“Oh.” She pressed her lips together. “If we go further in there, it’s definitely trespassing. You remember what happened the last time we did that?”

As if I could forget? But the construction site hadn’t just been blocked off by mundane obstructions. The very Third Eye signs Donica had followed to it in the first place had been meant as warnings.

“I won’t commit to it if you’re not willing,” I said.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t willing!” Lena gulped down a mouthful of coffee. “You know I’m down for risks. Just making sure they’re informed ones.”

I sipped my own cup. “We’re on the same page, then?”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Yeah. It’s time we went back to the tunnel.”