Chapter 50: Revelations

For one absurd moment, I thought it was Mask.

When my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, though, I recognized the jogger who’d stared at us when we passed him on the way up the Incline. Which wasn’t worse, but certainly stranger.

He had his hands on his thighs and his shoulders moved with hard breaths. I realized he must’ve sprinted back up. About the time I turned to look at him, he caught enough of his breath to yell, “You kids all right?”

“We’re good,” I called. I refused to let myself get annoyed at being called a kid, even though I wasn’t sure this guy was even older than us. I supposed he’d seen our phones in our faces and Bernie slung over Lena’s back and assumed we were younger than our actual ages. Fair enough. And he had run back to check on us. “Thanks.”

He hesitated and looked around. “You’re, uh, not supposed to leave the path.”

“Right, sorry.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I guess we just kind of kept going.”

Now that we’d been called on our transgression, I felt my face and chest flush. I clambered back up to the summit of the Incline and reached back to haul Lena up over the lip of the little clearing there.

The jogger frowned at me, then he really frowned at Lena.

She brushed at her skirt. “What? Have I got something on me?”

“No,” he said. He shook his head. “Not any more.”

Lena shot me a glance.

My face was frozen in the same polite, apologetic smile I’d put on a moment ago. I locked it in, because it was exactly what I needed right now.

I could guess what must’ve happened. We knew from what Zhizhi experienced at the construction site that non-players could perceive Third Eye phenomena in the moment one of us collected a Reactant.

It was one thing for a non-player to do that after we’d shared the game’s secrets with her. Quite another for someone who’d probably never even heard of Third Eye to stumble across the sight of Lena as her flaming avatar, much less the two of us walking into the sky.

“Oh, you saw that?” Nervous laugh from yours truly. “Now I know why you looked at us like we were crazy on the way up.”

“It kind of looked like the lady was on fire,” he said. “She didn’t seem in pain, so I wasn’t sure what to think, but then you went all the way up there and fell, and I had to check.”

“Good of you,” I said. “Sorry we gave you a scare, man. We were trying out some new special effects.”

He blinked. “Special effects.”

“For our channel?” I cocked my head. “We’re YouTubers. Not the asshole kind, I promise!”

“So she wasn’t – she didn’t –”

“Fly?” I laughed again, less nervously, and put my arm around Lena’s shoulders. “Oh man, imagine how many views we could get if we could pull that off for real!”

“Right?” Lena’s attempt to chuckle sounded less convincing than mine, either because she wasn’t as good of an actor or because I was hearing what I sounded like in my head, not in reality. She gave me a playful elbow in the ribs. “I guess the wire work looked pretty good.”

“Wire work,” the jogger said. “That’s... Very good. Yeah.”

“Just imagine how it’ll look after post-processing,” I said.

He took a while chewing on his response. His mouth worked it over like he had a piece of gum. Or else he really did have gum to chew.

Either way, I saw the moment he decided to believe me. His shoulders sank infinitesimally, even as he leaned back and straightened up. I say he believed me, but it was more like he let me convince him not to think too hard about it. My explanation? Bullshit. He? Could guess as much.

But what else was he supposed to think?

“I’m sure your video will be really cool,” he said. “You shouldn’t stray off the path when you’re filming, though.”

“We won’t,” I said. “We just didn’t notice we’d hit the end. Sorry again.”

Lena toed the dirt. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Well, I guess it’s fine. I better get back.” He started toward the steps down. He tensed to resume his jog, but hesitated and glanced over his shoulder. “Where can I see it?”

“It?” I blinked.

His lips compressed. “The video.”

My skin flushed again. At least we were doing good impressions of clueless influencers. “Oh!”

I glanced at Lena, but she was still studying the dirt at her feet.

“Ashbird,” I said. I patted her shoulder. “It’s her channel. The Magnificent Ashbird. But, the channel is just called Ashbird.”

“I’ll check it out,” the jogger said.

Lena raised her voice from a mumble for the first time since she’d realized we had a live audience. She flashed her victory sign and her streamer’s grin. “Always great to make a new fan!”

The jogger chuckled, and it didn’t even sound very forced. Then he took off running.

As soon as he was out of sight, Lena and I sagged against each other.

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We must’ve been pretty wiped out, because after I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, I found Bernie’s plushie form in my arms and the half-felt bulk of his Third Eye form curling around both Lena and I. I scratched his back and he hummed happily.

That was enough to put a smile on Lena’s face, which did the same for mine.

“I think,” she said, “we should save the practice for somewhere less busy.”

“I’m with that.” I gave Bernie a squeeze. “How much do you think that guy saw?”

“Too much,” Lena said. “Do you think it was a mistake to point him to the channel?”

“I doubt he’s going to bother searching up the YouTube channel of a couple of ‘kids,’” I said. “Even if he did, does it matter?”

“It puts him on the track of looking at Third Eye stuff,” Lena said.

“If he watches your videos, he’s going to see the same ‘special effects’ we were showing off today,” I said. “Worst case scenario, he’s convinced the game gave us real magic and gets a couple weeks head start on us telling everybody as much. Second-worst, he’s convinced we’re doing everything on the videos with practical effects and conning the players into thinking it’s in-game. So what? Anybody who’s experimented with Third Eye is going to know we’re showing off real techniques.”

“I guess it’s got to be better than no explanation at all.” She leaned forward to fuss over Bernie.

“It was the best I could think of at the time,” I said. “It’s not completely untrue, either.”

“You did good,” she murmured. “I froze up on you.”

“Just being a good tank,” I said.

“The best,” she said. “This expedition has been awesome on basically every level, but...”

“You’re ready to go home?” I asked.

She bobbed her head.

“Same,” I said.

The plan we’d sketched out as we walked over to the Incline involved a walk back through Parker, then north toward Aurora to find whatever further Materials we could before we ran out of time.

Good plan. Efficient. Productive.

Exhausting.

As we started the long walk down, I leaned over and said, “You want to just catch a bus back to the light rail station?”

Lena exhaled. “God, yes.”

After that, the only thing we used our phones for was to find the nearest bus stop. I don’t know if the suburbanites whose houses we trudged past thought we were there to rob them or not, because seeing their expressions would’ve required me to drag my eyes up from the sidewalks anywhere but at an intersection.

It did punch through my haze that part of why we’d gotten dirty looks was probably the fact we’d been swaying our phones around like we were filming. People disliked that, the same as they got weirded out by smart glasses – which Lena had been wearing until we sat down at Kurosawa. It hadn’t come up much in the city, not because people didn’t think we were weird, but because city people respond to weirdness by ignoring it even more aggressively than they do normalcy.

At some point, I figured I should share that revelation with Lena. Some later point. Neither of us felt up for conversation. Something to bring up on the light rail trip home, perhaps, if neither of us fell asleep.

Why had the encounter with the jogger taken so much out of us? The thought of our Third Eye powers being exposed to the world made me break out in a cold sweat, but why? It was nothing we weren’t planning to reveal, was it?

Well, was it? We kept making excuses to put the revelation off.

I didn’t dwell on the reasons why. Then I started to wonder if Third Eye was somehow dragging my attention away from thinking about it.

I pushed that worry away as well. When we’d discovered that the game conferred real, measurable powers, I’d sort of consigned my fears about it manipulating my mind to my metaphorical recycle bin. If I fished them back out, it meant questioning everything I experienced. While that might be philosophically interesting – also, terrifying – it was useless when it came to guiding my actions.

Almost useless. If I doubted my ability to think clearly because Third Eye might cloud my mind, getting a non-player’s take became even more valuable.

I started tapping out an AutoCorrect heavy text to Zhizhi to check if she wanted to film our evening expedition. I hadn’t finished by the time we reached the bus stop.

I really needed that BlueTooth keyboard.

As we sat down, Lena eyed my phone. “Who’re you texting?”

“Zhizhi,” I said.

She watched me struggle for a moment. It didn’t speed up my texting.

“I’d offer to take over,” she said, “but my phone is fucked.”

“We really will need to get you a new one,” I said.

“We really can’t afford it,” she said.

“In for a penny,” I began.

“In for, like, three hundred bucks?” She rubbed her eyes. “I thought today was a triumph, but... ugh.”

I patted her hand. “It has been.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course,” I said. “In terms of the players we know, you’re officially at the top of the leaderboard now.”

“How do you figure?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, you mean in how many Reactants I have?”

I nodded. I was on one each of Air and Water. Erin had Earth, Fire, and Water. The most anyone else on the wiki team had posted was four units, spread across one to three Reactants. (I’d been at four total myself, before I squandered two of my Water, not realizing I wouldn’t get it back if I used it as a Material rather than a Reactant.)

Between her Fire and her Air, Lena’s total had hit five. A new record!

Sort of. Since Matt hadn’t shared his totals, he might have more, and a couple of people who’d chosen to share their stats on the wiki claimed to have as much as seven. Then there was Omar Jeffries, who supposedly had five of each core Reactant – five he was willing to spare, plus any he was keeping for himself. I suspected Mask had a lot, too, although they might have had as little as a single unit of an especially strange one. After all, the phrasing of Omar’s post about prizes made a point of calling out “core” Reactants, which seemed to imply the existence of non-core ones.

Still, whether the devs had intended it or not, Erin had turned Third Eye into one of those games that tracks both a worldwide leaderboard and one for your friends list. And on the latter list, Lena now occupied pole position.

She beamed about it, glowing with no need for a filter. Only a flickering glow, though; after a second she grabbed my arm. “You’re not upset, are you?”

I drew back. “Why?”

“You’re the one with the seas and skies avatar,” she said. “I’ve sort of stolen your thunder.”

I laughed. “You’re the one who wants to go compete in the tournament! Besides, I still think we’re supposed to get all four Reactants before we can start playing the full game.”

“Okay.” She squinted at my face. She could break out a microscope and she wouldn’t find a hint that I resented her getting more Air than me.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You let me take the next Reactant we find and we’ll call it even.”

“Deal!” She relaxed and her grasp on my arm turned into hugging it.

I was about to rest my head against hers when my phone rang. I glanced at the name. Zhizhi. Had I sent my incomplete text while I wasn’t paying attention? I picked up and greeted her.

“Yeah, hi, whatever,” she said.

Lena and I were seated close enough, and Zhizhi spoke loudly enough, that we both sat up straight.

“What’s her deal?” Lena muttered.

We didn’t have to wait to find out. Zhizhi asked, “Where are you two?”

“Parker,” I said, “scouting. Why?”

A moment’s hesitation. I’d swear I could hear a muffled groan. “I swear, Cameron, if you’re screwing with me right now –”

“Zhizhi, calm down,” I said. “I don’t even know enough about what’s got you worked up to screw with you. Why do you care if we’re in Parker?”

“Because,” Zhizhi said, “the station just got a ‘crank call’ about an angel appearing over a park down there.”