Chapter 78: Adjourned

I was pretty sure Joon Woo’s words hadn’t inspired Lena to close Third Eye. We remained six people, a tablet and a giant salamander and/or plushie stuffed into a too-small apartment.

So the temperature hadn’t actually dropped.

Nonetheless, I shuddered, and I wasn’t the only one.

“When OldCampaigner – Cameron – claimed he was going to prove we had access to actual magic, I thought it was a joke,” Joon Woo said. “When he gave his demonstration, I still assumed it was an elaborate hoax. All of you seemed to take it very seriously, though, and, to be clear, I would love for it to be true.”

Nobody spoke.

“But you did not cast a spell, Erin,” Joon Woo said.

Erin shook her head.

“You didn’t complete an invocation, or use a complicated Reaction that you found out how to target yourself with. You might have asked for it if you got the chance, but you didn’t. All you did was grab a Material – your first – and feel yourself transformed.”

“Yes,” Erin said.

“I’d love to wield actual magic,” Joon Woo said. “I’m a lot less comfortable with the idea of Third Eye’s developers using it to alter my body as they see fit.”

“She did ask,” Lena said.

Erin’s head tilted. She turned her tablet so Joon Woo could see us and vice versa.

Dude looked shook. His hair was even a little out of place. A couple strands, at least.

“Erin’s got a Custom Personification, same as me.” Lena turned into me, sort of a side hug, and I reached down to hold her arms. I felt her shoulders flex.

I knew that if I looked through my phone, I would see her wings flex, too.

“Pay to win girls unite?” Erin whispered.

“Damn skippy!” Lena flashed a thumbs up. Her smile faded. To Joon Woo, she said, “I wasn’t paying attention to it when I got my Reactant, sorry. But I’m sure these were real when I did.”

He had to be watching her wings flex. “They’re not part of your costume?”

Lena chuckled. She glanced up at me. “We, ah, actually tested that last night.”

My hand found her shoulder blade, right beneath where one of the wings would emerge. Though they seemed to be made of pure flame, they really did spring right from her back, no matter what she was wearing – or what she wasn’t. I’d spent a long time admiring the way they moved perfectly in tune with the muscles of her back. “Not part of the costume,” I confirmed.

“Obviously, it’s not as extreme as what Erin talked about,” she said, “but it’s the same principle. So yeah. Third Eye can change our bodies. But it’s only ever done it in ways we did ask for.”

Joon Woo frowned. He rubbed his neck. “That’s better. It’s still a frightening prospect, though, don’t you think?”

“Like you said, man,” I said. “Fucking terrifying.”

Also, incredibly cool. If those wings kept growing more and more real, would we reach a point when I could feel them on Lena’s back as well as see them? Would she feel it if I ran my hands along them?

I caught her glancing up at me. A hint of freckles suggested I wasn’t the only one who wondered.

“To be clear,” Zhizhi said, “you’re talking about those fiery wings from your YouTube video being real?”

I started at the sound of her voice behind me. Partly because she had a way of fading into the background when we were focused on other people. Partly because I’d allowed myself to start daydreaming about Lena’s wings.

“Yeah,” Lena mumbled.

“And – stop me if this is insensitive, but I need to understand what you’re getting at – when you got your, ah, Reactant, Miss Marshall? You had a moment where your body felt fully female?”

Erin hugged her arms. “Yeah.”

“Okay...” I heard the floor creak as Zhizhi began to pace. She came into view. “Up till now, you’ve shown me parlor tricks. I’m still not convinced I believe those.”

“We don’t need your belief, Ms. Wong,” Donica said.

“You’ve got your own?” She shook her head. “Well, you don’t seem murderous. I’m not sure about the cult part, though.”

“I get that it’s hard to believe,” I said. “Hell. We’re just talking about things that we felt for minutes. But all of us who got a Reactant did have an experience like that. For me it’s just looking down and seeing myself in different clothes with an amulet on my chest.”

Was it? If I grabbed a Reactant with my shirt off, would I look down and see my skinny arm reaching out? Or one more like my avatar’s, still slim, but toned enough to belong to somebody with at least a day pass to Joon Woo’s gym?

I’d never thought to consider the question before.

“So,” Zhizhi said, “it might just be in your imaginations.”

“It’s not.” Erin bit her lip. “No. That’s not right. That’s not data. Don’t... listen to me about it. I can’t be objective, so you have to dismiss me as a source.”

“God, I wish more of my sources would say that.” Zhizhi chuckled. “God, I wish I did more work where I could actually call somebody a source.”

Donica scowled. “Try to take this seriously.”

“I am. Honest. You have to realize, it’s not easy.”

“There’s another test we can do,” Lena said.

My eyes snapped to her. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Her shoulders flexed again. I felt the warmth in the air change as her wings moved, invisible behind me. She padded past Zhizhi and knelt by Bernie’s pet bed. She stroked his head. “I don’t care what most of you think, but Erin, promise you won’t get scared of Bernie, okay?”

“I could never!”

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“Yeah?” Lena gave Bernie a squeeze. “Cool.”

I knew what she wanted, so I gestured everybody up against the wall. “Give her some space.”

“What are we testing this time?” Zhizhi asked.

“Watch,” I said.

Lena kissed the top of Bernie’s head. “Ready to put on a show, little guy?”

“The stuffed toy?” Zhizhi whispered.

Lena sprang up and strode across the apartment. She perched on the edge of her computer desk and spread her arms. “Bernie,” she called. “Come!”

Zhizhi had been looking at Lena, but she turned to the pet bed with a wry smile on her face. Almost everyone had been looking at Lena; fair enough. Who wouldn’t want to? They all turned after she called out. Who knows what they expected?

I hadn’t been. I’d had my phone out, trained on Bernie, with Third Eye closed and a video recording.

At some point, I’d blinked.

And Bernie was in Lena’s arms.

“What the shit,” Zhizhi hissed.

I showed her the video I’d taken. One frame showed Bernie in his pet bed. The next, static. The next, an empty bed.

“I’d like you to take one using a phone that doesn’t have Third Eye installed,” I said. “Actually, I’d like you to document all the tests that way. It’s the main reason I asked if you could come over tonight.”

She gave a slow nod.

“From your reactions,” Joon Woo said, “I take it the plushie moved across the room?”

“Yeah.” Donica’s voice sounded shakier than I’d ever heard it, even at the construction site.

Why not? This was the hardest proof we had of what Third Eye could do, and it took a form you’d normally only see in a horror movie.

Even Miguel looked less than unflappable for once. Downright flapped. In his defense, he watched a lot more horror movies than Lena and I. Just ask our characters in his games; he took all kinds of inspiration for the horrible things that could happen when we made bad decisions.

I looked to Lena.

She was squeezing Bernie tight, her chin pressed against his head, her eyes wide and her frown half hidden.

I took a step toward her.

Erin flew across the room and held her arms out. “Oh my God. That was amazing! Bernie really is the coolest!”

Lena blinked.

“I understand if I’m not allowed,” Erin said, “but may I please hold him?”

“Course,” Lena mumbled. “That’s okay with you, right, little guy?”

I heard Bernie’s happy burble. He seemed a lot less unsure about Erin than he had been about me.

Lena let Erin scoop him up and give him a careful squeeze. I opened Third Eye and checked. Bernie had coiled around Erin and stretched his neck out so that he was half in her arms and half in Lena’s. Outside of Third Eye, the plushie remained fully in Erin’s grasp.

I didn’t have to wonder what would happen if that discontinuity had to get resolved as they stepped away from each other. I’d seen.

Erin’s reaction seemed to put most of the other guests at ease. I couldn’t see Joon Woo’s face, since his tablet was pushed up against the side of Bernie, but Donica was trying hard to smile, and Miguel either didn’t need to try or was much better at doing so.

Zhizhi lifted her foam cup to her lips with a trembling hand. “I...”

All our eyes turned to her. Well, I say that, but I’m pretty sure Lena and Erin were busy cooing over Bernie, and Joon Woo had no say in where he looked.

“I don’t know if I can justify not telling people about this,” Zhizhi said.

Her scribbled note appeared in Donica’s hand. “Justify? You agreed.”

“And I’m asking you to release me from that agreement,” Zhizhi snapped. “Are you all crazy? Think about what we just saw! Either this is a hoax on a completely different level, or it’s literally the biggest story. Full stop.”

“A story you’re going to sit on.” Donica strode across the room. Just before she reached Zhizhi, she folded the paper up and tucked it into her pocket. “Or a story I’ll see you buried by.”

“What the hell?” Zhizhi drew back. “I already said I’ll keep your friend’s identity out of things, even if I do break the story. So how about you dial the aggro down approximately a hundred percent, lady?”

“This story,” Donica said, “will break when and where and how we decide.”

Zhizhi snorted. “I’m sorry, but that’s the dumbest shit I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Really?”

“You think you’re the only players to realize this?”

“I think we’re the ones who have built the public’s trust.”

“Sucks to be the public.”

“Enough!” I wedged myself between the two of them. Zhizhi let me push her back.

Donica shrugged my hand off her arm. “I’ll remind you that this is still your fault, Cameron.”

“It might be my fault that Zhizhi’s here,” I said, “but you’re the one who decided to pick a fight.”

“She picked it at the moment she threatened to expose us!”

“When you put it that way,” Zhizhi said, “it sounds like you know there’s something to expose.”

I shifted to stay between the two of them. For a moment, I thought Donica might punch me in the stomach to get me out of her way, but her balled fists remained clenched at her sides. She turned on her heel and stalked back to the window.

Miguel met her there.

She eyed him. “What?”

“May I have a word?”

“It’s a free country.” She folded her arms and leaned against the blinds.

Miguel inclined his head. He swept over to where Zhizhi and I stood.

I stepped aside. “All yours, man.”

Either he would charm Zhizhi, or he’d piss her off so much her focus would shift entirely onto him. I’d rarely seen him find a middle ground.

“What’s your pitch, loverboy?” Zhizhi asked.

“Let us say for a moment that this is an extremely elaborate hoax,” he said. “I confess, on several levels, I’d be more comfortable with that outcome myself.”

“I don’t see how it could be,” she said, “but I’d for sure prefer it.”

“Who is it, in that case, that is being scammed?”

She furrowed her brow. “Me.”

“Oh?” Miguel raised an eyebrow.

“Thou doth protest too much,” she said. “You show me something incredible, tell me I can’t publicize it, and then piss me off until I go and do your work for you as an ‘expose.’”

“That would be a very clever use of reverse psychology,” Miguel said. “If it were a hoax.”

“As much as I’d like to believe that’s your con,” she said, “I don’t.”

“Then let us entertain for a moment,” Miguel said, “the idea that all of this is real.”

Zhizhi tipped her foam cup back, but she’d already shaken all the coffee out.

Miguel held his hand out and she dropped the cup into it. He swept around the counter, poured her another, and slid it down to her.

She clutched it but didn’t start drinking.

He got a cup of his own out and poured the last of our coffee into it. He raised it for a toast. “To 9News.”

Zhizhi lifted her cup as well, but frowned over it. “Huh?”

“They are your employers, yes?” Miguel blew steam from his cup. “Naturally, I assumed you would bring to them – how did you describe it? ‘Literally the biggest story?’”

She took a swig of coffee and winced as the heat hit her mouth.

“If you tried to sell your news crew on it,” he asked, “what would they do?”

She licked her lips. Nervous or just trying to get hot coffee off her tongue. “They’d laugh me out of the building.”

“And Cameron, if you were to put this on your channel in your next exciting video?”

“People would think it was a publicity stunt,” I said. “Lena and I talked about it. We think it’s safer to string people along with the idea it’s just a game and teach them how to play it safely, then as more start realizing the weird stuff, we’ll start admitting more of it. But we need to talk to Erin and the wiki team to really plan it out.”

“A cautious and measured approach,” Miguel said.

“An approach that keeps you in the game.” Zhizhi coughed and rubbed her lips on her sleeve. “That keeps your channel bringing in new subs.”

“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t on my mind.” I spread my hands. “What do you want us to say? Lena and I need the money. Maybe we can’t be trusted, then.”

“I didn’t mean –” She shook her head. She glanced at Miguel. “I can tell you’re going somewhere with this story. How about you skip to the end?”

His shoulders slumped. “Is there anything more tragic than a beautiful woman with no sense of the dramatic?”

For once, Zhizhi and I were on the same page. We both rolled our eyes.

I said, “I can think of a few things.”

“Oh, very well.” Miguel sighed. “You are a journalist, Zhizhi.”

“I’m an intern.”

“A journalist,” Miguel repeated. I caught the moment the force of his words hit Zhizhi, because she stood up a little straighter. “What I am suggesting is that you journal.”