Chapter 89: Once More Unto

Matt’s words should’ve made the prospect of returning to the construction site seem more intimidating. We should’ve hemmed and hawed. Maybe formed up in our line, tried to replicate the confidence-building powers of Lena’s stupid hero walk.

Instead, we gave our equipment one last check and strode back inside like it was the most ordinary building in the world.

I can’t vouch for how anybody else felt, but for me? That brief bout of PVP helped a lot.

First, there was the reminder of just how freaking cool Third Eye looked, how impressive the things it could do were. I don’t want to speak for Donica, but I think it must have made her want to get her Reactant more than ever so she could actually play instead of just watching. For me, and I’m pretty sure Lena, it reinforced my desire to keep playing. For Zhizhi, at least once she’d peeked at what we recorded through our phones, it reminded her of how cool the footage she could get might eventually look.

Then there was the match itself. Both Erin and Matt showed off some tricks I hadn’t thought of. I found it far easier to watch and learn from outside a fight than I had in the few seconds I’d spent in one.

More importantly?

I knew I could beat either of them.

Unfair? Well, maybe. I knew Erin had another Reactant she hadn’t used for the match, and Matt had given one hell of a demonstration of how useful Water could be with the trick he’d used to end the match. As for him, Erin accused him of holding back, he admitted he had, and I had no reason to doubt it.

But I’d played catch with Albie. For a little while, I’d even kept up.

How should I put it? Erin was the type of player who only wanted to fight bots, but had been dragged into enough competitive games to get Bronze ranked. Matt, the type who wanted to raise his rank, but hadn’t watched high-level play and remained stuck in Bronze. Low Silver, if I wanted to be generous. Which I didn’t.

Albie was Diamond plus.

She was playing a game they hadn’t even seen. I couldn’t play along, not yet. But I knew what it would look like when I could.

I pushed back into the lobby and faced the elevators again.

Maybe if the central one had opened and I saw what lay inside again, my confidence would’ve shattered. I couldn’t say, because it remained shut.

“Let’s check another shop,” I said. “We can do our first time test before we head back into the warehouse.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lena said.

I glanced back. Zhizhi nodded. After only a moment’s hesitation, Donica did too.

We walked past the mom-and-pop shop she and I had used to enter the warehouse the first time. Past the art or toy store with its weird arrangement of shelves and circular table.

Past the elevators. They remained closed.

The third doorway on the left turned out to lead to another half-formed restaurant, like the first place we’d explored. No booths in this one, Just crude wooden tables and chairs. The counter was just a frame to hold glass, so maybe it was supposed to be some kind of deli or bakery.

Lena took a deep breath. “Man, this place looks like it would be so tasty if it were real. Third Eye needs to spring for smells next.”

Bakery, then. I knew all about her sweet tooth.

I raised my phone and checked out the decor she was seeing through her smart glasses.

Red and white checked tablecloths draped over the tables, and there was a placard stood up near the counter with pictures of pastries on it. Lena approached it and looked it up and down.

I swept my phone around the rest of the room, seeking other things we might be able to collect. Glass from the counter, filled in unlike the IRL version. I didn’t see another cash register, though.

“Um,” Lena said.

“What’s up?” Zhizhi asked.

“This place would’ve been only for the real hipsters,” Lena said. “Check out the specials.”

We joined her by the placard.

I tried reading the text, but gave up on it in a hurry. It was in Roman characters, and some of the words were in English, but it was the kind of gibberish arrangement I’d seen on the inspection report. That just left the pictures.

I wrinkled my nose. “Is that... hamburger? In a pie?”

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Lena tried tilting her head sideways. The angle apparently didn’t help. “Kinda looks it.”

Definitely some kind of ground meat. Something cake-like was garnished with anchovies or sardines. Then there were a couple of pastries, both of which looked like they had meat inside, pulled pork for one, more hamburger for the other. Finally, a perfectly ordinary cheesecake.

“Yuck,” Zhizhi said.

“I mean,” Lena said, “it’s not really that different from lasagna, right?”

We all looked at her.

“Be more adventurous,” she said.

Through my earpiece, I heard Miguel snort. “This, she’ll try, but show a hint of spices –”

“I like sweet, and I like savory. It’s weird to put them together, but I’ll take weird over spicy. Sue me.”

“Perhaps it’s a clue,” Erin said.

“If it’s a Third Eye thing,” I said, “and not what this restaurant was actually going to try to serve.”

“At least we don’t have to regret that this place never opened,” Donica said. She snapped a picture of the placard with her phone. “Does everyone have their XP?”

We nodded and backed off.

I’d lost track of who was getting the most Materials in here. Maybe Donica, and maybe we should’ve objected, but since she was the one most freaked out by the environment, it only seemed fair to let her take first pick.

She touched the placard, our devices flashed, and we were left with a more appealing looking bakery.

We split the three panes of Glass and the Plastic from the tablecloths.

“You know,” Lena said, as she leaned over one of the simple wooden chairs, “it would’ve been a lot more comfortable to eat our s’mores in here.”

Donica shuddered.

“I know, creepy building, technically trespassing.” Lena shrugged. “On the other hand, chairs.”

“And no snow,” Zhizhi said.

“Exactly!” Lena gave her a thumbs up.

“On the third hand,” I said, which made me think how useful a third hand would be in Third Eye, “it wouldn’t have seemed much like camping if we did it indoors.”

Lena wrapped her arms around me. “I knew it!”

I closed my eyes.

“You really are a camp geek,” she said. “I bet you wish we could spend, like, every summer in a tent in Rocky Mountain National Park, chilling with the bears and mountain goats.”

“I don’t think they have bears up above the treeline,” Erin said.

I patted Lena’s back. “You’re still wrong about me enjoying summer camp as a kid. Apart from the scavenger hunts.”

“Ooh,” Erin murmured. “That sounds fun.”

“It was, but the rest sucked.” I realized I’d completely given up on pressing my finger to my headset when I talked to the support team, even when I didn’t have Lena hanging off me. Ah well. Hopefully our hypothetical audience would be able to follow the conversation anyway. “Regardless, one of these days, we should see if Yvonne and big Charlie will lend us a tent and go up there. For a week, not a summer.”

“Total. Camp. Geek.” Lena kissed my chest and let go of me. “You caught his confession on tape, right, Zhizhi?”

“Everything we say is being recorded by like eight different devices,” Zhizhi said. “You know I don’t really have tape in here, right? It’s digital.”

“Okay, but tape is cooler,” Lena said.

“I worked with some in my history of broadcasting class,” Zhizhi said. “You might think it’s cooler, but it’s a huge pain in the ass in comparison.”

Matt’s voice cut into the line. “This is all very cute, but we’re seeing more dropped frames on our end. Are you experiencing discontinuities?”

Donica checked the watch. “I’ve got 8:02.”

“Hm. 8:03 here,” he said.

Off, but not by nearly enough to glean useful information from. Up to this point, it could just be that his watch was slow, or set a minute behind.

“If you want to continue testing this,” Matt said, “it sounds like you’re going to have to go into the warehouse.”

“We didn’t come back in here just to look at weird foods, anyway.” Lena turned to the swinging door at the back of the bakery. “Everybody ready?”

“A question you really should’ve answered before you went back in,” Matt said.

“I know I’m ready. Just waiting for the rest of these wusses to get their shit together.” Lena reached behind her and petted Bernie, who she’d slotted back into his pack on the way in. “Right, little guy?”

I didn’t think his answering meep sounded anywhere near as confident as her words.

She cocked her head.

I looked through Third Eye. Bernie licked her cheek and gave a sound between a hiss and a sigh. A puff of fire escaped his broad mouth.

She scratched behind his eyes. “Don’t let them get to you. We’ve got to be the brave ones.”

Bernie swiveled his eyes in my direction.

I found myself smiling back at him. “You got this.”

I didn’t know if Lena really wasn’t that scared of the construction site, maybe because she hadn’t gotten lost in it the first time, maybe because she hadn’t seen the elevator open. Or if she’d successfully pushed down that fear, which I thought would be more authentically brave than not feeling it in the first place. Or if she was just putting on a brave front to try and keep our spirits up.

Whichever it was, the last part worked.

The contrast between exploring the site with just Donica and doing it now with Lena, and with Erin, Miguel, and even Matt in our ears, was night and day.

I strode to the swinging door and held it open. “Come on. Let’s get these tests run, and depending on how they turn out, see if we can’t find something more worth collecting.”

I saw the warehouse on the other side. Row after row of shelves. Queasy fluorescent lights. Uncertain, alien space.

It should’ve turned my stomach, I think.

It didn’t.

For maybe the first time, I felt confident we could handle whatever it threw at us.

Lena swept past. Zhizhi shrugged and followed.

Donica sighed.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, you know I’m coming,” she snapped. “Don’t expect me to act chipper about it.”

“If you ever acted chipper,” I said, “I’d start wondering if I’d wandered into a parallel universe.”

“The difference is,” she said, “you don’t sound like you’d prefer alternate versions of your teammates.”

I grinned as she stalked past. I waited until she was in the warehouse and called, “Loving the optimism.”