Chapter 89: Springing Forward
“How’d your scouting go?” Lena asked.
“Fine.” Donica practically snarled the word, which did not suggest she meant it. Neither did her tight eyes and pressed-together lips. I wasn’t sure if those had anything to do with whatever basketball players she’d watched, though. When she pulled herself out of the Yukon, her lip curled and she sort of hopped around to the hood. She paused there, breathing hard, favoring her ankle.
I dragged my suitcase up to the back of the vehicle. It carried a couple changes of clothes, my necessities, and my PC case, and two months ago I might not even have been able to pick it up. Now I could carry it and Lena’s both and not get tired. Sometimes I really loved Third Eye.
It wasn’t Lena whose luggage I thought I should take charge of carrying, though. I eyed Donica’s ankle. “I think you should leave the driving to us for a while.”
She glared at me. “If I’d let you drive me I’d have missed practice.”
I knew two things: first, that Lena would agree, and second, that she’d want to pick a fight anyway because she felt like she was defending me.
Quickly, trying to head off the conflict, I said, “Did you find anybody you wanted to try to lure to the agency?”
“I wasn’t expecting to,” Donica said.
“How come you couldn’t have let Cam drive, then?” Lena asked.
Donica pinched her nose. “How did you sleep last night?”
“Great!” Lena laced her fingers together and stretched. “Thanks again for covering us.”
“That’s how come I couldn’t have let Cameron drive,” Donica said. “I have to at least pretend to be doing my job, or I’ll find myself staying in someplace you would pick out.”
Lena’s arms flopped to her sides. I watched her face ripple through a series of expressions as irritation warred with gratitude.
To keep her from settling on the former, and definitely not because I found the sight of her internal conflict adorable, I kissed the top of her head. She squirmed, but leaned into me.
Donica swept her gaze over the parking lot. “Where are the others? And how did your scouting go?”
“They’re just grabbing the last of their stuff,” I said. As we spoke, the door of one of the other cabins opened and Erin, Zhizhi, and Michelle stepped out. Erin waved to us. “As for scouting, you’re looking at the first person we’re sure has completed the set.”
“Of Reactants?” Donica scowled. “Really, Cameron? I thought you were going to take turns collecting things, and the next one certainly wasn’t yours.”
I chuckled. “I was actually talking about Erin.”
“She got Air? That’s fantastic.” Donica took out her phone. “Although I think you’re exaggerating. We know that Omar person has all four, unless he’s simply lying. And let’s see...”
I saw her bring up the Third Eye wiki.
I got ahead of her objection. “Six people on there claim to have collected at least one unit of each of the four core Reactants. Let’s say, you’re looking at the first person we know who’s gotten them all.”
Before Donica could respond, the rest of the team reached us.
While I helped Zhizhi load bags into the Yukon’s cavernous cargo space, Donica hugged Erin. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Erin said. “This has been a pretty incredible trip so far.”
“I’m glad,” Donica said. Her voice caught.
I glanced around the side of the Yukon to see Erin frowning at Donica’s ankle.
“Are you okay?” Erin asked.
Donica managed a credible shrug. “I’m fine. I’ll let other people handle the rest of the driving today, that’s all.”
Erin’s frown deepened. “I appreciate you looking out for me, but if you need the rest, I can drive you back to Denver. It’s only an hour, hour and a half out of our way.”
And the same back, but I knew why she wouldn’t mention it.
“I said I’m fine.” Donica drew herself up. “I’ll stop being fine if someone half my age tries to mother me.”
“Sorry,” Erin mumbled. She sounded sorrier that she’d failed than that she’d tried.
When Donica pulled away from Erin and stalked to the back seat of the Yukon, though, she did a damned good job looking like she could take a walking tour of the Black Forest. I wondered how much Advil and Tylenol she’d downed on the way over when Erin wouldn’t be able to see. Even injured and out of the game, Donica still felt like she had to play the cool big sis.
They had such a weird relationship. But then, who doesn’t?
“Everything loaded?” Zhizhi asked.
I looked over the parking lot and gave her a thumbs up.
Stolen story; please report.
She matched it. “Then let’s roll.”
Lena and I shared one row, Donica and Michelle took the back, and Erin sat up front with Zhizhi.
Our route appeared on the SUV’s console. We’d debated it last night before retiring to our respective cabins.
“Last chance to rough it this afternoon,” Zhizhi said. “If we cut east there’s a weird route we can take that’s all fields and windfarms.”
“No point making a plan if we don’t try to stick to it,” I said.
Erin bobbed her head, and we were away.
We cruised through the last of the Black Forest and into the outskirts of Colorado Springs.
It was a shame Donica couldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, take another turn at the wheel. We’d have to take full advantage of Zhizhi’s stint. When the non-player or ex-player drove, all four people still in the Third Eye beta could at least collect XP from the objects we drove past, even when they weren’t worth finding a place to pull over and collect.
Initially, we saw plenty to grab. The materials didn’t seem to dry up anywhere in the forest, and they stayed plentiful into the suburbs. As we got closer to I-25 and the center of Colorado Springs, though, we abruptly stopped finding anything.
I panned my camera back and forth, but I felt my shoulders sag.
I felt Lena’s hand on my arm. “Sup?”
“I’m getting nothing.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Did we screw up?”
“By going through the city?” Michelle asked.
“Probably,” I said. With nothing showing up outside, I turned back to the Yukon’s cabin to look at my teammates. “That’s not what worries me. Lena and I are posting all our finds to the wiki to try to lure Mask out, right?”
Michelle shifted in her seat. “Right.”
“I’m wondering if we’re ruining our chances of finding more,” I said. “Somebody could’ve realized we were scouting in the area and decided to beat us to it.”
“Still worth, though,” Lena said.
“I know. If we didn’t collect anything else it would be worthwhile, provided we actually get his attention.” And provided we won the rematch, and that winning gave us an angle by which we could rescue Matt and Gerry. I kept those qualifiers to myself. “It will still suck, though. Especially after we stop delaying the posts.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Erin said. “Er, not about that.”
I frowned at her. “You sure?”
“Colorado Springs has four very busy wiki contributors.” I saw her tap her phone to bring up the entries. “Everything here along ‘25 was cataloged in the first week.”
“Jesus.” I had to swallow a chuckle at the fact my brain had gone blasphemous. Colorado Springs meant two things in my head: an awesome zoo, and an unusually high rate of religious people. Neither was something I associated with a big population of gamers. “That’s a higher rate of active players than Denver!”
“It’s the same with game stores, actually,” Erin said, “and they have a lovely tabletop games convention every year.”
A good reminder not to make an ass out of u and me. Although I’d never understood what u were supposed to have done wrong in that saying.
“Should we pivot?” Zhizhi displayed her ability to do so by shifting seamlessly into the middle lane. Imagine having the confidence to make runtime decisions about where to direct a civilian tank! I was sure that was crazier than anything we’d tried in Third Eye.
I clenched my teeth and tried to pass it off as a grin. Lena noticed and massaged my wrist.
“Let’s try scouting the west side of town first,” Erin said. “I’m looking at the list of finds here and I don’t see many there.”
Hope sprang eternal. Unjustifiedly, in this case, as it turned out.
Zhizhi turned onto US-24. If somebody drew a line from Florida to Colorado we could’ve been riding on it, aimed directly away from our nominal destination. As we cruised toward the foothills, though, no Third Eye objects appeared. I frowned at my camera screen.
We might find something if we roamed off into the neighborhoods, but these were nice neighborhoods. We’d get a pass as long as we stayed in the Yukon because it fit in with the vehicles around it, but if we disembarked to collect objects, someone might complain. Or call the cops.
Besides, I had no guarantee we’d even find anything to collect.
I didn’t, quite, believe someone was cleaning out Colorado Springs specifically to try to get ahead of the finds Lena and I were posting. The problem, I supposed, was that there was no extensive RTD here. Everybody had cars, and the Third Eye players in town must have decided to make good use of theirs.
I eyed the mountains.
What I really wanted to scout lay up there, but it was, like Red Rocks, the kind of technically out-of-town place I could see getting a lot of traffic from potential Third Eye players. We’d have to pass right by a couple of major tourist destinations just to reach it.
“This is pointless,” Donica said.
Michelle nodded.
Erin leaned over the armrest to look at us.
“I really, really wanted to try the Cave of the Winds,” I said. “It being a cave says it might have Earth, the name and the sound it’s named for that it might have Air, and with some of the formations in there I can’t shake the thought it might have Crystal.”
“And what are the chances you’re the first person to come to these startling revelations?” Donica asked.
Lena folded her arms. “But have you considered Crystal, though?”
I touched her shoulder. “As much as I’d like to try, it probably isn’t worth our time. We haven’t seen anything in Colorado Springs. The town’s picked clean.”
She slumped against me. “I guess.”
“I’d love to visit the cave,” Erin said. “Even if it ended up a bust, we should make time for fun, too. I’m looking at the website, though, and it seems like the next tour won’t start for a couple of hours.”
Going in the wrong direction to scout a potential windfall was one thing. Waiting for a tour to start, without even the chance of finding anything in the meantime?
I sucked air through my teeth. I shook my head.
“You sure, Cam?” Lena asked.
“If there’s any point, we should vote on it,” I said. “Realistically, I think we should pivot.”
“Pivot,” chorused through the Yukon’s cabin. Only Lena dissented.
Zhizhi merged back into the right lane, then slid to the offramp that led to the fantastical rock formations of the Garden of the Gods. I had no doubt the park there had been an incredible source of Stone when the Third Eye beta started, and maybe Earth, Air, and Fire besides.
Now, there wasn’t a single impossible object in sight.
We took a moment to appreciate the scenery, and to double-check that we weren’t missing a subtle resource.
Then Zhizhi got us going again, headed in the right direction this time. The Yukon crested a rise and we got a look at all of Colorado Springs, with the plains stretching as far as we could see on the other side. Even the edge of the Black Forest looked flattened from this distance. Everything else in view was fields or empty grassland.
I swallowed a sigh.
I liked mountains well enough. Forests were cool. I loved cities best of all.
Third Eye, however, seemed to want me to plunge into the heart of what looked to me like the out of bounds area of reality’s game world.
I supposed it was only fair we try for the boundary break. What were we doing scouting out of town, if not trying to speedrun Third Eye?