Chapter 97: Raid

Lena and I didn’t exchange glances. Why bother? I knew we were thinking the same thing.

Whatever Albie was doing, it had to be important. At minimum, she was trying to protect us. The last time we met, she’d given me a rare resource that she hadn’t been able to replenish, and now she was operating at less than full capacity.

We couldn’t let her face this alone.

I straightened up and held my phone out. Lena got hers out of her pocket, as well.

Albie shook her head.

“What you’re doing,” I said. “It’s to help everybody, right?”

She gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“We’re part of everybody,” Lena said, calling back to the same thing I was, what Albie had said when she pushed the Potion on me in the first place.

“Oh my God,” Donica muttered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Erin,” I said into my headset. No playing around with pushing my finger against my ear, now. “Miguel. Matt.”

“What is it, Cam?” Miguel’s voice came through high, fast, and squeaky, even more than before, like a YouTube video played back at 2X speed.

“You guys are going to need to give us some coordination.” I unclipped my bodycam and held it out to Albie. “Here, kiddo. I’m not sure we’ve got time for you to accept the Discord invite.”

Albie cupped the bodycam in her tiny hands. Her shoulders slumped, but she clipped it to one of the clasps on her cloak. “This is real dumb. I promise I won’t have any trouble if it’s just me.”

“Sorry,” Lena said. “Grown-ups do dumb shi... stuff sometimes.”

Albie smiled, a little. “It’s ‘kay. I still like you.”

We hadn’t heard a crash for a few minutes. Maybe whatever was out there was like a lot of predators, and it wouldn’t attack if its prey didn’t show fear?

I liked the thought, but I knew better than to voice it. Talk about a death flag. Either it would live up to its name, or I’d survive and Lena would never let me live it down.

“If you’re gonna try to help,” Albie said, “you’ve got to understand. You probably won’t be able to see it right.”

“Even through Third Eye?” Lena asked.

Albie shook her head. “It’s not here enough yet, and your knowledge of joy and knowledge of the self and knowledge of the world aren’t aligned enough.”

I think we must’ve stared at her, because she lowered her eyes. “Sorry. I don’t know how to explain it better. I don’t have the right words.”

Lena knelt beside her and tipped her chin up. “It’s fine,” she said. “We just gotta get through this and you can teach us all about it.”

Albie averted her eyes.

I wondered if this was the kind of concept the inspection report had been trying to get across through its awkward machine translation, or whatever it had been.

I wondered where the concept, and the proper language to convey it, came from.

More to the point –

“If you can’t even see what you’re dealing with,” Matt said, “how can you possibly think you can be of any help to her?”

Lena winced.

I shook my head. “Albie. If you can show us what to do, it won’t matter if we can see it or not. You know?”

Albie looked up at me. She frowned, but I thought it looked more like she was concentrating than that she was upset. She nodded. So did Lena.

We all got it. Just like when we’d played catch in the park, I didn’t necessarily need to see what I was fighting. I just needed to know where to put my tools to stop it.

“We got this,” Lena said.

“Damn skippy,” I said.

Albie tried to smile.

Bernie hissed.

Way to bring the mood down, little guy.

Albie turned and Lena and I looked down the aisle.

At first, I didn’t think anything was moving, didn’t think anything was there at all. The only thing that seemed to change was the flickering of the fluorescent lights.

Then I realized that the darkness on the floor wasn’t just weird lighting.

It was a shadow.

And it was drawing closer.

No, that wasn’t right. It was elongating.

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I still couldn’t see whatever was casting the shadow, but it was obviously present, because the shelves on either side of us started to push away. The one I’d grabbed onto tipped and crashed into the adjacent aisle.

Albie flung her arms out and backed against Lena and I, pushing us away.

“Is this something we have to fight?” I whispered.

No picking fights. No matter how scary it might seem, maybe it was just another weird animal. Dangerous? Perhaps, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was evil. I disliked the idea of trying to hurt it, even if it was just to drive it off so it didn’t hurt us.

“If you won’t run away?” Albie gulped. “For sure.”

“How bad is it?” Lena asked.

“Could be a lot worse,” Albie said. “I shouldn’t be in any danger from this, but you guys... Just, promise you’ll be careful, ‘kay?”

“No argument there,” I said.

“We’re not seeing anything on our end except the shelf falling over,” Erin said. “What is it that you’re looking at?”

“Check the floor,” I said.

“Oh?” She probably took a second to review our footage, but our time was so distorted, I couldn’t even really parse the pause. “Oh.”

“Should we aim for where we see the shadows?” Lena asked.

“Just concentrate on defending yourselves,” Albie said. “Once it starts, you’ll see at least a little more. I think. That won’t be safe either, so don’t look too close.”

Although it was hard to tell at first exactly what, we did see something change. The shadow stopped approaching, either because whatever cast it stopped moving, or stopped growing, or whatever light source had caused it to stretch toward us stopped shifting.

Something changed in the air, though. Or maybe the air itself did. I found it hard to look at, the way the elevator had been.

After a few seconds of that, I realized I wasn’t just looking out of the corner of my eye at a distortion, but at a transparency, and it grew more opaque as I watched.

It was a triangle. Then it unfolded into a pyramid, and tipped to reveal a prism, and curved and twisted along angles I didn’t understand, its triangles multiplying, its complexity growing, as it curved into a shape something like what we’d seen wooden statues of in that one shop.

Albie drew in a hissing breath.

Whatever bothered her, whether it was anger or fear, it seemed to pass as the thing continued to unfurl. Limbs emerged, two legs, two arms, a tapering point that became a head. Joints, simplistic, old action figure style, then more points of articulation. Elbows and knees. Fingers. Folds like clothing, a coat and loose pants like a lot of our avatars wore, and, weirdly, the pointed head turned into something like an old-fashioned hat.

None of this had any color on it. I mean, it must’ve been some color, because in my head, it was all opaque, not transparent, and if you showed it to me in a paint program I probably could’ve guessed the brightness. Not the hue, though. It’s hard to describe the gymnastics my head went through trying to process what to color it in with. Whatever my eyes fixated on as a point to keep me grounded, that was the color the whole shape of the thing took on, like someone had taken a dropper tool and then pressed fill on the shape.

The whole process of it unfolding reminded me of a time lapse of polygon models over the decades, from ancient, simple wireframe stuff all the way to something modern, detailed, AAA.

What it all resolved into was something like human.

Not a person, but the idea of one.

It reminded me of what our Materials looked like when first manifested, especially that first sheet of Plastic I’d conjured what felt like a lifetime ago.

If you could collect Human, is this what would manifest when you used it with a Reactant?

“It’s just some guy?” Zhizhi muttered.

“If it’s like this,” Albie said, “maybe you really will be okay.”

I’d have felt better if her voice hadn’t shook.

Zhizhi’s boots rang out on the concrete. Which would’ve made sense if she’d been retreating, but the echoes grew louder with each step. I risked shooting a glance her way. She crossed half the distance back to us, Donica at her heels.

She raised her camera and pointed it at the thing’s face, or at least, where its face would be if it had one. “Hey, pal!”

No response.

“Smile,” she shouted. “You’re on candid camera. Just so you know, all of this is getting piped out to external storage, so whatever you think you’re doing? Whatever happens to us, you’re not getting away with it.”

“I don’t think it cares,” Lena said.

“Yeah? Well maybe ‘it’ should,” Zhizhi said. “The game gave you a cool costume and some freaky powers? Congratulations, asshole. That’s no excuse for going around scaring people. Including a little girl.”

Indeed, Albie’s shoulders shook.

That was more response than Zhizhi got out of the creature.

She took another step forward.

“You don’t have any HP,” Albie said. “You should stay back.”

When Zhizhi didn’t retreat, Donica grabbed her arm and hauled her backwards. She didn’t seem to have any trouble.

I admired Zhizhi’s attempt to brazen her way through. How could I not? If I didn’t appreciate a fight or flight reflex tuned to “fight,” I’d never have been able to put up with Lena. On the other hand, I sure didn’t blame Zhizhi for letting herself be dragged back.

“Eyes forward,” Matt said. “The shadow’s moving again.”

I marked it, extending and curving in either direction around the unmoving figure.

I licked my lips. “Any tips?”

I wasn’t sure if I was asking Albie or the support team.

I got answers from both.

“It’s all real,” Albie said, “but the shadow’s probably closer to helping you understand where it is.”

“Donica is the least experienced player, so she should concentrate on protecting Zhizhi,” Miguel said. It sounded so weird to hear his familiar voice sounding so sped up, but in its way, I thought it would be useful. The world we were operating in was practically real-time pause for the support team. I hate that kind of gameplay, but what the heck. I wasn’t the one who had to play it. It would give them more time to try to understand what they were looking at and help us process it. “Cameron, ensure she doesn’t have to learn on the fly by interposing something between the creature and her. Lena, when an opening arises, you should have our most destructive attacks. Aside from whatever Miss Albie can offer, of course.”

Tank and DPS. Pretty much our natural roles. We could’ve used a Support, though.

I tried to smile. “Not exactly enough of a plan to beat a raid boss.”

Lena stretched her neck. “Let’s hope this is designed better than an MMO, then.”

I didn’t expect to have time to argue with her about the virtues of raid mechanics. At first, though, nothing else happened. The shadows stopped elongating. If the figure continued to grow more complex, it had long since passed the point where my eyes could tell the difference.

It just stood there.

The only reason I stayed tensed for a fight was because my tension wasn’t a patch on Albie’s.

Her fists were clenched so tight it made the leather of her Third Eye gloves crack. Her shoulders trembled as she kept her arms outstretched between the creature and us. She practically vibrated.

Nothing else moved. It seemed like time had stopped. That was for us in the discontinuity. I couldn’t imagine how it must be stretching on for the support team outside.

Speaking of discontinuity...

Even though nothing seemed to move, I would swear that the ceiling looked further away than it had before. The aisles seemed taller, towering over Lena and Albie and I. Yet the creature remained in proportion to them.

I blinked.

And when my eyes opened, the shadow was at my feet.