[You have entered Safe Zone Gamma 67712!]
Golden light swept through the cockpit as the plane passed through the barrier surrounding the town. Houses rushed toward them. The fingers around Zoe’s neck melted away. Scoured by light. She gasped, breathing once again, as the teeth sinking into her shoulder dissipated in a blast of holy fire.
For a moment, loving warmth swept away all pain. All fear.
The plane slammed into the first building.
Screech of steel against masonry. She jerked in her chair. Blacking out for a second from the collision. Bella screamed beside her. A distant sound, like wind through a memory. Zoe’s mouth opened. Tried to shout, but remained silent with overwhelming horror. No room in her mind even to pray, to hope, as the plane crashed through houses like a bulldozer. Spiderweb cracks fractured the windscreen.
[Warning: you are about to leave the Safe Zone!]
The plane passed through the golden barrier on the other side of the small town and entered the forest.
[You have left the Safe Zone. Warning: dangers abound!]
Crunch and groan of trees breaking before steel. A branch whipped the windscreen. The glass shattered. Sudden smell of pine under the sky of shifting colors.
The plane stopped.
Zoe breathed, sobbing, adrenalin thumping through her like a judge’s hammer. The pain in her side a reminder.
She lived.
Beside her, Bella laughed. Blood dripped from her forehead from an errant piece of glass, but she wiped it away without a care as she unbuckled herself and staggered to her feet.
“I landed a goddamn plane!” she screamed like an eagle. “I’m immortal!” She glanced over at Zoe and the joy crumpled from her face. “Oh, no, no…”
Blood-soaked Zoe’s clothes. Dripped from the cuffs of her pants. The slices in her side pumping out more. Zoe fumbled at the seatbelt, but her fingers grew numb.
“Zoe?” Bella said. “Can you hear me? Don’t move, alright?”
Bella undid Zoe’s seatbelt. Zoe slumped down and slid onto the floor. Pain bloomed as the adrenalin faded. She groaned or thought she groaned, but the sound was faint. Distant. Colors flared in the night sky, but her vision darkened with every leaden blink.
Bella pressed against her side. Said something.
Zoe looked up at her.
“Pressure…” she said. “Stitches. Need stitches…”
Bella nodded. She pulled off her jumper and bundled it against Zoe’s wound. Taking Zoe’s hands, she placed them over the improvised bandage.
“Keep them there, alright?”
“Kay…”
Bella searched Zoe’s face, the concern so palpable that Zoe forced a grin.
“I’m the doctor… remember?”
“I’ll find a first aid kit, or… or something. I’ll be right back.”
Bella rushed out of the cockpit and left Zoe alone beneath a sky bleeding rainbows. What could cause that? The light obscured the stars. Maybe there were no more stars? Zoe inhaled, trying to keep her breathing calm. The scent of pine sharp. The iron tang of her blood.
The wind blew cool against her face.
A notification echoed in her mind.
[Level up! You are now Level 2.]
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Metal]
* [Blood]
* [Wood]
Zoe stared at the words, listened to the echoes, and pondered the thoughts sliding into her brain from an unknown origin. What did any of it mean? The prompt first sounded while fighting for her life. Killing monsters led to a level up…
This was all a game?
She wanted to laugh, but there was no humor as she clutched at the wound in her side. This wasn’t the first time she saw so much blood, but never her own. She tried not to think about the survival rate for wounds like this. Especially in the wilderness.
Pines swayed beyond the broken rim of the cockpit windscreen. The plane pointed up? Did this even count as wilderness with a town right there? No, there would be a hospital… without power. No. She shook her head. Can’t think like this.
She needed to trust in Bella.
Needed to distract herself.
The prompt blinked at the edges of her consciousness.
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
What could that mean?
But if she was about to die… no, she would not die. Not here, not like this. Couldn’t let doubt sneak into her mind.
If she was going to… sit here, and… wait for Bella, then she might as well do something.
Like, select an element.
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Focusing on the list, she noticed it differed from the one that appeared while she fought off the burnt-eyed dead. She thought it might be hard to remember the difference since she was so preoccupied before, but the words of the inhuman voice were nothing like her own thoughts. The words of the system stood out like a spider crawling across her arm.
It was uncanny having thoughts slide into her mind. Thoughts that weren’t her own. She hoped the voice would stop once the phases were complete, but it didn’t seem likely.
During the battle, it offered her the choice between Sky, Metal, and Blood. Now the choices were Metal, Blood, and Wood. Had she lost the choice of Sky because she was no longer flying?
She closed her eyes and sighed. The sound alone cost her energy. A numb frustration grew inside her. Was she cursed to die confused?
“What does ‘incorporate’ mean…?”
[Incorporate the energy of the world. Become more than yourself. Grow, and your attributes will follow.]
“Huh?” She sat up a little straighter at the words. “Can you tell me more?”
The voice remained silent.
She winced as she settled back down. Moving was a bad idea.
What were attributes?
She dared ask another question.
“Attributes?” nothing happened. She recalled one of the first messages before everything went to hell. “User status?”
STATUS
Name: Zoe Chambers
Level: 2
Body: Hollow
ATTRIBUTES
Might: 7
Vitality: 9
Dexterity: 9
Willpower: 6
Insight: 8
Skein: 39/39
Titles: Intrepid (+5 to all attributes)
The information appeared inside her mind. Neat and organized in a way thoughts never were. Even when she crammed for med school until she saw diagrams when she closed her eyes, it hadn’t felt like this. She would have shivered if she had the energy.
Actually, she was shivering…
Blood loss or the icy wind? She believed it was the wind. Had to believe it. The sigh of the sky matching her leaking breath. Wouldn’t it be great if she had a doctor beside her right now?
Someone chuckled through her lips.
For the first time since everything went to hell, she thought about Ben. Almost missed him. Well, not him, but his skills. Almost as good a surgeon as her…
Even she could acknowledge he did outstanding work with her chest.
What would it have been like if he never betrayed her? She would still be in LA. Would this all have happened if she hadn’t left home?
Silly.
How important could she be in the grand scheme of things? Of course, the world would be turned upside down no matter what she did. How human to believe all significant events stem from us choosing one path or another…
Was Ben even alive? He might have still been in a plane when it all happened. How far ahead of her was his flight, anyway? Maybe he crashed into the ocean with all her money and that damn receptionist. Sank to the bottom of the sea to be eaten by crabs.
Maybe he flew over a Sydney that no longer existed.
Would she ever find out?
A slow, comforting blink. She wanted to stay behind that warm darkness, but refused.
No time for idle questions. She focused again on the information spread out inside her mind.
The names of the attributes made as much sense as anything else. She recognized the terms, at least. Vitality probably covered her physical health and well-being. She could do with more health.
What were her choices?
[Please select an element to incorporate:]
* [Metal]
* [Blood]
* [Wood]
She winced as the voice echoed in her head. Was it an echo? Or paint dripping down the wall of her skull? Lights in the sky, hypnotic patterns, she felt herself drifting and took a deep breath.
Focus.
Blood, or Wood? These seemed the most obvious choices for Vitality. Especially since she lacked so much blood right now. Her attention strayed toward Blood…
[Would you like to select Blood?]
[Yes] / [No]
She hesitated, just shy of the mental confirmation she felt would trigger the selection. It was feeling like a new sense, this voice inside her mind, this system.
Blood made the most sense, as much as anything made sense, but she hesitated at the choice.
All her life she had rushed into decisions. Her presence on this plane spoke to that. Did she want to rush this decision as well? Or was she just overthinking this?
What was the better choice between rushing in or overthinking?
What did her gut tell her? She giggled weakly. Her gut kept leaking blood. A silent but persistent vote.
She closed her eyes and remembered holding the scalpel. Stalking down the corridor toward her ex-boyfriend’s office. The steel blade a manifestation of her will, her desire to cut free the dead weight of her life. Blood might make sense, but Metal felt powerful.
She didn’t want to decide anything out of fear. That was no way to plan her future. She would not die here, so why force herself to decide based on momentary fear? Her numb and sticky fingers slowly crossed.
“I choose Metal.”
Time slowed. Her last syllable stretched out as she shrank, falling. Her eyes were tunnels, her vision shafts, and down and down she went. The world, what little she could make out, glowed with a fierce light. Auras surrounded, permeated, rippled out from the world: swaying trees, metal cockpit encircling her, scintillating sky like rainbow ink in turgid water. The metal cockpit pulsed, and a pulse within her echoed, answered. Some new organ awakening. Cold energy poured into her, out of her, and the metal of the cockpit writhed.
Beneath the surfaces of plastic and carpet, metallic tendrils snaked and slithered like roots buckling concrete. The tendrils flowed toward her. She could not move. Could not escape as the tendrils draped themselves around her legs and wrists and wound themselves up toward that mysterious pulse in the center of her chest.
The voice echoed, slow, methodical. She heard the practiced, lifeless quality of a surgeon reading from a chart. Calling for tools. Readying the knife.
[The flesh is the vessel. Filled with impurities, it shatters under pressure. Replace the foul with a few drops of grace. Know the pain of the journey. Quest now to be whole, or surrender to agony.]
Metallic roots reared like snakes. They struck, pierced her skin with fangs and hooks, and dragged her up and out of the tunnel of her vision.
Smell of crumbling rust. Feel of a thumb along a razor blade before the blood wells. White flash in the back of her eyes like a tin roof glaring in the sun.
Pain brought her into the world.
She screamed, but only a gurgle emerged.
Black filth welled up in her throat. A taste like tar, like bile, like licking an ashtray filled with tears. She vomited. Her vision swam with tears of garbage. The wound in her side widened as thick grimy streaks oozed out with the trickling blood.
Cold energy rushed over her. Metal piercing, pouring in, engraving itself upon her soul as the black filth poured out, and the tendrils rushed to fill the void left behind.
An instant can be a lifetime.
As she drowned in the pain, a door in the back of her mind creaked ajar. A crack of light. An inhuman whisper. A choice presenting itself with every illusion of innocence.
[Stop the pain. Reject the System.]
[Yes] / [No]