Chapter 45:

Alice stared as Titus pulled the phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table, face up. They both were surprised to see a random number ringing. She had half expected some alarm or calendar event.

"You think it's a spam call?" Alice asked after the second ring.

Titus shrugged. "I haven't gotten any. Have you?"

"No," she shook her head. "Not even a robocall, surprisingly."

Titus looked at the phone. "It's not even my phone."

"Well, you only gave your number to one person," Alice reminded him. "You should answer her."

Titus nodded and hit the accept button, putting it on speakerphone. A couple of seconds later, they heard a choppy voice say, "Titus," and then it cut off for a few seconds before coming back in. "Near Chicago," and then it cut off again.

"Elaine?" Titus asked, speaking loudly and clearly, enunciating his words carefully. "Elaine, is that you? Are you okay"

"Yes,"the phone crackled loudly. "Titus, it's me.” Crackle. “Fine"

"You're breaking up," Titus said.

"Titus, we're near," crackle, crackle, crackle. "Chicago," crackle, crackle, crackle. "Few days," crackle.

Titus leaned forward and checked the phone. "You barely have any service," he said. "I think we won't be able to rely on the internet for much longer. Near Chicago?"

Alice motioned to Titus as Elaine continued to try to relay her message. "Why doesn't she just text?" Alice asked as Titus pointed at her laptop.

“I can’t understand you, can you text?”

Crackle. "Fine,” Came the disappointed reply.

Titus rolled his eyes and hung up on Elaine, sending her a quick text message asking her to type it out. Alice pulled up her tracking software and reverse input the number, finding that Elaine was nearly halfway around the world from them even with the reshuffling. How she managed to get so far in such a short time, Alice had no idea. It must have been a lot of driving and a lot of fighting.

Apparently, Elaine was near Chicago. According to the GPS though, it looked like she was somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Still, Alice couldn't really say anything as to what was actually there.

"We should go there soon," she said.

Titus nodded. "I really want to go now. But we can't."

Alice shook her head in agreement. "We cannot. But it does put another timeline in place. If the infrastructure is really failing, we need to get it up and running with the supercomputer center as soon as possible. We don't have enough time for you to take another class or whatever. We need to start experimenting now with your alchemy."

Titus nodded. "I suppose I can get some work done in the next couple of hours before the class starts, but I'm really not sure I can do it without some more instruction," he said.

Alice grimaced. "If you need to, but we don't have time to just level up. We need to move quicker. Things are failing." Getting an idea she pulled up a report she shouldn't have had access to. "It looks like satellites are coming down. I think we're looking at some sort of cascade effect. If something like the Kessler syndrome is happening, we probably only have hours, if not days, seeing the rate of drop-off."

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"Kessler syndrome?" Titus cocked his head. "I haven't heard of that one."

"It's where satellite debris damages other satellites, and it circles around the globe, taking them all out. One bad micrometeorite or satellite collision not mediated by people monitoring them, and we can lose all communication in the span of a few hours, at least all satellite ones. And clearly, the cell towers are pretty much entirely compromised," she said, gesturing at the phone. "You're on a 2G network. I didn't even know those were still around."

Titus grimaced. "Do you think Elaine needs our help?" he asked, waiting for the text message to arrive. Surprisingly, it still hadn't.

"I don't know," Alice said. "It sounds like she wanted us to meet somewhere, but I couldn't tell if she was in danger. She knew we wouldn't be able to get there if she was in danger. She didn't sound panicked."

"That woman is never panicked," Titus cut in. "I would not judge anything based on the tone of her voice."

Alice nodded, taking that in stride. "Well, we can't do anything to help her immediately. And if she's trapped, hopefully, she can wait an extra day. But more likely, I think it has something to do with—" Titus's phone chimed with a message.

"That took a really long time," Alice said.

Titus picked up the phone to read it and said, "Ah, yeah, she's not really in trouble. It doesn't sound like it. She's being a bit cryptic as if she doesn't want someone to read her messages."

"Do you think someones been intercepting her stuff?" Alice asked.

"She probably thinks so.”

“Honestly, I don't think she necessarily knew I was listening in until I spoke." Alice said.

"If she even heard you speak. It would have been hard to know."

"Maybe. But I could read her text messages. So maybe she has a point."

"You can?" Titus asked.

Alice rolled her eyes. Titus sighed. "Yeah. So, it looks like we're going to have a family meeting near Chicago in several days."

"Do you want to go?" Alice asked. She felt a surprising bit of nervousness. Was it that Titus would want to go without her, or was it that she didn't want to meet these dangerous people? Maybe once they finished their job and mission, Titus wouldn't have any reason to stick around. But then again, maybe there was no reason for him to stay because everything would be taken care of. Alice wasn't sure what part of it was lying to herself, but she felt like she wasn't telling herself the full truth.

Titus, though, answered, pulling her out of her thoughts, "I think that we might need to go. I don't really want to, but if we're going to introduce you to everyone….. Well, you have the [Agelessness] trait. And I think getting everyone on the same page sooner rather than later is probably a good idea. There are people who, even if I don't sincerely trust them with my life, are the ones I know best in the entire world. If we want to be able to help the people getting back from this tutorial, assuming they're not as well equipped as we are, it'd be best if we coordinated."

Alice nodded. "I see. I think we probably need to talk to them anyway. For many reasons," she said, still not exactly looking forward to that.

Titus smiled and nodded. "Yeah. Me neither. Anyways, I guess we'll have to put off hunting until after I've tried a few things," he said as he plopped a massive metal cauldron down on the table, pulling out a knife and a cutting board as well. He started chopping apart something unidentifiable but smelled slightly acidic.

Alice pulled her shirt up over her nose. "Oh, gross. Do you have to do that here?"

Titus looked at her strangely and then nodded. "Of course," and then went back to his work without further explanation.

Alice stood up and paced across the room, the eyes of the NPC lady tracking her as she attempted to escape the smell. The butchered monster was one thing when it was outside. But now, in close quarters and without the excitement of fighting it, the thing was gross.Alice thought as she paced by the far wall. Designs and swirls of the patterns of enchantments spun through her head. "Titus," she said after a few minutes, "Can I work on your shovel?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to enchant the spear?"

"I do, but I don't want to mess it up. I need some practice on actual items, not just bits of metal."

Titus handed her the shovel. The blade had long since been reprofiled into more of a leaf-shape. The steel was doing decently well at holding an edge, but was still nothing like a properly tempered weapon. She took it over to the far side, putting it down on a table, and hunched over it, starting to draw tiny little pathways along the blade.