“Congratulations!” said the voice in her head. “50 floors swept in under 12 hours. You have earned a contribution point. Sinaloa is Strength!”

Maria wiped sweat from her forehead with her elbow, thankful once again that the masters had given her light duties while she recovered from her time in the dream world. Her arms and legs were still weak and thin, and her palms burned from the rough wooden broomstick, calluses softened by her time in the sleeping chamber. She felt a little guilty, as her sisters followed her on their knees, dragging a basin of now filthy water from the rags they used to polish the recently swept floors of the Governor’s residence.

The only downside was that her solitary contribution point would secure no more than a single meal, meaning she would once again need to impose on her family, if she wanted to eat the following morning. Which she very much did.

Why, oh why was I pulled from the dream world? she bemoaned for the hundredth time. I could have secured dozens of points had I been allowed to stay.

Naturally, no one would explain the waves that rocked those such as her. She could only imagine that it had something to do with the Alux. She could still see the little person of the forest vividly in her imagination, though the specifics of the conversation with the magical being were fuzzy at best.

“You must never tell another soul!” her mother had hissed when Maria shared her tale in the first hours after her wakening. “The little people hold their secrets dear.”

Unspoken was the far greater danger of gaining the attention of the masters. For a young woman of Maria’s status, the only defense was dirt on the face and ashes in the hair, perhaps some rotting leaves hidden within her simple robes to enhance her unwashed odors. But even those measures might not suffice should she become an object of curiosity rather than contempt.

Maria watched as her sisters finished the final floor, shepherding the exhausted resources of her depleted body. From time to time she wielded the broom to catch one last piece of imaginary dirt, wary of being seen as idle, should one of the invisible watchers happen upon the scene. Though her family had cleaned the Governor’s residence since she was little, their eyes were unworthy of the sight of even the lowest of the Governor’s staff, but that did not mean that their labors weren’t overseen. Each of them had received beatings from invisible hands over the years, often not knowing why. Or objects and furniture in the very room they were cleaning would vanish and move.

It was simply the nature of the world, that those of low status, the grovelers in the dirt, had eyes unworthy of true sight.

Soon, she and her sisters were back home at the worker’s dormitories, pulling their food bars from various hiding places within their robes and engaging in the furtive consumption that passed for dinner. It was another hour before their mother arrived at the family’s assigned room, a rare half-smile upon her deep-lined face.

“Girls,” she announced. “The Voice of Heaven told me the Governor’s home will be closed to us in the morning. You may do as you like before midday.”

An entire morning!

“Don’t stray far in case other work is assigned!” her mother continued. “And don’t...”

Maria tuned out the string of rules and cautions that would inevitably fall from Mama’s lips. Luisa, her youngest sister, leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“I have something to show you.” Her voice was tinged with mischief.

Maria touched her hand. “Shh,” she whispered back. “Mama's talking. Later.”

“I’ll show you in the morning,” Luisa replied, ignoring their mother’s chastising look in her direction.

Later, when the girls were free to talk, in the minutes before the silent period, Maria attempted to pry the secret from her sister, but Luisa would only shake her head and smile. “Tomorrow,” she said.

The next day, the two sisters walked through the hemp fields, threading their way through rows of plants as tall as they were. The air was full of the plant’s musky scent.

“Luisa, where are you taking me? We’re getting too far, and you know it’s not safe out in the fields when no one can see us.”

“Don’t be so stiff, Maria. You’re the only fun one left.”

That’s because the others have all gained some common sense, Maria thought. Or had it beaten into them. I wonder what’s wrong with me?

Ever since her return from the dream world, Maria’s thoughts kept circling back to the visit from the Alux, the dream within the dream. She couldn’t remember much from the conversation, only a sense of calm, an optimistic serenity that still resonated within her chest, the sense that she had been blessed in some way by the forest spirit. Since that visit, she had found herself wondering if there was more to the world, if her life might expand past faithful service to the Masters.

Naturally, she had tried her best to push those dangerous notions away, to remain small and humble, to accept her role of utter servitude with grace. But the idea was stubborn, and in the moments when her hands were occupied with work and her thoughts free to wander, she had sometimes allowed the dangerous thought to surface that perhaps, just possibly, she, Maria Mendez, was special in some way.

“Almost there!” Luisa said, her voice hushed but excited.

Maria looked ahead, to see that they had come to a place in the field where the stones from all around had been piled together, a pile of rocks where a few stubborn trees had found a place to grow. She wondered for a moment how Luisa had managed to find something out here, so far from home, but put the thought away. Her youngest sister had always been free and foolish, and shared Maria’s penchant for wandering the lands around their home, searching for edible plants and flowers. She couldn’t chastise her, for after all, this was the very behavior that had been responsible for her own assignment to the dream world.

They walked slowly now, Luisa pulling Maria’s hand. “There,” she said, pointing to something beneath one of the trees. “Do you see him?”

Maria tried to make out what Luisa was pointing towards. The sky was thinner than usual, allowing the light from the rising sun to cast faint shadows, and the area under the tree was dark. She could make out a lump of green, and at first she thought someone had piled leaves beneath the tree. But then a part of the green stirred, and she realized it was a human figure, a man.

“Do you see?” Luisa asked, barely able to contain herself. “Do you see him?”

The green man stood, his back to them, and Maria pulled her sister down, out of sight among the hemp.

“What are you thinking?” she hissed. Her heart pounded and her mind was spinning though. This man, this green man with spindly arms and legs, was much taller than the forest spirit she had encountered in the dream world, but Maria knew, she just knew, that the two events must be connected. To be visited once in a world of dreams, that could be a chance encounter, but now, to see another being of the forest near her own home…

What could it mean? Are the forest spirits returning?

Maria squeezed Luisa’s hands and stifled an entirely inappropriate giggle. Something new, something special was happening, and she was a part of it somehow.

***

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I’ve got to find some food, thought Mo.

He looked over the fields around him, briefly wondering where he was. The past weeks had been a relentless blur of fields and wastelands, of fevers, seizures and delusions. Mornings were almost okay, these days, but he knew that by early afternoon the tremors would return, and not long after that the hallucinations.

He watched an eel moving between the rocks and corrected himself. The bad hallucinations. It’s a good thing I had some meat on my bones when this all started, he thought, looking down at himself in disgust. He still wasn’t entirely sure if his skin color was some kind of strange long-term hallucination or something else, some residue of his malfunctioning system. A vague memory that liver failure turned your skin some color or other had him holding out hope it wasn’t real.

One thing that he knew was no illusion was the feeling that large pieces of his mind were missing. Back when he had realized his system was utterly unresponsive, he had cried like a baby, before remembering that he had done the same thing the day before, and the day before. In fact, he had absolutely no sense of how long his memory had been on the fritz, or how much time had passed. A somewhat healed knife wound in his shoulder was his best indicator, assuming the injury was connected to his current state.

He wished he could remember why all this had happened to him. All he had to go on were vague memories, a fight, piloting a hovercar too fast over festering waters, feeling like he would lose control and go flipping end over end, fear that he would sink and drown. Fear of what would be done to him if he was caught. Basically, memories with a lot of fear. Then there was something about Anda, and that little gob girl, but he pretty sure that part was another hallucination.

Man, what the hell was I thinking? How did I get myself in this situation?

He still found himself reaching for his system to boost his mood, or to look something up, hell, even to check the time. The only thing he didn’t miss was his old augsight mods, mostly because they had become a particularly vivid part of his hallucinations. In the mornings, it was mostly the sense of being underwater, a gentle ripple in the air, seeing the occasional sea creature out of the corner of his eye. Later in the day, the Mayan deities came out to play. Previously, he had been unaware it was possible to hallucinate pain. Now he knew better.

Still, there were moments of clarity, moments where he almost felt… himself? If that self was one from years ago, when he had still been living at the dojo, before he had been, fairly he would be the first to admit, kicked out on his ass. The years since then were now a rolling blur, somehow gaining less clarity as they approached the present.

He heard a giggle from the field behind him.

That’s a new one. Giggling pot plants. Can’t believe people used to smoke this stuff, it stinks.

His stomach rumbled, and he briefly wondered if the plants might be edible. He hadn’t planned on ending up in the middle of a cultivated field. In fact, he was trying to stay away from other people as much as he could. Without a functioning system, his reflexes were sluggish, his senses poor, he would be the victim in any encounter. In his half-starved state, he doubted he could hold off an angry gob.

The problem was, everything grown in the fields he had skirted for days on end had been raw biomass, plants chosen for their speed of growth and general hardiness, rather than edibility. They would all be gathered up in time and converted into food bars and the like, but that didn’t help him any. He knew the time would come soon when he would be forced to risk stealing food.

Actually, he decided, that time seemed to be just about now.

***

What is it now? Nykka wondered.

“This one begs your pardon, Mistress. The Doctor would see you.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. He couldn’t send a message? And why do they have to train these poor schlubs to talk like this?”

Of course, the Doctor hardly ever used his system for messages, and he insisted she use hers as little as possible for that purpose as well. He had never explicitly stated the reasoning behind the behavior but Nykka understood it to be a piece of his general attitude toward system security.

She made her way down the stairs to his office. Or was it a laboratory? Some mixture of the two she supposed. It was a tenth the size of his primary lab up north, but the Doctor spent more time in various other labs located around Sinaloa’s holdings, preferring to be isolated from clan politics. His position within Sinaloa was absolute and unassailable, but he preferred to leave it to other hands to dirty themselves with earthly power, only intervening when he felt his research was threatened.

“Nykka, I have a task for you,” he said, his customary greeting. She remained silent, her customary response. “There have been reports of an anomalous individual within clan territory just to the north, in the agricultural area southeast of Pasto.”

Oh crap. Is Attaboy wandering around?

“Naturally, the boy comes to mind, though the word of mouth indicates someone of larger stature. Go and retrieve this person. If you cannot, bring back a witness.”

Nykka gave thanks that she was the one given the mission. That it was assigned to her was no surprise, as many of the high-ranked security personnel were still showing symptoms of mental influence from the Averdale debacle and unavailable for such a duty.

“The reports indicate that the individual possesses some kind of active or passive camouflage,” the Doctor continued. “If you suspect that they are an advanced operative from another clan, withdraw immediately and send word to me. That is all.”

She nodded. If this is Attaboy, I’m going to kill him. On the Inside anyway.

It was entirely likely she would find Attaboy on the Inside before she found him Outside, especially if he had left the caves. Her current Inside mission was to draw on her connections at the Academy and gather intelligence about the girl and what exactly had occurred in Averdale. She decided a brief visit to the Academy to rule Attaboy out or in as the ‘anomalous individual’ should be her first step.

***

For the second time in a week, Attaboy was summoned to Mumo’s room.

“You better still be in that cave!” was the first thing he heard, before he had even cleared the doorway.

“Oh. Hi Nykka,” he replied.

She seems so much smaller now, he thought. He glanced over at Mumo, who was watching the interaction with a faint smile.

“Still in the cave. Loving the cave,” he continued hastily, after turning back to Nykka and seeing her expression. It was strange to see the two of them together, Mumo and Nykka, two utterly pale beings with white eyes, though Nykka’s red leather outfit highlighted her coloring further than Mumo’s simple white robe.

She looked at him closely for any sign of deception, then sighed in relief. “Food holding out okay?” she asked.

“Still got a couple weeks left. I want to leave soon though.”

She glared at him. “Don’t even think about it. The Doctor’s got eyes everywhere. I’m about to chase down some phantom, just because there was the merest hint that some stranger was seen moving around the fields just a few miles from where you are.”

“So that’s why you were so worried? Not because you would miss me?” He almost winked at her, catching himself as he remembered that flirting would just be weird at his current physical age. He had to admit that a big reason for the changes to his Inside appearance were so that he might, someday, have the kind of love life he remembered from his days as Atticus.

It’s just lucky I’m in a position to do that. As far as he could tell, nearly everyone else was forced to mirror their Outside appearance, other than hair and other cosmetic changes. Except for Lilijoy’s weird orc friend. He had no idea what that was all about.

Nykka gave him a strange look. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” She looked around Mumo’s room. “This isn’t the place though. Care to take a walk?”

After saying goodbye to Mumo, they walked out the front door of the Academy and down the wide path leading to Academy town. The cobblestone path wound down the gentle hill, and Attaboy could see many dirt paths formed by the feet of impatient students seeking a more direct route than its lazy curves provided. The sun felt hot on his dark hair, a sensation he was still getting used to, as on the Outside there was neither direct sunlight, nor did he have hair to speak of.

Nykka walked beside him, and he was careful to keep his strides slow so she wouldn’t be forced to hurry her step, an inconvenience he appreciated all too well.

“So,” she started. Several seconds of silence followed. “So, I need to ask you something. About your system.”

Aw, I was hoping she was going to confess her feelings. He chuckled, as that was about as likely as… well, he couldn’t think of anything less likely. But still…

She mistook his chuckle for skepticism.

“I know, I know. You just got out of that situation. Believe me, I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. I...” she tailed off, and Attaboy could sense she was struggling to find the right words. “I’m kind of screwed at the moment.”

Guess she decided to go blunt. No surprise there.

“If I don’t obey the Doctor, he can… allow my system to die, I guess is the easiest way to explain it.”

Attaboy took in the implications. Yeah, she is screwed. No wonder she pretends to be his most loyal servant. She took a huge risk helping me.

The Atticus part of him, to the extent that any such thing existed anymore, supplied the other half of the equation. She wouldn’t take that risk unless she hoped for an equally great reward.

“And?” he said, feeling a little disappointed she hadn’t helped him out of some kind of intrinsic goodness.

She stopped. After another step he stopped too and turned to face her. “Can you help?” she asked.

He studied her face. In the light of the sun, her white skin almost glowed, and in the back of his mind he wondered if she had to worry about sunburn on the Inside. There were no external signs of her emotions, no quivering lip or furrowed brow. But somehow he could tell that she was frightened, terrified to be asking this, perhaps fearful of the vulnerability she was displaying.

“No,” he replied. He watched her face harden, saw her begin to summon words, but before she could answer his denial, he finished the thought.

“But I know someone who can.”