A knock at her hotel room door. Fira jolted. She jumped up from where she was watching television and approached the door warily, one hand outstretched, fire cupped in her rear hand. Lowering her head, she peered out the peep hole.

Levi beamed from the other side of the door, dressed in a tattered white shirt and jeans, a backpack on his back. He gave a jaunty wave.

Fira opened the door. She frowned, glancing at the clock. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have the meetup—a thing? At noon?”

He waved his hand. “Already found out everything I need to know. No need to risk any of that. You hungry? I could use some pizza.”

“I… uh, sure? And then we figure out the next step?” Fira asked, lost.

“No, that is the next step. First rule of pizza: pizza is not a means to an end. Pizza is an ends in of itself,” Levi said, marching off.

Fira squinted after him, then shook her head and followed. “Do you ever say anything that makes sense?”

“I always make sense. You’re the one who’s not listening.”

“I…don’t think that’s right,” Fira muttered to herself.

Levi tutted.

Out of the dim, vaguely smoky-smelling hotel and back into the sun. Levi led the way with confidence, leaving the glittery towers of Central City behind as he made a beeline for the crumbling skyscrapers of Old Town. Broken-down, grimy strip malls and gas stations filled the streets between the two, the remnants of Old Town’s suburbs now a no-man’s-land between the old city and the new. Homeless people wandered the space, pushing shopping carts full of their whole lives, carrying sleeping bags on their backs.

Fira cut her eyes away, uncomfortable. She shifted, then forced herself to look back up. One by one, she scanned their faces, searching for her brother’s among them.

“Hey! Hey, you. Come here,” Levi said, gesturing.

One of the homeless people, wearing enough layers of clothes to make determining their gender impossible, drew close hesitantly. They peered up at Levi, hope and fear warring in their eyes.

Levi fumbled in his back pocket, then reached out, taking firm hold of their hand. He looked them in the eye. “Half of it’s yours. The other half goes to the address on the sheet. I can trust you, right?”

They hesitated, then nodded.

Levi grinned. “Good dude. Find me on the other side, and there’s another twenty in it for you. I’ll know if it was delivered or not.” He released their hand and walked off.

Fira glanced back, then looked at Levi. “What was that about?”

“I had a couple of bills burning a hole in my pocket. Had to do something about it,” Levi said, shrugging.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“So you…handed them off to someone on the street, who’s probably just going to buy drugs with the money?” Fira asked.

Levi shrugged. “It’s their life, not mine. If they do, then at least I made one person happy. You know, Fira, sometimes it’s good to have faith in people.”

She squinted at him. “Of all the starving idiots I’ve run into, you’re certainly the one most eager to give your money away.”

“Must not know many starving idiots. Half the ones I know are even more excited to throw money at bullshit. At least I’m putting it to a good cause,” Levi commented.

“What cause?” Fira asked.

Levi gave a slow smile, waggling his brows at her. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Keep your stupid secret.”

“I am, after all, a man of mystery.” Levi reached up to his head and tipped an imaginary hat.

“Suuuure.”

Around them, the buildings became fine once more, the facades grand, but all of them infected with the decay of disuse. Graffiti colored the walls, while once-proud glass clad office buildings grinned gap-toothed at the wind, windows missing here and there all the way up their height. A hospital gaped, interior exposed to the wind where a wall slumped at the building’s feet, IV stands, beds, sinks, and even soap dispensers still stood where they’d been abandoned, decades prior. Weeds choked once-pristine flower beds, the most industrious of the plants already seeking holds on the buildings, both exterior and interior.

Feeling eyes on her, Fira whirled. From high overhead, a face vanished into shadow, gone so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen anything at all. She squinted after it, trying to make sense of the dark.

“Don’t stare.”

Fira turned.

Levi waggled his finger. “It’s rude.”

“You saw them, too?” Fira asked.

He shook his head. “But I know the kind of person who lives here. They don’t want to be seen. They don’t want to be known. Everyone in here is a dead body, rotting away, or a poison, locked in a jar, slowly growing stronger.”

“What? That’s… unusually eloquent, for you.” Taken aback, Fira gawked at him.

“You have a lot of time to become eloquent, when you’re rotting away in Old Town,” Levi half-sang. He shrugged at her and grinned, spreading his hands helplessly. “I try not to spend too much time in my own head, but sometimes you find yourself in unfortunate company.”

“By which you mean, your own?”

Levi gave her a look. “Do you feel fortunate?”

Fira opened her mouth, then snorted. “How am I supposed to answer that?” she muttered, half to herself.

“Eeeexactly.” Shooting finger guns, Levi skipped along.

“But seriously. There’s a pizza place in here?” Fira followed after him, looking around her. Black mold climbed up the rear of a gutted strip mall with its glass front blown out and its ceiling drooping from the weight of the accumulated precipitation. A tree grew through the center of a quaint old shop on the other side of the street.

“Just wait. It gets better,” Levi promised.

“If you say so,” Fira muttered.

They walked on. Slowly, more people filled the streets, most of them dressed in rugged leather or scale armor, carrying weapons on their backs and hips. Levi waved at a few of them, and they waved back, friendly if distant. Tents stood inside some abandoned buildings, while others were boarded and tarped up, repaired enough for their current, temporary occupants.

“It’s almost like the edges of an Exclusion Zone, where all the players live while they hunt monsters,” Fira commented.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Levi confirmed.

Fira’s eyes widened. She nodded. “Oh—oh, right. I almost forgot. Central City has an open portal.”

“Yep. And it’s just up ahead, in the heart of Old Town.”

Thick purple vines and tangles of green brambles with orange flowers replaced the ordinary weeds. Over to the right, an enormous fleshy plant, almost like a succulent, slowly shattered the shell of the building it grew in. To the left, a story-tall tentacle, complete with octopus-like suckers, flopped alongside the street, and Awakened darted back and forth along their length, chopping the tentacle up into slices. High-STR and Awakened with Strength skills hoisted the slices, carrying them deeper into Old Town.

“Where are they going?” Fira wondered.

“Let’s go find out!” Without waiting for a reply, Levi chased after them.

“Levi—” Fira shook her head and followed.