For the second day in a row, I awake to a series of loud knocks on my door. It took forever to fall asleep the night before. After I had healed my broken eardrums and the shattered inner-ear bone, there was still a residual ringing in my head that kept me from slipping into oblivion. Eventually, my weariness won out in the end, however.

I groan and roll over.

“Whozzit...”

“Ah, you can hear.” Came the reply.

“Yeah, barely.” I manage to stammer out as I pull myself from the bed.

“What are your plans today, Lawrence?” The door creaks as Shawn leans against it.

“Store,” I respond simply. “Need....thing.” I nearly fall back to sleep. Two hours just wasn’t going to cut it.

“Did Ortega call you last night?”

His voice jolts me back awake.

“I don’t know.”

“Right, your phone.”

I slip off to sleep again.

“Anyhow,” I’m jolted awake again, “We have some new team members coming in. They’ll be flown in once the property is in order.”

“Did..did he say when it will be?”

“About four more days.”

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“Huh...” Once more I begin to slip off into sleep.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Huh.”

I toss and turn for ten more minutes until I realize that falling back to sleep was an impossible feat. I slam my fist into my pillow and push myself. God da— Gods dammit. I yawn as I pull on the cleanest clothes I have, take my bag, and take Clio out for a walk to use the restroom. Really, I couldn’t wait until the property was ready. Clio would have so much room to run around, and I wouldn’t have to worry about entering a door with a days-long conquest time, like the level 10 gate I had entered a week and a half ago or so. Two weeks? I don’t know, the days were beginning to run together. If today’s date was the 3rd of January...more than a week and a half, less than two.

I take Clio in after about ten minutes of walking around and grab my bag and a handful of cash from the dresser. 1000? 2000? 3000? How much would I need? Just a couple of weeks ago I would have never considered spending money at this rate. Now? Now it seems like I would have to. I grab all the money I have saved up; a little over 3000 dollars; more than half of which came from yesterday’s door, and walk out of the door after scratching Clio’s favorite spot behind her ear.

The motel is about a twenty-minute walk from the business sector of the town. There, there were a variety of stores; most of which I would be visiting that day. Maybe I should call Ortega and get someone to drop off the stuff I was about to buy at the property? Yeah, I think I’ll do that when I get my phone. I suppose that’ll be the first place I go, I decide with a yawn.

While walking, I remembered what Shawn had asked me the day before when we were about to crest the last layer of the siege tower. Oak, was it?

“Can you search the leaderboard for someone calling themselves, ‘oak?’” I ask the Shard.

“Of course, I can.” Came the reply.

The leaderboard pops up on the screen that separates from the bracelet. I turned around so that the people in passing cars wouldn’t see it. It scrolls, but not for long. About half a page. There, in position 11 of the world rankings was the name, ‘oak.’ That would explain a lot of what I had seen yesterday, I suppose. Didn’t he cause not one, but two sonic booms with his javelin? Didn’t he also kill over 15 Dogmen in the blink of an eye? Yeah. That would explain so much. I’m glad that he came here. He’d probably be the crutch of the whole operation here in what would become the agricultural hub of the United States, all I had to do was to follow him. With that knowledge, an invisible weight lifts off my shoulders. Yes, I just had to follow his lead.

The phone store was my first stop. The man behind the counter — a stocky man who wore a pastel pink polo, and had his black hair slicked back with gel, glances up from his own phone as I step into the store.

“Bill, or...?”

“Nah, I’m here to buy a new phone.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something waterproof,” I answer.

“Most phones are these days.”

Were they? I hadn’t changed phones in...six years?

“Well...a good one then.”

The salesman smiles and leads me around the store. In the end, he convinces me to buy a rather pricey one with a rather pricey case. He even threw in a pair of headphones and transferred my data through the cloud. I leave feeling satisfied. That was one chore done, now for the others. I still had a little over 2000 left in my pocket.