Coden rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He had flown halfway across the country to some random compound in the flatlands to attend another meeting about solving their collective problems. It was urgent, supposedly. More urgent than binge watching the forty-second season of Big Brother? Probably yes. Most things are.

“Where's Pionic? It’s his damn meeting, why isn’t he here?” Graham Callixto, head of Marine Corps Equipment Management complained. His own specific problem was that despite his excessive amount of budget spending, most of the equipment that was sourced from his department turned out to be faulty, most notably of which were the beloved grappling hooks that the crayon eaters were oh-so fascinated with.

“He’s in Bermuda,” someone that Coden didn’t recognize said.

Graham scoffed. “How do you know?”

“I don’t.”

Graham blinked. “Then why did you say it?”

“I dunno,” he dumbly replied, scratching his nose.

“Why you-!”

The door banged open, and all the heads turned to see Jared Pionic walk in. Curiously, not all of the heads were the same as last time. A few new attendees, for whatever reason.

“Apologies for the wait, gentlemen,” Jared absentmindedly apologized while flicking something unseen off of his shoulder. Coden yawned.

“Bud, I’ve got a season of whatever shit the algorithm picked waiting for me back in New York. Can we hurry this up?” Coden gruffly questioned.

Jared smiled. Crookedly. “Of course, Admiral. We will all have our issues addressed.”

Coden adjusted his posture, preening a little. Admiral, huh? Well, it does feel nice to be properly addressed every once in a while, even if his useless interns couldn’t say his proper rank for the life of them. “Go on.”

Jared looked back up at the table. “As you all know, the two soldiers Ryan Garvey and Alarick Hoffman, or simply just Alan as I’m now informed his peers called him, are lost somewhere in the new lands of Central America. Due to our president’s military background, he will likely be more sympathetic to these two lone soldiers. He will undoubtedly inquire as to why they haven’t been found yet, and once he does, Marvin Valdez is, as the kids say, ‘cooked’.” Jared nodded his head to Marvin Valdez, head of SOUTHCOM. He nervously waved. Jared cleared his throat and continued.

“Anyhoo, it is of the utmost importance that we find them because-”

Someone raised their hand. “I thought that we were gonna find them because we wanted them to solve our problems for us?”

Jared blinked. “I, er, never said that. As I was-”

Another person spoke. “No, I remember you saying it. You said something about money being involved too, right?”

Jared nervously chuckled. “Now, I have no memory of-”

The room erupted once the word ‘money’ was mentioned. Coden internally sighed.

“Money?”

“Money!?”

“I want some! No, need some!”

“Gimme some cash man! Please, my wife’s pregnant with her boyfriend’s kid! She needs her meds!”

“Whu- whutchu got for me, man’? Gimm- gimme summa that paper, mane’.”

Jared slammed his hands down on the table. “THERE IS NO DAMN MONEY!”

The room went quiet, except for a quiet, “Aw, man.”

Jared took a deep breath. “As I was saying, finding these two is currently objective one. For any of you that have access to satellite assets, use them. Valdez, get somebody on retracing their GPS locator. Even if most GPS’s abroad don’t work anymore, it’s worth a shot.” Jared turned to Coden, who promptly straightened.

“Coden, you use your drone fleets to cover as much land as possible, as quickly as possible. Leave no crevice unexplored, but don’t dilly dally in one area, either. Be efficient about it.”

Jared smoothed out his clothes. Black suit jacket, bland black tie on a white shirt. Basic. Classic G-Man. Coden didn’t like him one bit. But, he would do what he said. Jared had enough dirt on him, on all of them, to make sure that he never got a chance to boss around interns ever again. He did have one question, though.

“Mr. Pionic,” Coden said loudly, getting Jared’s attention. He turned with a cool expression.

“Yes, Admiral?”

Coden ignored the obvious attempt at flattery. “We seem to be doing all of the damn work for you. What slack will you be picking up on the, er, rope?” He stuttered, losing steam. Jared’s eyes pierced into him, as if looking into his soul. “That is to say, the metaphorical rope, you see. There isn’t really a rope-”

Jared interrupted him, putting a blessed stop to his meaningless blabbering. “I will be working to solve this issue in my own way. None of you need the stress of worrying about what I will be keeping myself busy with. You have– or will have –enough on your plates already.”

“Wait, does that mean there’s dinner being-” Erick Lehmann, head of the Useless Ending Comments Department, quickly tried to say, but Jared Pionic turned around and abruptly left the room, door banging shut behind him.

The room was silent for a moment, then Coden decided to break it. “Meeting adjourned, you fucks,” and then followed Jared’s example.

. . .

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The broad-shouldered man sat alone in a darkened room, a large screen filled with scrolling text, the only source of light in the area. The blue glow of the device cast the broad-shouldered man’s body in shadow as he sat in solemn silence.

Watching.

Waiting?

Various words repeated themselves on the screen as the text flicked by at a speed that made it near impossible to read.

The Flash.

FBI.

Furner.

Plot.

Conspiracy.

Murder.

Dresden.

The sentences in which they found themselves varied. Whatever all of them said, it wasn’t enough to pique the interest of the broad-shouldered man. Not yet.

. . .

I woke up with a start as the rickety-ass wagon thing I was on rolled over a large rock in the weathered and beaten path. Immediately, my mind went to the catalyst. I frisked myself for it and, finding it safe within my pocket, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I sat up and observed my surroundings. The beige sand stretched for miles and miles; in other words, a damn long walk. Might have to commute. I leaned over the edge of the roof of the carriage (wagon?????) to look down on Ryan. He was curled up into a ball, sucking on his thumb. Seeing that he was fine, I looked to the front seat, where the local BITCH had taken residence. I fucking HATED THEM. I took all my self restraint not to-

“Hi!” I cheerfully said to Aris. She jerked as if broken out of a stupor before turning around in her seat to glare at me with slightly less heat than a hydrogen bomb. I decided against entering into an involuntary staring contest and looked away, resting my gaze on a suspiciously shaped butte. Seeing its shape brought a chuckle out of me.

I set my bag down on the top of the roof I was sitting on and stretched. The aches of the previous day strained their way into my muscles even more, and as they did, I thought back to its cause. I had witnessed a normal dude pull a Transformers and turn into some sorta demonic creature right in front of my eyes. Now I’m no scientist, but I figure that you at least need to be eighteen years old to do that.

We had narrowly escaped, but scars still remained. For example, Ryan’s beloved 1996 fine china collection had shattered in my bag. Why was I carrying his fine china collection in my bag? Damn good question.

Looking out at the horizon, I saw . . . nothing. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure where I was going. I had learned long ago that even if you don’t know the right path, picking a random direction and sticking to it is sometimes better than staying still. Remembering some basic wayfinding lessons, I checked out the arc of the sun. Contrary to popular belief, the sun didn’t rise exactly in the east. It rose a little to the left of it. Anyhow, the sun was shining to my right, which told me that we were headed north.

“Yo, Aris,” I called. She didn’t respond. I cursed and pulled on the translator ring and repeated myself. Her head jerked around to glare at me, which was getting kinda old.

“Yeah yeah, sorry to interrupt your sesh’ of doing fuck all, but I’ve got a question and you’re gonna answer it. Ready?” I harshly asked.

“I havn’t th’ faintest on what any of them words mean.” She grumbled.

“Great. Where in the - well, not world - are we? And following that, what’s north?”

Ryan suddenly perked up from within the carriage. “Yeah! And tell us, has the west risen finally?”

“Hey Ryan?”

“Yeah dudebro?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay.”

I looked back towards Aris, who was gazing on with a faraway expression. “Well?”

She sneered. “What damned corner of the world you come from that you don’t know what's north? Doesn’t matter,” she said as I opened my mouth to reply. “Fer’ your first question, I have no clue where we are. No mapmaker with any sense tries to travel past the mountains, and the coastline isn’t that much safer in those areas because o’ that damned sea creature.” She pondered for a second. “We’re probly’ past those mountains, in the unmapped lands.”

Ryan crossed his arms, joining in. “And what’s north?”

She rolled her eyes. “Gitapollagónes. Home of every nation that matters and the impassable mountains that act as a barrier to it.”

Me and Ryan both raised our eyebrows in unison. “Gitapollagónes?”

I scratched my head. “Sounds . . . European.”

Ryan smacked my elbow. “Dude, watch your language. ”

Aris frowned. “Do you two really have no idea what I’m talking about? Where did you even come from?”

“Well you see, when a mommy and a daddy love each-” Ryan started, but I socked him in the jaw to shut him up, and answered the question myself.

“Somewhere damn far from here, alright? Now, I know what you said about the mountains, but still. How do we get through it?”

Aris eyed me and Ryan suspiciously, thoughtfully, but answered the question all the same. “Normally I say that ye’ don’, but there . . . might be a way. An’ when I say might, I mean might. Ye’ don’t cross the ranges without a cost. More often than not, the cost is your life.”

I patted my pockets for change, but alas, they were empty. “Why are these mountains so dangerous?”

Aris shrugged. I turned away from her, done with my questioning. Wanting to discuss things with Ryan, I leaned over the edge of the carriage roof and spoke in a hushed tone. Ryan looked back at me through the open window.

“We are totally and completely fucked without evac. Does your satellite radio still work?”

Ryan sheepishly looked away. “I lost it back at the crystal mine.”

I threw my head back in frustration. “Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you just be able to NOT fuck things up for once?”

Ryan glared at me. “Okay Mr. Smartypants, why can’t you use your radio?”

I froze. “Well, I, uh, lost it.”

“Ha!”

Angry, I shoved him away. “It’s not important now. What is important is that we find another squad that’s hopefully been transported here, wherever here is.”

That gave me an idea. I hopped down from the carriage and attempted to land gracefully. Instead, I kicked up a bunch of sand and fell face first. I heard a high-pitched giggle come from either Aris or Ryan, I couldn’t tell. Springing back up, I jogged ahead of the carriage and waved my arms in the air.

“Stop the wagon!”

Aris jerked on the reins of the wagon to stop it. The beasts of burden carrying it huffed and halted, their hooves surprisingly sinking very little into the sand.

Raising my arm, I waved both of my companions off of the primitive vehicle. “Get down here, both of you.”

Ryan hopped out, and Aris followed shortly after. I adjusted the collar of the uniform I had stolen from the crystal mine, sweating in the heat. Once both of them had gotten down, I pointed at the ground.

“Aris, I’m gonna need you to draw a map of . . . whatever this continent looks like.”

While Aris grudgingly got to work, I shuffled my feet in the sand and pondered on our current situation. Obviously, shit was rough. Me and my regretful compadre were, at the very least, far from home. Spiderman. And laws of physics? Out the window. Mages and fuck-ass wizards? One-hundred percent real. And Uncle Sam? Nowhere to be seen, but that’s standard operating procedure. Me and Ryan were on our own, just like at the ridge.

Once Aris had finished, I brusquely shoved her aside and peered down. Turning my head slightly, I asked Aris, “These hatched lines. What do they mean?”

She gestured at the crossed lines I was talking about. “I’m no cartographer, but that’s th’ mountain range that separates th’ unknown regions from, well, everywhere else.”

“And what’s over here?”

“The Commonwealth an’ th’ Samraat’s.

“How about here?”

I asked and she answered. On and on we went, back and forth. Some time later, when she seemed to be on the brink of refusing to answer any more questions, I clapped my hands together.

“Great! Aris, your contributions to the United States Army will not go unnoticed.”

She frowned and spoke in an unknown tongue. Guess the translator ring was out of juice again. I spun on my heel to talk to Ryan, who had . . . mysteriously disappeared.

I blinked, then spotted a trail of footprints in the dusty sand. I turned to Aris, who was following my gaze. She glared back at me and leaned against the wagon, picking at a hangnail. I took that as ‘permission’ to go follow the trail.

I jogged as fast as I could with the sand slipping out from under my boots. The trail led up and over a nearby dune. Scaling it, the sand worked itself into my boots and socks, chafing between my toes, and the sun beat down on me.

Maybe a minute passed? Not sure. The starchy cloth of the stolen clothes I was in made focusing harder. But, I reached the summit of the dune all the same.

I looked over it and spotted Ryan, right below me. He didn’t cast a shadow, because it was midnight.

“Ryan!” He jerked his head up to me. “What the hell?” I asked him. He looked at me with a blank, mindless expression. All he did was point up.

I looked to see what he was pointing at. I blinked.

The cosmic eye blinked back.