The long dead monorail station stands before us, viciously amputated from the rest of the train network when the Reality Shift hit. The severed elevated track dangles precariously above and several parts of the station's roof have been torn apart, letting in the elements. With Buddy leading the way, our group makes its way inside, pausing at the rundown escalators leading to the train platform upstairs. The chill wind blows, and a ghost of a sigh passes through the station.

"Is this place safe?" I ask dubiously, looking around the weather beaten structure.

"Sure!" Carol confirms, "Parts of the roof may be gone, but staying in here is still warmer than camping outside. Wild animals are also less likely to head up to the train platform level."

I frown at Carol's assessment of the station. Our ranger is missing the most obvious problem.

"This station isn't part of Winter Rift. It bled over during the Reality Shift. You're asking us to camp in an unstable sector."

"How would you know that?" Carol asks, "Have you explored every inch of Winter Rift before?"

"No, but I recognize this station." I grimace while stifling a yawn from the accumulated fatigue, "Its on my way to work in Crossroad City."

"Uh." Carol smiles stupidly, her face flush with embarrassment.

In fact, to say I recognize this monorail station would be an understatement. This is literally Shoreside Station, the one near my apartment. This particular incarnation of it might be in abominable condition, but the layout is still largely intact.

"I'm more concerned about the dead people?" Sam raises an objection of his own, pointing at the corpses piled at the base of the escalator. Thanks to the cold, the corpses resemble shriveled up mummies more than men, all their faces hideously pinched and drawn, with all identifying features destroyed.

"Its a bad omen alright." I grunt in agreement, pointing at the bullet holes and scorch marks that riddle the vicinity of the corpses. A pillar directly facing the escalator even has a large chunk of concrete liberally gouged out of it.

James steps over the examine the corpses, prodding one of them cautiously. The corpse's clothes, bleached from exposure, crumble under the lightest touch. Spent casings litter the floor around the mummified corpses, dirty with corrosion.

"I think none of these guys will mind us crashing here." James comments, dusting his hands off, "And whatever fight they were in is long over."

"Exactly!" Carol enthusiastically agrees as she leads us up the escalator, "And the Rift Mapper confirms that this sector will be stable for around forty eight hours."

"Nothing to worry about, huh?" I comment as we reach the top of the escalator only to encounter another corpse, this one with its head blown cleanly off. A shattered butt stock along with a barrel extender lies near the corpse.

"Don't tell me our mighty Rift Sorcerer is scared of a few dead people?" Carol pokes my cheek again, teasing.

"Its just a bad feeling." I grumble, "Put it down to my gut giving its opinion."

"I know what you mean." Carol unexpectedly agrees, as she looks at the station's clock mounted on a nearby wall. A stray bullet had destroyed the clock's mechanism, but we could still see the last time it displayed. Twelve sharp.

"Twelve, its a sacred number isn't it?" James muses, "I heard the Gunslingers in Combatant Department talk about this before. Twelve is somehow special to them?"

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Close enough." Carol nods grimly, "Twelve is special to us. A number that represents the honor of the Gunslinger class. The battle that took place here? There was no honor at all."

"Just bloodshed." I mutter to myself as I try to keep my nerves under control. The longer I stay in the rift, the more highly strung I feel. There's no reason for me to feel this way, after all we've not met with any danger so far. But I just can't shake the feeling of constant danger settling around me. This morbid find is just making things worse.

I should have brought along that blunt Breath slipped into my jacket. Relaxing seems like a pretty good idea right now.

"We should bury the bodies." Sam says quietly, "Give these people some peace. And show our gratitude for being allowed to enter into their home."

"Never saw you as superstitious." James observes wryly, "We can get started after camp has been set up."

"I'm all for it." Carol affirms, "Poor sods have suffered enough indignity. Also I need time to prepare dinner."

........

James plants a piece of scrap metal into the ground, marking the shallow grave we dug for the assorted station corpses.

"Done." he announces, sounding very pleased with himself. Though to be fair, James did most of the digging since I was still tired from carrying the deer carcass.

"So, uh, should we say a prayer for them?" Sam asks in an unsure voice, "But we don't know who they are."

"Its the thought that counts." Carol says as she approaches us, "I'm sure whomever those people were, they would be grateful that at least someone cared."

"I wouldn't." I smirk, chortling slightly.

"Sorry?" Sam asks, sounding offended.

"That guy with the no head." I explain, "He was dogpiled and killed by that other group, right? Wherever he is now, I'm pretty sure he's pissed about being buried in the same grave as them."

"Why didn't you say anything then?" James asks with a tilt of his head.

"The thought just came to me." I shrug, leaving unsaid the real reason. That I just couldn't be bothered while James was busy digging away.

The four of us walk up the escalator, where Buddy stands guard. The tantalizing smell of roasted meat is already causing my stomach to rumble.

"Time heals all wounds, Adam." Sam finally says, "I'm sure both sides would have forgiven each other by now."

"Would take a hell lot of forgiving to forgive the person who blew your head off." I grunt as our group settles by the campfire, "Not sure I would be able to do it."

"You never know until you try." Carol cracks a joke as she begins serving up slices of roasted venison to us.

"Very funny." I snort, nibbling at a piece of the meat. Not bad, Carol certainly wasn't bluffing when she claimed to be a good cook.

The campfire drives away the cold and for a moment, the atmosphere settles into a peaceful, congenial mood. I look at the busted station clock on the wall, where both hands are raised to twelve, not moving an inch. A frozen moment in time. Are we sitting in an alternate dimension's distant past, or a possible future that is yet to come?

"Here." James passes me a bottle and I take a sip out of it.

"Schnapps?" I respond, swirling the drink around my tongue, "Drinking on the job now?"

"We're off duty." he laughs my observation off as the bottle is passed around to the rest of the group.

Carol takes a deep breath, before speaking.

"Now that everyone is comfortable, there's something I need to share. Make that two somethings."

Carol opens up the Rift Mapper device, letting us see the screen. A map of the Rift is displayed, with several sectors marked in angry red. A green triangle denotes our current position while a dotted line marks out a route taking us to a sector with a blinking green dot. The Mapper also provides information of the approximate time when a sector will be reshuffled and where in the Rift it would show up again. Little wonder Carol had been gone for so many hours, collecting this much data can't have been easy. We had actually crossed a huge amount of distance today, Carol had taken advantage of the periodic shifts in the rift's layout, timing our journey to coincide with the sectors reshuffling themselves.

The rest of us look at her in silence, prompting Carol to continue. She taps the blinking green dot on the screen, a sector containing a body of water. The iceflow lake, Winter Rift's main attraction, so to speak. Water drawn from the lake is said to be the purer than any spring back in the real world.

"From the Rift Mapper, the location of the package is half a day's journey away from us. If we leave early tomorrow, we should be able to grab the package and get back here by nightfall."

"Great." James pumps his fist, "Then its back home to the Guild?"

"Probably, yes." Carol half heartedly answers, worry all over her face.

"But there's something wrong." Sam observes.

"Uh huh." Carol's mouth twists uncomfortably, "The Rift Mapper picked up a transmission from where I suspect the package had been dropped."

"A beacon?" I take a guess.

"That's what I thought at first," Carol frowns, "but it turned out to be a distress signal, asking for help."

"What?" James blurts out in surprise.

"I think," Carol murmurs, her voice wavering, "we weren't sent to pick up a package at all."

"We're here to pick up a person."