Once upon a time, I lived in New York City. Before then, I’d never seen someone die.

My first year at Columbia Law, I lived on campus, just a few blocks northwest of Central Park. It was an adjustment, to say the least. I’ve always been a city gal, but Chicago has nothing on the Big Apple. New Yorkers don’t faze easy. They’ve seen everything. And as a newbie, I had to learn quick.

In just my first semester, I witnessed more streakers than I can count, way too many furries, a group of men bicycling in diapers, three people casually strolling down the street wearing live boa constrictors, two subway goats, one subway stingray - allegedly stolen from the aquarium, and at 10am every single day, a man perched on a bench in front of my favorite cafe eating an armful of tomatoes. He just cradled ‘em like babies and ate ‘em like apples. There was not one morning that I didn’t see him.

NYC is a weird, weird city.

So by my second semester, I mastered the art of not caring. You see a crazy old man with more beard hair than clothes aggressively berating passers-by about his best friend Buddha, you move on.

Which is how I ended up mere inches from death.

Sometime in April, after the Bookstore Crawl in Brooklyn, I was coming up out of the subway. There was a woman at the top of the stairs. Wild, brittle hair like a bird’s nest, a tattered floral sundress sloping off her shoulders, bare feet. She was flailing her arms, screaming that the helicopters were spying on her.

I glided past her in my newfound unfazed New Yorker way, oblivious to the foot-long shard of glass in her hand. I mean, I noticed it, but more as a prop piece than a weapon. Like me with my wooden spoon. Just something that got picked up along the way. I remember wondering how she wasn’t cold. That was it. Just, ‘Gee, she must be cold.’

Then I heard an older woman behind me say, “Ow! Fuck you!”

Her last words.

I turned around, and a triangle-shaped hunk of glass was sticking out of this woman’s windbreaker, right there in the stomach, like some avant-garde urban art piece. It took time for it to register. For another few seconds, the woman kept walking. Then she faltered, slumped to the side, and collapsed onto the sidewalk. Another passenger put pressure on the wound, but by the time the paramedics showed up, she was dead.

The other woman, the killer - she didn’t seem to notice. She was still yelling about the helicopters out to get her.

And here’s what I did. The amazing reaction I had to this horrendous moment.

A nervous giggle bubbled up in my throat. I couldn’t help it.

I laughed.

No, it was not funny. Not one bit. But that was my reaction anyhow. Nervous laughter.

It turns out a bout with trauma has not corrected that.

I watch as a pair of strangers step onto the portal. It’s like a target, its white rings marked in red.

A moment later, the flying piranha matriarch rises from the streets, her leathery wings beating in strong, steady strides.

The two men stand on the portal, oblivious to the monster surfacing behind them. Then, one of them whips around, shotgun in hand.

It’s too late. Before he can even think to take aim, the matriarch twists her head and chomps. His torso snaps free. Severed legs topple to the floor as his head rolls off the portal. The matriarch throws back her fishy maw and lets the rest of him sink down her gullet in three nasty gulps.

The stranger’s partner doesn’t move. Maybe he’s hoping the portal will whisk him away before the monster notices. Maybe he’s just frozen in fear. Either way, it’s over fast. With a beat of her wings, the matriarch sinks her talons into his torso and casually flings him off the building. The illuminated rings inside the portal dim as the monster returns to the streets for another snack.

I laugh. It’s quick. Just a breathy, guttural chortle that escapes my lips before I manage to cut it off. Really, it sounds more like a horse neighing than a laugh.

Still, it’s enough to get a couple glares.

“That’s horrible,” I say. Then I yawn. Fantastic work, Helen.

The apartment owner raises his eyebrows. “You’re messed up.”

“You’re messed up,” I reply.

Luci, the back of her head just barely poking above the sofa, doesn’t move. She says, her voice barely above a whisper, “So what, we’re just going to die?”

Damn. Well if that’s not a way to ground someone back to earth…

Elias replies, “No, chispita. We will figure out a plan.”

“I’m not asking you.” She shuffles onto her knees and peers over the back of the sofa, those big brown eyes looking into my very soul. “I’m asking Helen.”

“I don’t- No, of course we’re not going to die,” I say. “Elias is right. We’ll make a plan. We already have a few fights under our belt. And we’re armed. And…”

My eyes catch on something: Elias’ bandage. My breath hitches in my throat.

An idea begins to take form.

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“And I think I’ve got something. But first,” I turn to our host. “I’m gonna need some caffeine.”

1.

Party Member Added: Ron Cook (Lv 1)

2.

Title(s) Earned:

Party Animal: Belong to a party of four.

Reward: Debate +1

3.

Skill Proficiencies Increased:

Debate 7

Well that seems pessimistic.

A few minutes later, the coffee table has been shoved aside. I’m posed in front of the sofa with Luci, Elias, and our new friend Ron the bassist in attendance. Elias, despite his practiced posture, looks as tired as I feel, his expression of hard consternation marred by the dark wells growing under his eyes. Ron is super glazed. Just happy to be here. Luci… I don’t know. Her perfect cupid face is splotchy red, like she’s moments away from tears. But she’s looking up at me with such hope. Such trust.

Nursing a can of disgustingly sugary Red Bull, I relay my genius plan.

“Power leveling,” Elias replies, his voice flat.

“That’s part one, yes,” I say. “With only Level 2 baddies to go around, we won’t get very high. From what we’ve seen, it’s 10 experience points per monster, with levels going up consecutively by 10. Level 1 takes 10 points to master, Level 2 takes 20, Level 3 takes 30, and so on. So Ron and Elias, you need to kill ten monsters each to hit Level 5. Luci needs seven. I need eight. That’s a sum of thirty-five, but as a party, we can assume it won’t distribute perfectly. So let’s say we need to kill forty flying piranhas total.”

“That is a metric hellton of bats, man,” Ronnie notes.

“But the matriarch is a Level 10,” says Luci. “With a skull. That has to be bad.” Her knees are tucked to her chin, her pretty auburn hair draped in a fraying braid across her shoulder. Between Ron and Elias, she looks so small.

“I know. We can’t match her level. But we’ll fare better with four players half her level than we would at just 1’s and 2’s.”

Luci nods sagely to this. So does Ron, but I don’t think he gets it.

“We should recruit more people then,” says Elias. He doesn’t say ‘as cannon fodder’, but the implication is there.

“There’s no time,” I say. “We either spend our last hour leveling or we spend it hoping we can find people in their apartments who are, for some reason, higher level and rearing to go. It’s not a good option.”

“We should at least warn them though” Luci says. “We know where the portal is. There are still people out there searching.”

“Yeah, a bunch of folks went out with spraypaint and megaphones and stuff already,” replies Ron. “Wonder what happened to ‘em...”

Elias runs a thumb over his bandage. It hasn’t soaked through again, but it’s just a matter of time. “What about the vines?”

“I’ll get to that,” I answer. “Our main goal is to level up our best stats. We won’t be rounded out at all, but this is just one major fight. We focus on our best skills, and we hammer those home. For me and Luci, that’s dexterity. For Elias, that’s strength. For Ron, fortitude. Sorry, Ron. You’re the official punching bag. We also need to form a rough strategy and battle order. Probably with Ron drawing fire, Elias and me as second hitters, and Luci picking off the party crashers.”

“I’m following you,” Elias says, “but I don’t see how we’ll be able to find forty enemies within an hour, much less kill them.”

“We lure them.”

“Alright. How?”

I grin. “With you.”

After another all-too-brief explanation, I expect there to be pushback. The plan is clinically insane. But, to my surprise, everyone just follows my instructions as if I actually know what I’m doing. It’s the lawyer side in me. I’m persuasive, even when everyone in the room knows damn well I’m lying. Either that or my deception skill is working overtime.

Elias, I believe, doesn’t think the plan will work. Not entirely. While he keeps his mouth shut, the man has a terrible poker face. His bushy caterpillar eyebrows can’t help but arch in complete incredulity, his forehead a mess of consternated wrinkles. I swear, before we reach the portal, that luscious mink-brown hair will be nothing but gray.

Still, he doesn’t argue. He understands that impossible odds call for impossible plans, and he obviously doesn’t have any better ideas - although I’m sure he’d be fine just using Ron and me as a sacrifice and then hurling Luci onto the portal at the last second. It’s clear his goal is to get Luci to the finish line, everyone and everything else be damned. With Luci already at a Level 3, her survival at least seems plausible.

As for me, I would like to survive. It actually comes as a surprise how much I’m willing to do to ensure it. I wouldn’t call it a character arc or anything. If death arrived by wishing it, I’d be dead one hundred times over. But my survival instinct is a persistent little bitch. And honestly, I want to know what the hell is going on, and I can’t find out if I’m dead.

It’d be nice if the others survived too. I know. What a big ol’ heart I have. But I like Luci, and Luci likes Elias, and Ron… well, Ron is a person that I know now. So there’s a sliver of my shriveled raisin of a heart that wants them to live. That’s all it is really. Truly heroic stuff.

Whatever else there is to these relationships, I block from my mind. There’s enough on my plate already.

So, on we go. We pack Ron’s bass in a gig bag, grab his battery-powered amp, tear up some rags, scrounge his fridge and recycling for every last Stella bottle, raid poor Mrs. Frolova’s apartment for a handle of Russian vodka, dig in Ron’s coat pockets for more Bic lighters, resupply the bandages and divvy them out, and wrap our arms and torsos in leather and duct tape which temporarily increases our fortitude, but only by 1.

After our preparations, we bullet down the staircase opposite of the one we used previously. With luck on our side, we make a clean getaway to the first floor - all the vines strictly sequestered in the hallways and parking levels - and head out the back door toward the parking garage entrance.

This is where we set up shop. And by set up shop, I mostly mean line up a row of precisely four molotov cocktails. That way, if things get too hairy and Ron can’t get to his bass guitar on time, we have fire. Lots of uncontrollable fire.

We have a few major issues though, some I think we can address, some we can’t. One of the issues is that Luci only has eighteen bullets. Elias begrudgingly wedged the last two bullets into the magazine, giving her a total of ten before she needs to reload. Apparently a clip is supposed to make it easier? I know nothing about guns. Whatever the case, she’ll have to conserve her ammo. Once she’s clean or the fight gets too close, she has a baseball bat.

Also, my knives were a dumb idea from the start, so I have a machete now - which of course earns me another useless notification about non-reconstituted weapons. Who knows why Mrs. Frolova had a machete, but god bless her.

The sun beams down on us, the sky clear and sadly monster-free. They’re mostly trolling the car-choked street to the south. Since that’s where the matriarch hangs out, that area’s off limits. If we had time, we’d just wait for a few of the monsters to meander over. Unfortunately, time is not on our side. According to Elias’ calculations, we’re down to forty-seven minutes before the Lookout Tower plummets into oblivion.

Seriously, fuck whoever designed this.

Just inside the parking garage, Elias edges down the ramp. He insisted on doing this alone.

“You got this, Tío!” Ron cheers.

“His name’s Elias,” I correct. “Tío just means ‘uncle’ in Spanish.”

“Oh dang! I didn’t know I could speak Spanish!”

Luci bounces from one foot to the other, alternating between watching her uncle and scanning the skies.

“He’ll be fine,” I say. “Ron and I can keep guard if you want to keep an eye on your uncle.”

She swallows, nodding.

Elias’ figure shrinks into the darkness as I turn away. Given that this was my bright idea, it’s killing me not to watch, as if my sight alone could will him to succeed. I clutch the machete with a death grip and listen as best as I can.