Someone’s inside the house.

Can’t be a monster. Not unless they’ve got enough manners to use the front door. It could be looters. For every game-savvy player just interested in the essentials, there’s likely at least five dumbasses who think now’s a great time to pawn a Tiffany lamp. I try to get a glimpse through the porch windows, but they’ve got some kind of glass that distorts everything inside.

Luci visibly swallows as she nudges the door open. I follow her into a bright, window-lit foyer stretching a full three stories up. It’s quiet. Just birds chirping and the faint song of a wind chime from outside.

She slips her backpack off her shoulder onto the welcome mat, gaze focused on the strip of hallway leading past the front staircase.

The floorboards creak. Luci hasn’t moved. She glances my way. I shake my head. The sound came from up ahead.

She looks down the hall again, then back at me. Her expression is clear. She wants me to go first. Since I’m the adult, I suppose. I make a similar expression. It’s her house. If she wants in, she can go first.

A man pokes his head into the hallway.

“Luci?”

A grin breaks across Luci’s face. “Tío Elias!”

She bursts towards him.

Not a looter then. They’re quite clearly related. Same auburn hair, same long nose and dramatic eyebrows. He looks my age, maybe a bit older. Judging by the pressed black slacks and collared shirt, he’s got himself pretty put together.

His eyes beam behind thick square frames. Then his face sours. He takes a step back.

“Whoa, chispita. Where did you get the gun?”

“Uh, school?” she says, slowing to a halt.

He puts his hand out. Her eyes downcast, she places the barrel in his palm. He checks the chamber before placing it on the console behind him.

“And who is this?” he asks, looking at me. Looking very disapprovingly at me, I should say.

“That’s Helen. We’ve been helping each other.”

“Hmm. Well, Helen. Thank you very much for bringing my niece home. I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”

“Right,” I say. So that’s how it is. It’s not like I mind being let off the hook. His method of dismissal is just a little grating for my tastes. I almost want to fight back on principle.

“Wait, Tío. I want Helen to stay. She’s in my party. We’re going to the Lookout Towers together.”

“Party?”

“Yeah, like grouping up? To find the portal?”

“Portal? Luci, you’re not making sense.”

Luci looks back at me, her eyes pleading. Shit. This is not what I signed up for. I could just shrug, say you’re on your own, and peace out. But dammit, I like the kid. As much as I want to avoid any and all “adult” conversations, I can’t leave her with a guy who doesn’t get what’s going on.

“Hey Luci,” I interrupt. “You said you needed to get some things, right? Why don’t you do whatever you need to, and your uncle and I will talk.”

“Okay!” she says way too easily. “It’s great to see you, Tío.”

With that, she flashes me a smile I can only describe as short for ‘good fucking luck’ before bounding up the stairs.

What did I just volunteer for? Wait, why am I doing this? I should have taken the out when I had a chance.

Once Luci is out of sight, I drop my backpack and carefully balance my barbell against the wall. “So… Elias, right?”

“You let her have a gun?” he snaps.

“I didn’t let her. She just kinda had it,” I answer. “You have seen what’s happening, right?”

Turning around, he waves a hand dismissively as he heads off down the hall. “It’s not my concern.”

“It’s sort of everyone’s concern.” I chase after him into a kitchen. It’s not worth describing, suffice it to say it looks like what you’d imagine in a Home and Gardens magazine. Big and ostentatious. Glass cupboards to show off pristine glassware. A party host’s kitchen.

He grabs a pitcher from the fridge. “Would you like some iced tea?”

No, what I want is a beer but now doesn’t seem like the right time to test boundaries. “Sure,” I say. “So, do you-”

The fridge whirs loudly as ice clinks into a pair of glasses.

“So, do you remember, a few hours ago, there was that voice. It said the world’s been infested. There’s a portal. We’re all going to die. That kind of thing?”

“The prank,” he says.

“You… you think it was a prank. Like, a telepathic prank.” God, I am so bad at confrontation. Give me a podium, a stack of research, and a few hours to prepare, and I’ll argue a guy into renouncing his own mom. But the second I’m face-to-face, impromptu with someone, I’d rather fling myself off a building than argue. “I don’t really know what to tell you, other than it wasn’t a prank. Some force bigger than either of us has taken control, and if we don’t do what they want us to do, we die.”

“That’s crazy talk.” He pours the tea, ice crackling, then slides a glass across the island.

“Okay…” I need to think. Evidence. I need evidence. Oh, I’ve got it! “Just humor me for a sec. Think of opening up a map.” I take a sip. “Oh my god, this is delicious.”

“My brother’s recipe. Two black, one green.”

“I love it.”

“We’ve been-” Shards of glass skate across the tile as his tea crashes to the floor. “What the- What’s happening?”

I take another sip, smack my lips contentedly, and place my glass on the counter. Now I’ve got him. “You have the map open?”

“Why… why is this… what is...”

“Yeah. Um. Sit down. Let me explain.”

It takes me about twenty minutes to relay what’s happening. It’s clear that a lack of logic isn’t his issue. He’s smart. Reasonable. He’s just a little too rational. He lives in a world where things make sense. A world of order.

Elias is intimidatingly put together. When I ask him if he’s got any vices, any at all - gaming maybe - he literally says “reading.” Reading. As a vice.

He is - or was, I suppose - an accountant at a fancy firm right in the Loop. Lucky for Luci, he was visiting a client in Oak Park when the planet broke apart. I’m happy she’s got a loved one in the area, even if that loved one is a bit of a square that clearly dislikes me and all my loser influence on his precocious niece.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“So, open up your stats for me,” I say. “Think ‘Status’ and then ‘Attributes.’ You should have a bunch of points distributed across the list. That number will increase as you level up.”

“Yes, I see them.”

“Okay, so how many points total?”

“Thirty.”

“Seriously. Huh.” I wonder if everyone has thirty. That has some bizarre implications. I mean, you’re telling me Donald Glover and I have the same number of points? Do you think they made him dumber, uglier, less athletic, or less charming? Poor guy.

“So what’s your highest?” I ask.

“Strength.”

“Really? Not wits?”

“My wits are 8. My strength is 9.”

“You’re kidding.” I glance at his arms. I guess his sleeves do look a little tight around him. Would it be weird if I asked him to take off his shirt? “What’s your fortitude?”

“It’s 5.”

“That’s the highest between us, so you’re the tank for now. That means you’re up front taking aggro. Pretty much your job is to wave your arms and say ‘Over here’ and then whack the baddies as hard as you can. If there’s a baseball bat or a fire axe in the house, those would be good choices. And if you level up, put your stats in strength or fortitude. You may need to even out your weaker stats later, but you can burn that bridge when you get there.”

“I’d rather avoid violence.”

“And I’d rather be drinking, but here we are.” He does not find this amusing. I continue. “The monsters we’ve encountered so far prefer populated areas. But it’s hard to think we’ll get through this without needing to fight.”

“Alright. What about Luci?”

“She’s got a lot of dexterity and a good handle on guns. I don’t think she’ll be able to hold onto the gun in the long-run, but for now, it’s her best bet.”

“She’s not keeping the gun.”

“We’ve told you what’s out there, right? Flying monsters?”

“It isn’t right.”

“And?”

“She’s too young. That gun has a 10-pound trigger pull. She shouldn’t even be able to use it.”

Huh. How’s he know that? “But she is able,” I reply. “She needs protection.”

“She has me.”

“And what if that’s not enough?”

His shoulders sag. After a moment, he relents. “Alright. She can keep it. For now.”

“Great. Last thing. Have you gotten a notification about discovering any classes? If you have, you should have a tab in your menu that lists them.”

His eyes shift. It’s strange watching someone else navigate the menus. “I’ve discovered one. ‘Skeptic.’”

I smirk. I don’t know how it translates to combat, but it feels right that this guy earned it. “What’s it say?”

“It says it’s a survival class. There’s a bonus. ‘Closer Look: Identify common and uncommon items.’ Then it says I can see more at the Index. What’s an Index?”

“No idea.”

“What about you, Helen?”

I pause. “What about me?”

“You said I should perform as a tank. Luci will manage long range. What about you? What is your plan?”

“Oh. Um. I don’t know. I’ve been hitting things with a barbell.”

“A barbell.”

“Like a light-weight aluminum one. It’s not great, I’ll admit. My strength blows.”

“You haven’t at all thought about yourself in this,” he says.

“I guess I’ve just been winging it.”

“Helen, if you’re going to stay with us, I would like that you do more than ‘just wing it,’” he says. “Luci has taken to you. She seems to trust you.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe ‘Good Judge of Character’ isn’t among her skill proficiencies.”

He narrows his eyes but doesn’t press the issue.

Once I’m done running him through his stats and sickeningly long list of skills, he heads upstairs to speak with Luci. Meanwhile, I help myself to a tour of their little estate. Report cards on the fridge, smiling photographs on the wall, souvenir postcards on the kitchen pinboard - they paint a picture of a beautiful, loving family.

I feel like an intruder. Not like my family was the worst. We were perfectly functional. We just didn’t get along. I’d always been eager to make a family of my own. For a time, I really thought I could.

And here comes the anxiety attack again. Maybe I should stop by a pharmacy.

Okay. Let’s just breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

A new line of text filters into view, first in alien gibberish as always, then English.

1.

Party Member Added: Elias Martez (Lv 1)

2.

Title(s) Earned:

Party of Three: Belong to a party of three.

Reward: (1) Dining Furniture Certificate

Third Wheel: Be the only unrelated member of a 3+ party.

Reward: (1) Drink Voucher

Third wheel. Har har. Very funny.

I suppose that means Elias still wants me in the group for now. I’m not sure how to feel about that. This whole day has just been so weird that I suppose bashing bat-fish monsters alongside a teen and her uptight uncle wouldn’t make it any weirder.

A few minutes later, Elias returns downstairs, now dressed in blue jeans and a blue-green flannel shirt. He throws a backpack onto the kitchen island.

“Welcome to the party,” I say.

“I don’t like this.”

“Yeah.”

“Luci shouldn’t have to be involved.”

“Agreed.”

He runs a hand through his hair. With a resolute sigh, he pulls a trio of thermoses from the cupboard and fills them from the tap. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Generally a bad idea.”

He ignores that. “It’s been assumed that we have twenty hours to find this portal station.”

“Right.”

He throws the thermoses into the pack. “I don’t think that is true. I’ve been reviewing the map. I believe our countdown is shorter.”

My heart skips a beat. “Okay… How much shorter?”

“If you look at your map,” begins Elias, leaning on the counter, “you see the red box highlights the zone that remains active, yes?”

I think about the map, and an overlay opens over the kitchen. “Yeah, the part that hasn’t fallen off the edge of the earth.”

“Where were you when the event happened?”

“I was at the grocery store on Keller and Maple.”

“You spent how long in there before you noticed that the zone was shrinking?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes?”

“So within ten minutes, let’s say, the eastern edge closed approximately fifty feet. Let’s assume the same happened on the western edge. That is ten feet per minute. At that rate, it would take a little less than a week for the area to collapse completely. It’s now been two and a half hours. Where do you see the red line?”

“Looks like Keller and Erie. That’s about a mile.”

“It’s .71 miles. And assuming the western end is the same, that’s just under one and a half miles in two and a half hours. That isn’t ten feet per minute any longer. Without rounding, that’s fifty feet per minute.”

Holy shit. “That is a lot of math,” I reply.

He gives me a dull glare. “It means the region is shrinking faster. If it remains consistent at its new rate, we have twelve hours. But if it continues to pick up speed…”

“How much time?” I say with an inkling of dread.

“Three hours. Just over three hours, really, but I would estimate three hours to be safe.” Removing his glasses, his brow furrows as he shakes his head slowly. “I don’t understand though. Why would they say we have twenty hours?”

Oh my god. I smack my forehead. Literally smack my forehead. I’m so stupid. “I knew it! I knew something was off with the description.”

“What do you mean?”

“Check out your quest log.”

His eyes shift. “Alright. Here. It says, ‘The planet has been infested and broken into various quarantine zones. In twenty hours, each zone will be reconstituted. Seek and report to a portal station to avoid reconstitution.’”

“See how they worded it? Twenty hours until the zone is reconstituted. It says nothing about having all that time to escape.”

“That isn’t fair. Why would they trick us? That isn’t fair.”

“Yeah, none of this is fair. I think that’s the point.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just think… I don’t know. If the folks running this whole shebang felt indifferent toward us, they’d be more upfront about the game screwing us. If they liked us, they’d apologize or make it better. But if they didn’t like us, then this is kinda how they’d act, right? I mean, they haven’t even told us the rules yet. This is like the cold open of a game, only it’s still permadeath. They don’t even have Level 1 monsters. They all start at 2. Doesn’t that feel a little bit personal?”

“But why? What did we do?”

“Who knows. Humans are pretty shit. We clearly did something to piss someone off. And I think it gets worse.”

“How? How can it get worse?” There’s a light quiver to his voice. Poor guy. It would really suck to start the apocalypse with something to lose.

“Well, first, we don’t know where the portal is,” I say. “For all we know, it’s dropped off the world already. But my guess is it’s somewhere toward the center. Or at least we have to hope it is. The problem is that the world is getting smaller. Denser. More populated. And guess who loves populated areas?”

“The monsters,” he replies. “That isn’t fair.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”