***DREAM***

“I fucking warned you,” Ken’s voice came across the phone.

“Shut up, Ken, and listen to me very closely. I’m about to do you a huge favor. I’m gonna scratch your back real good, and then you’re gonna scratch mine. Understand?”

“Speak,” Ken said.

“You might have wondered how I got your bank account info and the code to exit the holding cells. Short answer: I’m psychic. It’s not one of the gold thingies you stole; it’s all-natural. The reason I’m saying this is because, in certain circumstances, I can tell the future. Now, for the next part, I want you to avoid moving or looking and giving anything away. In about ninety seconds, someone’s going to shoot you in the back of the head from the window behind you. It’s likely a nosy coworker who decided to follow you pro bono.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I really, really need you to scratch my back. Go ahead and take care of the nosy coworker, I’ll wait. Matter of fact, kill my grandparents right now if you’re afraid of them trying something while you’re busy.”

Ken left dead air over the cell phone.

“What the fuck are you on?” Ken finally demanded.

“Sixty seconds before someone puts a bullet in your head, Ken. Deal with that, then get back to me.”

“If there’s no one there, I’m killing them both.”

“Sure,” Tom said with a shrug. It wasn’t like the dead guy could do any real damage, at this point.

Grampa’s voice came over the line. “What’s going on, son?”

“Dream stuff. Gotta check on something real important, Grampa.”

“Are we still alive, kid?” Grampa asked.

“Far as I know.” Tom shrugged, even though no one would see it. “If Ken doesn’t survive, I need you to stay on the phone and tell me what—”

Blam!

Blam blam Blam!

A moment later, Ken’s voice: “There was two of them, not one,” Ken growled. “I almost got shot.”

“You’re welcome? I’m not that psychic. Anyway, for my next prediction… In the next…fifty seconds, a bunch of dudes riding horses are going to show up. I think there’s a possibility that they’re gonna kidnap my daughter. I want you to tell me whether they kidnap her or not, and whether or not they take my grandparents alive or kill them.”

“And what if nobody comes?” Ken asked.

“Dude, it’s one minute. Set a timer on your phone or something. If nobody comes, we can get back to our regularly scheduled hostage exchange. Hell, I’ll even take the fall for the two more cops you just killed. Put my prints on the gun and everything.

“I need you to scratch my back, here,” Tom ended, putting every ounce of emotion he could into it.

“Fifty seconds. Then I start shooting,” Ken said.

“Thank you,” Tom said, setting his timer.

Tom heard Ken usher his grandparents out into the street at gunpoint.

A breathless forty seconds later, he heard the clip-clop sound of horses walking across asphalt.

He heard his grampa shouting and a few other raised voices. Clanging, screaming and baby crying.

A moment later, Ken picked up the phone.

“You really are psychic, aren’t you?”

“A little bit. Describe exactly what happened, and I’ll take the blame for everything.”

“An old guy on a white horse cut your grandparents in half, and crazy bastards in actual plate armor grabbed your daughter. They held a wooden box up to the baby and seemed real excited about something.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed as his stomach churned. The only way he avoided losing it was focusing on Ellie. Focus. Ellie first, self-recriminations and throwing up later.

“How many of them were there?” Tom surprised himself with how icy his voice was.

Tom grilled Ken for details on the kidnapping of his daughter, trying to bleed every ounce of information he could out of the dead man.

There was roughly the same amount of knights, one old guy with a long white beard leading the pack, capable of swinging his sword at people beyond his reach.

They wore identical outfits. Since their faceplates were down, except for the old man’s, Ken didn’t get much info about their behavior.

They just came and went.

“Huh,” Jacob grunted, peering through the window curtains. “That’s weird.”

Back here already? Tom thought, scowling.

“Thanks for your help, Ken. I’m going to leave you with a helpful tidbit about my powers: I can’t see the future. I can only recreate the past and explore different possibilities. Since you’re too stupid to understand what that means, I’ll spell it out for you: Your real body is dead in a pool of blood on a cheap motel floor in the middle of nowhere, shot in the back of the head, and as soon as I wake up, your consciousness will cease to exist.

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“Have fun with that, and burn in hell,” Tom said, ending the call before snapping the phone in half.

“Wow,” Jacob said, glancing at Tom.

“Kinzena!” Grant whispered beside him, peering out the window. “They’ve come to take me back to Orsoth!”

Tom watched helplessly as Jacob came to the same stupid-brave conclusion that he could convince a platoon of armed knights to fuck off with a single gun.

Is he high right now or something!?... That would actually explain a lot.

“Jacob, wait,” Tom said, grabbing Jacob’s shoulder. “They’ve got powers; they can make their swords appear in other places and blow things up with their mind or something. You’re not as safe as you think.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Tom.” Jacob gave him a cheeky grin and turned toward the door.

Tom couldn’t watch Jacob die twice in a row. He grabbed onto his minion’s shoulder and hauled backward with everything he had.

“I said stay HERE!” Tom shouted, Jacob’s shirt tearing in his hand, the sensation transmitting through his entire body as Jacob escaped his grasp.

***AWAKE***

A blunt force bruised Tom’s ribs, startling him out of his sleep. A moment later, a displeased-looking knight with his faceplate up rode by, giving Tom a glare.

If we have to stay awake, you have to stay awake, his look seemed to say.

Tom watched the knight go for a moment, his fingers clenched into fists in the horse’s mane. When Tom noticed the pain in his fingers, he gradually relaxed his hands.

Wait. That’s not horse hair.

Frowning, Tom looked down at his hand. A ragged bit of white fabric rested in his palm.

….What the hell?

***Chris Campbell***

Where’s the police? Hell, where’s the goddamn National Guard?

A small army of foreign dudes in armor killing civilians indiscriminately seemed like the sort of thing that would catch their attention.

Within an hour, there should have been a news crew in a helicopter flying overhead. There should have been men with guns and cold expressions blocking every road. Tear gas and bean bags at least.

Nope. Instead, Chris was handcuffed in the back of a wagon, next to Debbie, whose entire blouse was caked in blood. The old people fought too hard. She’d been spared by virtue of having boobs, as evidenced by them dropped the baby in her lap.

If there was one thing Chris knew about Debbie, it was that her maternal instincts were for shit.

“Use your goddamn words!” Debbie said to the small child in her grasp, slowly getting angrier as the child continued to bawl at full volume.

“Babies don’t have words to use,” Chris said in a tired voice, watching as another commuter ignored them on the highway. Had America finally reached critical mass of the average person keeping their blinders on, or was something weirder going on?

“Babies usually cry for three reasons,” Chris continued, drawing on several years of trying experience. “Hungry, poopy, or sleepy.”

He peered at the baby. “That baby is sleepy. You can tell by the way she’s rubbing her eyes.”

“Well, why doesn’t she go to sleep then!?” Debbie demanded. “That makes no fucking sense!”

“You gotta get her comfortable. Bounce or rock her while holding her to your chest and singing. That should do it.”

Debbie held the squalling infant out to him with a pleading look.

“Normally, I’d help you out, here,” Chris said, glancing around at the column of horsemen surrounding the wagon. “But I’m fairly sure they kept you alive because they thought you’d handle the baby better than I would. If I disprove that sentiment… You better learn fast, because I think your life depends on it.”

“I can’t sing!” she hissed. “I don’t even know any baby songs.”

“Lyrics don’t really matter. Just sing anything you know the lyrics to.”

Chris saw a glimmer in her eyes, and realized he’d made a terrible mistake. She hefted the baby over her shoulder and started singing, bouncing the baby to the song.

“I said certified freak, seven days a—”

“You are not singing a baby to sleep with “WAP”.”

“—week, wet-ass pussy, make that pull-out game weak!”

“That song is terrible.”

“This song is female empowerment.”

“I couldn’t disagree with you more. Could you at least sing something like Kryptonite?”

“Oh, is that something you listened to twenty years ago?”

Debbie then proceeded to ignore him, although she slowed the rhythm and lightened the tone of “WAP” into more of a lullaby, which actually managed to send the baby girl to sleep, much to Chris’s displeasure.

When the child finally passed out, Debbie shot him a triumphant grin.

Just for that, Chris decided not to mention the fact that none of the bucketheads surrounding them had any diapers on hand, and in a matter of hours, Debbie was going to find that out the hard way.

Instead, he leaned against the bars of their cage and stared out into the distance.

Where are they taking us? He thought as the double column of horses clopped down the highway, arousing no more interest than passing curiosity. The smell of horseshit and car exhaust made a strange combination as they plodded along to the east.

Is that a cougar? Chris thought he spotted a big cat watching the procession before it took off, sprinting across the landscape.

Chris craned his neck to try and spot it again, but the animal was already gone.

They pulled off the road and made camp for the night, after travelling a grand total of maybe twenty miles. Chris spent quite possibly the most uncomfortable night he’d ever had since summer camp, he and Debbie leaning against each other in order to avoid the ice-cold bars of their cage.

The baby was afforded a blanket.

The next morning, they packed up their shit and got back on the road. For some damn reason, there was still no interference by the U.S. military.

What on earth is going on? The only thing Chris could think of was that there was some kind of information blackout. Did these sword-wielding maniacs have some kind of God-tier hacker looking over them?

I mean, the highway is right there! They were trotting down the shoulder, in full view of everyone.

The men seemed less comfortable with cars than their horses were, honestly. The line closer to the street would flinch sometimes as cars whooshed by them at fifteen times the speed they were currently going.

The leader was stone-cold, though.

The old man looked almost…permanently displeased. He had that kind of long white beard that Pai Mei had from Kill Bill. The kind of beard that never had, and never would exist.

But there it is, Chris thought. Nobody got a beard that long…without being really goddamn important. And he wore it well. That constant scowl kept people jumping to make sure he didn’t blow up on them.

I suppose that’s what it’s for.

Chris sighed and leaned back against the bars, avoiding Debbie’s gaze. He knew why Debbie was alive: They wanted a nanny for the baby they’d spontaneously decided to kidnap. He had an inkling why the baby was alive: Something on that old-timey compass got them excited. Almost greedy-excited.

But what the hell do they want with me? Chris was old, and fat. He didn’t have anything in the way of monetary value except experience.

Is that it? Did they want someone they could pump for information?

Chris hadn’t seen a single smartphone. No guns, not even a damn steam whistle. They were afraid of cars.

Where the hell did these guys come from?