2.1 Chains
ONE YEAR POST GRADUATION
Maeven stares dully at an email:
We would like you to know that we appreciate the time and effort you spent applying for our position. Unfortunately, on this occasion, you have not been successful to progress to the next stage.
She looks up to the cork board above her monitor. On it is a stack of notebook paper so thick it bends around the thumbtack. One last listing is squished into the page’s bottom margin, and she strikes it out with a pen.
Today is just another repeat. A re-telling of a lesson she’s learnt time and time again: No one wants to hire a sick person. Maeven’s repertoire of super abilities, almost everything she’s learnt from the Larosa Girls’ Academy of Will, vanished in mere months following her graduation.
It was the beginning of an illness.
She pinches the stack of paper and birrs. On it, includes a complete list of guild openings she’s applied for in the past twelve months. Her dwindled enthusiasm is immortalised within. With each passing page doodles fade, coloured marginalia darken to black, messages of self-encouragement vanish—soon after it did her mind.
For the past year Maeven has been encumbered with a terrible illness. Something like a fever, in the sense that you can see it coming but comes out of nowhere. It’s not an illness of the body, nor of the mind; it’s not some phenomenon of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ or ‘mental health.’ It’s an illness of a nothingness most Users just call Will Block. Meaning that other than the most basic of enhancements, Maeven can’t use her Will.
She lets go of the paper.
There it is again. That shattering, sinking feeling. Like rings of metal slithering from her bedroom floor and chaining her to the ground.
Maeven shuts off her monitor by the switch on the wall. Tic! It takes the light with it.
Today is just another repeat.
Behind her, there’s a TV propped up on the wall by the foot of her bed, and a gaming console sitting on a stack of textbooks. That’s the only good thing that’s come out of this Will Block, that is, her discovery of a video game called Drake Quest VIII. The controller by her pillow a testament to how lazy these months have been.
Today, she doesn’t reach for it. Her hand instead clinching against the wood of her desk.
No.
She gets up. She walks to the bookshelves. Her bedroom is narrow like a hallway, about four steps wide and something steps long. Two thick bookshelves are domino’d by the left wall like a mini library.
Debris of plastic and aluminium rattle by her feet as she kicks them aside.
Today is different.
Her hand reaches for the flyer on her bookshelf. She clutches the blinds of her window to read it and it unsticks open after a forceful twist, drawing narrow bands of golden light over the paper.
“THE VOLUNTARY RESERVE: BEGIN AGAIN.”
2.2 Sedan
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She stares at that same flyer, now sitting in the passenger seat of her brother’s red sedan. Her backpack is on the floor behind her, her suitcase is in the boot, the same red hardshell she’d bring on academy excursions with her parent’s phone number still written on the little tag. IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL.
The great, second chance. The VR is the place to turn to when all other ‘Roads of Life’ have either dead-ended or spun you back the way you came. It’s not meant for Will Users, not really. They typically have one campaign during the first half of every year and it usually has something to do with building schools, distributing health resources, and feeding the poor. Things you can pat yourself on the back for doing, for Paying it Forward. It’s a purpose haven particularly for lost men across the United Lands, and she guesses somehow, well, Maeven Riel.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Her brother Hunter is muttering to himself as he’s driving. “The Reserve. The Voluntary Reserve…’ Brown eyes, dishevelled black hair, tall. Like Maeven, he’s got a bit of baby face, that’s from dad’s side of the family. He only found out she was volunteering for The Reserve a week ago, once Maeven had finally made up her mind to go ahead with it. She could have announced it when she first submitted the application—months in advance—but she really didn’t think she’d make it this far. She thought that at some point by now she was going to hit cancel.
“How long are you gone again?” says Hunter. “Three months did you say?”
Maeven hums.
“I wish you would have told us earlier.” He checks for cars as he turns into another road, then leans back into his seat.
“Didn’t you try the military? Like the real military?”
“I missed the cut-offs.” she says.
“You missed every cut-off from every military division in the UL and you’re not waiting for the next one.” He doesn’t believe her. Maeven just says, “Yeah.”
“I don’t even think they have cut-offs.”
The real military…He’s saying that because The Voluntary Reserve barely qualifies with the word. The bootleg military, people would rather call it. The Ranger Rejects, the Army from the Back Alley; others mistake it with the Peace Corps.
“I mean how do you feel about it? Good at least?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“I guess that’s all that matters.”
“Eyeshot’s going to be there.”
“Ah.”
That seems to explain things. Hunter’s face settles with a look of understanding. “The guild User you like.”
Maeven wouldn’t call herself a fan of many Users at all. Eyeshot is one of few exceptions. She’s a master of firearms, gets things done without showing off. She’s dutiful, effective, she doesn’t perform things, she finishes things. All at a level of Will Maeven pales in comparison to.
“She’s not a guild User.”
“Government User,” he tries, stopping at an intersection. “Wait, I thought she’s Secretary of Defense? What’s she doing for the VR?”
“She’s just nominated. The vote’s not finished.”
“Oh, so she’s not yet.”
“She will be.”
They’re driving through the neighbourhoods of their hometown, Rosvale, passing jacaranda trees and lakefront houses; a nice place to grow up. Her and her brother live in the smallest variation of homes in the area. A single-storey brick house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a small, wooden-fenced backyard they cut peepholes out of to spy on the street as children. They were never meant to be Users, Maeven and Hunter. Their parents chose the Academy because it was the most prestigious school in the area (and as they would later find out, the entire continent) and had foregone almost all other luxuries just to afford this one. The immigrants had no idea the academy would teach their children to awaken their Will, and everyone else who had read their application biographies had no expectation the two would make it all the way to graduation.
It could be a good time to leave, Maeven thinks. Living here in Rosvale was beginning to feel like being stuck in a past time anyway. Untroubled, routine, undeservingly easy. Just too…Rosvale. She gets the notion that Hunter’s probably feeling something similar. He is only weeks away from moving.
“How’s work?” she asks him.
“It’s okay, you know. Still getting used to everything.”
“Is your mentor still—”
“I didn’t mean he was a dick. He’s not he’s just—a little bit intense.”
They turn right. Panning into view is the Rosvale Subloop Station. The roof spans out like a scallop shell, under it there are vending machines, electronic boards for departures and arrivals, and long escalators descending deep underground. It’s mostly empty this morning. There’s a lone man pulling his suitcase to the escalator.
“Oh boy, here already,” says Hunter.
Maeven clicks the door handle.
“Wait sis,” says Hunter, she stops with a foot out on the pavement.
“I’ve got something for you. Hold your hands out and close your eyes.”
Unnecessary, she thinks. Maeven takes her hand off the door and does so anyway. She senses a pulse of Hunter’s Will.
Something soft touches her palms. Furry. She opens her eyes and says, “Sketchy?” Sitting in her hands is a grey persian cat with grumpy, downturned eyes, and a series of drawing implements curled up in its tail, all manifested with Creation Will. “You’re giving me Sketchy?”
“Yep,” says Hunter. “Stanley says I need to go back to drawing with my own hands. I don’t want to be tempted, you know. Plus it’d be a shame for my minion to go to waste.”
“This is one of your best minions.”
“Minny’s a bit more useful nowadays.” He pats the feline on the head. Pitching his voice he tells the minion, “You’re in good hands now Sketchy.”
Taking Hunter’s minion to the military, that could be interesting as well as useful. She certainly won’t be having the feline drawing up blueprints or life studies.
“You can keep him inside when you’re not using him. In you go Sketchy.”
At the command, Sketchy jumps into Maeven’s chest and disappears, where she can feel her brother’s Will ball up and lay there idle, somewhere next to her sternum. It’s a bit of a strange feeling but she’s used to her brother’s presence being around anyway. It’s a nice one. Uplifting and full of inspiration. “Well, thanks.”
“It’s alright. It’s a favour for me too.”
Maeven takes her bags and rolls them over to the car window.
“See ya I guess,” she says.
“See you sis. Good luck with everything”
Hunter watches his sister depart from the window, his insides going a little tight as he thinks: That suitcase looks heavy. Three months is a long time.
If something happens, there’d probably be no easy way to contact her. She’ll be out of the UL, not always around to pick up her pad.
But when she walks up to the escalator and lifts her bags overhand, there’s not a shift for leverage just thin trails of smoky Will rising from her arm. That’s when he tells himself, for the utmost time, not to forget.
Maeven is the strongest User he knows.