“Hell yes I’ll fight monsters with you!” Zoe answered.

Je-won chuckled. “I was talking to Dexter.”

“I know. But I’m inviting myself.”

He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. The authorities are taking people in the system.”

“Only ones who are stupid enough to alter their appearance.”

“For now, yes. But there’s that leaderboard. It shows your name.” Je-won wasn’t sure if it used the name you entered, or if you could sign anything you liked and be accepted. There were plenty of real names on there, but also ones that obviously weren’t. Though he wasn’t going to tell her this. “I suspect the authorities will be scanning it, looking for people to round up.”

“I won’t use my real name.”

“Zoe, it’s—”

Zoe reached up and quickly scribbled in the air. “Done.”

Je-won rubbed his forehead. “Zoe…”

“It’s fine. I put Sparkle Lips.”

“Sparkle lips?” Dexter asked.

Zoe shrugged. “First thing that came to mind. Didn’t want to give Je-won a chance to stop me.” She frowned.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, and quickly reached in front of her again.

Je-won lurched forward and grabbed her arm.

“Ow.”

“It didn’t work, did it?”

Zoe sighed. “No,” she answered dejectedly. “I think I signed too fast and it couldn’t read it. No big deal, I’ll just write it again slower this time.”

“Zoe, listen to me. Don’t. Please.” He kept his gaze fixed on her.

“Jeez, why so serious?”

He kept staring at her.

“Alright alright. This is crap. Leave the girl out.”

“I’m leaving the one who isn’t yet in danger of being kidnapped by the government out.”

“I think I might not be either,” Dexter said. “In the message I got saying I’d joined the system, it called me Dauntless.”

“Well that’s unfair,” Zoe complained. “Though you are a bit stoic. Maybe I could try manic pixie dream girl.”

She put up her hands when Je-won glared at her. “Kidding. Man, you’re no fun when you’re serious. Like a completely different person.”

Je-won returned his attention to Dexter. “Your name. Go on.”

“Yeah.” Dexter shook his head. “Doesn't make sense. I’m the reason Leah’s in the hospital, and it gave me a title called dauntless.” He laughed bitterly. “I'm not dauntless. I was frozen in fear and couldn't move. Leah tried to get me to run with her, to escape. Then the monster slashed her. She fell into my lap, bleeding on me and I just sat there staring at her bra.”

Zoe opened her mouth to make a quip, but thought better of it on seeing the look on his face. Even through the buzz, she had more compassion than that.

Instead, she brought the conversation back to herself. “So no one can track him. That means I can—”

“No,” Je-won said firmly.

She grumbled something under her breath and went to take a drink from her beer, found it empty, and reached for another one.

Which Je-won also stopped. “You’ve had enough. Buzzed is one thing. You’ve had a hard day. And that’s an understatement. But I am not letting you get drunk.”

“Can’t you drink at like sixteen in Korea?”

“No. And we’re not in Korea.”

“Clearly.” She huffed and folded her arms, leaning back in the chair and staring at the ceiling.

Dexter saw Je-won suppress a smile. Then the man’s gaze turned to him and he grew serious. “You should make sure your name isn’t listed.”

"How?”

“I’d say you should experiment, but I’m not sure we have time for that. I just have to hope there won’t be a penalty for me guiding you.”

“Penalty?”

“I know the message said it was intuitive, and in some ways it is, but it certainly does not hold your hand.” He paused briefly. “I don’t think that’s an accident.”

“What do you mean?” Dexter asked.

“This is just a guess, but I believe it’s part of the test that both messages have referenced. The first saying the trials were beginning, the second one saying it was analyzing the results and that another test was coming. The fact that there’s a leaderboard.” He shook his head. “I could be wrong, but I believe it is trying to pick the best, the ones who can figure things out.” He let out a weary sigh. “But the message also said the next test would come soon. So I’m going to guide you through the most important things. You can find your name on the leaderboard. Do you know how to access it?”

Dexter nodded. “The message mentioned how to. Swiping up, yeah?”

“You got it.”

“Alright. Here goes.”

Dexter brought the interface into focus. It was always there, but somehow unnoticed. Not invisible, exactly, just not something that drew his attention or obstructed his view.

“Sweet!” Zoe grabbed another slice of pizza. “We can eat and watch you do magic tricks.”

She really was kind of manic, Dexter noted.

“Aren’t you full yet?” Je-won asked her.

“Very. But with monsters about, who knows when I’ll be able to eat again.” She looked at his sword, which he’d set on the coffee table beside the pizza. “What’s the Korean equivalent of a ninja?”

“You don’t think I could be a ninja?”

“If you go around with your face covered, you’ll never find a girlfriend.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I liked Sara,” Zoe said wistfully. “You shouldn’t have broken up with her.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh. Right. Well hey, the world’s ending, anything’s possible. Dexter and Leah are dating now.”

“I’m trying to focus here,” Dexter said.

“And I’m trying to inject some normalcy into the situation. How are you so calm? You just took a shower and yet you still have blood in your hair.”

Dexter grunted, pushing away memories of the auditorium, and swiped up.

As promised in the second system message, this action brought up a leaderboard with four columns—rank, name, level, and score.

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Interacting with it was strange. It was somewhat like interacting with a screen, but more physical since he could actually feel each element he touched.

The leaderboard stretched out before him and seemed to go all the way up into the ceiling and down into the floor. Off to the left was a sort of button; the word locate boxed in by lines of mist. He tapped it and the list zoomed by until landing on one particular name: Dauntless.

Rank Name Level Score 196,534 Dauntless None 0

There were other people below him, but they all had the same lack of score and level.

He touched the misty, marshmallow-like text and with a quick flick of his finger he sent the list zooming all the way to the bottom. The last person on the list was ranked 3,512,019.

So around three and a half million people had joined the system, assuming it listed everyone who had.

It was a lot, but relative to the entire population of the world, it was only a small fraction.

How many of them, he wondered, had been taken, were even now being held by the FBI or some other more secretive government organization?

He also wondered why he was ranked above others who had the same level and score as he did. Maybe it was sorted by score and level, and then by who joined first?

He scrolled up again to go to the beginning of the leaderboard, looking at who occupied the top spots.

Rank Name Level Score 1 Vin ﴾The First Cultivator﴿ Copper 100,000 2 Anatoly Novikov Copper 90,000 3 Goro Sakurai ﴾The Sniper﴿ None 42,450 4 Orden the Great None 8,010 5 bal67 None 1,000

Some of the names clearly couldn’t be real ones, so it appeared it was possible to either change them or get the system to accept one that wasn’t your legal name. That was good, because, like Je-won had suggested, it would otherwise be quite easy to track who had joined. He wasn’t himself worried, since his name was listed only as Dauntless.

One oddity was that his title didn’t have the brackets around it like what he assumed were the other titles, like ﴾The First Cultivator﴿ or ﴾The Sniper﴿.

“Well this is exciting,” Zoe said sarcastically, finishing her slice of pizza and leaning back.

“I’m looking at the leaderboard.”

“Are you on it?”

“Yeah. I'm not ranked that well.”

“Duh. You've barely done like anything. Why would you be ranked well?”

“And your name?” Je-won asked.

“Dauntless.”

“What’s your rank? On the leaderboard.”

Dexter told him, and Je-won began swiping at the air.

After a few moments, he nodded. “Dauntless is what I’m seeing as well. That’s good.”

“It looks like you can change your name. ‘Orden the Great’? ‘bal67’? Those can’t be real names.”

“Yes. I—” Je-won glanced at Zoe, sighed, then said to Dexter, “I did notice others on the leaderboard who have what appear to be aliases.”

Zoe began to say something, but Je-won continued before she could. “But, if someone inspects you, they’ll know you’re in the system, even if they can’t see your name.”

Zoe grunted, but had no response for this.

“Inspect?” Dexter asked.

Je-won nodded. “There’s a series of icons when you swipe down from the main screen. Have you not explored it at all?”

Dexter looked at the floor, memories of the auditorium trying to assert themselves; Leah’s bloody bra, the arm all on its own.

“Hey,” Je-won said, “it’s okay. Just focus on the here and now, alright?”

Dexter nodded and tried swiping down from the top.

As expected, a shade pulled down with a row of icons. The first was an eye with a line through it. When he touched it, the line went away.

He looked at Je-won and information appeared.

Je-won Yun

Level: None

Wondering if it really did only work on those in the system, he studied Zoe.

The information on Je-won vanished, but none for her appeared.

“Why are you looking at me like I’m a blank wall?” Zoe asked, pulling him back to the present.

“Trying to inspect you. Doesn’t work. Which is good.”

“Well, how about you do something we can see? I’m getting bored watching you stare into space. And tired.”

“You should go to sleep,” Dexter said. “Rest your ankle.”

“Boring as you may be, I don’t think I could sleep.”

“What happened to your ankle?” Je-won asked.

Zoe waved at him. “It’s nothing. So what's the plan, exactly, after this? Other than don't get abducted by the Men in Black. You really think we’ll have to fight monsters? If you can kill them with a pizza peel, they don’t seem particularly strong.”

“The only reason the pizza peel killed it was because of Nara’s ability. If it hadn't been for that, I doubt it would have injured it. I'm sure you've seen the reports by now of people trying to attack the monsters to no avail.”

Zoe turned to look at the computer monitor, the video of the attack long ago having finished playing, paused on the end screen. She nodded. “Yeah. We've seen. I was hoping it was wrong.”

“What was Nara’s ability again?” Dexter asked Je-won.

“Enchant Metal. Does what it sounds like.”

“She got it just from joining the system?”

Je-won nodded.

“That’s it? I didn’t get anything other than the title.”

“Really? Both Nara and I did.”

“How can I check?”

“Your stat screen lists any abilities. There’s also an icon on that bar that—”

Je-won’s phone rang.

“Is that…” Zoe said with trepidation. “Is that Gangnam Style?”

Je-won ignored her, answering his phone and putting it on speaker. “Did you change my ringtone again?”

“It’s my ringtone,” Nara answered. “I want you to feel the proper emotion whenever I call you.”

He shook his head. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”

“Not exactly. You haven’t heard?”

“About what?”

“Are you still at the restaurant?”

“Yes. I’m with Dex and Zoe.”

“Then go outside and see for yourself.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just go outside and see. They’re not dangerous. I don’t think. Not to you.”

Je-won stood, grabbing his sword from the coffee table despite what his sister had said.

“Stay here,” Dexter told Zoe as he followed Je-won. “Rest your ankle.”

“No way.” She got up and limped toward him. “I’ve got my own personal crutch. Now come on, help an old lady down the stairs.”

Dexter sighed, but helped her down into the restaurant’s kitchen, following Je-won.

“Oh my god,” Zoe said, looking at the destruction of the pizzeria as they exited from the kitchen and into the dining room.

“Yes,” Je-won agreed. He had cleaned up the worst of it, including the broken glass, but he could do nothing about the broken windows at the moment. Not that he was particularly worried about how his restaurant looked anymore.

There was a pizza peel on the counter next to a destroyed cash register. Zoe picked it up. “Is this what you used?”

Je-won nodded.

“Looks normal,” she said, studying it. “There’s no blood.”

“It bled smoke.”

“Really? Cool.”

“You outside yet?” Nara asked from Je-won’s phone.

“Not yet.” He motioned with his head at the front of the dining room. “Come on.”

Zoe set the pizza peel back down and, using Dexter for support, followed Je-won.

Even before they got outside, they could hear the sound of horns blaring and loud voices coming from somewhere nearby.

“What is that?” Zoe asked.

Her question was answered a moment later as they exited the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk, staring down the street at the spectacle in front of the townhall two blocks away.

“A protest?” Je-won asked into the phone. He still had Nara on speaker.

“Not exactly,” she answered. “They think the government’s spying on their phones and computers, so they went house-to-house gathering people.”

“They’re not wrong about that.”

“Vince Bayard called me and told me about it. The mayor organized it. A lot of people have kids missing. Ones not accounted for in the deaths. Kaitlyn’s among them.” Kaitlyn Bayard was Vince’s daughter.

“Wow,” Zoe said. “They’re not trying to be very secretive.”

“What are they planning on doing about it?” Je-won asked Nara.

“I don’t know. Thought you might want to check it out and see. All Vince knew was that it was about the missing kids. Are there a lot of people there?”

Je-won sighed. “Yes. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be done here soon then be back home.”

“No rush. We’re all good here.”

“Still, I’ll be home soon. Love you.”

“Yeah yeah.” A pause. “Love you too.” Then she hung up.

“There’s so many people,” Zoe said. “No way they all fit inside.”

“Doesn’t look like they’re letting that stop them,” Dexter observed, seeing Bobby Reed, the mayor, exit the townhall holding a bullhorn, to cheers from the crowd.

The mayor’s voice began echoing out into the night, though his words were hard to understand, even amplified.

“Should we go to it?” Zoe asked.

“No,” Je-won answered. “No, I don’t think we should. Getting involved in that is a bad idea. Mobs never make good decisions. We’ll find out what they’re planning from someone who went.” He looked at Dexter. “For now, it’s time to finish up your introduction to the system.”