Now that Dexter knew Leah was okay for the moment, he decided to leave the hospital to go home and shower and change. He needed to think. He needed to figure out what it meant to be a part of the system. Like it had said, he needed to regroup, experiment, explore.

On his way out, he spotted Zoe. She indeed had twisted her ankle, but luckily wasn’t hurt badly. It did mean though that she had yet to be treated.

“Dexter!” she grimaced as she got up and limped toward him. He hurried to her so she wouldn’t have to walk. She hugged him. “Have you seen Matt?”

He looked around. The agents in FBI jackets were all gone, but he still spotted a few police officers. “Yeah. He’s… fine.”

“Really? Cause your voice is making it sound like he’s not. At all.”

“You waiting for your parents?”

“Out of town. Was waiting to be seen.” She gestured at her ankle, then around at the overcrowded hospital. “I’m getting the feeling I’d have better luck praying to House MD than being seen before the world’s blown up.” She sighed. “You drive here, or come in an ambulance?” She studied his blood-stained clothes.

He waved off her concern. “I’m fine. I drove.”

She nodded slowly. “Don’t suppose you want to give me a ride home?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “No reason I guess. You have that stupid scooter, right?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Stupid?”

“I mean, wondrous, beautiful, sexy babe magnet rocket motorcycle.”

He laughed. “That’s the one.”

“Have an extra helmet?”

“I do actually.”

“Good. Would suck to die in a scooter crash after surviving an alien invasion.”

[https://i.imgur.com/4PDj1c4.png]

His place above Je-won’s pizza joint would normally only be a few minutes away, but traffic was awful, vehicles loaded down with people and luggage.

He couldn’t understand why. Where was everyone going? The attacks had happened everywhere. There was nowhere to escape to.

There’d been a video taken by someone on a container ship in the middle of the ocean of the vessel swarming with human-sized squid monsters, people jumping off like they were recreating Titanic as others were wrapped up and devoured.

If a container ship in the middle of the ocean wasn’t safe, then these people in their luxury SUVs wouldn’t be, regardless of what vacation cabin or lake house they escaped to.

On his scooter he could at least thread through the worst of the traffic.

“What are these idiots doing?” Zoe complained from behind him. With their low speed and his scooter being electric, it was easy to converse.

“I have no idea.”

There were several police cruisers from the county sheriff, but no FBI vehicles. At least none that were obvious.

The ten-mile drive took nearly forty-five minutes, and the sun was beginning to set by the time he made it back.

“Uh…” Zoe looked around the alley they’d stopped in.

“Oh, crap. I was supposed to take you home. Sorry, I totally blanked.”

“This is where you live, right?”

Dexter nodded.

The alley had employee parking for Heart&Seoul Pizzeria, Je-won’s restaurant. There were no cars, which meant neither he nor Nara, his little sister and sole employee, were here.

Zoe got off the scooter, winced as she put weight on her ankle, then pulled off her helmet and handed it to him. “Have anything to drink?”

Dexter wanted to explore the system, figure out what else besides making you look like a K-pop anime character it was capable of, but when he thought of dropping her off and coming back here alone, being all by himself in his apartment…

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Some company sounded nice. It meant delaying exploring the system interface, because he wasn’t sure he wanted Zoe to know he’d involuntarily joined it. He trusted her, but she liked to talk.

“The restaurant does,” he answered. “And it looks like it’s closed. I’ll get you the key.”

“I like the way you think.”

[https://i.imgur.com/4PDj1c4.png]

Dexter’s apartment was a small studio situated atop the restaurant. There were no windows except for a tiny one at ceiling height in the bathroom, the floor creaked, it was loud on weekends, the water pressure was poor, the Wi-Fi was so bad he’d had to run an ethernet cable through the wall downstairs… And those were only the faults he’d noticed in his first week here.

But it was cheap, and it was his own. And that was enough for him. Plus, he liked his landlord.

Hard to ask for more.

There were two ways into his apartment, both up a flight of stairs. The first was the rickety set in the alley off the back of the building, which he parked his scooter under and helped Zoe limp up. The second was out his ‘front door’ which let on to a small landing and flight of stairs that led down to a door to the pizza joint’s kitchen. Which was why Dexter had a key. His little studio didn’t have so much as a hotplate.

He ate a lot of leftover pizza.

Inside the studio apartment, Dexter grabbed the key to the kitchen door at the bottom of the staircase and handed it to Zoe. “It’s out that door and down the stairs. You’ll be in the kitchen. The drinks are—”

“I’ve lived in this town just as long as you and eaten here as much as anyone. I know where the alcohol is. He won’t mind?”

“Just make sure you only take the cheap stuff.”

“Fine by me.”

Dexter dug through his dresser—a large old wood thing which had come with the apartment and which he could see no way to remove without disassembling it entirely—for clean clothes, then headed to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, he exited the bathroom, freshly showered and in clean clothes. He found Zoe sitting in front of his computer, browsing social media, watching videos of the attacks all around the world. She had found the beer without issue and had several bottles on the desk beside her. Two of which were opened, one already drained.

She turned to look at him, taking a drink from a beer. “What’s with the door?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Door?”

“Why is there a key?”

“Why is there a key… To my door?” He motioned at the beer bottles. “How many of those have you had?”

“Not your front door—or whatever you call it. That one.” She pointed at the door that led to the restaurant’s kitchen. “There’s only one door at the bottom of the stairs. Stairs lead straight up here.”

“So?”

“That doesn’t strike you as odd?” She smiled. “Like, maybe the previous owner was secretly a serial killer and this was where he kept his victims locked away while he toyed with them. Have you seen any ghosts? Or had any signs of haunting?”

“No. To either. And it’s not much of a prison. There’s another door that leads directly outside, remember?”

“Yeah, that does kinda hurt the theory. Are those stairs new? I don’t remember what this place was before Je-won.”

“No idea. But the stairs are definitely not new.”

She shrugged, then motioned at the screen as she returned her attention to it. “I can’t believe this is happening.” Currently playing was video of an attack on the streets of what looked like NYC. Instead of one monster like had attacked the school, there were hundreds.

It made him wonder how the system decided how many monsters to send. Or maybe it was random.

None of them looked like the one he had seen, the one he had shared that ‘moment’ with.

He looked away as someone was taken down by one of them. “Yeah. Anything new?”

“Just psychos talking about the government abducting people.” She looked at him. “I don’t get it. How do people get so crazy? Like, I always thought bigfoot was a joke, but people actually believe that stuff.”

“You believe in ghosts, but bigfoot is a bridge too far?”

“Bigfoot’s boring. Ghosts are cool.”

“Turns out it’s not so crazy.” He sank down into his sofa. It was old, and smelled a little funky, but it was comfortable, and he’d gotten it for free.

Zoe spun around in the computer chair to face him, the beleaguered seat post letting out a squeal of protest. “You believe in bigfoot?”

“The government abducting people.” He suddenly was worried that his apartment was bugged and they were being spied on. But that was crazy.

She made a go-on motion.

He sighed. “I saw them rounding up altereds at school. And at the hospital.”

She frowned. “Altereds? You mean people who changed their hair or whatever?”

“Yeah. Matt was among them.”

Her face fell. “Seriously? And they took him?”

“Maybe he’s fine,” he said hopefully. “Maybe they’re just being cautious.” He didn’t exactly not believe it, but he also didn’t quite believe it either.

Zoe leaned to the side to free her phone from her pocket.

“What are you doing?”

She wiggled the phone, widened her eyes. “Calling him. Duh.”

Dexter wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “Don’t let on that you know they took him.”

She already had the phone to her ear. “In case anyone is listening?”

He nodded.

Several moments passed. Then several more. Zoe was frowning deeply now. She pulled the phone from her ear, looked at it, then up at him. Then she hung up.

“No answer. No voicemail either.”

“Does he have one? He strikes me as someone who would disable it.”

“I… think so? I don’t call him that often.”

“You sure seem worried about him now.”

“Well yeah, he’s hot now.”

They stared at each other for long moments. Then she cracked a smile.

Dexter laughed, then she did too.

“K-pop hair, weird eyes, horns, and a beard made you like him that much, huh?”

“I could take or leave the horns. And I already liked him. End of the world made me decide to stop waiting for him to get the courage to ask me out.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“What, you finally ask Leah out?” she joked.

“Sort of.”

“Whoa, seriously? How is she?”

“Shocked, but I think she’ll recover. She was expecting it.”

She kicked at the air between them, not even coming close to hitting him. She winced. “Ow. And I meant from the attack.”

“I know. And, physically, yeah.”

“Yeah…”

A knock at the door interrupted their awkward moment.

They froze, staring once more into each other’s eyes, this time in fear.

How had they tracked Leah’s phone already? Dexter wondered.

They couldn’t have. They must have been waiting here. But that made no sense.

What do we do? Zoe mouthed.