Luna and Purity return to me not long after most everyone else has scattered. The one whose hand I smashed yesterday wears a brighter smile, partially because her conversation with Herb is over.

“Alright, Melody. We want to respect the amount of time it’ll take you to adjust to this new world, but there’s also a few departments around here in which we are really lacking. Are you, by any chance, good at mechanics, engineering, cooking, or farming?”

“I’m good at fighting,” I say, hoping to avoid the bulk of the intense labor. You mean to tell me I’m dead, but still have to work?

“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. We may have to end up giving you a job you’re not familiar with. I’ll see what our other defense people have to say. For now, though, I think we’ll have to put you toward cooking, because Tes normally does that, and she is spread very thin right now.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have another miscellaneous helper,” Purity says, flipping through a worn notebook. “Cooking as main priority, but odds and ends otherwise.”

“I feel I should say I have no experience in cooking,” I protest.

“A lot safer than no experience in electrical wiring,” Luna says, giving me a nudge. “Besides, if we’re being honest here, you can’t really do much worse than what we’ve got already. Our options are very limited in terms of food, and there are no spices. We barely have salt.”

“How… how do you have food here?”

“Our more tech-savvy friends have aptly called it the Glitch,” Purity says, leading the way out of the building and towards what seems to be a house repurposed for food. “So far, once about every twenty rests, the pantries in the houses restock. Along with a few other things around the place, like kerosene containers for lamps, trees we’ve chopped, and so on.”

“As long as we’re smart with our consumable management, we stay fairly caught up. Have a surplus of some of the stuff, too, that stays after each glitch.”

“How does it happen? What does it look like?”

“Well, apparently, it just… happens overnight. The stuff reappears. But we can’t watch it happen. The only one to do that was Miami, and… well, that’s how he ended up a ghost.”

“The Glitch glitched him,” Luna says simply.

“Seems dangerous and unreliable.”

“Oh, for sure. We don’t trust it one bit. Fortunately, Herb, Biff, and Rosa tend to our ever-growing fields of crops. These are… also affected by the Glitch, as in once they reach maturity, they produce every twenty days. But we keep expanding the field, just in case it ever stops. We’re getting close to a point where the potato crops are at a sustainable size for every loop.”

“How… how long have you been here doing this?”

The two of them look between each other, telling me it’s been much longer than they’d like to admit.

“The three of us, Oriana included, have been here for five years. The next-longest is Sprocket, at three.”

Five years. Five miserable years stuck on this rock. Forced to do nothing but barely survive for the first two, no doubt, until slowly building up a group of people to keep it running. I was under Asgard’s control for just over five years myself, but at least I had a change of scenery every few months.

We reach the kitchen of the repurposed building, and I notice a robot in the center of the dining area, clearly in disrepair.

“Speak of the devil,” Purity says, approaching the robot. “What are you doing out here, Sprocket?”

The machine whirs lightly. “I had predetermined the three of you would be here today, and came for a visit. There isn’t long, you know.”

Purity laughs nervously as she lifts the robot. “Yeah, so you always say. How many days?”

“Six.” The way the robot punctuates it almost feels like a joke.

“He’s how we know when the next glitch is,” Luna says. “Six days.”

“And eighty-eight minutes,” the robot adds.

“You know we say ‘one hour and twenty-eight minutes,’ Sprocket,” Purity teases, placing the robot on a chair.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“We haven’t the time for such luxuries, Master Purity. There isn’t long, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Come on, Melody, we’ll show you where everything you need is.”

As the two of them walk me through the kitchen process, they make small remarks about how things should be done. There’s a calendar they rarely stray from for course planning—“Copper gets upset if we change the cycle orders”—and at the beginning of every cycle, the kitchen worker empties what’s in the house’s pantry and puts the stock in the back of a storage room in the basement of the house. Pretty straightforward food management, if not complicated by whatever strange magic bullshit is happening here.

All the while, I can’t help but think about how… trusting everyone is. And that could be just the nature of where we are, in that if you can’t trust one of the fourteen or however many there are, then the flow of things falls apart.

I’ve gotta figure a way out of here. I wouldn’t last long, especially with these flare-ups happening twice already.

Before, the flare-ups were rare. Maybe once a month, max. And for most of my life, while still under Asgard’s control, there was medication that would keep the flare-ups and my abilities under control. That was a luxury that I clearly wouldn’t have access to here. I doubted there was any sort of medicine here, period. Not to mention, the odds of anyone being capable of producing some sort of concoction to help me out are low.

Luna gives me a gentle nod as her and Purity finalize their kitchen instructions for me, and steps out to join Sprocket. “Let us know if you need any help, Melody. We’re all in this together.”

I scoff a little at her remark when she’s gone, although the thought lingers in my head. Should I try to use this place as a second chance? A life of normalcy, or as close as I can get to it? I wasn’t given that chance. The last time I lived in a house was ten years ago.

Tes joins me in the kitchen roughly an hour later, as I’ve started on the lunch routine. She nods silently my way, and begins working on a different portion of the lunch area.

I wait a few minutes to talk to her, unsure of what to say. Small talk is a privilege I had very little access to growing up. “So… you’re mute, right?”

She nods, then makes a motion with her hands, letting me know she speaks sign language.

“Yeah, I don’t know any signs. You don’t have to worry about me trying to keep conversation all that much, though. I don’t really talk to people.”

She nods again, her expression telling me she isn’t surprised or phased in any way.

As the time for lunch begins to approach, another figure, one that I don’t recognize from the meeting this morning, approaches, smiling at the two of us.

“Good morning, ladies,” he says, leaning against the counter where food was to be served. “Melody, you’ve made quite the impression around here, I’ll have you know.”

“Okay,” I reply. “And you are?”

“Of course. The name’s Biff. I’m pretty much the hotshot around here. I have to practically claw the ladies off of me.”

“I don’t get that impression from you.”

His demeanor barely falters as he deflects. “No doubt because you’re a lesbian. I’ve clocked you already, no worries. And if you didn’t know that, then there you are. In fact, word is you’ve got Luna crushing on you already. Anyway, enough of that. Tes, are you ready?”

She gives me the slightest look before turning and nodding to him. His grin gives nothing away, but her glance tells me everything.

He’s certainly clocked something.

I give the two of them a few moments to get ahead of me, then quietly slink behind, as the man leads Tes across the street toward another house. As soon as the front door is closed, I rush across and place my ear to the door.

Why am I doing this? Why do I care what happens to her? What this man is doing with her? For all I know, I was reading her expressions wrong. Maybe I was reading his expressions wrong.

No. I was her once. I haven’t read anything wrong.

As his voice moves around the house, I crouch under windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of where they’re headed. Eventually, they stop in a bedroom.

“You know the deal,” he says, revealing a black whip engulfed in flames. “Off.”

Tes pauses a moment, then tries to raise her arm toward him. He reacts immediately, the whip tangling around her bicep. As she crumbles in pain, she raises her other arm in surrender, and the whip retracts.

With the power dynamic established, I’ve seen more than I need to. I sprint around to the front of the house, and quietly swing the door open. Then, with a bit of panicked navigation, I find the bedroom, and peek into the room. Tes is already half-naked as her captor also begins to undress.

No time to lose. I rush in, and before he can even turn to face me, a red, crackling spike extends from my hand, piercing him from the back of his chest and through his ribcage. He sputters a little, then turns to face me.

“What the… hell…”

Tes stares wide-eyed, then covers her exposed parts as the life leaves her captor’s body. Every inch of blood in his body flows into and through my wrist, and my muscles swell a little. At last, his corpse crumples to the floor, exsanguinated.

Tes wastes no time in getting dressed, and we share an unvoiced exchange. I’m not entirely sure what is said during the exchange until she nods, a tear forming in her eye, and raises her hands. As she does, a glowing purple platform lifts from the ground, carrying the slumped body with it. She then walks forward, the platform levitating with her. I follow behind her, and the two of us discretely leave the house, and I keep watch for prying eyes while Tes leads us toward a field of corn.

The walk is strangely somber. With no words to exchange, unless I feel like breaking the silence, it almost feels like a funeral procession, except for the worst man possible.

We reach the edge, essentially hidden behind the cornstalks, although the crops themselves had been cut short about twenty feet from the abyss. She hovers the platform carrying Biff a few feet over the edge, then twists her wrist. The platform disappears, and his body drifts down as if it were a feather, until a few seconds later, he is no longer visible from our vantage point.

Tes turns to me. “Thank you.”

I give her a nod. A secret she’ll almost certainly be keeping.

She begins the walk back to town first, but I lag behind, staring out into the void.

Second time’s the charm, fucker.