Phase Zero Complete.

Time Until Phase One: One Hour, Fifteen Minutes

Please Wait.

The staircase led us through what might’ve been a manhole cover once. Now, it lay on its side like an overturned bank vault. As I opened it, I saw the Chicago skyline in the distance, with the gigantic black skyscraper that everyone still called the Sears Tower, even though it hadn’t been called that in a couple of decades, dominating its center.

Everything looked transparent blue, and the whole skyline was covered in hundreds of faintly glowing hexagons.

So, that was weird. Lake Station should have been under Downtown, just a few blocks south of the Chicago River. Instead, the shimmering water of Lake Michigan greeted us to our right, along with an Igloo cooler and a couple of beach towels on the sand. We were well north of where we should be.

When I pointed that out, Calvin nodded matter-of-factly. “Not a surprise. That whole dungeon shouldn’t have been a loop, but it was. Figures this Consortium would have messed with the whole city’s layout to suit their needs. They said something about terraforming, right?”

“Yeah,” Tori said. She kept looking south, her brow wrinkled. “Hal, if Jessica’s anywhere, she’ll be at the Field Museum.”

“How do you figure? Wouldn’t she go home?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. She’s an assistant curator. The plan was always to get to the museum if there was an emergency. She’ll be there, taking care of that stupid T-Rex or the Native American exhibit or whatever she does.”

I’d never been to the Field Museum—or the aquarium or planetarium that were also right there, for that matter. I had been to Soldier Field once, though, so I knew roughly where we’d have to go to get there. “Alright. Calvin, you still with us, or do you want to make your own way?”

The long-term-rider turned Hardcore Tutorial survivor shrugged. “I’ll stick with you two for a while, ‘til you do something I ain’t up for. If we get separated, I might aim for the museum, too. Never been there—might be worth seeing.”

When I tried walking toward the skyline, though, I only made it a dozen yards or so—not even off the sand—before hitting that glowing wall of hexagons. “I think we’re going to have to wait a bit, like it said,” I muttered.

“I guess so,” Tori said. She sat down in the sand, facing the waves.

I joined her, pulling up my new stats.

[Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 18]

[Stats]

►Body - 16

►Awareness - 33

►Charge - 0/25 (0 Used)

Stat Points Available: 0

[Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

Items

►Surge Protectors

►Lock-Grip Gloves

►Trip-Hammer (Inoperable, Charge 0/10)

I had 25 possible Charge, which I got from draining magical items. According to the stat sheet, I couldn’t use my Trip-Hammer. That made sense; I’d traded my magic away when I picked up the Voltsmith class. But it was my creation, so I should be able to fix that. I just needed ten Charge.

The Lock-Grip Gloves felt surprisingly useful, given what the Trip-Hammer did, and I didn’t want to take the Surge Protectors apart quite yet. But I did have the Imbuing Rod—and I couldn’t use it without Power Surge. It’d be the ideal item to experiment on.

A message popped up as I stared at the simple metal rod.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Imbuing Rod (Common, Charge 12)

User can transfer personal buffing spells placed in this rod to other people’s weapons.

I got the option to drain the item but chose not to—at least for now. First, I wanted to know how the Imbuing Rod worked. Getting answers now, while there wasn’t any danger or pressure, might help with problems later, and it wasn’t like I had anything else going on.

I set it down in the sand and started taking it apart carefully, letting my Awareness show me where the magic pooled inside of it and how it flowed. It glowed a bright, almost-white blue, just like my old spells, and the smell of hot wires filled my nose, but before long, I had it all figured out.

The whole device was really three parts, all held inside the metal case.

First, the battery. It wasn’t anything like a lithium-ion battery, or even a Duracell. Conceptually, though, it was one—a bronze sphere at the bottom of the rod, about the size of a lug nut. When I’d poured a Power Surge into it, it filled up and held the magic. Right now, it didn’t have a spell in it, but I could still see that blue-white energy pooling faintly around it.

When the Imbuing Rod was used, the spell traveled through a series of mirrors and lenses, which I assumed helped to keep it from dissipating too early. I didn’t bother with any of that; it wasn’t like I wanted to use it.

And, finally, at the rod’s top was what looked like a showerhead—an emitter. That was where I’d empowered the sledgehammer and Tori’s knife, and it looked a lot like a projector’s lightbulb and lens.

So, the whole thing was just a magical projector, huh? It could be useful, sure, but I needed the Trip-Hammer up and running.

With my questions mostly answered, I drained the Imbuing Rod.

It didn’t disappear or even fall apart, but it did change. Where it had glowed white-blue, it now seemed flat and dull, like an unpolished hunk of metal. Instead, my palm glowed—an orange glow that traveled toward my chest before settling over my heart.

►Charge - 12/25 (0 Used)

“Hey, Tori, you seeing this?” I asked.

“Seeing what?” She turned toward me, glanced at the spent Imbuing Rod for a second, and turned back toward the beach. “Yeah, that’s kinda neat how it works.”

She didn’t look at my chest at all.

Interesting. She couldn’t see the glow. It had to be my Awareness. I grabbed the Trip-Hammer and disconnected the bronze battery from the Imbuing Rod. It took a minute or two to figure out how to connect it to an Earth-based electrical circuit, but when it was done, I had a place to put my Charge and a trigger to activate it.

I dumped ten Charge into the hammer.

►Charge - 2/15 (10 Used)

Trip-Hammer, by Hal Riley (Created Item, Charge 10)

The Trip-Hammer uses magical energy and salvaged parts to apply massive force to a small area. First created by Hal Riley of Earth.

I went through my inventory mentally, looking for anything else useful to make. It was full of chunks of train that Tori had ripped off the Redline Wyrm, but those weren’t helpful right now. In the end, I had to stop; I didn’t have enough Charge to power anything else, anyway.

I pulled the Trip-Hammer and the broken, useless Imbuing Rod into my inventory. Then I joined Tori and Calvin, who were watching the waves come in off Lake Michigan and enjoying the contents of the Igloo cooler.

----------------------------------------

“Where do you live?” Tori asked between sips of Sprite.

The cooler turned out to be full of soft drinks, pre-made Subway sandwiches, and all sorts of other picnic stuff. I wasn’t sure about taking them—they might’ve been someone’s—but when Calvin grabbed an Italian BMT, a timer appeared over it matching the countdown to Phase One, along with the word ‘Fleeting.’ The System had put it there for us, so there wasn’t any harm in eating it. Probably.

“Andersonville. I’ve got an attic studio apartment there above this old lady’s house. I’ve been there for a couple of years,” I said. “You?”

“Rogers Park.”

This all felt like too much of an interview for me, but we had nothing else to do. “Why’d you pick the Hardcore Tutorial, anyway?”

She stiffened, screwed the lid back onto her drink—which only had ten minutes or so on the timer—and stared off toward Lake Michigan. Then she sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got some time. Why don’t you get started?”

“Okay.” She went quiet again. “So, Mom—Mom Mom, not Jessica—used to tell these stories when I was a kid. Heroes and villains, swordfights, magic, all that stuff. Then, later, I played a lot of games. A lot of them. Fantasy ones. I grew up with all that crap. You know how it is, right?”

I shook my head. “Pigs and chores here. Never got into it as much as some of my friends did.” I didn’t mention Beth, even though she’d played a few games like that. She hadn’t been into the gaming and fantasy culture—not like Tori, at least. And I didn’t mention my ex, either.

“That sucks,” she said. “So, I grew up with it all—it was part of my life. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, all of that stuff. I even had a sword and fencing lessons. But when Mom and Dad…when they didn’t want to be together anymore, all that dried up. Mom got too busy. She couldn’t afford the lessons anymore, and Jessica’s too…”

Tori paused, a cloud passing over her face. “She’s always pushing real history books at me, and she doesn’t think my gaming hobby’s productive or useful or…whatever. When the train crashed, I wasn’t thinking about it as a real, serious thing. The messages reminded me of my games, and I saw a chance to be a wizard or something. I grabbed it before Mo—before Jessica could talk me out of it.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring out at the slowly setting sun. “Sorry.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. The truth was that she was just a kid, and she’d made a dumb, impulsive decision like one. “You remind me of Beth.”

“Who’s that?”

“My sister. She would have liked you.”

It took her a second. Then, she sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

“She always had her head somewhere else instead of in Cozad,” I said. I couldn’t look at Tori anymore. “Where does your mom live?”

“Wisconsin.”

“Shit,” Calvin said.

“Yeah. Dad’s in New York on business, and Mom’s in Wisconsin. Jessica’s the closest thing I’ve got to family here.”

Time Limit: 0:00

Congratulations on surviving Phase Zero: Tutorial Dungeons!

Phase One will begin after a few short messages.