Chapter Eighteen: Not Dead Yet

  I woke up.

  I know, I know, that’s probably not the most exciting event you’ve ever read about, but since I’d passed out face-down in a swamp, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.

  Not that I’d had a lot of time to think about it. But in that split second before I activated [Wild Sanctuary], I would’ve given myself fifty-fifty odds at best.

  I blinked up at the trees overhead, the enormous moon still shining down. I had no idea how much time had passed, but the moon hadn’t moved, so either it hadn’t been long or the moon in this rift didn’t move. Both seemed possible. Neither seemed likely.

  “You back with us?” On the surface, JJ’s voice was calm, even cool. Just a friendly dude asking a casual acquaintance how they were doing.

  But I had [Uncanny Insight], which meant the black-and-white shades of people’s typical conversational tones had blossomed into a full-color spectrum of meaning. Here’s what I heard, and deduced, from those four simple words.

  He was at least three feet away from me, maybe closer to five. If he’d been the one to turn me over, most likely saving my life, he’d backed way the hell away before I woke up. That could’ve been because I reeked of toxic waste plus eau-de-urine, but he’d been trapped in the muck himself, so he should’ve been used to the smell by now.

  If he’d stayed close, that would’ve indicated concern. His distance said caution.

  The words had been even, no squeaks or stammers, but beneath their smooth surface ran a thread, a subtle off-note. It sounded like fear, maybe mixed with something like wonder. Like he was scared, but he wasn’t sure how scared he ought to be, and definitely didn’t want to show that fear to a potential predator.

  I wondered if JJ worked with adolescent boys. Or if maybe he’d spent some time in jail himself. Because what I heard was the awareness of danger, and the faith that a rational, even-tempered approach might defuse a hazardous situation.

  I didn’t consider myself a hazardous situation. So what exactly had my Very Bad Idea done?

  The sound I made in reply was somewhere between a grunt and a moan. More like a half-gasp of misery than a groan.

  A wet dog nose promptly shoved its way into my line of sight, followed by another from the other side. Zelda licked, but Bear just sniffed, confirming life. A heavy weight across my legs shifted, wiggled, moving higher, so I flopped a hand up to rub Riley’s head.

  “That was… bad,” I said.

  “That was amazing,” JJ said. He’d moved closer and the undercurrent of tension in his voice was gone, disappeared as fast as a Tinder match who’d just heard the words ‘jail time.’

  Why had he relaxed? I scrunched my eyes closed against the light of the moon, and let Zelda cover my face in dog spit. She was going to do it one way or another, so there was no point in objecting, and I didn’t have the energy to shove her away.

  Well, and I didn’t really want to, either. I remembered how I’d felt when her injuries healed. She probably felt the same way now.

  “What did you do? How did you do it? That was incredible.” JJ drawled the last word, dragging out its vowels with the kind of Southern emphasis you only heard from true natives.

  I huffed out a laugh. “You born in Florida?”

  “Huh? Yeah. Lived here my whole life. Why?”

  “No reason.” I lifted the hand that had been petting Riley’s ears and flopped it around in an attempt at a dismissive wave. Not a particularly good attempt, although the movement made me realize that I didn’t hurt. I was exhausted and I felt like every vestige of life in me had been drained into the swamp. But I wasn’t in pain and that was probably noteworthy. In a minute or two—okay, maybe five—I might be ready to sit up.

  “So, um, what happened when I did… uh, what I did?” I asked.

  “Oh, sugar, this is a seeing-is-believing kind of moment.” JJ’s voice was closer, and even with my eyes closed, I could feel that he’d moved right next to me.

  “Come on there, Bear,” he said, his tone affectionate. “Let me in, sweet girl.”

  In the vast sea of human encounters, most people float by unremarked. Your fellow classmates, the people you see at the grocery store, the neighbors you nod at when you’re out walking your dogs—they’re all just scenery, in a way.

  Not in a bad way. Not like you’d sociopathically kill them during the apocalypse to get ahead kind of way. Just in the normal way that assumes they’re vivid in their own life, but merely background color in yours.

  And then every once in a while, one of those people says something or does something that makes them real. Makes them someone to remember, someone to care about. Turns them from a splash of background color into a person of interest.

  I believe I’ve mentioned that Bear was a rescue, and a bit on the feral side? You’d think that Riley—a Rottweiler/pit bull mix—would be the dog that scared most people, but no. Bear definitely had Lab in her, but she also had Belgian Malinois.

  Riley radiated couch-dog energy. Sure, he might be big and tough-looking, but any dog-friendly person could recognize that he was a softie at heart. He carried himself like the kind of boy who wanted nothing more than to rest his head in your lap and snuggle while you watched TV. The term Netflix-and-chill might have been invented for him.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Bear’s energy was much more “Do you want me to kill something for you? What do you want me to kill? Can I kill something? Tell me what needs to die. I will do it.” Even dog people saw it in her. She was the kind of the dog who made people stop walking, open their hands down at their sides, hold their breath.

  And I say this as Bear’s person, as the human being who chose to let this dog into my home and my life.

  Any stranger willing to call her a ‘sweet girl’ while shoving her out of the way had an immediate place in my heart. Also an immediate warning label, of the sort that read, ‘might be insane, caution warranted’ but you know, that was the fate of anyone who stayed too close to the fire that was Bear.

  JJ, having squeezed between Bear and me, slid his arm under my shoulders and helped me sit up. I didn’t resist, even though I would have been fine with another five — okay, maybe even ten — minutes of lying on ground staring at the moon. Yeah, it was a good moon, but also, I was fried.

  A part of me was sort of internally poking at my insides, trying to see if I could feel anything. I hadn’t killed my external senses, obviously. I’d felt Zelda’s wet kisses and heard JJ’s words. But had I burned out my internal senses, the part of me that should have been howling with pain?

  It didn’t feel like it. Nothing hurt, but not because I was numb or overwhelmed by agony. I felt, sort of, fine. Exhausted, but not injured.

  The swamp could not say the same. My internal explosion must have initiated some kind of external explosion, too, because the trees surrounding us had all been flattened, radiating out from a central point. Me.

  As far as I could see, in all directions, the rift had become less swamp, more demolition site. In the distance, at least half a mile away, maybe more, a wall of flowering bougainvilleas encircled us. It was the biggest Wild Sanctuary I’d ever created, by a literal mile.

  It seemed to have wiped out the rift, and everything in it.

  My jaw dropped, mouth gaping open, but I was speechless.

  “Impressive, yeah?” JJ said. “You shoulda seen it happen. It was the craziest thing I’ve seen in a bunch of days fulla crazy shit.”

  The blinking light in the corner of my vision told me I had notifications waiting to be read. Numbly, I let them scroll up before my eyes, although most of my attention was on the landscape before me. Yep, I’d killed everything in the rift with my Wild Sanctuary. I had a little wince of regret when I saw the XP notices for the [Clay Slimes] scroll by, but I let it go. In the grand scheme of things, feeling sorry for little clay slimes was not on.

  But I paused on this notification:

  Congratulations! You have survived an event that should have resulted in your death.

  Award: Resist Death achievement.

  Survival accomplished via companion ability: Never Say Die.

  Base reward: 1000 XP

  Times this achievement has triggered: 2

  Multiplier applied: 2^(2?1)

  Total XP awarded: 2000 XP

  Okay, so I would have died if Zelda hadn’t saved me. That was good to know. That was… hell, that was… I puffed out a few short, sharp breaths.

  Shit. That was terrifying.

  “You okay?” JJ asked, trepidation clear.

  “Just freaking out,” I said, my voice tight. The notifications continued.

  Congratulations! Unnamed Rift N5W12S#486 harvested.

  Award: Rift Harvest Bonus

  Reward: 1000 XP

  Congratulations! Unnamed Rift N5W12S#486 harvested for the first time.

  Award: First Instance Harvest Bonus

  Reward: 1000 XP

  Congratulations! World First — Second Rift Harvest. You are the first sapient on your world to successfully harvest two rifts. Recognition of your achievement grants you increased experience gains.

  Bonus: +20% experience from all sources.

  The random XP was piling up, but I was so much stronger than the rift that it wasn’t doing much. It was enough, though, that I could level up to level 18 if I wanted to. Given that I was apparently in perfect health, I decided to hold onto the points until I needed them more.

  Until I was almost dead again, I tried not to think. This near-dying stuff was feeling like a PTSD invitational.

  “Everything’s dead in this rift,” I said, swallowing hard. I’d killed everything. I’d killed everything without even noticing. Without deciding. Just… okay, yeah. “We should move on to the next instance and see if that’s the one where your mom is.”

  “Instance?” JJ asked.

  His arm was still warm against my back and I had no desire to move. It was so reassuring to be sharing this insanity with another human being.

  “The rifts form multiple instances. So if you go in at the same time as other people, or, you know, dogs…” I stroked Zelda’s furry back, glancing down into her worried brown eyes. “… you stay together. But if there’s a pause between the time you go in and someone else goes in, you both wind up in the same place, but different, um… examples?” I finished tentatively, not exactly sure how to describe the way the rifts worked.

  I suspected that people who played a lot of video games would get it immediately, but I wasn’t one of those lucky people. Who knew that playing video games would have been the secret to survival? I wished my dad was still around so I could tell him so, but the thought made me blink back a few random tears.

  It was probably just as well that I’d already lost him. Trying to keep him alive in the apocalypse would have been horrifying. Which was why I needed to help JJ right now. His mama should still be alive, so we needed to find her and make sure she stayed that way.

  “Shit, like dungeons in a video game? Are we living in a video game?” JJ’s arm tightened behind me, muscles reacting to his surprise.

  I forced myself fully upright, albeit a little reluctantly. “Not sure it’s a video game, exactly, but some of the same rules are there. The, uh, multiverse has been prepping us.”

  “Dang.” JJ laughed, although it sounded a little forced. “So all those kids playing video games instead of football were actually making the smart choice?”

  I made a scoffing noise of my own. “Football was always a bad bet. Risking your brain for a gladiator sport is a losing proposition for most of the sacrificial lambs involved.”

  JJ snorted. “No argument there.”

  “Okay, now I’m questioning whether you’re a real Floridian,” I muttered. I’d never met a single man in Florida willing to acknowledge that the damage caused by football might outweigh its entertainment value. Usually arguing that point was a fast way to end a first date. Or a second. Sometimes even a third, if I’d actually liked the guy to begin with.

  He laughed again, and this time it sounded real. “Go Gators?”

  “Pfft.”

  “Let’s go find my mama,” JJ said.

  “Yep.” I looked at him. I knew nothing about him except that he wasn’t scared of my dog. But right now I was really damn glad I’d decided to save his life.