I flew up the side of one of the ships. What I needed was information. I needed it quickly, too. The best way I could think of to have both of those things at the same time was to ask someone. A cursory look over the first ship didn’t reveal anyone. Nor the second. My heart raced faster with each passing moment. There! I saw someone on the forth near the ship’s bridge.

  I flew to the man and landed next to him. His expression was one of complete shock. He’d seen me fly and land, only to be a teenager to his eyes. I opened my mouth to speak, as did he. A lance of fear shot though me as he took a large lungful of air and turned. He was going to shout!

  I quickly cast Dominate Mind. Like with Mom, it was a disgusting feeling—both from the blood casting and from the skill itself. I forced him not to yell while implanting in his mind that he never saw or spoke to me. Of course, I also asked him which ships would be full of oil tonight. Through Dominate Mind, I had my answer. There were two ships that fit my criteria. The first was—in fact—the one I was on. The other was two away, in the direction of the ocean.

  There was no way for me to run through the ships, place the bombs, and escape in time. What I needed was a better solution. I needed a way to quickly place the explosives and then fly back. I was limited in both time and blood. If I took too long, not only would I be late returning to Mom, but I would also take an unplanned swim along the way!

  My heart raced as an idea came to me. I pushed off the ship and lifted into the air. Flight took me forward on the water side of the ship. I came to a hovering stop at the waterline near the front of the ship. The ship gently rose and fell a few inches with the water. The measured markings running below the waterline were barely visible above the water. It was full of crude. It was at this location where I placed my first Delayed Explosive.

  I didn’t know the first thing about ships. They were these huge behemoths of steel and oil that steamed through the waves. They were sturdy, but also not sometimes—the knowledge of the Titanic rattled around my head. I wasn’t sure one explosive would be enough, which is why I also put another on the other side of the ship. I did my best to match the timing on the second bomb so both would go off at about the same time. The skill wasn’t that precise—and I had to guess how much time it’d taken me to get to the other side of the ship—so there was a snowball’s chance in hell that they matched perfectly. I hoped it would be within a couple seconds, though.

  Getting to the next ship meant skimming across the water past another ship along the way. Thankfully, no one saw me in the gloomy shadows the ships cast. The second ship was riding higher in the water than the first had, so I put the Delayed Explosives to explode an hour later than the first ship. They were located in the same general area—away from the bridge so I didn’t hurt the people, but far enough into the bulk of the ship to break it in half. Hopefully.

  Now that the explosives were set, it was time to get back to Mom. I redid the Illusion to look like a bird before skimming along the water. Unlike my journey across the water to the ships, I felt like I was under a time crunch to get back to Mom on time. Even if that weren’t true, my blood was getting low. I increased my speed.

  I kept my direction straight towards the piers. There simply wasn’t the time—or the resources—to faff about with giving boats a wide berth. If they saw me, they saw me. I was moving too quickly to allow anyone to get a good look, so I hoped that would be enough to keep me hidden.

  As I neared the pier I’d leaped off of minutes earlier, I felt blood begin running down my nose. It made breathing more difficult the more blood flowed. With an increased heart rate—and so much blood spent—the flow was not small. I cut the skill as quickly as I could. I tumbled down the pier as I bled off speed. While not painful—my tier 2 body was far more resilient than any child would be—it was not comfortable.

  I lay on my back—stunned—for a couple of minutes. Each cough ejecting blood from my throat. A Heal stopped the bleeding, but left me lightheaded. The expenditure of blood wasn’t helping my situation. I coughed as I rose to my feet. Despite my blood being low, I still had places to be and things to do.

  I forced myself forward. The theater was only a couple blocks from the pier. I got more and more anxious as the minutes ticked by. I didn’t have a watch or a phone to let me know how long I’d been gone. I only hoped I would make it back before the credits.

  Before I got to the theater, I redid my Disguise Self, which made my even more lightheaded. I rushed into the bathroom after showing my ticket. Then I undid my disguise before returning to the theater where Mom was. Thankfully, the movie was still going on. There wasn’t much time left, but it was just enough to get into my seat before the credits began scrolling.

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  I lay on Mom’s shoulder. The lightheadedness from overusing blood didn’t go away, but I felt better resting. It was a short rest. Then the credits rolled and the lights came up. Mom and I waited for the others to leave before getting up and returning to the car. She buckled me into the car seat, and I fell asleep quickly. All that I had done that day had worn me out.

  I awoke to the loudest boom I had ever heard. I turned my head in the direction of the sound. Across the highway and above the distant lights rose a great ball of fire. Seconds later, I heard a second boom.

  “Holy shit!” Mom exclaimed.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Though I already knew. The speed at which the experience notifications were popping up in my vision told me everything. I had seriously overdone it!

  “I don’t know!” Mom yelled. “Some kind of explosion in the city. Let’s see what the radio has to say.”

  Mom switched on the radio to the local news station. They were droning on about the latest political scandal before the the woman speaking was interrupted by a short burst of music that signaled a transition.

  “I’ve just been informed,” she said, “that there’s been a series of explosions in the port area. If anyone’s listening in that area, please evacuate immediately. I am looking at a live feed of the port. There’s smoke and fire billowing above some of the ships, obscuring the view.

  “This is a developing story. I will continue to monitor the situation and come back with any further updates. Again, if you are in the area, please evacuate to safety.”

  “That’s scary,” I said.

  Mom looked at me, her eyes clear. There was hate in her eyes. I stared back at her as her eyes glazed over. She didn’t say anything more as she drove. The System Contract kept her silence.

  She wasn’t wrong. I’d gone far—maybe too far. My intention was to kill animals, not humans. At least not directly. The whole plague idea would probably leave humans dead as well, even if that wasn’t the goal.

  I felt my heart sink and begin to beat quickly. The people who had died weren’t real, I reminded myself. They would return when I went back in time in a decade or so. So what if they died! I would be lying to myself if I didn’t have doubts. Still, I forced my mind to return to the mission. I needed experience or all these people would die for real. What was a little pain now for their salvation later?

  “Mom,” I said.

  “Yes, Dear?” she asked while keeping her eyes on the road.

  “After we get home later, forget everything that happened tonight outside of the news reports. We went to a movie near your house.”

  “Ok,” she said in a monotone voice.

  A lance of guilt ran through me, but I pushed it away. It’s what needed to be done. I knew she knew it’d been me. The System Contract wouldn’t have stopped her from putting the pieces together. She wasn’t stupid—even if she was greedy and a thief. I couldn’t have her telling anyone the truth. It was far too early for me to return. I needed more experience first.

  The phone rang as we were pulling into a parking spot in front of Mom’s apartment. She picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes,” she nodded—even though the person on the other side couldn’t see it. “We’re both safe, we just got home…. I’ll put on the news to see…. Ok, thanks for checking up on us. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “Dad?” I asked.

  “Mhm,” she nodded.

  Mom led me inside.

  She turned on the TV. The coverage of the explosion at the port was everywhere. Every channel had cameras on scene. Even after all the time it had taken us to return, there were still fires. The smoke had cleared enough to see the devastation of the port’s facilities. The buildings that normally loaded and unloaded the ships were mangled. Parts of them had been launched hundreds of feet away.

  At the center of the mess was an oil fire and a half-submerged oil tanker. The ships on either side were similarly half out of the water. Firetrucks’ and firefighting boats’ lights flashed on the scene. Long streams of water poured from hoses to extinguish the fires—or at least push them out into the harbor where they wouldn’t cause more destruction.

  As I watched, my heart began to race. I wasn’t sure exactly when, but the other two bombs were set to go off soon. I didn’t have a way to cancel them—the first two had done more than enough damage already. Two more was just too much.

  The channel we were watching was getting its feed from a helicopter flying nearby. As the newscasters were talking and speculating about what had occurred—and what, or who, was responsible—there was another massive explosion! Water vapor condensed at the leading edge of the shockwave. A small mushroom cloud began to rise. Then a second explosion ripped through the air from the same location. A spout of water was launched high into the air.

  As soon as the water fell to the ground, the camera pointed to what had—moments ago—been a ship. In its place was mangled wreckage and another oil fire. Across my vision came the experience messages. There were far fewer this time, and they tapered off quickly.

  “Oh my God!” Mom yelled, covering her mouth. “Another one…”

  I noticed that many of the firetrucks were no longer in the same place they had been. The hoses also weren’t spraying water in any useful direction—if they were spraying at all. The less that was said of the firefighting boats, the better. The feed from the helicopter cut off as soon as the news station realized the magnitude of the disaster. The taboo of showing dead bodies on TV was still alive and well.

  I shook my head to clear it. There was nothing to be done. I did my best to make peace with the situation, but my body betrayed me. My heart raced. I began to sweat. Nausea gripped my stomach. I stood up and walked to my room.

  “Sorry you saw that,” Mom called after me. “Are you ok?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Sleep well.”

  I did not—in fact—sleep well. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. I tried to tell myself that everything would be ok. That I’d done what I had to do. But it was of little use. I could not calm my body down. After an hour of trying, I gave up. I cast Sleep on myself.

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