Sprint Page 3

  Folding Shield: Durability 100/100 Hardness 10. A shield that folds in on itself enabling the bearer to hide the shield as a simple armband.

  I use the interface to check all of my currencies. I have 261 credits left, all of which go to Rachel. We are still splitting the credits we get. I spent a little more than my fair share repairing my shield, but I am sure she won’t begrudge me the extra credits. I have 835 honor points and 80 Iron I tokens. I peruse the Honor Exchange, but nothing really sticks out as a I need it now type item. When I look at the Gate Store to check my currency, I see that we have sixty-six hours left before it would reset and my hopes of curing my wife would be gone. Just two more successful battles and I will have enough for it. I step away from the black screen and head into the door. I feel the familiar tugging sensation and I find myself again in a pitch-black conference room inside the State Capitol building.

  Chapter 4

  I work my way outside and see Rachel waiting for me by sitting on the steps to the Capitol. I decide to sneak up and surprise her. I quietly creep up behind her and grab her shoulders and shout.

  My wife jumps around and slaps me in the face and points her plasma gun at me.

  “Will! You scared me half to death. Don’t do that. These aren’t safe times anymore, if my reaction had been a little better you would have taken a plasma bolt to the face.”

  I laugh, smile, and shrug, “You would have healed me. Besides I think you will find that plasma doesn’t hurt me as much anymore.”

  “Why? What happened? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  I explain to Rachel how I reached level three. I let her know about the additional ability point and we have a long discussion about Talents. She talks about going healer or support role in her talent build. “Do you want to do another one. It will probably be dark by the time we get there,” I say turning my gaze to the long winding line of people.

  Rachel shakes her head, “No, not today, let’s find a spot and make camp. Besides my clothes are looking a little ragged.”

  I look down, the plasma bolts from the blue alien’s gun really did a number on her clothes, they are ripped and torn. She will need to change once we find a nice spot.

  Rachel and I walk to Civic Center Park. People are setting up tents and staking out their own spaces. The light is getting orange in the sky. Rachel and I find a small open space in between two large tents. The occupants of the tents greet us with hand waves and smiles. I unload my pack and start to set up my tent. Rachel and I both have single occupant tents that will just barely cover each of us. We used to go hiking in the mountains and would spend a few nights here and there under the stars. This was not going to be so different. Except now we are camped in the middle of a city where the laws of nature no longer apply. We finish setting up our tents and I say that I am going to go look for some firewood.

  We had managed to scavenge a lot from our fridge before the food warmed up. We store it in our personal inventories. Our inventories have the ability to freeze time and prevent spoilage, at least that is our theory. All the food we take out of them is exactly like when we put it in. Hot things are hot and cold things are cold. Even so, while our personal inventories are like refrigerators, we still need some way to cook the food. For that we need fire. Truth be told, I was also looking for a bathroom that still might be working. All afternoon and no bathroom breaks have really left me bursting. I take the hatchet with me and head off east to the city council building. As soon as I cross Bannock Street, I get a notification.

  Welcome to Capitol Hill. The Mana Lord for Capitol Hill has set it to be a non-competitive zone. Competitors and civilians will receive an honor penalty if they kill a player or civilian in a non-competitive zone. If you do not have the honor to deduct, you will be killed instead. There is a 5% experience tax and 5% credit tax for any kills in Capitol Hill.

  I vaguely recalled the messages from earlier. Jacob is the Mana Lord of the region and he imposed a tax. Well, it shouldn’t matter. I open the door to the city council building. The lights don’t turn on, but the orange sunlight is enough for me to make my way to a bathroom. It was pitch black in the bathroom, but a lifetime of practice lets me figure my way around. Once I wash up, the light lets me make my way to a conference room. I take the hatchet back and chop off chucks of the wooden table. Pretty soon I have a few armfuls of wooden planks. I walk back across Bannock Street and find Rachel. She is pacing back and forth. As soon as she sees me, she runs forward and tells me it is her turn to find a bathroom. I give her directions to the City Council building and make my way back to our makeshift camp. I start to stack the wood into a pile.

  By the time Rachel gets back, I have used our fire starter and have a decent size fire going. I am just getting out pots and pans to cook dinner, when Rachel walks up and sits down.

  “What have we done?” Rachel asks. I scrunch my brow and look at her. “We are murderers. I was thinking about this when I was gone. We are just a school teacher and a real estate agent, and now we have murdered people.”

  “It was us or them, those skaters didn’t give us a choice, those aliens would have killed us.” I hug my wife.

  “I’m not worried about the skaters, those douches can rot in hell, they got what they deserved. The aliens we didn’t have to kill them, we didn’t have to go into the gate. We made the choice to put ourselves in the life and death situation.”

  “Where is this coming from? It was you more than me that was pushing to go into the gate.”

  “I know, but we made a choice, and now four aliens are dead. Do we have what it takes to kill more tomorrow? I’m not sure I can do it. I value life. Before this, I wouldn’t have hurt a dog, let alone another sentient creature.”

  I hug my wife tighter. “If we don’t do this, we can’t get your antidote. I need you to live.”

  The moment of silence extends for a few heart beats. I can only imagine what is going through her head, “It’s getting worse, my leg. There is a slight tingling in my leg now. Like is about to fall asleep, but hasn’t yet. I really need that antidote.”

  I take her words as resignation, I try to cheer her up, “See, we have to do this. We have to kill, you are worth fifty dead aliens. This is only four more. We will have your antidote in two more battles tomorrow. We can do this. We have to do this.” While my words started as encouragement, they changed while I was speaking. The more I spoke the more detached I became. The aliens are not worth my wife’s life. While we make the choice to kill, the aliens make the choice to risk death. They come into it knowing the risks. For a few minutes, we just sat in silence. Thinking about what we have to do tomorrow.

  “I’m pregnant,” Rachel whispers. “I was going to tell you in a week once I had my first doctor’s appointment, and I saw the heartbeat, but I’ve taken three tests and they all came back positive.”

  A grin splits my face, and joy wells up through my chest, “Rachel, that’s amazing!” Rachel and I had been trying for our first for almost two years now. We suffered two miscarriages already and I could tell that getting pregnant for a third time was really weighing heavily on her. All the memories from the first to coming to her head. “This just means that we have to keep you as healthy as we can.”

  “Do we even want a baby now? With the world so different, with us so different. What will a baby be like that is born under Ulteria? This is going to be impossible!”

  “Rachel, of course we want a baby! There is never a perfect time. We wanted this, we planned for this.”

  “We planned for it back when I was just a real estate agent and you were a school teacher. Now we are superheroes, Will. I have the ability to regrow bone, muscle, and skin, and you can fuckin’ shoot laser beams.”

  “What can we do Rachel? You’re pregnant now, and I think that is amazing. We can’t change it, so let’s embrace it!”

  Our hot dogs and beans start to simmer so we dish them out and we start eating them. We just sit in silence. My shoulders are sag
ging with the weight of what she told me. Maybe she is right, maybe bringing a baby into this new world isn’t the best idea right now. I just keep thinking about how hard this new life is, how much we will have to struggle and how having a baby will make all of that harder. What have we been doing? Racing along murdering people. Traveling to other planets and killing aliens. Were the Gates even safe for a pregnancy?

  Shake It Off triggered. Mental Manipulation resisted.

  What was that? Shake It Off is my new talent, why did it trigger? I stand up and pull out my dagger. My wife grabs her gun and we both start to look around.

  “What is it?” She asks, focusing all around us.

  “I just got a notification that we were being attacked.”

  Rachel stiffens and pulls out her blade, but with no one approaching us and only a few people giving us side long glances, it would seem that we were out of danger. I relaxed and sat back down. Rachel joined me only a second later.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. We were talking about your pregnancy and how hard it will be in this new world with a baby, and then I got a notification like we were being attacked.”

  “What do you mean hard? We have wanted this for a long time, I am sure having a baby will be fine.”

  I stare at my wife and shake my head. I guess I was more persuasive than I felt. She is embracing the now and living in the moment. We can’t do anything about it, so why not be happy about it. I reach out and take Rachel’s hand. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  She looks at me and scrunches her brows together and tilts her head. She just shrugs and we go back to eating our dinner.

  “Can I trade you some apples for your hot dogs?” a feminine voice asks.

  I glance up and see the girl with the green braid from before. I forget her name, but I recognize her face. Rachel glances at me and I shrug. I will let her be the face of our group. She was always more social than I was anyway.

  “Sure, we don’t have apples. We can trade,” Rachel replies, reaching down and grabbing two hot dogs.

  “Could I have four? I have five apples, I’ll give you all of them. It’s for me and my friends.”

  Rachel reaches down and picks up two more hot dogs. “My name is Rachel. Where are your friends?”

  The girl glances over to a tent with a group of twenty somethings sitting in a circle chatting. “Over there. My name is Kylie.”

  “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you five hot dogs for five apples, if you let us sit with you tonight,” Rachel replies to the Kylie with a smile.

  “Oh sure, the more the merrier.” Rachel and I stand up and we walk over to the group sitting in a circle on the ground. “Hey guys, this is Rachel and...”

  “Will,” I provide helpfully.

  “Will, yeah. Rachel and Will. They traded us for some hot dogs and wanted to come by and meet everyone,” Kylie says while she starts to pass out the hot dogs. I notice that she keeps the extra hot dog for herself.

  The group goes around and introduces themselves. The overly muscled companion from before, his name is Brent. His Gate Wars partner’s name is Stephen. There was also a man I had never seen before who went by Jay. We spend some time chatting about mundane things, like the weather, food reserves, and how they came to be out here at the Gate. Apparently, Rachel and I were right about the help section, it wasn’t common knowledge. This also didn’t know about their personal inventory. We showed them and Stephen played with it the rest of the night bring things in and out of his inventory. Things started to get a little uncomfortable when the topic of abilities came up.

  “So, what abilities do you two have?” Brent asked.

  This simple question caused Rachel and I to hesitate. Do we want to reveal our powers to people we just met? We glanced at each other and while looking directly at Rachel, I said, “I have the ability to shoot plasma bolts and she has the ability to scan her surroundings.”

  “Yeah, it’s kinda like an echolocation thing I have going on. It was super helpful against our first opponent in the Gates. They could teleport and they bounced around shoot us with plasma. But if I used my echolocation as soon as they teleported, I got an image of where they were going to appear in my head.”

  Brent whistles, “Plasma bolts and echolocation, those are some nice abilities. How far is your range?”

  Still hesitant, I reply, “Far enough, it has never really come up to be honest, everyone has always been in range.”

  Stephen chimes in, “Do you two have any other abilities? Brent and I are level two and we each have two abilities.”

  Rachel shakes her head, “No, we are still just level one. Good to know we will be getting more abilities though. I am hoping for an offensive talent like Will’s.”

  “Yeah I can imagine plasma bolts would be very useful in the Gates. You basically are your own ranged weapon,” Brent says.

  In an effort to take the attention off of us, I jump back into the conversation, “What are your abilities? You have two of them, that must be nice.”

  “It sure is nice, when you level up you unlock something called Arrays. It lets you combine powers to give additional effects, you two are going to love it. I know I did,” Brent smiles. “I have two powers, Hardy and Giant Strength. I am basically a walking tank. Last fight some green skinned alien shot me a couple times with a plasma gun,” Brent lifts up his shirt, to reveal some nasty second-degree burns. “If I didn’t have Hardy, I would probably be dead.”

  Rachel grimaces at the burns. Rachel knows exactly what it is like to be shot by a plasma gun. “You said something about abilities combining together.”

  “Yeah, I combined my two abilities and now I have super-human endurance. I basically never get tired. It is really useful with the bulk I am carrying now.” Brent flexes his biceps to show off his massive size.

  “That is impressive,” I say with an appreciative nod. “What about you Stephen?”

  “Oh easy, I go invisible and I can charge kinetic energy through melee weapons. Unfortunately, Arrays wasn’t nearly as useful for me, all my combination does is make the energy buildup in my weapon invisible, but I can attack a few times with the weapon before I become visible."

  Rachel’s jaw has dropped, “You can turn invisible? What is that like? How do you even see?”

  “It is weird to be honest. Everything turns to ghostly white and it is like I am looking at only part of things. I can’t maintain the invisibility for very long, but it has been critical in our fights. Our strategy is pretty simple. We find the aliens, Brent charges in and then they forget about me. Brent’s ability gives him a lot of lasting power, but I am the reason we keep winning. They don’t even touch me and my hammer crushes everything.” To emphasize his point, Stephen points over to a sledge hammer by the tent entrance.

  “What about you two?” I ask, looking over at Jay and Kylie. In a moment of hesitation, Kylie looks over to Jay and Jay hold her eyes for a moment before he speaks.

  “We are both civilians,” says Jay.

  “Yeah, I’m Stephen’s girlfriend and Jay is my brother. We are just along for the ride.”

  “Dangerous ride,” I reply. “Who’s to say what people with abilities are going to do to our communities? I heard about people trying to rob each other already. It won’t be long before warlords start to pop up.”

  Kylie sighs, “Yeah, I wish I knew where all the police went. They would be really helpful right about now. I’m sure some of them got abilities.”

  Everyone looks around at each other a little confused at Kylie’s words. Brent speaks up, “Somehow I doubt the police would be able to do something about someone who can shrug off bullets or shoot plasmas bolts. I think...”

  “... we’re better off on our own.” Jay, Rachel, Brent, Stephen and myself say the same thing right at the same moment. We look at each other and laugh.

  “Jinx.”

  Chapter 5

  The rest of the night passed without much to note. We t
alked long into the night about our powers, how best to use them. I could tell that Stephen and Brent used to be gamers. The way that they spoke about tactics, screamed gamers. Rachel and I never revealed our true level. We talked about Jacob our new Mana Lord, and where the Mana Garden could be. No one had any idea. Kylie never brought back up the police again. In fact, she seemed to be in quiet contemplation for the rest of the night. We said our goodbyes letting everyone know that we will meet back up with them tomorrow night. Rachel and I didn’t stay up to talk, we were getting tired and we had a big day ahead of us. Just two more battles and we would have the antidote. Rachel would be cured.

  I woke up after the sun was up, but without a watch, all I could say was that it looked like it was before noon. I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when Rachel poked her head out of her tent. Our previous camping experience always occurred deep in the woods and mountains. In nature, it was always so quiet and serene. That couldn’t be said for Civic Center. The noise never really died throughout the night. More than a handful of people had stayed up the entire night. I suppose this new world had an allure.

  “Good morning,” I mumble through a mouth full of toothpaste.

  My wife has never been the traditional morning person, and now without coffee, who knows what her mood will be like. She grimaces and looks up at me, “Ulteria isn’t a dream. There goes my wish.”

  I smile and a bit of toothpaste falls to the ground, “Not a dream, but it’s ok, because today is the day we earn you that cure.”

  My wife crawls out of her tent and stands up grunting and limping, “Good, because I think it is getting worse. It is pretty stiff right now, but maybe it will get better once we get moving. Thankfully when we are in the Gate, I can use some energy to heal myself. It takes a while to come back.”

  Rachel and I continue to have normal morning conversation. I casually mention the lack of coffee and she groans louder than when she stood up. Apparently, she is not looking forward to caffeine withdrawal. We both get ready, changing into spare clothes that we brought along. After we pack up our tents and eat some toast for breakfast we head off to the end of the line. The line was shorter today, probably fifteen minutes before we will reach the front.