Chương 110: 107: Mistakes Were Made

I left the big dogs behind, but Zelda came with me, of course. Missy joined us too. She had the keys because it was her car, and instead of just handing them over, she decided to see if they'd left anything else behind. On our walk to the gate, she fretted over whether she'd need the insurance paperwork and the registration, obviously uncomfortable about simply abandoning her car.

We were all in a liminal space of sorts: was everything about life pre-System gone forever, or was this one gigantic wobble before life returned to some new normal that still included bureaucracy and taxes? I suspected the former, but mostly because I didn't think the Multiverse was evacuating the whales for the fun of it. With or without the System, our way of life had been in trouble.

Instead of piecemeal disasters—wildfires that destroyed entire towns, droughts that left cities without water, hurricanes that hit five times a year instead of one—the entire world got to have the disaster all at once. Whether we'd recover was up in the air. Whether she'd get fined for abandoning her car was probably not. Obviously, I said none of that to her. I just murmured politely until we made it to the gate, and then made sure she stepped in next to me.

The Spruce Gap rift was right where it belonged on my list of accessible rifts, but to my surprise, two instances of the rift were already open, each with half a dozen people inside. None of them were Unknowns, but I didn't recognize any of the names. Maybe the people we'd saved from the spiders were working on their revenge. I opened a new instance of the rift and chose Missy to join me in it.

This was another rift I'd spent no time in, just stepping into it with the Francis family and then exiting to the enclave, so I entered cautiously. The entryway was a lovely little forest glade, but the paths leading into the rift were shadowed, with hints of webs overhead. So far, rift entrances hadn't had monsters in them. Every rift instance I'd harvested required a bit of exploring to find the monsters. But I didn't know whether that was a rule or just anecdotal evidence.

It hadn't been covered in my Rift Keeper tutorial, probably because it was so basic that anyone taking the tutorial already knew it. Fortunately, this instance was just like the others, and there were no spiders in the clearing. I breathed a sigh of relief, turned around, and—with barely a glance at the parking lot—stepped out of the rift. Yes, I am a fucking idiot. The last time I'd stepped out of a rift, someone had shot me.

Did that suggest to me that maybe the outside of a rift was just as dangerous as the inside? No. Should it have? Duh. Nobody shot us. That was the good news. The bad news was that there were people in the parking lot, one of whom I immediately recognized. The last time I'd seen him he'd been lying on the ground whimpering in pain. Standing in front of him was an older man in military uniform who looked much too happy to see us.

"Oh, hell," Missy said under her breath.

"Melissa!" the guy who was obviously Bryce's dad exclaimed. He strode toward us, his hand outstretched.

"It's so good to see you. We've been very concerned. Is Megan all right? And David? And your son? I'm sorry, I've forgotten his name."

"Jack," Missy answered, letting the guy who had to be Bryce's dad clasp her hand in his own.

"And yes, everyone's fine. I'm surprised to see you here, though, Colonel." He gestured toward the Highlander.

"We came into town to see what supplies were available, and Bryce recognized your car. One of the locals told us you'd cleared out an infestation of spiders in the store. When we realized you'd disappeared into the shimmer and hadn't re-emerged, we thought the worst. I've sent two teams of my people in to assess, but they haven't returned either. I was starting to get worried." Shit. I would have liked to ever so subtly wander away from Missy toward the car, but the colonel turned toward me.

"You must be Olivia Thorne," he said, putting his hand out for me to shake.

"A pleasure, a true pleasure to meet you." He glanced over his shoulder at his son, then turned back to me and said, "Please, allow me to apologize for my son's… over-eagerness. I'm afraid my own enthusiasm about meeting you led him to exercise some very poor judgment. I hope you can forgive both of us."

I didn't even need [Uncanny Appropriate Behavior] to know that the polite thing to do—the socially appropriate thing to do—was to graciously accept his apology, but I glanced at Zelda, remembered Bryce pointing a gun at her, and said, "He threatened my dog." I gestured toward Zelda.

"This dog. He pointed a gun at this sixteen-year-old dog while she was napping in the sunshine and threatened to shoot her if I didn't do what he wanted." I paused for a couple of seconds, curious about how he'd react. Had Bryce given him the full story? But when the colonel opened his mouth I could see the excuses coming, so I cut in with, "I let him live. I think that was very forgiving of me, and it's the best I'm gonna do." I turned to Missy and held out my hand for the car keys.

"I'm just going to go grab the atlas, okay?" Poor Missy. She was beyond flustered and well into acutely uncomfortable, but she pulled the fob out of her pocket and handed it to me.

"I'll, yes, just, ah, be there in a minute, okay? Yeah, just, one minute." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. I walked away, Zelda at my heels, but [Senses Beyond Sight] let me hear both Bryce's muttered "fucking bitch," and his father's soothing charm as he assured Missy of his complete understanding. Honestly, the colonel didn't seem all that bad.

I might not have accepted his apology, but I appreciated that he'd offered it, despite the way he'd minimized his son's shitty behavior. And his concern seemed sincere, including his worry for the people he'd sent into the rift. I caught Zelda's attention and tilted my head back toward the colonel, asking her without words if she had an opinion. She gave me the equivalent of a shrug. Smells okay. I should have brought the big dogs along, but this was supposed to be a ten-minute trip.

The longest part should have been the walk to the gate inside the enclave. The atlas was right where it was supposed to be, but Missy was still talking to the colonel. I wasn't going to ransack the glove compartment or the center console to see what else she might have left behind, so I tucked the atlas under my arm and clicked the car locked. Much to my intense annoyance, re-entering the rift was going to reveal information I'd prefer not to share.

The colonel was highly unlikely to think we were just camping inside the rift after all, especially after his teams made it back and told him about the giant spiders. But the only way I could think of to avoid exposing my ability to travel through the rifts was to get in the car and drive away. We could find the next closest rift and hop through it to get back to the enclave, but we'd have to ditch the colonel somehow, and we'd be wasting precious time. I was incredibly torn. Was it worth it?

Was this a secret I could keep? Walking back, I interrupted the conversation by handing Missy the key fob and saying, "Your turn," speaking over the colonel who was telling her something about conditions in DC. I'm sure it was fascinating, but I didn't give a damn. But then I gritted my teeth and added pleasantly, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're in a bit of a hurry. We've got people waiting for us."

"Yes, of course," Missy said with relief.

"Excuse me, Colonel." She hurried over to the car. The colonel frowned, glancing at the rift shimmer.

"Are Megan and David still inside?"

"Something like that," I said, maintaining my pleasant smile. He looked between me and the shimmer for a moment longer, and then visibly set that concern aside. With a slight incline of his head, "I realize we've gotten off on the wrong foot here, but I would be incredibly remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to ask you, on behalf of our government—""The billionaire boys' club, you mean?" I interrupted him again. The System was doing terrible things to my manners.

I couldn't even bring myself to pretend to be polite.

"I won't be helping them. Sorry." At least I avoided adding the obvious, "Not sorry," at the end of my sentence.

"Let me rephrase that, then," the colonel persisted.

"Our country, the country that I've served for over thirty years, is experiencing a crisis of unprecedented proportions, and your help could save lives." I nodded.

"Yep."

"So you'll work with—" I started shaking my head before he had even made it halfway through his sentence.

"You should try FEMA. Oh, wait, they cut FEMA's budget, because local governments should run their own disaster relief efforts. Great news, I am in fact working with a local government. The federal government will just have to manage on its own."

"The federal government can provide you with information," the colonel said.

"Details about the places with the greatest needs—""Let me guess. The politicians' home towns, right? Or the military bases? I'm not going to be the flavor of the day for Washington's pork barrel politics, thanks. I'll decide who I can help." The colonel took a breath. His warm expression didn't change, but the vein throbbing in his temple hadn't been doing that before. I tapped [Analyze]. [Commander: Level 6]. Good for him.

He'd probably taken a Common fighter class, and it had evolved at Level 5 to his current Uncommon class. I kept the mental button on until his tooltip popped up. Mark Whitaker. Human. Condition: Optimal. He must have leveled up pretty recently if his condition wasn't fatigued or dangerously stressed or any of those other "living a challenging life at the moment" statuses.

"This is a difficult time for everyone," the colonel finally said.

"My understanding is that your efforts may in fact have made it a little easier worldwide, and I have no intention of minimizing that accomplishment. But that's exactly why working with the government while we navigate this crisis could be beneficial. I promise you, the moment your name was announced, people began searching for you, and not all of them will be as well-intentioned as the military." I flicked my index finger in Bryce's direction.

"As well-intentioned as the man who threatened to shoot my dog?" Colonel Whitaker grimaced, but his tone was wry when he said, "Mistakes were made. But my son does not represent the government." It was so annoying that the colonel seemed like a reasonable human being. I needed him to be a jerk so that I could blow him off with a whole heart, because I had no intention of working for the aforementioned billionaire boys' club, no matter how persuasive he was.

"Well, I'm sure that many members of the government—or at least the armed forces—are working around the clock right now to master the secrets of the System. I bet you've got some top-level security geeks strategizing in a secure room at the Pentagon right this very minute, and I'm sure they know far more than I do. I may have been an early success story, but in no time at all, I'm sure hundreds, thousands, of your soldiers will surpass my accomplishments."

"Ms. Thorne…Olivia… may I call you that?" The colonel had a bit of an action hero vibe going on. Not old Army, not Jack Nicholson in that movie where he rants about handling the truth. But new Army, maybe Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, authoritative but reasonable. Yes, I know Picard was Star Trek, not the army, but you get the idea.

"Call me whatever you like," I said.

"Olivia, you're not wrong. We have a great many people working very hard, all around the world, defending innocent civilians from these new enemies." I did not let my expression change, but I totally wanted to call bullshit. That sounded so, so unlikely. I was sure the army was prioritizing keeping its own soldiers safe over taking care of foreign nationals. Not that they weren't out there fighting monsters. They undoubtedly were.

But they were doing it to protect themselves and their fellow soldiers first and foremost.

"None of them have come anywhere close to Level 20. We have a Special Ops instructor who got that First Defender title, and he's reached Level 14. He's by far the single highest-leveled person that we're aware of, with the exception of yourself. We don't know anything at all about this Citizen of the Multiverse achievement, and as for the System-enforced contract signed with another species—well, I'm sure you can understand that everyone in Washington is real curious about that."

"Those news people are serious gossips," I said, not bothering to hide my bitterness. What the fuck? Why was my business all over the news?

"I don't have any authority to do more than request you come to Washington for a debriefing and a conversation about our shared interests and how best we could work together during this crisis. But the President has declared a state of national emergency, and the Defense Production Act is likely to be invoked. Once it is, the government will have the legal authority to compel your service. Wouldn't it be easier if you simply joined us willingly?"