Chương 65: 64: 123 Seabreeze

Back on the safe side of the gate—well, safer—I let the men greet Ross and tell their story while I looked around. I needed a compass. I'd looked at a map before leaving home, so I knew I was headed south, but the rift turned out to be literally in the middle of a redwood forest. I had no idea which way to go.

"You lost?" Danny said. I guess he'd been watching me look around.

"Yeah. Can you point me the right way? Jules—Juliet—lives at 123 Seabreeze. Is that close to the school?"

"Umm…" He shrugged, then turned to his father.

"Hey, Dad, do you know where Seabreeze is?"

"Parallel to Catalina, on the other side of Washington," Mercer replied without a second of hesitation.

"How can you not know that?"

"Kid doesn't drive, Dan." Joey poked Mercer's upper arm.

"You wouldn't know street names either if you didn't drive around town for a living."

"Yeah, yeah." Mercer rolled his eyes, but a hint of a smile cracked through the exhaustion.

"How far away is that from the school?" Danny asked, ignoring the byplay.

"The elementary school? Six blocks." Mercer rubbed his face.

"The high school? More like twenty."

"Toby's mom would go to the elementary school, right?"

"Probably, yeah."

"Can I walk, uh…" Danny stuttered to a halt.

"Olivia," I supplied for him.

"Olivia." He beamed at me. A beam entirely unwarranted by my name, to be honest. Was he one of those kids who thought adults had to be Mister or Missus? Was I accidentally being that adult who tries to be cool? Not that I wanted the formality, but I didn't know why I was getting the 100-watt smile treatment.

"Can I walk Olivia to the school? His dad frowned a little, nodded slowly.

"We both will." A flicker of disappointment crossed Danny's face.

"But Dad—""She's not wrong," his father interrupted.

"I gotta crash. I can't keep going like this. So you can keep us both safe on the way, okay?" He ruffled his son's hair, and Danny ducked away from him. Mercer turned back to the barricade.

"You guys—""We'll stay here," Ross said.

"In case George and Helene come back or something, someone else comes out." Joey grinned at him.

"No worries, Dan. We're on it. Get some sleep." George and Helene weren't coming back. Rift #312 didn't have any open instances. But did I really have to be the one to say that? Before I could decide whether I should, whether I had to, Mercer started walking.

"Come on," Danny said, not quite grabbing my hand and tugging me along, but definitely acting like he wanted to. If he'd been three years younger, maybe five, he would've. The redwoods were beautiful in a way that I was too tired to appreciate: enormous, with deep coppery trunks, and greenery too far above me to feel real. I'd seen pictures, but being amongst them was different. I wished I'd had a chance to camp here. I could imagine that at night the silence would feel almost holy.

Zelda's head was on a swivel, her nose working overtime. I sympathized. Florida didn't smell like this. If our air had been this damp, it would have been humid, sticky. This was more like resin-scented fog. Like an expensive candle store the size of a cathedral. We hit an asphalt path first, then reached a street thirty seconds later. The redwood forest that had felt so deep and mysterious was really just a park next to a neighborhood. A neighborhood that had seen some shit over the past few days.

My head was swiveling just like Zelda's as I tried to take it all in at once. Disasters happen in chunks. The tornado hits and three houses are gone, smashed to bits, but the surrounding houses are fine. The fire rages, and maybe if it's a terrible fire, an entire block becomes ashes, but the neighboring blocks are fine. The hurricane wipes out everything for three hundred feet, and then the damage lessens, and then the buildings are fine. This wasn't like that.

It was more like lightning—in the form of some System-related disaster—hit every other house. So you'd see one house, totally normal, and then the next house burned to the ground. Boring house; house with smashed windows and an enormous hole in the roof. Boring house, boring house, boring house, and then one with so much blood on the sidewalk that whatever had happened there should, by all rights, be a story told in whispers for the next thirty years. Danny saw me noticing that one and shrugged.

"It'll be better when it rains." Mercer glanced over. He'd been trudging down the middle of the road like a man on a mission, completely focused on a goal. The marathoner staggering his way to the finish line. But he saw where I was looking and nodded.

"That… that was bad." His voice was hoarse. I was not about to ask. I didn't need to know.

"Hey, can I ask you questions?" Danny said, bouncing a little.

"Yeah?" I responded with some perfectly reasonable (IMO) wariness.

"What level are you?" I stared at him. His look back was completely guileless, an innocent 14-year-old, okay, maybe 15, not realizing that he was asking to peek in your underwear drawer. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"Why do you need to know?" I responded, ever-so-politely. His crushed look was a masterpiece of manipulative innocence.

"I don't, but you knew my level. How'd you know my level? Nobody else does. I mean, I think my dad kinda figured out that I wasn't just riding my bike around town, but people don't know other people's levels. Or their classes or anything. How did you? And how'd you know Uncle Joey was hurt? Hurt bad? Like, you said he was gonna die, but nobody else knew that." Mercer stopped walking. He looked at his son with an expression somewhere between surprise and wonder.

"That's a really good question."

"That's a bunch of questions," I replied, a little snappishly.

"But I have an ability…" I hesitated. Did I want to share the name? I wasn't entirely sure where my reluctance was coming from. It wasn't as if I thought I had some super special secret advantage that I'd be giving up if I let the word out. It was more like… hmm. It was more like the time in ninth grade when I'd told a tenth grader my score on the practice SATs. How was I to know that a 79 didn't mean a C, but a 790? Almost perfect, and the highest score in the school that year.

The only reason I'd taken the stupid test was because my English teacher had said it might let me skip into an AP class. But this was not like that. I didn't care what Danny thought of me, he could not make people point me out in whispers for days, and the information might be useful for him.

"I have an ability called Analyze. It's the advanced form of one called Identify. I think there's also an Inspect and an Appraise. If you get a chance to take one of them, you probably should, because it's super useful. I can see the level of anyone who's lower level than me." And probably some that were higher level, too, although I hadn't had a chance to try that out yet. We passed a burned-out car.

I was ninety percent sure—oh, no, one hundred percent sure—that the thing behind the wheel had once been a human being. I stifled my gag reflex and checked on Zelda. She walked next to me with her ears pricked forward, head held high, as if she were testing the surroundings for danger with every step. Mercer stopped walking again and pointed to the left.

"That's Seabreeze," he said. He nodded toward the street straight ahead.

"School's another half mile ahead. Do you want to go to the school first or check for your friend at her house?"

"Which is closer?" I asked. His eyes closed, as if he were pulling up a mental map, then opened.

"123, you said? It should be in this block."

"I'll check the house first. The school's straight down this road?" He nodded.

"I can find my own way there, then, if Jules isn't at home." He rested his hand on the holster at his side.

"No, we'll come with you. There's been…" He shook his head as if he couldn't find the words.

"It's not safe. Not for a woman alone. Not… there's been…" He looked like he was almost swaying with exhaustion. I wanted to say something bitter and angry. It was always so ironic that men wanted to protect women when all they ever needed to protect us from were other men. But I kept my mouth shut.

Not for the usual reasons—the bone-deep certainty that arguing with a man with a badge was a waste of breath and likely to bite me in the ass—but because Mercer seemed like a good guy who was trying hard and who was so tired he could barely see straight.

"I'll be fine." I kept the words gentle.

"No, really. There's a guy… we didn't catch him… and those people with the eyes…" Mercer was gonna collapse if he didn't get some sleep soon. I looked at Danny. He had a weird expression on his face, but before I could even try to figure out what it meant, [Uncanny Insight] kicked in. The guy, whoever he was, the one who had done something so twisted that in the midst of a nightmare he stood out, that guy was dead. And Danny had killed him.

"Justified?" I said softly. Danny nodded, his eyes bright with a sheen that was probably tears.

"Good job." I tipped my head toward his father.

"Take your dad to the school and tie him to a bed. He needs some sleep. I'll check my friend's house and then catch up with you if she's not there."

"If she is, like, can I come back? I've still got questions. I want to know…" I sighed. I was not the cool grown-up. Really, I was not. I was the one who was gonna make the kids eat their vegetables. How was I managing to pick up so many goddamn teenagers?

"Sure. But I don't promise to answer." He grinned at me, and then he grabbed his dad's elbow and began to lead him, ignoring his muttered protests, toward the school. Zelda and I headed down Seabreeze, checking house numbers as we went. The neighborhood was cute, which wasn't unexpected. I'd never imagined Jules living in McMansion territory. These were ocean cottages with wide front porches, tiny yards, and wind chimes. So many wind chimes. The odd thing was, the wind chimes were the only sound.

Where the hell were the people? People evacuate for hurricanes sometimes. Towns get eerie and still, everyone left huddling behind their boarded-up windows. But this wasn't a hurricane. There was no place to go, no escape along a highway packed with cars and traffic jams. So many of the houses showed signs of damage, though. Broken windows, shattered walls, scorch marks on the siding. Number 117 was burned to the ground, nothing left but ashes. 119 looked unharmed, but empty. 121… I wanted 121 to be damaged.

I wanted it to be an absolute wreck, because in the rule of lightning strikes, if the lightning had hit 121, it would have left 123 alone. Right? 121 was fine. 123 was not. The house was adorable. One of those classic Craftsman-style houses with a great front porch and interesting architectural details. My dad would have loved the bracket work under the eaves. He would have been dismayed by the broken windows. I mean, not as dismayed as me, but definitely dismayed.

I stopped at the foot of the sidewalk leading to the porch. There was no car in the driveway. Was that good news? Bad news? I couldn't bring myself to move until Zelda nudged my knee. Her ears were flat against her head, almost like an otter. Bad, she said when I looked at her. No Jujube." I think you're right." I square breathed my way up the path, onto the porch, and to the door. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I wasn't surprised.

If someone had been home, they would have at least tried to cover the front window. The curtains were blowing out past the broken glass. I tried the door. It was locked.

"Jules?" I called.

"Toby? Anyone home?" No answer, of course, but I wasn't surprised. The car was gone, the door was locked. They weren't home. It was the obvious answer. It wasn't that their dead bodies were lying inside, unbeknownst to all their neighbors.

My ranking for Worst Experience of My Life seemed in constant flux these days and this moment didn't really compare to that time I saw Jack and Emma gruesomely killed by a monster lizard, but I stuck my face next to the broken window and took a deep, deep breath, hoping against hope that I would smell nothing but the fresh salty air. I didn't. Or rather I did. Or… well, whatever, I didn't smell anything awful. No dead bodies were rotting away inside that house. The relief made my knees weak.

I wanted to sit down and bury my face in my legs and just breathe for the next three days. Instead I looked down at Zelda and said, with forced cheerfulness, "Not here. Shall we go try the school?" She stood on her hind legs, put her front paws against my thigh, and demanded, Up. I didn't hesitate, even though it was a strange request from my girl who didn't like to be carried, just scooped her up and buried my face in her fur. I didn't cry. It wasn't the worst-case scenario.

I hadn't even let myself consider the worst-case scenario possibilities. But I knew this wasn't it. But I had wanted so much to see Jules. To sit at her table, to hear her laugh, to feel her casual confidence bolstering my own self-doubt. Jules wasn't like me. She moved through the world with the courage of her convictions, grounded in her own strength. To be fair, she also had the security of privilege, which she'd be the first to admit. I needed her to hold my hand. Instead, I had a dog licking my hand.

Licking my hand with the quiet dedication of… what the fuck? I could feel an internal shift. It was as if I were growing three inches taller, only not physically, just on the inside. It was okay that Jules wasn't here. We'd find her. It would all work out. I knew all of that with a surety that honestly made me feel like I was high, but on some really good drugs, way better than anything I'd ever tried. I opened my status sheet and started skimming. There it was.

Resilience: 26 (+10%) (+10) = 39 My Resilience had just been bumped up by a ridiculous 10 points. It was a noticeable difference. [Emotional Support for the Win]. My dog had just drugged me. I wasn't quite sure how to feel about that, but for the moment… well, I'd take the win. I hugged her close for a moment longer, then said, "Thanks, Z," and set her down. Jules would be at the school. She had to be. Time to go.