Chương 67: 66: Everyone Sleeps Eventually

"He said he was Level 5, and that made him the new ruler of San Celeste." Danny put ruler in air quotes. The guy must have leveled up in the challenge scenario. And really, whoever was running the System integration operations department needed to get a better fucking game plan. Surprise, surprise, being one of the very first people to kill something in the initial moments of the integration did not make you a good person.

"He killed so many people." Danny sounded tired, just remembering.

"No women, no kids, but the mayor and the deputy mayor and the police chief and… people I knew. Pretty much every grown-up man." He stopped talking again. This time I didn't prompt him, just waited. He leaned back, letting his head rest against the building and looked up at the sky.

"He took handcuffs from the station, and he cuffed Mrs. James, who worked in City Hall, and Kelly, the dispatcher, and a couple people—women—I didn't know, and my sister, Katie." I felt like I already knew the answer but I asked the question anyway.

"Older sister?" He nodded.

"She's very pretty. Amazing soccer player. She won't—" He glanced at the school building behind us.

"She hasn't come out of the second grade classroom in three days. Not even sure how she's going to the bathroom. Maybe she sneaks out in the middle of the night." His words held such a complex mix of emotion: fear threaded with annoyance, tangled with grief and anger.

"So she was in handcuffs?" I took him back to his story. Not for the first time, I sent a mental thank you into the void to the therapists of my past. All those years of therapy had sometimes seemed like a waste of time, but it sure had taught me how to question an unhappy teenager.

"I was hiding behind a desk in the station. He saw me and didn't bother with me. I guess, you know, kids were where he drew his line. So I read through all the classes and looked at all my choices and took Scout, with Stealth for my first ability."

"I was impressed by how powerful it was. Pretty much instant invisibility," I said, keeping my tone neutral.

"It gets better with practice and I've been practicing a lot."

"So you've got stealth and your sister's in handcuffs." I returned to his story.

"He took them to one of the big houses on the beach. The new ones. My mom calls it the travesty. It's like a castle, there's turrets, and, like, it's big." I did not laugh, although I absolutely wanted to.

"I followed and—he wasn't paying any attention at all," Danny spat out the words like he was angry at the guy for so underestimating him. Maybe some part of him was.

"He didn't see me following him and he didn't see me when I snuck into the house and he didn't see me when I hid in the bedroom." He put his head down on his knees again, so his next words were muffled.

"And he was sound asleep when I stabbed him in the back and killed him, so he didn't see me then, either." I didn't say anything. If that death had been the problem, Danny wouldn't have been so happy a few hours ago. Something had happened since. But this time waiting didn't work.

"The System told you it was justified, didn't it?" I finally asked. He nodded, not looking up.

"So what's bothering you about it now?" He looked up at me.

"My classes. I got an uncommon class, Assassin. And another uncommon class, Stalker. And a rare class." He swallowed, mouth working.

"Spill it," I ordered.

"Cold-blooded Killer," he whispered.

"My dad would…"

"Ouch," I said calmly.

"I see the problem. No worries."

"No worries?!" He burst out.

"You don't, my dad, I can't, if he—""Stop," I said, putting a hand up.

"If you don't like your class options, you don't have to take one. The System will offer you a different one eventually. My friend… well, a guy I met… didn't want any of the Fighter classes he could choose from, so he didn't choose, and then after a while, the System offered him Bard. I don't know if he had to level up again first, but maybe. And I didn't choose any of the classes, either, and eventually the System gave me one that's, like, about plants. Growing things, that's what I'm good at."

Danny stared at me, a combination of relief and surprise on his face.

"Plants? But—are you sure?"

"Sure about the plants or sure about the class? I mean I'm sure about both, so, yeah."

"Plants?" Danny repeated.

"Yep."

"What good are plants?" he asked, staring at me, and then his eyes glazed over in that way of people who were reading messages in their HUD. His lips formed words but no sound came out. It looked like oh my god, but I could have been wrong. I didn't read lips. He covered his face with his hands.

"Everything okay?" I asked warily. He didn't answer. I looked at Zelda. More kisses? she asked doubtfully. I shrugged. I didn't know. Would that even do anything? I sort of thought it was a one-and-done Resilience boost, not additive, but maybe his had worn off already. He lowered his hands finally. His eyes were bright again, but not with tears. He smiled at me, half intense relief, half sheer glee. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I got an achievement," he said.

"A really, really cool achievement. And a new class, too."

"A better class?" He nodded.

"I took it already. I took it right away."

"Good."

"Don't you want to know?"

"Only if you want to tell me," I replied. Of course I wanted to know. But something about the way he asked felt like a trap.

"I'll tell you my achievement if you tell me your level," he tried bargaining.

"Dude. That's personal. You shouldn't ask people personal questions like that."

"But you know my level."

"Well, get Analyze. Or Identify. And then you can find out people's levels, too." He narrowed his eyes.

"What if I tell you I know something about your level that you maybe don't?" I scowled. What the fuck did that mean? Was the System giving him information about me? Why would it do that? That was creepy.

"Tell you what," he said, grinning.

"I'll tell you my new class, you tell me your level, and then I'll tell you my achievement. You get two pieces of information for my one." Okay, it was obnoxious of me, but I immediately tapped [Analyze] and looked at his class. [Thorn's Shadow: Level 5]"Thorn's Shadow?" I demanded.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's a unique class." His grin covered his face.

"I got it because of my achievement. Now do you want to know?" I so did. What the heck was the System doing? I thought back to when I'd gotten my own unique class. The System had taken so many things into account before I got it; achievements that had been more luck than strategy, decisions that had been more chance than choice. What had Danny done that gave him a class that sounded so closely related to my own?

"Do you know what my class is?" I asked him. He shouldn't, since he couldn't [Analyze] me, but if the System was all up in my business, maybe it was revealing that, too. He shook his head.

"It's called Thorn's Edge Guardian. Do you think the System has a thing for thorns? It gave me killer bougainvillea, but I thought that was just making the most out of what was available."

"I'm the thorn in my class," Danny said. He read aloud, "You are the thorn in the shadows, striking from the dark not out of greed or the desire for power, but to save those you love."

"Wow. That's pretty nice, actually. Does it make you feel better?"

"So much better. I never actually felt that bad about it until I got those class choices. I mean, I didn't tell anyone about it, so I guess maybe I kinda felt bad? Or at least I didn't want anyone to know what I did."

"No one realized?" Danny shook his head.

"I cleaned up in the bathroom, and locked the door behind me when I left. Then I told them I'd come to get them out and we were escaping and had to be quiet."

"Did he…" I tried to think how to phrase my question. Men didn't generally kidnap pretty teenage girls because they wanted housekeepers. Danny knew what I was asking, though.

"He kept them locked up. Maybe he was tired? He was kind of freaking out about something, but I don't know what. But I knew I'd get my chance if I just waited. Everyone needs to sleep eventually." Everyone needs to sleep eventually. So true, and yet so painful for me. Were the Barrow brothers saying those exact words around their dinner table right now? A commotion by the gate drew my attention away from Danny. A small group of people were on the outside, being blocked from entering by the guard.

I recognized one of them: Ross, the guy from the barricade who'd stayed behind when we entered the rift. Also the guy who'd calmed a stressed out Mercer down when he was aiming a gun at me. That act alone had him tentatively filed in my "good guys" list. The noise hadn't just attracted me. A crowd was forming on the inside of the fence, too. Parents were shooing their children away, hurrying them inside the building, but others were gathering near the gate.

Their body language radiated hostility, defensiveness, fear. I stood up. Like any sensible person, I was well aware that the smart thing to do when watching a potentially violent crowd form is to get the hell out of the way. But it was a crowd composed of [Unknown]s. This wasn't going to end well for them. Danny scrambled to his feet.

"I think those are the aliens," he said, voice hushed. I looked closer, using [Analyze] on the people outside the gate. Ross was there, of course, still a [Fighter: Level 2], but there was also an [Explorer: Level 6]. And then there was a [Sarathi Hunter: Level 5], a [Sarathi Scavenger: Level 6] and a [Sarathi Healer: Level 8]. Holy shit. Danny was right. Those were aliens. I suppose technically the goblins I'd slaughtered in the scenario were also aliens, but it wasn't the same.

These were real, live, walking, talking, breathing people from another planet. And it would be really good to keep them that way.

"Come on," I said to Danny, starting to move forward, and then I turned back to him.

"No. Go get your dad and the school principal. Fast as you can." He gave me a single nod and dashed toward the door of the school. I shoved my way through the forming crowd, not particularly politely, saying, "Nope, nope, nope," until I reached the gate and then I turned and faced them. Ross was arguing with Marino but I ignored them.

"What do you folks think you're doing?" I asked, conversationally. With a thought, Warden's Edge appeared in my hand. I didn't actually need it, but a little obvious magic might serve to deter a few of the smarter [Unknowns].

"Those are aliens," an angry woman at the front of the crowd spat at me.

"This is their fault."

"Defending our children," a slightly calmer older man said, a grim look on his face.

"We're not letting them in here." I let my gaze roam over the crowd, scanning faces and names.

"In the four days since this craziness started, only three of you—" I paused to indicate the three people in question "—have gotten even a single level. Do you know what that means?"

"Who the hell are you?" A voice from the back of the crowd shouted.

"Get out of the way! You don't belong here." I laughed. Honestly, I couldn't tell you why. This was the second mob I'd faced in something around twelve hours, and by far the less scary one. These people were so outmatched it was crazy, and the idea that they could scare me by shouting was… really, it was a mockery of everything I'd already gone through. My laugh disappeared, and I glared in the direction of the voice.

"I am the person protecting you from making a really stupid mistake. Protection I'm not sure you deserve, frankly. You're sitting in this cage, acting like somebody's gonna come save you. Nobody's on their way to save you." I let them take that in for a second or two, and then I looked at the man who thought he was defending his children. Without taking my eyes off him, I gestured over my shoulder.

"One of those aliens back there is a Level 8 Healer. If they have a Level 8 Healer, I'm sure they also have Level 8 Fighters and Warriors and Crusaders and all the other militant types. But they didn't send their killers to talk to you. They sent a healer." I looked at the woman who'd blamed the aliens for the System's arrival.

"If the System was their fault, they'd be Level 200." I took a deep breath and, raising my voice so that it would carry over the crowd, I said, "Earth is now connected by rifts to potentially hundreds of thousands of other planets. Like it or not—and I'm sure you don't—we are now part of the multiverse. Some of those planets contain beings who will become our enemies. Others don't.

If we turn the latter into the former out of fear and—" I stopped myself from saying 'stupidity' with an effort, and continued, "—fear, we are all fucked." I paused and scanned the crowd again, and finished, "On a more personal note, the guy who killed your mayor bragged about being Level 5. How many people died trying to stop him? Are you really so suicidal that you think numbers are going to mean something against magic?"

Personally, I felt like my speech was pretty damn good for being spontaneous and completely off-the-cuff. The guy in the back of the crowd, the same one who'd shouted earlier, didn't agree. He shouted at me again, with a level of vicious in his tone that was entirely unwarranted, "Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?" Zelda stood up. She'd been sitting next to my foot while I spoke, her usual shadow position. She wagged her tail once, the fluffy white plume swiping through the air. May I?"

Try not to hurt him if you can avoid it," I replied, loud enough that the people in the front line could hear me. Hmph. She gave an audible snort, then launched herself into the air, triggering [Size is Just a State of Mind] as she went. I had to press my lips together to not laugh as people scattered and screamed and fled in panic. The asshole in the back didn't get a chance to run. He landed on his back, Zelda on top of him. She growled in his face, teeth bared.

The spreading wet patch on the front of his pants told me he'd think twice before yelling at me again.