Chương 94: 92: Service Animals

Alternative integration enhancement conditions met. I wanted to read the words to Jack immediately and demand he tell me what they meant. I also didn't want to freak out Missy and David, or give Bryce any information that wasn't essential. So I kept my mouth closed. But my appetite was mostly gone. I ate one last cookie, dusted my fingers off, and said, "So, leaving tomorrow morning first thing, right? I guess that means early nights all around?" It did. More or less.

I wound up lying awake on the couch with those alternative integration enhancement conditions running laps in my brain for what felt like forever. Back in the scenario, Jack had told me about the books he'd read, the ones he thought might have been seeded by the System. I vaguely remembered that in one of them the main character's fast leveling meant the entire planet got harder. For everyone. Could I remember the name? No, of course not. The details? Not at all.

I just remembered Jack's enthusiasm, the fun he'd found in the story. But if the entire world was entering Tier 2 because I'd hit Level 20… that wasn't fun. No, that was fucked. Chelsea would know. In the quiet darkness, I whispered, "Chelsea?"

"I don't," a voice whispered in my ear. I nearly jumped out of my skin, startling so hard I kicked Zelda at the end of the couch. Bear leaped to her feet, ready to fight. After hushed apologies and some soothing pats, I looked around the room. Chelsea fluttered over to the coffee table, glowing in the dark. She was in the shape of a fairy, except still with the body and face and style of my old therapist. Clearly I was having a very strange dream.

"You're not," she said.

"That busybody was right that on worlds more accustomed to magic, we usually take the form of pixies. Not that it matters, a construct is a construct. Outside of a mana domain, though, my construct relies on ambient mana, so smaller is easier." I was not going to laugh, because it would be rude, but Pixie Chelsea really was adorable. She huffed at me, and I remembered that she could read my mind, so I shrugged.

"Sorry," I whispered.

"What do you know about these alternative enhancement conditions?" She spread her tiny pixie hands.

"Under review usually means that the System has notified a relevant authority about an unusual event, one outside typical integration parameters. Like when you closed the rift and it notified Rift Management. But because it's not standard procedure, I don't have any information on it." I let my head drop against the back of the couch and sighed.

"Try to get some sleep," Pixie Chelsea said, before doing a twirl in the air and disappearing in a sparkle of light. I smiled as the glitter faded away. I didn't feel any better, but she really was ridiculously cute. And then I tried to go to sleep. Total fail. I kept reminding myself that there was nothing I could do about it, one way or another. I tried all of the mindfulness techniques any therapist had ever tried to teach me and then I started making up new ones.

The new ones were, you know, bad—more about taking the thoughts and burying them deep than letting them float away like clouds in the sky. But at least trying to invent new ways to get rid of intrusive thoughts let me focus on something other than the intrusive thoughts. And then I remembered that my status sheet was an excellent cure for insomnia. I opened it up and took a look. The titles had gotten ridiculous.

Title(s): First Defender, Preliminary Challenger Top 1%, Rift Keeper, World First Rift Clear, World First Rift Close, Unconventional Diplomat, Universal Translator, Multiverse Explorer, World First Citizen of the Multiverse (4) Not quite as ridiculous as the XP modifiers, though. I'd gotten +10% on seven different achievements. Second Rift Harvest and Clear had each given me another +5%, and the Third Rift Harvest had been another +2%. Every experience point was worth 82% more than it should be.

Just yesterday, I'd thought it would take forever to get the 12, 600 XP needed to reach Level 21, and it would have if I'd been killing monsters for it. But all those bonuses and rewards for World Firsts had added up fast. I had 83, 365 XP and I only needed 75, 600. I was probably pretty close to Level 22. And then there were my attributes. I was getting a 30% multiplier on them from the rewards for Citizen of the Multiverse 3 and 4, as well as the 10% that came from Preliminary Challenger.

Between the multiplier and the bonus +10 Presence from Unconventional Diplomat, I'd picked up a new trait. Presence (20): Still Waters When you choose to be noticed, attention settles on you and others are more likely to recognize your authority, relevance, or threat. When you choose not to be noticed, you become easier to overlook. You are not invisible; you are simply less likely to draw attention unless your actions demand it. The choice is yours. I read the description at least three times.

People who wanted attention and had classes that relied on Presence would never want this trait. I couldn't imagine Reverend Barrow or Mayor Guilford choosing to go unnoticed. I liked it, of course, but it felt aimed at me. I'd assumed that traits were generic: reach 10 in an attribute and you automatically got the exact same thing as everyone else who'd reached the same milestone. But Still Waters made me suspect that they were unique. Or if not unique, at least targeted.

It made me read through my other traits with a more critical eye. When I was done with the traits, I looked back to my attributes. If I leveled up and put my points in Serendipity, I might get an X-Factor Synergy (20) trait, like I'd gotten synergy traits at 10. But leveling up would be like a massive caffeine boost. And given that I'd apparently decided not to sleep at all, I ought to wait until morning to do it.

I spent the next three hours tossing and turning on the couch, practicing my mindfulness techniques and trying not to annoy my dogs too much, and finally, when the sky started turning gray between the boards covering the windows, I leveled up. 21. It was not immediately exciting. No offers of new abilities, no class evolutions, just a couple more points in Perception and Will, another point in Resilience and two free points to play with.

I checked my traits immediately to see whether hitting 60 in Perception gave me a new trait: it didn't. Then I dropped my two free points into Serendipity, and it did. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. X-Factor Synergy Trait Triggered! The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Your Presence, Serendipity, and Will have reached 20 points, and Still Waters, Useful Coincidence, and Rooted Self have merged into: X-Factor Synergy (20): Common Ground: Your Presence, Serendipity, and Will now reinforce one another as a unified X-Factor foundation. Calculate the difference between your highest and lowest X-Factor attribute. Half that difference is added to your two lower X-Factor attributes for all purposes except trait thresholds.

You are harder to rattle, harder to ignore, and luckier than you have any right to be. I lost Still Waters and Useful Coincidence before I'd ever used either one of them. Rooted Self, too, and even though I'd had it for a while—since back in the scenario—I didn't think I'd ever used it, either. I didn't even remember what it did. Effectively, though, Common Ground was simply a huge boost to my Presence and Serendipity.

My complete attributes list was: Physical Strength: 10 (+30%) = 13 Agility: 10 (+30%) = 13 Endurance: 12 (+30%) = 16 Mental Intelligence: 9 (+30%) = 12 Perception: 46 (+30%) = 60 Resilience: 26 (+30%) = 34 X-Factor Presence: 5 +10 (+30%) + (Common Ground: 19) = 39 Serendipity: 12 + 3 (+30%) + (Common Ground: 19) = 39 Will: 44 (+30%) = 57 I still wasn't sure what Serendipity did.

"Luckier than I had any right to be" was the kind of vague bullshit people used when disasters were near misses instead of direct strikes. The best disaster was the one that stayed so far away you never even knew it existed. Presence, though… ugh. I'd liked Still Waters a lot. I didn't love the idea that the minute I walked into a room, all eyes would be on me. I hoped that wasn't what having a Presence of 39 would do. It also affected Flag of Truce, which would more than double in size.

I hoped to God that didn't mean the angel would get bigger and/or louder, because honestly, that would be just like the System if it did. And really, those were big numbers now. Maybe not big enough to mean anything if "alternative integration enhancement conditions" were about to increase the entire world's difficulty setting. But big. The sky was still getting lighter, so I rolled off the couch and collected the dogs.

I took them outside to take care of the usual morning business, promptly went back inside to collect my jacket, then went outside again. October in North Carolina was not the same as October in Florida. I sat on the porch steps and huddled into my jacket, keeping an eye on the dogs and feeling mildly guilty about my irresponsible dog ownership. Had I brought poop bags? Nope.

The central console in my car held a few hundred of them in neat little rolls for when we went on hikes away from home, but I hadn't driven here and it hadn't even occurred to me to stock up when I was leaving the house. Was this the most important thing to be worrying about during the apocalypse? Obviously not. Was it better than worrying about what alternative integration enhancement conditions were? Oh, so much better. Jack came out of the house and joined me on the porch steps.

He looked half-awake, still yawning.

"You're up early. Sorry about the couch." He'd offered me his bed the previous night, but I'd declined. Did I think monsters were going to break into the house in the middle of the night and that the dogs and I would do a better job of defending us than anyone else would? No, of course not. But if such a thing should happen… I'd just said if the dogs needed to go out, it would be easier to be downstairs and the couch was fine.

"We need to talk," I said, ignoring the polite morning greeting nonsense. He nodded.

"Transportation. We're gonna have to go with my parents in their car, I guess. I've only got an e-bike."

"Ooh, I bet e-bikes are going be priceless soon," I replied, momentarily distracted by the thought.

"We should try to bring yours. Do your parents have a bike rack for their car?"

"My folks have two cars. My dad's mid-life crisis car, and I'm not being mean, he calls it that himself, and my mom's SUV. With the dogs, we're gonna have to take the SUV. I don't know whether they'll want to take both cars. It'd mean more gas, but maybe they'd let us take the SUV to New Jersey."

"Yeah, about that…" I explained how I was traveling the country. Jack stared at me. He didn't look sleepy anymore.

"That's the most OP thing I've ever heard of."

"I didn't want an enclave. I thought they sounded horrible. Emma tried to hand it off to me right away and I just laughed. This was what Chelsea, my System rep, came up with as second best." Jack shook his head.

"Not second best, I bet. It's like your class, though. Holding out for something better works for you. How high is your Serendipity again?"

"Oh, um, effectively… yeah, pretty high."

"How high?" He narrowed his eyes at me.

"Well, because of stuff. Some bonuses and…" I sighed.

"Yeah. It's 39 now." He gaped at me and then started to laugh.

"Chelsea did mention that Rift Keeper's maybe a little more powerful than anyone expected it to be. I guess on most planets all the rifts are claimed—owned, basically—so Rift Keepers don't just jaunt from one to the next." I shrugged.

"Speaking of that, though, we might have trouble. When I said we needed to talk, it wasn't about transportation. Last night I got a couple of really cool achievements and then I got this message." I opened up my notifications so I could read it to him.

"Notice of Review: Alternative Integration Enhancement Conditions Met. No action is required at this time."

"Uh-oh." Jack stared out at the street, but not as if he was seeing it, more like he was searching his memories. I winced.

"Integration enhancement, that's… that might be bad."

"I asked my PIC, but she couldn't help. She said it means something's happened that's not normal and the System's passed the buck. More or less, anyway." Jack grimaced.

"I guess that means the aliens get involved personally. That could be okay. Maybe." I pulled my knees up and buried my face in them.

"It's not my fault," I said, my voice muffled.

"I mean it is, but it's not like I did anything. I mean, I did…"

"It is what it is." Jack patted the top of my head.

"You can't change it, and you're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine." Zelda stuck her head under my arm and gave me a lick. The shot of Resilience from [Emotional Support for the Win] was a nice little boost.

"Thanks, Z," I said, sitting up and giving her ears a rub.

"You're right, we're gonna be fine. So let's figure out how we're getting to Spruce Gap. I could take us through a rift, but then your parents would be stuck there without a car. And I'm not sure I want Bryce to know—" Jack interrupted me before I could finish.

"You definitely don't. We're not telling my parents, either. Bryce's dad is in the army. A colonel, I think. Unless you want to wind up working for the government before the sun sets, you don't want them knowing what you can do."

"Not your parents either?" Jack grimaced and glanced over his shoulder at the door. Carefully, he said, "You know, serving your country could be seen as your patriotic duty. Anyone who thinks that way could argue that it would be a public service to help conscript you. Right?" I blinked at him. I hadn't thought about it in that way, exactly.

"I am not that patriotic. I wouldn't even be that patriotic if I liked the current administration."

"Word." He shrugged.

"I did think about whether I owed the world something when we came back from the scenario. Whether I should be out there trying to rescue people. But I'm one person."

"Yeah. And you can only do so much. Not naming names, but some people might think the government would be the best institution to decide how you could be most useful."

"Pfft. I'd be hand-delivering gold-plated toilet paper to the billionaire du jour. No. I am not going to be doing that."

"So we need a story. How'd you get here?" He wasn't asking for the truth.

"I took the bus."

"With the dogs?"

"Service animals." He pressed his lips together to hold back the laugh, then let it go.

"You know, that's like the worst lie ever," he said, "but what are they going to say? My parents will know you're lying, but they can't call you on it because it would be rude. And Bryce, he's so self-absorbed, he probably won't even ask. Megan might notice, but if you keep a straight face, she can't argue. Especially the service dog part. If she asks, look wounded and say the ADA doesn't require you to reveal your disability."

"You sound like a lawyer," I said. He snorted.

"Ha. Nope, just used to arguing with my sister." He looked away, watched Riley sniffing the bushes, then still not looking at me, said, "Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. And for yesterday. Getting in the car is gonna feel a lot different knowing you can bail us out if the cars break down, and leaving my parents is… well, I'm going to feel so much better walking away now." If my dad had still been alive, nothing would have induced me to walk away. No wild horses, no acts of God, no other clichés.

When I was nineteen, though, I would have left without a second glance. Jack was incredibly lucky and about twenty years too young to understand why. I hoped someday he would. Meanwhile, I'd do my best to keep him alive. And fed, too. Was it breakfast time yet?