Chương 97: 95: A Language He’d Understand

I laughed. I couldn't help myself. Talk about a sense of vindication. Damn, it was just like the moment when I finally stopped making excuses for my ex. (That birthday party, previously mentioned, when he passed out in the cake. Lightbulbs went off and all Jules would say was, "About time.")"Damn, you're stupid, aren't you?" I said cheerfully.

"Haven't you heard about the guns exploding in people's hands?"

"They say that's rare," Bryce said, his expression ugly. I think maybe he didn't like being called stupid.

"I'm willing to take my chances." He really had no idea what kind of chance he was taking. Should I mention my murderous bougainvillea? Reverend Barrow's exploding head? Maybe use [Flag of Truce]? But no, that stopped System-enabled violence, not bullets. I needed to speak a language he'd understand, and I had just the thing. I reached into my companion pouch, pulled out the police chief's gun—who knew that would come in handy? —and aimed at Bryce.

"I can take my chances, too." While I was at it, I checked that my [Invisible Armor] was still on. It was, and I probably had about an hour left on it, so I didn't bother to tap it again. I didn't know for sure that the armor could take a bullet, but Mr. Bloody Waterfall, back in San Celeste, had been Level 5 when he slaughtered his way through the police station and city hall. Someone must have tried to shoot him and failed, and it probably wasn't because they had lousy aim. Bryce went white around the lips.

He swung the gun away from me, and for a moment I thought he'd realized how stupid this was. Instead, he aimed at Zelda. At my sweet little fluffy white dog, lying in the grass, asleep in the sun.

"You willing to take that chance for your dog, too?" He threatened my dog. He actually went there. I was going to kill him, obviously. He was as dead as any human being could possibly be and still be moving around.

"I'm willing to be reasonable about this. You come inside, you stay in the safe room until my father arrives, no one gets hurt." He was talking as if he were still a living person. As if he didn't know that he'd just run out of time on this planet.

"It'll just be for a few hours. Twelve, at most." Jack moved in the garage, deliberately catching my attention. Our eyes met. I knew we were both remembering that moment on the porch.

"Shadow step behind him, stab him in the kidneys, shadow step away," that's what he'd said. He pulled the Void-Touched Dagger out of the sheath at his waist and held it up. It was a question. I didn't wince, but I wanted to. It was one thing for me to decide Bryce was a dead man walking. I'd kill him with a clear conscience. Well, okay, with a modicum of guilt and a reasonable expectation of some unpleasant fallout that I'd have to deal with eventually. But for Jack to stab his sister's boyfriend in the back?

Family drama for a lifetime. And would the System consider it justified? He wasn't in any actual danger. Megan appeared in the doorway behind Bryce and I flared my fingers in a "Stop!" gesture to Jack. Shadow-stepping into his sister in order to murder her boyfriend was a step too far, no pun intended. I dropped the police chief's gun back into my pouch. I was obviously not going to shoot if I might hit Megan. Not that I would have, anyway. I wasn't interested in exploding. I had better weapons.

I pulled out Warden's Edge, and shovel in hand, took a step between Bryce and Zelda. If he fired and Rebound hit Megan, I'd give her my last healing potion. But I was not letting him shoot Zelda. Megan, though, had realized what was going on. Her mouth fell open, as if she were going to say something, and then she closed it again. For a moment—a second at best—she had an expression of almost resigned fury, and then she did the coolest thing I'd seen all day. And it was a day that had included a nine-foot tall boar.

She moved so fast I almost couldn't follow the motion. One hand drove up between Bryce's legs, while the other slammed his gun arm down. He crumpled, making the thin, high-pitched whine of a man in agony, and dropped the gun as he clutched his groin. Megan kicked the gun away from him and said, to the back of his head, "I've decided, Bryce, that we really don't suit one another, after all. I've got integrity and you're a fucking idiot." He fell onto his side, still making that sound.

She pulled her leg back, and I could see her fighting the temptation to kick him in the kidneys before she set it back on the ground with a gentle sigh.

"I guess I should tell my parents we're not staying," she said. She nodded toward the Highlander.

"Do we have enough gas to get home? There's probably some in the garage, if you want to look for it."

"Will do," I said. Jack came out of the open garage door and around the side of the house. He saw Bryce lying on the ground, Megan disappearing into the house, and me still standing there with a wry expression on my face. I would have killed him. I honestly would have. And you may think, oh, hypocrite, anguishing over killing goblins that might have just been simulations, but ready to murder a human being in a heartbeat.

But those goblins had been a long time ago—mentally if not literally—and he'd threatened my dog. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I could not, however, kill a guy who was writhing on the ground after having just been dumped. I had no sympathy for him, but murder in cold blood was out. A pity, because I suspected he and his father might turn into a problem for me. How did his father know my name?

If the government were getting information directly from the System while ordinary people struggled, I was going to be extremely put out. Jack picked up Bryce's gun. I could see the same expression on his face that must have been on mine: a yearning to do something gratifying, but irrevocable. And probably bad for us.

"Not justified," I said, maybe a little more sadly than a truly good person would have. Jack tilted his head in question.

"Oh, right, I haven't told you about that, have I?" I looked at Bryce and shook my head.

"I'll tell you later." Bryce seemed like someone who might discover Murder Hobo the hard way. I should probably spoil it for him, but I wasn't going to. I knew that as soon as people like his father learned about the Murder Hobo title, they'd be looking for ways to avoid getting it, and I wasn't going to give them a head start. Ten minutes later, the entire Francis family, all three dogs, and I were squashed into the car like the proverbial sardines.

The only things more squashed were my pockets and companion pouch, which were stuffed with as many of the tools and pantry goods we'd brought with us as I could carry. Not everything, unfortunately, but a lot more than would have been possible without my spatial storage.

"How come I get the heavy dog?" The words might have sounded like a mild complaint, but Megan hadn't stopped stroking Riley's ears since he jumped onto the back bench next to her and put his head in her lap. I didn't answer, because saying, "He has a radar for the person who is unhappiest at any given moment and considers it his mission in life to try to comfort them," seemed unlikely to make her any happier about our current circumstances.

"Just lucky," Jack answered for me. He was definitely the happiest person in the car, not quite bubbling over with delight, but not all that far off either. We'd literally left Bryce lying where he'd fallen. He'd stopped whimpering, but had made no move to stand. Missy'd had reservations about leaving him there, but those reservations were overridden by her daughter's determination to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"Where are we going?" David asked.

"Back to Durham?" Yep, we'd loaded up and departed so fast we hadn't even had time to talk about where we were headed.

"Let's go into Spruce Gap and see if anyone knows the location of a rift."

"A rift? You want to go monster-hunting again?" David sounded genuinely surprised. Missy's eyes narrowed, and she used the rear-view mirror to look at me.

"Is that how you travel?" I gaped. Jack laughed.

"I swear I didn't tell her." He slapped his chest over his heart.

"Cross my heart, hope—""Don't even say it," I interrupted him. Hoping to die during a magical apocalypse was clearly dangerous.

"You obviously didn't take the bus," Missy said.

"Nobody was gonna buy that."

"You—what?" David sounded confused.

"It's probably, what, a twenty-hour bus ride? Even when everything's normal and it's not. Buses might be running, but roads are closed, there are detours, monsters. You would have had to leave Florida three days ago and you wouldn't have looked like you'd showered that morning. Plus, three dogs? At the best of times, no. When everyone is terrified of animals going crazy, absolutely not. It was a blatant lie. But I was sure you had a reason for lying, so I didn't say anything."

"You didn't take the bus?" David said. I shook my head.

"Nope."

"You believed her?" Missy demanded. He shrugged.

"I was busy thinking about what to bring and—" He sighed.

"Actually, you already told me you'd parked down the street. I should have remembered that."

"I'm glad you didn't." I shot a quick glance over my shoulder at Megan. She was silently crying, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stared out the window. Riley had wiggled even more onto her lap, both paws and half his body atop her legs. I really needed to add some tissues to my companion pouch. I looked away and said, "As far as I know, I'm the only person on the planet—well, the only Earth-native person on the planet—with this ability. So I'd really rather word didn't get out."

"But…" David started, then hesitated before finishing.

"But what are you afraid of? You're also the highest level person on the planet. You could be doing so much good." Jack rolled his eyes. I laughed.

"I think your neighbors are probably pretty happy that I solved your rat problem. But I'm one person, not an army. If word gets out, people with power are going to want to use me. And anyone who knows me risks becoming a hostage, right? It would be the easiest way to control me. Throw Jack into a prison cell and tell me to dance for whoever managed to grab him and…" I shrugged.

"I'm not going to be a puppet for anyone, no matter who's trying to hold the strings." Why yes, I had spent part of my sleepless night strategizing about what to tell David and Missy should this subject come up. Why do you ask?

"How did you manage to become the highest-level person on the planet?" Missy asked.

"Not to change the subject, and I'm sorry if it's a personal question, but I've been dying of curiosity. Yesterday I was too worried about the monsters to really think about it, and I didn't want to ask at dinner after you cautioned us about…" She shot a glance at the rear-view mirror, winced, and didn't finish the sentence. In a quiet voice, she said, "David, can you find the tissues in my purse? Just pass them to the back, okay?"

"Before we started losing the internet," Jack said, "rumor was that most people who'd gotten into the scenarios came out around Level 5 to 7. I didn't feel so bad about regressing when I heard that. Lots of people died pretty quick. Hardly anyone made it to the end. And the people who did usually teamed up early, so they were dividing the XP between a big group. You and Zelda probably killed more goblins on your own than most people did."

"We finished early, too," I told him.

"Not that it mattered, everyone returned at the same moment. But it mattered for our score. Zelda and I got top one percent."

"Ouch," Jack said, rueful.

"I mean, good for you, that's great. How long did you last after I d—" After a quick glance at the back of his mom's head, he substituted, "finished?"

"Oh, we made it to the end. Reached the room, grabbed the stone, solved the quest. Did the thing."

"How?! There was no—you got past the lizard? And the goblins? But there were hundreds of them! And that lizard, that was a one-shot kill. I didn't even get a hit on it." I reached down and stroked my girl's ears.

"Zelda made it to the core, and I used [Pack Instinct] to teleport to her."

"That's awesome," Jack said, shaking his head.

"It still doesn't really answer how you became the highest-level person on the planet," Missy said from the front seat. David turned and looked back, a pack of tissues in hand.

"Ah," he said, then passed it to me. I turned and held them out to Megan. She'd been staring out the window, but brought her attention back to the car and took the tissues with a muttered thanks. Turning back to the front without comment, I replied to Missy.

"I had a big head start from the scenario, and it sort of multiplied after that."

"People at higher levels were saying it's tough to keep leveling. You need a lot more XP and it's harder to get, isn't it?" Jack said.

"Once you out-level the monsters, you stop getting XP from them. All those rats didn't give me a single point. But achievements can be worth a lot. And I've been… doing stuff, I guess. Clearing rifts, going places, trying to help people where I can. I haven't turned in any quests yet, but I might be able to get experience from them, too. I'm sure people will catch up, though." Jack looked doubtful, but didn't argue. I changed the subject.

"So once we find a rift, we can basically step into it, and I can take us more or less straight to Emma's enclave. We'd have to leave the car behind, though." Missy and David exchanged glances, and then Missy nodded.

"You can bring us back to it if things don't work out, right?"

"Things will work out just fine, oh, Level 10 purified-water, healing mage," I said, only slightly sarcastic. Sure, I had valuable abilities, but every enclave on the planet needed Missy's skills, not to mention her levels. Emma would recognize that in a heartbeat. If Pen had been worth her first-born child, Missy was worth whatever came after first-born children on the desperation scale.

"What? Level 10?" Megan's voice came from the back seat.

"Healing mage? What?"