01 - Mirrorfall
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26 – Watching the Clock
There were almost a dozen recruits in the gym – a couple that she recognised, but more that she didn’t. Stef looked around, unable to give much credence to her ability to identify and remember people. Still, most of the recruits around her were people she’d never seen before. ‘Shift B and C people,’ Curt said, noticing her staring. ‘We’re Shift A, different people tend to use the gym at different times.’ ‘Does that get confusing?’ she asked as she followed him towards the sim rooms. ‘I mean, “shift” has quite a different meaning around here. Using it in both senses…’ she trailed off and shrugged. ‘Seems weird.’ ‘It’s “require”…
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25 – Bills and Benefits
Stef leaned forward, grabbed Curt’s phone from the cradle and exited the navigation app. ‘We’re here,’ she said and set it back into place. ‘Which building?’ Curt asked. She leaned against the door and pressed a finger to the window to point at the building they’d just passed. ‘That one.’ Curt slowed the car and backed into a spare spot about half a block down from her building. ‘I’ll just wait here,’ he said. ‘Go do whatever you need to do.’ She nodded and pushed on the door of the car, aware that she should probably say “thank you”, but unable to form the words. Talking was…still not easy. Maybe…
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24 – Tech Support
The Tech department seemed so much more full of life than the Field floor. Large, flat-panel monitors streamed memes and videos. There were the standard emergency diagrams and such, but they were drowned out by schedules of a dozen different MMOs and P&P RPGs. Stef grimaced as she bumped into Curt. Warn me before stopping, next time. He pushed open a door but made a shushing motion. ‘This is the phone bank,’ he said, stepping aside to let her see a room with seven recruits at large desks, each containing at least three screens. ‘Some people can call us directly, but we also get a lot of triple-zero calls routed…
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23 – New Game Plus
+1 to confidence. +1 to giving a crap. Debuff: Run home and hide has been dispelled. Stef stared at the intersecting halls, then made a left turn. Are you ready to admit you’re lost yet? Not quite. Curt’s text had given her the room number of the meeting room, but navigating by door numbers alone wasn’t working. She’d seen the gym twice, the hall with the dorm rooms once, two separate common rooms, and the mess hall. She’d found a large board room, but so far, the small meeting room had eluded detection. She held her hands out in front of her, fingers on the home row of an imaginary…
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22 – Two Steps Forward
The trail finally came to an end at the base of a steep hill. The root they’d been following had come up out of the ground and lay on the surface, its slow pulses making it seem like a sleepy snake on a cold morning. Curt put his hand to his ear, acknowledged something, then pointed at the other three recruits on the East side of the hill, and they moved to join them. One of Brian’s cronies had a bandage around his arm, and bright orange paint had splattered onto his pants. ‘How many?’ Brian asked Curt. ‘One sentinel. Red saw four.’ ‘One conscious,’ Red elaborated, ‘the other three…
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21 – The Grove and the Grave
Stef stared at him. ‘Lol. Wut.’ ‘I’d appreciate some help,’ he said, ‘since you don’t seem too bothered by corpses.’ Thick rubber gloves appeared on his hands. ‘But take precautions first.’ ‘What precisely are we–’ She waved her hands in front of her. ‘Wait. Wait. Wait. This is a training scenario, right? To prepare us for regular work, right?’ ‘Right.’ She required gloves that matched the ones he’d required. ‘Do you routinely play with dead bodies? Isn’t that a tech’s job? Or a medical recruit or something?’ ‘Ding, ding, ding, the newbie wins a prize.’ ‘Ooh.’ He knelt beside the body. ‘So if you can just-’ He looked up. ‘You…
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20 – Forest for the Trees
There was an ocean above her head, and she couldn’t breathe. -pond, grandfather’s pond, she must have slipped- She reached for the surface. It was there. So close she could see the ripples in the- So deep, she was going to die- -floating, she was- She reached up, if only to see her hands, to see anything but the darkness- The bottom of the ocean was soft- But there was still so much further to fall- So much more darkness that could- She couldn’t stay- Stef jolted awake. There was darkness, and her heart slammed for a few beats, worrying that for once, she hadn’t escaped from drowning, from- This…
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19 – Overtime
Require: cookie. Stef nommed on the cookie as she stared at the treasures that surrounded her. Her bed had quickly become a tiny nerdy dragon’s hoard. A stack of first-issue comics sat to her right, topped with six copies of Amazing Fantasy #15, each shiny and new and all hers. Spider-Man for Spyder, it was just appropriate. Beneath the wall-crawling menace sat the first outings of Batman, the X-Men, and a dozen more heroes. And it was fun to require copies of Giant-Size X-Men #1, and slowly require it to be bigger and bigger, until the size had felt right – maybe not giant, but definitely, pleasingly oversized. A hardcover…
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18 – A Step Towards Things Looking Up
The river was the first thing she saw as the world became clear again. Stef looked around, and immediately recognised the broad path beneath her feet and the sounds of kids playing: South Bank, a wide stretch of parklands, cafes and touristy spots. It was a place people went, so it was somewhere she tended to avoid. There were people around, but no one was pointing and shouting at two people appearing as though by teleport. ‘How do people not see that?’ she asked. ‘Okay, maybe you’re clever and stuff, and usually shift into areas where people wouldn’t look, but-’ She gestured around. ‘There are people here. And with everyone…
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17 – Sounds and Meaning
The world was fog. Stef stared at nothing. Sometimes there were noises. These feelings were too big and too…outside of her wheelhouse. She hadn’t been built to deal with shit like this. She’d barely been built to function as a person. There’d been a reason that staying inside, speaking with no-one and barely existing had been her comfortable speed for years. More noise. Maybe it was stompy boots back to finish the job. Doing things meant experiencing things. Meant dealing with consequences. Meant having to… She shouldn’t have been the one to survive. It should be her brains on someone else’s fingers right now. Except that person would have been…
