AP5, Ch. 41, 42 (Patreon)

Chapter 41

Time until next Challenge: 4 days, 23 hours

“Land claim status?” General Cleary asked me. “We’ve been sending speedsters and flyers out to collect Money and bring it to Shops to spend.”

“We’re at 18.8%,” I said. “So… a little better… it’s helping…”

“But it’s not enough.”

Time until next Challenge: 4 days, 18 hours

“I wanna go outside!” said Cassie.

“Why don’t we go to the playground? You love the playground.”

“We did the playground already,” said Gavin. “We did it before lunch and after lunch and now it is after dinner.”

“Yes. We do it all the times!” Cassie said. “Five times!”

I glanced at Pointy, wondering if I could talk the kids into sitting down for another one of the turtle’s movie recreations. That had pretty much been their lives for the past few days: bland meals, time in the underground play area, and movies, all in the same few windowless rooms. They were among the safest kids on Earth, and blessed beyond words, but I had to admit their routine had been kind of monotonous. 

Plus, in the back of my mind, I wasn’t sure if any of us would live through the next few days. I always wanted to make my kids happy, but… especially so when the future was so uncertain.

“Well… Let me think, then. Um, do you have any ideas?” I asked. I knew what they’d say, of course: Micah and Gavin wanted to go out and fight monsters, especially the two new varieties Ariel had spawned since we took off for Fort Defiance that they hadn’t gotten to see. Cassie would ask to go flying. None of those suggestions were something I’d agree to, but asking let me stall for time as I tried to come up with an enticing option that didn’t need a lot of space or resources.

I listened just long enough to be sure I was correct, then tuned the kids out as they spoke over each other, only making skeptical “Hm” noises whenever there was a pause, which served to spur them onward.

Car games aren’t going to work. We’ve played “I’m thinking of an animal” and its ilk far too many times in the past few months. Maybe Vince will have some ideas when he gets back from using the restroom? Eh, can’t count on that. Hm. It’s got to be something new… Hm. Maybe we can find someone off-duty with a fun ability? The flyers were all sent away, and I don’t want the kids flying anyway, but most of the stone-shapers are still around.

“What if we tried to find the people who made the playground and asked them to help us look for fossils in the walls?”

That brought Micah up short. “There are fossils in the walls?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we could ask them to check.”

“Can they sense rock like that?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I think-”

Mental Speech interrupted my thoughts: Ms. Moretti, we’re seeing new monster types. They don’t match the list you provided. Please explain!

I shook my head, holding up a hand. Ariel? What’s going on?

There was no reply.

Ariel? I tried again.

“Mom?” Micah asked.

“Ariel’s not answering me,” I said, both for his benefit and to the everpresent Marie. That had never happened before, and I felt a chill as I remembered the warning Ariel had given me the last time a Linked User had died. “What’s the status of the other Linked Users?”

“We’re checking,” she said. “We’ve already got confirmation that the Canadian guy is okay. Waiting on word from the other two. Wait, the Pakistani woman is fine too.”

“And… the Australian man?”

Marie winced. “The message just came through. He’s… gone.”

“How?!”

She shook her head. “I don’t know yet. Something clearly went wrong - maybe a lot of things. The confirmation of death didn’t come from our usual contact among his defenders.”

“Shit,” I said, ignoring Cassie’s scandalized “ooo” as I scratched my fingers across my scalp. “Ariel won’t be able to talk to me anymore. She must have lost control of the database she used to confirm my identity. Because of the janked-together nature of our connection, she said she’d lose the ability to mentally communicate with me if that happened.”

“She doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with me the way she did before, but she can probably still listen to us,” Pointy said. “I would have said definitely, but… the new monster spawns worry me. Are they localized or world wide? No, wait, don’t answer that yet. More important is that this location is drastically less secure than it was a minute ago. You all need your armor on, now. Some of the monsters Ariel had discussed with us will be able to reach you even inside Fort Defiance.”

“Shit, you’re right,” I said, scooping up Cassie and starting to jog back toward a room filled with lockers, where our stuff had been stored. “I skimmed thousands of monster profiles when I helped her pick the new ones. There were a lot with rockshaping abilities and others with bodies even more flexible than the paraslugs. And that’s just the stuff that Ariel considered appropriate. Hamlet’s difficulty cap for the Maffiyir is higher, so he’ll have even more monsters he can access.”

“So… we’re going to get to fight after all?” Gavin asked.

“Child, that is so not the point!” I snapped as I rounded a hallway corner.

“We’re still gonna win, though, right?” Micah asked. “We got to the fort. That’s what we needed to do.”

I hesitated. Micah had picked up on the danger of the Challenges several days earlier, but he’d relaxed after we’d gotten to Fort Defiance. He hadn’t asked if we’d bought enough land to win in time, and I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t seen the point. 

“Mom?” he asked. “How long until we win?”

“Well…”

“I mean, it has to be in the next few days, right? We’ve got like.. Four and a half?”

“That is what we have, yes.”

“And we’re going to win in time?”

“We have to,” I said.

“But… are we going to?” his voice rose to a near-squeak.

I took a deep breath, met his eyes, and lied through my teeth. “Yes.”

“So, when-”

“Not now, Micah!” I yanked open the locker we’d been given for our belongings. I’d kept my own armor on - even behind so many defenses, my guardians had insisted on it - but I’d let the kids relax, confident they were safe. I grabbed the first helmet I saw - Micah’s - and popped it onto his head, slightly askew. He grumbled and readjusted it.

Vince skidded around the corner and into the room. Someone must have let him know what was up - maybe Marie? - because he didn’t ask any questions. He just reached out to grab a kid’s breastplate from my hands. “Arms up, Gavin! Let’s get you latched in.”

Gavin ignored him, pointing off to our left. “Mom! There’s something coming through the wall! More than one thing!”

“Yeah, so get your armor on! I can feel them coming, too.”

Gavin put his arm up obediently, letting Vince fasten his breastplate at superhuman speed.

Then the first monster popped out of the wall.

Chapter 42

Time until next Challenge: 4 days, 17 hours 55 minutes

I’d felt them coming - whatever they were - and had titanium plates ready to foul their leaps as they emerged from the wall. They hit the metal plates with more force than I anticipated, easily overpowering my Telekinesis and sending the plates crashing to the ground. 

That kind of speed and strength combined with the ability to move through stone?! Whatever the hell these are, they’re a clear step up from the stuff we’ve been fighting so far. 

Fortunately, we were deep in the heart of an edifice built to protect me, and even if the majority of the flyers had been sent away in a desperate bid to help those with Money make it to Shops, Fort Defiance was still packed to the brim with people who’d made my safety a priority. In addition to the handful of bodyguards following me around at all times, everyone in the locker room had dropped what they were doing to aid in our defense, and a wall of people was already forming between my family and the monsters emerging from every wall.

How did they come straight for me? Hamlet must be updating the location they’re heading for near-continually.

The thought flickered by almost unnoticed. I was far more concerned about the wide variety of monsters we were facing, a concern that only deepened as a piercing shriek ruptured my eardrums and caused several of the soldiers in front of me to stumble.

Rockshaping and Sonic Blast? Or something close enough to it not to matter. So, he’s sending out little monsters with more than one ability.

I dropped my titanium plates, noticing a purple haze flicker across my skin as a monster’s analogue to Hex hit me. 

Whatever, that won’t kill me quickly. I noticed similar glows on my family members. Or the people around me.

Seven Telekinetic “hands” made the process of getting my kids and Anju into their armor much faster, even if I didn’t bother with all the buckles and fasteners. 

Gavin’s tail had flicked across our group, healing our hearing just in time, but barely a second passed before another Sonic Blast knocked it out again. I frowned as I grabbed Cassie and held a gas mask to her face, flashing a holographic arrow pointing upward. Priya nodded and Vince flashed me a thumbs-up, and then we were heading out and up, making our way toward the tower in the center of Fort Defiance. 

I didn’t lead us all the way to the top, pausing our group in a small chamber two-thirds of the way up, right after I’d passed someone I recognized as one of the men who’d helped stoneshape the subterranean playground into being. He was glaring at the walls with an expression of concentration, and I had to assume he was doing whatever he could to keep the new monsters from following. Heading to the top would just expose us to flying monsters.

As soon as we stopped, Vince reached out to squeeze my hand, a pulse of healing fixing both my ears and my charred and pitted skin where the Hex had hurt me. I saw one of my bodyguards gently tapping Marie’s wrist and assumed she, too, had been healed.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Even though I could hear again, I had to raise my voice to make myself heard over the screams and booms of the battle above and below me.

She shook her head, bewildered. “I’ve let General Cleary know where you are. We’re trying to get answers about the scope of what’s going on. The number of new monsters spotted keeps going up, but the last count I had was 43 new varieties.”

“Are the other Linked Users still alive? The Australian guy went down, right? Do we have any more answers about what happened?”

“Not yet. It sounds like native wildlife might have played a role…”

“With all of our alien enhancements?” I said, shocked. “That can’t be right.”

Marie shrugged helplessly. “Maybe not. I don’t have confirmation. There are also some people talking about a traitor, so… We don’t have answers.”

“A traitor? Why would anyone… No, nevermind. Whatever happened over there is already done with, and as long as it’s not something that’s likely to happen here, it doesn’t really matter what went wrong. ” 

Even though I said that, I couldn’t help but eye my bodyguards, twisting to put Cassie on my far side, between me and Vince. One of the soldiers, the man who’d healed Marie, lifted a hand. “Everyone in Fort Defiance has been vetted by an aide with over 500% in Insight. It’s not perfect, but we’ve done our best to ensure everyone close to you values your safety.”

I nodded briskly, my mind already motoring ahead to the next question as I stepped back against the wall to let a group of reinforcements move past me to the top of the lookout tower. “What about the other Linked Users? I’m not the only one still alive. Are the other two under attack as well?”

“Yes,” said Marie. “Although the new monsters don’t seem to be everywhere. Our contacts in Madrid don’t report anything out of the ordinary.”

“Ariel must still have control of most of the world,”  Vince said. “Hamlet probably grabbed a few areas?”

I nodded. “And knocked her out of the database she used to verify our identities. She seemed confident we’d still be linked to her after that, but I admit I was worried - her connection to us is basically made of duct tape and hope. If the new monsters aren’t everywhere, though, she must still be alive.”

“Does she still have control of the Shops and land distribution?” Marie asked.

It was my turn to shrug. “She’s not answering my questions. I hope so? I ordered her to prioritize that. I didn’t think of Hamlet just grabbing the area around me…”

“General Cleary backed you up on that,” Vince said.

“And he still does,” Marie said. “I’m still getting answers, but depending on how large of an area he controls, it might be possible to get you out of it. If we lost the Shops, we’d lose any chance of keeping Earth after we won. And you said Ariel was worried he’d be able to completely prevent our victory.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “She said he wouldn’t be able to directly alter land prices, but he could easily re-arrange the Shop interfaces and change the display languages.”

“If he couldn’t change the price, couldn’t people just buy the thing that cost 144?” Micah asked.

I shook my head. “If they could find which one it was. Most countries use arabic numerals, but he could just write out the names of the numbers in a foreign language. Even if people figured out which one it was by trial and error, if he reshuffled the interface and language every few minutes… it wouldn’t be flatly impossible to buy land, but it would be close enough to make no difference.”

“Well, people can still read the Shop interfaces and buy land,” Marie said. “Even from the Shop we have underground here, for the time being.”

“It’s under attack now?”

She nodded. “The monsters after you shifted targets shortly after we made it up into the tower. I got word from above, too: more kinds of flying and climbing monsters are appearing as the burrowers attacking the shop are killed.”

I shuddered. There were thousands of monsters available to Ariel, and Hamlet has thousands more. How do we prepare for that? How do we defend against attackers that can do literally anything, or as close to it as makes no difference?

I looked around the room. My family and friends looked shaken, but more furious than terrified. My bodyguards were scanning the walls, roof, and floor with constant vigilance. Between all of us, we had a wide array of abilities available, and no one was giving up.

We’d hold out for as long as we could, but even if we were perfect, it wouldn’t be enough: we wouldn’t win this game in time.

Not on our own.

“Ariel!” I called aloud. “If you can still hear me, please help! Find any way you can to help us. We need you!”