Abyssal Border Protocol: Ch 4 (rough draft) (Patreon)

Chapter 4: Princess and the Tower

One breath, she was on Future Rock with Justin’s lips still warm on hers, the taste of him lingering sweet and electric on her tongue. The next, cold stone pressed against the bare soles of her feet, and the air smelled wrong. Recycled. Stale. The kind of air that had never known a tree or a river or the particular green perfume of the valley she had called home. The sun on her face, the smell of crushed leaves and pine, the sound of wind moving through the valley canopy below Future Rock. All of it. All of it was there.

The next breath, it was not.

Liz opened her eyes. Cold stone pressed against her bare feet. The room was grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling. A narrow cot with a thin grey blanket. A toilet and sink behind a half-partition of the same featureless material. A small screen mounted opposite the toilet, with a chair that was not a chair at all but a protrusion from the wall, seamless and cold. No window. No crack of light. No seam in the wall where a door might be.

She was standing in the center of a cell.

She looked down at herself. A white nightgown, thin enough that she could see the outline of her own body through it. No leggings. No boots. No jacket. No bra. No underwear. Her clothes were still on Future Rock, scattered across the leaf-strewn ground where Justin had been kneeling. Liz’s hands came up to her chest, fingers curling into the fabric of the nightgown. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The cool of the floor climbed through her soles and into her calves, and she stood there, barefoot and shivering with desperate fear, trying to make the room stop being real.

“Justin?” Her voice came out small, swallowed by the walls. “Justin!”

No answer. No echo. The room absorbed sound, making it flat and total. The light in the room was diffuse, not bright, not warm, just there, coming from the ceiling but not from any single point, nor did the ceiling glow; there simply was light. Alien and wrong.

Orange text bloomed across her vision, hovering in the air like something projected onto the inside of her eyelids.

SYSTEM INTEGRATION… COMMENCING…

DRAFT PROTOCOL: Initializing…

INTEGRATION MESSAGE:

Earth Prime female on the world… Alpha 437-T-369, your reality iteration has been drafted for abyssal border duty. Compliance is mandatory. Condition start set, level 0.01, max allocation. 18 months allocated.

PROGENITOR CLASSIFICATION: Female progenitor. Species: Human. Iteration 0.01, Abyssal Border Wall Tower.

Liz’s breath caught. The word progenitor sat in the text like a clinical term from a biology textbook, and something in her stomach turned cold and heavy.

WELCOME, ELIZABETH MCKNIGHT, TO THE ABYSSAL BORDER WALL TOWER. YOU HAVE BEEN RELOCATED FOR YOUR PROTECTION AND THE CONTINUATION OF YOUR SPECIES’ COMBAT POTENTIAL. SEE THE SYSTEM HELP MENU FOR FURTHER DETAILS.

XP POOL: 0.

PROGENITOR INCENTIVE STRUCTURE: UNLOCKED.

The words kept coming. Liz read them standing in the middle of the room with her arms wrapped around herself, the thin nightgown offering nothing against the chill. Her stomach dropped through the floor. Her mouth went dry.

Female progenitor. The words sat in her chest like stones.

She found the system menu the same way Justin had, by focusing on the icon that had appeared in the upper right of her vision. It unfolded with the same clinical precision.

System menu:

Leaderboard.

Abyssal Border Wall Progenitor Status page.

Map.

System help.

Tower amenities.

Crafting.

Messaging.

She opened the progenitor status page first.

Abyssal Border Wall Progenitor Status Page:

Name: Elizabeth McKnight.Age: 20.Race: Human.

Species Origin: Earth Prime.

Reality Iteration: Alpha 437-T-369.

Classification: Female progenitor.Tower Assignment: Abyssal Border Wall Tower, Iteration Level 0.01.Protection Status: Sequestered.

XP Pool: 0.

Level: 0.01.XP Required to reach level 0.02: 100-XP.

Health Status: 100 percent.

Mana: 0.Mana regeneration: 0.

Primary Function: Progenitor preservation and warrior-line continuation.

Secondary Function: Tower crafting, resource generation, content creation, and protector support.

Tower Cell: Standard isolation accommodation.Amenities: Cot, blanket, toilet, sink, water allotment, food allotment, view screen.Current room comfort rating: Minimal.Current room safety rating: High.Current room freedom rating: Restricted.

Crafting Access: Unlocked.Starting materials: None.Crafting tools: None.Market access: Locked until the first crafted item is listed.

Progenitor Incentive Structure: Unlocked.

Pregnancy bonus: 10,000-XP.Birth bonus: Permanent tower accommodation upgrade.Child classification: Abyssal Border Wall warrior candidate.

Warning: Female progenitor XP acquisition is limited. XP may be gained through protector transfer, progenitor incentive rewards, and approved tower commerce.

System Notice:Your survival has been prioritized.

The final line hung in the air, stubborn and unyielding.

Your survival has been prioritized.

Liz stared, and the glyphs smeared into an orange haze as her vision clouded. Her hands, numb, clutched the nightgown to her ribs. It was a thin, rough garment, too white, too sterile, like something manufactured for a body-shaped object, not a person.

“No,” she said.

Nothing replied.

She tried again, voice scraping at the edges. “No, no, no.” Each repetition sharper, more fractured. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to take me from my life and call it protection.”

The text remained, unchanging and orange.

Your survival has been prioritized.

Liz stepped away, heel catching on the edge of the stone cot. Pain shot up her leg; she sucked in a breath and grabbed for the nearest wall.

The wall was cold, the cold of the massive not of winter snow and wind.

Justin.

The thought struck so hard she doubled over, one arm wrapped around her stomach, the other pressed to her mouth. She could still feel the heat of his palm, the tremor in his grip, the look in his eyes on Future Rock, heavy with everything neither of them could say for years.

But they had said it.

They had finally said it.

Then the world had changed and stolen the next breath from them both.

“System,” Liz managed, head rising. Her voice shook. “How do I leave this room?”

The status display blinked out. In its place, a search bar unfolded, neat and center.

System help query.

Answer:

Female progenitors exit from the tower: never.

Abyssal Border Wall Tower iteration level 0.01 is a protected sequestration environment. Female progenitor relocation is permanent until system conditions change, protector access allocation changes, or the progenitor incentive structure updates.

She read it again.

Permanent.

The word fell out from under her.

She lurched to the wall, slamming both hands against its blank surface. The noise was dull, flat. No echo. Not metal, not stone. Some gray, null material, swallowing every sound, as if built by something that hated echoes.

“Let me out!” she shrieked. “Let me out!”

She hammered the wall. Again. And again. Her palms stung. She curled her fist and struck, pain bursting through her knuckles, but she kept swinging until her breath shredded and tears blurred out the box.

“Justin!” she screamed, throat raw. “Justin, please!”

Nothing.

Her knees buckled. She slid down, back against the wall, knees to her chest. The nightgown rode up; she yanked it down with shaking hands, hate and fear knotting together.

Don’t fall apart. Not yet.

Dad’s funeral had taught her the world didn’t pause for grief. Mom’s bad choices had taught her that crying didn’t move walls. Brayden had taught her trust could be a toy, cheap and breakable in the hands of a man with a pretty smile.

Justin had taught her something else.

Justin came back.

Always.

When they were kids, when she played princess in the fort by the creek, Justin crashed through the underbrush with a stick sword and a cardboard shield. When her dad died, he sat on the porch steps beside her and said nothing, because there was nothing useful to say. When Brayden left her feeling cheap and stupid, Justin’s answer to the message was anger that wrapped around her like armor.

He would come. If he could.

The thought hurt more than the silence of the room she found herself in.

Liz wiped her face with the back of her hand and forced her breath to slow. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. She’d used that trick before exams, before archery tournaments, before calling her mother to ask if the rent was paid.

“System,” she said, voice steadier, “Can I talk to Justin Barnes?”

Communication request: Justin Barnes. Abyssal Border Wall Warrior. Earth Prime male. Iteration Alpha 437-T-369.

Communication options:

Text: 1-XP per 10 words.

One-way voice communication: 1-XP per two seconds.

Two-way voice communication: 1-XP per second.

One-way audio and visual communication: 10-XP per second.

Two-way audio and visual communication: 20-XP per second.

Current XP Pool: 0.

Communication unavailable.

She stared at the options.

“Oh, you piece of shit.”

A laugh clawed out of her. Ugly, raw, not even sounding like herself. She pressed fingers to her lips, then forced herself to her feet.

The display was on the wall, across from the toilet. The chair beneath it wasn’t really a chair, just a ledge, gray and seamless, nothing crafted so much as extruded. Each step to it was cold under her bare feet. She sat. The seat didn’t yield at all.

The screen came to life. The menu was orange, with different options from the screen floating in the air.

Tower Function Display:

Leaderboard.

Protector view.

There were only two options for now.

She stopped breathing when she read the last. “Protector view,” she whispered.

Protector view access: Available.

Female progenitors may observe male progenitor protectors within linked reality iteration for emotional support, compliance support, protector bonding, and reproductive incentive alignment.

Cost: 0-XP.

Linked protectors available:

Justin Barnes.

She touched his name, and the screen flashed, changing to Future Rock.

It was not staticky, nor was it a recording. It was a live viewport.

Justin stood where she had vanished, rooted, bloodless. Her clothes pooled between his boots and the stone. Pink lace. Black leggings. Her bra. Her jacket. The hiking boots she’d worn that morning. All of it obscene in the sun, dead fabric on warm rock.

“LIZ!” Justin screamed.

The sound shivered through the screen, a half-second behind, but absolutely him. His voice. Tearing itself apart.

Liz lunged at the screen. “Justin! I’m here! I’m here!”

He didn’t react.

“Justin!”

He spun, searching the rocks, the brush, the trail. Both hands in his hair. He looked wild.

Liz pressed her palms to the screen. It was warm. Machine-warm.

“He can’t hear me,” she said.

Audio transmission from female progenitor to protector requires XP expenditure.

Current XP Pool: 0.

“I know!” she snapped. “I know, damn it!”

Justin collapsed to his knees, scooping up her clothes. He handled them with care, as if they were her, as if leaving them would injure her. Liz’s chest cinched around a sound she would not let out.

“Oh, Justin.”

He shoved the bundle into his backpack and bolted.

The view tracked him. Not through his eyes, but more a drone’s view, always just behind at an angle, following as he crashed through the woods toward home. Branches whipped his arms. Dirt flew from his shoes. Panic radiated from every line of him, every ragged breath as he sprinted.

“Go,” she whispered. “Go, go, go.”

He reached the house. He shouted for his mother. For Alison.

Liz watched him find the clothes.

Kathleen’s by the sink.

Alison’s on a bed.

He broke, there in the house.

Not all the way. Justin never broke all the way. He quaked, he swore, and then some solid part of him locked down. Liz had seen it before—the day his father’s coffin dropped into the earth and Justin stood beside Kathleen with one arm around Alison, a boy trying to become a wall. To become a man to early.

A new menu flickered in her vision.

Emotional distress detected.

Would you like to access a calming tutorial?

Yes or no?

“No.”

Would you like to access the tower’s orientation?

Yes or no?

“No. Wait orientation, yes, but in a little bit.”

The prompts vanished. But she had the feeling it would appear in a moment to offer her the orientation she wanted when she wanted it.

On-screen, Justin sat on the couch and began interrogating the system. Liz couldn’t hear the answers unless he read them aloud, but she read his face: confusion, horror, calculation. That cold math of survival.

Then he said her name.

“Liz.”

Her hand covered her mouth.

He asked how to contact her. He asked about XP. He asked how women got XP.

She saw the instant he figured it out. His face went still. Still, the way the world stills before lightning strikes.

“The system is making the women give birth,” Justin said.

Liz recoiled, breath caught, as if the words had physical weight.

The screen didn’t care. The room didn’t care. The orange menus waited, patient, as her life was disassembled and categorized.

She backed away from the screen and went to the sink. Water. She needed water in her mouth, something real.

At the thought, a slot in the wall opened, and a cup filled with water appeared. Liz took it hesitantly but drank. The water was clear. Cold. Flawless spring water. She drank and refilled the cup until her stomach cramped, then splashed more over her face from the sink, letting it run down her neck and soak the nightgown.

She stared at herself in the mirror above the sink.

Dirty-blond hair wild around her face. Green eyes rimmed red. Lips swollen from Justin’s kiss and from biting back fear. She looked like a girl yanked out of one world and stored on a shelf in another.

“No,” she told her reflection. “No. I am not going to be furniture in a tower.”

It helped. Not much. But enough.

She went back to the bed and opened the help menu.

“How do I get XP without Justin?”

System help answer:

Female progenitor XP acquisition:

Primary method: Transfer from male progenitor protector.

Secondary method: Approved tower commerce after market listing activation.

Tertiary method: Progenitor incentive rewards.

Liz’s jaw tightened.

“Explain approved tower commerce.”

Approved tower commerce:

Female progenitors may create items, services, instructional material, entertainment material, visual content, audio content, emotional support content, and reproductive incentive content for purchase by male progenitor protectors.

Crafted item sale access requires at least one listed item.

Content listing access: Unlocked.

Crafting listing access: Locked until materials are acquired.

“Materials?” Liz asked.

The starting tower cell contains no free craft materials beyond standard consumables and accommodation items.

Warning: Destruction of accommodation items may reduce comfort rating.

She scanned the room.

Cot. Blanket. Pillow. Nightgown. Toilet paper. The walls.

Her gaze caught on the blanket.

“You want me to sell pictures of my tits or ass or tear up my bedding?”

System response:

Both options are valid.

She stared at the screen, which was still following Justin. Then laughed again, “Of course they are.” She wiped her face and looked at the wall display. Justin was alive, moving, collecting knives and anything with an edge. Fear and determination in every movement.

She leaned closer.

“Hold on, Justin,” she whispered, though he couldn’t hear. “You figure out your side, and I’ll figure out this side.”

She touched the screen again, fingers spread over Justin’s face as he moved through the house. It held his image behind warm glass, a fake nearness that made the distance worse.

Justin pulled knives from the kitchen drawers. The big chef’s knife. The smaller one. A claw hammer from the junk drawer. He kept moving from room to room with that blank panic on his face, the kind that came after terror had burned so hot it left nothing but ash and function.

Liz knew that face. She had seen it after his dad died and had seen it when Alison fell from the old oak behind their houses and broke her wrist, screaming so hard Kathleen nearly fainted. Justin had gone white, picked his little sister up, and carried her to the car while everyone else spun in circles.

He was doing that now. Placing one foot in front of the other. Taking each moment one breath at a time. Gathering one useful thing, then the next.

“Good,” Liz whispered, hugging herself with one arm while the other hand stayed on the screen. “Keep moving. Don’t stop. Will have time later to make sense of this, of this shit.”

Justin spoke to the system, asking about monsters, about countdowns, about the rules of this nightmare. He changed clothes, layering shirts, pulling on heavy pants, and putting on boots. The sight hurt her in a place newly bloomed to the love that had always been there. He had been kissing her in the sun just minutes ago. Now he was dressing for war with a kitchen knife and a fucking hammer.

Then he went to her house. Liz shook with excitement; she knew what he was going to get.

The view followed him through the door and into her room. Her room. Her bed. Her books. The old posters she had not taken down yet because some part of her had not been ready to be gone from her childhood world for good. He opened the closet and reached for her bow.

A laugh broke out of her, “My bow,” she said. “That’s right.”

He found the arrows. Found the hunting tips.

Liz pressed both hands to her mouth, relief at him getting the weapon and fear at knowing that a monster was coming, one he would need to fight.

They had hidden those when they were kids. She had saved money for weeks. Justin had helped her sneak them past her mother because Rebecca would have lost her mind if she’d found broadheads in her daughter’s room.

He remembered. Of course, he remembered. Every moment she watched, her heart filled with love for Justin and the man he was becoming.

How could I have been so blind… She knew she had not been, had always known what was there between them. She had just been scared. Not now, though; now she would be brave and would love him until the end.

The screen followed him back to his house. He set things out on the coffee table and couch, turning a normal living room into something between a yard sale and an armory. A broken mall-ninja sword. Two staffs. Kitchen knives. Claw hammer. Her bow. Arrows. Backpack. Food. Water. Clothes and a sleeping bag.

“Oh, Justin,” she whispered. “This isn’t fair.”

The word fair almost made her laugh again. Fair had died on Future Rock after she had been taken by the system. The countdown reached three minutes.

Liz stood in front of the screen, both hands clenched. Justin waited on the back patio with her bow in his hand. His shoulders were tight. His jaw worked once, like he was grinding words into dust before they could get out.

She could hear the faint summer noise around him. Leaves. Creek water. The soft hum of insects. All the life at home.

The tower room had no sound except her breath.

3…

2…

1…

Liz stopped breathing with him.

Nothing happened.

For one wild second, hope sparked in her chest.

Then Justin moved to the patio edge.

The view shifted.

Something black slid near the creek, near the old fort they had built as kids. Long. Wet. Wrong. Six feelers rose from its back, tasting the air. It crawled over grass with a skin-slick sound the screen should not have been able to carry, but did.

Liz’s stomach knotted.

“No. No, no, no.”

A squirrel dropped from the tree.

“Get away!” Liz screamed.

The tentacles snapped up. The squirrel vanished into its teeth and black flesh.

Liz reeled back, one hand over her mouth. The creature was not fast across the ground. Not by a long shot. But those tentacles had moved like whips.

“Justin, stay back,” she said, voice thin. “Please stay back.”

He did.

He walked forward with the bow raised, keeping a distance. His face had changed. Fear was still there, sweat bright on his forehead, lips parted around each breath. But his eyes were on the monster. Not on the old fort. Not on childhood ghosts. On the monster, a real one this time, not one cooked up by their imaginations.

Liz found herself leaning with him as he drew.

“lower,” she whispered. “Don’t yank the string. Breathe.”

The arrow flew.

THUD.

The creature screamed. A wet, tearing noise. Liz jerked at the sound and grabbed the edge of the screen ledge. Black blood spilled from the wound. The thing thrashed, tentacles slicing the air where Justin would have been if he had been closer.

He drew again.

“Good. Again. Again.”

The second arrow struck.

The tentacles spasmed, then fell.

Liz’s knees went weak.

Skill gained:Archery: Level 1, Novice.Aim: Level 1, Novice.

The words appeared near Justin, small and orange, before vanishing. The creature’s body dissolved into black dust, eaten from reality by the system.

XP gained: 30-XP.

Liz stared at the empty patch of grass.

Thirty. Thirty XP for that.

Thirty XP for risking his life against something that could rip a squirrel in half before it hit the ground.

Justin dropped into a patio chair, breathing hard, bow across his lap. For a moment, he was just a boy again. Not a warrior. Not a protector. Not some male abyssal boarder wall warrior thing the system had named him.

Just Justin.

Her Justin.

Then he shot to his feet.

“Oh fuck! Old Man Tom!”

Liz’s heart lurched. “No, don’t go alone. Justin, wait.”

He could not hear her. He grabbed the bow, one of the staffs, and ran.

The screen chased him around the house, up the drive, across the familiar stretch toward Old Man Tom’s place. Liz had been there a hundred times. Delivering birthday cards or for tool borrowing. Listening to the old man shouting at Justin to hold the flashlight still. The smell of oil, cut grass, and old coffee.

Justin reached the porch.

Liz saw the blood before he did.

It painted the window. Her hands went numb.

Inside, the recliner chair was ruined. The shape in it was not a person anymore. It was red pulp, torn fabric, crushed bone, and the awful remains of a man who used to sit there and wave at them from behind the glass.

Liz made a sound that was not a word.

Justin threw up.

She turned away, but the room gave her nowhere else to look. It was just gray stone or the view screen; her world narrowed down to one focus. The warriors.

When she forced herself to face it again, the rock creature was moving.

It was waist-high, built from ugly stones with red points for eyes. It stepped through the blood and broken room with the weight of a bad dream. It was slow and heavy with too much mass for its size.

Justin backed off the porch.

“Run,” Liz said.

He did not.

“Justin, run.”

He darted into the garage.

Liz almost screamed at him then. The garage was a trap with too much junk and only one way in. If the thing got in behind him, if he fell, if he—

He found the sledgehammer.

Old Bessy.

Liz knew the hammer. Everyone knew the hammer. Tom had given it a name as if it were a dog or a wife he argued with. Justin lifted it from the wall, both hands on the handle.

“Time to get some vengeance, Old Bessy…” he said.

His voice came through the screen, low and rough. Far more manly than she had ever heard him be before. She felt her cheeks blush and her stomach warm at the sound.

Liz swallowed down the building heat and went back to watching.

The rock creature had fallen down the porch steps and was pushing itself up with all the grace of a dropped bag of bricks.

Justin waited on the grass. He swung the sledgehammer once, testing its weight, then set it down and grabbed the staff.

He went in low and fast with the staff, tangling its legs and tripping it.

The staff cracked against the creature’s leg. The rock thing toppled face-first into the grass with a heavy thud.

“Yes!” Liz shouted. “Yes, Justin!”

He grabbed Old Bessy.

The first blow landed with a crack that made Liz flinch.

The second broke the stone.

The third sent chips skittering across the grass.

Justin raised the hammer again and again, his whole body moving with it, arms, back, shoulders, all the fear and grief and rage pouring down through the iron head.

He was sobbing by the end. Or maybe breathing. Maybe both.

Skill gained:Blunt weapons: Level 1, Novice.

50-XP gained.

The rock thing dissolved.

Justin stood over the fading dust, shaking so hard Liz could see it from the screen.

“Tom,” she whispered.

There would be no grave for Tom. Not with what remained.

Liz understood the thought moving through Justin before he said any of it. She could see the shame gathering in his shoulders. The urge to do something proper. The horror of what proper would mean.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “Not that. Not right now.”

He walked home as if each step carried the weight of time itself in his stride.

Liz stayed with him.

She watched him sit on the couch, trembling. Watched him unlock the tower search. Watched him search for Kathleen, Alison, and then her.

Her breath caught when her name appeared.

Tower occupant search: Found.

Her screen chimed.

Message access change detected.

Protector search connection established.

Justin sent a message to Kathleen first.

Good, Liz thought. That was right. His mother needed him. Alison needed him.

Then he transferred XP.

A soft orange prompt bloomed in front of Liz.

XP transfer received.

Sender: Justin Barnes.

Amount: 15-XP.

Transfer fee paid by sender.

Current XP Pool: 15.

Liz stared at it.

Fifteen.

He had killed monsters, watched Tom die, and the first thing he did with that blood-earned XP was send it to them.

The pressure in her chest broke.

She sank onto the ledge-chair, hunched over, hands covering her face. Tears slipped between her fingers, hot and useless and human.

Another chime.

Message received.

Justin to Elizabeth:

Liz, you okay? I’m okay. I love you, hold on!

Message cost paid by the sender.

She touched the message with shaking fingers, wishing they could be him, any part of him.

The words burned into her, casting her love for him in a molten metal formed in the heart of a blazing star.

She spoke the words to the empty air, tears streaking down her face, “I love you… You, you always come for me.”

It was a promise sent through a horror system by a boy covered in the first blood of a new world.

Liz drew in a broken breath.

“Reply,” she said.

Messaging active.

Text: 1-XP per 10 words.

Current XP Pool: 15.

She tried to write something calm.

She failed.

Liz to Justin:

OMG, Justin! It’s horrible! No windows! Door Locked! I’m trapped! I have Food, Water, a toilet, a view screen, a bed, one pillow, and one thin sheet! That’s it! Ahhhhhh! Don’t forget me, Justin! The System says it’s for my protection, as I am able to breed more abyssal border wall warriors to fight, but I basically have to get pregnant. The System says I can craft and sell what I make to the Warriors. I get bonuses for birthing children. ARRRGGG! Be safe! I love you.

Message cost: 9-XP.

Send?

Yes or no.

Liz stared at the cost.

9-XP.

Almost everything he had given her.

She should have shortened it. She should be careful. Justin would need XP. Kathleen would need XP. Alison would need XP. Hell, Everyone would need XP.

But he had asked if she was okay. And she was not okay. Not even close.

“Yes,” she said.

Message sent.

Current XP Pool: 6.

On the screen, Justin opened her reply.

She watched his face move through every word.

Horror. Rage. Pain. Love.

He looked up at the ceiling.

“Hang on, Liz. I'll get you out of there. I… I love you!”

Liz pressed both hands to the screen again. “I love you too.”

He could not hear her. It mattered, though, love, anyway you cut it, that was one of the strongest powers of men and women, love. It had taken our species from cave to space.

Justin stood and went outside. He looked up.

Liz looked with him.

The sky had no sun.

For a breath, she did not understand what she was seeing. It was daylight. Blue-grey, pale, but wrong daylight, but daylight all the same. Yet the sky was empty. No yellow blaze. No sun is sitting above the world. Nothing.

Justin cursed.

Liz stared at the screen, her tower room forgotten. No sun.

The system's answer came when Justin asked, and this time, he read enough of it out loud for Liz to piece it together. Their world had been added to an infinite border plane. A different dimension. Here, there were no orbits of celestial bodies, no stars. Day and night were regulated by the system.

Liz sat down hard on the edge of the cot.

The planet was gone. Not destroyed, no, not in the movie way. But gone from its place in the universe it occupied. It had been cut out by the system, then flattened and stitched into some border wall that went on past the normal understanding of normal space a time.

Her mother was somewhere in this tower also.

Kathleen was somewhere here also. Along with Alison. Every woman she had ever known. And the men were out there under a sunless sky, waiting for monsters.

Justin bought a clock.

He went back inside and checked supplies. Backpack. Food. Water. Her staff. His broken sword. Old Bessy. The two horses at Hank and Linda’s farm were mentioned when he thought of them, Strider and River. Liz remembered feeding them apples as a kid, remembered Linda laughing when River stole one from her hand.

Then Justin froze.

“Shit, Hank and Linda…”

Liz’s stomach sank.

“No,” she whispered. “No more.”

But Justin was already moving.

He grabbed his pack and weapons and got on his old mountain bike. The screen view followed him up the road.

Liz knew the route. The dip in the road. The mailbox with chipped paint. The old fence that Hank meant to repair every summer and never did. The white farmhouse. The red barn.

Screams came from the barn. Animals. Horses. Cows. Panic and hooves and bodies slamming against stalls.

Justin dropped the bike and ran. Hank lay in the barn doorway in a pool of blood.

Liz covered her mouth with both hands.

The monster beside him was dead, an old scythe buried through it. Hank had killed it. The old farmer had killed his monster and died after. His body was opened in a way no body should be opened.

Justin fell beside him.

“Help him,” Liz whispered. “Please help him.”

But there was no help for that kind of wound, save for what a doctor might offer, or a battlefield medic.

Hank’s breath slowed. Stopped.

Justin sat there with him, useless hands hovering over the wounds.

Liz cried without sound.

Not big sobs now. Those had burned out. This was worse. Tears slid down her cheeks while she watched the world she knew empty itself one person at a time.

The dead monster dissolved.

40-XP gained.

Justin asked why he got the XP.

The system answered his question, and Liz understood. If the abyssal border wall warrior died before they killed the monster, the next closest warrior got the XP.

A system of rules. Neat, clean, and horrible.

Justin got up.

He let the animals out.

It was strange, watching him do chores in the middle of the end of the world. Gates opened. Animals moved. Horses snorted and danced, eyes white with fear. Justin found the carrots and apples, then approached Strider with his hand out.

His voice changed to the same tone he always used when speaking to the animals.

“Hey, Strider, good to see you. You’re okay, boy, you know me. Everything is going to be okay.” The words were empty, but his tone was what was important.

Liz leaned closer, throat aching.

Strider came to him.

The horse took the carrot. Justin got him out, then River. He hitched them near the trough at the front of the house and gathered their saddles.

Skill gained:Animal handling: Level 5, Novice.

Liz watched his face when the skill settled into him. He looked confused, then startled, then a little steadier as if the system had put a hand on some part of his mind and turned a dial.

“Okay,” she said. “That helps. Good. We’ll take every bit of help we can get.”

Then he got a sheet from the hall closet in the house.

“Oh no…” Liz said, the plea was a whine at what she knew he was going to do. What he was going to do alone. “he shouldn’t have to do that alone…”

He wrapped Hank. Dragged him to the tree in the garden.

“No, Justin, you don’t have to do this.”

But he did.

He dug.

The shovel struck the earth again and again. The sound came through the screen, dull and wet and real. Justin’s shoulders worked. His hands blistered. Sweat darkened his shirt. He stopped and puked once. Then again. Then kept digging.

Skill gained:Digging: Level 1, Novice.Level 2.Level 3.Level 4.Level 5.

Liz wanted to hate the messages for appearing over a grave. She wanted to scream at the system for measuring the shape of grief and giving it levels.

But Justin dug better after each message.

The hole became straighter. The shovel bit deeper. His movements wasted less. Soon, the grave took shape.

She sat on the edge of the grey cot in her white nightgown, hands knotted together, watching the boy she loved bury a neighbor beneath a tree where Hank and Linda had watched the sunsets.

There was no sunset now.

Just a programmed dusk waiting to roll over the land.

Justin covered the grave.

He stood over it, filthy, hollow-eyed, streaked with sweat and dirt.

“Linda, if you're watching, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did not get here sooner. I could have. I could have helped him…I’m. I’m sorry. Hank, may you rest in peace.”

Liz bowed her head.

“I’m sorry, Linda,” she said.

She wondered if Linda had a screen. Wondered if Linda was watching. Wondered how many women in how many grey rooms were watching husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers die.

Justin spent a credit to send Linda a message.

Then he stood there.

For a long time.

Liz stayed with him.

The light began to fade, and the darkness came in a wave from the distance. Not night falling from the sky. Not shadows lengthening from trees and hills. A wall of twilight moved across the world as if someone were pulling a curtain over reality.

Liz stood from the cot.

“What is that?”

Justin saw it too.

“I have to get home.”

He gathered the horses, walked his bike, carried his pack, and moved down the road with River and Strider behind him. The view trailed over his shoulder from a bird’s eye view. Twilight fell over him.

Liz found herself holding her breath until he reached the house.

He put the horses in the backyard, gave them oats, and went inside.

The house was dark and quiet. All the hums and little lights of electricity that made a home buzz and feel alive were gone. Just a room and a couch and a boy with too much death squeezed into one day.

Justin lay down.

Liz stood inches from the screen.

He looked older than he had that morning, not by years, but by weight. His face had sharpened around the eyes. Dirt streaked one cheek. His hands were raw. His shirt clung to him. The bow rested nearby. Old Bessy leaned where he could reach it.

He was afraid. She could see it. She was afraid. But they would not give in to fear, not as long as they had each other.

The system had called him a warrior. It had dressed its horror in function, metrics, and duties. But he was afraid, lying there in the dark, and that made Liz love him with a force that hurt. Because he was afraid, and he had gone anyway. He was brave and had courage, a kind most did not, for she knew without fear that there is no courage.

“Good night mom and Alison, I love you,” Justin said into the dark. “Liz, good night, I… I love you.”

Liz’s throat closed.

She touched the screen.

“Good night, Justin. I love you too.”

He could not hear her.

She had 6-XP left.

Enough for a message, to send words of comfort. Enough to say good night. Enough to waste what might matter tomorrow.

Her finger hovered over messaging.

She wanted to send it. Wanted him to see the words before sleep took him. Wanted to give him one warm thing in all that blood, black, and darkness.

But tomorrow would come, and with it two monsters. Then four

He might need her to answer something. She might need one message when it counted. The thought made her pull her hand back as if the icon burned.

“No,” she whispered. “Save it.”

On the screen, Justin’s eyes closed.

His breathing shifted.

Sleep took him in pieces, not peace. His brow twitched. One hand curled near his chest. The dark room wrapped around him, and for a while, Liz feared he would vanish too, that the system would take the picture from her now that he slept.

It did not.

The protector view remained active.

Liz dragged the thin blanket from her cot and wrapped it around her shoulders. It smelled like nothing. It held little warmth. She sat on the floor beneath the screen with her knees to her chest, watching him sleep.

Somewhere beyond the gray stone, if beyond meant anything here, her mother was trapped. Kathleen was trapped. Alison. Linda. Billions, billions of women… Every woman who had been breathing on earth had been placed in exact replicas of her room.

Liz looked at Justin’s sleeping face. He had promised to get her out. She believed him; if there was a way, then he would find it.

She opened the crafting menu as she started to fall asleep and left it hovering beside the screen, small enough not to block his face.

Tomorrow, she would learn the tower.

Tomorrow, she would figure out how to make something from nothing.

Tomorrow, she would find a way to help the man she loved survive.

For now, she sat in the sterile dark, knees tucked to her chest, watching the screen, watching over Justin the only way she could.

“Sleep,” she whispered. “I’m here, I’ll always be here.”