A Little Something

Because, as Ilona eloquently put it, our last few weeks seriously sucked.

We get a treat, with the caveat (listen closely, Horde!) that it is not the beginning of a new serial, confirmation of the next project or any other secret message for us to divine in the tea leaves.

It’s a Friday short and we are fluffy about it.

The warehouse lay in complete silence. Nine thousand square feet of concrete floor with rows of drive-in bays on two sides and brick walls on the other two. Metal rafters supported a corrugated steel roof, punctuated by industrial lamps. Normally daylight would filter in through the translucent panels above the bay doors, but it was evening, and the lamps were the only source of light.

I left half of them off, and the concrete was a patchwork of light and shadow.

I sat in the middle of the floor, right leg extended and resting flat. I bent my left leg, grasping it by the ankle, and pulled it toward my chest, trying to loosen my hips. I wore a tracksuit with conveniently long sleeves that covered my arms and a pair of running shoes. My hair was up in a ponytail and out of my face. If anyone walked into the warehouse, they would see an ordinary forty-year-old woman sitting on the floor.

This wasn’t just a bad idea. This was a dangerous idea.

Maybe he wouldn’t show.

The warehouse sat on Pershing Road in Cicero, in the middle of an industrial zone. Warehouses lined the entire street, and by night the area was deserted. The traffic noises had receded a while ago. It was quiet.

I closed my eyes. The silence blossomed like a flower, and I sank into it, listening. There was no emotion, no worry, only waiting.

Reality faded. Not completely. It had become an overlay, and beneath it a different place and a different time unfolded. A lithe figure spun across rocky ground, a sword in her hand, her movement fluid one moment and explosive the next. Behind her, a huge purple sun rose in a pale blue sky.

I’d tried meditation before, but my thoughts always ran away in circles. Kids, bills, work. But this wasn’t meditation. I wasn’t at peace. I wasn’t healing or reestablishing inner balance. I waited like a predator, thoughtless and anticipating approaching prey, while my mind danced through someone else’s memory.

A faint whisper of a vehicle sliding into the parking space.

I let go of my left leg and switched to the right one.

A quiet thump of the car door closing.

Footsteps drawing near.

I opened my eyes.

The door in the far wall swung open, and Jeremy Fenlon emerged onto the warehouse floor carrying a long duffel bag on his shoulder. He was forty-five years old, although most would judge him to be in his thirties until they saw his face. His dark battle suit allowed for full range of movement, but despite being slightly loose on his frame, it couldn’t hide his build. People tended to pick up a little weight as they aged, but his body was lean and almost pure muscle, as if woven from steel wire. He was ridiculously strong and abnormally fast.

Jeremy approached and stopped ten feet from me. He had a classic square-jawed face with a very narrow nose, eyebrows that angled up, and smart brown eyes, wrapped in crow’s feet. His brown hair had begun to grey, and he kept it cut longish on top and brushed it straight back, so it curved slightly. He looked like someone who used his brain for a living, was excellent at his job, and had too much work on his plate. A highly competent surgeon in the prime of his career. A genius professor, scuffed up around the edges.

He was none of those things.

Jeremy took the duffel off his shoulder, crouched by me, and surveyed the warehouse. “Love the place. Thinking of changing careers?”

“I rented it for one night.” I straightened both legs.

“Why?”

“Privacy.”

Was I making a mistake? I’d rolled that question around in my head for the last three days, long before I asked him, and I came up with ‘no’ every time. Tomorrow, I would be officially returning to work. I needed a benchmark.

“I need to know if this is covered,” I said.

Jeremy sighed and nodded. He had a quiet, calm voice, and something about the way he talked anchored you and made everything he said seem reasonable.

“I’m still your assigned Peer Support Specialist. Anything that happens here is covered by therapist-client privilege. I’m bound by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HIPAA Privacy Rule. The only thing that overrides that is the duty to warn and protect. Are you planning on making a credible, imminent threat to your life or the lives of others?”

“No.”

“Then we are covered. So, what can I do for you?”

“I need you to fight me.”

He frowned. “That’s it? That’s the favor?”

I nodded.

He looked around the warehouse dappled with patches of gloom and light and turned back to me. His gaze locked on me, unblinking.

“The fastest and simplest reaction pathway is by touch.”

He spoke in a measured, methodical way, his voice almost intimate.

“No thinking required. Touch a hot pan and your body jerks your hand away before you can process anything. It takes an average human 150 milliseconds to pull their hand out of the fire. It takes me 78.”

He really was ridiculously fast.

“A fight doesn’t rely on simple pathways. It depends on sight. For an average human, the response to visual cues takes about 250 milliseconds. Recognition bumps us up to 384 milliseconds, and once we start making choices, we go up to a full half-second. Normal humans also slow down with age.”

He gave me a quick smile. I smiled back.

“I don’t,” he said. “My choice reaction time in a fight is 246 milliseconds. I assess the enemy, make a judgement, and start moving before you can jerk your hand away from the fire, Ada.”

“I know,” I told him.

“Did you look up my stats?”

I didn’t answer.

Jeremy unzipped his duffel, reached into it, and pulled out a sword with an odd, segmented blade.

“This weapon isn’t designed to spar. It’s designed to kill. And I’m not your friendly neighborhood sensei, who teaches kids the value of discipline through martial arts. I’m a flux reaper. I’ve cut my way through breaches for seven years. Remind me, what is your designation?”

“Dimension Breach Resource Assessor.”

“That’s right. DeBRA. A noncombatant. Being in a situation where you are forced to fight for your life is inherently traumatic. Reliving that stress helps you move past it. However, exposure therapy has its drawbacks. There is a high risk of re-traumatization with improper execution. I’m not sure this qualifies as a proper execution.”

I would have to give him more to get him to agree. “This isn’t about PTSD.”

“Then what is it about?”

“Self-assessment.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I can kill you before your mind recognizes my face.”

“When we started this a month ago, you asked me what I needed. I need this.”

“If Monday makes you anxious, we can postpone.”

I shook my head. “Do this with me, and I will be ready for Monday.”

He pondered me for a long moment and sighed. “Okay.”

Jeremy rose with fluid grace, holding his sword in his left hand. He offered his right to me. I gripped it, and he pulled me to my feet.

“Do you need a weapon?” he asked.

“I have one.”

He squinted at my empty hands. I almost felt sorry for him.

Ten years ago, portals opened in large cities all over the planet. We hadn’t known we were under attack until they burst, spilling monsters into the world. Something had opened breaches in reality, connecting us to other worlds, and attempted to invade. From that moment, humanity was at war.

We adapted.

We developed new terminology, created the Dimensional Defense Command, and dug in for the long haul.

In the wake of that first burst, some people gained unusual abilities. We called those people Talents, and they fell into two broad categories: combat and noncombat. The portals became known as gates. We learned that they led to interdimensional spaces filled with terrifying creatures and valuable resources that defied our understanding of science. Resources we required to continue repelling the attacks.

My talent let me enter a breach and assess the resources it contained. I was a government employee, a valuable asset that the DDC loaned to the guilds. A noncombatant. An average human in every way that counted.

One month ago, I walked into the Elmwood Gate with one of the best guilds in the U.S. I was part of the mining team. The guild was supposed to protect me at all costs. Instead, it betrayed me and left me for dead.

Twenty-seven people lost their lives in that breach. For over a week, my children didn’t know if I’d survived, while the Cold Chaos Guild and the DDC were absolutely sure I was dead. Then I walked out of the gate with my dog.

Cold Chaos and I made a deal. The DDC might have had doubts about my account of their heroic rescue, but they had no proof we lied. More importantly, my death had the potential to become a huge PR nightmare, and once they discovered I was alive, they couldn’t wait to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

I’d been examined, interviewed, examined again, and once the higher-ups ascertained that I had every intention of continuing my work, they breathed a collective sigh of relief. Everything could go back to the way it was.

Jeremy was my DDC-assigned therapist. A high-grade combat Talent, trained specifically to work with people damaged by their time in the breach. His task was to get me over my trauma as soon as possible. For the last month, we’d been glued at the hip. Cognitive behavioral therapy, in-the-moment coping strategies, grounding techniques, we did all of it.

Two weeks ago, Jeremy walked me into a breach and walked me right out. We slowly built up the duration, and yesterday I stayed in a breach by myself for half an hour. Before I threw him this curveball, he had expected to clear me for work on Monday.

Right now, he was likely having serious doubts about my mental state.

Jeremy had devoted all of his professional time to me. He was careful, patient, and attentive. And another person in my place might have mistaken it for genuine care. But I knew better.

Jeremy saw me the same way he saw a monster blocking his path or a vehicle that needed to be repaired. I was an issue he had to solve. The DDC entrusted him with the woman who had found the biggest load of adamantite in the history of this war. His primary goal was to put me back together and send me into the breaches, and he went about that task with maximum efficiency. Once I was fully operational, he would put a check mark by my name and never wonder what became of me.

He was good at controlling his emotions, but hiding from my talent was impossible, and when I tested him a couple of times, I sensed his frustration. There was no genuine compassion or connection there, only a skin-deep pretense at empathy. He must’ve promised to get me up and running by Monday, and he intended to hit that goal. He would do nothing to jeopardize it, which was why I invited him here tonight.

“You should prime the blade,” I said.

“I think we’ll be fine.” He motioned to me with his free hand.

There was something predatory in the way he stood. Something tinged with bloodthirst and inner indifference. A kind of selfish anticipation.

Both of us were shaped by this war. At our very first session, Jeremy told me that one Ada had walked into the Elmwood Gate and a different Ada came out. He had no idea how right he was.

I flexed. My talent snapped into being. Jeremy’s image split into layers of color, and I processed the input in milliseconds.

The wide, thick metal bracelet on my right wrist flowed like water. Smooth metal drained down into my hand and gathered there, still hidden.

“Attack, Ada,” Jeremy said. “Or better yet, let’s abandon this plan and go home.”

I moved.

Jeremy was fast. Fast enough to process the strike of my empty left hand but not quite fast enough to dodge. My fingers grazed his forehead, and I spun around him, my whisper floating like the first hint of rising wind.

“Faster, Jeremy.”

The flux reaper whirled around. I gave him no time to adjust. The metal in my hand snapped into an avelier blade, a narrow sword with a split, razor-sharp tip that was born on another world. I didn’t have a purple sun to guide me, but my body knew all of the movements. I had practiced them every day since leaving the breach. They were second nature now.

Jeremy lashed out, his sword slicing in a horizontal arc. I let his sword slide off my blade, lunged past him, and tapped the back of his head with my free hand.

Jeremy’s eyes flared with orange. The flux blade split in his hand, breaking into a whip of metal segments connected by pulsing veins of orange energy. He became a whirlwind of metal and energy, the whip sword striking, spinning, slicing, retracting into a rigid blade, then breaking back into a whip without warning. His breach name was Render, and that is exactly what he did. If he’d been facing a mob of monsters, he would’ve shredded them to pieces.

I flowed between his strikes, waiting for an opening.

Cut, cut, cut, cut…

He lashed at my legs, and I barely avoided the strike. The orange tendrils of energy passed so close that the static pricked my skin through the cloth of the tracksuit.

Jeremy bared his teeth. He was trying to cut me, but I was fog. I was water.

He spun the flux blade in a spiral cut, the end of the whip snapping.

Now.

I lunged into it and caught the energy tendrils with my blade. The sharp segment slid through the twin tip of my sword and stopped, wedged there.

I punched Jeremy in the chest with everything I had.

The flux reaper flew backward, landed on his side, rolled, and sprang to his feet.

I stopped. One of the lamps glowed directly overhead, and I stood in the cone of light. It slid off my sword as I retracted the blade into the bracelet. I learned what I came here to find out. I was now faster than a peak-tier damage Talent.

I knew I could kill monsters. Walking out of the Elmwood Gate breach proved that. The question was, could I kill people who killed monsters? I had my answer.

If I went into the breach and a guild member betrayed me again, I could kill them.

I would kill them.

“Two hundred and fifty-nine milliseconds,” I told him. “Your average choice reaction time.”

Jeremy stared at me, his expression shocked.

Silence stretched.

He opened his mouth. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Adaline Moore. Dimension Breach Resource Assessor,” I said. “Thank you for your assistance, Jeremy. I believe you’re right. It is time I returned to work. I will be in my office on Monday. Please let your supervisor know that I am available for breach assignment.”

He stayed completely still, as if rooted to the floor.

I turned and walked to the door.

“Come, Bear.”

A massive shadow slipped from its hiding place in the corner of the warehouse.

Jeremy’s eyes widened. He hadn’t seen Bear. He hadn’t even noticed her.

The huge German shepherd padded past him, completely silent, showed him her teeth, and followed me out into the night.