Chương 43: Chili, Dogs, and Crystals

Kelly parked the truck at the curb outside a low brick apartment building and let it sit idle. She sat with the heat ticking as she studied the locked door at the top of the stairs. Earlier that loop, after a containment breach at a hyperloop station, a station manager named Rook had invited her to eat chili and meet the dog she had saved. She had lived through this day before, and she knew that reaching the East-grid without preparation would leave her a dead smear on the street before she reached anything useful.

So she was preparing. This was preparation, sort of—battling an apocalypse and avenging your death to something unseen, while bailing on brunch was just bad form. She killed the engine. Behind a door on the second floor, a dog barked, and claws scraped tile. Kelly climbed the stairs. Rook opened the apartment door. Rook was wearing an old apron tied over his clothes, one hand holding a wooden spoon.

He looked at Kelly with recognition, then at her truck with curiosity, and Kelly noticed the small shift in his expression as he realized this was not a simple visit between two people taking stock in an apocalypse.

"Kelly," Rook said, stepping aside.

"I'm glad you came. I was starting to wonder if you were going to decide that accepting an invitation was somehow more dangerous than everything else you do." Kelly removed her gloves and gave him a look.

"That is a very specific accusation for someone who has known me for five seconds today."

"I have known you longer than five seconds."

"You know what I mean." Rook smiled slightly.

"I do." A tan, flop-eared mutt with a gray muzzle shoved past him and planted both front paws on Kelly's thighs. Rook said, "He'll settle once you're inside." Kelly scratched behind the dog's ear and smiled. She'd had worse greetings today. The apartment stayed warm against the smoke outside and carried the smell of chili. A teenager sat on the floor near the kitchen wall with a bowl in both hands. Rook's neighbor, apparently. I guess his chili really is famous, Kelly thought. A hologram of Dr.

Haider flickered above the counter and read off the nutritional profile of something labeled survival loaf. Kelly reached over and waved a hand through the hologram until it vanished.

"Later," Kelly told the hologram. Rook ladled chili into a bowl and handed it to her. A news screen on the wall showed a district marked'EAST-GRID' burning in twelve places. Kelly ate a spoonful and let the heat settle in her chest. She looked up from her bowl.

"It's good. The chili." She tasted her spoon.

"Disturbingly good for someone who's never actually tasted it." The teen ate another spoonful.

"You sound surprised." Kelly shrugged.

"I keep forgetting he doesn't eat. It's a little insulting to every chef alive, somehow." Rook kept his back to them at the stove.

"Cooking isn't about eating." Rook cooked dessert while the news cycled through footage of fires and military convoys. The screen showed a city-region labeled EAST GRID with a live feed: smoke columns, flashing lights, armored vehicles moving between barricades. Rook set a glass of water on the table beside her.

"They've had that whole district locked down since this morning. It keeps spreading." The neighbor leaned forward with his bowl in both hands.

"The broadcast keeps cutting away. One minute it's fires, the next it's a map with no labels. Half the reporters won't say what they're seeing." Rook settled into a chair near the couch.

"That's because they don't know. The military's been pushing everyone back from the east side since the first portal opened. No one's getting a clear picture." He kept his eyes on the screen.

"Whatever's there, they really don't want people to see it." Kelly swallowed another spoonful and watched the screen. Behind the live feed she carried a different image from a loop the others would never live: the same region erased in chromatic light, a detonation that had killed her before she even knew to locate its source, and one of the causes that triggered her first loop. The feed on screen showed stacks of buildings with their tops sheared off and smoke rising from the four dozen floors.

"If they're keeping it locked down, something over there is doing a lot more than just trashing the place," she said. The neighbor nodded.

"I heard from a guy on the first floor that they found a real life sewer mermaid." Rook shook his head.

"That old legend?" Kelly scoffed.

"No way that's real. Everyone knows a sewer mermaid is a guy in a wig and a wetsuit running a scrap hustle." Kelly ate a second bowl and then a third while the news cycled through footage of fires and military convoys. Buster circled a cushion three times and dropped onto it with a full-body sigh. He climbed onto the couch and settled with his head on Kelly's lap. The dog's gray muzzle twitched through a dream. Rook adjusted his seat near the couch.

"Buster only trusts people who stay calm. He won't rest on someone running hot." The chili was good. Spicy enough to make her eyes water, but not so hot that it stopped being food. The bread the neighbor had brought was soft in the middle and tore apart easily. Kelly could not remember the last time she had sat somewhere this quiet and eaten something made by another person. The loop had made most meals into fuel. This was different.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Kelly looked down at the dog. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned. His ribs rose and fell under her palm. She blinked several times and kept her hand still. A hollow ache sat behind her sternum. It would disappear once she started moving. Fighting. Inventing. But with Buster on her lap, and warm chili in her mouth, she was still. She knew the loop would reset. Buster would not remember her hand on his ribs.

Rook would not remember the bowl she left on the floor. The warmth in the room would be erased, and she would be the only one carrying it. When the day reset, no one in this apartment would remember that she had ever been there. She blinked hard and kept her palm flat against Buster's ribs. Rook collected her empty bowl without comment and set it in the sink. The neighbor looked up from his own bowl, opened his mouth, and then went back to eating. The silence inside the apartment stretched around her.

Buster's breathing stayed slow and even. Kelly kept her hand on the dog's ribs until the tightness in her chest loosened enough for her to speak.

"Buster has the right idea," Kelly told the dog.

"Couch, tail, ignore the apocalypse." Rook scratched under Buster's chin.

"He's been onto it for years. Panic wastes energy, and a warm couch solves most problems." Kelly leaned back.

"I respect that. If I could sleep through the end of the world, I would." Kelly let that simmer and stared out of the window. Something with too many arms and ice for legs just climbed out of the sewer.

"Second best day this week," she murmured. The neighbor had heard about her day. He quirked his head.

"You fought a troll earlier, and this is the best part of your week?"

"The troll didn't season anything." The dog sighed and dropped his head onto Kelly's elbow. Rook said, "Buster, let the woman eat." The neighbor asked, "Are you staying longer? You don't have to leave yet. There's more chili, and Buster gets upset when people vanish right after he trusts them." Kelly watched the news-screen.

"I have to move. I've already stayed longer than I planned." She looked at him.

"Besides, I'm always leaving. The city has a schedule for me." The news played on. Kelly kept her eyes on the screen. The east grid held something. A secret there had glassed half the district. There was a lab she needed there, too. Whatever waited to kill her also sat in that district. She had made preparations to investigate. The answer might sit behind the loop, the invasion, everything. Moving made the pressure in her sternum ease, and Kelly was already thinking about moving. Vaughn first.

She needed their machines, and permission had never been the useful part. New augments, Titles, Traits, and then a botanical lab in the east grid. None of that belonged in the warm air of this room. She let the thought sit behind her ribs. Then the East-grid. Two reasons. The first was the botanical lab on the map, because it had a lot of things she needed. The second was the grid itself.

Every soldier in the city had been funneled into that district, which meant something there was big enough to draw that response. The loop had already shown her what would happen later in the day—an explosion that would glass half the city that started right there—but it had never shown her what caused it. Last loop, something in that district had killed her so fast she never saw it coming.

She still didn't know what was in the grid, why the military had poured so many soldiers into the streets there, what had killed her, what caused the explosion, or what started the loop. She kept all of it off her face. Rook followed her gaze, as if reading her intentions.

"Kelly," Rook said, "the east grid has been eating soldiers all day."

"So have I." His neighbor made a sound and looked embarrassed. Rook gave Kelly a long look. Rook asked, "What if it's a weapon?"

"Then I'll carry it."

"What if it's a person?"

"Then I'll learn what they know." He folded his arms.

"It's the most dangerous part of the city."

"I'm going to prep first. Shoot later." Kelly shifted her hand to Buster's shoulder.

"People not wanting you to see something is basically an invitation." His neighbor frowned at his dessert.

"Or a reason to stay away." Kelly stood. Said her goodbyes. Scratched Buster behind the ears. Rook told her to stay out of the east grid until she had better gear. Haider told her to sleep. Kelly promised nothing. He walked her to the apartment door while Buster stayed on the couch and started snoring.

"You know where to find us," Rook told her.

"The door stays locked from the street, but if you come back, knock and I'll open it." Kelly stepped over the threshold.

"I'll come back." Rook held the door open.

"Don't make a production. Walk in and eat. Buster will be here, and so will I." Kelly paused on the landing.

"I'll walk in and eat." The neighbor spoke from the floor.

"Try not to die." Kelly glanced back at him.

"I'm immortal, you know that, right?" She stepped outside. The door closed behind her, and the lock clicked into place as she headed for her truck. The chili sat warm in her stomach, and a street ahead ran dark. Kelly started the engine. She drove toward Vaughn with the window down. The city smelled of wet ash and hot metal. A collapsed overpass sat ahead. A pack of small creatures stripped wires from a dead truck. Kelly kept driving. Vaughn came first.

Jennie might be behind the next discovery, the next battle, the next body. Kelly planned to survive long enough to find out. She spotted a tattered-robed green creature near a subway entrance. The creature hunched over a wooden staff with a glowing crystal bolted to the top. It waved the staff at a knot of people sheltering behind a flipped car. A ribbon of magma lifted out of a split in the street and curled through the air. Kelly stopped the truck and got out. Shot forward. She let her pulse climb.

Her mer-blood answered. The magma stuttered, then held. The creature's head snapped toward her. Kelly pushed a wave of anger outward. The magma reversed and folded over the street in a bright rush. The creature screamed and ran. Kelly pulled a gun from the shadow at her feet and shot it several times in the back. It dropped. She walked over and collected the staff.

"Appreciate it." Inside the truck, Kelly laid the staff on the passenger seat. From the shadow at her feet came a cloth bundle of dense bones from the death knights under the city. Then a sealed container of troll matter. Then a container where she planned to put slabs of meat demon, leaking containment fluid onto the floor mat. Kelly had beaten the Heavy once. Now it would be used. She'd hunt it down in the streets for parts. She needed to upgrade herself real heavy, maybe add some weaponry, and hack her traits.

"You and me? We're going to do great things," she told the staff. Her job stayed the same. Her goals too. 100EQ was 90 levels away. The east grid waited for no one. Kelly looked at the staff. One magic stick down. More would follow. Nine Vaughn Industries rose at the end of the block, a tower with a cracked sign and a glass front streaked with soot. Kelly had samples. A lot of samples. She rolled the truck to a stop outside the entrance and left the engine running. Kelly stepped out and looked up at the tower.

The staff hung from her belt. Her shadow pooled at her feet, ready.

"First, upgrades," she said to the empty street.

"Then we go see what's glassing half the east grid." She walked toward the glass doors, one hand already reaching for the shadow at her feet.