Chương 12: Setting Out

"Lock." The spell rotated the tumbler and the bar mechanism keeping the security gate closed withdrew. Val grabbed the bottom edge and hauled it upward, the steel groaning as it rolled into the housing above. Behind the grille, the glass double doors were shattered. Someone had reached through the gaps and smashed them, maybe hoping to pry it open with a crowbar, but the security gate had held. Enzo stepped through the empty door frame, glass crunching underfoot, and the others followed.

Inside, the shop was untouched. Rows of bikes hung from wall mounts and stood in floor displays, frames catching the light from the broken windows. The smell of rubber and chain oil. Racks of accessories along the side wall. Helmets, bags, water bottles, pumps, all of it still in place. Enzo glanced over his shoulder. Across the street, a handful of people had stopped to watch. Two men and a woman, loaded down with bags, checking out the open bike shop with obvious interest. He looked up at the shutter above him.

Too high to reach. He extended his hand and made a pulling motion.

"Telekinesis." Mana flowed out of him, coalescing into a formless haze around the metal gate above. The shutter rattled all the way down before stopping with a loud thud when it hit the pavement.

"Lock." The mechanism clicked again, this time securing them inside. He ignored the new notifications. Val and Sumi were already wandering the rows. Val ran her fingers along the frames as she passed, and Sumi had stopped in front of a display of electric bikes, reading the feature card with mild curiosity. Murph sniffed at a rack of tires, lost interest, and lay down in a patch of sunlight near the broken window. Enzo left them to it.

He'd been in shops like this plenty of times, back when riding was part of his active lifestyle. The layout was familiar. Performance bikes along the far wall, commuters and hybrids in the center, mountain bikes near the back. Accessories to the right. Service counter and workshop behind a half-wall. While the goal was simply to get out of the city and back home to where their parents lived, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the reality was different.

If his suspicions were correct, the Eater problem was only just beginning to make itself known. The existence of Tier 1s showing rapid physiological evolutions was already scary enough, and without technology to communicate, travel, and fight back, it was only going to get worse. Much worse. Which meant they needed to prepare for anything. He started pulling gear. Three repair kits with spare tubes, tire levers, and patch adhesive. A hand pump that mounted to the frame.

Three sets of panniers from the touring section, the clip-on kind that hung from rear racks. Three rear racks, aluminum, bolt-on. Water bottle cages. A package of bungee cords. He piled everything in the center of the showroom floor and went back for helmets. He spotted a hands-free dog bike leash kit hanging near the accessories wall. A spring-loaded arm that bolted to the rear axle, designed to keep the dog at a safe distance from the wheels, plus a padded chest harness.

He grabbed them and tossed them onto the pile.

"Enzo." Val's voice came from the far wall. She had a bike lifted overhead with one arm, the frame so light it barely flexed.

"This one." He looked at it for all of a second.

"No."

"Why?" She lowered it, holding it by the top tube as if it weighed nothing.

"It's the coolest one here."

"Carbon isn't a good choice for this. You hit a pothole wrong and the fork cracks. You clip a car door and the frame splits. And when it breaks, it's done." He pulled a steel-framed hybrid from the center row and rolled it toward her.

"This is what you want." Val looked at the hybrid the way someone might look at a sensible sedan after test-driving a sports car.

"Ugh. It's ugly. And heavy."

"You just carried eighty pounds of dog food across the street. You'll manage." He tapped a frame with his knuckles. The steel rang.

"This can be repaired. Bent back. Welded if we find the right equipment. When the derailleur cable snaps in six months, we replace it with cable from any other bike we find on the road. Carbon requires specialized equipment to repair and materials from a world with supply chains. That world's gone." Val stared at him for a moment. Then she set the carbon bike back on its mount and took the hybrid.

"Fine. But I reserve the right to complain about it."

"Noted." Sumi appeared beside them.

"Should I just pick the same kind?"

"I'll pick yours," Enzo said.

"And mine. Give me a minute." He found two more steel-framed hybrids in the right size range. Similar builds, slightly different fits. Wide tires with enough tread for debris and wet roads. Flat handlebars. Mechanical disc brakes, cable-actuated rather than hydraulic, because cables could be replaced in the field where hydraulic systems needed specialty fluid they wouldn't find. Simple drivetrains with a wide enough gear range to handle hills under load.

The one he chose for himself was dark green with a straight top tube and rack mounts already brazed to the frame. It reminded him of the bike sitting in his parents' garage in Mill Valley. He'd bought that one the summer before the accident, ridden it through Marin County on weekends, up Mount Tam and back down through the redwoods with his knees pumping and the wind loud enough to drown out everything. It hadn't been touched since.

He adjusted the seat height, patiently walking the others through their own adjustments. His own set to the position that allowed a comfortable range of motion considering his knee. He bolted the rear racks on, checked the torque by feel, and hung the panniers. Then he started the transfer. The dog food bags went onto Val's bike, one on each side, balanced. Water bottles distributed evenly across all three bikes.

Enzo's tool rolls and gemstone pouches went into his own panniers, padded with a spare shirt from his pack. The hand-crank sharpener strapped to his rear rack with bungee cords, heavy but at least it wouldn't unbalance his ride. Backpacks went on last, cinched to the top of the rear racks with their straps looped through. Lighter now. Wearable if they had to ditch the bikes and walk, but off their backs in the meantime.

"Test them," Enzo said.

"Ride a lap around the floor. If anything feels wrong, tell me." Sumi went first, pedaling a cautious loop with her hands tight on the bars.

"The bags feel weird. Like the bike wants to lean." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"It'll stabilize at speed. Keep your weight centered and don't overcorrect." He watched her ride another lap.

"You're good." While Sumi circled, Val knelt beside Murph with the chest harness. Murph took one look at it and backed up, ears flat.

"Come on," Val said.

"It's just a harness." Murph whined and squirmed sideways as Val tried to loop the strap around her chest. Val got one buckle fastened before Murph wriggled free and sat just out of reach, looking deeply offended.

"Murph, I swear to God—""Sit, Murph." Murph sat instantly, head swiveling toward Enzo.

"Good girl. Let Val put the harness on. It's safer." Murph cocked her head, tongue lolling. Then she held still while Val buckled the remaining straps, adjusting the fit across her chest.

"Unbelievable. Total betrayal." Val tightened the last strap and stood.

"I picked you out of a whole litter of your siblings. I let you sleep on the bed in secret. And I just threatened two men with fire to protect your kibble. But noooo, he says one word and you turn into a model citizen." Murph's tail wagged. Val bolted the leash arm to her rear axle and clipped Murph in. She swung a leg over and pushed off, weaving between displays with more speed than the space warranted.

Murph hesitated for a half-stride, then found her rhythm, trotting alongside with the spring arm keeping her clear of the wheels. Val braked, circled back, and nodded.

"We're good." Enzo mounted his own bike after slipping his cane tight between the bungee cords. The motion was strange after four years. The leg swing, the seat, the shift of weight as the bike accepted him. He pushed off. His knee worked. No grinding, no sharp protest. The circular motion was smooth and low-impact, the joint moving through its range without the lateral stress that walking demanded. He knew it would be fine.

Cycling had been the first exercise his physical therapist had cleared him for after the surgery, and the last one he'd kept up with before he'd eventually stopped doing that too. But knowing and feeling were different. For the first time in four years, his legs were doing what he asked of them without compromise. He completed the loop and pulled up beside the others.

"Ready?" Val asked. Sumi nodded.

"Let's go." He pointed at the shutter.

"Lock." He swept a hand upward.

"Telekinesis." The security gate rolled upward, and the three of them set off. The first few blocks were quiet. Murph found her stride alongside Val's bike within half a minute, the spring arm keeping her at a comfortable distance from the wheels. The panniers swayed gently with each pedal stroke, then settled into the rhythm. Nobody talked. There wasn't much to say that the streets weren't already saying for them. The streets looked the same here as everywhere else. Same aftermath, same silence. Bodies in cars.

A woman on a bench who might have been sleeping if not for the color of her skin. Sheets draped over shapes on the sidewalk, weighed down at the corners with rocks or shoes. Someone had started that, at least. Started and stopped. Everything tinted red, though it was steadily fading as the mana in the blood continued to dissipate. Enzo guided them west along the commercial strip, weaving between abandoned cars.

A delivery truck sat jackknifed across an intersection, its rear doors hanging open and cargo long since emptied. He extended a hand toward a sedan whose door hung open in their path.

"Telekinesis." The door swung shut. They rode through the gap. Two blocks later, he did it again. A car door, closed with a flick of mana. Then, as they passed a parked SUV, he pointed at it like a gun and murmured, "Lock." The locks clicked from ten feet away.

"What are you doing?" Val called, catching up and riding alongside him.

"Practicing magic."

"You're finger-gunning spells at parked cars."

"I'm leveling spells on parked cars. There's a difference." Val was quiet for a moment. Then she took her left hand off the handlebar and brought it to her chest, palm open, fingers spread. She was attempting to absorb mana. One-handed. With her eyes open. While pedaling. And without even the pretense of meditating. Her front wheel wobbled hard. Sumi made a small noise of alarm. Val corrected, steadied, and tried again. Her jaw set with the effort of splitting her focus between the physical world and the intake.

Murph continued running beside her, with no idea how close she was to potential tragedy. They passed a half-built barricade across a residential street. Overturned shopping carts, a bookshelf, some chairs. Two men stood behind it with a baseball bat and a golf club, watching them ride past without a word. Val's hand trembled. Then she let it drop and grabbed the handlebar again, breathing hard.

"Well?" Enzo asked.

"It works. Barely. But it's like trying to drink through a straw while sprinting. But I got some, which means it works!" She grinned at him.

"You know what that means, right?" He understood the implications. Mana absorption on the go. No more reliance on poses and closed eyes. It could mean the difference between life and death in a fight. It could also mean dying tragically in a biking accident. Val continued.

"Also, my mana is really flowing right now. My heart's pumping hard, and the mana just wants to go."

"Can you control it?" She shook her head.

"It's moving too fast to do anything but let it flow. I'll have to practice." Enzo nodded. They'd traded notes about their experiences with mana. His casting. Her cultivation. At first he'd wondered if cultivating mana was just another way to create spell forms, just internally instead of externally. It turned out that they were fundamentally different processes. Spells required control to create precise forms using mana guided by intent.

Techniques also required control, but over the circulation as mana pulsed and threaded from the heart across the body. Val had described braiding the flows, breaking them into carefully measured pulses and beats akin to music. Or simply shoving as much as you could into your hand and hitting things with the resulting magic explosion. The smell hit as they cut south briefly to avoid a pileup. A car with its window smashed, body still inside. The sun had been working on it through the glass.

Enzo breathed through his mouth and pedaled faster. Nobody commented. While Enzo continued firing off spells, Sumi brought one hand up to her forehead. Thumb and index finger pressed together in a circle, using the one-handed lens he'd accidentally discovered that day they returned to the apartment. Except her eyes remained open while she did it, taking the idea from Val's experiment. She gasped.

"It works!" A pause.

"I wonder if I can absorb while riding, too."

"How about we don't all meditate while dodging abandoned cars," Enzo said.

"In a city full of Eaters that might be hiding anywhere." Sumi blushed.

"Good point."

"You should definitely keep training Mana Sense while we ride, though. That has to be a valuable skill." She smiled.

"It already leveled up once!" They approached the intersection that would allow them to cut north through Golden Gate Park. It was the same road they would follow all the way through the rest of the city, eventually taking them across the Presidio and onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Enzo recognized the stretch. He'd walked this road a hundred times. Knew the cafe on the corner ahead, where he'd buy coffee some days when walking Murph. Had frequented half a dozen of the surrounding stores.

They passed one that was familiar for a different reason. A bloody handprint, dried brown on the glass door, with a man slumped nearby, face turned to the wall. He remembered the moment. The first day of the end of the world. The rain coming down. Blood everywhere. Rushing to cross the street, Murph in his arms. Not knowing if she was going to die, if he was going to die, or even whether Valentina was safe.

That man had been pounding on the door, screaming to be let in, while the people inside, safe behind the glass, watched and did nothing. Enzo had kept walking. He'd known what those people had known. There was nothing anyone could do. He kept riding now, too. A man sat on an overturned milk crate at a corner of the intersection, a hand-lettered cardboard sign propped against his knees. Red marker. Block letters. THE END IS HERE. REPENT. He looked calm. He looked as if he'd been there for days.

Perhaps longer than that. Possibly he'd been there before any of this started, and the apocalypse had simply caught up to his marketing. They rode past, turning north. The man watched them go without a word.