The area outside the shelter showed few signs of the devastation. Crowds of people gathered together in lines.

Anne and I sat a little way off, waiting for our bus. No. 37 would take us to Pendleton, but it would be at least half an hour before it arrived.

“You made up quite a story on the spot,” I remarked to Anne.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You’re okay with introducing me as your brother?”

“Well, I thought of going with ‘he appeared amnesiac and fully naked on top of a building where I was dangling from, after being pushed over by my homicidal classmate’ - but that might have taken us longer to get home.”

“If I didn’t get arrested.”

“That, too. It’s the first thing I could think of. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I kind of like it,” I replied. “Andrew Drake. Brother to Anne Drake.”

Anne blushed. “Well. That’s okay, then.”

“Will your dad be okay with it?”

“I’ll… convince him. Don’t worry. You need an identity, at least until you get your memory back.”

“He won’t mind my being an … ultra?”

“He won’t, trust me. You saved my life. I think that makes you family.”

"I think that makes us family, too. I'd be honoured to have you as a sister, if you'll have me as your brother. Not just for the ID papers, but in truth."

"You would?" Anne's face lit up. "I … I didn't know if you were okay with it. I mean you're an ultra, I'm just…. me."

"You are the bravest person I know."

Anne blushed. “You’re definitely embarrassing enough to be an older brother.”

A new dialog box appeared:

YOU HAVE BEEN OFFERED THE CHOICE TO JOIN THE DRAKE FAMILY.

JOINING WILL EARN YOU THE SURNAME DRAKE. THEIR FRIENDS WILL BE YOUR FRIENDS AND THEIR FOES, YOUR FOES. NO DEEPER BOND CAN EXIST BETWEEN PEOPLE THAN THE BOND OF FAMILY.

ACCEPT? YES/NO.

It felt right.

QUEST UPDATE: EARN YOUR NAME. SURNAME GAINED: DRAKE. +100 XP.

ANDREW DRAKE

LEVEL 2

HP 120/120

MP: 240/240

PP: 216/216

XP: 470/2000

Was there an easier way to keep track of these numbers? One that didn’t involve me having boxes full of text pop up at random intervals?

A notification popped up:

ENABLE HEADS-UP VIEW? YOU CAN DISABLE IT LATER.

YES/NO

I nodded.

The box vanished.

Instead, at the four corners of my field of vision, bars appeared.

On the upper right, I could see a red bar with the letters HP on one end and 120/120 on the right end.

A blue bar below it, titled MP, and 240/240 against it.

The surprise was a green bar appeared below that, with a new name: AP 120/120.

A silver bar appeared to the upper left, with PP and 216/216.

A second surprise: a golden bar below that, with CP and 210/210.

At the bottom of my field of view, a grey bar appeared: XP 470/2000. At least this was obvious.

A circle appeared to my lower right, half white and half black and the letters +10 in white next to it. I remembered one more of the notifications - Ethics? Ah.

And the last was a small set of letters to the lower left in pink, with a dollar sign:

$ 0.00

My power was basically telling me I was broke. No surprise there.

Still, this view seemed more convenient than having boxes pop up every time I did something. Plus, it gave me an idea of all the numbers that I had to track. Health, mental energy, persuasion, XP, ethics, money, and whatever AP, PP and CP were - I resolved to look them up later.

I might enjoy numbers normally, but too many had been thrown at me in too short a time.

The bus dropped us off at Pendleton at close to ten.

Anne’s neighbourhood was a nice suburban street, with row houses and nicely maintained lawns. Tall fences separated the properties from one another. Well-lit streetlights and a clean main road.

“Looks prosperous,” I remarked as we walked up to the house.

“Dad helped build most of the houses on this street,” Anne commented. “Including ours. He has all sorts of funny stories about each one.”

“Like?”

“Like chasing raccoons off a site. There was also a snake infestation in one of the houses.”

“Not yours, I hope?”

“No, that one was Mr. and Mrs. Beaker’s.” She pointed to a house at the end of the street. “The great pigeon invasion of ‘75 was also centred around that one.”

“.... Pigeon invasion?”

“A few dozen pigeons nested in their house when they were on vacation in the Bahamas. When they got back they tried to chase the birds out. Turns out that pigeons are vicious creatures.”

“Are they now.”

“Hey, you haven’t seen an enraged pigeon. According to Mrs. Beaker, they had to flee for their lives. They called the cops, too. Cops weren’t happy.”

“Did the pigeons attack them, too?”

“Don’t remember. Ah, here we are.” Anne pushed open a gate with the number 2508 next to it.

The Drake home was a two-storey house with steel grey walls and a brown wooden roof. The door and windows stood out in white against the grey.

Anne walked up to the door. “Hello? Anne here.”

A robotic voice beeped from the door: “Password.”

“Chocolate ice cream.”

The door gently swung open.

I was impressed. “Was that a robot?”

“Robot? …. No, that’s just the home security system. It’s a sound-activated door management system.” She looked puzzled. “You haven’t seen one of these before? They’re pretty old tech.”

“I guess not. It looks really sophisticated to me.”

Anne shrugged. “It’s a fairly standard feature. Most houses have some sort of voice control system nowadays. The software is designed to recognize my face and voice. Dad’s, too….. He isn’t home, or he’d have been at the door when we walked up.”

“We’ll look for him. I have less than two hours before I can use Prophet's Roulette again."

"Okay. Let me check the house and the answering machine until then."

Anne walked me through the house. We checked the windows (intact), the electricity (on), the plumbing (water running), and the doors (the back door made a funny squeaking noise, which Anne assured me had been the case before the attack as well).

There were no messages on the answering machine. There were no e-mails on the computer. There were no post-its on the fridge.

“I’ll check the HMS,” Anne suggested.

“What’s an HMS?”

“House Management System. The door control software, the garage, all of it connect to the HMS and track stuff. Like when the door was opened, by whom, et cetera.”

“Why didn’t we check that first?”

“Because I don’t remember the password. But I found Dad’s papers. The password is listed here.”

The HMS showed that Paul Drake had left the house at 8:15 am the previous day. The attack had started at 12 noon. Since then there was no information on him or on his location.

We tried his phone again. Still nothing.

Finally, Anne sighed. “Is it time for your skill yet?”

“About ten minutes from now.” I shrugged. “Is there a place I can lie down? I don’t know if standing up would affect things.” Plus, if the ability backfired and I got a blinding headache, I would probably be better off lying down.

“We have a couch.”

Sure enough, there was a nice leather couch in the drawing room. I lay down on it and tried to concentrate.

The clock ticked down as I stared at the roof, with Anne sitting silently by the side. Would this work? I knew there was a chance of failure. One which would leave me with a massive headache to boot.

There was also the slight challenge that insights were supposed to be randomized. Could I do something to ensure that the hint I got was directly related to Mr. Drake?

“Anne,” I asked, “do you have a photo of your dad?”

“Sure.” She handed me a framed photograph from the mantelpiece.

Brown eyes, black hair, and a bushy beard with tinges of grey. Paul Drake’s photo showed a happy, smiling man with a powerful frame, flipping pancakes in the kitchen.

I tried to fix the image in my mind. Then I summoned my interface, went to Skills, and picked Prophet’s Roulette.

Timer still running. 00:00:30. 00:00:10. 00:00:05. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.

I activated the skill.

TEST OF LUCK: PASSED.

TEST OF INTELLIGENCE: PASSED.

WARNING: ROULETTE NOT SUITABLE FOR FOCUSED INSIGHT.

WARNING: SIDE EFFECTS MAY TRIGGER.

My vision swam.

This time, the insight was not a text box, but an image.

A man lying unconscious in a hospital bed, with an IV line running into his veins. Bandages across his head. A machine beeping at the side.

Paul Drake.

I could see a doctor in green scrubs. A nurse, too. Some of the image was blurry, in strange places.

The nurse’s scrubs bore a tag - W. HINNET.

The doctor’s couldn’t be seen.

The vision faded.

TEST OF LUCK: FAILED.

WARNING: SIDE EFFECTS ACTIVATED.

And agonizing pain exploded through my forehead.

YOU HAVE INCURRED SIDE EFFECTS FROM MISUSE OF A SKILL. FIRST MISUSE PENALTIES ARE MILD. FUTURE MISUSE PENALTIES INTENSIFY WITH EACH USE. USE SKILLS CORRECTLY.

-30 HP.

-150 MP.

-100 AP.

-200 PP.

-200 CP.

STATUS EFFECT: CRIPPLING HEADACHE: -3 INT FOR 2 HOURS.

HP: 90/120 PP 16/216

MP: 0/192 CP 10/210

AP: 20/120 Effects: Crippling Headache 02:00:00

$0.00 XP: 470/2000 Ethics: +10

INT REDUCED TO 12. TIMER: 02:00:00

“Ohh…” I groaned. “My head.”

“What happened?” Anne exclaimed.

“.... He’s alive. But he’s in a hospital. Unconscious.” I groaned. “And I managed to give myself a killer headache.”

“Which hospital?”

“Don’t know. There’s a nurse - W. Hinnet - who was standing next to him.”

“I thought this power gave you hints?”

“They’re supposed to be random… not directed. Think I screwed up by using Roulette this way.”

“Understood. Can you stand up?”

I pushed myself upright. My head still had shooting pains going through it. “I think so. Head still hurts, though.”

“Understood…. Shall I get you some aspirin?”

“Please…”

“Okay.” Anne rushed out. I levered myself off the couch and to a standing position.

I’d really hit myself hard with this misuse. I felt fortunate that I’d been lying down - if I’d been standing up, the pain would have caused me to fall over.

It also drove home the point that misusing my powers was dangerous. If a 30 HP loss was a ‘mild’ effect, then what would a serious effect look like? And what would happen on the third, or fourth, or fifth such misuse?

My Skills, I decided, were best used only in the manner they were intended.

FOR LEARNING A LESSON FROM A PAINFUL EXPERIENCE, YOU SHOW GOOD JUDGMENT. +1 WISDOM.

It seemed my powers agreed with me.

Anne came back with an aspirin and a glass of water. “Here,” she handed me the tablet. “It should help with the pain.

I downed the tablet and drank the water.

The headache faded.

EFFECT CURED: CRIPPLING HEADACHE.

INTELLIGENCE RESTORED TO NORMAL. HP +5.

… Wait, what?

“Anne, do you have any more of those tablets?”

“Sure, here.” Anne handed over another tablet.

I focused on it. “Observe.”

ASPIRIN TABLET

MEDICINE. + 5 HP.

REMOVES MINOR MEDICAL STATUS EFFECTS. REMOVES HEADACHES COMPLETELY.

…. And medicines also helped to cure my getting headaches.

I’m no doctor, but even I know medicines aren’t supposed to work that way.

Maybe they worked that way only for me? Or was this a side-effect of my power?

…. Maybe I’d figure that out later. Right now, the priority was to figure out how to help Paul.

“So he’s …. alive?” Anne asked

“Alive but unconscious. At least according to my vision. If it can be trusted.”

“It’s the best lead we have so far. Do you know which hospital.”

“No. How many hospitals are there in Tanisport?”

“At least ten. We can’t be going from hospital to hospital….”

“We can call them. Also, one of the nurses is named W. Hinnet. We can ask the hospitals if they have a Nurse Hinnet on staff - it’s unusual enough a name.”

Anne brightened. “That might work.”

The next hour was occupied by us trying the phone numbers and websites of all the hospitals in the city.

The first six hospitals responded that they had no Nurse Hinnet on staff. As for unconscious people with head wounds, there were far too many to identify. They took our details and promised to call us back.

The seventh confirmed that Nurse Hinnet was on staff, but had left for the day. They had several patients in an unconscious state, including forty-six who fit the description we gave. We would need to come down and identify the person ourselves.

"Just to make sure, let's call the other three," I suggested.

It turned out that the last hospital we called also had a Nurse Hinnet on staff. And seven unconscious patients.

"Tanisport General and St. Mary's," I told Anne. "How far are they?"

"Tanisport General is halfway across town," Anne replied, "but St. Mary's is fairly close. About twelve kilometres."

"Let's go?"

As we entered the garage, I got a sudden notification:

TEST OF LUCK: FAILED.

Anne swore. "Crap!"

"What happened?"

"The autocar's dead." Anne pointed at the vehicle, which seemed dark. "Cable wasn't connected and the charge ran out."

"Can it be fixed?"

"It just needs to be charged. That takes four hours."

"It's two a.m. right now. At least we know where he might be."

"We could take a cab."

"Are any working right now?"

"No ….."

"You're not going to be able to get to a hospital twelve kilometres away in less than four hours. And Tanisport General is even farther."

Anne slumped to the ground. "I know…. I just wish I could do something, you know? Find him. Just….. be by his side."

"I know." I parted her shoulder. "At least he's in a hospital. Let's just get you some sleep for now, and I promise we'll go in the morning."

"What if something happens and he's in danger?"

"Then my quest will let me know. And it'll probably come with a timer."

A wan smile crossed Anne's face. "It's strange; you've had your powers for less than two days, and we're depending on them already."

"That's…. strangely true."

"And we still don't understand them fully."

"Also true."

Anne sighed, then got up. "Let's charge this. Then we'll get some sleep. Will you keep an eye on things? Your quest alerts and stuff?"

"I will. I don't actually feel sleepy right now."

Anne showed me how to connect the charging cable to the Autocar. We then headed back into the house, where she showed me the guest room.

"You'll wake me up at six?"

"I promise."