I hadn’t been the only one watching when the ground swallowed the little girl. I was running towards her before I consciously decided to do so, and I was far from the only one. It looked like a thin layer of the dirty orange mulch that had covered the playground had come to life, completely covering the girl and pulling her form prone against the ground. It really looked just like the ground cover. If it wasn’t moving, I might have just thought it was a thick mound of mulch some kid had pushed together.

It was moving, though, an undulating squeeze rippling along its length.

Could it be something… alive?

I grabbed at the mulch, trying to dig it away from the girl, but my hands couldn’t find purchase. Wherever I tried to grab, the mulch texture melted away into a slick, featureless surface.

Shards of ice ricocheted off the bundle and into the face shield of my helmet. Another portion erupted in brilliant flame, and I could hear Micah shouting “Fires of Punishment!” like an anime character. The area where the Ice Bolt had landed was leaking fluid and it began making an awful high-pitched grating noise, like nails on a chalkboard

Definitely alive.

Darryl and Carlos had arrived but were standing back, clearly hesitant to use their baseball bats with the little girl still bundled inside. Seeing their uncertainty made me remember: I didn’t have that problem. I pulled out my sword and activated Assisted Strike, aiming to shave off a slice of the monster without striking deeply.

With all of us attacking, it probably only took seconds to wear away the monster’s health, but it felt longer. The young girl it had eaten was probably around Gavin’s age, and her father - who’d been trying to tear at the monster with his bare hands - had his arms around her instantly.

She didn’t look great. She was screaming loudly and her nose was bleeding. I didn’t know what, or how many, injuries she’d taken.

I glanced around. Gavin had turned around at the commotion, and was staring at his injured playmate. I could see he was trembling. “Hey sweetie, can you give her two uses of your Healing Touch?”

He nodded, wordless.

I raised my voice. “Who else here has Healing Touch? Come over and give her a few hits. Let’s spread out the healing so no one gets too tired.”

I felt Gavin thump into me and I squatted down to put my arms around him. I could feel his body shake as he sobbed quietly. I was about to try to comfort him when a sudden thought terrified me.

There could be more of those… things.

“MICAH! CASSIE! Get over here!”

Gavin mumbled something I didn’t catch. I kept my eyes on Micah and Cassie, who were moving toward us, as I tried to listen.

“What was that, sweetheart?”

“I didn’t fight it.”

“Hey! Hey, that’s okay. We had lots of grownups here, and we killed it really quick. She’s gonna be fine, see?”

The girl’s screams of terror and pain had receded. She was still crying, but she now seemed more angry and scared than hurt.

“That was a really bad blanket!” she shouted at her father.

Gavin hid his face on my armor, wiping a big trail of snot down my front. “I didn’t help, though. I had my Touch of Desai and I didn’t use it!”

Micah reached me just in time to hear Gavin’s self-recrimination. “Well I did a really hot fire on it, Mom! Did you see my fire, Mom? It was more than 1,000 degrees, Mom!”

Shit, really? I thought. Fire that hot had probably hurt the girl on the other side of the monster. Maybe. Or would it? How hot was fire usually? Even if it had hurt the girl, I couldn’t really say Micah was wrong to have used it. I didn’t know what the monster had been doing to the girl it’d grabbed, other than squeezing her really hard. That was bad enough all by itself.

“A little empathy, Micah?” I said, nodding down toward his little brother. Micah looked confused, but I think he could hear how close I was to the end of my rope, because he didn’t argue. We’d talk later.

“What in the hell was that?” The girl’s father had picked her up, and was staring around angrily at the crowd, as if one of us might have been responsible.

I was looking around the crowd too, trying to pick out a face, then gave up. I was terrible with names and faces under normal circumstances, and these were anything but. “Somebody had Analyze, right? Is that guy still here?”

One man raised his hand. “I do… but the ability works better the longer I use it. That… bad blanket or whatever wasn’t alive that long, and there were a lot of people in between me and it. I couldn’t see it that clearly. Uh… I can tell you that it can change its shape somewhat but has to stay basically flat. That’s about all I have for now.”

“Can it change color?” Carlos asked.

He frowned. “I think so?”

I wasn’t happy to hear that, but I couldn’t be surprised. What kind of ambush predator was perfectly adapted to hunt only in dirty orange-tinted mulch?

Cassie had grabbed Pointy and was clutching her tight in one arm, her other hand twined in the fabric of my sleeve. Good. I wanted her close.

“Pointy, did you see anything before that thing struck?”

She shook her head. “I did not. I can see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, so whatever camouflage it has seems to extend to UV reflectivity and heat emissions.”

I raised my voice. “Did anyone see anything strange before the badblanket attacked? Or has anyone been attacked by these before?”

No one had.

“Maybe they’re just a rare spawn,” suggested Carlos. “Did anyone who hit it get a good blueprint or a load of cash? Was it worth a lot of points?”

I looked at Pointy. I didn’t remember exactly how many points I’d had before. She understood my unspoken question.

“You and Micah got one point apiece when the monster was defeated. Neither of you has any new blueprints. If no one else does, either, I wish to propose an alternative theory. I informed you some time ago that this Commonwealth civilization works in a base-12 number system.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“So, I have been alive for almost exactly 72 hours. Assuming that Cassie did not wait long before claiming her ability, it has been just over three Earth days since the start of the Maffiyir. Three days is an intuitive time to raise the difficulty, as three is a meaningful subdivision of twelve.”

I didn’t like what she was suggesting. “So… you’re saying…”

“Those badblankets might be everywhere now.”