I stared through the ring of the crossbow’s sight, keeping the pin trained at the center of the mess, waiting for the slightest movement, the smallest shift of paper. In the back of my head, I wondered if there was a chance Kinsley had intentionally misdirected me to the corner, so the source of the ambush could come at me from another point of attack. I dismissed the thought. It’s easy to be a good liar, incredibly difficult to convincingly act like a bad one.

“Talk to me, Kinsley,” I said, still watching her out of the corner of my eye. “Not going to hurt you, but I need to know what kind of shit you’ve gotten us into.”

I heard a sniffle that devolved into a series of hiccuping sobs. Her hair covered her face. “There’s no one in the corner… it’s the vent.”

Immediately I looked up. There was a standard vent covering high up on the ceiling, five horizontal slats with the usual closing slide. It was on the smaller side for a duct, the air passage likely too tiny for anything but a squirrel to be hiding in.

Or a bug?

I hefted the fallen shelf out of the way. Carefully, tested my weight on the still-standing shelf before clambering up to get a look inside the vent while Kinsley seemed to settle herself, tears running silently.

It was empty.

“Do you hear anything?” Kinsley called over, as if she were afraid to hear the answer.

“No.” I was thoroughly confused. There was nothing to find, and no room for anyone to slip by me. But she had looked so damn guilty. It was clear as day. “Not even circulating air. Kinsley, you wanna just tell me what’s going on here instead of making me guess? You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Yeah, okay, I scared you. It’s not your problem, you won’t care.” Kinsley said.

She was wrong. Especially now, with the city on the verge of eating itself, anything that compromised her was most assuredly my problem.

“Well, I’m here, and no one else is. Might as well give it a shot.”

I was almost relieved when Kinsley glared at me. The fire in her eyes faded, and she resumed her intense study of the floor. “I’ve been hearing noises coming through the vent.”

“What kind of noises?”

“Impacts. Grunts of pain. Someone being hit, over and over again.” Her voice grew quieter with every passing word. “I know they’re not real.”

Finally, the high-alert in my mind seemed to relax. I walked over to where she still sat on the dusty computer chair. Her whole body tensed. Then I crouched and pointed two fingers to my eyes. “Look here.”

She did. Her brownish eyes were sunken into her head some, giving her a gaunt appearance. “Uh-oh. Bending down to my level. Please don’t say something nauseating and encouraging.” The joke fell flat.

“I’m checking to see if you have a concussion.”

“Oh.”

I’d done this for Iris and Ellison several times over the last few years whenever they’d taken a nasty spill. It was just one of the things you picked up when going to the hospital was a last resort. “Follow the tip of my finger.” I held up a finger and moved it from side to side, making sure her eyes tracked it properly.

“I’m fine. Felt a lot better after the health potion.” Kinsley said, her expression exhausted.

“Well, you probably do. But apart from the fact that they speed up physical healing, we don’t really know how they work. Or how good they are for head injuries.” But so far, her eyes were tracking just fine. “Any double-vision, random bouts of nausea?”

“No, Dr. Matt.” Kinsley said sarcastically.

“Any known history of schizophrenia in your family?” I said in my best, dry doctor voice. At the mention of family, Kinsley went pale and immediately looked back towards the vent.

Careful. Treating her like your sister again.

“There’s nothing really notable, except for epilepsy.” Kinsley’s eyes tracked to the vent.

I let that hang. Sometimes saying nothing is better than saying something. By now, Kinsley knew what I was hinting at. Only she hadn’t made any boisterous objections to the contrary. It wouldn’t necessarily mean anything if she had, generally people with psychological issues—temporary or chronic—are the fastest to tell you I’m Fine. But the lack of denial meant… something. I wasn’t sure what. And epilepsy had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. So, I could only conclude that Kinsley brought it up for a reason.

Eventually, she broke. “Did you know, some people with epilepsy can drive?”

“I didn’t.” I acknowledged the non-sequitur, prompting her to talk.

“If it’s been long enough since they’ve had one. Three months, I think, or something. My… Dad, had them since he was young. Never could get a license, but he could feel them coming. Any time you hit your head during a seizure you run the risk of making them worse. So, he’d lay on his side on the couch and just kind of wait for them to pass.” Kinsley rubbed at her arm, her lips tight. “Anyway, it was getting better, you know? He switched to a new medication. Four months in between, instead of one or two.”

“Get his license?” I asked.

Kinsley shook her head. “No, but he was excited. Planning to try later this year.”

I looked back over at the vent, slowly putting it together. “He went with you, didn’t he?”

Kinsley shook her head. “I’m not sure how they found me. They seemed professional, and genuinely interested, going on about me having a gift. Dad was against it, but they were offering a stupid amount of money, and I threw a fit, so he gave in. When they realized I couldn’t give them what they wanted, it went… really bad…” Kinsley’s mouth trembled, and she fell silent.

There was a growl deep in my throat before I could stop it. “They separated you. Worked on you one at a time. But the rooms were right next to each other. And I’m guessing…” I looked over at the corner of the room, “You could hear it.”

Kinsley laughed, the sound dark. “I could hear everything. It’s stupid. Like, they were hurting him. And all I could think was…” She trailed off.

Please don’t hit him in the head.

“How’d you get away?” I asked.

Kinsley wiped her eyes and cleared her throat loudly. “I was holding on to a level. You know, there’s a lot of choices, and it seemed important. I had a lot of time to think in there. Plan. I misread the door feat the first time. Didn’t realize how good it was.”

I leaned back on the table with a sigh. “And now you’re sitting here in an empty warehouse, isolated, going over it again and again despite knowing—logically—it’s not your fault, wondering if there’s anything you could have done differently.”

Kinsley was immediately defensive. “I couldn’t have used the doors to get him. Even if I used one to get to where they were holding him, there’s a cooldown. And when I opened one, trying to get back and look, everyone was gone. And now… I keep hearing it.”

I was less concerned about the hearing things now that I knew her history. It was probably a simple combination of trauma and stress. This type of environment would be stressful for any child, let alone one that had been through what Kinsley had. I’d overestimated her, but only slightly. She was clearly resourceful, managed to escape, arm herself, stay hidden even though people were looking for her. She had all the earmarks of a survivor. The only difference, aside from her age, was that Kinsley hadn’t been doing this as long as I had.

And it was always hardest in the beginning.

“What do you want to do?” I asked, baiting her slightly. “You take that perk and you’re golden. Credit me another week with the dungeon key, and I’ll even scout places for you, find somewhere isolated where you won’t be found.”

“I… can’t be alone.” Kinsley’s expression grew dark. “And I don’t want to hide forever. I want to find out what happened to my Dad. And I want to find a way to hurt them. Even if I’m not suited to it.”

Kinsley wouldn’t last if I left her here. I couldn’t directly help with a place to go. Our apartment was cramped enough as it was, housing someone who could effectively out me as a User was a terrible idea.

But that just meant I had to be creative.

“Alright, lock in that perk and pack your shit. Put everything you can in your inventory, so we don’t look like a target out there.” I put my items back in mine as I mentioned it.

“What?” Kinsley asked, shocked out of her funk.

“Also, we’ll need some extra food if this is going to work.” I considered. “Preferably casseroles. The general goods tab have any casseroles?”

“No. Why would you need—Never-mind. Why are you helping me? Wait, no, how much are you charging me?” Kinsley asked, looking completely flabbergasted, trailing me around the table as I dismantled her computer.

“I’m not. Charging you.” I shrugged. “More banking on acquiring an ally who, if everything goes right, will be one of the most wealthy, powerful people in this fucked up new ecosystem. It’ll pay dividends later.”

“What? Me?” Kinsley squawked. “How?”

That was the question. A lot of it depended on variables that were anything but predictable. But we’d just gone from a setting where only a percentage of the population needed merchants, to a situation where everyone did.

“I’m still working on it. For now, we need to get you out of here, so you can stop playing middle-school Lady Macbeth.”

“I understood that reference and you’re a dick. Not to mention the most transactional person I’ve ever met,” Kinsley grumbled, finally kicking into gear and starting to throw her things into a backpack. “Feels like dealing with Rumplestiltskin.”

“Says the girl-scout selling cookies at the end of the universe.” I was doing my best to distract her, keep her in the moment. “Come on. We’re on a timetable.”

The notification pinged in my vision.

Quest: The Cradle of Civilization

Primary Objective — Form the Foundation of the Merchant’s Guild.