The description floored me. My main concern with building up a User identity was long-term. The identity perks were just window dressing. If I somehow acquired a tank identity. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to back it up, and it would be all too obvious that I wasn’t who I claimed to be.

Granted, I had no intention of ever being a tank. But with just a few choices of assimilated feats along with the subtle nature of my Ordinator abilities, I could bridge that divide.

Not to mention, I could potentially round out my character in ways that my chosen Ordinator branch had locked me out of. Page had several ranged feats that looked promising—

“Are you salivating?” Sae was looking at me in distress. She called up to the front seat. “Anyone want to trade seats? He’s salivating.”

Nick’s cool blue eyes studied me in the rearview mirror. “Dude. You just ate.”

“I wasn’t salivating.” I rolled my eyes. “Just thinking about battle tactics. Though it would help if I knew more about your skills.”

“Seems normal to me,” Jinny piped up from the driver’s seat. “Thinking about blasting mutant elk always makes me peckish.”

“I wasn’t salivating!”

“The elk, really?” Nick asked Jinny, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “They had growths and shit.”

“My initial reaction was ew. But the smell when we burned them…” Sae trailed off with a happy sigh.

“Okay. Now I want to trade seats. Or cars for that matter,” I shot back. The idea of eating creatures as intelligent as the was making queasy.

“Actually,” Nick cocked his head. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“I’m not eating mutated-cancer-ridden-monster-elk.” I said firmly.

“Not that.” Nick twisted in his seat to face me and Sae. “You knowing more about our skills. Since you’re doing the tactician thing.”

Sae’s mouth popped open, as if a thought had just occurred to her. “That’s right. We can share character screens.”

I didn’t need screaming in my ear to remember the complicated nature of

“And you just thought of this now?” I asked, attempting to buy time. It was possible that the system wouldn’t consider voluntary sharing of information as a traditional method or appraisal, but it was far from a sure thing.

“We haven’t really had to use it much.” Jinny admitted. “It’s mainly been the three of us, talking through options as we level.”

Sae had been uncharacteristically attentive towards me ever since I’d discovered the tracker on Nick’s car, and noticed my reaction was off. She leaned her head on her palm. “Personally, I’d love to see your character screen. We talked through some of it already, but that didn’t really satisfy my anal-retentive side.”

Translation: let’s see if you left anything out, bitch.

I can’t hesitate. She’s already suspicious. Give her one more reason, she’ll keep banging that drum until something falls out.

So I doubled down. Before anyone could do anything, I navigated to the party screen and highlighted Sae. There were grayed out options for demote or promote to party leader, as well as an option to access the trade screen. And right below that, was the selection I was looking for.

I focused on it. And repressed a sigh of relief when the Identity drop down appeared.

Thankfully, I hadn’t left anything out. I’d been completely transparent about the bullshit feats and stat allocation I’d chosen.

“Done.” I even managed to sound bored.

Sae’s eyes glazed over as she read over it, and her lip twitched in disappointment.

“Let me see!” Jinny said.

“Not while you’re driving.” Sae shook her head. “Alright, I’m sending you mine.”

The others followed suit. I sat very still. If fucked me, I’d have to pretend to know every detail of their builds. Thankfully, it didn’t. Either having an established User identity was a workaround, or there was a more intrusive method of identification that none of us had access to yet.

I read through Sae’s first. She was aggressively built as a support. Overly so. If there was ever a situation where she was the last man standing, the party was screwed. It was likely why I was able to handle her as easily as I had—level difference aside, I was much more attuned to one-on-one combat than her.

As long as at least one person more combat focused was left on their feet, she was one hell of an asset. Her main debuff was A smokescreen that partially blinded and demoralized opponents. There were a few poison-based damage over time abilities. She was able to buff weapons with either frost or poison, though the drawback was she had to touch them.

Something ticked in my brain. “You don’t have a contact frost spell. When you tagged me during our… spar… was that the weapon buff ability?”

Sae nodded, smug. “Figured that out by accident. Panicked and froze a goblin. Whoever’s writing the descriptions of skills and items in general—”

“—needs to be fired,” I finished. She nodded in approval.

Maybe we’d get along after all.

Her title was eye-drawing:

I focused on it, to see if there was anything more to read, and nothing happened. I was tempted to ask. Considering the highly personal nature of some of my titles, however, I decided it was probably better to leave it alone. There was likely a reason that despite the myriad of skills and feats we’d discussed, not one of the three had talked about their titles. In my experience, at least, they tended to be revealing in ways that were distinctly uncomfortable.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to confirm that.

“Do any of you have more than one title?” I asked.

An air of discomfort settled over the car.

“Because mine is… more than a little annoying,” I added, trying to defuse the tension.

“We, uh, haven’t talked about them much.” Nick gave me a look that was almost begging me to drop it. “As far as I know, you only get one.”

“Figures,” I sighed, and continued sorting through the screens while keeping an eye on the road. It helped that the system screen was semi-transparent, but I had to make a conscious effort to not tunnel-vision.

Nick was a powerhouse. As he’d previously said, his chosen feats all revolved around taking a beating and dishing it out. Like some sort of masochist tank-dps hybrid. What he hadn’t mentioned was that his main counter-attack ability relied on catching damage with a shield. From the description, it worked similar to a battery, building charge until he decided to dish it out. Also notable was a feat that kept him conscious and on his feet until he died.

Damn. Not sure if I would have picked that one for obvious reasons, but it made sense with his build.

His title was illegible. A literal black bar hung over it like a redacted military document. I suspected it had something to do with the ethos he mentioned. And considering how everyone had reacted the last time I mentioned titles, I decided to let it go.

Having read through both their sheets, it was clear that Nick had a natural synergy with Sae. He was incredibly hard to kill, and as long as he was alive, she could buff him.

Is that the same Escalade?

We’d stopped momentarily at a light. My heart hammered as I focused entirely on the street behind us. There was a Black Escalade parked on the side of the road. They all looked the same, so there was no way to know for sure, but a feeling of dread settled over me.

I nearly opened my mouth to call it all off, when a woman pushing a stroller approached the Escalade. She pulled a key fob from her clutch and clicked it, the lights on the escalade flicking on.

The light turned green, and I kept watch as the car grew more distant.

Barely visible, the woman pulled an infant in a onesie from the stroller, hoisted it in the air like Rafiki in the Lion King, and loaded it into a car-seat.

Keep jumping every time you see a black car. Idiot.

Annoyed at how quick was to switch targets, I pulled up Jinny’s sheet. Then I read it again. By the third time, I realized it wasn’t going to make sense if I read it a dozen times.

I studied her in the rearview. She saw me looking and gave me an uneasy smile. “Happy to answer any questions you have about my sheet when I’m not driving.”

In other words, Sae and Nick didn’t know. I gave the sheet one more cursory scan, just to confirm I hadn’t imagined it.

Yeah. I had many questions.