It took barely more than a glance to realize what they were all staring at. The sun was gone, what should have been a clear blue late-afternoon now appeared to be evening—only the stratosphere was dyed mud red, instead of dark blue. Talia had stopped at the stairway behind me and peered out.

“Store me, the way you stored the plant.” Talia commanded. Her voice was tinged with worry.

“You recognize it.” I realized.

“The sky is reminiscent of my home.”

“A realm of Flauros.”

“Yes. For this much bleed-over to occur, whatever is happening is almost certainly large scale.” Talia eyed me. “Make ready.”

I reached out a hand to her, as I had to Audrey, and then stopped. An idea formed. implied that I could fold summons into existing weapons. The utility of that was limited for something like a sword, unless there was some aspect I was missing. A throwing knife on the other hand? Especially one that returned whenever I summoned it? There were a lot of applications there. I withdrew and held it out towards Talia, watching in fascination as she simply merged into it.

“Comfortable?” I asked.

“Not the word I would use, but it is better than the void.” Talia said.

Someone screamed. Then another person, and another. My attention snapped back to the crowd that had formed in the center of the street. Among a handful of people holding hands to their mouths were pointing, shaking hands extending towards the newly warped sky. I looked up again and found the source of the alarm easily.

A dozen small pinpricks of golden light twinkled above, splitting off in a series of explosions, each branching fragment detonating again, and again, and again, until there were hundreds of tiny fragments hurtling downwards. Behind them were a series of familiar blue meteors, complete with the long extended tail. Unlike the smaller, golden fragments, they didn’t appear to be heading straight towards us, each heading in a distinctively different direction.

We were the trial run.

It made sense in a horrifying sort of way. If you were going to do something this large scale, you’d generally want to lead with a test case. Just to make sure all the kinks were worked out. With the isolated nature of the dome, there was a part of me that held a small seed of hope that once whatever machinations the system was intended to carry out had run its course, apart from the influx of incredibly strong and potentially wealthy individuals, the rest of the world would remain relatively unchanged.

As I watched the fragments rain downward, that hope withered and died. Whatever was left after all this would be unrecognizable from what we had before.

If there was anything left to recognize.

A notification popped, informing me that the twenty-minute wait period had elapsed, and the along with Jinny’s User core were both returned to my inventory. Taking a moment to ensure no one was looking my way, I withdrew the mask and pulled it over my head, feeling the tell-tale wave of calm pass over me as I fell further into Then I joined the crowd in the center of the street.

Almost immediately, something occurred to me that I’d barely thought of in the midst of the turmoil.

I was asking a lot. And it wasn’t guaranteed, even ignoring the fact that she was an atrocious liar. My mother and sister would probably take whatever she said at face value, but my Ellison would likely see through it immediately. He was naturally insightful that way.

Annoying as the timing was, it didn’t hurt to consider it. There was a part of me that still believed that fire-walling everyone was the correct course of action. But Kinsley had consistently been my strongest ally by far. Her abilities and assistance had enabled me to do things I simply wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, and saved my life more than once.

I’d sort out how much of the truth—if any—to give her later. If I could concoct a convincing enough story, it was probably safer to go with that. The problem was, Kinsley was observant. She had also seen me lie before during the family meeting. Whenever someone catches you in a lie, or watches you lie to someone else while explicitly knowing there’s deceit present, you’ve effectively given them a baseline for judging everything you say in the future. Making them far more likely to realize they’re being duped than the average person would be.

And given the recent series of events, I wasn’t exactly keen on losing more allies.

There was a harsh blare of static that seemed to radiate from everywhere at once. A noise, that could have been a jingle if it wasn’t for the harsh, tritone nature of it, played a series of three discordant notes.

Every car parked on the street turned on simultaneously, the surroundings suddenly peppered in headlights and brake lights.

On closer inspection, it wasn’t actually coming from everywhere. The noise was coming from the parked cars, and a series of televisions on the outside-section of a nearby sports bar that suddenly flickered on.

“DENIZENS OF DOME 1,” The voice boomed out loud enough that I felt the vibration in my chest. It had an otherworldly cadence and the sibilance and tonality of a snake that brought to mind the fantastical comparison of a snake that had learned to speak. My attention was drawn to the tv’s facing outward on the deck. They were still rife with an old-timey black and white static, but it appeared to be fading, an image beneath the noise beginning to show through.

I wasn’t the only one to take notice. A few people shuffled towards the screens alongside me, others peering into cars with internal GPS screens that now displayed the same image, a half-dozen looking at their phones.

The image on the screen came into sharp focus. At first glance, it was a man lounging on a crystalline cathedra, gripping the arms of the chair lightly, one leg draped casually over the other. As the camera pushed in slowly, more details gradually became clear. He was wearing a simple black tuxedo, complete with bow-tie. The apparel looked off-somehow, though that might have been due to his perilously thin form. He was wearing a mask that clashed with his attire, a simple white faceplate, save for a jagged smile etched where the mouth would be. With a mockingly formal air, he raised a long arm, thinner than a child’s, his fingers long and spindly, and waved. His sleeve fell back with the motion, revealing a flash of mottled gray skin beneath.

“I must say, we’re impressed.” The figure tilted his head—it would have been an almost human gesture, if it wasn’t for the extreme angle. “While some of you have been stagnant, an unexpectedly substantial number among you have enthusiastically taken the process in stride. One of you—an ungifted no less—even managed a surface level intrusion into the framework of the system itself.”

A chill gripped me, as I realized he was talking about my mother.

The figure continued. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. There is no word in your language that accurately describes what I am. So, you may call me Overseer.” His voice, still sibilant, began to lose the disquieting cadence, becoming less strange, though no less intimidating.

“We rarely see this level of progression in an instigation until the first transposition event has already come to pass. After that, everyone panics, practically trampling each other to consolidate power as quickly as possible.” Overseer cackled, clapping his hands together with delight. The mirth disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and when he spoke again, there was a growl in his throat. “But here you are. As the forerunners of the rest of your species, you’ve set the bar rather high. Normally, the first round is a little reserved, as a high initial body count tends to be counter-intuitive to our purposes, but this is a special case. Given the progress you’ve already made, there is little reason to coddle you. This is a special case indeed.” He chuckled, the noise crackly and unpleasant.

“And let’s not forget that you have an Ordinator.”