Sara and I spent the next few minutes sharing information before the rest of her people arrived. Many of them were from the same region, so they were able to get a head start on gathering the Illuminating Lux, with several fragments landing fairly close to the receptacle.

“Were you able to gauge approximately how much we’ll need to fill a receptacle?” I asked.

“No.” Sara scowled. “When you place them in the receptacle, they transform into liquid. The first we found nearby filled the receptacle by almost a tenth. It’s the first time I’ve felt lucky since this whole thing started. Then, the second filled only a fraction of that.”

“Maybe they hold different values, depending on the difficulty of the location and the monsters guarding them.”

“That was brought up. But the two we found were equidistant from the container, both guarded by nothing more than a mess of translucent crabs that did little beyond scuttling away.” Sara was deep in thought, brow furrowing before she spoke again. “The values may be assigned randomly.”

I had a less pleasant theory, extrapolated from the subtle manner the Overseer had used to seed discord from the moment he began to speak. This entire thing seemed to be an exercise in the Tragedy of the Commons. Most people—myself included—did not want a massacre. If the value was transparent, each receptacle requiring fifty lux, for example, initial selfishness would eventually turn to altruism as the receptacles were filled and Users with lux left over began to share resources with their neighbors.

This was already partially offset by the option to sell lux to a vendor. Intentionally obfuscating the values would build desperation, encourage in-fighting and grabbing as much lux as possible until the receptacles were filled.

And it was working. The Adventurer’s Guild was perhaps the group I was most likely to help, and I had no intention of sharing my map and landing locations I’d found until my region was secure.

There was the sound of several vehicles, either dirt bikes or ATVs, quickly approaching.

Sara’s head shot up. “That’s them. And our healer, I hope.”

My cue to leave. I’d given Tyler as much time as I could. The rest was up to them.

“Stay safe.” I left Sara behind and made my way to where my bike was still overturned on the street. A military style jeep barreled past, pushing ninety, nearly hitting my bike as it sped down the side road.

“Hey!” Sara called after me.

I stopped and turned back. “Yeah?”

“You’re not bad in a fight.”

“Neither are you.”

“Point is, some of our recon guys saw a team of Users take down some big ape thing earlier, and it dropped a half-dozen lux. Not sure how many of us are left, or if we’d even be up to something like that. But if the easy pickings run out, and we decided to take something big on, give you a call? We’ll split everything evenly.”

User: ???, Class: ???, LVL: ??? User: Matt, Class: NPC, LVL: N/A User: Matt, Class: Page, LVL: 5. Custom Entry

I stared at the fourth option. Custom entry had never been an option before. Out of curiosity, I selected it.

Another layer. The safest option was to say no. It seemed unlikely Sara would rip me off. She’d had an opportunity to steal the lux from me already when I lost track of the grocery bag, and she hadn’t taken it. But the Overseer had just given everyone an excellent reason to be suspicious. On the other hand, with the way this was panning out and the dubious value of each lux, it was entirely possible I’d find myself in a late-stage position where I’d need just a little more.

One paranoia beat out the other, and I selected option four. Maybe she’d eventually make the connection between having trouble remembering what I looked like and the ordinator the Overseer was talking about, and the choice would come back to bite me, but I doubted it. She had no idea what I looked like thanks to the and the contact info gave her precious little to go on.

“What kind of name is Myrrdin?” Sara asked.

“Welsh,” I called back.

/////

The next few hours were more draining than any I could remember. After hearing what happened to Tyler and Sara, I avoided interiors as much as possible, opting to grab whatever lux I could find out in the open.

Ellison had messaged me notes he and Iris had gathered from the Open Forum. They were surprisingly detailed, more dossiers than note-sheets, though given Ellison’s talent for hiding in plain sight and Iris’s preternatural affinity for lip-reading, I really should have expected this. My siblings were always thorough. They had to be. I skimmed them, intending to read them all in more detail later.

Rodrick’s Lodge was the group with the most presence in my region. My brief encounter with them had left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, but if their presence meant more hands on deck, I had no intention to complain.

I’d switched the grocery bag out for a satchel I’d found in the cracked open display of a clothing store. Though it was more secure, it annoyed me to realize that the glow from the lux still showed through, making it entirely obvious to anyone who happened to be looking exactly what the contents of the satchel were.

The undercurrent of anxiety escalated with every lux I found. I was up to five now, and more and more Users were looking my way as I passed them on the motorcycle, glares sent my way growing more dark, more hungry.

Don’t push it.

I reluctantly turned back. From what Sara said, once the lux was banked in a receptacle, it was impossible to retrieve. I had no intention of tempting fate. On my return journey, I found my thoughts preoccupied with Rodrick’s Lodge. We knew they had a vendor. Kinsley could restrict sales through the site, but if a group had a vendor on hand, that was an entirely different matter.

Drop off the lux. Get a handle on things. Make sure Rodrick’s Lodge wasn’t going to fuck it all up. I took a hair-pin turn, heading down an abandoned side street, still committed to avoiding downtown if at all possible.

With all that was going through my mind, it was a miracle I saw it. I have no idea why it didn’t trigger Maybe because it was stationary rather than moving.

It was an apartment building in the midst of a raging fire that saved me. Orange light reflected off the wire like a horizontal flare. It was pulled taut across the road at neck level. There was no time to do anything apart from react.

I squeezed the break and the clutch hard, yelling out in pain as the bike toppled, sending me sliding along the asphalt as I cradled my head.

A dozen sprinting footsteps raced towards me.

“Get the bag and the bike—in that order!” Someone shouted from the back.