Kinsley hadn’t said anything else after my last message. In and of itself, that was surprising. She almost always had some snarky remark when my requests were more commands than suggestions. Maybe her experience with Ellison had unsettled her. Or something else had come up.

I desperately wanted to be wrong. Ellison was family. Family had always represented an emotional blindspot for me, which made it far more difficult to rein in my preternatural tendency to assume the worst.

Still, I had to consider it.

The voice was disguised, but his speaking cadence was fundamentally wrong. Not to mention, there was an issue of presence. I’d been pushing it, with how often I’d been gone, and if the feeling of the mystery User’s level of power and the effect he’d had was accurate to a high level, him being Ellison should have been impossible. Ellison had been close by every time I’d been home. No suspicious comments, no oddly timed disappearances.

If it was him? It followed that the system had assigned him a class with a similarly clandestine objective to mine. I knew from personal experience that there were ways to avoid being publicly outed, avenues to circumvent identification through the guild and party screens.

It was possible in theory. Jinny had a title that doubled every benefit, feat, skill, and stat point she received. But she’d paid for it dearly, even if that price was paid before the system was in play.

Occam’s razor said no. It was too unlikely that I’d met him in the wild. One-point three million people—probably significantly less now, but still—and I just happen to run into my brother on a lux run? Much more likely it was just another asshole with divine interference, or been hopped up on amphetamines and grinding since this shit started.

Something about that felt wrong. Denial I was desperately trying to rationalize.

Ellison was one of the few people likely to respond exactly as I had at the beginning of the event. He didn’t have my ability from the trial, but if he had something similar, something that allowed him to map things out and a get a bird's-eye view of a situation—the sort of feat that would absolutely appeal to him as an early pick—and was also keyed into the communications network, it was entirely possible that he’d come to the same conclusion I had, and it had led him here.

My heart raced as I stared at the last message I’d sent. There was still no response.

Mantle let out a low whistle. He’d climbed to the apex of the stairs, and was lingering outside the door, as if afraid to go in. I followed him, nearly missing the last step.

I thought I’d grown numb to carnage. There’d been a never-ending stream of bloodshed and bodies since the event began. Still, the growing suspicion in my mind painted the scene with shocking contrast.

Eight bodies in total.

I closed my eyes. Only an idiot would pick a fight with these odds. Maybe they’d ambushed him on his way out. Forced his hand.

“Don’t think so,” Mantle said, pointing to the far body. I realized I’d spoken the last part aloud when he responded to it. Another sign that I was slipping. “Let's do a quick sweep and get the fuck out of here before he comes back.” His voice was shaky.

Centering myself, I stepped around the mess for a better look at what he’d spotted.

And felt a piece of myself crumble.

The man at the far end was face down on the plush red carpet. A single, sightless brown eye stared up at me. One arm was folded beneath him, the other stretched out towards the pulpit at the left of a grand chancel. Most of the bodies had been looted, stripped down to blood-stained underclothes, no weapons in sight. It was impossible to tell who was armed or unarmed.

But what was obvious was that the man hadn’t been standing his ground. There were seven stab wounds that formed a circle around his back, where the blades had penetrated his armor. In the center of the knife wounds was a hole I could see the carpet through. And there was a visible dent where his head had struck a pew on the way down.

There was no way around it. He wasn’t trying to fight. He was fleeing, and died before he struck the floor.

I banished all notions of what I wanted to see, of what would make me feel better, and studied the scene.

The men had been on their way out. Someone attacked their biggest User from behind. There was a gaping hole in the back right quadrant of his armor, exactly where his heart would be. The rest had folded. Some had fought in blind, disorderly panic. Others had tried to run. In the end, it hadn’t made a difference.

They all died the same.

I fought the immediate feeling of relief, remembering all too well how I’d discounted the escalade.

There was a pause.

If Ellison had disappeared for any significant length of time, my mother and sister would have noticed and said something. Fifteen minutes to half an hour? Much harder to keep track of. I’d been toying with the idea that he had either a feat or skill that allowed him to teleport, not unlike Kinsley’s. Dipping away for a short time, then returning and making an appearance before anyone was the wiser. None of that explained his strange behavior when we’d talked, but it was a start.

Only, what Kinsley was saying put a solid hole in my operating theory.

Still. Ellison could be cranky and immature, borderline cantankerous at times, but he always found a way to help when shit hit the fan. And the fact that his behavior was so out of character had me skeptical of everything.

Not to mention, he hates sitting idle. Add in the part where the place he’s parked himself is highly visible to anyone paying attention? It feels like a clear attempt to establish an alibi. There’s something there.

I glanced up from the torn bodies to the front of the church. An icon of the Lady of Guadalupe was framed in brass behind the dais. She was clad in flowing garments of emerald and gold. Her head was turned to the side, her gaze averted, eyes tightly closed.

What am I missing?

Out of the corner of my vision, I caught movement. Mantle had continued into the church at a brisk pace, making good on his previous sentiment to clear this place and leave as quickly as possible. I took one more look at the bodies, trying to commit as much detail as possible.

Then followed him.

Mantle slowed down, glancing over awkwardly as I approached. “Wasn’t trying to get a leg up. You seemed… preoccupied.”

While the apology seemed genuine, the fact remained that I was still getting nothing on him from Before, there was a possibility that whatever interference I was getting came from the mystery User, but he was long gone now. Whatever was happening was likely due to Mantle himself.

“You said you were scouting the place out. Any chance you saw the survivor enter?” I asked, deep in thought.

“Why, you know him?”

“No.”

“It’s possible he went in with the others and I just didn’t catch it.” Mantle frowned. “I feel like I would have noticed someone that height, though.”

Maybe. It was another question without answers. I didn’t like undefined variables, and it seemed my list of unknowns was growing greater by the day. Still, I had the cognizance to keep Mantle at the forefront of my mind. My unassisted read was that he wasn’t anything particularly nefarious, just another scavenger in a city full of carrion. But scavengers could be dangerous.

I stayed slightly behind him and to his left, letting him lead. We traveled deeper into the church, our path winding through a series of nondescript corridors until the telltale glow of lux was visible through a door at the end of a carpeted hall. Mantle swung the door open, and his jaw dropped open.

“Ho-lee shit.” Mantle breathed.

There were a dozen lux orbs stuffed in an overturned storage crate at the end of the room. I couldn’t help but think that the number was probably triple that before Ellison—

Not Ellison. You don’t know that yet.

—Before the User had collected his haul. More impressive was the aftermath. Two massive trolls lay dead on the ground, each the size of a large bear. Like the Users, they both had multiple gaping holes in vital areas.

pinged gently in the back of my mind. I took a step back, all my attention focused on Mantle.

“What?” Mantle asked, taking a step away from me.

It took a moment to realize where the warning was coming from.

“Hear that?” I asked.

Mantle squinted, cocking his head slightly. “No. If anything, it’s quieter than it has been in hours. The gunfire stopped.”

“Exactly.”

The silence wasn’t a good sign. It meant our friend unloading the machine-gun on the giant lizard had stopped firing. And I was willing to bet it wasn’t because he won.

I was about to say something to that effect when the ceiling caved in, raining down a seemingly never-ending torrent of debris on our heads.