Bec pressed her mask against the glass like that would do anything to help her see the city better. “Black… Scarlet? Why did you ever leave this place?”

They both sighed. Black shrugged. “That’s complicated. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older, but… honestly, I don’t much know myself.”

All Scarlet would say was that was far too personal of a question to ask her. Bec dropped it. There would be time for all those answers to come. She had time.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“We’re going to take a break. Sleep. Eat. Probably in ol’ Sherman over there.” Black gestured at the big tree. “Then we’ll go and yell at my, erm, our dad.”

Bec looked at Scarlet and she looked surprised. “What? I’m not going to pick a fight with the Silver Star. I’m going to stop at Akasha and put in my hours for teaching you.” Scarlet gestured to make it rain, rubbing her palms out towards Bec and Black. Somehow that move survived the obsolescence of physical currency and Bec had no clue why. Maybe it was too fun for people not to do.

Black filled Bec in, “Akasha is the second floor, hub of all the research done in the city. It’s much larger than Avalon. I would call it more a small country. I have a feeling you’ll spend quite a bit of time there.”

Bec nodded. “Al suddenly won’t shut up about us visiting.”

Black sunk into his seat. “Hmm, that reminds me. Energy.”

Bec laughed. “Really? We still doing this bet?”

“If you want to concede, I’d gladly allow you.”

Bec shook her head. “Nah. We’ve got lots of new intel. It’d be stupid to give up now. Just give me and all a few minutes.”

Bec and Al conferred silently.

“Bec, remember how he said Mechanic was close. I think that his ability to read people is a side effect of his power to study electronics.”

What? So… what is a Word that applies to technology and people?

“Bec, think carefully. How many times have you thought this exact word? You’re practically saying it right now.”

Bec chewed on it for only a moment before it clicked, and she sat up. “My god, it lines up with everything. The perfect running, the electronics, the gunplay, the reading of people…”

Bec sat up to look at Black who somehow sunk almost entirely into his cushioned seat. “Black! Is your word… Tech?”

Scarlet jumped and pumped her fist, shaking the whole cable car.

Bec grinned. “Did I do it?”

Black slouched harder. “Yeah… you did it.”

He sat up and extended his hand out. “Good game.”

Al cheering in her head was interrupted with a blup sound. “Blup?”

She looked at her Timelet. It said. “Balance update: +25 000 000 LC. New Balance: 27 530 000.

How did the transaction happen so…

“Bets are sacrosanct in the city. AmiGo knew of the bet, and… he took my money.” Black flopped back into his seat staring up at the clouds through the glass ceiling. “I really wanted to check out that AI of yours.”

“So… your Word.” Bec didn’t want to say it out loud even if the cable car was mostly safe. “You had to cultivate skills like running, gun play, reading people’s expression, and…”

“I swap between them. My mind is limited. I instinctually categorized my skills into different sets and, well, my eyes reflect the set I’m applying in the moment. Green for people, Blue for technology. Red for combat. I have others but… well, you figure them out.”

Bec nodded. She’d figured out some of them. She’d never actually seen Black fight, but the moment his eyes turned red, she would have figured that one out.

“Here’s our stop. The cable cars were looping back around so the posse stepped out onto what looked like a log cabin hanging off the side of a cliff. Bec ran to the edge and peered over to see several houses on the wall. It would totally be amazing to live there!

“So we’re looking for a hotel?”

Black shook his head. “Food first. Do you want to treat?” Black looked a little sheepish at that, being reminded that he lost a bet to a child.

“How much?”

“Depends on how much you’re willing to spend. There are places ranging from 500 LC to… well, you could blow all your cash tonight if you wanted to.”

“Hmm, let’s do 100k a person.” She looked at Black and Scarlet for feedback. “Too high? Too low?

Black laughed. “No, it’s perfect… for a celebration!”

~~~

Glasses clinked. People laughed. Music boomed. Bec was having a ball. This place looked like an ancient Norse mead hall had a baby with a nightclub. Wood floors lacquered in blacks and whites met with walls of iridescent neon-colored torches burning flames that glittered and sparked. Bec, Scarlet, and Black were sitting next to each other at the only table in the place. It was a massive round table with nearly a dozen other people all sitting and having fun. That was just how it be at the appropriately named Round Table: Bar and Grill. Food came in a number of courses, a concept Bec knew existed but never actually experienced. 7 courses and 7 drinks, and, boy, were they fancy. Each drink was paired meticulously not just in flavor but in aesthetic.

Her Caprese salad came with some kind of Bloody Mary that tasted like a pizza made love with a salad vinaigrette. She had a spaghetti and meatball dish that had black noodles, “made with squid ink that had never seen the light of day” before being revealed to her. It glittered like the night sky and the meatballs seemed to spin like planets. Maybe that part was just in my head, she thought as she sipped a drink that seemed to swirl and sparkle like a galaxy. She had so many meals. So many drinks. It all started to blur together.

“To Bec!” Black shouted.

“The endless,” Scarlet replied.

The whole table followed suit making Bec flush with embarrassment.

A few people tried to strike up a conversation with Bec and, counter to Bec’s usually shyness, she was on the verge of actually engaging with them. Scarlet was glad to see it, despite the obvious fact that she was doing it because she was drunk.

“So, you look pretty banged up. How did that happen?” A man with a posh accent and red hair styled like the sunset. He obviously wanted to know some details about this Endless Bec he shared a table with.

“Mmm, I’d like to hear about it, too.” Scarlet prodded Bec to explain. “She got the injuries when she got ‘ported into a room with five armed scavengers. They jacked my poor girl.”

“Yeah, so what happened?” The man asked again causing his neighbors to perk up.

All eyes… no, only a few eyes were on Bec, but it made her so nervous that she stammered her first words.

“I—I asked them what they wanted.”

The men laughed. “That probably didn’t work out so well.”

Bec shook her head. “N-no. This guy. Scars all over his face. He just shot me right in the knee right there.”

The men nodded solemnly. Only a few of them adventured out of the city, but this lined up more or less with what they expected out there.

“So, I belted out my stunning attacks. I won’t tell you how exactly, but I blinded all of them.” Bec was starting to really get into it. “So, there I was, in the center of five guys… and one girl. They were blindly shooting their guns. I was dead tired. My legs were like jelly after I spent a whole day running through the Suburbs dodging traps and ambushes left and right.”

Scarlet snorted at the embellishments, but the table started to really listen.

“I was too tired to even stand so I grabbed a handful of gravel and started flinging it at them at high speeds. No good, they were wearing armor. My opening gambit stunned, hell incapacitated some, but this girl, she tried to shoot some kind of energy beam at me. I rolled away. She couldn’t find me. Blind you know. A guy came running towards me. He was so desperate to end my stunning display that he just bolted in with a knife. Wham, I blow his foot off with a flick of my wrist. Bam, he hits the floor. This lady with the laser hands? Well, she throws a grenade at me and this poor dude on the ground.”

A lady gasped so slightly that only Bec could hear it. It emboldened her. “I slapped the ground through the man blasting myself away and blowing the grenade back to the group in front of me. I fly into a man and kill him on the spot. The grenade handled the rest.” The crowd was dumbstruck. It was like an action movie hero was sitting at their table.

“We call her the endless because she’s unkillable.” Scarlet finished the story. “When Black and I next found her, she was sleeping away in some guy’s chest cavity.”

“Bloody DISGUSTANG!” The guy bellowed. The whole table started to devolve into wild talking and murmurs.

Bec’s heart dropped. This story was obviously too mu—no wait, they were cheering. That was definitely cheering. The whole table had started chanting, “Endless Bec! Endless Bec!”

Bec’s face flushed as she pounded some drink with golden flecks floating in it.

“Bec! Bec! Bec! Bec! Be—”

That was the last memory Bec had before she woke up.