Marcus

Marcus and the others spent a cheerless morning beneath the blue skies, huddled around Roylan’s portable stove, eating their breakfast in silence. With the sun high up the sky, the temperature rose to comfortable levels, and Marcus had to take off his cloak to cool off.

It looks like its midday already, Marcus thought. He glanced at his watch and found it was only seven in the morning, but he knew the time wasn’t right.

Doing a quick mental check, it was three in the afternoon when the storm and the rift showed up, which meant they had been in this godforsaken place for less than twenty-four hours.

What a long, awful day, Marcus sighed. Almost eighteen hours of hell.

Marcus made a note to himself to check and count the time every hour. He needed to be sure the full rotation of the planet (if this was even a planet) so that they would be able to get acquainted with the days and the weather and to find if this world had the same twenty-four-hour rotation as that of Earth.

Fortunately, everyone’s mood had calmed down in the past few hours; the strange popups vanished just as quickly as it appeared. He was worried that they created such a ruckus the entire forest would have heard them, prompting some savage creature to investigate and descend onto their location. To be safe, they moved at least forty miles south of the camp, parking at the side of the giants’ path for a quick breakfast.

Hyun stirred the pot on the portable stove filled with pinto beans mixed with canned grilled chicken and salsa. Marcus had eaten worse. He had only gotten one small scoop out of the pot onto his Tupperware, but he told himself he should be grateful they at least had food.

Aside from the silence, another veil lingered through the camp, and Marcus heard several hushed whispers about what they saw in their dreams. Marcus didn’t have to join in to know what they were talking about. He was there, and even though time had passed, he could still vividly remember every detail.

The Cherry Blossom Tree.

The black fog.

The voices.

Even now, thinking about it, he could feel the dream’s humid air prickling his skin.

It spooked the others to talk about it further, and Marcus was grateful for that. He thought they might not want to go back to sleep tonight and return to that dreadful dream. He had lost count how many times Andy and Roylan asked him of what he saw in there, comparing his to theirs. They had heard him calling out, but they couldn’t find him. With the bits and pieces he heard from everyone, the consensus was that they dreamt of the same tree, but they recalled the dream only lasting for barely a few seconds.

Marcus felt like he was in there for hours.

Easton felt the same thing. Easton leaned closer to his ear, whispered, “We need to talk about what happened.”

Marcus didn’t answer, taking a bite out of the chicken.

“Marcus. We both know what we saw.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he hissed.

“You were in my dream. We were actually talking, like for real. How is that possible?”

“You should get used to it by now. Nothing here makes sense. Let’s just not talk about it, okay?”

Easton shook his head. “But I blacked out. I don’t remember what happened next. All I saw was the tree and my stethoscope dangling out of the trunk—”

Stethoscope? Marcus turned to look at him. It was my dog tags hanging on there, he recalled, but he didn’t say it out loud.

However, Easton caught the change in his expression. “You know more than you let on. What did the tree say about you?”

Marcus sighed, suppressing the urge to walk away and sit somewhere else. Over the few hours, it was Hyun who found out how to summon the popups again. All they had to do was close their eyes and bring them to the right, holding it there for a couple of seconds, and then open them. The popup would appear in front of them, lasting only six seconds before dissipating.

Marcus did what Hyun showed him earlier, and although he couldn’t see the others’ popups. Only his.

[The Warrior Level 3]

[The Commander]

“It called me a Warrior,” Marcus said, “level 3, apparently.”

Easton nodded. “In a way, it makes sense why it called you that. You are a soldier, after all.”

“There’s more to life than soldiering,” Marcus scoffed. “How about you? What did you end up with?”

Easton bit his bottom lip, closed his eyes, and opened them a few moments later. “Freaking Cleric. Whatever that means.”

“Just that?”

“Yeah. Cleric. Level 2.”

“Cleric,” Marcus repeated, rolling the word onto his tongue. “It thinks you’re a priest?”

“You and I both know I am far away from that. Both my parents are atheists. Claire and I have never stepped foot inside a church in our lives. Maybe it stands for clerical? Am I a secretary? I don’t feel like a desk jockey. Wait, maybe its pointing to my personality. I don’t think I have the personality of a priest or a pastor.”

Marcus chuckled softly. “You can get annoying sometimes. With all—” Marcus looked him up and down, “—well, you. You do tend to sermon those you disagree with.”

“No, I don’t!”

“You kinda do, bud.”

Easton crossed his arms in a huff. “Well, I refuse to believe it. I am not that kind of person, and certainly not a Cleric.”

“Is that all you remember in the dream?”

Easton nodded. He narrowed his gaze at him. “Why? Was there something else I missed?”

Marcus let out another sigh and told Easton what he saw after they found the sea of Cherry Blossoms, him joining the others kneeling on the ground. He could tell that the boy was tensed and uncomfortable when he got to the latter, could see Easton pictured himself imitating the poses of the others.

“That’s…freaky,” Easton said. “Yep. I don’t remember that at all. I think we’re the only ones who are aware of the others’ unnatural stances.”

Marcus looked around the camp, studying their faces. Blake focused on feeding Willie while Hyun scooped out a portion of his meal onto his plate. Brett was intensely talking to the Kapoors, scribbling on his notepad like it was something important. Connor, Jacob, and Eli were hanging out by the truck, eating their own share with Paul’s kids. Paul and Roylan were standing on top of the truck bed, scanning the surroundings, watching for any signs of trouble. Kenny and Andy sat not far away from them, and when Kenny caught Marcus looking at him, he regarded him with a friendly nod, then returned to eating his breakfast.

Of all the whispers he had heard in the past few hours, none had mentioned about the cult-like behaviors they exhibited in the dream.

“I think we’re the only ones,” Marcus said.

“Does that mean anything?”

“I don’t know. Though, I wished I was just like the others.”

“Yeah. It's not something you can easily forget,” Easton said, “but, did you also join the others? That is, if you could remember.”

“I saw my body again, kneeling next to you, but I was aware of it. Not like you.”

“Huh. That is weird.”

“And the tree talked to me.”

“Well, what did it say?”

Marcus shrugged. “Cryptic shit. I don’t understand it myself. Says the tree is us. I get that part. I mean, it literally wrote what our strength, health, and all the other shit are about us on the branches. Did you see that one, too?”

Easton nodded.

“Then it started saying some nonsense like our goal here is to become stronger and be something more, whatever that is.”

“Stronger? For what?” Easton asked.

“I didn’t understand it at first when I heard it, but since this morning, I think it has something to do with our level?”

“So if I’m level 2 and you’re level 3…” Easton trailed off, mulling it over. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Since it pertains to our abilities, it explains how we need to be stronger by leveling it all up? Like a video game? I don’t understand.”

“It also told me another thing,” Marcus said.

“What?”

Marcus looked around, making sure no one was in earshot. “This has to stay between us. I am going to tell Roylan later, maybe your dad, but as for the others, I don’t want to cause a panic and paranoia. It's the least we could afford right now. We’re all jumpy already.”

Easton scooted a little closer. “I’m all ears.”

“The voices. It says they were responsible for bringing us here. The city, the storm, everything.”

“Do you think its magic?” Easton asked uncomfortably. “It has to be magic.”

Marcus scoffed, shaking his head.

“What? It’s a genuine question,” Easton whined. “This completely ignores the limitations of physics and the natural world, don’t you think?”

“I’d be a blind man not to think that.”

“Then let’s think logically here. If we ignore that the reason that it was all magic, then we got transported here by some teleportation device from a technology that is beyond human understanding. A device that can somehow displace an entire freaking city to another place. Better yet, across space. And then, we come upon the question of what we saw earlier—”

“The popups.”

“Yes. Those things. What if when they were teleporting us to another place, it wasn’t instantaneous. After we saw that rift in the sky, we blacked out! But, for how long? Think about it.”

Marcus paused, scratching the stubbles forming on his chin. “We could be unconscious for hours.”

“I was thinking more of years. What we saw earlier, they might have left implants in our brains, to communicate with us, to see us.”

“Like a tracking device.”

“And they’ll have to attach it to millions of people in San Francisco. That will take a long time.”

“And then have time to displace all women within the vicinity, don’t forget.”

“Right. That one. Then, why bring only the men?”

Marcus shrugged. “Forgot to ask. I was busy trying to get out.”

“Unless the teleportation device only allows the ones with an XY gene. We can assume that someone with the ability to do that at such a large scale knows what they were doing, that it was deliberate.”

“He might not be alone.”

Easton perked up. “Yeah. That’s right. Maybe it was an entire team. Could we be a scientific experiment? What if the voices you heard were them talking to their test subject?”

“Honestly, Easton, I couldn’t give a fuck why they brought us here. All I know is that when I meet them, I won’t hesitate to kill them.”

“We’re talking about aliens here,” Easton said.

“Hey, if they breathe, they can be killed.”

“Or it could all be magic,” Easton continued, “and explaining that is above my pay-grade. How do you defeat monsters when they disobey the laws of physics?”

“The monkeys didn’t. I blew their heads off,” Marcus said.

He recalled the massive wave of those little critters rolling through the streets, the shrieks they made as they tore through the looters gathered around Roylan’s truck. Paul battered next to him, slugging the looters trying to get on the truck bed. Marcus shook the image out of his head. Though, he could never get rid of the putrid smell as the looters pissed and shit themselves while they were being eaten.

“Guns still do their neat tricks.”

“Except for those giants,” Easton corrected. “Oh my God, Marcus, do you think we’re all that’s left? So many people…” There was an unmistakable hint of distress in Easton’s wavering voice.

Marcus remembered the others running for the woods, and a part of him did hope that they made it to somewhere safe.

“When we find someplace safe, and I mean a place where we can protect ourselves and build upon, then we can start looking for other survivors. You remember the dream?”

Easton paused, furrowing his brows. “Y—Yeah. There are other cherry blossoms aside from ours. Hundreds of them.”

Marcus nodded. “I think those are other groups of survivors, still alive and kicking.”

“That would be in the thousands—”

“Precisely. One of them is a group of soldiers and its quite a big group. Maybe a platoon or two. I recognized some of their gears and insignia, and I think they came from San Bruno.”

“The military base.”

“Yes. If they are alive, and we find them, maybe we can all help each other. Protect one another. If they came from the military base, they should have more resources than we have. Helicopters, weapons, food…”

“What if those creatures destroyed all of it?”

“There is a fifty-fifty percent chance that San Bruno is already gone. But they might have escaped the city as we did. If Colonel Reeves is with the soldiers, he would certainly announce a full retreat. That man knows when to stop to save lives. If he thinks the city is lost, he’ll save as many men and civilians as he can until he keeled over.”

Marcus made a quick glance into the thick of the woods, picturing people traversing through the rough terrain as they did.

“There are more people out there in the woods, just as scared as us,” Marcus was saying, “once we find a safe haven, we’ll start looking., bring them to our camp.”

"Do you think we'll find it?" Easton asked. "All I see are just woods. Endless forests as green and blanketed with fucking snow. How on Earth are we going to find one in this weather?"

"Well, Easton, That is the million-dollar question. I think all we can do now is have a little faith," Marcus said, nudging him on the shoulder. "I mean, you are the Cleric. Shouldn't you know something about that?"

"Ha. Ha. Funny. Anyway, aside from rescuing others, a second point for business is finding out what this Order all means to us.”

"It represents Characters," Brett blurted out from behind them.

Marcus whirled around, almost on instinct, grabbed hold of the shotgun leaning against the boulder to his right, saw Brett awkwardly stood with a notepad on his hand, a sheepish grin on his face. Roylan's youngest son turned the paper face forward, showing the notes he had written, but they were too small for Marcus to read from his position.

"How long have you been standing there, man?" Easton asked.

"When you guys were discussing finding a safe haven. Sorry to eavesdrop," he added right away, realizing he had crossed the line. "I didn't mean to. I just came by to talk to Marcus about something. I tried to tell dad, but he won't listen. It's very, very important. I promise you."

Marcus and Easton regarded each other with confused looks. Marcus shrugged, pressed his palm on the log he's sitting on, and pushed himself back to his feet. "Let's hear it."

Brett shuffled closer. He extended the notepad toward them. "I've been recording what everyone saw this morning and in their dreams. I noticed something when everyone was talking about it."

"More weird-ass shit?" Easton said jokingly.

Brett chuckled. "Well, it gets stranger. Before I proceed, I just want to let you know that I work as a senior game-developer for Ubisoft in San Francisco, and I've spent a lot of my days with these things…okay, I am boring you. Sorry about that. Look, it took a few convincing here and there since they didn't want to relive it again, but you know, I tried to tell them that this is really important, and Marcus—that's you, would love to figure this thing out…"

"Cut to the end, Brett. Keep it brief," Marcus said as politely as possible.

"Oh. Right, right, right. Then I recalled my experience with the tree and what I saw on it, and it got me thinking: Fortitude, finesse, intelligence, wit…these are classic game attributes in role-playing games. Strength, agility, intelligence charisma, and all that. Then there's the Enchanter for Malik, Rogue for Blake, and Warrior for Connor—"

"Wait. Connor got that?" Marcus asked.

"Yeah. I thought you knew."

Marcus sighed. "I.haven't discussed it with them yet."

"Oh." Brett paused, frowning.

"Brett. Hurry up," said Marcus, twirling his finger, wanting Brett to say what he wanted to say, trying to keep down his losing patience.

"Well, obviously, those are, in role-playing terms, the classic set of Classes. In this world, its called an Order, which I believe is part of hierarchical ranking, and the Class means something else entirely, kind of like the suborder. For example, Hyun told me that he was called a Wilder, which is his Order. But then he also told me that the popup shows him as a Ranger: his Class. So, it feeds down to specifics based on each individual."

"So, your theory is that this is a game?" Easton asked in bewilderment.

"Absolutely. This world mimics a role-playing game. Levels, attributes, classes--it all makes sense! A fucked-up, hyper-realistic game that can also get us killed."

Brett managed a wide grin. "And we are the fucking players."