1

They left the rabbit aberration where it lay, not wanting to tempt fate any further. Damon suggested that he and Emma use the food from their inventories to feed the team. He didn’t mention it, but the orc general was apprehensive about using Emma as a carrying source in the future, fearing the glitch might have infected her like a virus.

The teammates were uneasy about using the fire the goblins had built, so Harper cast Dirt Squall to put out that fire. The spell provided a constant wind force loaded with grit that separated the embers and eventually blew the flames out. “I wish I had used this to move the rabbit flesh,” she said to Emma, but the veteran Grimalkin hunter stared vacantly into the woods, her thoughts somewhere else.

Harper then cast Fire Scorch to start a new fire on wood the Alabama orcs had gathered. They cooked nine salmon, six squirrels, two ptero birds, and two normal rabbits. The team sat in a circle around the fire, which was closer to the outskirts of the camp’s eastern side.

“Gosh, this salmon is delicious,” Madison enthused as he ate the fish.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Zack grunted, “but I was telling the crew the other day that it’d be great if we had some butter.”

Vlad scoffed. “Fuck budder. We need tequila for dis.”

Zack laughed. “Don’t you communists drink vodka?”

The bearded mage stared at him. “I am American Russian,” he said judgmentally. “Also, I have taste.” To his right, Rachel and Zahra chuckled. Vlad smiled at them endearingly, seizing on the opportunity. “Hey, you two ever consider having a—”

Zack threw his fish bones at the Russian. “Man, you never quit, do you?” he asked with a trace of admiration.

Vlad grinned and said no more. The team also grew silent as they relished the food. Jordan placed his hand on Emma’s lap, but she didn’t react to his touch. She had become withdrawn since the glitch incident, and he could see the stress visible on her face. He wished there was more that he could do, but he was dealing with his own feelings of grief for his dead brother.

Eventually, the teammates started talking to each other in small groups. Kylah, Nevan, and Harper chatted with each other. Madison and Sierra spoke quietly to each other.

Angie turned to Rachel and Zahra, who were being hounded by Vlad again. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” she asked and the two healers nodded enthusiastically, grateful to have a diversion from the eager Russian. “Why would you give up your lives back home to live here?” The sporadic conversations in the camp stopped as everyone turned to Angie. Meanwhile, the two female healers looked bewildered by the question.

“What did you say?” Rachel asked.

Angie glanced at Damon, troubled but not surprised. “You do know that Cloud Nine refused to take us back, don’t you?”

Rachel slowly shook her head. “I… I was informed that we were filling in for the losses you’d suffered,” the former zoologist stammered. “That… that we’d be back in two weeks.”

Angie laughed bitterly. “That’s what they told us.” She gazed at the recruits, most of whom looked equally shocked. “I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but when we completed the tower, we told them we wanted to go home and they flat-out refused to take us back.”

“Well, you didn’t finish the job,” Silo argued.

Angie smiled dismissively at the orc. “And we probably never will.”

Sierra stared at the veteran hunter. “This can’t be. It said two weeks on the posting Cloud Nine had sent out.” She began reciting what she had read. “Immediate opening… huge reward… two weeks.” As she muttered the last words, she glanced at Madison.

He shook his head and said softly, “I never saw the posting.” He glanced over at his buddy from Montgomery. “The company contacted me and Jackson, but they did say two weeks.”

“Well, they lied to you,” Emma snapped uncharacteristically. Her eyes looked glazed over.

“So… so, you’re saying we are imprisoned in here?” Rachel asked. As Armando placed his hand gently on the small of her back, Zack answered the healer. “That’s why we call ourselves ‘the Inmates.’”

2

As the rookies reeled from the news that their stay in the realms might be permanent, the veterans discovered that the only ones who’d known what they were getting into were the first four recruits sent in: Nevan, Kylah, Vlad, and Lorenzo.

“And three of them were transferred against their will,” Zack said, “so that leaves you, Lorenzo. You volunteered for this mission.” The former Marine stared intensely at the Italian. “So, what the fuck is your story?”

Lorenzo lowered his food. “I believe it’s our duty to bring him back.”

Emma scoffed. “Good luck with that.”

“Finding him is important,” he countered. “Some things are bigger than just you and I.”

As his rage inflamed, Zack stood up and stalked toward the Grimalkin hunter but he stopped himself before reaching him. “You sound like the fucking company,” he shouted.

As most of his teammates glared at him reproachfully, the curly-haired Grimalkin stared back at them. “If you don’t believe in the mission, then what are all of you doing here?”

“We came here to find Harris, and to collect a paycheck,” Damon growled. “That’s probably what everyone else thought too.” He slammed his fist into the dirt. “But we were told we’d be home after fourteen days before the mutations set in.”

A murmur of discontent rippled through the rookies. Keshon’s concerned voice floated to Damon from the other side of the campfire. “Wha… what mutations?”

He threw the remains of his food into the woods and turned to Angie. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

3

Angie explained to the newcomers that their bodies would be subjected to what the company had called “temporal mutations” because of the breakdown of the Epiphany system. “At least you have two weeks,” she said, glancing at the veterans. “Damon, Zack, Emma, Jordan, Harper, and I are down to our last five days.”

Harper told them about the family they had encountered in the village in the northern section of the realms. “The Jennings were the only survivors from the people who were abandoned here in ‘65 and after eight years,” she glanced cautiously at the rookies, “their mutations had become quite severe.”

“Yeah, they didn’t look like humans anymore,” Jordan muttered.

Beside Harper, Kylah turned into her father’s chest and started crying. As the team members continued to discuss the subject quietly and soberly, they discovered that Nevan, Vlad, and Lorenzo had known about the temporal mutations before they were sent into the realms.

“Nevan and Vlad had no choice; they were forced in,” Zack stated, then turned back to Lorenzo. “But here we go, back around to you,” he said suspiciously. “What’s the deal with you? You got some kind of death wish?”

The Grimalkin shrugged. “I wanted to do this for my country. Harris is an important figure.”

Zack, Vlad, and Damon all laughed heartily, but there was little humor in their outburst. “You said you worked at the security and counterintelligence office for the NSA, right?” Damon asked.

“S&CI, for short,” Lorenzo offered.

Behind him, Vlad muttered, “Sissy.”

Damon ignored the reference and continued. “And the company recruited you, so who’s to say you’re not spying on us? What’s stopping you from sending back a report on us when we return to the landing zone?”

Lorenzo shrugged. “I can only say that’s not what I’m here for.”

Zack scoffed. “And you didn’t help Vlad, Kylah, and Nevan when the company kidnapped them,” he snarled, then turned to Damon. “I don’t trust him. We should send him back to the landing zone!”

Damon nodded and studied the Italian, who sat stoically, undeterred by the recriminations.

“We’ll decide in the morning,” the orc general announced.

4

The veterans did a quick check and found that, like them, the recruits had no family and that they had signed NDAs before going into the realms.

“So, no one will know if you’re missing,” Harper said, “just like us.” She suggested the members distribute their stat points from the bunyip and goblin kills, but that led to a new conversation about stat-allocation strategies.

“It’s already so late,” Nevan said, gazing at his daughter, who had fallen asleep against his chest. “Can’t we do this in the morning?”

Harper nodded. “We have only twenty-four hours to use them, so we’ll have to do this early tomorrow, then.” She stared up at the sky, which was completely black. “God only knows what time it is.”

Zack laughed and gestured toward Lorenzo. “Why don’t we ask the narc? He probably has a secret watch or some inside intel.”

Harper glanced at Damon, troubled by the dissension within the team, but Lorenzo seemed to take the barb impassively. She led the members through an inspection of the goblin huts, which had appeared unimpressive from the exterior.

“Wow,” Zack said as he stepped inside one. “Maybe we shouldn’t have killed those little twerps. We could have used them as builders.”

The goblins had compacted the mud so much that the walls looked like they were made from a porous stone. Even more impressive were the shelves they had molded from the same gray mud. The mobs had smoothed them along the hut’s circular walls, and they contained primitive weapons, which were mostly fashioned from bone. The huts were also a lot more spacious than they appeared from the outside. Dried grass had been twined together to form six beds on the dirt floor. “Those are too small for us,” Jordan commented, and Zack laughed. “Yeah, I’m gonna need five of them.”

Harper glanced at him and Damon. “How do you want to split the team?”

The orc general rubbed his growing beard and thought about it for a moment. “Why don’t you, Kylah, and Nevan take a hut?” He glanced at the father and daughter. “I would give you a space alone, but I think you need at least one veteran in your midst.” Nevan nodded, looking slightly embarrassed, while Kylah seemed pleased with the arrangement.

“I want a hut alone with Emma,” Jordan stated.

Damon gazed at him and understood. Emma still had that vacant stare and appeared deeply affected by the glitch mishap. “Yeah, you guys are a couple anyway.”

Silo blew a raspberry, “What is this? A dating show?”

Damon decided that he’d had enough. He grabbed the orc by the neck and escorted him out of the hut, dragging him back to the campfire. Silo tried to resist, but Damon was a level-61 orc and had no trouble imposing his will. “You listen to me,” he growled at the Brit. “I’ve had it with the disrespect you’re showing the team.”

Despite the disparity in size between the two orcs, Silo pushed forward against the team general. “It’s a fuckin’ free country, mate!” he shrilled in his oddly high-pitched voice. “I’m entitled to my own opinions.”

“No, you’re not,” Damon barked. “This isn’t a free country. This is the realms. And if you don’t smarten up, I’ll send you back to the LZ with Lorenzo, mate.”

Damon eased up and Silo broke away from him. But the rookie remained defiant. Without a resolution, the two orcs turned back to the hut and found Angie and Zack watching them and standing by the door. They allowed Silo back in and finished with the night’s arrangements.