Walter watched the little girl vanish and he cussed under his breath. A handful of moments later, the two who had been standing nearest the Champion began to walk away, another heartbeat and the Champion himself began to disappear down the road as well. Walter was left, standing alone near the city’s humming barrier.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and took a step forward, towards the barrier. The motion broke the power of his Command, Burgling Heron. Initially, he’d discounted the Command as useless, but Walter was beginning to understand and appreciate its uses. Invisibility was helpful, but needing to have both his feet planted motionless on the ground was far from ideal.

Yet without that Command, he would have surely been found as he lurked behind the Arena’s Champion and his two companions. Walter had kept his distance and managed to remain out of sight. Stalking and sticking to the shadows weren’t unfamiliar concepts. He’d spent a number of years of his life investigating the lackluster security of the houses around him. It started as a taboo curiosity, but over time it had blossomed into a life of theft which had only ended by an ill-fated train re-route. Agona had given him two Commands for the actions in that previous life. Both were levels gained in Bara.

Walter had turned a corner, only to find the three individuals he’d been tailing had stopped and were a short distance away. He had used his Burgling Heron Command a handful of times, breaking it by taking a long stride and then whispering it again, until he was close enough that he could hear them, but far enough that he was safe from accidental detection.

In the minutes that followed, he listened to what the group spoke about, witnessed what transpired. That Sky Sight had given the Champion a Special Command, that the Queen now had its use. He’d been knocked to the ground during the initial shockwave as the rockets hit, but righted himself and used his Command before anyone had seen him. He’d suffered through the following blasts, a wide stance keeping him stable as lasers shot outside the city’s barrier, buffeting him with wind and dust. He’d watched as, looking just as confused and frightened as he was, they walked away, leaving nothing but a line of craters.

Unlike the others, Walter had watched the clock sitting inside the nearby shop closely. He had listened to the Champion’s words just as closely, and he trusted in the predictive capabilities of Sky Sight. He believed that there would be people coming to the city at 8:36 and so, once he was alone, he closed the distance between himself and the barrier and he waited. He squinted through the bright blue glow and counted as the seconds ticked away. As the clock blinked onto the preordained arrival time, he saw movement. A blur at first, in the distance, but it approached quickly. A van. It did a stalwart job of avoiding the craters, the wheel being wrenched back and forth to avoid them as it sped down the train line. It showed no signs of stopping until just before it reached the barrier, when it turned sideways and screeched to a halt.

Walter wondered if he could put his faith into the barrier, rolling his Command around on his tongue, hesitating. He had thought to gain some insight into the Champion, perhaps befriend him for the purposes of protection, but now he found himself the only witness to something of the utmost importance. Running and hiding both felt natural, but he stood transfixed and watched as a door slid open and two men leapt out of the van, followed by two women.

One of the men threw something he’d brought from the vehicle. A bottle. As soon as it touched the barrier, it hissed into smoke.

“Well fuck,” he said in a guttural voice. “It’s really charged.”

“There has to be a way in,” the woman next to him said. “We drove this whole way, we can’t just stand here. Someone will be here in no time to arrest us for entering the quarantine zone.”

“Stop saying shit none of us want to heard. If you think there is a way in, why don’t you shut and-”

“Wait, look!” the other woman said. Walter turned and saw she was pointing directly at him. The other three turned to stare as well. He could feel the color draining from his face.

“Is that…”

“Yeah, hey! Let us in!”

The four walked closer to the barrier, waving their arms. They came closer, until he began to fear for their safety as much as his own. But he was too deep into his own thoughts to move, to speak. His eyes followed them as they walked a short distance along the barrier, but his head and body remained motionless.

“Are you deaf? Let us in, man!”

“Hurry up, you shit!”

Walter took a step closer to them, knowing his voice would be faint. He was scared, but he wanted answers. He ignored their words and asked his own questions. “What’s going on? Why are we trapped in this city?”

They were quiet, then the man with the guttural voice let out a laugh. “What do you mean? You’ve got super powers and shit, right? Let us in and we can join. Just drop the barrier.”

“You aren’t here to help,” Walter repeated what Sky Sight had told the Arena’s Champion, Abel. It was the sole piece of information he had regarding the men and women standing before him. “Why hasn’t anyone come here to free us?”

“Free you?” One of the women asked. “What the hell does that mean?”

“That sound…hey do you hear that?” the other woman asked desperately.

“Fuck!” One of the men yelled. “Let us inside, right now!”

“It’s a helicopter! Come on, man, they’re going to fucking kill us if you just stand there.”

“Please, no,” One of the women cried as she dropped to her knees. The other woman started running away.

“Let us in the fucking city!” The man yelled. “We can help you fight! We can-”

His words were cut off as the sound of a rotary cannon whirring to life drowned all of their cries away. The helicopter was distant, nothing but a blur in the sky to Walter, but the destruction it caused was highly visible. The shells ripped through the three still standing before him, leaving the shredded mince of human to splatter the ground and hiss against the barrier. The firing continued as the barrel turned away and found the final target. Once the woman, beyond Walter’s sight, had been killed, the sound of automatic firing stopped, echoing away into the skies and leaving him alone with the hum of the barrier.

The chopping of the helicopter grew louder and Walter realized it was coming closer. He had watched as bullets had dissolved against the city’s exterior wall, he knew he would be safe if it tried to fire, but his heart pounded and fear ran rampant through his mind and veins. The aircraft lowered itself as it neared, until it sat in the air motionless, as though it were alive and watching him. It didn’t fire, simply remained afloat. Hairs raised all over his body.

“Burgling Heron.”

His body disappeared. The helicopter lingered a few seconds longer, then slowly started to lift up and headed back towards wherever it had come from.

Walter looked at what remained of the van and its former occupants. It seemed they would be left to rot in the open, for the carrion and scavengers to feed on. He turned away and tried to push the sight out of his mind. He tried to push everything he had just seen into the far reaches of his mind, telling himself he would deal with it later, when he was safe.

Instead he he focused on the long walk back to Sierra, back to their small home in this terrifying city.