The police station is attached to something that looks like a small church, maybe a stylized community center. One of the officers unlocks it. The desks are unoccupied and even if it can’t have been over two weeks since this all started, there’s a dusty smell to the bullpen. At the back, we go down stairs and the officer unlocks another door, this one metal. On the other side is an aisle with three cells on each side. Like those in TV shows, they’re just bars from floor to ceiling with a bench on the left and right. There’s a metal toilet and sink against the back wall.

No privacy for criminals, it seems.

The first cell on the right has a Latin woman in it. Her light gray suit’s rumpled and stained, and she watches us intently. The third on the right has a man lying on the bench, seemingly sleeping. The officer opens the second cell on the left and I step in. It’s about three meters on all sides, concrete back wall, floor, and ceiling. The door clangs shut and locks with something that feels like finality.

The one good thing about it is that I’m alone.

Like that’s going to help you.

I glance at my willpower, down to below a quarter. Yeah, it will. I should have the night to replenish it before I have to deal with anyone and see if I can explain I just defended myself.

I sit, close my eyes, and hope that going through my sheet counts as me doing nothing.

Name: Chuck Dorval

Species: Human (ethnicity: Caucasian)

Class: Aether Guardian, Level: 9

Experience: 205,251

Ability Tree: Bodyguard

Ability: Switch, Level 5 (you have 5 points to distribute among your abilities)

Attributes

Strength: 25

Dexterity: 13

Endurance: 32

Intelligence: 14

Charisma: 10

Aether: 21

Health: 31

You have 4 Attribute points to distribute

Stats pool

Hit Points: 294/310

Mana: 210/210

Will Power: 13/67

Stamina: 522/522

Base Weight capability: 310 kg

Skills

System note

to avoid over crowding your display, only skills with a level 5 or above are listed as part of the Identity Sheet. For a complete list, please refer to your Skill window.

Automotive repair, Level 9

- specialized: 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan

Block, Level 14

Dodge, Level 17

Driving, Level 8

Endurance training, Level 32

Hand to hand, Level 6

Parry, 15

Perception, Level 15

Staff, level 21

Strength Training, Level 24

Tracking, Level 12

Willpower Training, Level 23

You have 5 Skill points to distribute

What the fuck am I supposed to do with all those numbers? Other than bigger is better, they’re basically meaningless. For the skills, it’s easy. I put them in willpower Attributes are…I know what they mean, and again, larger numbers in them are better, but how does the charisma work? If it’s higher, will I draw more people to me? Now that’s a scary thought. They also affect my stat pools, but I have to guess at the how.

Or do I?

How does Stamina work?

System Query: Stamina

Stamina determines how long you can exert yourself. Varying activities will drain your stamina at varying rates. Higher skills will reduce the stamina drain in using them. Stamina starts replenishing once strenuous activities are over and is affected by the rest modifiers.

So the obvious, without actual usable details. It’s going to be based on Endurance and since I have an Endurance skill, that’s got to come into play. With higher skills reducing how much endurance I lose, maybe I shouldn’t have put them all into willpower.

Should have thought about that before, genius.

With my stamina more than ten times higher than my endurance, there’s a multiplier in play, but no idea what it might be.

I hate math.

Maybe if you were smarter.

My intelligence is among my lower attributes. But what good it’s going to do me to raise it? What do smarts add to being able to fight?

Okay, system. How does intelligence work?

System Query: Intelligence

Intelligence is your ability to perceive information, manipulate it, and attain conclusions.

Oh, that is so fucking useful.

Guess you aren’t smart enough to get it.

If you aren’t going to help, how about you shut up?

Dexterity has to impact my ability to hit since strength is how hard I hit. Two points go in there. Not that I felt any difference when I put a point in it, but I put one in intelligence, anyway. A higher number can’t hurt. That leaves one point, and since I’m not bothering with magic and I definitely don’t want people to want to hang around me, that only leaves one reasonable place for it. Strength.

Now onto my abilities and trying to make sense of those walls of texts.

“I’m going to make a guess here,” a man says, and I glance at my willpower. It’s about halfway between a quarter and a half. It’s not dropping.

Yet.

“You’ve had an encounter with the esteemed Mayor of Bartlet Town but didn’t want to do what he said.”

That’s enough to make me ignore my desire to ignore him. He’s sitting now. He has a scruffy beard and I touch my chin and the bears I’ve been growing since this started. I need to get a razor.

“Why do you think that?”

“That’s what me and her are here for.”

I shake my head. “I—”

“Broke a law,” the woman answers. “I’m thinking you got in a fight.”

“Defended myself.”

“And Barlet’s police just happened to be around to arrest you afterward.”

“You say that like it wasn’t a coincidence.”

My father snorts and my paranoia ticks up.

“Come on,” the man says. “The cops never showed up to a brawl when the world was right. You really think any of them still willing to do their job would care what you did to a few thugs?”

I look at them. “What are you here for?”

“Officially?” she replies, and I hesitate before nodding. “Robbery for me. Loitering for him.”

“Loitering? Really?”

The man shrugs. “According to the cop who arrested me, there’s dully appointed lodging for anyone who needs it. They can’t have people getting hurt because they slept in just any unoccupied building.”

I look at her.

“You’ve seen how much stuff is lying around? With no one claiming any of it? I needed supplies for my practice, so I went and got them.”

“And they just happened to catch you,” I state.

“There’s a law, or so the two officers said, against just taking something lying around. Supposedly, there’s an office where I can put in requests for what I need and quests are generated so people can work and go up in level and be productive members of this little new society.”

And I slept in a vacant store and stole from it without getting caught. It took a fight with some racists to land me in here.

And how convenient was it all?

“And why do you think you’re really here?” I ask.

The man looks at the woman, and for a moment, I know they’re conspiring together.

“You have a better handle on what he’s doing,” the man says.

She sighs. “Mister Barlet is getting people to agree with him. He’s using an ability to make it happen. Anyone who can resist him,” she motions to the three of us, “end up here.”

“And you know that how?”

“My class comes with a defense against willpower-based attacks. And I get warned I have been attacked.”

“What class is that?”

“Mentalist.” No hesitation.

“Like reading minds?” I ask and I have no idea if the panic I feel is carried in my voice.

“Not yet. It’s a higher-level ability. At this point, it’s mostly protective with a little telekinesis thrown in. Not strong enough to get me out of this. Anyway. Once I realized I was under attack, I left the meeting. I didn’t put together Mister Barlet was behind it until Samuel joined me.”

I look at the man, Samuel. “How did you know?”

He snorts. “You should have seen his face as I kept not agreeing with him. I didn’t know it was an attack until Louisa told me what happened to her, but it was clear he was the one doing it.”

“How did you resist?”

He laughs. “I have a shitload of willpower. In like the three digits, and not just one hundred. Not giving in to people’s always served me well when I… well, before this. I ensconced myself when he started turning purple, and the bruisers he had with him became agitated. I’m not exactly good in physical altercations.”

“What about you?” Louisa asks.

I don’t need my father’s warning to know to proceed cautiously.

“Since the world changed, I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping an eye on my willpower. I’m not good in crowds, and if I lose it, things can get messy. When we reached Harrisonburg, he had the whole city as part of the welcoming committee and I was losing willpower even before he started talking. I left the moment I was able to, and before I punched him.”

“Kinda wished you had,” Samuel says.

“Social Anxiety?” Louisa asks. “Sorry, shrink, can’t quite help it.”

“How long have you been in here?” I ask, instead of answering her. If she’s a psychologist, she probably knows what my problems are better than I do.”

“Since the second day after this started,” he replies tiredly. “I’m a local, so I set up about helping the others deal with the stress of the change. Mister Barlet was going around talking to people about his plan for the city. He didn’t call himself Mayor then. In fact, he claimed to be doing the rounds on behalf of Mayor Papinian, because she was busy managing the crisis from the center of the city.”

“Six days ago for me, by my count,” Samuel says. “I wandered in, and he approached me within hours, welcoming me in and telling me how wonderful Barlet City was and was going to be with my help. When I didn’t immediately accept his offer to stick around, he just insisted and tried to convince me how important I was to his plans. I should have realized he had an ability then because he was pretty pathetic about it. But I found him funny. In my line of work, you really learn to appreciate those who have no idea how to convince you of something. He had it down to almost an art.”

“If you haven’t worked it out yet,” Louisa said, “Sam’s a conman.”

“It’s a job like any other,” he says when I raise an eyebrow. “But like I said, he got angrier and angrier, and the bruisers with him became agitated, so I ran. I was picked up that night as I was settling into an unoccupied house. I didn’t get much chance to talk before I was in cuffs and dragged in here.”

“Why not just throw you out of the city if he only wants people who agree with him around?” I ask.

“You’re the one who worked out that part, Sam.”

“I don’t think he can,” Samuel replies. “At least not if he wants his city to grow. I’ve queried the system about anything I can think of, which includes city growth. The primary component is the population. Everything else trickles down from that. The system uses anyone residing within the border to calculate it.” He motions to the cells. “This qualifies as us residing in the town.”

There’s no way this is real. I wouldn’t buy the premise if it was in a book by Clancy or even Brown. I try to decipher their expression, but I can’t get anything from them. Okay. One of the first rules you taught me, dad. No matter how insane the situation seems, if I can’t work out the truth, go with it until I do.

“So what is he doing, exactly? Using mind control to force people to stay?”

Louisa shakes her head. “If it was outright mind control, I don’t think I’d have resisted it. From what I saw him do in that meeting and what Sam told me, he’s more nudging people into agreeing with him. Eroding their willpower until his ideas seem good.”

I remember John easily agreeing with Victor as the man spoke of them staying. I didn’t pay attention to the others, but there were no protests. Even from those who’d mentioned they were trying to get to their family.

They aren’t your problem.

It’s one thing for them to choose to stay here. And maybe that is what happened. I can’t have been the only one keeping an eye on his willpower, or someone among them has to have more than me. So they would have agreed because they wanted to.

There you go, no need to—

But I’ve spent my childhood being manipulated. Hardly knowing what decisions were mine and which my father influenced me into having. Even now, half the time, I’m fighting his voice in my head.

More than half, trust me on that.

If they had their decisions made for them. I owe it to all of them to stop it.

I stand. “How do we stop him?”

“Excuse me?” Samuel asks.

“We aren’t exactly in a position to do anything,” Louisa adds.

I approach the door. Thick metal frame, thicker lock.

“I don’t think even you’re strong enough—” Samuel starts.

With a scream, I slam my foot against the lock and metal shatters out of the door frame. The loud clanging as it hits the bars covers the rest of the man’s protest.

“Do you want to help me?” I ask as I step out of the cell.

“Just to be clear,” Samuel asks. “But if I say no. You’re leaving me in here, aren’t you?”

I smile at the man, and he takes a step back.

My father’s voice ohs in admiration at the effect my smile has.