Order

Basic

Momentous Longmace

Disjoint Tallblade

Striking Grace Module

Inertus Barrier

Knight's Shell

Availability:

1 Equipment Token (Basic)

3 Meal Token

"I can't stay here," Ben said, reading down the list on the tablet.

They were outside, and Ben felt like he'd fallen back into paradoxical normality.

He sat on a park bench outside the visitor center, the sky a very ordinary gray, the wind a little cold, the grass and trees reassuringly drab.

A gleaming inter-dimensional spaceship floated in that sky, but that just made everything else seem more normal by comparison.

"'Cause of the people they killed?" Dawn asked.

Hayden stood nearby, silent, staring off at the forested northern horizon.

Monroe was behind the bench, swinging his sword around with no care for the recently bandaged cut on his chest. The sword made humming sounds as it passed through the air a couple of feet behind Ben's head.

"They're murderers," Ben said. "I don't see them any differently to the monsters out there."

"I get it," Dawn said. "I mean, they're a little less indiscriminate, but I get that you don't feel safe there."

"The guy they murdered, it was for..." Ben glanced down to his chest then gave Dawn a significant look.

She looked at the spot on his chest, then her eyes widened in realization. "Huh. Why?"

Something in Dawn's eyes changed, just for a moment. There was a second of suspicion there, like maybe she thought the Lirral had had a very good reason for incinerating a guy, but then it was gone. It hadn't been a consideration for her for longer than a second.

"They had some claims," Ben said. "They don't stand up, from my point of view."

The subtext of their conversation completely passed over the others' heads. Hayden wasn't paying attention at all, and Monroe was working his way around the bench.

He brought the purple blade down a foot in front of Ben's face.

"You should get a Tallblade," he said, looking at the tablet in Ben's lap.

The sword had a blade three feet long, and a tapering hilt of the same length, giving it almost more the look of a glaive more than a traditional western sword. There was no crossbar, just a slightly angled part at the top of the hilt just above where Monroe was holding it.

"Can you be careful with that?" Ben asked.

Monroe pivoted and brought the sword down through Hayden's head.

Ben started leaping to his feet, but the illuminated purple blade passed through her harmlessly, like it was nothing but a projection of light.

"It's in 'geometry mode'," Monroe said. "Only hurts the teardrops like this."

It took a second for Hayden to realize what had happened, then she turned and sucker punched Monroe in the bridge of the nose.

"Ah ruck," Monroe said, stepping back with his hand to his face. When he took his hand away there was blood all over his top lip.

Ben looked back at the tablet. He didn't want a sword. At the top of his list of questions was whether the Lirral had any way of tracking the alien squatting in his skin. The answer to that would tell him whether he had to leave now, or whether he would be able to come back to the visitor center to keep in contact with the other survivors and learn how things were developing.

He was also wondered if there might be medical equipment that could get the thing out, but he was a little more skeptical of the latter. The reaction of the Lirral in the temporary infirmary kind of suggested that there was no medical intervention for it.

He tapped out and went back into the Restraint section.

Restraint

Basic

Dismal Pike

Propulsive Chainmace

Handlance of Fulmination

Defiance Module

Dervish Module

Squire's Doublet

Availability:

1 Equipment Token (Basic)

3 Meal Token

No restraints. Just more of the same. Or similar anyway. He didn't see anything that could be what he was looking for, though he didn't actually understand what any of it was.

Chainmace, was that a flail? What was a handlance? The modules, he had no idea.

The Survival menu seemed focused on long range. Bows, crossbows, and more lances.

When he got to the Nuance menu, he thought he saw something that might be what he wanted.

Nuance

Basic

Disjoint Dagger

Inertus Gloves

Relocation Bracer

Horizon Force Module

Heaven's Glimpse Module

Agent's Cloak

Availability:

1 Equipment Token (Basic)

3 Meal Token

Heaven's Glimpse? Was that anything? 'Glimpse' wasn't 'scan' or 'detect' but it was the closest he'd seen so far.

Dawn sighed and leaned back on the bench. With total languidness and contempt, she raised the tablet and started looking through the menus.

Movement at the visitor center caught Ben's attention. He turned in time to see a human in sleek white armor stepping through the doors. The armor had plates that covered his legs like chaps, and a chest piece that reminded Ben of a conquistador's breastplate. Both parts were made of the same gleaming white ceramic-looking material as the Lirral suits.

The armor wasn't the only alien equipment the guy had. There was a white-hilted purple knife hanging from a band around his waist, and he carried a diamond-shaped shield of the same white material on his left forearm. Three pieces of alien equipment in total.

"Hey, we only got one token," Monroe said, indignation over his nosebleed turning to a different kind of indignation.

"Yeah, we all did," Ben said.

"So how'd he... Oh. Did maybe other people give him their stuff?"

"Nah, that's not what happened," Dawn said.

The opportunist looked around, fixed his gaze on where Monroe was standing with his sword still in hand, and immediately started marching towards them.

"Oh hell no, you're not getting Demonflayer," Monroe said, squaring up and brandishing the sword. He did something to the hilt, and the color of the blade lightened from purple to lavender, with bursts of white sparking along the edge.

Ben slipped his tablet down the front of his slacks. Dawn handed him hers, and he pushed it down after it. Hayden stopped watching the horizon and turned to look at the approaching guy.

Ben closed his eyes and started rubbing his forehead. For some reason his thoughts took him back to his highschool lunch room. He didn't know why. Maybe it was the way the armored guy was posturing, maybe it was the weird sanctified risk of violence that kids were allowed to pose to each other, replicated here by adult humans operating under the gaze of the Lirral. Maybe it had been a day and he was just dissociating.

When he looked back up the armored man was a few feet away.

Monroe had turned to face him, standing with one leg behind the other, like he was ready to bolt.

"What do you want? Stop. Hey stop, stop."

Monroe backpedaled as he spoke, barely glancing behind him as he tried to keep space between him and the armored guy.

The man paused as he moved past the bench. He had pale skin and medium length black hair, with a well-kept beard from cheek to chin. He turned to glance down at Ben and Dawn.

When he spoke, his voice had a boisterous friendliness to it that took Ben off guard.

"Hey! You don't have any stuff!"

"Nope," Ben said.

"You lootin' from people?" Dawn asked.

The guy held up his free hand, placating. "Oh. Yes. I'm so embarrassed. I didn't think I'd be the one doing this, you know? This isn't me! What am I doing?" He laughed. "But still, here I am. I guess you never know, right?"

Dawn glanced at Ben, her expression flat.

"You never know," Ben agreed.

"I'm Dorian by the way, lovely to meet you," Dorian said, before turning and resuming his advance on Monroe.

Ben turned to return Dawn's look. Her expression communicated something that he wouldn't have been able to put into words. A tiredness, a 'this is about right'ness, a feeling of being done in a way he only understood because he was right there with her.

Monroe swung his sparking sword at Dorian, who blocked the lavender blade with his shield.

Monroe put weight on the sword, trying to press pass Dorian's defense, the blade making a noise like a dentist's drill pressing on a toilet bowl.

Instead of giving way Dorian stepped back and swung the shield into the blade, trying to bat it away. The sword didn't move like it had weight, it didn't bounce away. Instead, the blade popped like a soap bubble, before being replaced a split-second later by a wave of new light rushing out of the hilt.

In that split second Dorian had reached out and planted a fist on Monroe's forehead, then another, two quick bops.

Monroe threw the sword blindly and ran, his mouth emitting a keening sound, not even looking at the sword as it flew into the grass at Hayden's feet.

Dorian reached down to pick the sword up by its long hilt.

After watching the fight happen and seeing Dorian pick up Monroe's sword, Hayden pulled out a can of mace and sprayed the bearded man in the face.

"Ah! Ow. Ow!" His voice had a very I just stubbed my toe quality. "Why'd you do that! Ahh my eyes really hurt."

He started staggering away, blinking, still carrying Monroe's sword.

Monroe ran up and pushed the man over, grabbing the sword and then the man's shield. The guy in armor put up a token fight, but couldn't stop him getting the items off him.

Monroe approached the bench, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Okay. I got his stuff. Let's go before he gets up. Let's go."

Ben pulled out the pair of tablets. He gave Dawn's back to her and looked back down at his own, the screen unchanged from before.

He tapped on the Heaven's Glimpse Module certain it would just purchase it without confirmation, but instead he got a fraction more information.

Heaven's Glimpse Module

Basic Equipment

By the glory of the Apogee, this Ether Module brightens the eyes of a being who submits themselves to the Bracelet of Earthliness. Amberine is the color of sight. Let no enemies of order escape your gaze!

Availability:

1 Equipment Token (Basic)

3 Meal Token

Flowery language. Ben couldn't decide if it sounded more like an ad, or something from a religious text. He could imagine a culture where it was both.

It took a minute to work out how to actually confirm the dialog, but a long press finally triggered the purchase or whatever it was.

The effect of the delivery was like the ejection he'd seen in the presentation, but in reverse.

A white box plummeted from nowhere. There was a streak of rainbow color, movement too fast to register, and then a white box just hit the ground with zero sound and zero momentum.

It sat there in the grass, steaming slightly.

Stupidly, Ben felt the 'Package!?' thrill of getting a parcel delivery. It only lasted for a second before he remembered how his day was going, and that killed it.

What he'd thought was a box turned out to be a cube of foam. It brushed away like soap suds, dissolving at the slightest pressure. As it vanished, it revealed a bracer made of the white Lirral ceramic.

Sleek and almost featureless, it had a layer of soft gray padding on the inside, and a thumbnail-sized yellow bead set into the top.

Ben slipped it onto his arm, half expecting it to burn his arm off, and it immediately snapped closed. The white material shifted to mold itself around his arm, closing like a blood-pressure band.

Ben jumped to his feet, tugging at the thing.

"Woah, what happened?" Dawn asked.

The bracer stopped tightening short of becoming uncomfortable. It never got any worse than snug, but he didn't see any way to get it off.

"It's stuck," he said.

Thinking it might be an unlock button or something, he jabbed at the yellow bead.

Instead of releasing him, light spilled into his vision, drawing geometric lines across the grass and visitor center parking lot.

Blinking, he went through the cycle of pressing and releasing the little yellow bean again a few times. Touch, lines on. Release, lines off.

Every time he pressed it, the world lit up in outlines. There were faint white outlines around Dawn, Hayden, and Monroe. When he turned to look at the Lirral guard standing by the bridge a little over a hundred feet away, the alien glowed with a silver outline.

"Okay, I think this is okay," he said, sinking back onto the bench.

"What's it doing?" Dawn asked.

"It's highlighting people, I think," he said.

He turned to look back at the visitor center.

The squat brick building was lit up with lots of white and silver lines. There was a mess of them, too crowded to work out any detail, but he bet every one was the outline of a person or Lirral in there.

"Through walls?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Want to swap?" Monroe asked, sinking onto the bench on the opposite side, before turning to look at Hayden. "Hey Hayden, want to donate your token to me? It'd make sense to concentrate our gear, right? Right?"

Dorian the opportunist was climbing to his feet from where he'd been sitting cross-legged on the grass. His eyelids were swollen and his eyes were bloodshot, like Ben on a bad hay-fever day.

He staggered past the bench, heading back towards the visitor center.

"Maybe you're not cut out for this looting stuff," Ben said to him as he passed.

"Oh gosh, you might be right," Dorian said, not slowing or looking at him, just knuckling at his eyes.

After a minute of playing with the bracer, Ben figured out that double tapping the bean locked it in the on position, freeing up his hand.

Finally, he checked the thing he needed to know most of all. With the bean toggled on, he looked down at his chest.

Nothing.

He could see the white outline around his hands and body, but where the alien growth was stuck in his chest, there was no indication that anything was there at all. He'd need to be actually looking at it with his regular human eyes to know.

"Your eyes look pretty spooky with that running," Dawn told him.

It took a second for Ben to process her words, still basking in the relief of not being one Lirral scan away from getting toasted.

"What?" he asked. "You can see that it's on?"

"Like a white glow."

As he was looking at her, the outlines faded, and the bean on the bracer went dim. He tried tapping it back on, but it only came back for a second.

He thought he'd broken it at first, but the longer he left it alone, the longer each use of it lasted, and from that he recognized the pattern of something that had run out of batteries and was slowly recharging.

He didn't know what it could be using to recharge. His body energy, somehow? Sunlight? Something else? It could be anything. He obviously had a lot of new physics to catch up on.

"We should plan," Hayden said suddenly.

She was holding the spear she'd bought with the tablet, a white shaft with a kite-shaped tip that glowed like it had a star stuck on the end. At some point the purple-bladed dagger Dorian had been wearing had made its way to her waist as well.

Before anyone had thought of anything to say to that, she went on.

"I'm on the same page as Ben. We should leave. Forget the aliens, the people in that shelter are psychos. And if we're staying together, we should work out what we're doing."

"I don't have a plan," Ben said. "I know you've all been kind of following me since we met on the staircase, but at this point we all know the same things. We're all as lost as each other."

"I may be management material, but this is all beyond my me," Dawn said. She looked across at Hayden, expression thoughtful. "You've had your shit together from moment one. I figured you for an intern. What's your story?"

"You want to know my story?" Hayden asked.

"Yeah, are you like, ex-military?" Monroe asked, leaning in over Dawn's shoulder.

Ben played with the bean on his bracer as they spoke, not ignoring the conversation, but not wanting to intrude on it by speaking. He'd had a similar impression of Hayden. Worryingly put-together, even when she was cremating demon-zombie corpses.

Hayden took a breath and turned her gaze back to the horizon.

"Fine. I might as well tell you. I used to be a girl scout leader. Every summer at college, I'd get a job working as a camp counselor, out at Camp Cardigan."

"You're a literal girl scout?" Monroe interjected. "I didn't think be prepared meant for alien invasions."

Hayden kept talking over him, and nobody noted the joke. "One summer, we got hit by a storm. Flash flood. The mountainside just... broke. We got hit by a landslide. Mud. Trees. Rocks. The cabins just folded. I was digging girls out of the mud with my bare hands."

Dawn stood and went to Hayden's side, putting a hand on her shoulder. Ben was surprised when she didn't brush it away.

Hayden hadn't finished. "One girl got her leg cut off at the shin when a wall came down on her. Mostly cut off. It was hanging on by skin. I had to finish taking it off to get her free. The other counselor got suffocated in mud, but I only found that out later. I carried those girls out of there. Eventually we found the camp's raft trapped on some branches, and we rode it down river to a bigger camp at Hebron. They got us to a clinic, took over looking after the girls. I guess I found a place in my mind I could go to, back then, and I went to the same place today."

Dawn put Hayden in a hug. She returned it one-armed.

As Ben pushed on the yellow bean a new outline appeared in his vision, in the clouds above them. A purple outline.

It was huge and getting huger. Many twisting limbs.

It started about the size of a dime in his vision, and grew to the size of a grapefruit over the course of a few seconds. It didn't stop.

It wasn't growing. It was falling.

"We need to run," Ben said, his neck craning back, swaying with vertigo. "Sorry, but we need to run."

Dawn and Hayden turned to look at him, but he was already up and gone, slapping his feet on the ground like he was trying to fly as he pelted his way towards the bridge.

With the same understanding, instant and implicit, of birds who see a single member tear away from the resting flock, the other three joined him.