Victor: Another someone? Who?

  Adam (GM): Unwad your panties. I’m checking.

  On the screen, the four remaining attackers had recovered from their shock at the falling elevator and were searching the lobby.

  “Persistent, aren’t they,” Marko said. “Hey, Jasper. Does this place have emergency stairs?”

  “Of course,” Jasper said, appearing over the TV. “The entrances are concealed, but not hard to find if you know where to look. I doubt those people will locate them though.”

  Adam (GM): Oh, I see. That’s interesting.

  Victor: What?

  Adam (GM): Relax. You’ll find out soon, unless I’m seriously mistaken. It isn’t a problem.

  Victor: Not a problem for you or not a problem for us?

  I didn’t get a reply. Movement on one of the screens drew my attention. An extremely tall, robed and hooded figure was striding down the hallway between our apartments. I had no idea where it’d come from. The robes were a tattered, muddy brown and I noticed the figure walked with a hunch, otherwise its head would probably bump against the ceiling. It had a staff in its left hand that was obviously meant for battle rather than ornamentation or support. The staff was sturdy, long and straight, and had metal caps at both ends made from gold, copper, or bronze. I couldn’t tell which.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Aria said, also having noticed the figure.

  The figure stopped and faced the wall of the hallway, directly across from the elevator. Its hood was so deep I couldn’t see any features. It raised its hand and touched the wall, which slid open to reveal a doorway. A new picture flickered onto the screen, replacing the blacked-out elevator camera. It showed an overhead view of a staircase. The figure stepped out of the hallway and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Then it stopped moving.

  “What is it doing?” Aria said. “Should we shoot it or leave it alone?”

  “Let’s just watch for now,” Marko said.

  “Oh, that’s interesting,” Jasper said. “They found the stairway door in the lobby. I’m impressed!”

  Sure enough, the four people in the lobby were entering a previously unseen doorway set far to the right of the elevator.

  “Is that the same staircase?” Marko said. “How would it even connect?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “It’s obviously the same one, though. Look.”

  I pointed at the stairway view, and we could see people at the very bottom. They started up the stairs, moving quickly but cautiously, each covering the other. The hooded figure at the top of the stair was completely still, it didn’t even sway in place. Its gaze seemed to be fixed on something in the corner of the stairwell, and I strained to make out what had its attention. I caught the faintest gleam of a reflective surface.

  “I think it’s watching for them in a mirror,” I said. “You know how some places have mirrors in the corners of the stairs? I’m pretty sure it’s waiting.”

  We watched in silence as the intruders climbed the stairs. When they reached the halfway point, hidden panels in opposite walls a flight above them slid open. A shining, metallic dome popped out from behind each panel and began spitting glowing, white bolts of energy. A pair of bolts slammed into the human in the lead, lighting up his body like a cartoon lightning strike. It was like looking at a full body X-ray. The light faded and left a smoking corpse behind.

  Marko whistled.

  “Kaius did say the Lux has defenses. I guess he wasn’t kidding.”

  The remaining attackers immediately returned fire, strobing blue lines passing white bolts. One of the domes shattered and another gunman fell. I watched a gobbek toss a grenade toward the other dome and a cloud of shrapnel, concrete, and glittering shards briefly blocked our view of the stairs. Defenses down and undeterred by their losses, the gobbek and a surviving fane continued to move forward.

  “Did you fuck someone’s mom or something?” Aria said. “Those guys really want you dead.”

  “I wish I knew,” I said.

  “I wonder if our robed friend is going to fight them,” Marko said. “If it only has that staff, you’d think it’d go for an ambush instead of waiting to get shot.”

  The gobbek and fane were almost to the top of the stairs when the robed figure acted. A continuous beam of orange-red light burst from inside its hood, reflected off the mirror in the corner of the stairs, and ripped into the attackers. The gobbek’s head evaporated in a red cloud and the fane behind him didn’t fare much better. He wasn’t dead, but his face was seared down to bloody bone, mouth open in a silent scream. The robed figure adjusted the beam slightly and finished off the fane. The beam cut off and its source vanished, the robed figure suddenly nowhere to be seen.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  Aria was scrambling toward the door of the apartment.

  “Yell if it comes back,” she said. “I want the guns those guys were carrying.”

  She flung the door open and stopped. A woman was standing in front of the door, her hand raised to knock. She had Asian features, was short, wore her brown hair in a ponytail, and had a pair of large, round glasses. I recognized the black pantsuit she was wearing from our trip to FlexTech. Aria’s thyrsus appeared in her hand and she started to swing.

  “Wait!” I said. “She’s one of us!”

  Aria arrested her swing inches from the woman’s head, eyes wide behind her glasses. I couldn’t see the woman on the image from the hallway, but I did see her purple dot on the mini-map. Where had she come from? Then realized I knew the answer. The fourth apartment, number one.

  “Hello [Marcy],” Jasper said.

  “Um, hi,” the woman said. “I’m Marcy. Marcy Liu.”

  “Hey, Marcy,” Aria said. The thyrsus vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “That was my bad. I’m Aria. Back in a sec.”

  Aria slipped past Marcy into the hall and jogged toward the stairs.

  “Come on in,” Marko said. “I’m Marko and this is Victor. Would you like some pizza? We still have a couple slices left.”

  “No, thank you, I have takeout,” Marcy said, stepping hesitantly into the apartment, fidgeting with her hands.

  “You’re in apartment one, right?” I said.

  She nodded, eyes darting back and forth between me and Marko.

  “Have a seat,” Marko said, dropping into an easy chair. “Please.”

  Marcy sat down on the very edge of the couch, looking ready to bolt at any moment. I didn’t want to spook her by getting too close, so I took the remaining easy chair. Marko smiled at the woman, obviously waiting for her to start talking. She did not.

  “We didn’t see you in the hall,” I said, ignoring the awkward moment. “Not until Aria opened the door. Is that one of your abilities?”

  Marcy took a deep breath and made an obvious effort to calm herself.

  “No,” she said. “That was programming. I told the cameras or whatever to ignore me. It’s called technomancy.”

  She unbuttoned her top, revealing a white blouse beneath. It had a short, complex runic equation drawn on it in black marker. Marko leaned forward and examined her work. He shook his head.

  “That’s amazing,” he said. “How did you figure that out? How long did it take?”

  “I cheated,” she said. “I managed to isolate that string of code from the inside of the Roomba that tried to attack me. It was just rolling around, cleaning, then suddenly had a taser on an extendable arm. There’s no way that arm could fit inside the robot, so I took it apart and examined it.”

  Marcy’s face had grown animated while she spoke. She leaned further back into the couch and seemed to relax.

  “The technology here is a product of its era,” she continued. “And the security is laughable. Even so, almost everything is interconnected, and I found layers to that connectivity. It’s both more and less advanced than what I’m used to working with. It took me awhile, but I brute forced a few commands through trial and error.”

  “And I thought you were smart,” I said to Marko, shaking my head.

  “I am smart,” Marko said. “That isn’t even a boast. Marcy is a whole lot smarter.” He smiled at the woman. “From what you said, I take it you’ve figured out the time discrepancy?”

  She nodded.

  “It was on the ATM receipts,” Marcy said. “I was twelve in 2008. It seems ridiculous, but I haven’t found anything that contradicts the evidence.”

  “You used an ATM?” I said. “Was that part of a quest or something?”

  “How about you start at the beginning,” Marko said. “We can fill Aria in on anything she misses.”

  “Well, I live in Atlanta, but was born in New York state,” Marcy said. “I own a growing cybersecurity firm, and everything was going well until I woke up here nearly a week ago.”

  “You’ve been in Anera the longest,” Marko said. “I wonder if our arrivals were intentionally staggered. I know it sounds dumb, but can I ask what year it was?”

  “2025,” Marcy said. “Start of September. Why? Wait, don’t tell me.” She looked down, thinking, and pushed up her glasses. “It’s different, isn’t it? The year I came from.”

  “Yep,” I said. “We all come from different times. Aria and I are from 2021 and 2022, and Marko is from 2026. We aren’t sure why.”

  She nodded, slowly.

  “I can’t explain it either, at least not yet,” Marcy said. “It doesn’t really matter, though. We’re in 2008 now, unless the entire city is in on the same joke. Anyway, I freaked out when I first woke up. I was in an unknown location, wearing clothes I didn’t recognize, didn’t have my phone, and the apartment was completely empty, except for the Roomba. Then I went outside.” She shuddered.

  “Wait,” I said. “You didn’t wake up to a name prompt? No tutorial?”

  “The tutorial didn’t appear until three days ago,” she said. “I’d come back from shopping, and the prompt was waiting for me when I stepped in the door. I won’t pretend that didn’t freak me out more, particularly when the stupid Roomba attacked me.”

  “The rollout suffered from a few bugs,” Jasper said. I’d forgotten he was there. “It’s all smoothed out now, though!”

  “What did you do for the first three days?” Marko said. “You must have found a source of credits if you went shopping, unless you were shoplifting.”

  “I had a panic attack for the first day,” Marcy said, matter-of-factly. “I saw the guard, the doorman, and a few green people passing by outside and lost my shit. I ran back to the apartment, locked and barricaded the door, and spent the rest of the day in bed, alternating between crying jags and wondering if I’d gone insane. I was still scared the second day, but I was starving, so I went to look for food.”

  Aria came back to the apartment with an armful of guns. She kicked the door shut and dumped the guns on the kitchen table with a clatter. Marcy jumped at the noise, and everyone turned to stare.

  “What?” she said. “Keep talking. I’m gonna check these out.” She sat down at the table and pulled one of the guns toward her.