They made it to the mess hall, with Reggie keeping the door open for everyone as he scanned the skies. Richard passed him, studying him. It was so odd to see him standing there, living and breathing like he hadn’t died in the wall breach. Seeing him brought a lot of uncomfortable questions about reality.

  Richard almost finished eating when Marcus tapped the table. “Everyone is on farming duty until further notice.”

  “Are we safe in the open skies?” Savannah asked.

  “We’re not really safe for the next three days. From what Eddie’s told us, locusts are a force of nature before the swarm simply dies out. No one has figured out how these swarms start, just that they do.”

  Savannah scoffed. “That sounds chaotic.”

  Richard got up with Savannah and left for the farm. Elias had come in later, and Richard was surprised he came in alone. These locusts had everyone on edge, but Elias seemed to be as grumpy as ever. Seeing Elias brought up the quick conversation he and Lucy had in the silos. Lucy seemed to casually drop that Elias and Dmitri had a past, and it wasn’t a good one. True, it seemed like that could be Elias’s story with anyone, but it was such that Elias hesitated giving Dmitri help when Dmitri’s life was on the line.

  Elwyndor was already in the fields, and Reggie was talking with her quietly. Elwyndor gave them gloves and a shovel, with instructions that they needed to overturn all the ground they could to pull out the remaining plants.

  “The light could attract the swarm, so we are working until the sun sets. Be prepared to wake up before dawn,” Elwyndor said.

  Richard and Savannah nodded, and once again Richard found himself alone with his thoughts. Lucy was tucked away in the healer’s building with Dmitri, and if she hadn’t come out of the building yet, it meant he wasn’t completely dead yet.

  “Do you know the history between Elias and Dmitri?” Richard asked Savannah. It was either ask and have a conversation, or be alone with his thoughts about Reggie’s appearance in this timeline. Or if the last time he would ever see Izzy was the image of her rushing into the swarm of locusts and disappearing in an instant.

  Richard squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again to watch Savannah working. He really needed a different conversation.

  “I’ve just heard rumors. I bet Eddie would know better,” Savannah said, glancing at Eddie. Richard had sensed this kind of pattern. It seemed like even though Dmitri was the leader, Eddie was the one to whom everyone turned for advice. Something about having lived the longest definitely made him the expert, but Richard wondered that if Eddie knew so much, why didn’t he try for the leadership position?

  “I’m fine with rumors.” When Richard said that out loud, he realized how bad that sounded. He shouldn’t have said it like that. What he should have said was the truth. He needed a conversation to keep his mind focused on something else besides what was actually happening to him. Savannah studied him carefully, but did her best not to show the judgement on her face. She didn’t do a good job.

  Savannah shrugged, digging her shovel deep into the earth and flipping the dirt around. “They came at the same time. You know the bond that happens among newbie groups, since you’re pretty close to your own group. So… yeah. They started off as friends before going to their separate classes. After a while, the leader of base two died. I don’t remember how long they’d been here at Kaelune, but enough that Elias was actively campaigning for leader. I was horrified when I heard he tried running for leader, but apparently he wasn’t nearly as much of an asshole as he is now.” Savannah turned over another pile of earth, digging through it with her shovel to search for plants. “Anyway, it was apparently close, but Dmitri won, and Elias… took it badly. It might be the reason he’s such an asshole right now.” Savannah shrugged. “Who knows? At least we can thank our lucky stars that we avoided any possibility where Elias is in charge of base two.”

  Richard was flipping over his own dirt when he had a nasty realization. Would there be a timeline where Elias was the leader? He wanted to avoid that one at all costs. Granted, he wasn’t sure he liked any of these timelines. They were curses, after all. He was gifted this overpowered ability, and yet he still felt like a pawn being used by higher powers.

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  “But like I said, talk to Eddie. He’d actually know.”

  Richard glanced over to see Eddie at work. His eyes widened as he saw the man dual-wielding two shovels, slamming them into the dirt and sifting them around for plants. If Richard hadn’t experienced the system himself, that movement alone would have rocked his brain. He had to admit it was still incredibly badass.

  The thing he couldn’t understand was how Eddie was here in this reality. The man didn’t even exist in the last two timelines. He had tried to piece together what had happened, and he assumed that something had gone differently with the wall breach attack. It wouldn’t be that hard a leap to assume a few different choices would lead to different survivals and deaths. But how was Eddie here at all?

  Richard fell into the swirling darkness of his thoughts. He had activated his overpowered ability too many times. It was way more than he bargained for. He didn’t even want this ability. Honestly, if he could have chosen the scavenger with the food gift, he would have. In fact, that would have been perfect. It was everything he wanted. An extra gift to help with his scavenging, not only to help himself but also his teammates. But for whatever reason, Order and Chaos refused to work together.

  Richard rubbed his face, and dirt streaked across his forehead. He glanced at the sunlight and knew they only had a few hours left. He went back to the question of whom he should tell. What would be the safest option? Could he trust Marcus to reveal that he actually talked to Chaos, and not to Order? Dmitri already seemed willing to lie for him, but would he be willing to lie about something like this? Or would he say enough was enough and throw him out of base camp?

  Was Dmitri even alive?

  Richard found his gaze wandering to the healer’s building, remembering what Dmitri’s lifeless body looked like. He also remembered how determined Lucy was that there was a chance. If it were anyone else, Richard would have laughed in their face. But Lucy? He believed that woman created miracles.

  Richard stayed away from his thoughts, instead focusing on pulling out the small nubs of plants. There was nothing whole left. If anything, the locusts had eaten them to crumbs. The guards had gone through their search of every building to make sure there wasn’t a small swarm stuck inside as everyone else worked in the fields, and Lucy kept working on Dmitri.

  When the sun set, Elwyndor called a group-wide meeting. It was decided that for the next three days, everyone would sleep in the silos for protection, since it would be safest. No one would leave the walls until the fourth day after the attack, and no one would be to blame for the swarm. Richard hadn’t considered it, but he could see why some people would blame Elias for what happened. Richard doubted Elias actually triggered it because it affected him just as much as everyone else.

  Elwyndor handed blankets out to everyone as they walked down the stairs to the silo. Richard wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, moving toward the back so there’d be more room. Elwyndor requested that all farmers be closer to the door. Richard didn’t mind. He had an inkling that they all had exhaustion fighting abilities to help them not be so tired.

  Richard sat down on the concrete and found he was comfortable. A few weeks ago he would have been surprised at that; now he was just tired. He needed the world to stop turning so he could think about his next move. And he had to admit that a flaw of his was to ignore the problem and keep going.

  He curled into himself, thinking again about Order and Chaos. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of a scavenger class with a cooking gift. It made sense to him that those two parts of him made up who he was. But these two beings were focused on making sure he only followed one of them.

  His thoughts lingered again on what Chaos said, and he also wondered just how much he could trust him. His gut said he couldn’t. Then again, just because he couldn’t trust Chaos, didn’t mean that being lied. Mostly, he thought of what Chaos said about the other planets, specifically Dmitri’s home planet. He seemed to know a lot about it, that it was apocalyptic, but the people embraced it. He also thought of Lucy. Chaos seemed to know her past, hinting that she had been murdered. How much of that was true? Would that remain true over the multiple timelines? What exactly was Chaos playing with by giving him this power? Probably just… boredom. At the expense of Richard’s life.

  Richard always came back to what he knew. He enjoyed being a scavenger. He was also looking forward to unlocking some of his food abilities when he could. It was the farming and quantum immortality that Richard didn’t like. More like he was increasingly afraid of Chaos’s gift, which felt more like a curse the more he used it. He was painfully aware that if Chaos hadn’t given him this ability, he’d be dead. But he found jumping from timeline to timeline to be a nasty shock to everything he knew. It was like waking up to an existence he wasn’t even sure of, and he felt like someone displaced from time itself. It was always an instinct to protect oneself from dying, but Richard now found he was more scared of dying because he knew he’d keep living in timelines that were just slightly different from what he was used to. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him: mortals weren’t meant for immortality.