“I can’t believe you just blew half of your resonance to buy gun ammo. You didn’t even consult me.” Samantha berated me over the phone speakers, but I only half heard her. My handgun now had a full magazine of fifteen rounds and one in the chamber; the heft of its weight was more comforting than the smell of old books and yellow lighting of the bookshop.

  “What, I still have a few thousand left, don’t I?” Each round had cost two hundred and fifty points each, given that the handgun had four rounds left in it when I checked before my purchase, the grand total had been three grand for a little extra firepower.

  “That’s barely enough for one system interface upgrade.” Samantha replied.

  “The phone? What kind of upgrades would I need?”

  “How about a map of Hopeville for one? Or a communication suite so I can talk to you outside the bookstore?”

  “Oh yeah, that would be pretty useful, wouldn’t it.” I looked at my handgun again, tempted to purchase more ammo or even a holster for it, but not one to purposefully risk the ire of a woman, I asked Samantha for her input instead. “What upgrade would you suggest?”

  “Definitely the map first.”

  “Not the communication upgrade?”

  “No, that would have been nice had you saved a few points, but I can always just text you for free.”

  A girl with some brains, I dug the smart chicks, and for some reason I kept imagining Sam as one of those girls with glasses who act all shy and quiet when they dug you back. Glad that Sam couldn’t read my mind, or at least I didn’t think she could, I purchased the map upgrade for my phone and had nil for points left. Yet on the main screen a new app called “Navigation” had appeared. I clicked it open and Sam started spouting information.

  “With this upgrade I can ping you your current location as well as areas of interest, best pathways, and employee tunnel entrances.”

  “Tunnel entrances? Why’d they build those?”

  “The residents didn’t like seeing Cognito employees in public. A tunnel system was built so security and technical personnel could stay out of view.”

  “That’s kind the kind of snobbery I’d expect from the High Heights Hills residents in LA.”

  “Half the people here are probably from there anyway.”

  “Eh, point taken.” I scratched my shoulder and scanned the books’ titles. They were mostly fantasy junk with titles like “Insouciance Lost" or “Magical Girl Vanguard”, but I wasn’t really interested in looking at them anyway. Something was weighing on my mind. “You know, why were you acting all squirrely back at District Nine. Why’d you refuse to tell me your name or anything over text? For that matter, what’s with this bookstore? Why didn’t that freaky admin come in here and finish me off?”

  Samantha’s sigh came out in a static hum over the phone. “I didn’t trust you. As far as I knew, there was a major attack on the system and you may have been the cause. Among other factors, I also wasn’t in a very trusting state of mind when your system interface came online.”

  “Didn’t trust an ugly slouch like me, neh?”

  “I wouldn’t say it exactly like that,” Sam’s voice lightened a little, “But I’m glad you’re not too offended.”

  “Jury’s still out on that, babe. What I’d still like to know is why you can talk to me here and why the admin stays out like this place has a bad case of the love bug.”

  “Ah, well, remember how I told you that I’m in the subsystems access area?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “If you lined up the subsystem map with Hopeville’s, this is where my body would generate, a central core. As it is, I can exert some measure of control here that I can’t otherwise do with the rest of the town.”

  “Ah, like keep that freak admin out and mess with the lights.”

  “Uh, restrict hostile instances and the admin from entering, yes. The lights turning on and leading you here were not me.”

  “Who else was it? Was it that Admin messing with me some more?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? That gangly weirdo kept whispering accusations and names I’d never heard of before. Not to mention the friggen headache it gave me.” I rubbed my temples, eyes almost tearing up in memory of that pain.

  “Richard, I believe you, I think, but I was watching it through your eyes the entire time. It never said anything.”

  Great, another mystery. I get one answer and three new questions pop up. I may be a private investigator, but I am getting tired of this Scooby Doo nonsense.

  “So, I’m going crazy then.”

  “I wouldn’t say that either. Maybe it was communicating telepathically, in that case I wouldn’t be able to hear.”

  “Would you tell me if you could read my mind?”

  “Would anything I say make you feel better either way?”

  “No.”

  “There you go then.”

  “Alright, fine, let’s just get to the brass tacks.” I took the phone and found a comfy leather chair to sit in. The idea that I might be sitting in the same spot as Sam was occupying in the subaccess space briefly crossed my mind, but I pushed that weird feeling down. “I got the map, but now I got a few skill and stat points to spend. Any ideas?”

  “Why don’t you just buy another gun for all that ammo you have?”

  “Baby, I’d buy a hundred guns if I could, but I’ve just got one and a gal that mouths off at me more often than an alley cat in heat.”

  “Maybe try putting a point in charisma for one, ‘baby’.”

  “Samantha…”

  “Right, sorry, sorry, I know you’re just trying to consult me like I asked.” The giggle from the speaker sounded a little unhinged, but Sam went on. “Looking at the available skills, that additional free point to every stat you got was very useful. It opened up a ton of options for more skills.”

  “Yeah, real useful, but now I’ve got almost twice the amount of options to deal with. Not to mention I have no idea what ‘imagination’ is.”

  “If I had to guess, it’s probably the equivalent of mana in any other game system.”

  I checked my stats and how much imagination I had available. The only stat I had that also started with a three was my education. Seeing this connection I noticed my inventory had jumped up to forty space after the plus one to all stats. So, education was linked to total imagination and physicality was linked to inventory space. Maybe getting a degree and gym class weren’t so useless after all.

  Either way, I still knew what skills I wanted to choose based on my earlier fights, but looking at the new options did not hurt. I clicked through the filter so that new available options were highlighted as bold.

  Before I ticked off Sam more by purchasing what I wanted, I asked her again for her opinion. Not like I hadn’t already made up my mind, but it was good to try and be on the same page, plus hearing another person’s voice was soothing after so much time alone.

  “Well, you already have the first tier of “Catch This”, so you could put the stat point into agility and not only move faster, but then use one skill point for the upgraded ‘Catch This!’.”

  “I mean, why throw stuff when I can sling lead instead?” I replied.

  “Sure, but you don’t have infinite ammo, but imagine if you had a few throwing knives and could perfectly nail a hollow in the eye socket every time.”

  Now that was tempting, but I asked Sam what else she thought might be useful.

  “The others have some basic utility, like quicker clotting or better jumping, but that intuition skill that lets you see through illusions seems pretty interesting.”

  She had a point, but the implications that there were invisible creatures out there was disturbing to say the least.

  “I’m going to put my stat point into intuition and then buy Yoink and its upgraded version with the skill points.”

  “You can take things in and out of your inventory for free on your phone already though.”

  “It appeals to me.”

  “You made up your mind before you even asked me, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t tell her that was of course the case, and did not to mention the promise I had made at the gas station, and replied, “Your input means a lot to mean, Sam.”

  “Smooth talker.”

  “Baby, I should buy you a drink sometime and then you’ll hear real smooth talk.”

  As Sam was mumbling something about my charisma again and “dump stats”, I first increased my intuition from five to six. I was sitting down this time, thinking I was prepared, but no electric tingle zapped my body like it did when I upgraded my reflex. Instead my heart rate started to increase dramatically to the point where I had to clutch my chest and start praying that I was not having a heart attack.

  I know they’re coming for me, they’re everywhere, even here. They’re behind the books. In the books. THE BOOKS! I don’t see them, but they can see me. Stop, please, just stop. They know who I am, but who am I? Who am I? Why did they bring me here? Sharon, Sharon, Sharon, why do I keep hearing that name, what’s that thing scratching at the back of my mind.

  “Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” I jumped out of my seat and checked the book aisles and under the front desk counter. Nothing was there and my heart rate started to settle back to normal alongside the intense feelings of something crawling up my back. It was Sam’s worried voice piping over the phone that brought me fully back to reality.

  “Richard? Richard! Are you ok? Come on, answer me, please.”

  I took my seat again and replied, “Yeah, I think I’m ok. Just leveled up my intuition is all.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Sam said. “You just stared off into space for like five minutes before freaking out, man. I was worried you were having a mental breakdown.”

  If what I just experienced didn’t count as a breakdown, I don’t know what did, but I threw a joke out instead.

  “Why does leveling up a stat have to suck so bad?”

  “I guess it’s just your body’s way of adapting to its new heightened senses.”

  To my great shock, I found myself missing the electric pain of leveling up reflexes. At least with that unpleasant sensation I didn’t get the feeling that ghosts were touching me or whatever. I pushed the thought of both those things out of my mind and focused on the reward. With sixes in both intuition and reflex now, I could afford both Yoink and its upgraded version, so I purchased those next. There was no feelings associated with skill upgrades as with stats, thankfully, so I had to test out my upgrades to get a handling on them.

  I pulled out my handgun and measured the weight of it in my right hand. With my eyes closed, I still felt it there, but I focused on that weight and willed it to go to my inventory with the Yoink skill. The instantaneous sensation of the gun disappearing from my hand was unsettling, but I whooped for joy anyway.

  “Did you see that, Sam?”

  “I did.” She replied. “That’s interesting. What happens when you try to take something out?”

  “Let’s find out.” I closed my eyes again and visualized the handgun. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just imagined it floating in the ether. The sound of a soft thud as something hit the floor alerted me to my successful withdrawal.

  “Oh my goodness, be careful! What if it goes off?” Sam asked.

  “It’s on safe.” I played it cool and picked the gun up. It looked just like it did before I stored it, but I wanted to push my skills further. With my eyes still open and focused on the handgun, I focused my desire that it go to my inventory and before my eyes, the gun winked out of existence. Following that, I figured that if I could store it with my eyes open, I could take it out the same way.

  My hunch was right.

  The gun materialized without the accompanying blue flash like items had earlier and dropped on the floor again. I played with this ability for several minutes, putting the gun in and taking it out of storage repeatedly. On the fourth try, I got the gun to materialize where I wanted it to on the chair and daring myself on the sixth try, I summoned the gun in my hand. Thankfully, the gun did not do something weird like fuse to my hand when I tried this, but instead winked into existence in my palm, grip where it should be and barrel pointed away.

  I felt like I was a cowboy, quick drawing his six shooter for a duel with the man in black and tried doing it again. This time I stuffed the gun in my pocket and tried storing it from there. That worked easily enough, as the weight and mass of the gun dissipated from me, but when I drew up my hand and willed the firearm to existence, nothing happened.

  “What gives?” I checked my phone inventory, worried the gun was permanently gone, but a blue light started shining on the floor as I did so. It took a slow, long, agonizing thirty seconds, but the handgun materialized next to me. It should have been instant, but it came out of my inventory like it did before I upgraded the Yoink skill. “Sam?”

  “I think you’re out of imagination, Richard.” Sam replied. “Check your stats.”

  I obliged and saw that Sam was partially right. My stats had adjusted so that my intuition was now six, but where it said Imagination, the number had decreased from thirty out of thirty to three out of thirty. Putting that together with the skill description for Yoink!, I did not have enough imagination to activate the skill.

  Sam put the rest of the puzzle pieces in place and said, “I was watching your stats as you were goofing off with that skill. Five minutes after you used Yoink! for the first time, your imagination went back up by three.”

  “So it recharges by three every five minutes.” I said.

  Sam replied as if I asked a question, “Yes, give it another two minutes and we can confirm that theory.” Two minutes flew by and indeed my remaining imagination jumped from three to six.

  “Takes an hour to fully recharge then. Not too bad.”

  “For now at least,” Sam replied, “but when you have other activated skills, that may become a problem.”

  “You think I’ll need to level up that much to take on the admin?”

  “Baby, I’m not sure if even a hundred levels are enough to take on that monster. The resonance levels from that thing were off the charts.”

  I wasn’t sure if I liked being called ‘baby’ and made a note to stop calling her that. Hopefully she’d drop the moniker too.

  “If you have so little confidence in me, then I’m going to need more firepower.”

  “And allies.” Sam quipped.

  “Is there even anyone left alive out here?”

  “Fortunately for you, every security team member has a portable interface that I can lock onto.” My phone beeped and when I looked at the map app, there were several locations with red dots on them. “I can even issue a radiant quest and reward for each security team member located.”

  “Ok, stop right there.” I held my hands up as if she were standing right in front of me. “Why don’t you just issue me a quest for something like ‘breathe ten times in a row’. That way I can rack up points without risking my neck.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. There’s an automatic resonance sequencing layer in the system that restricts what I can and can’t do. Believe me, I’ve tried just giving you points for nothing, but it gets rejected every time. Frankly I’m surprised it let me issue this quest to find the security team. It seems easier than the last one.”

  I didn’t want to burst Sam’s bubble of confidence, but the morbid part of me had to ask. “What if they ain’t alive when I find them?” I stopped, measured my next words and finished the dark thought. “Or human?”

  Sam did not miss a beat and said, “Then do what you have to do, PI. Every Hopeville security member is issued a weapon like the one you found and if you’re real lucky, then you may even find something with a little more kick.”

  My phone started buzzing again, quests for finding security team members and Hopeville survivors popped up alongside one that simply said, “Slay the Admin”. I had a sudden yearning to stay where I was, bury myself in a good book, and just wait for someone else to get the job done. Afterall, a rich person’s paradise like this had to have some sort of backup plan for emergencies.

  I couldn’t do that.

  As much as I wanted to, people may be in trouble out there and just sitting here was tantamount to letting them die. That monster could call me whatever names it wanted, but mama didn’t raise no sissy boy. I was going to save who I could and kill whatever freaks or ghouls that tried to stand in my way.

  “Alright, give me one hour to let my imagination refill and I’ll find these security team members.” I stood up from my chair. “Where’s the closest one?”

  “Scanning,” Sam replied, “You’re in luck, it’s across the street.”

  “Please tell me its not another gas station.”

  “No, it’s a grocery store.”