The lazy implementation bugged Remi more than the slight utility drop did. The system could've taken the effort to rewrite the paragraph properly, perhaps with something clever—a little flair to soften the blow. Instead, it just slapped on the parenthetical like an afterthought, as if saying, “Except Luck” was enough to fix the entire problem. He smirked despite himself. The AI’s laziness was almost charming in its bureaucratic efficiency, just like a teacher who refuses to fix typos in handouts and just tells the class to mark them by hand.

  He closed the tooltip and shifted his focus back.

  More endurance meant fewer moments like this, panting for breath after a sprint through what felt like quicksand. Remi exhaled, not ready to keep going. He felt the impatience almost radiate from Nel as he straightened from his hands on knees, still panting. “I need a minute. Can you hold up a second so we can chat before things go sideways again? I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. About your tutorial experience.”

  Nel stiffened, and her typing slowed just a fraction. “You mean the sandbox?” Her face became taut. She kept on typing. It was her turn not to make eye contact.

  “Yeah. I guess? If that’s what it was called. I know how I got here. I mean, mine differed from everyone else’s, but you?” He let the question hang, hoping she would fill in the blank.

  “Most people took the front door; I took the back. We’re here now; how we got here doesn’t really matter.” Remi knew she was trying to end the conversation, but he just couldn’t let it slide.

  “I know that. But I saw—.” Nel cut him off with a snap of her laptop lid. Eyes came up to peer from under her hoodie.

  “We’re not doing this, Page,” she said pointedly.

  “How do—?” She didn’t let that question finish either. She simply shook her head no.

  “You know what the system wants you to know. You only saw what it wanted you to see.” Her gaze held his, and it was longer than was comfortable. Remi could see the light of her hoodie dance in her eyes, deep blue and firm. “That’s all I’m going to say about it,” she said with an edge, but then softened her tone as she opened her laptop back up. “For now. And really, we have more important things to consider than my backstory at the moment.”

  Remi knew he should’ve let it go, but something in her tone made him want to dig in. Like a pivot in a poem, or pattern in a story that just begs for exploration.

  “Nel—”

  The lid snaps shut again, harder this time.

  “No.” She leans forward, elbows on her knees, eyes locked on his. “If you want to make it through this place, Page, learn when not to explore the subtext.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Nel.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “In this case, won’t.”

  Her mouth quirked, not quite a smile, but it bordered on one. “So we’re going to do this now, are we?”

  “I think so.”

  Nel’s fingers drummed on the top of the laptop, like she was considering opening it again and ignoring him, but she waved it away. “Fine, ask your questions so we can get to the important stuff.”

  “This is the—.” She waved that away too, disinterested.

  “Listen, Page,” her words became clipped. “Stop with the pleasantries. I’ll let you unbury the bone you keep digging at, but that is it. I won’t humour you. We don’t have time for it.”

  “Fine,” he shot back, “I saw how alone you were.”

  “You were alone too.”

  “It is not the same, and you know it. I was here for a day; it looked like you were in your sandbox for weeks.”

  “Four,” she replied flatly. “What of it?”

  “Are you okay? I mean, you’ve essentially been in solitary for a month. That can really fuck with a person.” He tried not to let the concern show on his face. He wasn’t subtle, and probably failed here too.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Now, Nel.”

  “Page,” she cut in. “You don’t get to lecture me anymore. We’re past that.”

  “Okay, no lectures. But—.”

  She cut him off again. “I also don’t need your pity.”

  “Yes, but—.”

  “Save it, Page. You aren’t my teacher anymore; in fact, honestly, I’m more yours.”

  Remi knew their dynamic had shifted. He understood what that meant, probably better than she did. He’d even worked with former students before. But they needed to reestablish things to create a new normal. He didn’t have the time to do it slowly, so opted to rip the band-aid off.

  “Fine. But if this is going to work, and I mean really work, then you’ve got to act like my equal and stop being such an asshole. If you fucking cut me off one more time, you and I are going to have a real fucking problem.”

  His words hung in the air for several seconds until Nel’s barking laugh popped the tension like flicking a soap bubble. It warped, and then was gone. Good. She shook her head, and with shoulders twitching in suppressed laughter, Nel said, “You just call me an asshole?”

  “Yes,” he replied. It came out louder than he’d wanted.

  She chuckled, then nodded. “Cool.”

  “Cool?”

  “Yeah, we’re good.” The silence was drawn out for effect. “Old Man.” She waited longer before she finished. “I just…I’m just not used to sharing, is all.”

  “I get that,” he said, “but I just needed to be sure you’re alright. Not dangerous, not a wildcard, not—. I can’t have you going all murder hobo on me while I’m passed out and then eat my eyeballs.”

  She smiled. “I think if your eyeballs need to fear anyone, it’s you, Oedipus.”

  “I knew it!”

  “Knew what?” she said with a devilish grin.

  * * *

  After about twenty minutes of walking, the jungle opened into a crumbling cityscape, fifteen or twenty blocks long by three or four blocks wide. It was as if the jungle had sprouted a downtown, right in the middle of its dense foliage. In fact, it looked a lot like the city Remi grew up in, except now it looked like it had lost a long-standing feud with the natural world.

  The transition to the city was gentle at first. A section of one floor jutted out from the dirt floor, an abandoned pickup truck covered over with a blanket of green and flowers. Eventually, the dirt and lichen became interspersed with crumbling bits of concrete. As Remi and Nel crossed the jungle’s threshold, mist and canopy gave way to cracked concrete and open sky. At the far end of the road, upon which they now found themselves, was another wall of jungle, and nestled within it a tall spire climbed for the heavens. It was like a pointed finger, outstretched prior to making a point of argumentation. Subtle. It was obvious where they were supposed to go.

  Remi surveyed his surroundings. Creeping green vines seemed to have taken up residence in the crannies of the buildings, having hauled themselves up the sides of the dilapidated towers. They clambered through the windows, some panes of glass fully gone while others remained stubbornly intact. Vines threaded themselves delicately through gaps and cracks, green lines woven into fractured glass that caught the light in rainbow hues.

  As Nel and Remi rounded a corner onto a wider street, off in the distance, about 200 feet away, they spotted a hunched form rooting around under the hood of an abandoned beater. It was a scene straight from a zombie movie, except they could tell, as they approached closer, that the creature was not one of the walking dead. Instead, it looked to be a dog cobbled together from broken appliances. Its tail, a power cord that flopped. Its body: two upside-down toasters. Legs sprouted from bread slots, corded vines. Its head? A waffle maker that snapped as the junk-forged Jack Russell gnashed on the car seat, trying to tug out the strings.

  Up close, Remi could see the “legs” were really bundles of vines sunk deep into the concrete, but before he could inspect it, Nel chimed in.

  “It appears to be something called a scrap gnasher. Seems appropriate.”

  Remi wasn’t sure when she’d summoned her interface, but she was typing, and he could see some diagnostic code running on her screen. Not waiting for her, he trotted toward the dog, ignoring the sounds of protest from Nel. As he got within a few feet of it, the gnasher stopped performing its titular action and growled at him. It was the sound of metal scraping on metal, a deep and violent tearing sound, a noise so striking that Remi realized it was for this, and not its apparent proclivity for chewing, that had garnered the name.

  “Good doggy.” Remi tentatively reached out a hand, and it seemed to calm; the growl shifted to more of a low rumble. He took another step closer. “Here—.”

  The gnasher lunged at Remi, but its knees were locked as its vine-root feet had grown deep into the concrete. Still, the top half threw itself forward, tearing free from the anchored legs. As the toaster body ripped loose, it slammed to the ground and slid toward Remi, cast-iron jaws snapping as it scraped to a stop at his feet. He stepped back reflexively, thankful that he wasn’t suddenly sporting a new set of open-toed boots.

  Remi wasn’t sure why it had separated, but Nel filled in the gaps as she circled behind the thrashing creature, which was still dragging itself toward his foot, inch by twitching inch.

  “Don’t rush in like an idiot. I could've told you it had a proximity warning of six feet if you'd waited.” Nel reached down, grasping the cord with her left hand. “I used a lock on the knees.” She wrapped the slack cord around her fist with three quick wrist turns. “I then convinced the vines to continue their pause-grow loop, which they did, into the pavement.” Nel yanked, ripping the cord from the toaster. The sound of arcing electricity and the smell of burnt wire filled the air as the gnasher gave one last thrash. Finally, it collapsed into its component parts. She didn’t wait for Remi to respond, simply yelled, “You’re welcome,” over her shoulder, already halfway down the street.

  Resentment prickled. Again he was forced to catch up, so when he spotted another gnasher, just down an adjoining road, he didn't hesitate.

  “I got this one.” He reached into his murse, extracting his metre stick, and threw it past the dog. “Fetch,” he yelled as he raced towards it. His weapon whirled end over end to clatter on the ground a few feet past the watching gnasher. The distraction worked as intended.

  The gnasher leapt towards the distraction, but not before Remi had lashed it. He pivoted and planted his feet, locking his legs while letting the lash extend over his right shoulder. As the dog continued toward the metre stick, the tether snapped tight, the gnasher’s momentum froze mid-air, and the sudden snap of force wrenched the gnasher apart with a metallic yelp.

  Metal parts clattered across the pavement in a spray. Although he couldn’t see them, the sound of the metal fragments as they bounced on concrete was oddly satisfying.

  Remi turned, excited to see an impressed Nel, but found her to be again typing.

  “Interesting,” she remarked. “Your Novelty ring spiked there. The system liked the call back to the fetch line, and the weapon improvisation. The system tracks novelty, like style points. It registers in your Rings. You scored 8. Impressive given the insignificance of the fight.”

  Remi blinked, confused and a little annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

  “The novelty of the fight,” she said.

  Remi expelled a breath in annoyance. “Yeah, I heard you. I’m not deaf. What rings?”

  Nel looked at him for a second. “Oh, right? Most players don’t have those turned on by default. We can fix that. Hold out your codex again.”

  Remi complied, and like before, Nel set her laptop on top of it, and typed for what seemed like an eternity. It was probably only about one minute, but it was long enough for Remi to imagine what his furniture name would be if he were sold at Ikea. He debated: Dockinpage? Remistund? The latter had a better finish. He was leaning towards it by the time she was done. As she hit the last return, Remi’s HUD blazed.