War wasn’t Hell.

  Calvin had seen it in Vietnam. He’d sworn that he was going to do something about it. At first, when he’d sweated in his bunk at the airbase, he’d thought that was politics, or religion—something that would change hearts and minds. Back then, he’d believed that hearts and minds could be changed.

  As the months dragged on, though, he’d started to realize that people were fundamentally…who they were. Not good. Not evil. Just…concerned with themselves more than with everyone as a whole. And that was…fine. It was. Calvin felt his own heart change, and his own mind. He couldn’t make big changes. But he could stop smaller, individual pains. That’s when he decided to become a doctor and help kids.

  That had lasted two months back in the States. Since then, he’d bounced from homeless shelter to homeless shelter, then given up on those, too. But one thing he’d sworn not to do—ever—was lead people into battle against other people.

  And now he’d failed at that, too. Calvin sat on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan. The hill hadn’t been there two weeks ago, and his Level Forty guards had needed to hack a space out of the bramble for him to watch. He’d had too many commanders send him and his boys into battle without seeing the consequences. Calvin had drawn up the battle plan with Hal’s help, and he was going to watch as the consequences of his actions took effect. It’d hurt. But he didn’t have a damn choice.

  War wasn’t Hell, after all. It was worse.

  And this was going to be worse than either of them.

  Tori gave our side a massive advantage, just like Calvin had been counting on. The artillery came in at about a cube every ten or twelve seconds. After the first couple of impacts, the sound was worse than the effect; the shrapnel wasn’t strong enough to kill anyone, or even seriously wound a Rank One. But the sound. The ripping, screaming howl of the box rocketing through the air in defiance of all the laws of flight. That was bad.

  Worse was the knowledge that, outside of very limited impacts, I wouldn’t have much sway in the fight’s outcome. Calvin’s plan was in motion. My job was to be wherever the Fireborn Crusader was and counter him as best I could. Everything else would happen as it happened.

  That was a tall order, though. Neither of us was a true combat class like Eddie Petrovich had been, but with his Flamecallers and armor—not to mention nine levels—he outmatched me.

  It was also tough because he and his summons seemed to have disappeared.

  Carol and I ignored the battle lines, such as they were—the arcing fireballs, the rapid-fire archers, and the fighters and melee classes slamming into each other all around the main drag through town. Calvin had warned that it’d be like this. He’d said that in actual war—medieval war, that was—no one died until one side broke formation. He’d also said that both sides would probably start with broken, half-formed formations and fall apart from there. None of us were soldiers, and a few weeks of haphazard training with a veteran who hadn’t been through it in fifty years wouldn’t fix that.

  He’d been right. The West Side people hadn’t broken so much as some of them had broken through the Crusade’s lines and others hadn’t. I sprinted past a man with a missing arm and enough Body points that he’d stopped the bleeding through sheer willpower; he was tucked into an alley behind a laundromat, and there wasn’t time to help him. A Crusader at Level Fifty-Five brought up her hammer over another delver’s head. I intervened there, shoulder-checking her to the ground and slamming the Siege Hammer down, then firing it. Armor and bone cracked, and she screamed.

  That was all I could do for the downed West Sider. “Where is he?” I gasped.

  “No clue!’ Carol said. Blood dripped from her spear. A half-dozen red experience orbs littered the ground near a man in armor. She leveled her weapon and charged, then snapped it up; it caught him in the throat, below the burn marks on the side of his face. He gurgled and died, and another orb appeared.

  “Try not to kill them if you don’t have to!” I said. “Remember the plan.”

  She shrugged. “I had to.”

  I took a look at her face and decided not to argue. Carol was furious. Cold, angry, and somehow emotionless at the same time. “Zane’s going to be fine.”

  “He’d better be,” she ground out through her teeth. Then she kept moving, and I followed her. The Fireborn Crusader was out there somewhere, and I couldn’t find him unless I started hunting.

  Carol cut inland, away from Lake Michigan, as dusk started to fall on Whiting. We passed small knots of fighting, but neither side had the numbers for battle lines, and the Crusade hadn’t finished digging.

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  A flicking sound rippled out over my head, and I hit the ground. “We’re friendly!” I shouted.

  A second passed, and I peeked my head up. We were in an alley behind a row of houses, with a strip mall on the other side. Filling the other side of the alley was the first technical I’d seen in battle.

  It was already in terrible shape. Popped tires, shredded armor, broken benches. But the Charge engine and Heart were still both running, and the machine crept down the alley as the Scorpion mounted on top slowly reloaded.

  “Seen the Crusader?” I asked.

  “Guy with two flame snakes?” the woman driving asked. I nodded, and she pointed. “He went that way. Didn’t bother with us. No idea what he’s up to; Jake put five bolts into him, and he hardly even felt ‘em. You’re after him, right?”

  “Right.” That wasn’t the combat report I’d hoped for.

  “You two be careful, then. He’s out there, and I don’t know where.” The technical creaked and groaned as it squeezed past us, then turned the corner and fired two oversized arrows down the road. “Contact!”

  I waved Carol over. “If we’re past the technicals, then so is Taven Liu. That means there’s nothing between him and Tori. I need you to change that.”

  She shook her head. “I need to find Zane. That’s my only priority.”

  “Wrong. You need to find Tori and keep her safe. The two of you can handle Taven if he shows up. I’ll keep looking for him, though, because I don’t think he’s going after her. He’s not interested in the battle.”

  “Neither are you,” Carol replied.

  That stung. But it was also true. My contribution had been the technicals and Tori’s shells. Past those, I was just another body: a high-leveled body, but another body all the same. “The best thing I can do is keep him from doing whatever he’s doing. Now go.”

  Carol went, and I prayed that I’d made the right choice as I kept hunting for Taven Liu.

  “Those technicals are trash,” Calvin muttered from the hill. “Artillery’s bad, too.”

  He had a pair of binoculars, and he was watching the battle progress from his perch. It wasn’t going well. The West-Enders were half the problem. They’d broken through in a dozen places, but they weren’t an army—and they weren’t the shadow of a disciplined force he’d been training at Museumtown, either. Now, the whole west flank was a mess of tiny fights that didn’t matter and wouldn’t change the outcome. All they’d do was get people hurt and killed.

  One of the technicals was down, and all five were damaged to some degree. The good news on that front was that the four remaining ones were still holding the line. But Calvin had messed up. Without communications, they’d have been more effective in a single formation, on the attack, not as a screening force.

  “Strategy’s failing,” he muttered.

  Calvin knew, on some level, that this was how battles went. They were ugly, unorganized, and chaotic. But he was seeing something, too. It was something he’d seen in the few battles he’d taken part in against a real military, and not the guerrilla forces his boys had been up against most of the time.

  The two sides’ objectives were different.

  The Crusade was already shifting. And they weren’t shifting toward Lake Michigan. Whatever the enemy wanted, it was in the industrial sprawl on Whiting’s western side.

  There were a few monsters on the battlefield.

  Not many. Whenever I saw one, no matter how low-leveled, I killed it, and everyone else was doing the same for experience orbs and the hope that a single level might make the difference. A Concrete Falcon crushed itself against my Siege Hammer on an oak-lined street, next to a funky-looking building that overhung the road.

  It was getting hot, too. Even as the dusk thickened, a humid, oppressive heat that reminded me of summer on the farm pressed down on Whiting. The further south and west I went, the worse it got. And as it darkened, I realized what was causing the heat. Whiting was ablaze ahead of me. I pressed on toward the glowing orange in the sky and the chemical smell as the plastic-based furniture in houses burned.

  Then I rounded the corner, and I saw what—or who—had created the inferno.

  It was Zane. He was up against four separate crusaders. Every one of the five was throwing fireballs and manifesting walls of flame around them; it was like hell had opened up in the middle of the Chicago suburbs. It also reminded me of Tommy’s last moments. I gritted my teeth, lifted the Siege Hammer, and charged.

  The first Fireborn mage turned, eyes widening as my hammer crashed down, already punching forward and back fast enough to shake in my two-handed grip. He tried to cast. He didn’t finish. The sound—and feeling—of the impact was horrifying, but when I looked down, all I saw was a red experience orb.

  Level Up! Seventy to Seventy-One

  Calvin’s plan had said very specifically not to kill unless we had to, but I didn’t care in that moment. I turned on the next mage. This one sprayed a burst of liquid fire across me. It burned, and my skin puckered and blistered, but I kept pushing through the pain. The Voltsmith’s Grasp lifted off the hammer, and three rail gun shots took the mage in the chest. He went down, still breathing.

  Not for long, though. With only two enemies left, Zane’s power started to shine. He lifted a flask to his lips. They blistered as he drank, and he coughed smoke. Then his magic and his Elite buff weighed down on the Fireborn mages.

  A moment later, they, too, were dead.

  “Carol?” Zane asked. He didn’t spare a glance at the disappearing corpses, but he did pick up the three experience orbs. I didn’t ask if he’d leveled.

  “She’s fine. I sent her to protect Tori. Have you seen the Fireborn Crusader?” I asked. The Voltsmith’s Grasp didn’t have any more shots for a while. Its Heart was pumping, but while it could fuel the Siege Hammer, it couldn’t do much more than that. I’d have to be careful not to drop it to zero Charge, or I’d be weaponless until it regained some.

  “No. But he’s around. Too many enemies.”

  I shivered slightly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. Zane was creeping me out.

  “Good. Follow me. We’ll find him.” He started walking. I followed. But it only took me a few seconds to realize that Zane had no interest in finding Taven Liu. The only thing on his mind was his twin sister, and he was heading straight back toward Lake Calumet. I started to argue, but the look Zane shot me made it clear he wouldn’t be talked down.

  After a moment to think, I decided to follow him. If the Fireborn Crusader was there, great. If not, we’d regroup, and the four of us could go search for him. Tori was probably out of ammunition, anyway.

  It’s narrated by Jessica Threet, and it’s a fun, SCP-inspired story with mystery, action, and a girl gaining anomalous powers as she tries to survive and end of the world scenario with the help of a not-quite-AI friend, a shadowy secret organization, and a powerful weapon that doesn’t obey reality.

  The Halcyon System Book Two: Victoria Falling came out on Kindle Unlimited a couple of months ago, but now that it’s available on Audible, I’m super-excited! I loved writing this story, and I’m eager to see more people read it. It’s been a passion project since I started writing. Thank you all.

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