Motioning for Blaze and Agent Bledsoe to come in, I dropped the SHIELD on my door. I’ll give Dierling credit…he didn’t try for another question, just turned and headed for his truck across the street with Torres following. By the time Blaze and Matt reached my kitchen, I already had Blaze’s red mug filled and sweetened how she liked it, waiting on the table. I held up a green mug toward Bledsoe.

  “Coffee?”

  “Thanks. Black will do,” he said, taking the seat as I poured.

  Setting down my own mug, I laid out the hot pads, and put the pan and rice cooker on the table. The warm scent of soy sauce and garlic mixed with the bitter edge of coffee in the small kitchen, grounding the moment. Sitting down, I let out a breath.

  “That was kinda fun,” I admitted with a crooked smile as we each filled our plate. “I hate to say I enjoyed the looks on their faces, but I did.”

  “Hanna… I felt the heat from your fire,” Bledsoe said, digging in. “How do you stand it? You weren’t even sweating.”

  She shrugged. “I just feel a little warmth. That’s all.”

  “So, a Fire Mage can withstand fire?”

  “At least our own. I don’t know about anyone else’s. Haven’t had that happen yet, thanks to Will.”

  Bledsoe nodded. “I read your reports from yesterday. You emphasized your magic wouldn’t have worked without his shields.” He turned to me. “If you don’t mind, how does it feel being so far ahead of everyone? I don’t just mean your level…you’ve seemed to have solved every problem thrown at you.”

  “Honestly?” I picked at my food for a moment. “I’ve been lucky. Making it up as I go. Pulling ideas from apocalypse fiction, the SCA, RPGs, stuff like that. I guess I’m one of a few thousands with that sort of background, and there are probably millions with part of it.”

  “True,” Bledsoe said. “But how many of them were the first of their class? Everyone’s looking for you firsts. We only know of about a two dozen so far, worldwide. There’s a guy in Seattle who took the first class that sounded cool but barely knows what to do with it. He’s still level six and hasn’t even spent his leveling points. People are working with him to fix that.”

  “What is he?”

  “Wrestler. I heard he likes pro wrestling and wrestled some in high school.”

  I scrolled through the Warrior sub-classes in my Rules interface. “Hand-to-hand only, can use fist weapons, max leather armor. WWE fan?”

  He laughed. “Big one, apparently. They’re probably trying to sign him up. Maybe get Hulk Hogan to teach him how to wrestle.” We all laughed.

  Blaze cleared her throat. “When are you going to tell Will why we’re here a day early?”

  “I’m getting there,” Bledsoe said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out an envelope. He slid it across the table to me.

  “Do I get to guess what’s in here, or do I have to open it?” I asked, looking between them. Blaze was smirking, Matt tried not to.

  Taking a slow breath for effect, I let it out before opening the envelope. Inside was a faxed page.

  “A FAX?” I raised my voice and eyebrows. “Didn’t those die off, like, a decade ago?”

  “Not in the government. We still use them.” Matt said, chuckling. “Read it.”

  The heading read, Office of the President of the United States.

  “This is my invitation, isn’t it?” They both nodded. I let out another theatrical sigh and read aloud:

  “The President respectfully requests your presence to discuss matters of immediate national interest concerning the worldwide phenomenon called the Game.”

  It rambled on for several paragraphs, including. lines about honoring me for protecting Eddington, offering transportation and lodging. At the bottom, it noted that if I couldn’t attend in person, they would set up a video call after the next spawning event.

  “I think someone told her I wouldn’t come.”

  Blaze laughed. “This is the second letter. When they showed me the first, I told them where you’d tell them to shove it, and that trying to arrest you would end badly. For them. I convinced them the optics would be bad. Very bad.”

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  “Can’t have bad optics,” I said, grinning.

  “Also,” Matt added, “we didn’t like the idea of injured or dead agents. Hanna proposed the video call and said she’d convince you to do it.”

  “I told them you wouldn’t until after the spawn, so it’s tentatively set for eight local tonight,” Blaze said. “Please, will you talk to the President?”

  I tilted my head. “How much of this is she wanting a photo op, and how much will she actually listen?”

  Matt didn’t hesitate. “Definitely the photo op. But when they sent me here, they told me to figure out why this town was doing so well. My job’s mostly training…procedures, evaluations, what’s working, what isn’t. Hanna’s uncle emailed me yesterday and told me to talk to her, that she was in the thick of it and in the news.”

  He glanced at Blaze. “Your uncle’s the first person who said training matters more than chasing people. We’ve tried to change what we can.”

  Leaning back, I studied him. He was serious, and so far, I liked him.

  “He’s still got friends in the agency, and some of us listen to him.” Bledsoe said. “She told me some stories about him on the way here. I told her some I knew. He’s quite the character, and if half the stories people have told me were true, quite the agent.

  “I already knew that part,” He added.

  “He was that good?” I asked.

  “He was. He didn’t get credit for all that he did, but many of us knew things he’d done and tried to do. So did some of the higher ups. Lots of us were sorry when he retired. My generation is now mostly running the agency on the day to day basis, and we’ve been changing what we could to make it better.”

  “But back to here and now,” he continued. “I watched that battle video at least half a dozen times…seeing an agent throwing fire like that. Never expected it. Then I read her reports.”

  Blaze was trying and failing to hide behind her coffee cup. Her face had already turned fiery red.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And I got on the phone to her, then the director, then everyone else. Will, we need your knowledge. Your guesses. Your advice. We know some in the agency won’t listen because it didn’t come from inside.”

  “Will, I told them what you said about what the city needed,” Blaze added. “We looked at what’s happened here and compared it to the big cities. They’re freaking out, can’t make up their minds. More casualties per capita in the larger cities than the smaller ones.”

  “The government’s trying to downplay the looting.” Blaze added. “In a few places, fringe militias are fencing off areas, claiming to be sovereign states. Most of that started last night.”

  “What’s the government doing about them?” I asked.

  “Not much, yet,” Blaze said. “They’re letting states handle it. Both parties are fighting over who’s to blame. The third parties are having a field day blaming everyone else. Special interest groups are pushing their own agendas.”

  I barked a laugh. “I’ll bet the peace-and-love types are holding sit-down protests on spawn sites, and it ends badly. For them.”

  Matt and Blaze exchanged a look, but said nothing. That said a lot.

  “What can we do about them?” Matt asked.

  “If you mean the peace-and-love types, I’d say let them. But I’m sure someone will sue because you let them do what they wanted and didn’t protect them. Any lawyers trying to represent the Kobolds yet?”

  “Not that I know of,” Matt said, “but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “How do we stop this or fix it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Matt admitted. “No one does. We’re getting a handle on it, but no one knows what will work.”

  “That includes me,” I told them. “If I say yes to helping…and I’m not saying yes yet…what does that mean? What do you expect me to do?”

  “Just what you’ve been doing,” Matt said. “Tell us what to do, what questions to ask.”

  “Is that all?” I shook my head. “Look, I’ve been lucky so far. Most of what I’ve done I pulled out of my ass as we went. Then I adjusted when something worked better. It mostly worked, but innocent people still died.”

  I hesitated, thinking of what I’d decided earlier. “Look. Right now, I’m the overpowered main character out of some bad novel. I’m Level 9 and still in the nursery.”

  Blaze frowned, but Matt’s eyes lit up. “That’s it… we’re in the nursery. Of course.”

  “What’s the nursery?” Blaze asked.

  “You don’t game much anymore, do you?” Matt asked. She shook her head, and he smiled. “In RPGs, the nursery is where you start. It has easy monsters, low-level quests, a mostly safe learning ground.”

  Turning toward Blaze, I told her, “It’s so new players can level up and learn how to play the game without dying too much. That idea's already out on the net and people are talking about it.”

  “When do you leave it?” she asked.

  “Usually around level five to ten,” Matt said. “You stop getting much experience from low-level stuff and get quests to leave.”

  “I’m level five,” Blaze said. “Shouldn’t I be leaving the nursery? How do we get out?”

  “I don’t know that we do,” I said. “I think the monsters will scale up until the nursery leaves us. Which means people who don’t level will get left behind…or we’ll have to carry them.”

  There was silence.

  I checked the time. “Think about that. I need to get stuff out of the dryer, including my armor. If I’m talking to the President tonight, I might as well dress for the occasion.”

  As I headed into the garage, the hum of the dryer shut off as I got down the steps. The warm, home smell of fresh laundry grounding me as I opened the dryer and pulled the warm clothes and my armor out, stacking them in the basket. I paused, breathing in and out.

  I just agreed to talk to the President, I realized.

  Going back on my word is something I didn’t want to do.

  Before I forgot it, I grabbed the wand I’d made for Blaze, laying it on top of the basket. Back inside, I heard them moving dishes and chatting quietly, cleaning up while I got my gear ready for what came next.

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