As the hovercraft sped over open water, the first thing Roy noticed was how loose it felt—like trying to run on a sheet of ice. There was no firm grip, no push from the ground, just a gliding, frictionless rush.

  There was also no such thing as breaking here. When he released the throttle, the fan merely slowed while the craft continued ahead. The big red emergency stop button would cut power to the lift fans entirely, but it would take a serious hazard to be worth risking that kind of abrupt halt.

  Steering was strange too. The handlebars responded with a delayed, drifting motion. A sharp yank didn’t produce a sharp turn—just a slow, sliding arc. It reminded Roy of a video game he’d played once with an input lag that made timing your attacks impossible.

  It took a while to get used to, and he tried to get in some practice making turns and varying the speed while they were still in a relatively open area.

  “Yeah, your job here looks much more fun than mine,” said Bastion, raising his voice over the whirr of the fans as he shovelled the first load of extra coal into the engine.

  That made Roy remember to enjoy himself.

  When they entered a narrow waterway filled with trees, Roy realized the hovercraft’s true value. In the open area near the river, a speedboat would have been faster and more direct. Here, however, it would have gotten bogged down in tangled roots, while the hovercraft lifted them over shallow water, mud, and even patches of dry land.

  This thing was made to glide.

  He got the hang of it quickly, edging off the throttle and moving slowly through the vegetation and into a flooded pre-Warp suburb.

  There were lots of collapsed roofs, lots of walls that had fallen inwards. Water always got into these kinds of buildings and took them apart. It would have happened even if this place hadn’t become a swamp.

  Roy always enjoyed seeing the exact ways things fell apart in different places. What decayed and what stuck around, even when theming wasn’t involved.

  Steel lasted longer, though grapevines now grew around gas pipes, and spoons had been collected by crows, nesting in the orange trees that had colonised the kitchen floor space.

  Other animals had moved in too, squirrels and raccoons in the sagging attics, frogs and fish in the water. Thankfully no gators yet, of either regular or man varieties.

  There was, however, a truly overwhelming number of mosquitoes. He and Bastion cheered whenever one flew into the fan and got torn apart.

  Old granite lasted a long time too. There were buildings like that back in the Star Republic. Bastion said the Presidential Palace in Star City looked like a giant Greek temple made of pink stone, and the whole Galveston sea wall had been built of the stuff, holding the ocean at bay where it had rushed inland elsewhere, preventing it from reaching the toxic waste fields to the north.

  There was little of that hard stone here beyond a few stray countertops submerged in puddles. Here, they’d built with less permanent materials. Wood-chip and drywall, without the theming to make them last.

  "I never got why these people didn’t theme their homes more?” asked Bastion. “I thought they loved that stuff.”

  “Originally, this sort of was a theme,” said Roy. “When people first spread out into these places, this type of house was like a shrunken-down version of the manor on some rich guy’s country estate. Lawns instead of hedge mazes, garages instead of coachhouses. Private plots for all the mini-mansions."

  "So, what, they wanted to pretend they were rich?"

  Roy shook his head. “You could be rich in a city apartment. They wanted to pretend they had land. The frontier was gone, but this made them feel like pioneers. To them, that felt like freedom. Still, it couldn’t have been much of a theme if they fell apart like this. I mean, what good is—whoa.”

  His thought was cut off as they cruised past an extremely amped up version of what he’d just been talking about. This house was massive, with three different rooflines, a two-story entryway, and columns along the front.

  "Looks like if you go big enough, the theme sticks,” said Bastion.

  The more Roy stared at it, the more bizarre features he noticed. A tiny round window floating alone on a huge wall, a small tower between facades of brick and stucco, balconies with no doors leading to them.

  “I love it,” said Roy, releasing his grip on the handlebars and letting the hovercraft drift to a stop.

  He’d watched movies where the characters lived in houses like this, and it always struck him that no one ever remarked on how amazing their living space was. Their house was so large they could have whole adventures without leaving home, and that was just ordinary.

  “I wish my family had a place like that,” Roy said.

  Bastion sighed. “Sometimes you get the big house, but the family is awful.”

  Roy didn’t answer. For as long as they’d known each other, they’d avoided talking about their families. He didn’t know much about his mom to talk about anyway, and after his dad was gone, it had been too painful even to mention him.

  Everyone knew who Bastion’s father was. The new governor of Wiley made his presence known wherever he went, but Bastion always acted as though he didn’t exist.

  It was part of the reason they’d become friends. They were happy to spend time together without any prying questions: practicing with swords and guns, exploring the wilderness, talking about where they were going instead of where they were.

  Even when they’d gone to the ruined mall to look for Roy’s dad, they’d barely spoken about it. Now it seemed Bastion had gained enough physical distance that he didn’t need to mentally run away anymore.

  “When I lived in Star City, my father was always deployed somewhere else, which was great, because I could go wherever I wanted. I spent hours at the market, talking to the treasure hunters and seeing the old tech they’d bring in. Sometimes they’d give me the junk they couldn’t sell.”

  Roy grinned. “Bet you got some cool stuff.”

  “I did. I had a minidisc player that lasted years before it stopped spinning, a light-up spoon, even some parts I was trying to build a computer with, but the best thing was this old leather journal—one of those thick, explorer-style ones with a padlock on it. It was filled with hand-drawn maps and notes about ruins out beyond the frontier. Directions, stories, weird little symbols I never figured out.”

  “That sounds amazing.”

  “It was.” Bastion’s grip on the railing tightened. “I spent months trying to figure out where some of those places were. The maps weren’t labeled, but I was pretty sure one ruin was an old NASA facility. Another looked like an underwater resort off the Atlantic coast.”

  “What happened to it?” asked Roy.

  “My father came home.” His voice was flat, but Roy could hear the tension underneath.

  Bastion stared ahead like he was watching the scene play out within the giant house. “He walked in while I had the journal spread across my desk. He didn’t say a word—just picked it up, flipped through it, and threw it into the fucking fireplace.”

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  Roy’s stomach twisted. “What?”

  “He didn’t even hesitate.” Bastion forced out a laugh. “He stood there and watched while it burned. Like I was going to go diving into the flames for scraps of paper if he didn’t.”

  “To be fair, I would have, in your situation.” Roy imagined it. A smaller Bastion standing there, helpless, as something he loved curled up into ashes.

  “He lectured me later. About how collecting junk was shameful. How Treasure hunters were no better than the raiders and savages he’d just been fighting in Arizona. ‘We don’t take shortcuts. We serve our country loyally and get rewarded for it.’” Bastion’s impression was a clipped bark of a voice.

  “Later on, he decided to make up for lost time when it came to military discipline. You thought the academy was strict, right? Well, that was a relief compared to being at home. I was planning to apply to the Rangers, so I could get far away, but he insisted I apply for officer training. He pre-wrote the application and stood over me while I signed it.”

  “Couldn’t you have deliberately failed?”

  Bastion laughed, some of the tension leaving him. “You do realize the Star Republic is corrupt as hell, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Roy. He’d gotten that the first time he noticed the current president had the same last name as the previous one.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if I were good, only what my name was. My father would have kept on being in complete control of my life. I could see it all laid out before me, becoming one of those waste of life legacy officers you see sitting around drinking to forget how much they hate themselves. You know, until we met, I’d completely forgotten about wanting to be a treasure hunter?”

  “You should just think of all that as setup,” said Roy. “Being unhappy then will make you even happier now. You’ve got a new map and everything.”

  Bastion grinned and unfolded the map Big Time had given them. A copy of the one he’d shown them in his office, in the back of a different book.

  “Oh, if the old bastard could see me now. He’d hate this so much, Roy. You have no idea.”

  Roy took a look at it. It was a tourist guide to the greater Orlando area, with disproportionately large cartoony versions of the popular landmarks and attractions taking up most of the space. Marker pen lines had been added to show the area overtaken by the swamp, and an X marked the shopping area they were trying to find.

  “We’re at 423 Orange Garden,” said Bastion, pointing at the burnished bronze sign outside the big house, the only one in the area still standing. “Which is right there on the map, almost too small to read. From here we head straight north.”

  “Make a note on it,” said Roy. “This is a good landmark. It’ll help us find our way back to Baytown.”

  “Are we going back to Baytown?” asked Bastion.

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Something could come up that’s more worth our while.”

  To answer that, Roy pulled out a magazine from his backpack. He hadn’t shown it to Bastion before, though he might have caught a glimpse when he’d picked it up in that old mall. But now his friend had trusted him with something deeply personal, and Roy thought he ought to do the same.

  It was a copy of Absolute Cinema, which contained an interview with the director of Future Knight, detailing the hero’s journey: the structure that lay beneath that movie, most other movies, and for Roy, life itself.

  Next to his sword, it was Roy’s most treasured possession. He kept it wrapped in plastic and carried it with him everywhere.

  He tapped the article with his index finger. “Act three: The return. We have to go back to complete the cycle.”

  “Why are you so sure that’s where we return to? Why not Galveston, or Wiley, or somewhere we haven’t been yet?”

  “Nothing really happened there. Bay town was the start of the story, I’m sure of it. Mayor Big Time’s map was the call to adventure. It fits in with your backstory and everything.”

  Before Bastion could protest further, Roy pushed the throttle and raced north.

  They stopped when the vegetation became too dense to continue. A patch of dry land led up to a ledge of broken concrete.

  Roy looked ahead as the wind swayed the tree branches, and through a narrow gap in the leaves he saw a sign shaped like a smashed-up disc.

  “Smash Hit Video,” he exclaimed. Jackpot.

  They got the hovercraft as close as they could, then waded knee deep through the stagnant water. Before long, the foliage became too dense to squeeze past. They started hacking away at it, Roy with his sword and Bastion with his kitchen cleaver. Bastion had more success, physical sharpness proving more effective than the base level of resonance Roy’s costume provided right now.

  Both were also equipped with the pain-spike themed baseball bats W. had given them. Roy had left the Castle Maul back in the hovercraft, since it was too large to get through the brush, and he wasn’t expecting to fight anything in the built-up area when the waters around them had been empty.

  When Bastion finally finished cutting out a narrow path, Roy followed him through.

  Around them were the half-sunken remnants of a shopping district. The first thing Roy spotted was the failing fortifications of a Kino Kingdom, which hadn’t held up as well as the one in Baytown. Its facade was stripped down to peeling foam.

  Most of the other shops and restaurants had met the same fate. Themed enough to keep the buildings from collapsing, but nowhere near enough to keep them looking pristine.

  The Festival Mart was still decked out in colorful banners and bunting, but the paint on the sign was starting to chip, and the stink of rotten food emanated from the doorway. He didn’t see any vending machines either. If there had been any here, they must have been on the parts of the street that had fallen into the swamp.

  A shop called Timeless Wonders was initially promising. Its marble columns and brass clock suggested some interesting relics inside, but upon closer inspection, the entire interior was flooded.

  The VirtuaQuest was entirely intact, as far as he could tell without any windows to look through, and the circular entrance portal was still pulsing with energy.

  “We should loot these other places too,” said Bastion. “Could be some good stuff in there.”

  Roy didn’t answer right away. He’d caught a glimpse of a knight waving his gauntlet in the reflected disc of Smash Hit Video.

  “After we get the big prize.” Roy was suddenly very eager to get in there and look around, but Bastion lagged behind to look at a set of screens with a keypad beneath them.

  “Hey, check this out. I’ve heard of these things. They let you speak over a distance, and you could see each other in the glass. You’d put your coins in and then—ohhh” Bastion ran off before finishing the thought. “This is so cool.”

  He was leaning over a car. Even with its metallic red paint overtaken by rust, it had obviously been a work of art in its time. It was low and curved, with an arrow-shaped hood ornament.

  “Revus Bandit,” Roy read aloud.

  “This was a sports model, but they were still road cars. More for fun than for professional racing.”

  “Do you think we could get it working?” Roy asked.

  “You’re forgetting that the roads are all busted up around here. That’s why no one bothers to ship in working cars from the Star Republic. Although…”

  “Although what?”

  “There’s always the cars that floated above the roads,” said Bastion.

  “Oh yeah. The flying cars. Man, we’re really missing out.”

  “I keep telling you, they didn’t fly. They just hovered.”

  “Like the hovercraft then,” said Roy.

  “No. Not fans with a plastic wrap around it, superconductors to float above a clear gap.”

  “We’ll keep looking out for one, but first, I can’t wait to get to the Video Store. I saw Sir Protagonist again.”

  “Where?”

  “Reflected in the smashed disc sign.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? This is important.”

  “You were having fun with the car and the talking screens. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  As they approached, they found the video store was very much intact. Even its floor-to-ceiling windows had held up, though the panes were too full of dust to see through. They smashed one of them with the bats and stepped inside.

  Between walls of black mould and faded yellow paint were shelves upon shelves of movies. Ultra-Discs were the size of dinner plates, so the plastic that encased them had plenty of room for artwork, most of which had colors far more vibrant than their surroundings.

  Bastion picked up one of the cases and shook it. “What the fuck is this. It’s empty.”

  Closer inspection revealed that none of the cases with box art actually had discs in them, though some did have another case behind them. These were yellow, with the Smash Hit Video logo and the name of the movie written in block capitals. Only these contained discs, and only some of the movies had them.

  “This is bullshit,” said Bastion. “They put these cases out here, saying they have all these movies, and it's all just a big lie. Honestly, these people deserved to get ripped apart by gator-men.”

  “Let's check out the rest of the store. There might be more in the back.”

  Beyond the shelves was the counter area, with a blocky computer and several other machines sitting behind it. There was a square TV hanging from the ceiling, and displays of candy and popcorn a century past their sell-by date out in front of it.

  The door behind the counter was gunked up and hard to move. Roy and Bastion worked together to shoulder it open, then they stopped dead.

  This building hadn’t entirely avoided flooding after all. The back room had a gaping hole in the wall, allowing in a deep pool of murky water, as well as a Gator-man.