Chapter 20: Dead Air

  People shied away from him as he walked in through the gates.

  Cole did not blame them.

  He still had ash on his boots from the wave. He could smell burned slime and rot. The staff in his right hand did not help. Neither did the black halo that had started appearing over his head more often than not.

  Four hundred experience. That was what the System had given him for the elite. The number sat in his mind.

  There was also the notification blinking for his attention from before leaving the rift.

  He had ignored it because the rift had been closing.

  He had stepped through because he did not know if rifts stayed open for stragglers, or if the Ethereal cared about fairness. Everything he had learned so far suggested it did not.

  Now he was back on Earth, and the world was in chaos.

  The sky over the warehouse yard had the washed-out look of a bruise. Smoke drifted in the distance. Tthick, ugly smoke from something that had been burning for too long. There was a taste to the air, too, ugly.

  All around him were people who looked like survivors in a movie, except there was no camera, no soundtrack, no director yelling cut.

  There were only eyes.

  A lot of eyes.

  Some stared. Some flicked away as if staring at him might invite disaster. Some looked at the staff in his hand the way a starving man looked at bread, with need that was almost disrespectful.

  A group of individuals met him as he strode forward through the open gate. They did it with the careful, practiced movement of people who had learned to approach danger with a mask on their face.

  One of them was the woman who had shouted at him to get to the gate when he had first appeared. Up close, she looked even more tired. Middle-aged. Healthy in the sense that she had not yet been reduced to bone, but there were lines at the corners of her eyes that told him sleep had become a luxury. She had a fair face, chestnut hair pulled back in a quick knot that was trying to pretend it was neat, a slightly turned nose, and deep green eyes that had seen too much in too little time.

  She wore a beat-up white coat over a simple dark blouse and blue jeans with professional shoes. A stethoscope hung around her neck.

  A doctor then, Cole thought.

  Beside her was a man. Gruff. Broad shoulders. Massive beard. Piercing brown eyes. Square features. A scar at his right temple.

  He wore flannel and heavy combat boots, and his hands were big enough that if he decided to pick Cole up by the collar, he probably could.

  On the other side of the doctor was a tiny woman with mousy hair and glasses, dark skin, and the kind of posture that screamed she wanted to be anywhere else. She held a clipboard in front of her chest. She wore a dark shirt with a Metallica logo, dark jeans, and black tennis shoes.

  She looked nervous.

  Cole slowed as they approached him, staff still loose in his grip. He could feel the crozier hum faintly, like a heartbeat that was not his own.

  Then there was shouting.

  Cole turned.

  A group of people were limping toward them from inside the yard. At their head was another man.

  He was lean, wearing the remains of a tattered suit. A pair of cracked glasses perched on his nose. His black hair was matted. His features were handsome, nearly too handsome, with a sharp jaw.

  His eyes were a startling shade of blue.

  His dress shoes had remained shining, despite the literal end of the world.

  The doctor broke formation instantly. She rushed forward as if the warehouse yard had ceased to exist.

  “Tanner!” she said.

  The man’s shoulders sagged. His knees dipped. His hand twitched toward his side. He made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob.

  Cole watched as the doctor’s face twisted in concentration.

  Light gathered around her hand a moment later.

  Yellow. Orange. A pink-red that drifted. The light glowed, alive, soft and steady.

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  Those motes of light flooded into Tanner.

  He let out a deep sigh of relief.

  Cole saw the tension in his shoulders ease. He stood a little straighter. He blinked.

  The doctor turned immediately to the others in the limping group. She tried to do the same.

  She made grabbing motions, fingers curling as if she could snatch the light out of the air.

  Her brow creased. Sweat beaded at her hairline.

  She tried again.

  And again.

  Finally, she shook her head, blowing out an explosive breath.

  “I can’t do it!” she snapped, and the frustration in her voice was almost anger at herself. “I can’t. I’m… I’m empty.”

  Cole stepped forward before he could talk himself out of it.

  “Here,” he said.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and produced his last two Mend potions. The glass vials clinked softly together, a sound too delicate for a world like this. He handed them to the remaining two wounded.

  “Drink this.”

  Their hands were shaking.

  The first was young, with a shaven head and burnished caramel skin, caked with dirt, bruises, and scratches. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth. One eye was swollen nearly shut.

  The second was shaggy and bulkier, with slightly tanned skin, but just as beat up. His shirt was torn at the shoulder. His forearm had a gash that had been wrapped in a strip of cloth that was already soaked through.

  Both men stared at the potions hopefully.

  Without asking questions, they uncorked the vials and got the potion down.

  Cole watched their throats work and their faces twist at the taste.

  Then their bodies change.

  The gash on the bulkier man’s forearm drew together, skin knitting with a faint shimmer. The swelling around the other man’s eye eased. The bruising faded.

  The doctor’s eyes widened.

  She stared at them, then stared at Cole.

  “How…” she began, and her voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. “How did you do that?”

  She whirled toward him fully, green eyes sharp now, the exhaustion momentarily replaced with intensity.

  “Were those potions? How do you make them?”

  Cole held up a hand.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” he said. “Is there anywhere we can sit and talk?”

  The man in flannel took a step forward, and there was something in his movement that told Cole he had been in charge long before the world ended.

  “Yeah,” he said. His voice was rough. “We do. Come this way.”

  Cole nodded and followed.

  The group that had first approached him moved with him, flanking him without making it obvious. Cole noticed anyway. He noticed everything now. Maybe it was the Authority. Maybe it was just survival.

  They strode toward a smaller admin building by the main warehouse. Behind them, Tanner and the two wounded men were guided toward another tent where Cole smelled cooking food. Warm and rich, his stomach tightened with sudden, sharp hunger. He had been running on adrenaline for so long that he had almost forgotten what food meant.

  The mousy woman glanced at Tanner’s group, then back at the man in flannel.

  “We’ll need a report from him,” she said quietly, as if the words were a checklist item that needed to be checked or the world would fall apart again.

  “Later,” the man in flannel said. He waved a hand. “Let them eat. Let them recover.”

  He fished a keyring out of his pocket. The keys clinked. He chose one and opened the admin building’s door.

  Inside, the hallway was a disaster.

  Parts of the floor were ripped up, boards uneven. Tarps covered the worst holes, pinned down with whatever they had. The air smelled faintly of mildew and sweat. There were claw marks ripped into the wall, deep gouges that made Cole’s mind try to picture what kind of thing had done it.

  The man led them to a side room.

  It was small. Plain. A plastic table with cheap chairs around it. A desk at the far end of the room off to the side, covered with boxes and papers and a pile of notebooks.

  A half-empty water jug sat on the desk with plastic cups beside it.

  Cole noted that too.

  They were rationing water. Even in a warehouse distribution hub.

  The man in flannel sat first.

  He gestured for Cole to sit.

  The others took seats without hesitation. Cole sat too, resting the crozier beside his chair, hand still on it. The staff felt warmer here.

  Or maybe Cole was imagining it.

  “Well,” the man said. “Well. I think we should do introductions.”

  He pointed at himself with one thick finger.

  “Name’s Seth,” he said. “Seth Milton.”

  The mousy woman turned slightly in her seat, clipboard still clutched tight.

  “Naomi,” she said. “Naomi Calder.”

  Finally, the doctor.

  “Dr. Alina Park.”

  They looked at Cole.

  He gave them what they wanted.

  “Cole Rourke.”

  Seth leaned forward, elbows on the table. His eyes remained fixed on Cole’s face.

  “Alright, Mr. Rourke,” he said. “Mind explaining how you’re so powerful? Why you came out of a rift at the exact time we needed saving? Maybe any insight you have on exactly what is happening around here?”

  Cole took a breath.

  He could answer. He could tell them about the dungeon. The trials. Faelen. The Ethereal’s cruelty. The way spells came out of his mouth as commands the world had to obey. He could talk until his throat went raw.

  It would not matter if he could not answer the one thing that mattered most to him.

  So he asked the question that had been sitting there.

  “First,” Cole said, “does anyone have a phone? I really need to make a call.”

  The three exchanged looks.

  It was Dr. Park who spoke up.

  “Um,” she said carefully. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  She looked away for a second, like she hated being the one to say it. Then she looked back.

  “Electronics are busted,” she said. “The Convergence, whatever caused it, that System, whatever, it knocked ’em all out.”

  Naomi nodded quickly, as if she had been waiting to confirm it.

  “Phones,” Naomi said. “Radios. Laptops. Anything that relied on modern circuitry. Fried.”

  Seth’s voice came in behind it, flat and practical.

  “Maybe we can get some of it back up,” he said. “Maybe. But as of now, all electronics are dead.”

  Cole leaned back in his chair.

  For a second, he held his breath.

  His mind tried to reject it. Tried to find a loophole. Tried to tell him they were wrong, that maybe his phone was fine, that maybe Nathan had found a way, that maybe—

  But the dread settled.

  It made a home in his chest.

  How was he going to find Nathan now?

  He stared at the plastic table, at the cheap chairs, at the clipboard in Naomi’s hands, at the stethoscope around Dr. Park’s neck, at Seth’s scar.

  This was real.

  No call.

  No text.

  No GPS.

  No system of comforting little maps that told you where your child was.

  Just a broken world and a boy somewhere inside it.

  Cole swallowed.

  His throat felt tight.

  And for the first time since the dungeon, since the boss, since the reward choice, he felt panic try to rise.

  He shoved it down.

  He kept his hand on the staff.

  And he stared at the wall for one hard moment, as if the stone could give him an answer.

  It did not.

  So Cole looked back at Seth Milton, Dr. Alina Park, and Naomi Calder, and he forced his voice to work.

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  Then, after a beat, softer still.

  “Okay.”