Chapter 9 – E-Rank

  Ashe had learned young that music was his outlet, his way of reaching into the dark corners of his mind and flushing out whatever was bothering him.

  That night he crawled into bed with music blasting, trying to plan, to map out his next steps.

  Eventually the darkness slid in and the absence of thought took over. He slept like a rock. Exhaustion finally caught up with him, and the aches had faded enough that the night wasn’t broken by restless tossing.

  He was already half-awake, rolling around in bed and worrying he’d overslept, when the familiar tone of his clock rang out.

  “Perfect,” he murmured.

  It was rare for him to wake up energized before his alarm. He could hear his parents’ voices downstairs and smell breakfast drifting up from the kitchen. Time to pretend again.

  He rushed to get dressed and headed downstairs. The smell of fresh bread wrapped around him, and his stomach growled on cue.

  As he stepped into the kitchen, his father turned toward him. “You look better today. How are you feeling?”

  Ashe smiled. “Good.”

  His mother’s voice followed, edged with concern. “Good? Doesn’t your head still hurt?”

  “My head?” he echoed, then it clicked. The fall in the national park.

  “A little,” he added quickly, fumbling the words.

  The corner of his mouth twitched, but his mask held.

  Breakfast passed as usual, small talk, bits of news, nothing sharp enough to cut. No mention of portals. No mention of Fewster Road.

  Ashe slowly let himself relax.

  When they were done, he thanked his parents for the food, helped clear the plates to the counter, and headed back upstairs.

  As he sat down at his desk, he spun once in his chair, trying to decide what to do next.

  “Shit. Today’s the twenty-fifth, right?”

  He grabbed his phone. “Siri, what’s the date?”

  “Today is April twenty-fifth.”

  “And the time?”

  “It is currently 8:58 a.m.”

  He let his shoulders relax. Plenty of time. At least two minutes before his standing chess game with Rasmus.

  Rasmus’s parents wouldn’t let him out at all, and Ashe hadn’t seen him in two years—but they still met online to play. Rasmus still sucked at chess, but it was their way of keeping in touch.

  Ashe opened Discord, then navigated to chess.com. He was sure he’d end up late, but it didn’t matter. Rasmus would be later. His usual excuse was that he was blind, which always led to Ashe reminding him they both were, and that it did not excuse taking ten minutes to find the right website.

  He waited a few minutes for the familiar Discord ping. When it didn’t come, he switched gears. Instead of music, he put WarFronts on low in the background. At least then he could keep up with the war while he waited.

  Discord finally pinged, and Rasmus’s voice crackled through his headset. “Ayo, you there?”

  Ashe exhaled. “You know I am. You’re always late.”

  “Late?” Rasmus said. “I can’t see the clock, how do you expect me to be on time?”

  Ashe snorted. “Yeah, right. I actually have twenty-twenty vision. I’ve just been lying this whole time.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I know,” Rasmus replied in a perfectly serious tone.

  He won the first two games of chess without much effort, but his focus slipped when WarFronts suddenly got interesting in his ear.

  “Dragonspire has just completed another D-rank dungeon in Melbourne. While in the region, they’ll be clearing surrounding F and E-rank portals before deployment moves to China. Higher-rank portals will remain under quarantine.”

  The words wrapped around his thoughts and refused to let go.

  An E-rank portal. Only one step up from the F-ranks he’d cleared. That shouldn’t be impossible for him. And if something went wrong, Annabelle and Kreor would be nearby.

  The real issue was not getting seen.

  But somewhere inside, he already knew he’d made up his mind.

  He cleared his throat. “I have to go.”

  “Already?” Rasmus complained.

  “Yeah. Something came up. Gotta go save the world. Portal-related,” Ashe said, letting it come out sounding sarcastic enough to pass as a joke.

  “Yeah, sure, Superman. When can you play again?”

  “You know I’m pretty busy as Superman, now that I’ve regained my perfect vision,” Ashe said. “But I think I can squeeze you in three days from now. Twenty-eighth, ten a.m. How about it, chief?”

  Rasmus let out a long, theatrical sigh, clearly tired of what he thought was just another of Ashe’s bits. If only you knew, Ashe thought.

  “Alright. Deal. Don’t be late,” Rasmus said, a hint of his usual good humor returning.

  He didn’t answer, just logged off.

  Back to PortalsNearMe.com.

  He searched for an E-rank portal he could actually reach.

  When the robotic voice of his app finally spoke the words, he knew he’d found it: Melbourne Central Bus Stop. Easy access.

  He yanked off his headset and tossed it onto the desk. His body was already moving before his brain caught up. His foot snagged on a cable and, a heartbeat later, he was face-first on the carpet.

  He stayed there, winded. Slow down, he told himself. Better safe than sorry.

  After a few steady breaths, he pushed himself up. Hoodie first, then a beanie, then the pair of sunglasses he used when the sun was too sharp. It would have to do as a disguise: beanie-wearing, cane-using, hooded thug.

  He slipped his phone and an old pair of Apple earbuds into his pocket, along with his bus pass. He hadn’t used it in years, but it had never been cancelled—or so he hoped.

  At the top of the stairs, fully kitted out, he paused to listen. Ants seemed to crawl down his legs; energy fizzed through him like air through a leaky balloon. When he heard the TV click on and the volume rise, he moved.

  Slow at first. Then faster.

  He crept down the stairs, keeping his cane light on each step. At the bottom he crouched, using the kitchen island as cover while he eased the drawer open, slipped the knife back into its sheath, and tucked it into his belt.

  His parents’ voices drifted from the living room, reacting to something on a cooking show. Still, he felt watched.

  He slipped past the doorway anyway, heartbeat loud in his ears, and made for the front door. The lock turned with a soft click. He froze, listening.

  Nothing from the kitchen.

  He eased the door open, slid outside, and shut it gently behind him.

  Only when he’d turned the corner at the end of the street, and he knew he would no longer be in view, did he pull out his phone and unlock the screen. He plugged in the location of the portal near the bus stop to maps and started walking. It would take him to the bus stop first.

  -

  The bus wasn’t crowded, it was a Thursday at 10 a.m., but the quiet felt heavy, almost dangerous. He didn’t turn on any music. He wanted the edge, the nervous energy. He was going to need it.

  Plans and strategies spun through his head, but he knew how that usually went. You have a plan until you get hit in the face, he thought. Pretty sure Mike Tyson had said that once.

  The bus hissed to a stop. Doors swung open and a voice crackled over the intercom. “Last stop on the line.”

  Ashe pushed himself up and fumbled for his cane, feeling for the aisle. A man’s voice cut in. “Do you need help?”

  “No, thanks,” Ashe said.

  He still felt the man’s eyes on him, like he didn’t quite trust Ashe to manage on his own. Ashe followed the direction of the voice until his cane found the drop of the steps. He prodded the ground outside, measuring the distance, then stepped down carefully, matching the reach of the cane. The last thing he needed was to faceplant out of the bus and look even more ridiculous than he already felt.

  He waited for the bus to pull away and for the last few footsteps nearby to fade before popping an earbud back in and letting his phone guide him. A few hundred meters later, the air shifted. Thinner. Wrong.

  He was close.

  He shoved the device and earbuds into his pocket, wrapped one hand around his cane, the other around the knife, and kept walking.

  A few steps more.

  “This area is quarantined!” someone shouted from his left.

  He pretended not to hear and kept going.

  “Stop!”

  The thinning air pressed against him like a wall of danger. When the scream reached him, a flicker of fear rose inside him, hot and sharp, then thinned into something colder, weaker. His fingers tightened on the hilt until it bit into his skin. One step. That was all it would take to turn back. But he knew if he stopped now, he would find an excuse every time. He leaned forward and took another step. The world twisted.

  His stomach lurched and, for a heartbeat, every sense blew wide open. The air turned thick as fog, pressing against his skin. Pain flared, not from one place, but everywhere at once.

  That was the moment he realized he’d made a mistake.