When we get back to the Volvo, I don’t get in right away. Something eats at me, some thread of connection that I’m not seeing.

  The humans that were stolen from the earth didn’t have magic cores in their souls. That must have been why those were the humans that were taken.

  The humans that remained have magic cores. I’m going to assume all of the remaining humans. That must be why we were left behind. It’s why we are able to develop stronger magic from the surges.

  Animals have no souls at all, therefore they don’t have magic cores. But they can still mutate and evolve from the magic surges, to which they’re attracted like moths to a flame.

  It answers one of the questions that still haunts me: who decided which humans were taken and which were not? Clearly, the answer is somewhere in our souls, where some of us had latent magic. And others did not.

  But there’s more there, something just out of reach, and I just don’t have enough information yet to figure it out. Still, I stand at the door to the Volvo, staring down at my clenched fists.

  Ryder opens the door, nearly whacking me. “Jane?” he asks, sounding just a smidge worried. “Is everything all right?”

  I force my head up, plaster a smile on my face. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” Because what else can I say? I open the driver’s door so I can talk to both of them, since Nancy’s watching cautiously from the passenger seat. “I’m getting a tad worried about how much gas is left in here.” I pat the roof of the car above my head. It doesn’t feel right to pretend that nothing’s bothering me; everyone would know I’m lying. So I give them a truth, though a smaller one. “We might have to be a bit more judicious about driving in circles.”

  “You took gas canisters from Canadian Tire,” Nancy points out.

  “Yeah, but I don’t really know what to do with them now,” I admit. “I feel like a TV show would have someone stick a hose or something into another car and suck to bring the gas up.”

  “That doesn’t sound very appetizing,” Ryder offers.

  “Agreed,” I say. “Also, I think most cars now have systems that block that.”

  Nancy lifts her hand and bites down on the cuff of her sweater. It’s something that I’ve noticed she does a lot—if she’s thinking, if she’s anxious. I don’t begrudge her her stim, and I wait a moment to see what she comes up with. “So we either have to find really old cars and hope they’re still full, or start breaking into people’s garages to see if they have any gas stashes?” Her hand drops into her lap. “Neither of those sound like good ideas.”

  “Agreed,” I repeat. “I think at the gas station, all the gas is just… sitting in giant tanks underground. Maybe we need to add someone new to our Party that can get liquid magic and then they can call it up and into the air.” I chuckle as I climb into the car fully, trying to imagine someone water bending gasoline. It makes for a funny image.

  Nancy lets out a small hum, considering my wild thought. “If the gas is in those big tanks,” she starts, her voice slow as she thinks aloud, “maybe we don’t actually need a magic user who can anti-gravity up liquids. Could we not just stick a cup on the end of a rope and drop it in? Anti-gravity that way?”

  I glance over at her as I start up the car. “We got nothing else to do with our lives,” I say with a shrug. It’s not supposed to sound depressing—just truth. “But I think we can do better than a cup on a string.”

  This is exactly the sort of silly distraction that I need to get my head away from magic cores and souls. Needing to figure out how to use the resources that remain is exactly the sort of post-apocalyptic trope that a television show or movie would use.

  I guess I’m a little okay if my life is just a huge trope now.

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  We backtrack, grab some more supplies, and then head back to Yonge Street and stop at the first gas station we can find. We’re not too far away from where I was when the Event first happened, and this once-busy street still feels like a ghost town. I let myself remember it, the cars crashing and the shouts and the few people left behind freaking out. I remember that man, the first one I saw, bemoaning that he’s still here and his daughter isn’t. I wonder how he’s doing.

  No, what I’m actually doing is distracting myself from how shaken I am being back on Yonge Street. And at how nervous I am to try this whole gas thing.

  Meanwhile, Ryder is bouncing like a kid on Christmas as we stand by the round discs that are embedded in the gas station’s asphalt. I’m pretty sure they open right into the gas reservoirs. A thought comes to me and I level a finger at Ryder. “You can’t be a part of this,” I spit out, so quickly that it almost sounds like I’m yelling at him.

  He takes it that way. He stops bouncing and his eyes go wide like he’s about to cry. “What? But why? I didn’t do—”

  I lift my hands, placating, and shake my head. Backtrack. “No no no, you didn’t! You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re just…” I gesture to the ground. “Gas.” I lift my hands back to him. “Fire mage.”

  Nancy lets out a gasp, the loudest and most obscene sound I think I’ve ever heard come out of her. “Oh my goodness, I didn’t even consider that!”

  “I don’t understand,” Ryder whines.

  “Ryder, sweets, gas is suuuuuuuper flammable. One wrong move and we’re all toast.” I reach over and give his hand a squeeze. “We trust that you won’t flame up accidentally or anything, but we just want to make sure we stay as safe as possible.”

  Nancy nods along.

  “Honestly, we should be wearing protective gear and clothes we don’t mind getting dirty,” I add, glancing down at my blood-covered shirt. “Well, that ship has mostly sailed.”

  The other two laugh—well, Ryder sort of hiccups since he’s trying not to laugh, still a little grumpy that we’re benching him. But when Nancy and I stare at him for an extra second, he lets out a humph. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll go stand by the car.”

  And then Nancy and I get to work.

  ***

  It takes us way longer than I even thought—just to get the cover off the tanks. I don’t think we’d have succeeded if I hadn’t put that extra Rank Token from the battle in the conservation area, where we met Nancy, into my Physical stat. As it is, I had to throw the one I got from the battle at the Montessori school into my strength to get the cover completely off.

  The scent of the gas knocks into us as soon as we get the tank open. We both throw up an arm to cover our noses at the sudden smell: Nancy’s hands and my forearm. But we lock eyes over our appendages and that’s that. We grab our supplies and get to work. Nancy unwinds a length of hose and starts feeding one end down into the hole. She looks up at one point, as if surprised it’s still going.

  “Do you think someone else got to it—oh!” There’s a splash, and Nancy smiles a relieved smile.

  “Glad we took the extra-long hose, then,” I say, actively unboxing the hand pump we took. I attach the small included hose on one end and slide it into one of our gas canisters. The other end, I attach to the hose.

  “And glad you took all those extra hose parts,” Nancy adds. She reaches out a hand. “Pass the canister,” she instructs. I gladly hand it over and then I get to the good part.

  The pumping.

  It takes a while to get the gas moving, but I keep pumping, even as Ryder shouts questions from the car. Nancy and I work around his nonstop questioning, just sort of grinning to ourselves at his increasing volume and quantity, when the first splash of gas lands into the canister.

  In her shock, Nancy loses her grip on the canister. It lands on its side, half the hose sliding out, gas dripping onto the concrete.

  I reach for it, reacting without thinking. And in doing so, I lose my grip on the hand pump. The weight of the hose drags it toward the giant hole in the ground.

  I throw myself on top of it. The pump digs into my stomach, but I’m just relieved I caught the thing.

  “Sorry,” Nancy whispers.

  I look up at her, eyes wide but a wild grin on my face. “What would an apocalypse be without some drama?” I ask.

  She snorts out a laugh, rights the gas canister, and clamps her hands down. She gives me a nod. “I’m ready this time.”

  “What happened!?” Ryder screeches from the car.

  “Nothing!” Nancy and I yell back at the same time. And with the laughter still in my voice and in my ears, I start to pump again.

  This time, when the gas starts splashing into the gas canister, Nancy doesn’t lose her grip. We fill four canisters before we pause, my arm finally starting to tremble in its exhaustion, and we reel in a good chunk of the hose from the tank.

  I pull a small weight plate from my inventory, one of the things I looted from the Goodlife Fitness, and use it to hold down the hose so we don’t have to pull it out all the way.

  “Are we done?” Nancy asks.

  “Definitely not,” I say. “I have like fifteen more canisters. Just taking a break.”

  “You’re a trooper.”

  “Thanks. Pop these in your inventory, and we’ll just split them up later.”

  Nancy does.

  And then a new voice. “What the fuck did you just do?”