We get to work immediately.

  I want to start delving into the intricacies of how Beaker’s magic works, but there’s more pressing things than me getting better weapons. Or so I’m told.

  Like where they’re going to sleep tonight.

  It’s already gotten quite dark outside, so we grab some flashlights and take to the street. It’s blissfully quiet out here, that sort of stillness that still feels odd though I’ve come to expect it. We still haven’t seen another living soul in my street’s little subdivision, either walking or driving, but math says there must be. Even if it lost three-quarters of its residents, that still leaves about seven or eight houses on my street that should still have people living there.

  It’s not perfect math. There might still be caveats about how many people are living in each house. But it’s at least a little bit of an idea.

  The first stop is the houses on either side of mine, of course. We get to the neighbour and we knock on the door. When no one answers, we try the door. It’s locked, but a little muscle on my part and the lock simply breaks. We enter the house.

  There’s no one home. But it’s hard to tell, exactly, whether that’s because someone survived and left, or if its residents didn’t survive. I think about the nature of the houses in Ryder’s old neighbourhood and I’m relieved that my slightly-more-rural street hasn’t had any looters come through. Yet. I know it’s yet. Eventually, I’m sure, someone will.

  Hopefully the Safehouse, or Safehouses, or Safecommunity, or whatever we’re going to call it, will stop them from entering where they’re not wanted.

  A future concern for a future day.

  That all being said, I suppose the most obvious looter would have been… me. I’m almost embarrassed that I didn’t think to come snooping into my neighbours’ homes as soon as I realized the world had ended. While the rest of the crew goes combing through the house, I head into the kitchen. The smell coming from the room is definitely not enjoyable, but I grit it while I go snooping through cupboards and pantries and claim what’s been left behind.

  Eventually everyone makes their way back to the front of the house, where we decide to check my house’s other neighbour and then make a decision. So off we go.

  The door on the other house is unlocked. It’s very clear that whoever lived here was, for lack of a better term, raptured. There’s a half-eaten sandwich left on the kitchen table and the moldy fixings of what dinner was supposed to be on the counter. There’s a blanket draped over the middle of a couch with some questionable bunching and a book on the floor. I can see the picture of their lives: someone taking a nap while their parent, child, or sibling sat at their feet with a novel. They all winked out of existence.

  Was there more than these four people living in this house? If it was only this family of four, then shouldn’t math say that one or two of them survived?

  And why has it taken this many days for me to consider this sort of numbers game?

  I wasn’t upset when Savannah said they wanted the other house. Even with the unknown status of that family, it was easier to start from a clean space than to have to clean up all this before getting to make it their own. We go back into the first house and I tell the Game to mark it as the extension of the Safehouse. There’s a prickly feeling that runs up my arms but no other indication that something happened.

  “That was anti-climactic,” I say, but no one heard me since they all headed inside already, so I go into the house after our new teammates.

  Ryder has immediately and intensely taken to Beaker, and he follows along the tall man peppering him with questions. Nancy and Savannah head off down another hall together, and I leave them be to follow the guys, instead. Just in case Beaker needs an intervener.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  But I learn that Beaker and Savannah did not know each other before the Event. They were the only two survivors inside a shawarma place. Upon realizing that, and realizing that there was food actively being cooked and appliances on in the kitchen, they went to go turn it all off and do what little they could to maintain order. That’s where they were when the initial surge went off, and how they ended up with a similar type of magic, just with different raw materials.

  I think about how that could have changed things for me and Ryder. If we both had Games, but they weren’t a connected Game, would I have walked away from him?

  It’s silly to ask that, because I know the answer without hesitation. Yes. I would have turned my back and left him alone without another second of thought in his direction. And how different would my life look now.

  So Savannah and Beaker stuck together, the hint of survivor’s guilt bonding them, and it took barely 24 hours before they became a proper couple. I worry about the nature of a trauma-bond relationship, but it’s not my place. I suppose it could also have been a lack of other options, and might as well take what’s been put in front of us… but I don’t know.

  I ended up with a kid who I can no longer imaging my life without, so I can’t be sure of anything.

  Beaker says that they want to each have their own rooms, their own spaces, despite their relationship, and knowing that it’s only been a few days, I can see that as a smart decision. Beaker chooses the master suite upstairs, with an en-suite bathroom and a large walk-in closet. He stands in the closet and picks up a pair of women’s sneakers that are in there, and a moment later it vanishes from his hands. He blinks down at his hands a couple times and then breaks into a smile.

  “First time using your inventory?” I ask him, leaning against the door frame to the main bedroom.

  He nods. “It’s all much more intuitive than I thought.” He quickly starts pulling all the clothes from the closet into his inventory. “And at least if these people do come back, we can return all of their stuff.” He pulls out a long and thin jewelry box that was tucked at the back of a shelf. His eyes widen when he opens it, but he doesn’t show me what was in it. When he looks up at me again, he’s got a wry grin on his face. “Most of their stuff.”

  I roll my eyes.

  I leave him to his packing and head to where I can see Nancy and Savannah are, on my map. They’re up on the second floor as well, but they hadn’t come up the same staircase we did; I find the second set of stairs at the back of the house and the girls in a bedroom right there.

  Savannah’s telling Nancy the same story that Beaker told us, and the stories line up. But for Savannah, their coupling wasn’t something of convenience.

  “I had kind of wanted to approach him right from the get go, because, come on, look at him.” She lets out a laugh. “But I was too nervous. So when it ended up just being the two of us… it felt like fate, I guess. I just didn’t want to scare him.”

  “So you got him to move in with you first, that’s smart,” Nancy says, though there’s a teasing edge in her voice.

  I just watch, since I’ve never really been good at this girl-talk stuff.

  “Once it was clear that we were going to team up for all of this, it just made sense to… team up. In other ways.” Savannah wiggles her eyebrows at Nancy, who bursts out laughing, and I consider leaving the room. Because, as mentioned, I’m not good at this kind of girl-talk.

  But Savannah looks at me, and pats the bed where she’s sitting. It’s a nicely decorated girl’s room for someone who is clearly a teenager, with robin’s egg blue walls and a geometric duvet of various shades of blue, green, and burnt orange. There’s no set of dressers, just filled baskets on wireframe shelves and a desk that’s a slab of wood on a pair of cube shelves. The little ones, just two cubes side by side.

  I come into the room, but I don’t go to the bed. I stop at a large full-length mirror that leans against a bare stretch of wall, that is outlined with photos jammed into the frame. I try not to look too closely at the people in the photos.

  “What about you guys?” Savannah asks, clearly giving up on getting me to sit down. “No boys in your lives?” She lets out a little giggle. “God, I’ve missed gossiping with other girls,” she says, flopping down onto the bed.

  “Jane had a fiancé, before,” Nancy offers.

  Savannah rises up on an elbow, turning to me. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Wait, should I be? Did he survive the… you know?”

  Forget about being good or not at girl-talk. This is a topic I don’t want to talk about at all. “We ended things before the Event,” I say. “I don’t know where…if...” I pause. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “She never wants to talk about it,” Nancy laments.

  “Sharing is caring, Jane,” Savannah says, patting the bed again.

  I glance down at her hand, her nails still manicured a coral pink that matches the bedspread. “Not about this,” I say, shutting it down before it can really take off.

  Alex didn’t survive. That’s what I keep telling myself. And if Alex did survive… well, I don’t want to go down that road until I have definitive proof that I have to.

  “If you’re claiming the room, empty it of whatever you don’t want. Come on, it’s already dark outside.” With those instructions given—and a very clear line separating me from the only people in a position to be my friends—I exit the room and flee down the stairs in the back of the house.