Aurin and I stood leaning on the wall by the hatch we entered the aircraft through, while I stared down at the card she couldn't see or feel. Which was weird because she could hear when I flicked it, it was like they forgot the antimemetic properties for one of the senses.

  The card was contentedly purring in my hand, which was just the strangest colour I'd ever seen. It was even weirder than the colour of anger.

  I took a deep breath and flicked it into the air, watching it seemingly vanish from existence. But when I returned my hand to my pocket, I could feel it still. The moment I reached for it, the card was there, but if I wasn’t looking, it just didn’t exist.

  Opening my mouth, I tried to voice what Makesi and I had talked about to Aurin, but found that I still couldn’t. It just wouldn’t come out; a panic response set in every time I tried, and I ended up just staying quiet.

  I hated how much of a coward I was.

  Turning to Aurin, I noticed she was staring at me.

  “You doin’ okay?” she asked as she placed a hand on the back of my head, started running her fingers through my hair, and gazed into my eyes.

  It was starting to grow longer than I liked it to be. I'd never been a fan of letting my hair go down past my shoulders. Even though I had to do absolutely nothing to keep it clean anymore, it still got tangled.

  “Yeah, just a lot to think about lately,” I replied evasively.

  “Like what?” Aurin asked the one question I wasn't deliberately trying to avoid, but I was pretty sure I'd sooner have a panic attack than actually tell her.

  “I think I need to cut my hair.”

  Vivi chose that moment to round the corner, interrupting the conversation to my immense relief. Looking Aurin up and down, a box appeared in the air in front of her and fell to the ground.

  “You know, I'm intellectually aware you're all a lot older than I am, but the fact you all look like children is incredibly disconcerting. Do you usually start working on completing objectives this young?” I asked, as a way to change the subject.

  “Ugh, no, we were assigned to this after the last team had a complete wipe due to some kind of idiocy and gave up the Contract. Before I was born, we were already at a Threshold State of six because of how bad the state of things had gotten. I’ve literally never seen that happen before. This entire Contract was fucked from the start. The moment my consciousness came online at the age of nine, I had to run away from home to meet with the team. Normally, we at least get to grow up with our parents because that helps with cultural development,” she replied with a sigh, then opened the box and from it handed Aurin a suit to change into. “At least we get emergency pay on top of our regular Contract fee. I was originally going to use that to buy an extra life, but I probably won’t have to anymore, assuming you’re coming aboard. That's what you and Makesi were discussing, yeah?”

  “Yeah…” I replied, and my hand found the card once again. A constant little reminder for something that I was not in the mood to be reminded about.

  Once they were done, Aurin was decked out in a skinsuit that was completely sealed, besides what looked like a sci-fi gas mask over her mouth. The suit was designed to allow survival in a Dust-filled environment for someone not already exposed to it. We weren’t expecting to run into any, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  Looking closely, I could see some kind of mental connection between Aurin and the suit itself. A thread connecting her lockbox to the external sensory input that was being provided. She looked over at me, winking with one of the digital projections that was acting as her eyes.

  “Does it look good on me?” Aurin asked, posing herself suggestively against the bulkhead.

  “You look good in anything you wear,” I said, not really lying. Aurin just sort of developed a vibe at some point that I was finally admitting to myself made me want to let her hold me down and do unspeakable things to me.

  My brain hiccuped at the realization of what just passed through it, and I felt bile rise in my throat as I felt myself crossing a line that had been beaten into me at some point.

  “Alright, now, Ren, I'm not really sure what you'd need right now. What kind of gear would even be useful for you? Can you shoot a gun?” Vivi asked, pulling me out of my thought spiral before it could even begin. I swallowed back the acrid liquid building at the back of my throat.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m alright with a handgun. Never shot a rifle before, didn’t really have a chance to get my hands on one as a kid,”

  “Who were you shooting as a kid?” she asked in return.

  “Other kids? Who else would I be shooting? What kind of question even is that?” I had to keep the guttersnipes away from my sleeping spot somehow. I didn't want to get shived in my sleep.

  “Man, this fucking planet… If I weren’t getting paid to save the damn thing.” Vivi muttered to herself, shaking her head. Her eyes were unfocused as she looked through her System. “Okay, I don’t actually have any Manifests with small arms. More of a CQC fighter if you catch my drift. You’re gonna have to talk to… Ah, here they are.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Makesi had rounded the corner with Aisling trailing a step behind and to the left of him. Makesi was wearing his usual armour, while Aisling was equipped with what looked like a mix between cosplay and an outfit you’d wear to a ren faire and had a pair of goggles over her eyes. Slung over her back was what appeared to be an anti-materiel rifle, given the size of its barrel.

  Makesi didn’t have any weapons, interestingly.

  “Hey! Aisling! You got any handguns that Ren could use?” Vivi yelled down the hall.

  Aisling’s eyes flicked around for a moment, going through menus far faster than Vivi did.

  “Smart gun or standard?” Aisling asked.

  “Well damn, if you’ve got fancy smart bullets I ain’t gonna say no,” I returned. I had never seen anyone besides the police using smart ammo. It helped them chew through protests like nobody's business when they could just spray into a crowd and guarantee every shot was a kill.

  A box appeared in front of her, and with a flick of her hand, it was suddenly flying towards me. It didn't even look like she touched it.

  Unable to react in time, the container bounced off my shoulder and into the wall, causing me to stumble from the force of the impact.

  “Aisling. She may have a single Stat unlocked, but she's still otherwise a baseline human. Please don't throw projectiles at her,” Makesi said while I went to scoop the box up.

  “Sorry,” Aisling said, in the loudest voice I had heard her use so far. As in, she was still barely audible from the distance we were at.

  Inside was certainly an object shaped like a pistol alongside several magazines. That's where any similarities with modern firearms ended.

  Instead of ironsights, the pistol had two wings sprouting from the top, and its grip was fashioned into a stylized design, similar to those used in arcade games. It also had glowing detailwork inscribed along the sides. Looking at the gun, I could tell it had a mind of its own, as its conceptualization was a set of vectors piled on top of each other.

  That was pretty neat.

  On contact with my hand, the gun flashed gold for an instant, and I realized that it was now present on the stage in my mind. The one normally reserved for spotlights. As I held it, I could feel the vectors realigning through my mental concept to fit exactly where I wanted to aim. It also felt like it would be incredibly easy for someone like me to backdoor into my mind through the pistol.

  It was lucky I was the only person in existence with my particular Aspect, but it never hurt to be careful. Who knew if someone had an Aspect or tool that worked differently but could achieve the same outcome?

  “If someone or something jacks into my mind using the connection, I’m blaming all of you,” I said, looking at the magazine. I noticed the bullets also had mental concepts. They were out for blood, as all good bullets should be.

  There was another layer underneath the foam holding the gun in place, and I pulled it out, revealing a belt for the magazines. Aw, that was sweet of her to get this for me. I was just gonna stuff them in my pockets.

  “That would be impossible given the design,” Makesi said.

  I just shrugged in response. Maybe there were failsafes I was unfamiliar with or couldn’t detect. I was fairly new to this whole ‘thinking objects’ thing. Or at least ones that didn’t break the moment I looked at them.

  “Should I be carrying a weapon?” Aurin asked, her voice came through clearly as if she weren’t wearing a mask.

  “Nope, stand as close to me as possible. If anything approaches us, get behind me and don't look at it. That will be the safest place in this entire universe until I die. If that happens, we have bigger problems anyway and are probably about to lose the team,” he said in reply. That was fairly reassuring. I wasn’t entirely sure about letting her come. I’d only asked because I couldn’t bring myself to go against anything she wanted. “That applies to you as well, Ren. Until you decide to read the code, please don’t accidentally die.”

  I nodded in response, ignoring Aurin’s glance towards me. She was definitely going to ask about that later. I kept my face straight despite my heart rate spiking.

  Aisling gave me a knowing look and tilted her head to the side slightly. What she assumed, I had no idea.

  “Are we going?” I asked.

  Makesi nodded towards me and hit a switch on the wall. The hatchway opened onto a ridge of red clay and scrub, the valley below veiled in morning mist. Hills rolled away in layers of green until, halfway down, the terrain just stopped. Beyond the cutoff stretched a perfect, level sheet of white orchids. A thin layer of mist covered the field, stretching as far as I could see.

  Large shapes were visible moving in the far distance, but I couldn't make them out with the fog.

  I could see a small town nestled on the side of a hill that had been half swallowed by the flowers. Several buildings had pieces sliced off where the field began line so precisely cut that it looked like they had been built that way. There also wasn't a single person standing past where the line began.

  The strange part was that none of it was real. It was just an idea stacked on top of reality, trying to mimic other ideas found nearby. Sort of like those praying mantises that look like flowers.

  Instead of current ideas, it had chosen older ones. Ones that had soaked into the land and become part of it. It was odd receiving all this information but not understanding how I was seeing it. The knowledge was just sort of there, like looking at the colour red and knowing it was red.

  I had to hold myself back from prodding it to see what would happen. That would probably be a terrible idea, since it was asleep right now after all.

  Aurin and I bunched up around Makesi as the group marched forward. When we reached the flowers, I noticed the idea seemed to sort of move out of the way around Makesi. Or maybe the better term would be that it was being suppressed? Like he was rewriting reality back to what it should be on the fly, but forgetting to remove a few rules along the way.

  It wasn't a perfect shield; the idea still leaked through, tasting the air around us. But it couldn't touch us.

  The air smelled of incense and was vaguely floral. Like someone was burning jasmine.

  Aisling pointed off to the side, directly to the left of where we entered the flower patch. As I turned to look, I noticed we were no longer anywhere near the line of flowers. It was gently sucking us in.

  I was pretty sure I could make it stop if I tried, but that would be no fun right now.

  “Dust presence rises dramatically in that direction. Space is folded oddly, and the overlap seems to be drawing us to a specific place, but it isn't preventing us from going anywhere if we force the issue. If we tried to leave, there is a path out,” Aisling said.

  “Well, let's see where it wants us to go first,” Makesi said, before turning to me. “Stay close to me.”

  Aurin reached out to hold my hand. I gave her mine and squeezed hers in return.

  The idea recoiled in disgust.

  Oops.

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