Chapter 7: Not the Same

Consciousness came all at once. Even with her eyes still closed she could read the floating text in front of her.

[Initialization Successful]

Interface

Status

Name: Scarlet Bourne
Level: 1
Tier: 0
Stats Per Level (SPL): 8
Free Stats (FS): –

Titles:

• Early Adopter (+3 SPL)
• First Bond (+2 SPL)

Traits:

• Anomalous Soul
• Primordial Psion
• Psionic Shroud
• System Guide

Stats:

• Strength (STR): 4
• Dexterity (DEX): 6
• Vitality (VIT): 3
• Perception (PER): 11
• Intelligence (INT): 9
• Willpower (WIL): 9
• Mana (MAN): 6

Skills:

• Empathy (T1)
• Bond Communication (T1)

Bond:

• Maus

The window appeared in her head, and it felt different from the initial system notifications. Those felt surface level, like something she’d been shown versus something that was a part of her like this new window felt.

One moment there was nothing but crushing pressure and the faded image of Maus convulsing beneath her hand, then she was fading, and now there was this. This Interface that showed her a Status? How were they different? What did that mean, and how did she find out?

She knew instinctively that they were different, in the way you know your fingers are not your hand. However just where the distinction lay, she was clueless. She pushed her questions away. First she should open her eyes. For all she knew the world had gone up in flames and she was currently laying in a giant fiery crater and the only reason she wasn’t in excruciating pain was because the terrible burns had already incinerated all her nerve endings.

She blinked her eyes open and took in a deep lungful of air. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she looked around the room and saw, nothing had changed? Okay that wasn’t quite right, the air itself felt, strange. If felt a little like walking through fog but stranger. There was a density there that hadn’t been before. That wasn’t the only change, however. Everything about her felt more somehow. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the change was though.

Focusing, she pulled up the Interface and stared at the text. Some distant, pragmatic part of her noted that if this was a hallucination, it was at least a consistent one. She dismissed the screen once more before summoning it again. She did this a few times, getting used to the mental command before reading through once more as the initial panic subsided. She settled in to go through the thing in more detail when her eyes snagged on the last entry. All nine of those intelligence points finally made themselves known.

Maus.

The ‘Bond’ entry registered just as the memory followed. The last thing she had seen before everything went dark had been his body seizing beneath her hand. Small and fragile and utterly out of her control. When she’d gone under, he had been on her chest. He was no longer there.

The interface vanished with her attention as she pushed herself off the lounge. “Maus?” She called.

She was already moving. The transition from lying to standing happened in a single, fluid motion that surprised her. Her first steps nearly had her stumbling from sheer shock. There was no flare of pain, no familiar hitch she had spent years compensating for. Yeah, there were a number of things that warranted closer examination, and she set all of them aside as she crossed the room in sure, steady strides.

Her hand closed around her cane where she had propped it against the wall, the weight familiar. Instead of leaning on it she slung it over one shoulder. Then she reached for the firearm she’d hidden underneath the table. She checked it, loaded it, turned on the safety, then holstered it before moving on.

The bunker felt different.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Scarlet was different, and something about that made everything else feel strange. She ignored it.

“Maus?” she called again, louder this time as she moved toward the door. She knew with a surety she couldn’t explain that he was not inside. Only, how the hell could he have gotten out?

Her pace quickened. The door to the bunker was still closed. The keypad beside it remained intact, its surface unmarked, its mechanism as secure as she had left it. There were no obvious signs it had been tampered with. There was only a short list of possibilities she could think of that would explain how Maus got out, and none of them were reassuring.

She punched in the code, unlocked the two deadbolts, and released the swing bar. The moment she stepped past the threshold she nearly went down.

Something small and solid darted across her path. It was moving with a speed that defied reason. Scarlet caught herself on instinct, her weight shifting cleanly as she stumbled back, and nearly tumbled into the opening she’d just come out of. She was both ecstatic that she could stumble without pain and confused about what the hell was going on.

Was that Maus?

Her gaze snapped downward.

A tiny bullet circled around, darted forwards and then just disappeared. Instantaneously he reappeared several inches to the left. Like he’d taken a step and then glitched. Or like the space between those two points didn’t exist.

“What the…”

More than the doom timer, more than the Interface. This single moment was more incomprehensible than anything she had experience since that first System announcement three days ago. For a brief, disjointed moment, her mind attempted to reconcile what she had just seen with reality as she understood it. Her mind came up blank. Her only coherent thought was that yeah, that would get him through the door.

She didn’t get the time to think about it any further because she’d finally seen just what had Maus so riled up.

The largest, meanest raccoon she’d ever seen was no longer aiming for Maus. Maybe it thought she was an easier target. Scarlet would have to agree. The creature only took a moment to reassess before it lunged.

Up close, it was uglier. It was closer to the size of a midsize dog, and its body was thick with an unnatural density that made it look grotesque despite its fur. Its eyes caught the light with a wet, reflective sheen, and beneath that there was something else, something that did not belong in an animal that should have been governed by instinct alone.

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Scarlet could feel it pouring off the creature in waves that smashed against her consciousness. Greed.

Not hunger or territorial aggression, but overwhelming, all consuming, naked greed.

Luckily for Scarlet the roided up raccoon – roidcoon? – was much slower than Maus. It went for her legs, and she swung for the fences.

Her cane came down in a clean, decisive arc.

The impact landed with a solid, jarring thwonk that travelled up her arm and into her shoulder. It managed to stagger the creature and send it tumbling sideways, but other than that the impact wasn’t enough to put it down. It hit the ground with a grating chitter; its claws scrabbled for purchase in the grass as it tried to recover. Something told her that her four in strength wasn’t nearly enough to do any meaningful damage to this creature. She could feel its greed shifting into anger. Even so, she adjusted her grip, shifted her stance to give it another solid blow and-

Maus was there.

He moved like an arrow. There was no warning before he appeared and no hesitation as he shot forward. It had been her and the beast, then suddenly a small, grey-brown and white blur had crossed the space between them.

She watched Maus’s teeth sink into the roidcoon’s throat with a precision that bordered on surgical. The sound the creature made was wet and ugly. Scarlet was both alarmed and relieved that it was quickly cut short.

Scarlet watched the one-sided mauling with a kind of distant clarity, her mind filing away the details while the rest of her tried to detach from the gory display she was unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone of.

Once the roidcoon was dead, Maus released his grip and landed lightly in the grass before turning back toward her. There was blood on his muzzle, and he took a moment to shake himself out, going from ‘fur-matted-with-blood’ to ‘fur-spiked-with-blood’ which wasn’t much better from an aesthetic standpoint. She could feel the satisfaction radiating off him.