Chapter 24 – A New World

He found the man in the yellow shirt sitting on the floor outside his room, back against the wall, knees up, staring at nothing.

Jake sat down at least a metre away.

They sat in silence for a while.

“She said there’s no point,” the man said eventually. His voice was flat and scraped out. “That it just gets worse. That the kindest thing is to—”

“She was lying,” Jake said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know she was feeding off your fear.” Jake looked at the wall across from them. “Whatever she told you, she said it because it made her stronger. Not because it was true.”

The man said nothing.

“This is the only life you’ve got,” Jake said. “One. That’s it. Spending it because someone told you to is the worst trade you’ll ever make.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“No,” Jake said. “It isn’t.”

He stood up.

“Don’t smash the window,” he said. “For any reason.”

“How do you do it?”

Jake tilted his head.

“How do you find the courage to go out there and face those… things,” he said, clutching at his head. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Instead of wasting time and energy on thinking about the things I can’t do,” Jake said. “I’d rather just do them. If I fail, and die, then that’s that. But I’d hate to think of the alternative—to not try at all.”

He looked up at him, blinking.

Jake scratched his head. “Don’t break the window, I mean it. I hate the sound of glass breaking. It’s bad luck.”

He went back to his room.

***

He was at Sloane’s door before sunrise. He stared at it for a while, noting the small dent from when he’d accidentally struck it with a mop.

She opened it already dressed, sword at her hip, arm in a sling, like she’d been waiting for someone to knock. She looked at him for a moment.

“Right now?”

“Yes,” he said, then paused. “Your arm?”

“I can fight one handed no problem.”

She grabbed her jacket off the hook and stepped out.

Susan was already in the corridor, cleaver at her belt, dark circles under her eyes that suggested she hadn’t slept at all. She fell in without being asked.

Glenn opened his door on the second knock, saw the three of them, and spent four seconds visibly weighing the comfort of his bed against whatever was about to happen. He said he’d be a moment, and Jake and the others watched as he darted from one room to the other. A few minutes later, he came out looking better than before.

And was that… cologne?

He grabbed the bow, and seeing Jake stare at him, he scoffed. “I don’t want to smell like all of you.”

Sloane held her nose. “Monsters will smell you from a mile away.”

Susan sniffed. “Is that girl’s perfume?”

“It’s unisex! It’s 2026, you know?”

“Wash it off,” Jake simply said.

Glenn debated it for a moment, but when he saw Jake still looking at him, he shivered and ran back in. He came back out without the stench.

The archer looked around. “Where’s Edwin and the others?”

“Don’t need them.”

Jake didn’t explain.

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They were halfway to the stairwell when the voice came from behind.

“Stop.”

Edwin. Jake turned.

Arthur was beside him, shield on his arm, jaw set. Behind them, the priest stood with his hands folded, watching Jake with the particular expression of a man who had decided something was evil and found the certainty restful.

And behind Edwin, four people Jake didn’t recognise. Big. Carrying weapons they knew how to hold, standing the way people stood when they were used to being the largest thing in the room. Edwin had been busy.

“You don’t go up,” Arhur said, saying it just a step behind Edwin. “Not until we’ve dealt with what happened last night.”

“There is nothing to deal with.”

“You broke a woman’s legs in front of the entire floor,” Arthur said. “You can’t just—”

“He is a devil,” the priest said, stepping forward, voice rising. “I have seen his kind before. He has no soul. He bleeds himself for power and he hurts without conscience and if we let him go unchecked—”

“Walk away,” Jake said to him.