ONE HUNDRE THIRTY-TWO: Ripples, III

132
******

Within moments, everyone on the bus was talking.

“System, call my mom!”

“Does this say tsunami?”

“What in Apex is an oceanic anomaly?”

“Wardrobe.”

“The possible tsunami is the anomaly!”

“Then why is it listed separately?”

“Text my sister.”

“Emergency teleport!”

“Access wardrobe.”

“Like the giant waves? Do we even have those here?”

“I thought there wasn’t any chaos on Earth!”

“What’s happening at Matadero? What kind of attack?”

“Wardrobe.”

“Uh…System? I asked you to call my mom.”

“I SAID LISTEN UP!” Torsten Klein bellowed from where he stood by the driver’s seat. At his back, the wipers were rhythmically stripping the raindrops from the bus’s windshield, and the head and taillights of the traffic on the bridge shone bright.

Silence fell. Alden, still on his feet, was gripping his leather cuff bracelet, pressing the auriad hidden below it hard into his wrist. He stared at the Rabbit’s Wardrobe, willing the window to look like it was supposed to.

It didn’t seem to be glitching, exactly. The tabs were there, including the special ones she had added. But there was nothing available for purchase. The shop was closed.

It’s different from back then. When I asked for the Wardrobe on the day the Thegund System broke and the request failed, it didn’t look like this.

It’s just not letting me make purchases. Everything else is normal.

Anxiety bubbled inside him anyway.

Your interface missing a function doesn’t mean anything is falling apart. You’re on Earth. Go ahead and do Peace of Mind, so you can—

“We’ll reach Apex in a few minutes. Stay. Calm,” Instructor Klein commanded. “Don’t panic about your calls not going through. Mine aren’t either. The System is obviously busy right now. I’m sure we can expect more information soon.”

Alden heard the words. He understood them. He even believed them. Mostly. But they did nothing to stop his mouth from going dry or his chest from tightening.

He wanted to climb out the window and run away. He wanted to crawl under one of the seats and hide. He wanted to be summoned, immediately, to anywhere where his connection to the System looked completely, one hundred percent normal.

It’s fine. Klein’s here. This is a bus full of high ranks. There are worse places to be. Calm down.

A hand shot up near the front of the bus.

“Not right now, Jupiter. Let me finish talking.” Klein’s demeanor was composed. “During an emergency, keep your wits about you. Don’t throw your powers at problems unless you need to in order to keep yourself or someone else safe. Pay attention to instructions from the authorities, from the System, and in the absence of instructions from those two sources, pay attention to me.”

His gaze landed on each of them in turn, calm and piercing at once.

“I don’t know any more about what’s going on than you all do. I’m sure information will be coming to our interfaces shortly. If I learn something else, I’ll let you know. For now, I expect you all to behave like this is a serious matter and you are serious young men and women.”

“No more translation,” a voice said quietly.

It was Ignacio, looking unnecessarily embarrassed about admitting he didn’t understand all of what Klein was saying. Spanish was his first language, and if Alden remembered right, he spoke Hindi as well.

“Even translation is broken now?” Mehdi said. “That seems bad.”

“It’s not broken,” Alden said forcefully. “The System is just busy. It’s not going to break.”

Mehdi turned to him with arched brows.

“Will someone buddy-up with Ignacio and translate for him?” Klein asked.

“I’ll do it!” said Jupiter, springing out of her seat. “But, Instructor, shouldn’t we turn around?”

Before Klein could answer, she went on: “We’re almost at the halfway marker, but it’s a slightly shorter distance back to F-city. And they have more safe harbor locations, don’t they? Isn’t there a building near that end of the bridge that’s supposed to be an emergency shelter?”

“Yes!” said Mehdi, rising to his feet. “My family lives near there. My mother’s always complaining about how ugly it is. Like a windowless fortress. We should go!”

There were murmurs of agreement from a few people.

Klein shook his head. “We’re already northbound. We have shelters in Apex, too, if we need to get to one. You also have to think about the responsibility of being…well, there are other reasons for heading in this direction. The main one is that the System indicated we should head to high ground quickly, and U-turning a bus on The Span will cause traffic problems and ultimately slow us down.”

“Other people don’t seem to know that,” said Kon, leaning over Everly to stare out the window.

Once his attention was called to it, Alden realized it was true. The sounds of horns honking and people shouting filled the gaps in between the sirens’ wails. There were four lanes on the Span–two headed north, two south. Cyclists and foot traffic that traveled below certain speeds could use the Span Trail, a jogging path that hung just below the level of the roadway from the western side of the bridge, like a shelf.

Behind Instructor Klein, the traffic, which had been on the heavy side but still steadily flowing in both directions, was shifting now. Motorcycles and mopeds were changing direction everywhere, and a small black car in one of the southbound lanes suddenly shot forward.

Finlay swore. Tuyet let out an alarmed eep. An instant before the car should’ve collided with the pack of bi-wheeled traffic in front of it, it lifted off the ground and went over the other vehicles instead, presumably thanks to the skills or spells of the driver or a passenger, since it didn’t look Wrightmade.

At least, it didn’t look like it was made by a Wright who’d known what they were doing.

The car barely cleared the heads of the nearest riders. Some of them actually ducked. Alden whipped around to watch as it got just enough height for its tires to skim the top of a city bus.

“Stupidity like that,” Instructor Klein intoned, pointing at the car, “is exactly the sort of behavior I expect you all to avoid. That person clearly doesn’t know how to fly a vehicle, therefore they should not be flying a vehicle. If they don’t kill themselves or someone else, they’ll exhaust their magic. They’ll create havoc for everyone around them.”

The CNH bus had already been slowing thanks to the shifting traffic. Now, it jerked as the brakes brought them to a full halt. Alden swayed on his feet.

Before anyone could even comment on the fact that they’d stopped, new System messages started rolling in.

 

[Disaster Advisory: All disaster alerts remain in effect.]

 

[Global Advisory: Due to an emergent situation affecting an area and population within the purview of the Triplanetary government, nonessential Contract services on Earth have been halted. Requests for information will be answered once normal function has resumed.]

 

[Disaster Advisory: Local damage mitigation efforts are in progress. The emergency teleportation allotment for Anesidora has been increased, but all personal requests for teleportation will be ignored. Your teleportation priority will be assigned to you shortly and may be adjusted at any time.]

 

[Disaster Update: Attack on Matadero – Confirmed]

 

[Disaster Alert: Oceanic Anomalies – Imminent]

 

“What the hell is happening on Matadero?” Mehdi muttered.

Matadero. I was supposed to be going there tomorrow.

Oh no.

Alden looked at Haoyu, sitting in the seat right behind him by the window. His dark brown eyes were fixed on the space in front of his nose. Alden couldn’t tell if he was staring at his interface or the seat back. His face—usually so cheerful, always so expressive even when the expression was a lie for the sake of one of his jokes—was blank.

“Haoyu,” Lexi said quietly, “I’m sure…”

“What are you sure about?” Haoyu asked without looking at him.

He didn’t say it harshly. His voice was as blank as his face. But there was a collective held breath, a group wince, as if he’d snapped at Lexi instead.

All over Anesidora, the sirens reached the quiet trough of their wailing and rose again toward their crescendo.

 

******

 

A minute after the bus had stopped, the students were all out of their seats and crowded at the front, trying to get a better view through the windshield. The sounds of Torsten Klein’s feet on the metal roof vanished suddenly.

“Used one of his spell impressions to get more height,” Mehdi said.

The Instructor was figuring out the traffic situation. The smaller vehicles were still in motion, weaving in and out of the stationary cars, buses, and vans.

“It’s not going to get better for a while, is it?” Kon’s voice was tense. “It might even get worse. We’re all trying to get off, but there have to be people in Apex and F who are heading to the bridge right now because they want to make the crossing. They’ll be trying to reach homes or families…”

“They’ve probably closed it,” said Lexi.

“That doesn’t mean they closed it before more traffic hit it,” Kon replied. “It could be jammed from end to end.”

The sirens had begun such a short while ago. Everything was happening fast, but it felt so slow. The word “imminent” was burned into Alden’s eyes. He’d expanded the last disaster notice and frozen it there rather than swiping it away. It was proof that the System was here and doing stuff; he wanted that proof even more than he wanted clear vision.

It couldn’t tell us how imminent? It couldn’t define oceanic anomalies even a little?

His brain fed him images of demonized fish swimming through the sea, crashing into the supports that held the bridge, poking them full of holes, transforming them into sand.

Knock it off. If the System meant demons, it would’ve said demons. It’s not like it doesn’t know the freaking word.

And there was no chaos here. Yet. Alden was on high alert in more ways than one, actively paying attention, waiting for the first brush of something against himself that was antithetical to his existence.

It wasn’t there. Not even that more nebulous sensation of being watched, of having your privacy violated, that he’d felt the first time chaos had touched him.

The world around him felt normal right now. His own body and his mind were the things that were growing increasingly foreign.

I hate this.

His chest hurt. His ears rang with tinnitus he didn’t even have anymore. His thoughts were pinging rapidly from planning to demons and corpses and watching patches of his own flesh turn into something grotesque—

Calm the fuck down!

The self-directed order didn’t work.

You could know you were going farther and farther off the rails without being able to stop yourself. Your head could be reminding you that you were normally capable of logical assessment, could be in the act of trying to do logical assessment, while at the same time, some wounded animal inside you ripped into every rational notion you had before it could gain traction.

I hate this so much.

He wondered if he was acting weird in addition to feeling weird. He was just standing quietly at the back of the group while the others looked out the windshield. Haoyu was beside him. Everly was right in front of him, standing on her tiptoes and trying to see.

He assumed he seemed all right to them. Like he was paying attention to their conversation about Klein, the alerts, and the people on the bridge who were starting to behave badly.

A man had just abandoned his car in the highway and taken off on foot. Alden’s classmates were debating. The debate was relevant to the next few minutes of his life, and he wanted to listen, but he was only catching sentences here and there that were getting ground up by the rapids of his thoughts.

I need to do Peace of Mind right away. I’m glad Kibby is with Alis-art’h. Alis-art’h will keep her safe no matter what happens to me. Tsunami? The water will be cold. Thenn-ar coughed up blood when she died. Should I run? If people are abandoning their cars, there’s no point in us staying on the bus. Should I trust Klein to know what he’s doing? Get your bag; it’s full of all your stuff. Did the global advisory go to Aunt Connie’s phone? Next find out if the surface of the bridge counts as the ground element for your trait. Is help coming? Do I run? Haoyu’s dad might be dead. Aren’t tsunamis usually caused by earthquakes?

Somewhere in that stream of unwelcome garbage, Alden knew there were good thoughts, ones that would lead to useful actions. But his ability to prioritize seemed to be badly damaged.

He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.

So it turns out my interface suddenly not having every feature I expect it to is something I can’t handle.

It shouldn’t be shocking. A buggy System had been the glaring warning sign about Thegund. System failure had marked the end of his old life and the beginning of his horror story. If something was going to hit his panic buttons particularly hard, why not that?

On some level, he was fascinated by the fact that he could recognize what was wrong with him, recognize that he was responding poorly, and still be unable to overcome it.

On a much more urgent level, he was afraid he was going to make the shift from panicky thoughts to complete and utter insanity. Or immobility. And then Klein would leave him here by himself so that he didn’t hold back the functional people.

Abandon the weakling. Sacrifice him to the demon fish.

Pretty sure that’s not one of my reasonable fears. I need to calm down. How do I calm down?

I need to do Peace of Mind right away.

Suddenly, Alden realized he’d been telling himself to do Peace of Mind “right away” almost since the sirens had started. Within seconds, he’d known he should. He’d just….

Scatterbrain.

Do the Peace of Mind no matter what. Right now. Get it done.

He stumbled away from the group toward the back of the bus for reasons that would only make sense to a panicky scatterbrain. Like, it wasn’t polite to start reciting your poetic Artonan in the middle of a group of people who were having a conversation. Mind your manners, Alden.

He rolled his eyes at himself and stopped at the last row of seats, facing the rain-glazed rear window. His hands were shaking. They mostly stopped when he started using them.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Dexterity. It had been made a part of his being. Alden’s hands were supposed to move well, and here they were, doing it for him.

The wordchain was so familiar.

Three months ago, I did this in the car with Kibby.

He’d been calmer three months ago, facing down almost certain death. After he’d survived this, he’d have to unpack the why of his mental state being worse right now than it had been back then.

Alden finished the chain. As the last syllable sounded, it felt like someone peeled the top layer off his panic and threw it away.

Thank you.

He suddenly remembered one of the boys in Engaging with the Unexpected asking why you would “sacrifice your edge” by using this chain.

That guy just doesn’t have enough edge. My edge is so sharp I have plenty to spare.

He hesitated, then started casting it again. It would probably double for him now, based on things Lute had said. Alden had performed the chain consecutively without paying it back during the car trip on Thegund. Trying to cast it when it was already active, for an increased effect, was a different thing. But it was a super healthy chain. He’d practiced it a lot, his form was perfect, and he was an Avowed.

To his relief, it worked. His edge dulled a little more.

Now the new one.

He wove his hands through the patterns for the chain he’d used earlier today. Mastery over his body would be extremely welcome. But when he reached the end, nothing happened.

I said it a lot faster than usual. Nerves. Was that the problem?

It was a much more powerful chain. Shorter snapback timeframe. Harder to cast. It was less familiar to him, and he was already holding debt for it. Maybe Alden just couldn’t call on it again with all those things working against him.

He dried sweaty palms on the front of his shirt. I’m tempted to go for a triple Peace of Mind.

He lowered his hands instead. He was calm enough to know that the urge was probably an overreaction. He wanted to be able to focus through his tension, not take it so far that he placidly let a giant wave carry him out to sea.

And I’m about in the right emotional place now.

The sirens were still making him anxious. He was afraid. But he was no longer so anxious and afraid that he couldn’t decide what to do.

Bag.

He strode back to his seat and grabbed his messenger bag. His finger brushed over the medallion on the clasp, and he felt the familiar authority prick of it identifying its owner.

Good bag.

He had two ponchos still in their packaging, a temper sphere, a carabiner, and a hundred feet of tightly coiled paracord. It was just the normal stuff he’d been playing around with during breaks lately. He didn’t even have the fancy survival cord he’d been using in gym today because he’d thought he was going to the mall to have fun, dammit, and he hadn’t swapped out his daily supplies for apocalypse supplies.

The apocalypse supplies were supposed to go in his apocalypse bag months from now, when he was due to be summoned. So that he could be a vastly over-prepared cocktail party waiter.

I thought I was too paranoid. Ha! Clearly, I’m not paranoid enough.

He also had his Artonan-made tablet, a stylus, a pack of origami paper, and one of those cookie dough protein bars—completely squashed because it was nasty and he’d just left it in the bottom of his bag to be abused.

And, finally, a pile of lavender sachets. He’d recently embarked on a plan to deposit his excess supply of the things in places where poor, lavenderless people might appreciate them. So that he could ditch them without feeling wasteful. If some of the classrooms and restrooms on campus suddenly smelled better than others was anyone going to mind?

He dug the sachets out and tossed them toward the back of the bus.

Not dying because I was weighed down by a few extra ounces of dried flowers.

He considered tossing other things, but he could think of uses for most of them so he didn’t.

Granted, he couldn’t think of many uses for them that would be relevant if he fell into the ocean. Maybe he could inflate a poncho and use it as a float or something.

The only other things he had were his clothes. Green plaid shirt, t-shirt underneath, a blinky checker in the front pocket of his jeans. He dug his hand into the pocket. Sure enough, his unknown Opposite was merrily chaining in response to his earlier chains.

Alden watched the Opposite stone glow for a second, then tucked it away again.

“Are you all right?”

The whispered question came from Haoyu. He’d separated from the others, who were…

Oh, okay. So that’s happening.

They were watching Klein, who was way out in front of them now. He was high above the traffic, clinging to one of the spell-created effects he used to rapidly shift his position sometimes when they were in the gym. The spells made invisible blocks that only he could touch. He could cast quite a few of them, but they didn’t last very long at all.

The Instructor had a high-powered flashlight in his free hand.

Alden’s memory for the fine details of the past few minutes wasn’t great, so he didn’t know if Klein had taken the light from the bus or grabbed it from a vehicle on the ground. He was flicking it on and off up there.

Morse code? We’re at that point.

“I’m fine,” Alden told Haoyu. “I wordchained myself into being something more like fine anyway. I guess you noticed? Are you…”

Are you all right?

Returning the question in this case seemed wrong. There were System notifications flashing in their eyes that said Haoyu’s dad was under attack.

“Will you entrust me with my bag?” he asked instead.

Haoyu nodded, but then he said, “That requirement makes your skill so much less useful. It’s strange. If you didn’t have someone else with you, you’d be helpless.”

He was still talking in a slightly off voice. Alden had the impression he’d lost a personal filter or three.

“I know.” He decided not to comment on the uncharacteristic bluntness of the comment. “I’ve thought about it a lot. What’s Klein doing?”

“We’re not sure.”

The answer came a second later, in the form of lights going up in the air ahead of them. A flare sizzled. A large beam flashed its own Morse code. An illusion of a traffic signal shone red. All of them were blurred by rain.

Alden looked out the back windows to see a string of similar communications flying into the air behind him. He didn’t understand all of them. Someone was in the air back there, just waving glow sticks with abandon.