INTEGRATED ACROSS US REFUSE TO ENTER PORTALS - COWARDICE OR PRUDENCE?

  DUNGEON BREAK PREVENTED IN MAJOR US CITY

  MONSTER CORE POWERED CAR IN THE NEAR FUTURE?

  Curtis eased up on the gas. "Fine. I'll try not crashing your car."

  "Relian has probably left Fort Wayne already," Luke said. "We’ll see what's what when we get there."

  They drove in silence for an hour or so. During this time, Luke pushed himself, focusing and doing his utmost to extend a thread of mana. While it reached farther now than when he picked up the skill, the skill’s still limited reach was a serious flaw in his abilities. Stretching, he reached forward between Curtis and Hiroki, and gritted his teeth, pushing.

  Dot observed but said nothing on the topic, and instead chatted away with Hannah. Concentrating, Luke tuned out their conversation, but he picked up words here and there, and thought they were locked in a debate about whether Six Feet Under or The Wire was the better show.

  The car jerked to the side, and Luke blinked, dropping his concentration. The thread of mana dissolved, and he looked out the window, blinking. "Why are we on an off-ramp, Curtis?"

  "Can't you feel it?" Curtis asked.

  "What?"

  Curtis glanced over his shoulder. "Didn't you have Seeker as your job?"

  "Yeah?"

  "What's Seeker?" Dot asked.

  "It lets us feel when a portal is about to open up," Curtis said.

  Luke looked out the window and narrowed his eyes. "I'm not feeling a portal."

  "Me neither," Curtis said. "But I feel something pulling from this direction."

  "Where does this road even lead?" Hannah asked.

  "The sign said Knox," Hiroki said.

  "I'm getting nothing."

  "Well, I am. I was so bored I almost fell asleep, and kept wishing for a portal to show up, or anything. Kind of drifted off," Curtis said.

  "Please don't fall asleep behind the wheel," Dot said.

  "Not drift off like that. More like the zen-state you can sometimes go into when driving, where it feels like you're floating."

  "Sure," Hannah said.

  Hiroki nodded as if he knew what Curtis was talking about.

  "Can't say that I've experienced that," Luke said. "Don't drive much."

  "Well, either way. I got a professional skill out of nowhere."

  "Ripples in The System?"

  Curtis turned and gave Luke a quick look over his shoulder. "No. What's that?"

  "I'm honestly not sure," Luke said. "Got it when the Deep Dweller slithered out of the ground."

  "This one is called Sense Intruder."

  "Intruder?" Hannah asked. "Sounds ominous."

  "There is an intruder in Knox?" Hiroki asked.

  "Guess we'll see," Curtis said.

  After driving south for what felt like an eternity, seeing nothing but field after field of corn, the small car passed near an airport before heading into Knox proper. It was a small, flat town.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Hannah pointed at a small pizza place just off the road. "Why don't we stop and eat? It's getting late, and I'm dying of hunger."

  "Pizza," Dot said, nodding in agreement, like she was settling an argument.

  Sitting outside on a patch of grass right next to the parking lot, each with several pizza slices in small cardboard boxes, they enjoyed the cool night air, allowing themselves a moment to just eat in silence. Soon, though, Luke couldn't wait any more.

  "Is the intruder somewhere around here?" he asked.

  Curtis nodded up the road. "Feels like it is somewhere up the street."

  "Maybe it's that man you talked about, Luke? What was he called?" Hannah asked.

  Luke chewed and swallowed. "Guide. But I don't think so."

  "Why not?" Dot asked.

  "I'm not sure, but I got the feeling he was working for whoever is responsible for us becoming Integrated, or maybe he even was the one responsible."

  "I still don't understand why you were the only one who met him," Curtis said, finishing up his last slice of pineapple and ham pizza.

  Dot looked up. "What? I met him."

  Everyone turned to her.

  "You did?" Luke asked.

  "Man behind a desk talking about the system? Sure. It was the same one I saw in that TV recording, looked like an old mentor of mine, but introduced himself as Guide."

  "That's it, then," Curtis said.

  "What is?" Hannah asked.

  "It's the class. Guide has a thing for Lifeweavers."

  "I saw him before picking a class, though," Luke said.

  Dot wiped grease from around her mouth with a too-small napkin. "He only showed up after I picked it."

  "A love for Luke and those who make the same choices as him, then," Hiroki suggested.

  "This is getting us nowhere," Hannah said, standing. She walked over to a trash can and threw away her box, then turned to the group. "Are we finding this intruder or what?"

  Luke caught her glancing at the shadowed patio of the residence on the opposite side of the street with worry in her eyes, but didn't mention it. Instead, he stood and joined her. "It's getting late. Maybe we should find a place to crash and get to it in the morning."

  Dot got up and stretched her arms over her head. "That sounds good, actually. It's been a long day, and I'd like to shower again. Still feels like I'm covered in blood."

  Hiroki gave her a strange look, but didn't say anything.

  "Fine," Hannah said with a sigh, despite looking relieved. "But is there even a place to sleep around here?"

  "One moment," Hiroki said. He headed back into the pizza place and returned a moment later. "Just up through there," he said, pointing. "A bed-and-breakfast type place."

  It took the proprietor quite a while to get to the door. From the dark rings under her eyes and the worn, graying bathrobe she kept closed with one hand, she'd been sound asleep when they came calling. The place wasn't so much a bed-and-breakfast as just someone's house. A small sign on the lawn proclaimed it as Knox's most luxurious place to rest your head for the night. Perhaps that was true. It might've been the only place, so it'd be technically correct.

  The woman assigned a room on the second floor to Hannah and Dot, while the rest of them were shown to a cramped room with a single, small window. Three different bunk beds took up most of the space in there, and they each grabbed a top bunk, since they were the only guests.

  Before they separated for the night, Luke took Dot aside for a moment and made sure none of the others could overhear.

  "Hannah is going through some trouble with her, uh, shadows."

  Dot frowned. "What kind of trouble? Something we can heal?"

  "No," Luke said, giving a slight shake of his head. "At least I don't think so. It has to do with her shadows and a monster."

  "Sounds scary."

  "It was. Not all of us made it. The monster is called the Deep Dweller, and it is either made out of shadows or uses shadows, like Hannah."

  Dot glanced up the stairs to where Hannah was getting ready for the night. "And it hurt her?"

  "In a way, I guess. It's kind of difficult to explain, but there is some sort of connection between them, I think. Anyway, that's her story to tell you, but if she gets... Weird during the night, you come get me, yeah?"

  "Weird how?"

  "Bad nightmares, waking up talking of the Deep Dweller, using her shadows without wanting to. That sort of thing."

  Dot mulled that over before raising a question she looked embarrassed to be asking. "Is she dangerous?"

  "No," was Luke's knee-jerk response, but then he forced himself to think about it. "Not unless it goes too far, and it could be nothing. Wanted you to know. Just in case, you know?"

  "I know," she said, looking up at him with those large, glittering eyes.

  They stood there like that for a moment before Luke cleared his throat and let out a nervous chuckle. "Well, good night!"

  "Good night."

  She remained there without moving a muscle, her face tilted up at a slight angle. Luke took a step back, gave an awkward wave, then turned and fled into the Fortress of Silence, which was Curtis's name for the bunk-bed room.

  No one woke Luke in the night, which he took as a good sign, but when they enjoyed bowls of oatmeal and cups of coffee in the woman's kitchen, Dot leaned in. Her eyelids looked heavy, like she hadn't had a good night's sleep.

  "She spoke in her sleep a lot, and whimpered some, but nothing worse than that."

  "You were awake?" Luke asked.

  Dot emptied her cup of coffee, refilled it, took another sip, sighed, and nodded. "Yup."

  "Sorry for making you worry."

  "It's fine," she said. "I wasn't afraid or anything. Or, well, maybe a little. But it was mostly concern."

  "For Hannah?"

  Dot nodded again.

  "You just met her."

  "I make an excellent friend.”

  "What're you two talking about?" Hannah asked from way over on the other side of a table too large for the woman's small kitchen.

  "Scrubs," Luke said, without missing a beat.

  Hannah frowned. "The TV show or the hospital clothes."

  "This thick head thinks it was filmed in a real hospital," Dot said, turning to face Hannah.

  "It was," Curtis muttered over the rim of his third cup of coffee.

  "What?" Dot asked.

  Luke chuckled and put on his best condescending face. "You poor fool. Perhaps you should not try your mettle against the champion of Scrubs trivia."