Sometimes, just when you thought you'd hit rock bottom, someone tossed you a shovel.

  Jones Autobody and Glass sat in the South Bay Industrial complex. It squatted at the end of a shared gravel parking lot with two other family businesses. The Keller family had owned their HVAC and heating system place for as long as anyone could remember, and the Brannigans did heavy equipment rentals. None of those businesses had survived the System's meddling unchanged. The Brannigans were renting siege equipment, and the Keller place now seemed to be some sort of fire magic emporium. Jones Autobody was now the Jones Family Smithy.

  Because, of course, the man who repaired cars for a living was now forging horseshoes.

  "You don't have to go in if you don't want to, JJ. You can walk away now, and they stay in your mind, unchanged. Maybe someday a way for them to come back is found, and you can have a reunion then."

  "No thanks." The angry reply was accompanied by the equally angry action of JJ attempting to push past Brom.

  It didn't work, but Brom was generous enough to pretend it did and let his older brother walk into the smithy ahead of him. When nothing exploded, he slowly followed, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the artificial light inside.

  Some things hadn't changed, like the white linoleum with its pattern of blue, grey, and blue-grey chips. The plastic bench seats where patrons and the patron adjacent could sit and wait. A plastic potted plant that seemed to be in every office ever. The lights overhead still hummed, although now it was less of an electric buzz and more of an unsettlingly melodic tone. The counter was still the same fake wood top with the chip in the corner from an accident years ago.

  His mother still sat in her chair behind it, giving both of them a plastic grin as they walked in.

  "Welcome! What can we make for you today?"

  Lucy Jones had been quite the catch back in her youth, and she'd aged extremely gracefully. Her thick hair had been strawberry blonde once upon a time, but was now closer to platinum with all the grey and white threading it. Her skin was smooth enough, crows' feet naturally gathering in the corners of her eyes and wrinkles on her forehead, but while overall looser, she wasn't what you'd call saggy. She wore a black sweater, her nails painted a lovely taupe, clearly magically separated from the grime and sweat of the smithy behind her.

  But her blue eyes reflected only pain. A helpless agony as they looked first to JJ and then, eventually, to Brom. There was a shock in there. Did she recognize the changes in him, or was it the fact that he had come at all? They seemed to beg him for something he couldn't give to her. He had no way of fixing this.

  "Mom... it's me. It's Jason. Your son Jason."

  Her face turned a fraction, that smile still in place, her neutral lipstick as perfect as the rest of her makeup. "Hello Jason! What brings you to our smithy today?"

  Yeah, fuck this. Brom's relationship with his mother had always been better than his relationship with his father. For all her faults and flaws, Lucy Jones still had maternal instincts. She might not have been willing to break with her husband on decisions made about her troubled middle child, but she had been willing to quietly wire him money when he'd needed it. Her affection might have been sparing, but it had been there. It hurt Brom to see her like this.

  [Communication Incoming: TJ Jones]

  He accepted, putting the call on private. TJ didn't need to see this.

  "Hey Uncle Brom, um, question. How quickly can you get to City Harbor? Like, there's some spooky shit going on down here and... well, can you just come help? Please." There was a stress on that last word, TJ glancing back over his shoulder as the harbor wind tousled his hair. A strain tightened the teen's features, and hushed crowd noises leaked into the communication, as if he were surrounded by people who were purposefully trying to keep quiet.

  Either way, Brom didn't need to hear more. He looked back up at what was left of his mother, addressing her unsettling, smiling face. "Ah. I don't need anything today ma'am. JJ, I'm leaving..."

  "Wait, my Dad's there? Is he okay?"

  Brom had already ducked out of the sanity-taxing tableau of the shop's front room. JJ hadn't made a single move to follow him. "I busted his lip, and he's having his heart ripped out of his chest talking to what used to be your Grandma Lucy, but yeah I guess. Other than that, he seems full of piss and vinegar as my Grandpa used to say." He paused for a moment, looking back at the door. "You want me to try bringing him?"

  "No." TJ shook his head quickly. "Absolutely not."

  "Alright then, go wait by the fast travel point, I'll be right there."

  Many people over the years must have imagined what it would feel like to travel via teleportation or magic. Brom had even given it a thought or two in his weirder moments. He was unprepared for the actuality of it. It was like someone popped a bubble against every inch of his skin all at once. One minute he was in one place, the next another. Instinctively, he blinked, and that was all the time it took for everything to be different.

  He saw what TJ had been worried about instantly.

  The Cold Harbor Yacht Club was an absolute relic of a time long gone by. A time when there'd been actual money in Cold Bay, and with money had come the wealth divide. The haves and the have-nots. In order to have a membership to the exclusive CHYC, you needed to have a sailing yacht and, more importantly, enough money to look like the type of person who'd own a sailing yacht. For as long as anyone could remember, its clubhouse had sat at the end of Pier One in City Harbor, all pristine white with navy blue trim and blue slate tiles. Looking very New England and very out of place. Surrounded by all the sailboats and sailing yachts, it had nested like a mother hen over moneyed chicks.

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  Over the years, it had lost a little luster. Most of the money had moved out of Cold Bay, leaving vacancies that were not filled. The clique had aged and thinned, unable to draw in new blood. Thus, it had quickly become the most exclusive bingo hall in town, treating its septuagenarian membership to elegant luncheons and early dinners. The fleet was still spotlessly maintained but rarely moved more than a berth or two, their owners almost uniformly too frail, with a couple of notable exceptions.

  Perhaps due to its nature of being largely sailing oriented and less about motor driven boats, the CHYC was virtually unchanged. However, the same couldn't be said for the boats around it. The gorgeous, lovingly maintained vessels had been smashed to tiny bits. Snapped masts rose from the harbor waters like a strange new type of tree, festooned with shredded sails. Fragments of hull, none larger than a frying pan, rippled on the top of oily waves. A reek was heavy on the wind, like rotting rust.

  "Uncle Brom." TJ's voice wasn't loud, coupled with a wave of his arm, it was just enough to draw attention to where he and a cluster of other teens were. "Guys, this is my Uncle Brom. Uncle Brom, this is Maxine, Alex, and Rudy."

  Maxine gave a finger wave before shoving her hand back in her hoodie pouch.

  Alex offered his hand and a bright smile, radiating golden retriever energy.

  Rudy just stared. "Dude, you didn't say your Uncle was yoked."

  Brom didn't parse the slang. It had already been a long day despite the fact that it was only two in the afternoon, and he was so mentally done in that it seemed like much longer. He shook Alex's hand and nodded to the other two. "I guess I'm taking that as a compliment. Hello, TJ's friends." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "So, why am I here?"

  TJ pointed at the CHYC. "Because that is a dungeon now, and we need a fifth party member to explore it. Check out the map, the comms are melting down over it. There's a feed clip of what happened when it went active. It's some impressive shit. Everyone here is thinking about grouping up and going in, but we don't have a lot of time. Just watch the feed clip, you'll see."

  Feed Clips must be the new video app. Man, Brom had already been feeling a little dated in the face of technology before the System had changed things, and now that feeling was getting worse. In his defense, the System had never properly shown him how to deal with any of this. He was stumbling in the desert, occasionally steered in the right direction by a teenage messiah.

  The video was crisp and clear, almost as if he were looking through a window at the scene itself. Someone was out trying to document the changes in town, and they'd been panning across the Harbor when the thing just appeared. At first, it looked like some large tramp freighter, smashing through several of the outer piers and the remains of the motor boats there, on a direct course to the yacht club and its lovely little charges. Then the front of the freighter had opened. Not like a cargo hold but like a mouth. The steel tore and became jagged, shark-like teeth, the upturned prow and forward portholes looking like the snout and eyes of some great fish.

  Those mechanical jaws chomped down on the helpless yachts, snapping them up like sacrificial lambs left to fuel its frenzy. It thrashed about, spilling rust and rotten fuel into the water. Perhaps it was a good thing that these beautiful relics belonged to owners too old to enjoy them. Precious few people were aboard when they were chewed up and swallowed down. It thrashed its bow back and forth, shredding through keels and ribs, moving in impossible ways. Only when it had consumed them all did it turn out of the confines of City Harbor and return out into the deeper grey waves, slowly sinking until not even the top of its mast remained.

  Brom let out a full-body shudder.

  "So, they think that thing is going to come back, like a world boss, unless we clear the dungeon. Because the quest for the dungeon is timed. So we want to do it before the timer goes away. You'll help, right?" TJ's voice was enthusiastic, recapturing some of that teenage invulnerability. Or maybe he was just that confident in Brom.

  It was too bad Brom hadn't ever told his nephew just how deep his hate of the ocean went. It was almost unfathomable. And that was the normal ocean, not an ocean confirmed to have shit like boat-eating shark-ships. Sharks... sharks were something else that Brom had problems with. But there was his nephew and his gaggle of friends, staring at him. Not precisely with starry eyes, but definitely with an expectation. Like conning him into being some fucked up field-trip chaperone.

  "Fucking fine. But if shit goes sideways, we figure out how to get out, okay?"

  [Player TJ Jones has invited you to a party!]

  He accepted. The party symbol appeared discreetly in his vision, and his health bar unfolded itself from passive mode to active mode. Seeing tiny little health bars flicker to life above his own with precise little numbers on them and neat little names above them, he suddenly realized that they'd all just made a grave error.

  TJ realized it too, whirling whip fast and slapping a hand over Rudy's mouth, the shorter teen's explosive outburst smothered. "Save the questions for inside the dungeon, okay? I promise that we'll answer them." He didn't let up pressure until Rudy nodded, and only then did he pull his hand away.

  The Asian youth gave a respectful nod in Brom's direction. "Like I said... Unc is yoked."