Before the collapse—before the Gates appeared and the Doom System started screwing with reality—the station Hiro arrived at had once housed an underground food court. Now, it was home to Los Mejoradores, a pair of conjoined merchants offering food and weapon upgrades. It was where Hiro had once enhanced his sword, and where Bianca, back when she was alive, had upgraded her shield.

  This time, he had different plans.

  “Yooo, I remember this place,” Bianca said as the two merchants lazily glanced in their direction. Hachi approached them, his tail going between his legs as Hiro set his backpack on the only standing table. He pulled out Mishka, who had slowly started to wake up on the way over. “These merchants had food too,” she added.

  “That’s not why we’re here. Not yet.” Hiro smirked at the shield, who now stood atop the table, using her tentacles like a pair of legs. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for—?”

  Hiro squeezed the bear, and in an instant, they appeared in the past, right in the middle of the bustling underground food court. Hachi barked in surprise. The air buzzed with chatter, the clatter of trays, and the hum of a cash register opening and closing. It was packed—so crowded that no one even noticed their sudden arrival as the timer started.

  01:59

  01:58

  01:57

  “This way,” Hiro said, grabbing Bianca’s arm.

  “What are we—” The realization hit her as they neared an Italian restaurant. “Wait. Pizza and tiramisu?”

  “Exactly,” Hiro said. “You said you liked tiramisu.”

  “You actually remember that?” Now in her human form, Bianca clutched her chest dramatically. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone—”

  Hiro ignored her, eyes already scanning the line of people waiting for their slices. The pizza sat under heat lamps behind a glass case smeared with fingerprints—pepperoni, cheese, supreme—all lined up on metal trays with grease pooling in the ridges. Below, in plastic containers, sat perfectly layered squares of tiramisu, the cocoa powder dusting the tops in neat, delicate swirls. There definitely wasn’t time to get in line.

  “Bianca, we’re going back.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Hiro released the bear, and they reappeared in the present.

  The underground Italian restaurant was still there—its name faded, the menu board cracked, but the structure intact. The seating area remained, though most of the chairs had been taken or broken. Hiro stepped behind the ruined counter, eyeing the remnants of a glass display case, its frame rusted but intact. A fridge sat in the back, its doors hanging open.

  Perfect for keeping tiramisu, Hiro thought as he prepared to squeeze the bear again.

  “Bianca,” he said, interrupting the shield, who had already started to complain to him, “I’m going for the pizza. You go for the tiramisu. This is gonna freak people out, but ignore them. We just eat and return.”

  “Oh, I get it now. I’m soooo ready.” She cracked her tentacles like knuckles. “Let’s freaking gooo!”

  Hiro squeezed the bear again. They reappeared behind the counter of the restaurant—only this time, there were people.

  “What the hell?” a beefy guy with a patchy neckbeard and a septum piercing asked as he stumbled backward.

  Bianca, ever the agent of chaos, pumped a single fist into the air as if holding something invisible. “Listen up, motherfuckers!” she roared, glee in her eyes. “I have a freakin’ bomb, and I will detonate it if you don’t take a step back!”

  Panic rippled through the food court. Some gasped, some scrambled to get out of the way, some hesitated in confusion, and some—particularly a group of disaffected teenagers—just blinked and kept scrolling through their phones.

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  Hiro ignored them all as he stepped toward the glass case and grabbed a hot slice of pepperoni. He took a massive bite, the flavors hitting him all at once—salty, savory, the warmth spreading through his chest like nostalgia itself. The crisp bite of the crust, the tang of the tomato sauce, the richness of the cheese—it was, for a fleeting moment, perfection.

  As he continued to bask in the heaven that is a slice of pizza, Bianca raided the pastry case with both tentacles, shoveling plastic containers of tiramisu into her grasp. Hachi, who had joined in on the madness, barked wildly at anyone who so much as glanced in his direction.

  Hiro grabbed another slice and tossed it to the dog—“Get it, boy!”—who wolfed it down in a few bites. Bianca plopped onto the floor and started inhaling tiramisu like it was the first meal she’d ever had.

  “Don’t fucking judge me!” she snapped at a horrified woman clutching her purse. She took another enormous bite, bits of mascarpone and cocoa flying from her mouth as she grabbed another of the tiramisu containers and tossed it at the woman.

  “Bianca, chill,” Hiro said through a mouthful of pizza.

  The moment of stolen comfort was short-lived once a cook burst out of the kitchen, wielding a pizza cutter like an executioner’s axe, rage burning in his eyes as he charged toward Hiro.

  Hiro sighed, wiped his mouth, and released the bear.

  They reformed in the present, Bianca in her shield form on the ground and Hiro standing behind the counter, still able to taste the pizza. Bianca rolled to her back and kicked tentacles up like they were arms and legs. She burst out laughing. “That was awesome! We have to do that again.”

  “We will,” Hiro assured her as he looked over to the Mejoradores, who didn’t seem disturbed in the least by their actions. “But shopping first. Then, it’s samurai time.”

  ###

  Hiro approached the twin merchants, their fused form stirring as they turned toward him in eerie synchronization. The tattered Southwestern blanket that concealed them slid away, revealing their conjoined bodies—two heads, one elderly man and one elderly woman, sharing a single torso that widened unnaturally below the neckline. Their shoulders blended into each other seamlessly, like molten wax that had hardened mid-drip. They wore loose, flowing garments that did little to hide the way their ribs tapered down into a single frame.

  “Bienvenidos,” the woman said, her voice warm yet tired.

  The man’s lips curled into a ghost of a smile. “We were wondering when you’d come back.”

  Hiro didn’t waste time. “We’ll start with Mishka. She’ll need a tender.”

  “Plantain tenders are good,” the man told him. “Good for babies.”

  “I’ll take one.”

  “Good. Como se dice ‘on the house?’” The man asked with a strange, toothy grin as he handed Hiro one of the Tenders. “Free of charge, the first one.”

  “Ooo, do you want to try some Spanish on them?” Bianca asked as she tapped Hiro on the shoulder.

  “No, just deal with feeding Mishka.”

  “Fine…” Bianca used her free appendages to wrangle the teddy bear into her arms while reaching for the food, allowing Hiro to focus on the two merchants.

  “In the First Interim, you were able to upgrade items,” he said.

  “Sí,” the woman told him. “?Necesitas una actualización?”

  Hiro parsed the question, responding, “I’m interested in upgrades, but I wanted to ask about them first.”

  “Yes, ask,” the man said. “Please.”

  “Last time, you sold weapon upgrades.”

  “We still do.”

  “In that case, what else are you selling upgrade-wise this Interim? Are you selling level-ups? Can you link my phone to others?”

  “No. We can’t link your phone, or sell you a level-up,” the man answered.“But we can permanently upgrade one of your stats.”

  He hesitated for just a beat, recalculating. “And the cost?”

  “For a single stat point, ten thousand Soul Cash.”

  Hiro ran the math. He currently had 4,351 Soul Cash and 18,413 followers. The follower multiplier worked as plus one, meaning he was looking at nearly a 3X boost, pushing his total above 12,000 Soul Cash.

  That’s enough to get one permanent Stat point, he thought. But is that the right call?

  “Which Stat would you permanently increase?” Bianca asked, tearing her gaze from Mishka as she wiped her tentacle against her side. “You’re still looking pretty swole, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “MIND,” Hiro said.

  “Ah, so you aren’t worried about being Buffy the Revenant Slayer after all.”

  Hiro ignored her. “And to upgrade my sword and my shield?”

  “Five thousand a piece,” the man said.

  His counterpart nodded. “Sí, sí.”

  Hiro exhaled slowly. That means I have two real choices. I could drop ten thousand Soul Cash into MIND and become smarter in this Interim and set me up for the next, or I could spend the same amount upgrading both my sword and shield.

  Both choices had risks. He glanced at Bianca, who was watching him closely, Mishka relaxed in her fuzzy arms. It all came down to one question: Mind or might?

  Hiro suddenly felt like he had seconds to decide, and he still didn’t know the right answer.