The Connected System

“Hi.”

Harper looked up, seeing Davis pulling one of the dining table seats back. She smiled at him, pushing the notebooks aside. She’d found a backpack hanging off a hook by the door. Unicorns and glitter. A young girls. Harper tried not to think about that. There were notebooks and pencils in the pack, nothing else. Piper had taken some to sketch in, wanting to save her newly magical pencils for summons. She’d moved to the couch, curled up near their father, sketching away.

“What are you doing,” Davis asked, taking a seat, pointing at the notebooks.

“Just writing about what’s happened,” she said, shrugging, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

She’d never been one to keep a diary or journal. She just needed something to pass the time. There was a lot of it now without internet or TV. Writing down everything they went through, that seemed a productive use of her freetime.

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said, reaching for one of the notebooks she hadn’t touched yet. “Can I?”

She nodded.

He flipped it open, pencil in hand.

“You guys have been through a lot,” Davis said.

“Yeah. It hasn’t been fun,” Harper admitted.

She wondered if this was the most words they’d ever spoken to each other in the last year or more, since entering the high school. They knew each other, or at least knew of each other. It had been awhile since middle school when the grades were smaller and everyone knew and interacted with everyone else. Coe-Brown wasn’t a large school and while they were both from Northwood, not one of the other towns that sent students to the school, they just ran in different circles.

“I bet. This whole thing seems like a game and with your high levels, that’s a lot of fighting.” He wrote some words on the first page, thinking and erasing a couple before adding more. “And a Dungeon? That’s just insane.”

“It was insane,” Harper said, holding in a shudder.

She’d been scared the entire time in the Challenge Dungeon and thought she’d done a good job of hiding it. But she’d been absolutely terrified. Her father had yelled at her, not really yelled but more scolded firmly, about needing to be more cautious and not take chances. He thought she had been enjoying the fighting and the danger.

Harper hadn’t.

But that was the only way she knew to cope with that kind of fear.

It was the same when competing. She would be terrified and the only way to overcome that fear was to turn the competition into something fun. Think of it as less a competition and just hanging out. With the Dungeon and the fighting, it had become less life and death and more about going through the actions and motions.

It was a floor routine. Just go on auto-pilot and perform the moves.

“Have you seen anyone else from school?,” she asked.

It was a question she’d been dreading the answer too. Her father, Piper and her, they hadn’t seen anyone since the day of the Connection. Just monsters. No word on any other survivors. Now they had seen two and one of them was a classmate.

That gave her some hope.

“Yeah, there’s a couple of us at the camp. A couple seniors and juniors, a freshman. But out of our grade? Just you, me and Mike Turner.”

Harper winced. Davis caught it.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m very glad to have run into you.”

She smiled, glancing at Davis, who was glancing at her. They both looked away.

Why did it have to be Mike Turner?

He liked her. A lot. She hated him.

Their families had known each other for years. Her mom and Mike’s mom were real good friends. Did a lot together, which meant the families had done a lot together through the years. When they had been kids, it had been fine. But as they got older, Mike just got creepier and creepier. He had a huge crush on Harper, and didn’t try to hide it.

But it wasn’t just her that he creeped out.

Other girls too.

And he was a jerk. Arrogant, without really anything to back it up.

She was glad that Davis was around. If it had just been Mike, that would have been horrible. Davis was at least a nice guy. He’d dated a friend of a friend of Harper’s last year. She’d forgotten why they’d broken up, but from all the gossip, Davis Millman was a good guy.

A real and true good guy.

Not one of those that pretended to be a good guy to hide their creep factor.

“What’s your Class?”

“Shadow Dancer,” Harper said, writing a couple more words in the notebook.

“That jumping in and out of shadows thing was really cool.”

“Thanks. It’s called Shadow Skip and yeah, it is pretty cool.”

“How does it feel?”

Harper looked at him, confused.

“When you Shadow Skip,” he paused when he said the name of the Ability. Harper figured he wasn’t a gamer and hadn’t had to talk about such things before. “What does it feel like? It looked like you just faded away, melting into the shadow and then when you popped out behind those monsters…”

Harper wasn’t sure if he was genuinely curious or flirting.

She hoped it was both.

“It’s really weird,” she answered, looking away as she tried to figure out the right words. Her pencil tapped at the notebook. “I feel like I’m being stretched out, but it doesn’t hurt. My body is cold, but a comfortable cold,” Harper said and shrugged. “It’s hard to describe.”

“I bet. It kind of freaked me out seeing it.”

“Freaked me out the first time I did it too, but in a good way. I knew what was going to happen, it really wasn’t that bad.”

“How did you know how to do it?”

“Just did,” she pointed to Cerie, the fairy once again examining everything in the house. “Cerie says the Connection basically downloads instructions to our brains and bodies.”

“No training? That seems kind of weird.”

“In the middle of a Dungeon, not having to train probably saved our lives.”

Davis looked down at the table.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

They fell silent, both writing away. Harper had enjoyed writing when she was younger. There had been a couple stories she’d written, but that had fallen aside when she’d really started competing in dance, gymnastics and softball. There just hadn’t been time.

And what she was doing now, it wasn’t fun writing. She wasn’t creating, just documenting. And in shorthand. Nothing flowery. Lots of bullet points with brief descriptions. She opened up her Status a lot, writing down what she saw in her vision.

“Harps,” her father said.

He was standing near the large window again, the curtain moved aside so he could look across the street. “You and Pipes need to get some rest. We’re going to raid the store in the morning.”

“Okay,” she replied, gathering up the notebooks.

She picked up the unicorn backpack, stuffing the notebooks and pencils in. In the morning, she’d have Piper put it in the magical bag of holding. Davis cracked a smile at the glittery bag. Harper slung it over her shoulder, not embarrassed.

“Davis,” his father said.

“Sure.”

She was surprised that neither one of them protested. Before the Connection, protesting going to bed had been a daily occurrence. It was just something teenagers did. Now, she knew her father was right. They would be fighting in the morning and being well rested was vital. The only times she had agreed that getting a full night’s rest was important was the night before meets. The night before a raid was like that.

Harper hated how natural this new world and its realities were becoming.

“There’s three bedrooms upstairs,” her father said. “Peter and Davis can have the big one. You girls can have the other two. I’ll take the couch and stay on watch for a bit.”

Harper looked around for Piper. She had to have gone upstairs already. Probably scored the best of the two rooms too.

“We’ll get up a little earlier,” her father continued. “Loot this place for anything worthwhile before heading to the store.”

They had done a quick search after breaking in, taking some of the food and drinks for dinner. The stuff in the fridge had already been starting to smell.

Harper didn’t like that she hadn’t thought breaking in was a big deal.

How quickly what was considered right changed.

She expected Peter or Davis to say something about stealing from the house. Neither did. But then, they had been sent out from the camp to do exactly what they were going to do in the morning. Loot the surrounding houses for anything useful.

Their goal tomorrow was to empty the grocery store of as much as they could.

And they wouldn’t be paying.

No rules in an apocalypse.

That was one thing movies got right.

***

Harper woke in the morning, rolling over and looking around. She didn’t recognize where she was, taking a minute to realize she was in a strange kid’s bedroom. A boy judging by the posters of games and sports stars.

She sat up, pushing aside the blanket. She’d slept on top of the comforter, with a blanket she’d found downstairs. Harper just didn’t like the idea of sleeping in someone else’s bed.

It was better than sleeping on the ground

Standing up, she ran through some stretches, looking around the room for anything that could be useful. Her father had raided the house last night, taking cans of food and bottles of water from the kitchen, tool from the basement. There was no garage, the cars in the driveway not there. Maybe the house’s owners had been at work, she thought, pulling together her stuff.

Harper could hear movement downstairs. Her father already up, if he had slept at all. He was pushing himself too much. She knew it, he knew it. Maybe she’d have a talk with him. If he burnt out, he’d be no use for them.

Reaching for the door, she stopped, catching her reflection in the mirror behind the door.

She almost screamed.

It had been days since she’d had a shower or bath.

And she looked it.

Face and arms dirty, scratched. Her clothes were torn and stained red with blood and who knew what else. Monster guts probably.

But her hair was the worst.

Matted, clumped.

She dug in her bag, looking for her brush. She had brought it with her. She’d been brushing her hair every morning since the Connection. Hadn’t she? Time lost meaning in the Dungeon, but she had tried.

It wasn’t in the bag.

She had lost it at some point.

Harper couldn’t believe she was looking like this.

Not one to really be concerned with appearances, but this was too much.

And she’d been talking with Davis last night.

Looking like this.

She probably smelled. All that sweating, blood and guts.

Harper yanked open the door, almost jumping across the hall and into the open door across from hers. The room Piper had slept in belonged to a girl. Young girl. Lots of stuffed animals. And a hair brush.

Smiling, Harper sat down on the bed, working the brush through her mess of hair.

It hurt, but she bit back the curse, forcing the brush to do its job.

What seemed an hour later, she walked downstairs.

Everyone else was at the table, except her father who was at the bottom of the stairs.

“I was just about to come up and get you,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“What took so long?,” Loch asked, pausing. He looked at her hair and the quick job she had done to clean herself up. “The hair?”

Harper walked past him, not replying.

She did hear his loud sigh.