The Connected System

Loch looked out the window.

He could see the Hobs running through what had been the parking lot of the local grocery store. The small creatures scurried back and forth. From his angle inside a house across the street, Loch couldn’t see them entering the building. He could see when they exited though.

Not carrying anything though.

Which was a good thing.

He was afraid that by the time they raided the grocery store, the Hobs would have picked it clean. The things probably didn’t know what they were looking at, he thought.

The bodies of the ones they had killed on Route 4 were still there, a couple of large crows pecking away at them. Their Spirit had faded into the glowing multi-colored sparks, entering the bodies of Loch, his girls and the Millmans. There was no difference in the appearance of the bodies. Still the odd shade of gray, dried light pink blood pooled on the ground. No way to tell that they’d lost the Spirit that made them part of the Connection.

The Hobs in the parking lot, just cracked and pitted asphalt completely empty of cars, didn’t come near the entrance. A couple had approached an hour or so ago. They’d poked at the bodies with their clubs and swords, growled between themselves, and quickly returned to the rest. They didn’t appear to care about their dead tribemates.

The large scavengers would be coming soon, the Hobs most likely wanting to avoid them.

Shifting a bit, Loch tried to look down the road to the east. He couldn’t see it, not from this house, but knew where the Hobs leaving the store were running to.

When the Connected System had come to Earth, it changed things.

Everything.

Even the land itself had been changed. In an instant. At least that’s what it felt like. The bright light, the shaking of the ground. It happened so quickly.

Buildings were gone. An entire street further to the east no more. Loch and his girls had known a family that lived down that street. Their house was probably gone with the street. Replaced with forest. At the intersection, barely visible from his window, had been a bank and another store. Both those were gone. The store replaced with the Hobs destination.

Their hill.

A large dirt mound.

Loch had no desire to run into that place. He could picture cramped tunnels, lots of turns and lots of Hobs.

Turning away from the window, Loch let the curtain drop. He didn’t know who had lived in the house before the Connection arrived, but they weren’t there now. No evidence that they’d been in the house when the Connection happened. Which Loch was thankful for. He’d been afraid to enter the house and have there be rotting food. The owners were probably some of those that had disappeared, unable to be Adapted to the Connection. Or just disappeared, like Loch’s wife.

He pushed that thought down. No time to dwell on it. She was alive somewhere. No way would Kelly have been one of the ones that couldn’t Adapt.

They’d broken into the house just over an hour ago, wanting to find shelter for the night. The second house Loch had broken into since the Connection had come. He felt a little guilty about it, but they needed the shelter. In an apocalypse, he doubted the owners would mind.

“What’s it looking like out there,” Peter Millman asked.

“About the same,” Loch answered, sitting down in an easy chair.

Probably the home’s owner’s favorite chair. It had the place of importance with the best view of the television mounted on the wall, the stairs to the second floor to the left, wide open entrance to the kitchen and dining room on the right, a sectional couch serving as the barrier between the spaces.

Peter and his son, Davis, sat on the sectional. Behind them, at the dining table, were Loch’s two daughters. Harper and Piper.

There were pictures of the house’s family on the wall. No one that he recognized. Not that he spent much time studying the pictures. Loch really didn’t want to know who had lived in the house. It was better that way.

The Millmans were the first people he and his girls had seen since the day of the Connection. They’d been a couple miles out of town on Route 4 when it had happened.

There had been plenty of monsters but no people until an hour ago.

After the Challenge Dungeon, Loch just wanted to rest but they’d discovered the Millmans surrounded by Hobs. No way was Loch going to leave the Millmans to be killed by the Hobs. He and the girls had gone to assist, making short work of the monsters.

The Dungeon had been a nightmare gauntlet but they had come out of it much stronger.

Much stronger than the Hobs.

And the Millmans.

They had been fighting with aluminum baseball bats and golf clubs.

No armor.

Loch and his girls had swords and axes. Loch had magical armor.

And all three had Abilities granted by their Classes.

Not only had the Connection brought changes to the world, the Adaptations to the people that had survived had granted them Classes. Just like a video game.

When they reached Level Five.

The Millmans were only Level Three and Two.

Loch was Level seventeen, Harper was nine and Piper seven. Harper and Piper shouldn’t have even been able to get Classes. They were underage. Yet, they had gotten them, thanks to the family’s trait.

Unfettered.

The Millmans had been surprised to learn about Classes. They had been surprised to learn about all the rest as well. Most people didn’t have access to a Bonded Spirit that was the Connections version of Google.

Cerie floated around the room, glowing green, examining everything. Davis Millman watched her, amazed. At least he wasn’t looking at Cerie like he had been looking at Harper earlier.

“I can’t believe Dungeons are real,” Peter muttered. “Those things,” he gestured toward the window and the Hobs across the street. “Are bad enough. But Dungeons? Divine Beings? Invaders.”

He shook his head.

Loch didn’t respond. What was there to say? The Chelsey Cemetary Dungeon had beaten the disbelief out of him and the girls. They had experience now. A lot of it.

“It’s hard to believe,” Peter said, shaking his head.

He held up his arm, turning it and looking at it from all angles. Not that long ago, it had been bleeding, a large gash down its length. Now the scar was barely visible. He shook his head again, amazed.

“We need to get back to the others,” he said. “They need to know everything you know.”

“The others?”

After the rescue of the Millmans, Loch had been bombarded with questions. The presence of Cerie had prompted them. It had started in the entrance drive to the grocery store as the dead bodies of the Hobs turned to the sparks of Spirit, swirling around the group and entering their bodies granted them Experience. Loch and the girls had looted what they could from the Hobs. It wasn’t much. A couple rusty swords and clubs. The armor wasn’t worth saving, the hides being really low quality. No coins, potions or anything else.

Loch hadn’t seen more Hobs in the parking lot, but he knew they’d come eventually. The blood would probably attract scavengers. And the Millmans were near a state of shock. They needed to rest and absorb what they’d just seen.

He’d quickly looked around, seeing the houses across the street, noting what buildings had disappeared. A large field was now where the gas station had been, a large depression in the ground marked the location of the former pumps.

There really hadn’t been many choices.

He’d told the Millmans to hold the questions and led the group across Route 4, something that would never have been possible before the Connection. The road had always been busy, especially in that area where three major routes intersected and the town’s major businesses were located. Not that there was much. The grocery store, a couple gas stations, the library, bank and a discount general store. Now the road was empty.

Not even any abandoned cars. They were just gone.

Getting into the house had been easy.

A short break once inside, after making sure the house was truly empty, and the questions had started.

Loch and the girls had done their best to answer, leaving most of it to Cerie.

The questions had finally died down. Loch knew it was out of exhaustion, not lack of curiosity. The Millmans still had plenty to ask.

But now it was Loch’s turn to ask.

“Yeah, a bunch of us are holed up at the churches next to the town hall. There’s talk of going to the school. It’s bigger. More space. But Ed thinks people will naturally come to the town hall. I guess he’s not wrong. We did. The others did too. I like the idea of the school though.”

“Ed?,” Loch asked.

“Ed Turner. You know him?”

“Yeah, I do.”

The Turners were family friends. Really just the wife, Susan, was. She and Kelly, Loch’s missing wife, had been good friends. Loch had tolerated Ed and Harper had hated the Turner’s son, Mike.

“When the Connection happened,” Peter continued, pausing at the strangeness of the word. “We didn’t know what to do. Lucy, my wife, was out of town. No way to reach her. I tried.” He paused, a dark look passing across his face. Loch knew that look well.

He knew what Peter Millman was going through. The same thing he was. Loch had no idea what had happened to Kelly. Before the Connection, she’d been in the car next to him. After the Connection, she was just gone. No trace.

He had told the Millmans about Kelly’s disappearance.

It gave the two men a shared bond.

Peter took a deep breath, before he started talking again. Loch could see the man pushing the thought of his wife down deep, just the same as Loch himself did.

“I knew we had to do something, figure out what was happening. Without cell service, no internet, I thought that others might be gathering. Seemed a natural thing to do. And the Town Hall seemed a good place to do it.”

“How many survi…of you are there?”

Loch had almost said survivors. He wasn’t ready to accept that word yet. It was true. They were survivors of the Connection. The vast majority of humanity had been wiped out, unable to Adapt. Of those that had, a good number had to have died since the Connection. It was a wild and violent world. Not everyone would have survived.

Loch and the girls had barely survived.

Luck had been on their side from the start.

“Maybe fifty when we left,” Peter answered.

Fifty out of nearly five thousand residents of Northwood.

There had to be more people in the town but it was a scattered town, no downtown or main street. It covered a lot of square miles. Add in the uncentralized nature of the surrounding towns as well. There were homes miles away from town hall, places down dirt roads.

How many more survivors were there?

Had to be more.

“Been fighting too,” Davis said. “Monsters have been attacking. Usually one or two a night. Every day more and more people were showing up.”

“We were part of a couple teams sent out to scout,” Peter said, taking over from his son. “Find supplies and other survivors. Hard to believe it took us two days to get from Town Hall to here. Used to only take five minutes by car.”

He chuckled.

Something about the timeline didn’t add up for Loch.

Two days to cover a couple miles. That part made sense. It was the rest.

Davis had said the monsters attacked the camp every night. The way he said it, it came across as they’d faced the attacks a couple times themselves. Not just one night, probably more than two. A day at their home before heading to town hall. Three days, maybe five or six, at the survivor’s camp.

That was too much time.

Loch tried to remember how much time they’d spent in the Dungeon. They’d rested three times, so three days? Plus the two they had traveled since the Connection.

Only five days.

But the Millman’s story made it seem longer?

“How many days has it been since the Connection,” Loch asked, not wanting to know the answer.

Behind the Millmans, both his daughters looked over, now very interested in the conversation. Even Cerie had stopped her examination of the various things that made up a person’s home. Pictures, knickknacks, books, flowers, all the random stuff that decorated a house and made it a home.

“Just over a week,” Peter said, looking at Loch strangely. “Nine days I think.”

Loch shook his head.

That was impossible.

He looked to Cerie, glared at her.

Only a couple inches tall, she had long hair, pointed ears, wings like a butterfly and glowed green. The brightness changed depending on her mood. She looked at the Millmans, just as confused as they were.

“That can’t be,” she said, her voice high. “Time in Dungeons seems longer but the time outside should pass slower. For every day in a dungeon, only half a day should pass.” She looked at Loch, seeing his angry glare. Her small face looked apologetic. “We were only in the Dungeon for three days. It should have only been a day and a half, two at the most.”

She flew over to the television, sitting down on top of the flat screen, legs pulled up tight, somehow balancing.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

Loch cursed, followed by a sigh. He knew that it wasn’t her fault. She had only told them what she knew. In the short time she’d been bonded to Piper, Loch had discovered that the fairy wasn’t all-knowing. There were gaps in her knowledge.

Important gaps.

“Dad,” Harper called out, the word more of a question.

“I guess it really doesn’t matter,” Loch said. “Just another way the Connection messes with us.”

The two Millmans exchanged looks.

“We were going to head down 202 a ways,” Peter said, after no one had talked for a while. “Hit the grocery store on the way back. But now…,” he trailed off, looking toward the window, the curtain blocking the view from outside. “With the monsters there and their home not that far away, I don’t know what to do.”

He looked to Loch.

Loch was uncomfortable with that, but he understood it. He and the girls had Classes, had higher levels. They’d slaughtered the Hobs in seconds, where the two Millmans would probably have been killed. Loch and the girls were strong.

Was the world already turning into a place where the strongest survived and ruled?

With Loch’s limited understanding of the Connected System, the Connection as it was commonly called, he realized that was exactly what it wanted. The strong to strive, grow, advance and survive.

The weak did nothing for it. They didn’t gain Spirit, which the System used as food or currency, or something. Loch didn’t even know what the System needed the Spirit that it leeched from the world and the Connected for. It just needed, or wanted, it.

Loch didn’t want to be a leader. He didn’t want to have to make decisions for others. He had his own girls to worry about.

But as he looked at Peter Millman, Loch realized that what he wanted didn’t matter anymore. The girls would come first, but he was one of the strong now. All three of them were. This was a world where the strongest would rule.

But not all strong were equal. There were some that would want to protect the others. But there were just as many, if not more, that would use their strength to lord over the others. To exploit them and use them to grow even stronger.

Loch knew he wasn’t going to be one of those but he was strong and that had some responsibility that came with it.

What was the famous saying?

With great power comes great responsibility?

Loch had never thought of himself as a hero. He’d had a brief stint in the Army. Back in the day, when he’d turned eighteen, he’d enlisted to get the GI Bill. He knew war would be hell, but wouldn’t the benefits he’d received outweigh the costs?

They barely did.

His time in service had taught Loch about duty and commitment. He’d been one of those that believed in the duty of a soldier to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves. It was a naive thought, but he’d carried that ideal with him throughout his life.

He cursed silently.

It looked like Loch wasn’t going to have a choice.

“Get some sleep tonight,” he said. “I think tomorrow we raid the grocery store and bring back what we get to the churches and the people.”

Peter Millman looked relieved the decision had been taken from him.

He looked overwhelmed by everything he had learned, was learning, about being part of the Connection.

Loch wondered what was different between him and Peter. Why had he gotten so lucky.

Not that he really thought of it as lucky.

Cursed?

That felt better.