《After the Fall》


 The Game

    ¡°Lighten up, Jay. It''s just a game.¡±


    Roger had used his real name, not his character¡¯s name. That mean he must be looking like he was about to blow his stack. Jay forced himself to draw an entire breath before responding.


    ¡°I''m not mad because I rolled a one. I''m mad because I knew it was possible and I didn''t have a backup plan.¡± He put both hands on the table so he wouldn''t pick up the offending die and throw it. ¡°Also, it''s not a game. It''s a simulation.¡±


    ¡°But you''ve got me for backup.¡± Ash grinned wickedly. Turning to Roger, he declared, ¡°I blast the wraith with arcane missiles.¡±


    Roger frowned gently. ¡°I thought you were out of spells.¡± As game masters went, he was one of the good ones. He never seemed to enjoy making the player''s lives suffer and yet his adventures were notoriously difficult to survive, let alone defeat.


    Ash was still grinning. He did that whenever he thought he had a clever idea, which Jay had noticed was all the time.


    ¡°While Tonto here was fooling around with his bow I was drawing a scroll from my backpack. The magic one, so it only takes half a round. I use the rest of the round to activate the scroll.¡± Ash dropped a handful of dice on the table. ¡°Read ''em and weep.¡±


    Roger started counting but Jay could see the roll was terrible. He knew the answer before Roger spoke.


    ¡°That''s not actually enough,¡± Roger said apologetically. Ash was staring in shock at all the dice showing single pips. ¡°The wraith is tattered and torn but it still lunges forward.¡±


    Jay closed his eyes because while they were open he could see the future with perfect clarity. The monster would make its attack roll; his beloved character, having been so carefully raised through the last nine months of work ever since he had started taking the new game - er, simulation - seriously, would be destroyed. The damage was entirely psychological; he actually preferred lower-level play and wouldn''t mind starting over. The pain was what it said about his ability to really deal with the unpredictable nature of the modern battlefield. Which called into question his long-term life plan. That was the part that hurt.


    A girl¡¯s voice, small and hesitant. ¡°I leap on it and rend it with my claws.¡±


    Jay opened his eyes again. The girl was new to the club; he hadn''t seen her around before. When she had asked to join the session he hadn''t objected because he had assumed that he and Ash would be able to finish it off on their own, so it wouldn''t matter if she was dead weight or not. So far she hadn''t done anything particularly interesting and he had mostly forgotten she was there.


    Roger was still shaking his head. ¡°The wraith is insubstantial. Even a tiger''s claws can''t hurt it.¡±


    The girl - Mary, he remembered - had turned into a tiger last round. Jay hadn''t counted that as interesting for precisely the reason Roger was citing. It wouldn''t help their current situation.


    ¡°Remember when I cast spectral fangs on my wolf?¡± Mary had started the session with an animal companion, which she had enchanted so it could affect the wraith. That might have been interesting several rounds ago but the wraith had reduced the wolf to a rotting husk almost instantly. After that Mary had gone quiet, making it easy to forget that her druid character would be dying too as soon as the wraith finished off Jay''s ranger. He wondered if she had thought that was a possibility when she had sat down at the table.


    ¡°Yes, but¨C¡± Roger tried, but the girl was already talking over him. Jay wouldn''t have guessed her capable of interrupting someone, let alone the quietly authoritative game master.


    ¡°Any spell I cast that affects my animal companion also affects me. The spell hasn''t timed out yet. Now that I''m in animal form it makes my claws capable of striking insubstantial targets.¡±


    Roger raised his eyebrows. ¡°I''m not sure the spell works that way.¡±


    ¡°Take it up with the elves,¡± Mary shot back. ¡°That''s what they say. Belarian''s Lament, chapter one hundred and seventeen, paragraph twenty-nine.¡±


    Roger sighed. Jay appreciated the sentiment; no one liked a rules lawyer. On the other hand, what was the point of the simulation if you didn''t stick as closely to real life as possible? And the elves were definitely the authority on druid spells; they had invented the profession, after all. If Mary had interpreted the passage right then there was no arguing with her.


    ¡°I don''t mean to be rude, but I need to check that,¡± Roger said. ¡°I mean, because I don''t know you yet. Okay?¡±


    ¡°Of course. That''s fine,¡± Mary said. She was shrinking back into the quiet, mousey girl who had spent the last two hours at the table. Jay was astonished that the transformation had happened at all.


    There was an awkward pause while Roger looked up the relevant passages on his phone.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Jay cast about for something to say, feeling like it was up to him to be friendly. He knew Ash well enough by now to know that the other guy wouldn''t bother. ¡°Belarian''s Lament? I haven''t read that far.¡± There were several million pages of elven lore already translated. Pouring through all of it for clues to how magic worked was a full time job. Jay mostly relied on second-hand analysis, though of course he had read the core Ranger ballads.


    ¡°It''s pretty obscure,¡± Mary acknowledged with a slight blush. ¡°I think it''s only known value is that particular clarification.¡±


    Ash shook his head. ¡°I studied quantum physics with less effort. Scouring elvish romance novels to learn magic is insane. At least Dr. Falconer writes clearly.¡±


    That was not nearly as attractive as Ash made it sound. Jay had tried to read Falconer''s treatises, out of professional courtesy if nothing else, but they took way too much math for granted. In any case, Falconer had only been studying magic for a decade - well, fifteen years if you counted the time slips - so there just wasn''t as much known about wizardry.


    ¡°I like reading them,¡± Mary said. ¡°They''re so beautiful. Like poetry.¡±


    Ash was not the kind of guy to appreciate poetry. Then again, neither was Jay. He put up with it, though, because he wanted to know how use the powers of the ranger profession. Just in case, someday, through some miracle, he could connive his way through the Gate. And start a career that meant something while there was still time; get out ahead of the rest of the pack and most of all, out from under the iron grip of the Church of Sinclair. Get out and grab some tael, the mystical purple virus that made people into superheroes, and in Christopher Sinclair''s case, an actual god. ¡°Grab¡± being the operative word, because the Church had every scrap locked down tight. Sure, it was for a good cause; Jay appreciated curing cancer as much as any guy who had never actually had cancer, which is to say in an abstract but still respectful way. And yet it seemed inherently unfair that Sinclair could fall through a random gate and become a god while everyone else on Earth had to petition for the right to cast the smallest spell. Someday, the Church said, they would have enough high-ranking priests to start sharing with other people, but given that the other thing Sinclair had brought back through the Gate was immortality, as in never getting old, Jay and pretty much everyone else assumed ¡°someday¡± could easily stretch into centuries. By then there would be no more opportunities; the human race would have conquered the world of Prime with corporations and armies, leaving no room for mercenaries and adventurers.


    Right now it was like the Wild West, with only one train leaving at high noon every day; and Jay, along with pretty much everyone else, dreaming of striking out to make his fortune instead of crawling up an interminable corporate, or worse, religious, hierarchy. Hence the simulation, the wildly popular pastime of pretending you could actually be a ranger or wizard and fight monsters for profit. And hence the addiction to rules, making the simulation as close to the real thing as possible.


    A lot of people were into it these days. But Jay was really into it. As in, all the way in. He had a bow and three pairs of moccasins in his apartment. He didn''t own a car because he''d spent every dime he had on hunting trips, getting backwoods hillbillies to teach a New York city boy everything they could about living in the wild. When you went to the other side you couldn''t just pop in for a snack or to replace a broken shoe-string. Jay had skinned and gutted a deer he had killed with his own hands, cooked it over a fire, and lived off the refrigerated remains for weeks. He had camped in a snowstorm, slept in a tree, and made a knife out of stone. He''d also made a stab at learning Elvish though without quite so much intensity. The language wasn''t going to help; if he met an elf on the other side they''d just turn him over to the Church. He had tried to join the military and sign up for Army Ranger training, on the theory it would at least make him tough, but the army wasn''t hiring anymore. Pretty much everyone who had a job was hanging on to it, expecting that they might still be doing it in a thousand years. This made things hard for people like Jay who came of age after the Gate. Sure, Jay appreciated that he would never die of old age, and it was neat watching his grandparents slowly grow younger again, but what was the value of eternity if you couldn''t get a decent job? Part-time work at a convenience store was not what he wanted to do for millennia. It barely paid the rent on a closet-sized apartment, and staying at home was no longer an option now that his parents were almost his age. They were both relieving their youth now that they were young again, and in his dad¡¯s case that meant cruising for kegger parties while his mom was way too into weed.


    If he had ranks he could write his own ticket. The Church might frown with the force of a thousand suns but it could not forbid, and there were people who already had ranks free and clear of the Church''s controlling hand. True, most of them had started out on the other side, but not all of them. And more slipped away every day, disappearing into the endless wilderness of Prime. A few came back with riches.


    The rest died, but that wasn''t as bad as it sounded. If you''d made the right arrangements the Church could bring you back from anything, even being eaten by a dragon. Or a wraith, both of which were apparently real and every bit as fearsome as people had always imagined. It turned out that the Church needed money as much as the next massive interplanetary corporation, so you could still buy certain favors. Like being rezzed this decade instead of centuries from now when the Church got around to it.


    So wandering off into a violent, unpredictable world full of unimaginable monsters wasn''t the suicide trip it sounded like. It was a viable career choice, if you were willing to get dirty and had the money to front a return ticket. Jay had spent enough time with his hands inside a dead animal to know he was good with the dirty part. All that was stopping him was the ticket.


    He wasn''t so sure about Ash. The young man certainly played his character like he was a Truther. Jay hadn''t known him very long but he had gleaned that Ash had been born on a Navajo reservation and clawed his way out of poverty into a prestigious physics programs just in time to watch physics get a total rewrite. It was hard to feel too bad for him; physics was one of the few industries that had open spots at the top, thanks to a histrionic response by a number of establishment professors who had taken the shakeup as badly as stockbrokers had taken the crash of ''29. But physics just didn''t have the same cachet now that it didn''t have all the answers. Maybe Ash was attracted to magic for the same reason Falconer had been. A chance to get his hands on the real heart of the universe.


    Roger looked up from his phone. ¡°Bir¨®g''s spell holds.¡± He was back to using character¡¯s names, so everything was cool again. ¡°Go ahead and roll for the attack.¡±

 Crouching Tiger

    Mary threw an impressive number of dice representing her tiger form''s raking attack. The damage was even greater than Ash''s spell and more than enough to destroy the wraith. Roger sat back with a slightly stunned look. ¡°Wow. No one has ever gotten this far before.¡±


    ¡°Seriously?¡± Ash said. ¡°It wasn''t that hard.¡±


    Jay stared at him. ¡°We''re out of spells, potions, vitality, and ammunition. If an angry housecat crawls out of that open tomb, you¡¯ll die. If two crawl out, I¡¯ll die with you. What do you mean it wasn¡¯t hard?¡±


    Ash didn¡¯t squirm under Jay¡¯s glare, though he should have since he was so clearly wrong. The short young man looked back like he was ready to start a fight, even though Jay knew that wasn¡¯t what he wanted. Ash was the kind of guy who was always starting fights without realizing it. ¡°If this was Otherside, we¡¯d be dead. We¡¯re not dead. Ergo, it¡¯s not that hard.¡±


    The logic made no sense but Jay understood it anyway. It was the sort of thing he would say. It was the sort of thing a Truther would say. A person who played the game for training instead of fun.


    Jay realized that it made him kind of like the arrogant little snot. He tried to make a peace offering. ¡°We should have brought a cleric to deal with all those undead.¡±


    ¡°That would have obviated the entire point,¡± Ash muttered. At that moment Jay was sure Ash was in it for ¡°the reals,¡± as the Truthers put it. Clerics, despite their power, were not often found in Truther games. The only legitimate path to the priesthood lay through the Church of Sinclair, and nobody who joined that organization was going to be out gallivanting around the world in search of monsters to kill. The Church had its own training programs for clergy. The people who played at being clerics were only playing a game.


    Mary giggled, causing both the young men to stare at her. Jay realized he had forgotten about her again. ¡°If this was Otherside we¡¯d all be clerics with machine guns.¡± Then she pulled a face.


    Jay and Ash shared a look. Was mousey Mary a Truther too? Of course, the fact that both of them were clearly thinking the same thing meant that they had just outed themselves to each other. Ash leaned back, looking more relaxed and friendly than Jay had ever seen him.


    Roger seemed to realize he had lost the attention of his players. He cleared his throat. ¡°Okay, so, I gotta review my notes for the next part. Meanwhile, how do you want to divvy up the loot?¡±


    Ash looked back to the game master. ¡°Is there enough to level me again?¡±


    ¡°No, Jrandi,¡± Roger answered, using Ash¡¯s character name. ¡°The souls the wraith had enslaved are legion, but you¡¯re seventh level. It¡¯s going to take a lot more than that.¡±


    The next words out of Ash¡¯s mouth shocked Jay. ¡°Then I say we give it all to Mary.¡±


    Jay stared at Ash but his face was inscrutable. The guy would be pretty good at poker.


    Mary was also surprised. ¡°Why would you do that? You just met me.¡±


    Ash shrugged. ¡°You¡¯re only fifth rank, right? It¡¯ll probably level you. And you were instrumental. If you hadn¡¯t showed up out of nowhere, we¡¯d be dead. Tonto¡¯s healing spells are weaker than diet soda. Not to mention your big finish.¡±This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Once again Mary showed a spark of steel. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t call him that. It¡¯s offensive. His name is Aragorn.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s only offensive if he says it to me.¡± Ash grinned. ¡°And a ranger named Aragorn is lame sauce. He deserves all the grief he gets.¡±


    That was completely true, which is why Jay had let it slide for the last eight weeks.


    ¡°It¡¯s not going to make me like you.¡± Mary was being quite stubborn for someone getting a free gift. Jay decided he liked that, too.


    ¡°If this was Otherside, it¡¯s what we would do,¡± he told her. ¡°Rank the weakest member. Look out for each other. It¡¯s how a party survives.¡±


    ¡°Yep,¡± Ash said approvingly, but he was looking at Jay. So it had been a test, but for Jay.


    ¡°We¡¯re not a party,¡± Mary pointed out.


    ¡°We could be,¡± Jay suggested, looking at Ash.


    ¡°What would be the point of that?¡± Ash asked it like he didn¡¯t expect an answer.


    ¡°Well,¡± Jay said, ¡°for one thing we could come back next week and lay waste to whatever new foes Roger makes up between now and then.¡±


    Roger blushed, confirming Jay¡¯s suspicion that the game master hadn¡¯t been prepared for their victory. ¡°Seriously, guys, I have some notes for what comes next. It¡¯s just that in three years, nobody ever thought to trick the king lobsters into fighting the orcs while evading both of them. Skipping all of that saved you a lot of juice. That was really clever.¡±


    ¡°Why spend yourself on low-value targets?¡± Ash asked. ¡°Better to focus on the guys who are really going to deliver.¡± He wasn¡¯t talking about the game anymore. Jay sat back, showing he was cool with the new topic. Being a Truther wasn¡¯t illegal, but if the Church got wind that you were, you wouldn¡¯t get closer than a thousand miles to the backside of the Gate. It¡¯s why nobody serious talked about it openly. Which made it hard for the Truthers to organize, to find each other, to put together the kind of party that could actually make it on the other side.


    Which, of course, was the point.


    ¡°Speaking as Aragorn, I have to say that the Arcanist Jrandi has proven himself in battle time and time again. If he¡¯s going to be this clever in the future, I¡¯d be happy to keep the housecats from killing him.¡±


    ¡°Master Jrandi concurs,¡± Ash said. ¡°We¡¯ve proven our mettle in this adventure. We should stick together for the next one.¡±


    Roger looked surprised. ¡°Are you guys declaring as a party? You want me to file the paperwork with the gaming commission?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Mary said. ¡°I¡¯d be happy to. My last party was¡­ I mean, I¡¯ve been looking for somebody who knew the rules as well as you guys do.¡±


    Jay bit back his sigh. He needed to stop forgetting that the girl was there.


    ¡°That complicates things,¡± Ash said, seizing the initiative. ¡°We¡¯ll get back to you next week. First I think the three of us should make camp and have a discussion. Preferably over a beer.¡±


    That was good thinking. The game store didn¡¯t sell alcohol, so they¡¯d have an excuse to go somewhere more private. Jay was surprised that Ash was inviting Mary, but decided he shouldn¡¯t be. The girl had quoted elven lore so obscure even Roger hadn¡¯t heard of it. If she was a Truther, she might well be someone worth knowing.


    ¡°Allright, so next week. Same time, right?¡± Roger was starting to look a little excited. Maybe he was happy that someone had finally beaten his adventure. Or maybe he was just plotting a way to murder them all. Jay realized he didn¡¯t care. The whole reason he had taken up gaming, rather than just studying on his own, was to meet other Truthers. To find a group of people who were as desperate to seize control of their own future as he was.


    ¡°Sure,¡± Jay said. ¡°By the way, that was a great adventure. Thanks for being so creative.¡± There were rules the game masters had to follow to make approved adventures. Roger was famous because he found ways to use the same pool of resources as everyone else yet turn them into a player-killing machine. Casual players didn¡¯t last long at his table. It was inevitable that Jay and Ash would gravitate here, looking for a challenge that would prepare them for the real world.


    ¡°It really was,¡± Mary said. ¡°You¡¯re every bit as fantastic as everyone said you were.¡±


    Roger mumbled a bit. ¡°Thanks. I mean, I try.¡±


    Jay realized that Mary had sought Roger out for the same reason. How many Truthers had passed through Roger¡¯s orbit? For that matter, was Roger a Truther himself? Jay took a critical look at the game master. He was older, which didn¡¯t mean as much as it used to, but he was also soft, pudgy, wearing thick glasses, and prone to affability even when players were screaming at him. Jay decided adventuring was always just going to be a fantasy for the man.


    For him, though, it was going to be more than that. He was sure of it. Even if it got him killed.

 In a Tavern

    They retired to a pub across the street. Ash didn¡¯t even wait until they had ordered. ¡°We¡¯re Truthers,¡± he told Mary bluntly. ¡°If you¡¯re not, you can bail now.¡±


    ¡°Ah,¡± Jay said, discomforted by the full-court press.


    ¡°You¡¯re also dicks,¡± Mary said. ¡°You more so than Aragorn, but still both of you. You treated me like baggage for that whole session.¡±


    ¡°And why shouldn¡¯t we? What can a fifth rank druid offer a seventh rank ranger and wizard?¡± Ash stared her down, but surprisingly, Mary didn¡¯t flinch.


    ¡°I¡¯ve memorized the entire elven bestiary cycle, all nine volumes.¡±


    Jay started to speak but then paused. He realized she hadn¡¯t mentioned her character at all.


    ¡°Okay,¡± Ash said, ¡°but I can get that on my phone.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± Mary snapped. ¡°While a raksasha is turning your guts inside out you¡¯re going to look up which spell can pierce his wards. You¡¯ll totally have time for that.¡±


    Jay tried to rejoin the conversation before it got completely out of the room and down the hall to whatever bizarre destination it seemed headed for. ¡°You mean, Roger wouldn¡¯t let you use a phone. No game master would.¡±


    Mary rolled her eyes at him. ¡°We¡¯re not talking about the game. Try to keep up.¡±


    Ash chuckled. ¡°So you¡¯re in for reals. ¡®Scuse me, but you don¡¯t look like the type.¡±


    She stared back. ¡°Excuse me, but you don¡¯t know fuck all about me.¡±


    The waitress showed up just then, and Mary blushed at having been caught cursing. Jay felt dizzy just watching the girl leap from timid to fierce and back again. That spoke to either a spine of iron or mental instability. Jay wondered if it mattered which it was. Going Otherside to face real wraiths wasn¡¯t exactly the behavior of the well-adjusted.


    They ordered drinks quickly. The bar was busy and thankfully the waitress didn¡¯t stop to make small chat.


    ¡°How many volumes you got in your head?¡± Ash asked Jay as soon as the waitress was gone.


    Jay was reminded of how Ash could pick fights without even trying. Mary might actually be less of a social hazard.


    ¡°Not that many. I focused on the low-rank creatures,¡± he answered, feeling a need to justify himself. ¡°I mean, you¡¯ve got to start small, right? I figured I¡¯d learn the rest as I moved up.¡±


    ¡°Starting small is for chumps,¡± Ash said. ¡°I¡¯m going over with the equivalent of a hundred wands of arcane missiles. If I can¡¯t make fifth rank by the time that runs out, I don¡¯t deserve rank.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Mary said. ¡°How can you afford that much magic? Do you have a source?¡±This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Ash frowned at her. ¡°Of course not. I meant a gun. I¡¯m going to take a gun.¡±


    Mary sniffed. ¡°That seems counter-productive. We¡¯re going over there to get away from technology.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Ash said slowly, staring at her like she was mentally impaired. ¡°We¡¯re going over there to get power. Technology has its role. Specifically, the part where we kill monsters before we actually have ranks. Guns will make that a lot easier.¡±


    ¡°What do you think of all this?¡± Mary asked Jay. Jay was a little discomfited by how much she seemed to care about his opinion.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a compound bow. I¡¯m pretty sure it equates to a second level power enchantment. I figure that, plus a few other bits, ought to put me up a leg. I¡¯m going to lay low, search out targets I can handle, play it safe. Not go in guns blazing.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Ash said. ¡°That¡¯s a good idea. You should do that. And when you inevitably pull a horde of cannibalistic orcs down on your campsite, you¡¯ll appreciate my blazing.¡±


    Jay tried to defend his plan. ¡°I convinced one game master to let me start a first-rank with a second level bow. It worked pretty well, even if I couldn¡¯t register the character with the commission.¡±


    ¡°Was the game master Roger?¡± Ash said with a sneer. ¡°No, it wasn¡¯t. So it doesn¡¯t count. Roger¡¯s the only table in town who¡¯s even close to the reals. Everybody else is just playing a stupid game.¡±


    ¡°If you¡¯re plan is so good, what do you need us for?¡± Mary said.


    ¡°Because even Tonto¡¯s weak healing is more than a wizard can do. Plus, going into the wilderness without a ranger? How stupid is that? I originally thought I¡¯d just hire one Otherside, but I guess that¡¯s not really possible.¡±


    Jay had read every account of interactions with the real druids and rangers. He nodded confirmation. It was not at all possible.


    ¡°The druids are worse,¡± Mary said, and for a moment Jay was afraid she was going to cry. ¡°No Terrestrial has ever been accepted to their order. If I want to be a druid I have to do it on my own.¡±


    ¡°Stone-cold bitches, they are,¡± Ash agreed. ¡°But the wizards are hardly any better. Getting into Falconer¡¯s academy requires a perfect SAT score. Chumps who missed as much as one little question need not apply. As I found out.¡±


    Ash paused while the waitress delivered their beers. When she was gone he took a long drink and then set down his glass. ¡°But if I already had the ranks, I¡¯d be in like Flynn. It¡¯s like bribing your way into Oxford. If you¡¯re an aristocrat of the right class you get in for free.¡±


    ¡°How are you going to get through the Gate?¡± Mary asked Ash. Jay decided they deserved each other; that was a rude question. Every Truther¡¯s fantasy founded on that rock.


    To his credit Ash didn¡¯t blow smoke. ¡°Still working on that part,¡± he admitted.


    ¡°And you?¡± Mary turned her gaze on Jay. It was like being faced down by a hostile gerbil.


    ¡°Same,¡± he said, sparing himself further conversation by becoming intimate with his beer.


    ¡°Then that¡¯s another thing I can offer you.¡± Mary sipped at her own drink while the two men stared. ¡°I won a research visa. I guess mastering spoken and written Elvish impressed someone. I figure I can squeeze in three assistants.¡±


    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Ash said. Jay wholeheartedly agreed.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t say I¡¯d take you,¡± Mary said, blushing. ¡°I mean, I hardly know you.¡±


    Ash laughed. ¡°You¡¯ll take us. You¡¯re running out of time to put your team together and your last party turned out be poseurs. You¡¯re as desperate as we are.¡±


    ¡°How can you possibly know that?¡± she squealed.


    ¡°Sheer deduction, my good woman,¡± Ash answered, tapping his forehead. ¡°Also, thanks for confirming it.¡±


    Mary turned to Jay for rescue. He shook his head. ¡°Ash is right. He¡¯s sharp like that. We¡¯re all running out of time. Every day the wilderness gets a little further away; every day the knowledge of technology spreads a little further. If we don¡¯t go soon we never will. I didn¡¯t want to admit it before, but now that you¡¯ve given us an actual path, I can see we never had another. I¡¯m ready to go. Tonight, even. Before it¡¯s too late.¡±


    She sighed. ¡°Not quite so soon. My transfer is scheduled for two months from now. You have that long to convince me won¡¯t all just die over there.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Jay said. ¡°I think I know how to do that. And incidentally, convince myself that the two of you won¡¯t get me killed.¡±