We didn’t take long getting back to the city. Before the tower, we stopped at a restaurant.
The terraforming hadn’t changed only the planet’s structure. It changed the air too, and those chosen by the system had their bodies altered down to the last molecule. We needed less sleep and less food than before. But less isn’t none, especially for tier 1s like us. My stomach had been making a point of reminding me of that since the clearing.
We sat at a table for four. Lili, even at fourteen, couldn’t reach the floor with her feet on those enormous benches, and swung them in the air. The place was called a restaurant, but, wooden from floor to roof, it looked much more like an old roadside bar. The waiters had nothing of waiters about them either.
“What’ll it be?”
The one asking was a woman with gray hair down to her shoulders, ashen skin and the build of a sumo wrestler, in both width and height. Without meaning to, I calculated how much damage she could take. A lot.
“We haven’t decided yet,” said Sun. “Could we see the options, please?”
“Of course, dear. Read up and pick, the kitchen doesn’t wait.”
Her voice was sweet as a grandmother’s. It didn’t match anything else about her. She took four metal plates with the menu engraved on them out of her apron and handed them out.
Lili took hers. Her eyes ran across the plate from right to left: she was looking for the price, not the name of the dish. Then she looked off into the distance, doing math, and I knew exactly what math it was: the guild fee, the prices at the street stalls, what was left over. She put the plate on the table, face down.
The other three chose. She didn’t.
“Lili, what are you having?”
“Uh. Nothing. Lili’s fine.”
Rafael had always had money, and Sun, clearly, had never gone through hard times. To them, this was a girl who didn’t want to spend. To me, it was a mirror. I used to read menus backward too. I did it right up to the eve of the Turn, when the egg bread from the corner stall was the only line on the right that fit in my pocket.
“Lili.”
“Lili?”
“Eat something.”
“But it’s expensive.”
“Think of it as a present for saving my life. Today you order whatever you want.”
She hesitated for half a second. Then she grabbed the plate back, so fast she almost knocked over her glass.
“Miss, bring me this one.”
“A small lamb fillet?”
“A large one, please,” I said. “And a chocolate dessert, if you have one.”
Lili stared at me with her big, round eyes.
“What? A leader who can’t put a decent meal on his own group’s table doesn’t deserve the title.” I made a face that was far too serious. “I take my duties very seriously. Especially the ones with dessert.”
“Thank you.”
It was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it.
There. Now I’m the leader. I complain about the title and use it when it suits me. Sun is going to make a note of this.
*
While the food hadn’t come, Lili drummed her little fingers on the table in a neat rhythm, counting the seconds. That was when another group came in.
“Damn, I can’t believe someone’s already cleared the first floor!” said a big man with short black hair.
“Who would have guessed?” another answered. “If anyone had been timing it, it’d be a record. The factions didn’t even have time to organize their newcomers to scout the floor, and someone had already finished.”
“Who do you think it was?” asked a short woman. “Argos? Terabitia? The Acropolians?”
“No. Word is already going around that all three are looking for the group that finished. It can’t be any of them.”
“Could be a play. Whoever gets out ahead stays ahead. Maybe one of them just doesn’t want to say yet.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“I wish. All three put up a reward for information. They’re paying up to ten firgios for the names.”
“Ten firgios?! That’s like a thousand shillings!”
COUGH COUGH COUGH
Sun choked on his own air. He didn’t really know what a firgio was, but he had a very good idea of how much a thousand shillings was. I gave him two pats on the back without taking my eyes off the other table.
“But why so much money?” asked a younger guy. “Isn’t it just the first floor?”
“It’s not ‘just the first floor’!” answered the tallest one. “Think about it. If it wasn’t a faction, that leaves an independent group or newcomers. Whichever it is, every self-respecting faction is going to want to recruit those people before the others.”
“Fresh arrivals? Impossible,” said the woman.
“I think it’s unlikely too. But one way or another, everyone’s going to try to recruit them.”
“And if they don’t want to join any faction?”
“Then it’s simple.” The oldest one, who seemed to be the leader, spoke without raising his voice. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. If they don’t have anyone backing them, the factions would rather snuff out the problem before it grows.”
Our food arrived at that moment. Sun looked at his plate like a condemned man facing his last meal.
He leaned across the table.
“Are you hearing this?”
“We are.” I picked up my fork. “So what?”
“How can you stay so calm? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Only if they know who we are. The tower doesn’t publish the names of whoever clears a floor. It would be ridiculous for success to come with a target painted on your back.”
“Okay. But then how do they plan on finding out?”
“By waiting for one of us to want the money and hand over the others.”
Sun went quiet. He looked at Rafael, then at Lili, then at me, and for a second I saw in him the boy someone had betrayed once, on a forum, at a school, and who was now looking over the table for cracks.
“Relax. I know none of you would do that.” I cut my meat. “The problem is something else. At some point we’ll have to grow. Each level is harder than the last, and the tower doesn’t warn you what’s coming. Not every floor is about killing monsters.”
“No? What’s it about, then?”
“I heard that, once, one of the floors was individual.”
“Individual?”
“The tower only let in one person at a time. Sounds like an advantage, right? No one would give an impossible challenge to a single person, otherwise why try?” I chewed. “But until someone finally finished that floor, not one challenger came back.”
“Not one? Not a single one?”
“I don’t know. There are some rumors. One of them says the challenger didn’t go in as himself. He had to cross the floor in someone else’s skin.”
I said it in the tone of someone remarking on the rain. Inside, the sentence scraped against a sore spot. A line from the index, maybe. Or a piece of the life the index had left out.
“That’s horrible.”
“Don’t think too hard about it. It’s just a rumor.”
*
Lili finished the fillet, and the dessert arrived: chocolate ice cream with a mountain of whipped cream on top, in a glass bowl.
She spent half a minute looking at the whipped cream without touching it. She seemed afraid it would run away. Then she took the first spoonful and froze. Spoon in her mouth, eyes wide, completely still.
Then she attacked. She ate so fast the cream didn’t have time to melt.
When she was done, she kept looking at the empty bowl for a few seconds. Her face had more color than before. All of us had finished long ago and were just waiting. She turned to me, very serious, and bowed in her chair.
“Lili thanks you deeply, sir!”
PFFF
Sun collapsed onto the table, laughing with his forehead on the tabletop.
“Why are you laughing at Lili?!” she protested.
“Because you don’t need to thank anyone,” I answered, also holding back a laugh, only better than him. “We’re a team. That came out of everyone’s work. I didn’t give you anything. It was yours.”
“Mine?”
She looked at the bowl again.
“Mine…”
PLINK
A drop fell into the empty bowl.
“Lili?”
“Lili isn’t… It’s just…”
She tried to hold it in. She pressed her lips together, blinked hard, looked at the ceiling. It didn’t help. The tears ran down without a sound, one after another, as if someone had turned on a faucet and forgotten it open.
I had no ready-made sentence for that. None of us did. It was ice cream. It was just ice cream.
“Hey, somebody make that kid shut up!” shouted one of the men at the other table.
“Yeah. This is no place for a kid. Get lost.”
“Sorry,” Lili whispered, with her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob. “It’s just that Lili never had a thing that was… mine.”
The men didn’t hear. They kept complaining.
“Owner! If you don’t get them out of here, I’ll do it myself!”
BAM
The table jumped. Rafael was on his feet.
“Rafael!”
“Mr. Rafael?” Sun pulled back in his chair.
The calm man from before had vanished. The aura coming off him seemed more monstrous than that of the monsters we had killed all day. The veins, which already stood out on his arms on an ordinary day, were about to burst.
“Easy.” I put my hand on his forearm, and my hand didn’t close around it. He looked at me, and the look was still fury. “Trust me.”
“What?” The short-haired one stood up too. “Think I’m scared just because you’re big? You’re not even that much bigger than me.”
Yes, he is. Much bigger. And if he hits you, you’ll learn to fly.
CLAP
The waitress clapped her hands once, and the sound cut through the room like thunder.
“All right! Sorry for the trouble, my dears.”
“At least the waitress has some sense,” said the short-haired one. “The kid’s stopped crying. Now it’s just this guy who wants to show off.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“What?!” He spread his arms, incredulous. “What’s this? Has everybody gone crazy today? Even this fat cow decided to make a fool of—“
“Cleber!” the group’s leader shouted.
Too late. The waitress grabbed him by the collar with one hand and hurled him toward the door like a bag of trash.