On Friday morning, Owen's father tried to walk down the old woman in the purple windbreaker, and lost.
He'd planned it. He told Owen about the plan in the car, in detail, like a man describing a heist. He was going to start fast, on lap one, while she was still warming up. He was going to hold the inside of lane four, so she'd have to go wide to pass him. He was going to lengthen his stride.
"You're not allowed to lengthen your stride," Owen said. "You're allowed to walk."
"Lengthening my stride is walking. It's just more of it."
The old woman came out of the dark on the first turn, at a pace that was technically a jog but looked like a woman going to get her mail, and passed Owen's father on the outside without changing anything about her face.
"Good morning, boys."
"Morning," said his father, through his teeth, and lengthened his stride, and she was ten yards ahead, and then twenty, and then just a purple dot on the far straight.
He stopped trying on lap three. On lap five she came around again, and this time she slowed down and walked beside them for a few steps, breathing as easily as if she were sitting in a chair.
"You're the one who's racing me," she said to Owen's father.
"I'm not racing anybody."
"You've been racing me since Wednesday. Your son told you not to." She had a face like a walnut and very bright eyes. "I'm Marguerite. I taught PE at this school for thirty-one years. I've been lapping men like you on this track since 1994."
"Rick," said his father. Then, like it hurt him: "You're fast."
"I'm seventy-three. I'm consistent." She looked at Owen. "And you're the one who was reaching. You ran two miles yesterday. I saw. Do it three days a week, not every day, and walk on the others, or your shins will file a complaint." To his father: "And you, walk. Every day. Your heart doesn't care who wins."
She went.
Owen's father watched her go for a long time. "I think I'm in love," he said.
"I'm telling Mom."
"Your mother would also be in love. That's a woman with clear values."
The results came in at 2:40 in the afternoon, and nobody called Owen.
He found out the way you find out things when you're eighteen: by noticing that the family group chat had gone completely silent for an hour and a half on a Friday. No memes from Maddie. No grocery list from his mother. No blurry photo of a transmission from his father. Just the last message, from 1:05, his mother: Rick, call me when you get the portal email.
Then nothing.
He sat through sixth period, which was civics, and learned nothing about civics. He texted his mother at 2:55: did dad get results. She sent back a thumbs-up, which wasn't an answer, and then, a minute later, We'll talk at dinner. Nothing scary. Go to school.
I'm at school.
Then be at school.
Theo, in the hallway at the end of the day, took one look at him and said, "Is it the thing?"
"It's the thing."
"Is it bad?"
"My mom said 'nothing scary.' She's an ER nurse. Her version of 'nothing scary' is a guy who walks in holding his own finger."
Theo didn't say anything. He walked Owen to the bus stop, which he never did, because he lived the other way, and stood there with him until the bus came, talking about Elementalist builds in a slightly louder voice than usual, the way you talk to someone in a waiting room.
His father had printed it out.
Of course he had. He'd gone back to the shop after the call and printed the portal page on the shop printer, the one that was mostly used for invoices and was sticky with something, and he'd brought it home folded in quarters in his jacket pocket. He unfolded it at the kitchen table after dinner (turkey burgers, no bun, which Maddie described as "a sad meatball") and smoothed it out with both hands, like a map.
"Okay," said his father. "So I'm a pre-something."
"Pre-diabetic," said his mother.
"I'm a pre-diabetic," his father said to Owen and Maddie, as if he'd been nominated for something. "Which, as I understand it, means I'm not diabetic."
"Yet," said his mother.
"Which means I'm not."
"It's like a trailer," said Maddie. "For a movie. The movie's not out. But the trailer's out."
"Thank you, Madison."
Owen read the sheet upside down. He'd had a lot of practice, in his first life, reading his own bloodwork in clinics where nobody explained anything. He knew what the numbers meant. That was the problem with knowing what the numbers meant.
LIPID PANELTotal cholesterol: 268 mg/dL (H) | LDL-C: 191 mg/dL (H) | HDL-C: 34 mg/dL (L) | Triglycerides: 215 mg/dL (H)
METABOLIC
Glucose, fasting: 112 mg/dL (H) | Hemoglobin A1c: 6.1% (H)
Comment: A1c 5.7-6.4% is consistent with prediabetes. LDL ≥190 - recommend statin therapy. See provider notes.
And then, typed underneath, from Dr. Mehta: BP recheck at nurse visit 3/27: 150/95. Starting atorvastatin 40 mg and lisinopril 10 mg. Home BP cuff, log twice daily. Cardiology to schedule exercise stress test. Diet and walking as discussed. Good work on the walking.
"She said good work," said his father, and tapped it.
"She said 'as discussed,'" said his mother. "She discussed you dying, Rick."
"She didn't say dying."
"She said 'ten-year risk.' I know what ten-year risk means. I've charted ten-year risk."
There was a pause at the table. Maddie looked at Owen. Owen looked at the printout.
It wasn't the worst sheet he'd ever seen. That was the thing. In the ER his mother had seen a thousand of these, and worse, and she would have said, if it were a stranger's, okay, so we get this guy on a statin and a BP pill and a walking program, and we watch him. It was the most ordinary sheet of paper in America. A forty-four-year-old guy who'd eaten gas-station breakfasts in a truck for twenty years.
And it was the first one. That was the part that kept catching in Owen's chest like a fishhook. In his first life there had never been a sheet. There had never been a nurse visit, or a recheck, or a 191 on a lipid panel with an (H) next to it. There had been a guy who took antacids on the stairs for ten years and said he felt fine. And then a phone call.
"The pharmacy has them ready at seven," his mother said. "We'll get the cuff on the way."
"Two pills." His father counted them on his fingers, like it was a lot. "Every day? Forever?"
"Maybe not forever. If you walk, and you eat like a person, and the numbers come down, maybe she drops one." His mother picked up the sheet and folded it in half, then in quarters again, the way he'd brought it. "But for now, yes. Every day."
"And the cardiology call?"
"They called me at three. They had a cancellation." His mother looked at Owen, very briefly. "Thursday, April ninth. Nine in the morning. Treadmill, with the stickers. You walk until they tell you to stop." This chapter was taken from novelping(.)com without permission.
"I can do a treadmill."
"I know you can."
His father looked at the folded sheet in her hand, and then at Maddie's sad meatball, and then, for a second, at Owen, and Owen saw something in his father's face that he hadn't seen in either life. Not fear, exactly. Something more like noticing. The look of a man who'd been driving a long time with a light on the dashboard, and had just now looked down.
"Huh," said his father. Then, to the table: "Well. Nobody's taking my coffee."
"Nobody's taking your coffee," his mother said.
"Then I'll be fine."
The page hosting the story supplied this passage without permission. Returning to the author's official publication supports the creator.
He got up and took his plate to the sink, which he never did. Maddie watched him do it like she was watching a dog walk on its hind legs.
Owen went to the pharmacy with them, because he asked to, and stood in the aisle while his mother picked out a blood pressure cuff with the seriousness of a woman buying a car.
His father found him by the vitamins.
"You did this," he said.
Owen's stomach dropped. "What?"
"The walking. The doctor. The clause." His father had his hands in his jacket pockets. He didn't look at Owen. He looked at the shelf of fish oil, which he had no interest in. "Your mother says if I'd waited till my next physical, which, honestly, I wasn't gonna do, that's five more years of that." He nodded vaguely back toward the pharmacy counter, toward the 191. "She says that's the kind of thing that—you know. That ends up a story they tell at work."
"Dad."
"I'm just saying." His father picked up a bottle of fish oil, read it as if it were a contract, and put it back. "I don't know why you did it. Two weeks ago you were—I don't know what you were. Some kind of guy who lived in his room." He frowned at the shelf. "Now you're up at six walking me around a track like a dog. And I got a sheet with an H on it. And I'm gonna take two pills. So." He shrugged, one shoulder. "So thanks, I guess. You weirdo."
Owen didn't trust himself to say anything, so he didn't.
His father bumped his shoulder with his own, once, like a guy at a bar. Then his mother called "Rick, which arm do you want," from the next aisle, and his father said "the left one, obviously, I'm left-armed," which wasn't a thing, and went.
Friday night was not a school night.
That was clause one, the weekend half: no three-hour cap, no 9:30. Get up every hour. Eat lunch with a person. Be at dinner. Dinner had happened. It was 7:50, and he had the whole night, and the weird, hollowed-out feeling you get after a day where you've been scared for six hours straight and then it turned out to be just paperwork.
Fri 3/27, he wrote. Track 3 mi walk (Dad). Marguerite, 73, PE, "your shins will file a complaint." Pushups 12 (finally). Dad: LDL 191, A1c 6.1, BP 150/95. Statin + lisinopril. Stress test THURS 4/9 9 AM. Dad said thanks.
He looked at the last line for a while. Then he drank his Clear Draft and did his warm-up and put the headset on.
[Welcome back, Rook.]
[SYNC 54% (base) + 3% (Clear Draft, 3h 53m) + 2% (Primed) = 59%]
Theo was out. He'd texted at six: family movie night, mom's orders, ur on your own, don't do anything famous.
Owen went to the ridge.
He told himself it was for the XP, which was true. Night Wolves were the best XP in the Riverlands for a solo at Lv12, if you could survive them, and he was about eight hundred short of 13. But he also went because the ridge was where his body made sense. He wanted to do something with his hands that worked.
Night came at 8:14. He was on the ridge at 8:10, standing at the south end by the den, breathing. Edda's Count, the way he'd done it a hundred times now: seven in, nine hold, twelve out. The wolves came out of the cave like smoke.
[Night Wolf - Level 13] x2
[Night Wolf - Level 14]
The fight was good. Not clean, not perfect, but good. He'd been doing this long enough in this body that he wasn't thinking about the shield anymore, he was just using it, the way you stop thinking about a steering wheel. Block, step, cut. Back Step at 59, a hundred and eighteen milliseconds of nothing touching him. The Lv14 lunged high and he went under it.
[Flow: SYNC 60%]
[Flow: SYNC 61%]
He did three packs in forty minutes. On the third pack, he tried Threefold, and his hips gave him eighty-one degrees, and the system called it Imprecise again, and he found he didn't even mind. Eighty-one. Twelve minutes of pretzel lady every night and it was moving.
[Level up! Rook - Level 13]
[+5 attribute points | +1 class skill point (4 unspent)]
He sat on the edge of the ridge with his legs over the drop, in the dark, with the Harrowgate lights down below and the river like a black ribbon, and opened the sheet.
He knew what he was going to do with them. He'd known for two weeks. You built a Wayfarer Duelist for movement and precision, and you built a headset player for whatever kept him alive. He put two in AGI, two in END and one in FOC, and watched the numbers redo themselves.
ROOK - Level 13 | Vanguard (no class)STR 13 | AGI 28 | END 28 | FOC 12 | SPI 4
HP 330 | Stamina 274 | Mana 102
SYNC 61% (flow) - dodge window 122 ms - input lag ~117 ms
Form tolerance ±64 ms | Crit 5%
Class skill points: 4 (unspent)
Four class points, banked. Somewhere in Vael there were people who'd picked Knight at Lv10, and dumped all their points into Shield Wall, and they were going to be sad at Lv15 when they saw a Wayfarer Duelist's skill tree go past them on the forums. He'd been one of those people, once.
He was looking at the class points, thinking about Ser Odran's door, when the whisper came in.
[Whisper] Varga: you're the tree guy
He sat very still.
Then he turned around, slowly, in case she was standing right behind him. She wasn't. The ridge was empty. The wolves' cave was quiet. He looked down at the crofts, at the dark road, at the shrine's blue light at the north end of the ridge.
[Whisper] Varga: sorry. that's a weird opener. hi. I'm varga. I saw you on the ridge tuesday. you did a thing with your feet
[Whisper] Varga: I've been trying to figure out what it was for 3 days and it's driving me insane
He read it three times.
In his first life, he'd known Sela Varga for fourteen years, the way you know a weather system. She was the coldest player in Vael. On stream she said maybe forty words a night, mostly callouts, and the rest of the time she just played, with a face like a closed door, while chat lost its mind. People called her the Ice Queen. People made compilations of her not smiling. He'd watched her win a World Championship on a laptop at two in the morning, in a studio apartment, eating cereal out of the box, and she hadn't smiled then either.
She'd never whispered him. Not once. He'd never been worth a whisper.
sorry. that's a weird opener.
[Whisper] Rook: hi
[Whisper] Varga: HE SPEAKS Visit g.com for the full chapter.
[Whisper] Varga: ok so. the thing with your feet. was that a form? it looked like a form. my coach thinks it's a Duelist footwork thing from the class hall but I've done all of those and none of them pivot like that
My coach. Of course. Halcyon had coaches. Halcyon had a gymnastics consultant, in the first life, by the end of year one.
[Whisper] Rook: it's a form
[Whisper] Varga: a form you can't buy at the class hall
[Whisper] Rook: correct
[Whisper] Varga: cool cool cool. are you going to tell me where you got it
[Whisper] Rook: no
There was a pause. He thought he'd blown it, which was stupid, because there wasn't an it to blow.
[Whisper] Varga: ok that's fair honestly
[Whisper] Varga: I wouldn't tell me either
[Whisper] Varga: I'll find it myself, it's more fun anyway
He laughed out loud, alone on the ridge, and a wolf in the cave behind him growled in its sleep.
It's more fun anyway. She'd find it. She was going to find it. In his first life she'd found the Wayfarer Duelist in month three, on her own, and nobody ever knew how, and she never said. And now she'd seen the footwork in week two, because of him, and she was smart, and she had a coach, and she was on a pod at ninety-eight percent, and Ser Odran's requirement was sixty-five. If she found that door, she'd walk straight through it.
He didn't know if there was only one. He'd never seen two Wayfarer Duelists on a server in fourteen years. But he'd never seen anybody find the class before month three, either.
[Whisper] Varga: different question. what are you on
[Whisper] Varga: you move like a Halcyon kid but you're not on our roster and the Sorrel guys don't move like that. are you on a custom rig? my teammate says you're a dev
[Whisper] Rook: I'm on something cheaper
[Whisper] Varga: lol ok
[Whisper] Varga: a mystery man
[Whisper] Varga: you know some guy is replying to every single comment about you with "rook is unavailable for comment" right
He looked at that one for a long time.
[Whisper] Rook: I've heard
[Whisper] Varga: ok last thing and then I'll leave you alone, I can tell you're an introvert, I am also an introvert, this is my entire allotment of talking for the week
[Whisper] Varga: me and two of my teammates are going to the Quarry on Sunday afternoon. iron hollow has the ledge camped 24/7 and they're being weird about it so we're going to go be annoying. you want in? you'd be the fourth
The system turned it into a box, the way it did:
Varga has invited you to a party.[Accept] [Decline]
He looked at the button.
The ledge. He'd found that pull on day two and lost it by day three, and Iron Hollow had been running it in shifts ever since, with a flag on it that said CLAIMED. Brannagh knew his face. Halcyon's pod girl and Iron Hollow's pod guild, in a quarry, on a Sunday, with Rook standing in the middle: in his first life that fight hadn't happened for another year, and it had been ugly.
And she was being nice. That was the part he couldn't fit anywhere. She was being nice, and a little dorky, and she'd called herself an introvert like it was a confession, and he'd watched compilations of her not smiling.
You only ever knew her face, he thought. You never knew her. You knew a stream.
Sunday afternoon was slow-cooker day. He'd promised. His father had a recipe printed out on the shop printer, too.
He hit Decline.
[Whisper] Rook: can't sunday. I'm meal-prepping with my dad
There was a long pause.
[Whisper] Varga: is that code for something
[Whisper] Rook: it's code for chili
[Whisper] Varga: LMAO
[Whisper] Varga: ok. the offer stays open, tree guy. have fun with your chili
[Whisper] Varga: (I'm going to find your feet thing)
[Varga is now offline.]
He stayed on the ridge until ten, because he'd told himself he would. The sun came back up at 9:14 and the night wolves went home, and he did two more packs of day-wolves in the grey light. His number didn't go any higher than sixty-two.
[Flow: SYNC 62%]
That was fine. It was a peak, not a ceiling. He got up at nine for the stand-up reminder and drank a glass of water in the dark kitchen, where his father's new BP cuff was sitting on the counter, still in its box, next to a new pill organizer with the days of the week on it. M T W T F S S. His mother had already filled it. Each little lid had two pills in it, one white, one pink, and she'd put a sticky note on Saturday: AM. WITH FOOD. I'M WATCHING.
He stood and looked at it for a minute. Then he went back up and lay down and put the headset on and finished the night.
At 10:02, he logged out.
LATTICE COMPANION - Session SummaryDuration: 2h 10m
Baseline in: 59% | Peak: 62% | Baseline out: 59%
Hydration check-ins: 2 ✓ | Stand-up reminder: 2 ✓
Physical adaptation: logged
Level 13! You're on a roll, Rook. Weekend rest counts too!
Fri 3/27, cont. he wrote. Lv13 (AGI 28, END 28, FOC 12). 4 class pts. Pivot 81. VARGA WHISPERED. She's nice??? She's looking for Threefold. She's taking Halcyon to the QUARRY LEDGE Sunday to poke Iron Hollow. Declined. If she finds Odran before I'm at 65—
He stopped. He didn't know how to finish the sentence.
He thought about it for a while. Then he wrote, underneath:
Then she finds it. It's not mine. None of it's mine. Get to 65.
He underlined 65 twice, and turned off the light, and lay in the dark for a while listening to the house: Maddie's music through the wall, very quiet; the TV downstairs, where his parents were watching something with a laugh track; and once, around ten-thirty, the long rip of Velcro and a small electronic beep from the kitchen, and his father's voice saying, "Is that good? Is a hundred and forty-four good?" and his mother saying, "It's better," and his father saying, "I'll take better."