“Unhand that chest,” Vexa said, clearly annoyed. “I killed the boss, I loot the chest.”

  “But I weakened the boss with fire,” Finn protested. “And I saved your ass a few times too.”

  “And I just saved both of your asses. Remember the last item you found? You traded it for some nudie magazines… and then you traded those for some food. No… this chest is mine.”

  Finn waved her off.

  I was still wondering what a nudie magazine was.

  The boss had all but disintegrated, leaving behind a treasure trove of Echo Cores, XP Cores, and a boss chest. Bigger than the mini-boss chests, this one rested half-buried in wet sand and broken crystal, its surface catching the sun with the same silver sheen as the others. The remains of the Gloomtide Devourer still glittered all around us, its razor-bright fragments strewn across the beach. A hard-fought battle, to be sure. Blue fluid hissed where it met saltwater. The air smelled of salt and scorched flesh. Even the small breeze that picked up couldn’t fully eradicate it.

  Vexa knelt down and, with her good arm, pushed the chest open. She had a much easier time with it than I had previously. It gave way with a neat little pop. She reached inside, her brow furrowing.

  “What is it?” Finn asked, giddy and practically hopping in place. “Is it a weapon? Armor? An item?” He sucked in a breath. “Is it a nudie magazine?”

  “Will you shut up?” Vexa said. She refocused, grimacing as she touched… something. “It’s… sticky.”

  Then, slowly, she pulled out a small, gelatinous item. It was green, semi-transparent, and looked wet even in the dry sunlight. Some sort of stringy bits hung from it, attached to a tiny, hand-shaped portion.

  “What in the clouds is that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But it feels disgusting.”

  “I’ll take it!” Finn said immediately.

  Vexa got defensive, pulling it back to her chest. “No. It’s mine.”

  Finn blew a raspberry, but said nothing else.

  “And that was it?” I asked. “That’s all that was in there?”

  She reached back in. “And… some sort of book.”

  She pulled it free.

  The title read: The Bourne Identity.

  “Bourne? What’s that?” Finn asked.

  “It’s a book,” Vexa said, flipping through the pages. The wind lifted a few leaves and sent them whispering beneath her fingers. “And there are no pictures, so it isn’t your kind of book. There are no naked women here.”

  “And a shame at that,” Finn replied, kicking at the sand. “Well, this was a waste.”

  Chimelet, content to let us talk, buzzed happily, doing circles and little flips in the sea air.

  “Big Soft kill, Breeblets live. Big Soft kill, Breeblets live,” it chimed over and over, delighted with the outcome if not the method.

  Then I saw it at the edge of my vision.

  A flickering. It was that place again. The loud place. The place filled with so much noise that I hadn’t known what to do with myself.

  Vexa reached out and took Chimelet gently in her hands. To my surprise, there was a tear in her eye, bright as the very sand we stood on.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said softly, “and the way you made my skin feel.”

  Chimelet leaped forward and rubbed against her cheek, making tiny chime-sounds as it did. “You go-go,” it said. “I stay-stay.”

  I blinked.

  The world of windglass pillars and crystalline surf vanished. In its place stood a gray concrete monument to human achievement.

  And Chimelet was nowhere to be seen.

  Buildings towered above us. Roads split in every direction. Hard edges and windows that flashed with reflected light turned the whole world sharp in a different way than the reef had. The air smelled hot of strange food, machine smoke, perfume, and of way too many people living too close together. Above it all was a sound that never seemed to stop: voices, footsteps, horns, and music from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  People surrounded us now.

  Humans. All human.

  They talked into little devices hooked over their ears. They stared at glowing rectangles in their hands and tapped them with their thumbs. They moved with purpose, hardly looking up or noticing the world around them. That was it; no one seemed to pay attention to anyone else. I was in the middle of a crowd, surrounded on all sides by bodies and noise and motion… and I had never felt more alone.

  “Should we head back to the skiff?” I asked.

  Finn gave me an exasperated sigh. “Pssh, no. We have some time still.”

  “I have something to do,” Vexa said suddenly, then vanished into the crowd before either of us could stop her. One second she was at my side, the next swallowed up by a tide of strangers.

  Finn frowned. “Eh, we’ll deal with that in a bit. Come on, follow me.”

  “What does that mean—”

  Finn grabbed my sleeve and dragged me forward.

  We plunged into the crowd. We dodged, ducked, and weaved between all kinds of people. I was assaulted by smell after smell: flowers so strong they made my nose sting, smoke from sizzling meat, warm bread, sugar, coffee, garbage left too long in heat, and something clean and soapy that reminded me of nothing I had ever known. Lights flashed from signs above the storefronts. Strange words glowed in colors I couldn’t understand. A machine screamed somewhere nearby, and a massive metal machine groaned to a stop at the curb.

  “Ah, there it is,” Finn said, dragging me again.

  I was shoved onto a stool and spun around.

  In front of me stood an old man, sixty years at least, working over a little cooking station built in a small wooden shack at the edge of the street. Steam curled up from boiling pots. One held plain water, another held noodles, and a large flat rectangle of metal radiated heat into the air, shimmering above it.

  “It’s called a grill,” Finn said, spotting my stare.

  “What do you two want?” the man asked, never once looking up from his work.

  I opened my mouth, but Finn answered for me. “Two specials.”

  Then he put down a small piece of paper and slid it over. The paper flickered in my vision, but eventually settled on a form. That, I knew, was some kind of currency, though it looked nothing like any coin or token I’d ever seen back on Skyreach.

  The man took the paper. It disappeared instantly beneath his station. Then he set out two bowls and began to prepare the food with the efficiency of someone who had done the same thing a thousand times and would do it a thousand more.

  “You’re going to love this,” Finn said. “I read about it before. It’s called… ramen. It’s from an old human culture. From a people known as the Japanese.”

  “I… how do you know all of this?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You’ve got to get yourself to the library. It’s adjacent to the captain’s quarters.” He wagged a finger at me. “You need to get yourself learned… as Vexa would say.”

  “And where is Vexa?” I asked.

  Finn suddenly got quiet. “I, uh…” He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t want to spread rumors or anything. Look… Vexa—” He gave an exasperated sigh. “You’ll see soon enough… so let’s just eat the damn food for now, alright?”

  Soon the chef placed two bowls in front of us, along with a pair of wooden sticks for each. The broth smelled rich and savory; the noodles were glossy beneath the steam, with slices of meat and green leaves floating on top.

  I stared at Finn. He put the sticks between his fingers and began picking up noodles with them as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  I tried.

  Failed.

  Tried again.

  Failed again.

  The old man sighed and slid over a silver object with four pointed prongs.

  “No-no-no,” Finn said quickly. “Don’t use that. I read it’s custom to use the sticks.”

  “How can you use them?” I asked, fumbling yet again.

  “I practiced on the ship,” he replied. “You know, in the mess hall, alone… two sticks of my blood and—”

  “You used your own blood?” I asked, then made a gagging noise just to annoy him.

  Finn shoved me and laughed.

  Soon, somehow, I started to get the hang of it. The sticks still felt wrong in my fingers, but less impossible. The old man watched with the slightest curl at the corner of his mouth and pulled the metal fork back toward himself.

  We ate.

  And clouds above, it was good.

  The broth was rich and deep and hot enough to make me sweat. The noodles were soft but springy. The meat nearly melted apart when I bit into it. It was more food than I thought I had ever been given all at once in my life. My stomach stretched in protest, and I had to stop more than once to keep from spilling it all back up. Even so, it tasted so good that I kept wanting another bite.

  Reluctantly, I stopped when the bowl was empty.

  Finn, however, had a second bowl.

  The man’s stomach was insatiable. An empty pit disguised as a human.

  “Are you sure you don’t have one of these Pocket things inside you?” I asked.

  He only smiled and drained the broth from the second bowl, then set it down with obvious satisfaction.

  “Thanks,” he said to the old man, who simply nodded and turned back to his grill.

  “Alright, we should find Vexa and leave—”

  “Not yet,” Finn said. “One more stop, and then we'll find her.”

  I threw up my hands, but the motion and sudden lurch made my overfull stomach ache all over again.

  Soon Finn dragged me into a building.

  It had an odd smell: ink, paper, leather, dust, and old glue. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was almost comforting, though I couldn’t have said why.

  Then I saw it.

  A magnificent sight.

  Books. Shelves of them. Rows and rows and rows stretching farther than I could comprehend, stacked so high I had to tilt my head back. The whole place was full of them—thousands of them. Skyreach had books, yes, but this… this was unimaginable.

  “Cool, eh?” Finn asked.

  I could only nod.

  “Okay, so you’re going to look for—” He snapped his fingers. “Ah, jackpot. See? You’re lucky. Come on.”

  I was whisked away again and brought to a shelf.

  So many books. So many names. So many authors.

  And yet one was… wrong.

  I reached toward it, then pulled back. The air surrounding it seemed just slightly off, as if heat shimmered where no heat should’ve been.

  “You see it, huh?” Finn asked. “It’s an anomaly. Something that isn’t supposed to be here.”

  “And… what do we do about it?”

  “Well, we aren’t supposed to be here either. So, while normal items can’t come with us, these anomalies can. Go on. Take it.”

  I reached out and grabbed it.

  Even holding it, I could feel it changing. Not in large ways, nothing dramatic, but the texture shifted slightly beneath my fingers. The weight altered from one heartbeat to the next. The title changed by a letter, then changed back. It felt like I was holding onto a lingering dream, and I had to keep grasping back out for it, or it would be lost forever.

  “Its fate isn’t set in stone yet,” Finn said. “Not until we leave the mist. So help me look for some more.”

  Finn and I spent a good half hour hunting anomalies.

  They were all books, at least at first glance, though none of them truly seemed to hold the shape they claimed. One’s cover felt like bark, then leather, then smooth glass. Another had pages that seemed too few until you opened it, at which point there were too many. One title refused to stay still long enough to read.

  Finn stuffed each one into the Pocket.

  At last he sighed and scratched his head. “Alright. I suppose it’s about that time. Let’s find Vexa.”

  “Find Vexa?” I asked, looking around at the hundreds of people and dozens of buildings. “How in the clouds are we going to do that?”

  Finn’s face lost all its normal jovial brightness. “I know exactly where she is,” he said sadly. “Come on. Follow me.”

  He was far less enthusiastic now, and that unsettled me more than anything.

  We went down a few streets whose names I didn’t catch, through more crowds, past neon signs and storefront glass and people who never once glanced our way. Eventually, we stopped before a building with a simple sign over the door: Bar.

  Finn pushed open the swinging door.

  The inside was dim, warm, and smelled strongly of stale alcohol and polished wood. Music drifted through the place from hidden speakers; nothing like the island’s chiming or even the ship’s songs compared. This was smooth, low, and sad. People spoke quietly around us, hunched over glasses, faces tired from a hard-lived life.

  There Vexa sat, swaying slightly on a barstool.

  Finn took a seat on one side of her.

  I took the other one.

  “Vexa,” I asked. “You alright—”

  She tipped backward right off the stool and hit the floor on her back.

  Then she started giggling to herself.

  There was a woman behind the bar, black-haired, cleaning a glass with a white cloth. “Are you two her friends?” she asked.

  “Eh, yeah…” Finn replied. “Don’t worry, we got her. Happens all the time.”

  The woman nodded as if that explained everything. She turned for a moment, came back, and slid a paper rectangle across the bar. “Here,” she said. “Alcoholics Anonymous. AA. There are a few local meetings. If you’re really her friends, you’d get her some help.”

  Finn nodded and pocketed the note. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Then he looked at me. “Alright, Torren, usually I need to do this myself, so it’ll be easy this time.”

  “This has happened before?” I asked. “How many times?”

  Finn leaned down toward Vexa. “I don’t know. Vexa, how many times have I brought you back to the skiff blackout drunk?”

  “iM nOt DwUnk,” she protested. Then she reached up and tapped Finn’s nose. “Boop.”

  I hopped off the stool and helped her stand. She leaned against me as if she’d forgotten how balance worked. Then, before either of us could stop her, she turned back, grabbed the glass of amber liquid still sitting on the bar, and tossed it down.

  “Now hold on—” the bartender began.

  Too late.

  Vexa slammed the empty glass down.

  It cracked. Not the glass; that shattered. The table itself.

  “Hey, you’ll pay for that—”

  “Take it,” Finn said, sliding over more paper currency. For a moment, it looked strange to me. Different. The color shifted, the faces on it not quite holding still. Then I blinked, and it looked normal again: pictures of stern old men and numbers printed in the corners.

  The bartender grumbled until she saw how much he had given her, then she smiled. “Have a pleasant day,” she said, her eyes wide with greed.

  Finn and I got Vexa to the door between us. Just before we stepped back outside, she turned to me and asked, “Are we killers? Murderers?”

  “Killers?” I repeated, and suddenly I realized that I was exactly that. A killer. More quietly, I asked, “Why do you ask?”

  “Poor Chimelet. Poor Breeblets.” Her eyes were wet now, unfocused and full at once. “Where do they go when the island disappears? Do they die? Did we… kill them?”

  “And there you go again,” Finn said. “You’ve got to stop putting it on yourself. The islands will poof with us there or not.”

  “And we’ll all die eventually too,” Vexa replied. “But if someone kills us before our time, they are a killer, right?”

  “Ugh… you always go and make my head hurt when you get like this. Just… stop talking and let’s get to the skiff.”

  It took us a long time.

  Three times we had to stop and let Vexa vomit what little remained in her system into gutters or trash bins, or once, unfortunately, onto a flower bed. Eventually she sobered enough to walk mostly on her own. People stared at us on the street as if we were the anomalies.

  Well. We were.

  Still, nobody tried to stop us.

  And then there was Finn. The man spotted an anomaly in the window of a store, darted inside, and came back soon after with that satisfied look he got whenever he had stolen something without technically stealing it. Into the Pocket it went.

  “It’s full now,” he said.

  I shrugged. How could a space made of nothing become full? How could it be anything other than empty?

  Vexa had gone quiet. Unusually so.

  We reached the skiff at last. It hovered where it always did. Finn and I helped Vexa’s unsteady self into it. Finn climbed in next, and with the J1s I casually hopped in myself.

  Finn pulled three times on the rope.

  We began to ascend.

  Slowly, the people disappeared beneath us. Then the buildings. Then the city itself became only shapes and lines. And finally, the mist crept in, erasing everything from view.

  Vexa stared down as the white rolled around us and began to weep. “Are we really doing what’s right?” she asked.

  I had no idea what to say.