Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

We were in the field now. The van was deathly quiet, pumping AC and struggling engine drowning out most noise. None of the witty banter, or nervous tittering that pervaded my first team. Even Astria was mostly silent, humming an atonal repetitive melody that was barely audible even with enhanced hearing.

I glanced in the rear-view from my seat in the passenger side.

Sae and Max sat in the two pilot seats in the center row. Max’s face was scrunched up, fingers tapping quietly on his knee while he stared at his UI, waiting for his evaluation ability to come off cooldown. Beside him, Sae sat cross-legged, her chitinous ankles hanging off either side of the worn fabric of the seat, her hands relaxed and palms upward, eyes closed. Behind them, the twins sat on either size of a bench seat sized for three, if the person sitting in the center was a hobbit.

The way they were sitting seemed off. Not their body language or mannerisms exactly, but that there was a space between them at all. They’d always been closely knit. Almost clingy. This was anything but. Astria’s legs were angled towards the center of the isle, as if she wanted to close the gap. Astrid’s, comparatively, were pressed against the door.

The saying had been repeated so much that it was almost trite, but that didn’t stop it from being true. A person’s legs and feet generally pointed in the direction they wanted to go.

Which, for Astrid, was out the fucking door.

Again, I was tempted to ask Sae about it. And again, I resisted. Whether it was prayer, or meditation, or silently and maliciously manifesting harm upon the people who wronged her, I’d seen her do this often enough to understand that it was her version of a high-performing athlete’s pre-game ritual.

She of all people would have told me if something was seriously wrong.

More realistically, Astrid was probably tired. The new dawn of recovery and health potions meant, barring a severe injury, we could be back on our feet the day after a mission, and ready to go by evening. But they did nothing for the mind.

Fatigue was inevitable.

For the moment, I dropped it, giving them one last look before I rested my head back against the seat. An unfamiliar sense of pride washed over me. They were a good team. We’d been through a hell of a lot of shit together in a relatively short period of time. Most of them had doubled their levels since they started, putting them miles ahead of the pack. They weren’t cheery or high-energy—the nature and stress of the work didn’t allow for that—but they were effective. And there were no egos to get in the way, no irritating edge cases that would inevitably spin out of control.

Which left me with conflicting emotions. Waging war on Sunny’s sector of the Order was tireless, sometimes terrifying work. People in his orbit seemed to have a propensity for pulling the most hair-raising bullshit out of their ass. That was the part I was more than happy to finally put to bed. It meant I could stop playing nightmare batman and go back to fighting monsters for a change.

Put all my efforts into helping Nick and company climb the tower.

It was possible that some or even all of them would stick around. Sae obviously would, but Gemini and Max I wasn’t so sure of. If they did, I intended to give them smaller assignments adjacent to what Nick and I were doing in the Tower. Keep them active, and continue pushing leveling opportunities their way.

I closed the three-way chat before my summon and scout inevitably started sniping at each other.

A bit of carpet caught the edge of my boot as I shifted in my seat, and as I looked down to smooth it, I noticed debris, the usual crumbs that adorned a minivan floor. It wouldn’t have stood out to me at all if the middle wasn’t immaculate.

He vacuumed.

“Nice ride,” I said, keeping it casual.

Greg jumped, stealing glances, probably looking for sarcasm. When he found none, he smiled widely for the first time since he picked us up. “You think?”

“Sure. Plenty of seats, plenty of space, milage that doesn’t want to make you gouge your eyes out. What’s not to like?”

“Ain’t had a car for a long time. Long, long time. With all the tooth and claw going around, figured I’d invest. Had options, you know. Plenty of ‘em. People throwin’ around money like it grows on trees, System giving out money for pattin’ your own ass. With all the green, could have bought something fancier from mini-miss-bezos but, I don’t know. Probably silliness.”

There was a lot of truth to that. The system would kill you in a second and laugh about it, but it never stopped seeding opportunity. Even for civilians.

Greg’s car was a pre-system navy blue dodge minivan, at least ten years old.

I weighed the wisdom of continuing this line of questioning, weighed the chances of me giving myself away, then decided it couldn’t hurt. I wanted to know how he’d been holding up. Greg was a regular presence in my old region, long before it had that designation. And more to the point he seemed nervous. “I mean it’s practical. But why’d you pick this specifically?”

“Silliness. Like I said.” Greg’s expression turned nostalgic. “But if you really want to know, I was hoofing it in uptown. Moving quick, cause the fuzz around there gets real staticky if you make the economical choice of pushing your shit around in a basket. So I’m looking out, head on a swivel. Valet line for Fyre is already around the block. Audi, three-hundy, Audi, Range Rover, Audi, Lambo… you get it.”

“Bunch of rich bastards queueing up to pay two-hundred bucks a plate.”

Greg laughed. “Yeah, you get it.” He paused. “You local?”

“Transplant.” I lied.

“But you been here long enough to get a feel for the place.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, at the front of the line—and despite me desperately needing to get up out of there—is this dusty minivan.” Greg squinted, gesturing with one hand. “And this bougie-ass, America’s-Next-Top-Model-ass, woman gets her and her Prada bag out the car. Hands her keys to the skinny valet, ignores the way he’s wrinkling his nose, and struts inside. It stuck in my head a little.”

“Because of the dichotomy.” I filled in.

“Crazy. Weird thing was though, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It was old, but it wasn’t a beater. Plenty of trunk space and seats for whatever she might need them for. But she could have parked that thing packed full of one-hundred-dollar bills in the middle of stop-six and nobody woulda looked at it twice. Figure even though I finally got some value to my name, if I go too flashy, someone’ll just find a way to take it away from me. This though?” He smacked the dashboard. “If it was good enough for her high-society tomfoolery, it’s good enough for me.”

It was a good story. But I’d spent enough time talking to Greg without the mask to know he was leading up to something. I let him simmer, his eyes glued to the road.

He spoke without looking at me. “Yall a quiet group. Serious.”

“Tired, more than anything. It was a busy day.”

Greg continued as if he hadn’t heard me, exiting the freeway. “The Galleria boys are alright. We go back a ways. Crashed with some of em for a few months, had a little spot under I-45. Nothing too big. Few scuffles in the night but we kept it down. And kept a thumb on the loud ones so they didn’t call down hell.”

“Sounds nice. Communal.” A memory sparked, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Greg shook his head. “Yeah… but hell has a way of coming, whether you call or not. City came in, hosed us down, took our shit and threw it away. Most of us rabbited before it got bad. Then the boys in blue beat the ever-loving piss out of the ones who didn’t.”

I winced. The over-funded cleanup was what I was remembering. At least one person died.

“You think they’ll see us as a threat?” I asked.

“Are you a threat?” Greg asked, his eyes flicking towards me.

“No.” I repeated the previous line. “We’re here for a bounty, nothing more. Guy’s a sick bastard. And the Galleria settlement will be safer once he’s gone.”

Greg’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “If any of ‘em catch a stray, they’ll blame me.”

“That won’t happen.” I’d make sure of it. If we did this right, Sunny wouldn’t know what hit him.

Gradually, the roads began to fracture, flecked with detritus and potholes. We drove slower, partially to give Azure more time to look for threats in the ruined streets and bombed-out buildings, partially because Greg didn’t want to ruin his ride. Once it came into view, the Galleria was surrounded by a wall that looked to be made of every material in existence. An amalgam of metal, plywood, and dirt, topped with a chain iron-fence topped with spiraling barbwire that ran the length of the top. Despite the messy aesthetic, it must have been a massive undertaking.

Greg came to a stop at an enormous sliding fence on what used to be the Galleria’s southernmost exit. A spotter on a rickety looking platform hollered behind him, and after a few tense seconds, the gate slid open.

“Any last words of advice?” I asked Greg, suddenly feeling out of my depth.

“Don’t go barefoot.” Greg half-smiled. Then his expression grew serious. “I guess, just remember, this is the most a lot of these folks have ever had. If you treat them well, they’ll remember. But in our heads, we’re still waiting for the hoses. If you take from them? They won’t ever forget it.”

Greg accelerated, maneuvering the minivan inside slowly, as the gates slid shut behind us.