Homegrown System

By the time they finally reached the warehouse where all the extra equipment was kept, Alice's hair was plastered to her face with sweat. Her borrowed shirt had a rip on the side, and her jeans had a couple of holes at the knees. The few cuts she had received were cleaned up, and luckily, she had avoided her hair being singed, if just barely. The second-degree burn she had on her left hand was healing but was taking a while and hurt whenever she tried to grab anything with it.

Titus looked relatively normal. He had a slight bit of dirt on the cuffs of his pants but otherwise looked unbothered. Alice felt like she was about to collapse from exhaustion, but still, she grinned with satisfaction as she hit level six right before they arrived.

She jogged the rest of the way from the monster she had just finished off. Titus hopped out and pulled the cart up so that the little bed they had to place everything on was up against the loading bay.

"We did it," she said, pumping her fist. "Level six!"

"Hey, congrats," Titus said as he pulled the keys out, and the incessant beeping from backing up the cart stopped. "Speed and power?" he asked.

She nodded. "Speed and power."

They had talked a little bit about it, and she had decided that she could always be faster. It would always be better when it came to both combat and magic. Getting her power up to an average of five would be extremely beneficial, as hitting things hard enough was a real problem for her. If Titus's theory about the magic and physical stats held true, that might be less of a case if she started getting some sort of magic attack, but even then, hitting harder with more power would probably be a good thing.

She felt a noticeable increase in her speed as she assigned the points and a decent amount of fatigue left her tired limbs. It seemed that the power stat really did govern her stamina slightly. Feeling a little better, she stretched, feeling like she had a couple of days of recovery after a good workout, and felt strong again.

"Ooh, that's a rush," Alice said.

Titus replied, "Yeah, it makes me think I wasted all those years working out."

Alice looked over at him as he was flexing his biceps in a kind of silly pose. "It doesn't look like it. Have you been getting larger since you've been adding points into power?"

Titus shook his head. "I don't think so. I haven't really noticed many physical appearance changes, but I do seem stronger."

"Hmm. I wonder if you want to get jacked now. Is the only way, like, working out?" She pondered.

"Hey, the only way to get jacked always has been working out," Titus said. "Even roids require working out.”

“It's a little disappointing that I won't be able to tone my body up by just adding points into power," she said.

Titus looked her up and down. "Yeah. If you keep living like this, in a month or two, any bit of baby fat you might have will be gone."

She gave him a mock glare but had to agree. Working on the computer all the time hadn’t given her much of a chance to thin up. If they kept running around and fighting like this all the time, she wouldn't need the stats to make her look more athletic. She probably would be more athletic, and the stats would just let her do those activities more easily.

"Come on, let's get things loaded up," she said.

Titus picked the lock on the door, since they had forgotten to get the actual key ring for it. At least, the golf cart keys didn't have the correct key on them. Alice grumbled as he did, "I still can't believe nothing happened when you hit level ten. I was expecting, I don't know, a class or some sort of achievement or something."

Titus shrugged. "Well, I've only been getting stuff at odd numbers—three, five, seven."

"Well, you didn't get anything at nine," Alice pointed out.

"So maybe it's prime numbers?" Titus asked.

Alice shook her head. "No. You would have gotten something at two if prime numbers were important."

"Well, I guess we'll have to see what happens when I hit eleven, but it could be odd primes," Titus suggested.

"Yeah. Maybe. Still, it seems kind of weird. But if it's eleven, then it'll be thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three."

"Wow. Level twenty-three seems a long way off." Titus commented as he tilted his head to hear the lock better.

"Well, if something happens at eleven and thirteen, I think we can probably assume odd primes," Alice said as Titus cracked the door open."You are fast at that. Really fast. I've seen the key before. That's not like a three-pin key,"

Titus gave her a wink, but he didn't say anything as he tucked the tools he'd been using into his pouch. After a second, he opened the door and walked through. "It's just a skill you pick up after some time."

"I don't believe you," Alice said but let the matter drop as they walked inside.

The power to the building was still on, so they flicked on the lights. It didn't take them long to locate the extra cables that she needed, along with a couple of interfaces. The place was blessedly free of monsters. A few minutes later, they had everything loaded up on the cart, and they were heading back.

Fortunately, it seemed like the monsters were mostly territorial and didn't move to help each other in fights when there was a commotion. Also, things hadn't moved back into their path after they had cleared it, so the way back was relatively smooth, only having to stop once for Alice to finish off a monster. She had stopped trying to complain about it and came to accept Titus's reasoning that levels were going to be important.

Even if she did somehow manage to turn off the System, perhaps she'd be able to keep all this strength and speed. She was pretty sure she could nearly double her typing speed with her increased control and finger dexterity, which would be a huge boon.

Titus, though, was getting to the point of ridiculousness. He had been putting most of his points into speed and power, with a balanced allocation in control. But upon passing ten in each of them, it was starting to become a little trippy watching him move, almost like he was a weird mix between a sprinter and a ballet dancer, but turned up to eleven. He said he felt great, but Alice was thinking he was clearly veering into the inhuman category.

***

Something was wrong. Alice realized it when they rounded the bend, and the supercomputer center came into sight. On the roof, she could see a few of the Thunder Sparrows, a small blue charge flickering between them. They hadn't been outside when they first arrived, and there was an odd glow coming from the tinted windows and a strange smell in the air.

"Fuck!" Titus yelled. The cart came to a screeching halt, and he leaped out, running for the door before it had even stopped completely, leaving all the materials they had gathered in the back. Only then did Alice recognize the acrid scent of burning rubber.

She followed him as fast as she could but was still left behind as Titus busted through the broken door and into the building. Alice stopped short as she got to the server room and saw the black smoke curling toward the ceiling.

Titus grabbed one of the fire extinguishers and rushed over to where the smoke was coming from. Alice put her head in her hands and suppressed the urge to scream. There were birds flitting around again—not electrical birds, but birds made of flame, like what you'd expect a Phoenix to be. They were nesting in the cables, which were melting, and the fire was spreading to the electronics. The indicator lights were all off.

Fuck. Alice almost wanted to cry.

Titus sprayed at the nest with a fire extinguisher, and the birds swarmed up and out like the Thunder Sparrows had done. But this time, they were made of fire, and she could feel the heat rushing toward her.

"We gotta run," Titus said as he raced past her and grabbed her elbow, dragging her along behind. Alice felt flames licking her back and could smell her hair burning. Even as she reached back to swat, she felt her burned hand connect with something solid and a brief flare of pain, like she had just grabbed a burning marshmallow off the stick and flung it away. Not caring about the pain, she tossed the bird aside.

Titus yanked her out into the corridor. Seconds later, they were outside, and several birds streamed after them. Once they were twenty paces away from the building, the birds screeched, smoke and flames billowing out of their small beaks as they wheeled around and settled in the entrance, carefully watching the intruders.

Alice patted out her hair, but the stench of burning keratin followed. What do we do? Alice thought. The whole plan was to track the System from here. How am I supposed to turn it off? How do I access it? How do I know where it went?

Titus moved behind her, watching carefully as he circled, making sure nothing attacked as he herded her towards the cart. She was walking without purpose, not really paying attention to her surroundings as she stumbled towards the cart. Titus pushed her into the seat gently as she sat, staring off at the supercomputer center that now had flames licking its walls.

"We're lucky to get away," he said. "Those were level twenty-five. Each one, not just the flock."

Alice ignored him. She simply sat and watched as any hope she had of turning the System off, of correcting her mistake, of fixing this fucking mess, burned down in front of her. It was all she could do not to burst into tears.