“Maybe EMT is who you were yesterday,” I said. “And Survivor is who you get to be from now on. Assuming we don't all die in the next few days, of course.”

  Emma had that glazed look, like she was reading words only she could see.

  I looked back at my own words. I’d gotten used to the little numbers in the corner of my vision, counting down scenario time and participants. The fitness rings—okay, health and experience rings—didn’t bother me much anymore either.

  But it might help if I could make the rest of the information display in a way that worked for me. Bad enough having a user interface forcibly inserted into your brain without having it be a bad user interface.

  For the next several minutes, I mentally dragged and dropped information around my vision, experimenting with the options in the System’s settings. The only thing I avoided were the emotional tone sliders. I’d figure those out later, when I decided how I really felt about the creepy Santa Claus who gave my dog her favorite toys. My feelings were currently mixed, but maybe they always would be.

  Eventually, I settled on a layout that looked a lot like my phone’s widgets screen. The familiarity was oddly comforting. The messages weren’t creepy Santa Claus beaming thoughts into my brain, just my calendar reminders, now separated and color-coded into quests, experience points, updates, and notifications. My status was reshaped into a fitness tracker, with tap-to-expand icons for attributes, affiliations, abilities, companions, skills, and traits.

  Once I had it all arranged to my satisfaction, I closed all of it. I could open it as needed, but now it would float pop-up messages into my view as they happened, then disappear them, while saving everything for later review in the notifications archive. It would tell me when I lost hit points, gained experience, picked up loot, or triggered an ability.

  Or when Zelda did.

  The companions pane had been my favorite discovery along the way. It was basically Zelda’s status screen. With the sunglasses, I’d been able to identify her level, class, and her bond with me, but other details had been restricted. Here, though, I could see her full status.

  Her attributes were Toughness, Instinct, and Spirit. Her class of Loyal Heart gave her +1 to Toughness and Instinct, and +2 to Spirit. At Level 4, she had Toughness of 7, Instinct of 6, and Spirit of 13.

  Her Spirit gave her a trait.

  Spirit (10+)—Heart Unleashed

  Once per day, you may unleash the full strength of your heart, doubling your Spirit stat. All abilities that scale with Spirit are enhanced accordingly.

  Her first ability made me smile.

  Passive: Emotional Support for the Win—Grant +1 Resilience to any ally you lick, kiss, or snuggle. Do the same to your soul-bonded companion for double the effect. Bonus increases with level, while duration scales with Spirit.

  So fitting.

  But her second ability made me pause.

  Active: Never Say Die—Once per day, when you or someone you love is within thirty seconds of death, you reject the possibility, and restore the dying to full health.

  “Hey, Jack,” I said, glancing up from my invisible interface to find both Jack and Emma absorbed in their own floating text. “Can I read you something confusing so you can tell me what you think it means?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I read him the description.

  His jaw dropped. “Wow. That’s a Revive.”

  “So it works after you’re dead?”

  “If it’s within thirty seconds of when you died, yeah.”

  “But how is she supposed to use it if she’s already dead? How does that make sense? You can’t do anything when you’re dead. That’s the definition of death. Dead. No longer active in the world.”

  I wasn’t opposed to the idea. Honestly, I was delighted. How cool was it that my dog could come back to life if she died? And not as a zombie.

  Very cool, that’s the answer. Extremely cool. But also so completely outside my understanding of how reality worked that my world was rocking on its foundations.

  “Magic,” Jack responded solemnly, but with a laugh in his voice. “It’s magic. Just embrace it.”

  “I’m totally embracing it,” Emma said, just as she lit up with an otherworldly glow. She held her hands out and laughed with delight. A blue shimmering haze covered them before extending over her entire body. “Defensive Shields.”

  “You took Survivor?” Jack poked at her hand, then drew his finger back hastily when it sparked with light.

  “I did,” Emma confirmed. “Improved my maps with Danger Sense, picked up the shield and a speed boost. Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with my attribute points.”

  “If you make it to ten points in a stat, you’ll get a trait,” I said. “Zelda’s got one called Heart Unleashed, which boosts her Spirit and improves the ability she has that uses Spirit.”

  “Ooh, that’s good to know.” Emma went back to reading her invisible text.

  Jack made a low noise of frustration. “I need to kill some goblins.”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him. Emma and I had both leveled up recently enough that sleep seemed irrelevant. Jack didn’t have the leveling up energy boost, but he’d been slowly regenerating within the sanctuary. In the firelight, his face didn’t even look scarred from the burns that had seemed likely to kill him a few hours ago.

  “Almost perfect,” he replied. “But really ready to get some XP.”

  “Tired?”

  “I should be, but I’m not.” He shrugged. “Too much adrenaline, maybe. I want to check out the stronghold, figure out a strategy, make plans. I know it’s dark, but I feel like I’m wasting time.”

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  “Lots of hours left.” I looked through the roses at the dark night sky. The fire was burning low, but it was full dark outside our cozy little nest, and tromping around in the darkness searching for goblins didn’t appeal to me. Jack had only seen the level one type, so maybe he was a little overconfident? Without my magic shovel, I would have been dead.

  “Unless number four is out there killing goblins right now. Maybe the goblins are all asleep and they’re stealthing their way to the Rift Core as we speak.”

  “Do you suppose the scenario ends when someone gets it?” I asked.

  I wanted to go home. I needed to make sure Riley and Bear were okay.

  But… my dog could bring herself back to life after she died. And not life as an aging sixteen-year-old with arthritis. Life as a bouncing, energetic, goblin-killing menace.

  If she leveled up again, to Level 5, would she get to evolve her class? Would she get to pick more abilities? Maybe her Never Say Die ability would improve, so instead of thirty seconds of life after death, she could have a minute. Or five.

  Or maybe it would expand, so the being she revived didn’t have to be someone she loved. I wasn’t worried about myself. People who think dogs are incapable of love probably need help defining love.

  But… well, I wasn’t quite sure Zelda loved Bear. Reluctant tolerance, yes. Love? Maybe.

  And, of course, there were Emma and Jack, too, but I was assuming they were short-term acquaintances, at best. Presumably at the end of the scenario, Emma would be dropped back in New Jersey and Jack in North Carolina, and we’d be unlikely to see them ever again.

  Point is, while I wasn’t ecstatic about killing goblins, I kinda liked the magic. I touched one of the nearby roses, a white one with petals edged in yellow. It murmured at me. Not a warning, but a hint of unease.

  Zelda lifted her head, pricking her ears in the direction from which the goblins came.

  I checked my countdown timer. 60:28. We’d all spent some time looking at our status sheets, but it was still a while before our next goblin was due.

  “Um, guys?” Emma stood, looking out into the darkness. “I think we might need to go.”

  “Go where?” Jack jumped to his feet, too, sounding pleased at the idea.

  “Away,” she responded grimly.

  “Away from our flower dome?” I stood more slowly than the two of them. It was dark out there. Okay, it was a weird, not-very-realistic forest, but even so, wandering around in the dark sounded like a fine way to sprain an ankle.

  “Something’s coming,” she said. “It’s a dark red dot on my map, moving slowly. I think that’s the danger sense kicking in.”

  “A goblin? It’s a little early for the usual dude.” For some reason, I’d decided the goblin was just the same goblin, reincarnating every hour on the quarter hour. I wasn’t sure why that thought comforted me.

  Was it really better to kill the same shrieking green thing over and over, rather than a bunch of individual shrieking green things? The last four deaths alone had included being shaken like a dog toy, eating a fireball, getting smashed with a shovel, and breaking its neck from falling into a pit. If one goblin had experienced all that? Well, it was probably developing some PTSD of its own.

  “No, I think it’s that lizard.” Emma folded her hands together, fingers interlaced, squeezing them convulsively like a nervous public speaker.

  The lizard. Right. The big acid-spitting, Komodo dragon-like lizard that Emma had seen kill an old man earlier in the day. (Had it eaten him? Did I really want to know?)

  “You think we can take it?” Jack asked, bouncing on his toes a little.

  “What? No!” Emma glared at him. “Are you insane? I told you, we couldn’t even scratch it. It’s tough. Like, seriously tough.”

  “Yeah, but you’re higher level now.” Jack sounded so reasonable. Like an idiot, but a very reasonable idiot.

  Zelda was on her feet now, staring toward the pit, and her hackles had risen, just a little, the white fur along her spine changing its rough pattern.

  Okay, Zelda agreed it was not a goblin. She’d dropped her squeaker ball next to the fire, and I bent down and scooped it up. While I was at it, I grabbed my water bottle, and the beef jerky, and then the big bone she’d gotten earlier in the day, dropping them into my K9 companion pouch.

  “What is that?” Emma asked, staring at it, momentarily distracted from her worries about the lizard. “How did you just stick that bone into a treat pouch that size?”

  I tapped it. “Goblin loot. And I am ever so sad that it doesn’t leave the scenario with me. Best treat bag on the planet. Or, you know, in the multiverse, if that’s what we’re talking these days.”

  “That’s really cool. We just got a lot of junk, mostly. Although I did get a bow and some arrows after I picked my class.”

  “Where is it now?” Jack asked.

  Emma’s shrug looked half-guilty, half-contrite. “Back where we were camping, I guess. I didn’t stop to grab it when I ran.”

  “Maybe we should try to find it?” I suggested, picking up my shovel.

  I held it blade upright, like some weird parody of that famous painting of the farmer and his daughter. I guess he was holding a pitchfork, not a shovel, but you get the idea.

  (Was it meant to be some kind of satanic thing, that pitchfork? And yeah, my mind wandered to weird places when I was worried about giant lizards attacking. I really ought to check my disassociation skill stat—I bet it was high.)

  “We should at least see how tough that lizard is,” Jack said.

  “What part of spits acid is confusing to you?” Emma snapped. Her eyes flicked up and to the left, looking at her interface. “It’s getting closer. It’s not fast, but I don’t want to be here when it gets here.”

  Zelda made a little noise, half growl, half woof. She tensed, dropping closer to the ground, poised to move. Not, of course, to run away, because Zelda was a Jack Russell terrier and running away was not in her DNA.

  “This might be too much for us, Z. No jumping at it, okay?” My hand tightened around the shovel handle.

  She ignored me, fully focused on whatever was coming.

  “Alligator, love,” I said, simplifying matters for her dog brain. “We do not attack gators.”

  Some of the tension left her body, and she glanced over at me, ears tilting in my direction. Sure about that?

  “Close enough.” I exhaled.

  My heart was racing, but I didn’t have Emma’s convenient little map with a red dot on it. I didn’t have Zelda’s sense of smell. I didn’t have the roses’ perception, however that worked. Not that I didn’t believe all their warning signs, but given that I couldn’t see, smell, or sense a threat, I was feeling a little stupid standing there on high alert.

  And then I heard it.

  I stopped feeling stupid.

  It wasn’t just a loud rustling in the brush. That’s a normal evening sound, one that can mean a lot of things, though raccoon is the safe bet in my neighborhood. But it was breathing. Wheezing, with a whistling, high-pitched whine that made my skin crawl.

  “Maybe—” Jack started.

  “We should run?” Emma interrupted him, her own voice higher-pitched than before. “That sounds like a great idea, Jack. Let’s do it.”

  “No,” he objected. “I was gonna say, maybe you should put your sunglasses on, Olivia.”

  “Sunglasses? It’s the middle of the night! And if you think a little eye protection is going to—” Somehow Emma’s whisper still sounded like a scream.

  “Oh, good idea.” It was my turn to interrupt. I turned up my palm and thought, sunglasses, and they popped into existence.

  “No, they’ll let her see what we’re dealing with,” Jack told Emma. “They’ve got Identify.”

  I fumbled the sunglasses into place. The familiar labels started appearing all around me: [Oak Tree–Crafting Component: Woodworking], multiplied by dozens, of course; [Wild Sanctuary] over my roses; [Canine Loyal Heart–Level 4] over Z.

  And in the distance, floating in the darkness above the still-unseen menace: [Acid-Spitting Stalker–Level ???].

  “So, Jack,” I said, swallowing and licking my suddenly dry lips. “How many question marks does it have to have before we decide that staying is a bad idea?”