The others stirred awake, Nyla had taken the last watch, and I the first. Despite their dislike of me, the soldiers all agreed that having one of the strongest fighters guarding us at all times was the best course of action. I spent the night alone, distanced from the others at my watch. I never got a chance to speak to them before they huddled together in a corner on the other side of the room.

  We took refuge in an abandoned tea shop. The store was small enough that everyone could see each other at all times. And the back wasn’t very large. Nyla only needed to peer inside to see that it was empty.

  There wasn’t any food left on the shelves, no tea, no coffee. What little remained did so because the packaging had broken when people raided the store before evacuation. Humanity was a fragile thing. It only took a disaster for the cracks to show.

  The store showed what a little fracturing could make good people do. I snorted and sat up in my corner.

  Nyla had been awake for hours, but her hair was comically pointing to all sides like a pine cone. She had the worst case of bed head I’d ever seen. The sleep still showed on her face as she buttoned up her coat with a yawn. And she hadn’t even been sleeping, I hoped.

  “Daryl,” she mumbled. “Coffee, breakfast, now.”

  The large man took action straight away. Like a trained dog. It took all I had not to sneer at him. It wasn't taking orders that I found funny, he was a soldier after all, and Nyla was his superior. It was the fact that he always kept that chip on his shoulder when dealing with others. He came from a nice family, with connections in the upper echelons of COBA, important enough that the other soldiers looked to him for advice when Nyla wasn’t around. He was the de-facto vice captain of the squad. But when Nyla called he came running obediently, even going so far as to help tie her pony tail.

  I packed up what little I didn’t keep on me. Nyla had been kind enough to lend me a sleeping bag before we departed. The damn thing wasn’t easy to roll back up, but it kept me warm and the ground much less hard. Still, I missed the comfort of a bed already. I rubbed my back and sat down with the others around the portable stoves the soldiers brought. Water boiled inside lightweight pans. They looked at me with wary expressions but didn’t protest my presence.

  Very few still held a favorable opinion of me. Among them, Quinn stood out like a sore thumb. The other soldiers pretended they didn’t see as she handed me a bag of freeze dried rations. I popped the mouth of the bag open. She poured it half full with the boiling water and instructed me to zip it shut after she finished.

  We sat in silence, waiting as the water heated the food. Then as if with magic, the dried flakes of sustenance turned into meals. I stared at the majesty of it, awed by the power of technology. If the Layered empire had stuff like this then our stay might even have been kind of decent.

  “Today we leave the city,” Nyla mumbled with a mouth half full. “We won’t be stopping for lunch so grab a bar and keep yourselves hydrated. It’s going to be a real scorcher of a day. We stop for nothing but the necessary. Everybody got that?”

  The group grumbled in agreement and went about their days. I had the luxury of not needing to do much. My role in the squad was to fight, to protect the ones who were too weak to protect themselves. The whispered soldiers on the other hand had all kinds of chores to do. Some packed the stoves, others cleared the store of any signs we might have left behind. Quinn took a few others to scout out the rest of the mall, looking for supplies and potential threats.

  Daryl stayed close to Nyla and acted as her right hand man. Whenever he got a second to spare he glared daggers at me.

  The professor cleared his throat at my side, I turned to him, letting Daryl stare at the back of my head. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Quite the show yesterday,” he said and chuckled.

  “Yeah, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  The assistant nervously fiddled with a button that was beginning to come loose on his shirt sleeve.

  “It’s alright,” he said with a sigh. “I understand what you lived through must have been tough, not only in the Forgotten lands.”

  He didn’t understand, he probably couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  I smiled. “Thanks. It’s been hard to get used to the safety back home.”

  “Safety?” He chuckled. “I’d hardly call this place safe.”

  “Well, comparatively safe.”

  “You did good against the fangs yesterday. Yet you said you fought mostly humanoids on the other side.”

  “Yup. Only thing not really human was the Slitherstitch, and even she had the upper body of one.”

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  “She?” he noted.

  I patted down my sides and counted my ammunition. “Ilya the beautiful. Her tale is quite ironic, really. She was so beautiful that she felt shunned. Only the Outsider’s whispers treated her like she was human. She let his corruption consume her, all for companionship.”

  The professor’s eyes sparkled. “How intriguing! Where did you get this information?”

  I looked around to see if anyone else was watching. “Can you keep a secret?”

  He nodded and shifted closer, the assistant leaned in behind him.

  I tapped my face, and let magic flow into it. The mask writhed like worms crawling across my face. My second skin peeled below the eyes, revealing the dark material of the leathery mask and its sewn shut mouth.

  The professor and his assistant recoiled with a yelp. I undid the change before anyone else had the chance to see.

  “Cool, huh?” I asked and chuckled.

  The assistant nodded warily. The professor wasn’t as easily won over with the macabre.

  “What in God’s name was that?” he asked, his tone hushed but sharp.

  “A trophy from the Slitherstitch. It contains a part of her legacy, and now mine.” I stroked my face with a finger and felt my thoughts grow distant. In more ways than one I could see myself in the story of Ilya. Surrounded by others but still alone. I even had a demon of my own whispering in my ear, although a somewhat more likeable demon.

  “Can you remove it?” The assistant asked.

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. No reason in trying when I can hide it. It’s as much part of me now as my hands," I said and waved the blackened hand in front of them.

  “I was meaning to ask about that...” The professor muttered and stroked his stubble. “Part of your blessing, yes?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t they tell you it’s rude to ask?”

  “They did.”

  His forwardness made me chuckle. I didn’t much care to hide it, it was too obvious for that. “It is. Helps me interact with magic.” I plucked a thread from the veil and held it up to him.

  Both of their mouths fell open. The professor clawed at his assistant and muttered, “Camera, camera!”

  The assistant rummaged through his pack without taking his eye off the thread, quickly finding the camera and snapping pictures.

  “Can I?” the professor asked and reached his palm forward.

  “Go ahead. Careful though, they’re slippery.”

  I dropped the thread in his palm and watched it wriggle to escape. The professor winced. I hadn’t yet considered what touching magic as a commoner would feel like. Apparently it stung.

  The old man didn’t let it bother him too much and moved the thread around in his palm, trying to pinch it between two fingers to raise it toward the flickering light of the fluorescent ceiling lamp.

  “Still can’t believe it,” a very tired Nyla muttered behind me.

  I flinched at the realization that she stood right behind me. Only she could sneak up on me in the group. Honestly she was the only one that managed to do so since I ranked up.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I groaned and settled back down.

  “Then don’t space out, and don’t distract the professor and his minion.”

  “Hey!” the assistant complained, still snapping pictures of the blue thread. “I have a name you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Stewie, it’s time to move. You can play with threads later.”

  “Can we?” the professor finally let his eyes leave the thread to meet mine.

  “You can.”

  “Oh joy!” he exclaimed. “This really is one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen in recent times.” He turned to Nyla and handed her the thread while explaining. “Condensed magic. Feel that buzz in your skin? That’s leakage, like magical radiation. It’s normally completely harmless,” he eyed my blackened hand, “but when condensed it will cause rapid decay of normal matter.”

  “Gerrard you crazy old coot!” Nyla squealed and threw the thread to the ground. “Don’t go giving me radioactive threads! And don’t go touching them yourself!” She turned to glare at me. “And you!”

  “I didn’t know they were dangerous, they’re just threads.”

  “Of condensed magic, boy!” the professor, Gerrard, quipped happily and bent to pick the thread back up.

  Nyla stepped on it and scowled. “No. Play time’s over. If you want to examine the threads you’ll do so tonight, and you will take care to protect yourself accordingly.”

  “Yes, yes,” the old man grumbled like a scolded child.

  “Alright,” Nyla shouted and clapped. “Let’s go.”

  I looked around and noticed the others had already finished the preparations. They were really quite efficient, these soldiers. When it came to chores, at least. The killing they’d have to work on.

  But there would be ample time for that.

  Quinn led the way as she had the day before. She had a GPS at the ready at all times, and grumbled more than once about how the veil interfered with the signal. Most of the time she had to rely on an old paper map, filled with hastily jotted down marks of her own. She updated the thing with the most up to date information whenever she got a signal.

  Asphalt steamed. The day was silent, much like the previous evening had been. It weighed heavily on the civilians and rookies. The gunfire, while somewhat unsettling, at least meant that humanity was putting up a fight. The silence suggested something wholly different. Only Nyla knew the real gravity of our situation, and she refused to speak of it. Said she did so for morale. Apparently.

  She could have told me, the others didn’t speak to me anyway. Apart from the professor and assistant duo and Quinn. But she didn’t trust me enough not to lash out. Like the weeks I spent hiding my true nature meant nothing. Although I assume they didn’t, since I gave up the act in the end.

  I shook my head. What a waste of time it all had been.

  The journey was one of boredom. Gerrard and Stewie were too tense for conversation, Quinn too far away to exchange words, and Nyla kept her distance to stay on the soldier’s good side.

  Once I was the hero of a hellscape. Now, the black sheep in a squad of elites. What a joke, even Samuel would beat the snot out of these pricks.

  I wondered how he was doing. Last I saw him he was still under Hugo’s care, awaiting appointment into the Order for real.

  All of them had some connection to the Forgotten lands, all but me. Even the children had probably been recruited into their parents' factions.

  I alone held the key to the Layered empire. I’d expected that it would lead factions to fight over me, yet things had been strangely quiet. There was the chance of Samara and Joanna keeping the details about my world hopping boots quiet, but COBA knew. They already knew everything. And as with all organizations, information would leak. It was only a matter of time.

  I could only pray that I’d be out of this shit storm by then.

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