It takes me a bit when I wake up the next morning to remember everything that happened yesterday. The apocalypse event. Meeting Ryder. Fighting with mutated animals. Fighting with asshole men. The whole thing sags onto my shoulders, ridding me of the comforting safety of my sleep.

  But then I’m up, and I guess it’s time to get going.

  Ryder and I did some prep work last night, filling as many containers as possible with clean water—and even some dirtier hose water in giant garbage cans so we can keep the toilet flushing a little while longer. We used some duct tape to better get the blinds closed. We took stock of all the food in the house and in our inventories, to try to get a better idea of how long it’ll last us.

  Turns out stuff in our inventory exists in a freeze state, so produce can stay in there without going bad or frozen stuff without thawing. We cleared out the fridge and freezer, since they were useless without power, and put the non-perishables all together.

  I fried a couple eggs for dinner over Ryder’s flame as a cooking source. I made a mental note to work on that.

  I ended up going back to my room once Ryder fell asleep on the couch.

  And now it’s a new day. I mentally prod the Game, just checking to make sure its still there. The map in the corner of my vision pulls up in response, and I give it a cursory glance. My bedroom is right above the living room, and I guess the couch is directly beneath my bed, because there’s only one white dot visible.

  I quickly realize that I’m delusional and that that’s absolutely not true. I jolt out of my bed, pound down the stairs without changing out of my pyjamas, and throw myself into the living room.

  There’s no gangly nine year old on the couch.

  I spit out a curse, loudly, and pull up my map again. It shows the outline of the house and the shape of the rooms, but nothing outside of the exterior walls. “Come on, Game, show me outside.”

  It doesn’t. I peel back the carefully taped curtains on the living room window that looks into the backyard. I don’t see Ryder. I replace the tape.

  And then I bolt to the front of the house and wrench open the front door.

  Phew.

  Ryder’s sitting in the middle of the front lawn, his little flame the size of a cantaloupe between his hands. Wow, he’s gotten good at that.

  “Jesus, Ryder, you can’t vanish on me like—”

  “Shh, Jane, I’m practicing.”

  I blink my surprise. The little rascal.

  But now that my heart rate has returned to something a little more normal, I can think like a rational person. I leave him to his practicing and go back inside, changing into something more comfortable and appropriate for battling mutated animals and casting magic spells.

  So, you know, leggings.

  Once properly prepared for the day, I return to Ryder outside, sitting down opposite him. He grins at me and lets his fireball wink out. “I’m level 3 now!” he tells me proudly in lieu of a greeting.

  “That’s coo—wait, I thought you were level 9 yesterday. Wasn’t our levels just our ages?”

  Ryder nods. “Yup. But the Game and I were chatting this morning and I asked how that made sense and how can we get stronger if we don’t level up, if we only level up once a year, so the Game changed it!” He pushes back his hair from his forehead, the sandy brown looking a little red in the sunlight. I can’t help wondering if he has a redhead somewhere in his family. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said his hair was brown.

  Priorities.

  “The Game can just… change?”

  Ryder nods, his eyes going a little vacant in that way that means he’s looking at the Game. “Yeah, just check your profile!”

  It still feels a little unnatural, but I think Profile! and sure enough, an interface pops up. There’s no avatar, just a list of stats:

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  You: Jane

  Race: Human

  Class: Fighter

  Subclass: Undetermined

  Level: 2

  Rank: 3

  At this point, most of it makes sense to me, except: “What’s the Rank mean?”

  Your Rank demonstrates how much magic you’ve consumed. A Rank of 3 means you’ve evolved three times from magic surges. Congratulations!

  I place my hands to my face, feeling the familiar bone structure. “It’s terrifying to know that I’ve evolved three times and… don’t feel any different.”

  “It could be because you haven’t given out your Rank Tokens.”

  I sigh. “Ryder, please assume I know nothing about any of this. What is a Rank Token?”

  “When we go up a Rank, we get a Token to spend! We can’t spend the first Rank Token we got, from becoming Rank 1, since that was us getting the Game. And then I accidentally spent my second Rank Token when I got my fire power! But I would have spent it on that anyways.”

  Huh. I don’t love the idea of the Game evolving so quickly, that it can be so different one day to the next. But I guess it, like everything else, is a magical thing. All I can do is try to keep up. Can I spend my Rank Tokens now? I ask the Game. When in Rome, right?

  Certainly. Which statistic would you like to improve?

  Can I see a list of my options?

  Statistics:

  Mental [4]

  Physical [2]

  Magical [1]

  Didn’t video game stat menus have things like Fortitude and Dexterity and stuff like that? This stat system feels like it was created by a child.

  I look through the Game’s interface out at the child in front of me, who is once again playing with his fireball. I guess it kind of was created by a child.

  Magical, I think, because it’s the weakest of the three stats, so it makes sense to balance them out.

  Jokes. I’m totally lying. I just want magical powers of my own. Duh.

  Please select a Magic Ability you’d like to activate with one Rank Token.

  And the list is… long. Like uncomfortably long. And some of them are absurd, like Fish Finding: Intuitively understand the best place along a water’s edge to go fishing. Why the heck would I want that? Especially when there’s another Fish related ability that can have you simply call fish to you. Why would you go through the motions of fishing if you could just snap your fingers and have fish leap out of the water and land at your feet?

  Can you narrow down the list? I ask the Game.

  Certainly. What are your filters?

  Shoot. I hadn’t thought that far in advance. You’re pretty aware of me and my strengths, I tell the Game. Can you give me what you recommend?

  There’s a pause from the Game, and maybe I’m humanizing it a little too much when I assume that means it’s thinking. Processing, maybe. Rendering. But still, it does spit out a few suggestions.

  With a strong Mental score and a low Physical score, mentalist-type Abilities would be a better fit. However, you are a Fighter class, and you want your Magic Ability to be aligned with your class.

  With that, it gives me a smaller list of basic abilities to choose from. I decide to go for classic. I pick Telekinesis.

  Congratulations! You are now a Magic User.

  New Achievement! You’ve designated a Rank Token!

  New Achievement! You’ve developed a magical ability!

  I push away the Game interface and return to the real world. I don’t feel any different, but apparently I have magic now. Ryder just focused really hard, so what if I…

  I pluck a blade of grass from the lawn and lay it on my knee. And then I just think that I want it to levitate. I can feel something inside of me churn at that, like sand that’s settled on the bottom of the ocean when someone walks through it and it clouds the water. I push through the discomfort, trying to imagine a giant spoon mixing the ocean water and sand until all the sand is dissolved into the water.

  Not a perfect metaphor, but it works, and the blade of grass lifts about an inch off my knee.

  Ryder lets out a gasp. Startled, I lose my focus and the grass drops back down.

  But Ryder’s gasp was for me, watching the blade of grass with wide eyes. “You chose a magic! That was so cool!”

  I can’t help my smile. “Thanks, kid.” I still have one more Rank Token but I save it for now, wanting a better idea of how to spend it. I check my profile again:

  You: Jane

  Race: Human

  Class: Fighter

  Subclass: Undetermined

  Secondary Class: Magician

  Level: 2

  Rank: 3

  Regular class, subclass, and a secondary class? Was that… right? I don’t know. But I guess it’s not my job to know. I’m just along for the ride.

  And now I can do magic. Which, not going to lie, is really freaking cool. I squint down at the blade of grass again and it lifts with much more ease, but I still can’t make it lift higher than an inch off my knee.

  “You’ll have to practice a bit,” Ryder tells me. “I can make my fireball pretty big now, but I can’t get it to go off my hand. I put my last Rank Token into it, too, which helped it get bigger without having to practice so much. The Game told me that if I was patient, I could get it that big on my own.” Ryder grins. “But I’m not very patient.”

  Rascal.

  “Can we have some breakfast and then go find some monsters to kill? I want to get more experience and level up more! The Game hasn’t decided what it wants to do with the levels yet, if there’s like a Level Token or something, but it’ll have to choose something if we keep levelling up!”

  The Game hasn’t decided. Why does that fill me with a buttload of dread? It’s the blind leading the blind here, and all I can do is follow along and hope to come out unscathed. Maybe banking my last Rank Token wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Sure, kid,” I say, just glad that he’s asking instead of running off on his own. “Let’s go have breakfast and then kill some monsters.”