Party Invite

Ayana POV

I hit the doorway at a run and it didn't move.

Not locked. Solid — the handle turning under my hand, the latch clicking, and the whole thing sitting in its frame like it had been painted there. I put my shoulder into it. Nothing.

I stood there with my breath sawing in and out of me, ribs still burning from the corridor, and the handle had opened the palm of my hand, and the blood made it hard to get a grip.

Behind me the passage went dark.

Two minutes on the clock.

I turned around with my back to the wood.

The wave had stopped four metres away. Light hadn't come back, but there was enough left from the far end to see what was in the dark, and what was in the dark was people.

Three. Two men and a woman. Their panels floated in front of their faces, all reading the same thing, and not one of them was looking at their panel. They were looking at me.

The one in front had a length of pipe. The woman had a carrier bag with something heavy in it. The second man had nothing at all, and he was the one I was frightened of.

"Her timer's green," the woman said.

I put my hands up. "There's a door behind me. It doesn't open. Go back the way you came and—"

"Her timer's green," she said again, and the pipe came forward.

I've been in one fight in my life. Year nine, a girl called Bethan who pulled my hair out at the root and got three days' suspension. I lost.

So I did the only thing I know. I looked at how they moved.

The woman hung back. The pipe led. The one with nothing stayed on the right, close to the wall, and he was the only one watching my hands instead of my face.

I went left, hard, and the pipe swung where I'd been.

Then the light went darker.

Not the wave. Something else. A shape passed the woman, fast, down the middle of the passage, and the pipe turned toward it and took two hits — chest, wrist — and the length of it came out of his hand and skittered past my feet.

The woman ran. The second man made a sound, then no sound, then met the wall.

Less than four seconds.

He stood over the pipe man with his shoulders down and his hands loose, not even breathing hard, and said nothing at all.

Grey coat. Same coat. Two days of apocalypse and it looked ironed.

"You're slow," he said.

I had answers. My lungs were too busy.

Under a minute.

Then the panel came down over both of us.

PARTY INVITE RECEIVED.

SENDER: UNREGISTERED.

ACCEPT / DENY.

00:00:10

I hit the gym.

"Don't," he said, already moving toward me, and I didn't understand until I saw his panel read the same as mine, same countdown, and his thumb nowhere near it.

I hit denial again. Harder. As though that would do anything.

INVITE DECLINED.

SYSTEM OVERRIDE.

TEAMMATES LINKED.

The pain came through first.

Not mine. His — a hot line across the ribs, low on the right, the kind of ache that makes you hold your breath. It arrived and it settled, and then my own ribs answered, a dull throb in the same place.

I put my hand there. Nothing wrong with me. It hurt anyway.

Then the rest, all at once:

SHARED HP: 100 / 100

SHARED STAMINA: 62 / 100

SHARED MINIMAP: ACTIVE

SHARED PENALTIES: ACTIVE

A bar appeared in the corner of my vision with two names on it. Mine, and his — Jarek — in the same thin grey.

Stamina dropped 62 to 58 while I watched. I hadn't moved. He had.

A dot appeared on the minimap. White, steady, four metres to my left. It tracked him when he shifted his weight, and it kept tracking him when he turned his head, and I understood that I would never lose him again, not in a crowd, not in the dark, not ever.

His hand closed on my wrist, and the pulse under his fingers was so quick and so steady it took me a second to understand it was mine.

He was too close. Two days of running and he was the nearest thing in the world, close enough that I could see the thread of a scar under his jaw and the way it was set, and I hated that I noticed.

"Don't touch me."

"You're bleeding." He turned my hand over. The cut was worse than it had been thirty seconds ago — a proper split now, wet to the wrist.

"I said don't touch me."

"Then don't die," he said, and let go.

I stepped back. The door sat behind me, the passage dark, and I had nowhere to go, which meant I did it standing still, facing him, which was worse.

"You could have told me."

"I did. Don't follow the marker."

"That's not the same—"

"No. It isn't." Flat, no apology in it, and it stopped me more effectively than an argument. "You took the wrong turn on purpose. Why?"

"Because the marker wanted the right one."

He looked at me the way he had in the street. Reading me is like a route.

"That's why I'm still here," he said.

"You knew about the intervals," I said. "You knew about the wording. You knew about the tether before it happened."

I took a step toward him. He didn't move back.

"And you stood there and let me work it out on my own. Because that's what people do with me. They wait to see whether I'm worth listening to, and by the time they've decided, it's too late."

"I was watching."

"That's not the same as telling me."

He considered that. Properly, with his head tilted, the way he'd considered the quest text in the car park.

"No," he said. "It isn't."

And then, because he seemed to think that was the end of it: "Doesn't change the outcome. You're alive."

"Because you let me be."

"Because you read a panel nobody else read." His voice didn't rise. "I watched you do it. I'd watch it again."

I didn't have an answer for that, and I hated that too.

The anchor arrived a second later.

A weight, low in my chest, like a hook that had gone in while I wasn't looking. Not pain. Pull. When he took two steps away, I felt it and had to plant my feet to stop myself following.

I tested it. One step backward, toward the dead door. The pull went tight. Stamina 54.

"Don't."

"What is it?"

"Tether. Past twenty metres it takes stamina. Then HP." He crouched by the woman's bag and looked inside. "You can't run from me now."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't tell me what I was going to do." My voice came out higher than I wanted, heat in my throat, the kind that comes before something you'll regret. "Who are you?"

He stood up with the bag in one hand.

"Later," he said.

TEAM TUTORIAL: SYNCHRONIZE.

MAINTAIN PARTY DISTANCE UNDER 15M FOR 00:05:00.

FAILURE: TETHER SNAP.

PENALTY: SHARED LOSS.

The countdown started and didn't wait for either of us to agree.

"Fifteen metres," I said. "In a passage."

"Then stay close." He walked, and the anchor pulled before I'd decided anything, and my feet moved to keep the hook from going tight.

I caught up because the alternative was worse. That's the version I'm telling.

He stopped at the far end, put his palm flat on the door there, and it opened.

Light came through. Not fog. Yellow, ordinary, like a stairwell.

"In," he said.

I went in.

Behind us, the dark wave started again — and it hadn't turned down the passage. It had turned toward the pull.

"Hurry," he said, which was the first time in two days he'd sounded like he wanted something.