I stood up from my chair. “I’m going to get ready for bed. Do you have towels?” I asked without thinking.
Cici nodded at me. “They’re in the cabinet,” she said.
I climbed the stairs and entered the bathroom. It was simple, but the layout caught me off-guard. A cabinet, bathtub, sink, and toilet were against the wall on the left, leaving room for a walkway on the right. The sink and tub each only had a single faucet.
Sure enough, the cabinet contained towels, and at the bottom was a bin with wrinkled towels. That was probably where I was supposed to throw the one I used when I was done. The setup seemed smart, but the amount of towels in the cabinet was unsettling. The entire top half was densely packed with towels. There had to be at least fifty. Why was my assumption that she had towels correct, and why where there so many?
I drew water from the faucet on the tub and felt its temperature with my hand. It was completely lukewarm. My hand did not detect any difference in temperature from the air in the room.
I let the water run and placed Occidae carefully by the edge of the room. There was no mirror in the room, so it felt kind of cramped.
I took my T-shirt and jeans off, only to realize I hadn’t brought a change of clothes into the room. I sighed and put my dirty clothes back on. One embarrassing trip to the bedroom later, and I had my bag with me next to Occidae. I pulled out some of Dad’s clothes that he had packed—just athletic shorts and shirts. I smiled. He was probably trying to keep the bag’s weight low.
It was a good thing we were generally the same size—I had inherited his freakishly tall build. I would often nab his sweatshirts, and he’d sometimes wear one of my jackets to the university just to get back at me. Reaching into the backpack, I pulled out a pair of boxers. Heck, even these would fit me. Never thought I’d be taking them.
By now the bath had a layer of water at the bottom a couple inches deep. It would be plenty. I had never been one to fill the bath all the way, or even take a shower.
There was bar soap in a tray attached to the tub’s rim. It didn’t look mass-produced, so I’d need to be careful to rinse off well, otherwise the lye would burn my skin. There didn’t seem to be any washcloth or sponge, so I used my nails to scrub the caked sweat, dirt, and blood off of my skin. My hair was an easy affair—I had no idea how Amethyst managed her long braid, or Cici washed that mullet. I used to have longer hair when I was younger, but at some point I got tired of putting it up every time I stepped into the shop. I kept it fairly short-cropped nowadays, even shorter than Max’s. Probably wouldn’t even have to shave it if I went into the military.
Several minutes later, I was bathed, brushed, and in bed. Cici had drawn curtains closed over the windows, and they worked surprisingly well to block out the sun. I could barely see my hand in front of my face once when the door to the hallway was closed.
Nothing much ran through my head, lying there in bed. I had nothing dramatic to pontificate, nothing to keep sleep from reloading my mind for its task tomorrow. I knew why I was here and what I was doing. It was just a question of how quickly I could do it.
I awoke a few hours later to the light of the sun as Cici drew the curtains open and the room flooded with warm sunbeams. After a few tosses and turns, I wrenched my eyes open and sat up groggily. Amethyst and Max lay breathing heavily, evidently not phased. Cici had to shake them awake.
After a few moments of waking up I spoke. “So, what do we do now? Just wait a few hours and go to bed again?”
“Pretty much,” responded Cici.
Fifteen minutes passed in straight silence as we came to our senses. Cici waited patiently for us, sitting cross-legged on top of her bed.
Max yawned. “But what do we like, do? What do you normally do right now?”
“Me?” she asked. “It depends. I guess seeing as we’re inside the walls, I used to read a lot.”
“You have a library?” asked Max excitedly.
“Yes, but it’s not open right now,” she said. “I didn’t mean books.”
Cici fished under her bed for a moment and pulled out a box about the width of two hands. She opened it, and inside was a stack of papers with ink printed on them—words. The paper looked flimsy and poorly recycled, but the text seemed readable nonetheless. She held one up and showed us. The title, if it could be called that, read “An Aesthetic of Diversions”. Underneath was an unfamiliar name.
“But we’ve got better things to do than reading these,” Cici said, and made to put the pamphlet back in the box.
“Wait,” said Amethyst, by now awake and wide-eyed. “Hand that to me,” she said, holding out her hand while she was still in her bed. Cici obliged, and Amethyst pored over it as if it contained the meaning of life itself. She put the pamphlet in her lap and sat staring out the window.
“Yeet,” she said simply.
“What?” I said.
“Bruh. Bussin. Bestie. Bussy, even.”
“Is she broken?” I asked Max. He didn’t seem to know what was going on, either.
“Dank drip. I’m finna glow-up, then ghost this Karen.”
By this point, Cici looked even more confused than Max or I. Amethyst held out her hands in a calming motion toward us.
“Seriously, just listen. Listen carefully to how the words sound.” She continued her strange phrases without delay. “My lore may be mid, but my out-of-pocket lines are lit.” She flourished her hand dramatically. “I am the queen of rage-baiting. I’m here to gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss. I exist to dab on the haters.”
Wait a minute. She was onto something. Her words sounded like—
“A different language,” said Cici. “You speak a different language.”
“I could stop here, but I’m too lost in the sauce,” said Amethyst. “Don’t be salty, but I’m going to continue slaying these sussy sentences,”
By now Max was cringing. “We get the point. Stop.”
Amethyst smirked at him but obliged. She held up the pamphlet and pointed at the title. “We’ve been speaking a different language this entire time. Us, I mean,” she said, pointing to herself, Max and I. “This is obviously not Latin script,” she explained. I squinted. Indeed, it was not. The individual squiggles were unintelligible. Yet, I could still read the title: “An Aesthetic of Diversions”
“Not a word of what we’ve been saying since we got here has been English,” said Amethyst. “And why should it be? Why on Earth would anyone here speak English?”
Max looked concerned. “Um, fair, but considering how integral language is to thought, isn’t that kind of… not good? How is this happening right now?”
I shook my head at him. “It’s convenient. Don’t overthink it.”
Amethyst leaned over and punched his arm. “Yeah. Shut up, nerd.”
“So we’re just not going to talk about how this is working? The whole thing where we’re automatically thinking and speaking in this language, but somehow slang and idioms can’t be translated?”
Amethyst extended her arm towards him as if she were casting a spell. “Manually breath.”
His expression shifted into annoyance. Even I had to start consciously moving my lungs.
“Screw you,” Max said. “What was that for?”
“Proves a point,” Amethyst said. “It’s only jarring if you bring it up.”
“Fine. Noted,” Max spat out between labored breaths. “But still. We now suddenly, supernaturally, have access to information we didn’t have before. The neurons in our brains have been instantaneously re-wired. Is that not a big deal?”
Amethyst rolled her eyes at him. “What, and suddenly teleport to the moon is just another Tuesday?”
As their banter petered out, an awkward silence overtook the room. Cici eventually spoke up.
“The better thing we’re doing is talking. That was the thing. That you were asking about.”
I perked up. “Yes. We need to strategize what to do next.”
Cici shook her head at me. “No, I meant about each other.”
I summoned the minimal diplomacy my short sleep had allowed me to recover. “Alright. Look, Cici, I get it. Different planet, different people, different ways of doing things. We all barely know each other, so you want us to build trust, blah blah blah. There is no time for that. I have obliged you long enough. Every moment we waste on secondary social shenanigans is another chance somebody could be killed by a demon let through a portal by the black robe people, and of course you don’t know anything about any of that because you haven’t bothered to learn why we’re here. The stakes are too high to lounge around porch-sitting like the world isn’t about to fall apart. We are here to kill demons, close portals, and leave.”
Amethyst shot me a suspicious glare. “You are here to do those things, not us. And we can’t leave. Max and I are only here because…” she petered off, looking at Cici, then back at me. “We’re only here so we could do what your father asked. Don’t assume everyone wants to play the hero.”
I reeled a little, taken aback. “Playing the hero?” I spat, my voice rising slowly. “What else is there to do? People are dying, and you don’t want to do anything?”
“I’m not a fighter,” Amethyst retorted. “I’d just get myself killed.”
My face distorted in anger and disgust. I turned to Max. “You too?”
He stared at me blankly. “Um… you did sort of assume a lot.”
I swiveled to Cici. “You at least understand what I’m getting at.”
She shook her head. “How can I? I don’t know you.”
This was too much for me. I stood suddenly, shouldered my bag on one arm, and picked up Occidae. “Cowards,” I muttered audibly before storming out of the room. How could they be so callous? Screw them. It was time for me to move on. Four hours was plenty of sleep, I’d just need to use some of the caffeine powder in my bag. I could probably get this crap sorted out in a week if I actually did something with my time.
I stormed down the steps, through the strange entrance room, and straight out the door, only to suddenly stop.
An entire squad of people in black cloaks pointed vaguely familiar looking assault rifles at me. They were decked in modern helmets and ear protection. Behind them was a less familiar tank. At their head was a man with short-cropped hair and an equally short smirk. He looked to be about in his thirties.
I raised my hands in the air and let Occidae dangle. My bag plopped on the deck stairs behind me. “Hello,” I said flatly.
“Goodbye,” the man called back, pointing at me with a finger gun. “Engage.” The air in front of me erupted into dirt and debris as muffled gunshots sounded. The ground beneath me rumbled as the tank’s cannon fired. Then it was over as soon as it started, the strangely muted gunfire fading into nothing. I stood on a patch of unmolested cobblestone, but the ground behind me to my left and right had been relieved of existence.
The dust cleared away, and the team was visible again. The man raised a handheld radio and spoke jargon into it. He looked at me, his expression now flat. “Repeat.”
The same muffled noises, the same result. The ground burst open like it was a pinata attacked by someone a little to old to be hitting it. The dust settled and the smoke cleared, but I was unharmed. Sunlight glinted off the soldier’s rifles—I could tell why they were familiar now. They were Dad’s design. My fists closed around Occidae as my blood began to boil.
A sharp breath while Occidae was unfolding, and the man was in my sights, another, and a projectile streaked forward faster than perception. The wall of a building to their side shattered instead of the man. I gritted my teeth in frustration. A second shot rewarded me with more collateral. The man muttered into his radio again. No. No sir.
I began marching over the cratered ground towards the man. His flat face began to turn into a stern frown. Behind the squad, a huge rift opened, far larger than the one I had come through. “Lieutenant?” one of the soldiers asked nervously, raising my father’s gun towards me as I approached. The man—evidently the Lieutenant—shook his head, pointing to the rift. The tank suddenly started driving through it, prying it open with its turret as troops followed behind.
The Lieutenant positioned himself between me and the sudden retreat, throwing his cloak to the side to reveal a tan shirt and camouflage trousers. I could feel a blood vessel on my temple bulging.
“It’s always you paramilitary fudgesuckers!” I screamed at him. “What, you think you can take me by yourself?”
He raised his fists and widened his stance in reply. “I could ask the same,” he said. Now that I was in front of him, I could clearly see a combat knife on his thigh he wasn’t even bothering to use. The audacity of this mothertrucker.
At this point I didn’t have any words for him, just an enraged roar. I brought the stock of Occidae down on him, only for it to bounce uselessly to the side, as if pushed by some invisible hand. I was rewarded with a strike to cheek that sent me reeling. Automatically I responded with a front kick, but it met only air. We circled for a moment.
“You know what, frick—“
I cut myself off as I suddenly threw a jab. The Lieutenant protected his face with his arm, but it was followed by a practiced series of hooks and crosses. The last caught him in the stomach and he visibly flinched.
I threw my weight forward to press the advantage and came at his face with my elbow, but I was pushed backward with a knee. “—you,” the man finished for me.
It appeared we were evenly matched. He was more muscular, but a full head shorter. Pound for pound, we were equal. The unstoppable force had met an immovable object, and the two were more concerned about beating the living daylights out each other than resolving a philosophical contradiction.
We started up again, exchanging blows like chess pieces. My knight for his bishop, his temple for my side. The trades became more aggressive, more vitriolic, until it felt like two kings trying to checkmate each other. A stalemate.
We both stepped back and huffed heavily. The Lieutenant wiped sweat from his brow. I just blinked mine away. We were both battered and bruised all over.
“What do they feed kids these days? You grow up on hormone milk?”
“Dad would be disappointed if I did not annihilate someone so tiny,” I said.
The Lieutenant’s eyebrows furrowed. “Mine would leave me to a firing squad if I lost to a woman,”
My eye twitched. “It’s always about gender with your types, isn’t it?”
“It’s always about height with your types,” he retorted. “If we could kill each other with guns like civilized people, this would never come up.”
He lumbered toward me, and we began again sluggishly. Our strikes and reaction time slowed. Seconds later we were both circling again, exhausted.
“Well, obviously this isn’t going to work,” the Lieutenant said, then mumbled more jargon into his radio. A portal opened up behind him and he punched it open before stepping through with a horrific squelch. I lunged after him, but it was too late. The rift disappeared as soon as it had come.
I let out enraged scream. “You’re all just cowards!” I yelled at the empty air.
“Dude, calm down,” I heard a familiar voice say behind me. I wheeled around. It was Max. Amethyst and Cici were with him.
Cici looked at me gravely. “Come on. It’s time to go. We can’t stay here anymore.”