Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Chapter 288

I returned to my suite, surprised to find it nearly as dark as it was before the party. As my eyes adjusted, I spotted Nick's silhouette, barefoot, shirtless, and passed out on the far end of the long couch with a pillow over his face, flanked on either side by two of the dogs—who notably, were ignoring their ridiculously extravagant domiciles in favor of smothering Nick.

Warm light from the end table lamp illuminated Sae's face. Not the face I'd grown accustomed to seeing, but her old one, finally free of the alterations that plagued her. It sort of shook me, seeing her like that. She'd kept most of her original features, save a few cosmetic tweaks for vanity.

"Damn," I said aloud. Initial snafu aside, Charlotte did great work.

Sae put a finger to her lips, her movement and expression serene. I looked down and saw Iris, bundled up in a blanket, eyes tightly shut as she dozed, head on Sae's lap.

I heel-toe walked to the couch so the vibrations of my footfalls wouldn’t be disruptive, and sat down carefully, trying not to jostle them. "What, I leave for ten minutes and the party dies?"

"Try two hours, helpline," Sae pointed to the digital clock on the stove that read 3:01.

It'd been longer than I thought. I winced. As much as I'd not been in the mood for company, some part of me regretted abandoning my guests. "Anyone still here?"

"That idiot," Sae pointed to Nick. "Kinsley passed out in one of the dog beds. But Julien and Charlotte called someone to take them home, Tara too."

"How were they, when they left?" I asked.

Sae made a dismissive gesture. "The hobbit made sure everyone knew you were 'dealing with a matter of great importance,' and they genuinely seemed like they had a great time. Just got tired is all. Was gonna see myself out too—not really the last person at the party kind of girl—then the other hobbit fell asleep on me."

"I can take her."

"She's fine for now," Sae ran her fingers through Iris's curls, "Way I see it I owe her a lot. The mirror doesn't lie. I looked scary as hell and she never even hesitated. Just accepted me and did whatever she could to help."

"That's Iris."

Iris moaned, grimacing as she clung to the blanket. It was a small, distressed sound, and Sae gently shook her shoulder until she roused from REM sleep, settling back down into quiet snores.

"Always have this many nightmares?" Sae asked.

I shook my head. "That’s new. Ever since the attack."

"Bastards," Sae's tranquil expression soured. "I get that the strike team is temporarily retired, but..."

"You'll have the info as soon as I do," I assured her.

"And we'll go in hard?"

"Like always." I paused, wanting to comment more on her appearance but not sure how to do so politely. "Are you... happy with the end result?"

"Still in shock, but over the moon, really," Sae shook her head in wonder. "I'd come to terms with it. The way I looked. On some level I'd even started appreciating the benefits. Like sure, I'm a freakish monster, but I'm armored as hell with built-in defenses to match." She held a dark chitinous hand up, extending the claws on her fingertips before retracting them again. "Never been so deep in the denial sauce to actually see it as an improvement, but it's saved my life more than once. The one thing I just couldn't take without getting nauseous—the face—is gone. As long as Charlotte's around, anyway."

"For the record, I never thought you looked like a freakish monster."

"Yeah, yeah," Sae gave me a playful shove.

"There's something I need to talk to you about. Something we probably should have talked about earlier, but there just wasn't time."

"Kind of scary, but go ahead."

I breathed in deeply and began. It helped that this was mostly familiar ground. I'd already told Sae about Hastur's pitch, along with the at-the-time-unidentified potion and promise of an eventual second. Now it was just a matter of filling in the blanks. Throughout the retelling, Sae was uncharacteristically silent, absorbing the information stoically. It was only near the end that she finally interrupted, revealing a growing annoyance. "Helpline, can we skip to the part where you explain how this is all a bad thing? Getting tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Whatever reaction I'd expected, that wasn't it. I blinked. "That... is the bad part. I only have one, and Hastur's stringing me along for the second."

"Okay..." Sae stared at me with growing disgust. "Please tell me this isn't you struggling with whether to give the first one to your sister or take it yourself."

"No—"

"Because no one deserves it more than her," Sae growled, surprisingly heated. "Putting aside the fact that she's your sister and this would significantly improve her chances of survival right before an event that will absolutely put her in jeopardy if it happens, she's not like us."

"Just wait—what's that supposed to mean?" I asked, getting a bit irritated at how dismissive the last comment sounded.

"Try looking around?" Sae said, equally annoyed. "I have a lot of respect for you, Matt, but at least a part of the reason we work so well together is because we're the same. We're both great at breaking things, picking people apart, being as brutal as necessary to get the job done. If the last month has proven anything, it's that."

"Not everything was a bloodbath," I hissed and leaned back on the couch, white leather creaking beneath me. "We showed mercy when we could."

"Yeah, I'm sure Buzzcut and the rest of targets you whisked away to 'interrogate further' are all living happily on the farm upstate," Sae rolled her eyes.

Not exactly.

She continued without waiting for a response. "It doesn't make any difference to me. As far as I'm concerned, every member of the order who wasn't Shanghai'd into the court is scum fully deserving of whatever bad shit comes their way. But there lies my point." She jostled Iris gently, stirring her from another nightmare, waiting for a few seconds until she snored again. "Your sister's a builder, in a time people actually trying to rebuild shit to make life better and not as some method of raking in selve are hard to come by. Just look at the hospital. We need people like her. And we need them to survive whatever's coming."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Yeah... she is," I agreed, suddenly at a loss for words. Hearing not one, but several of the arguments I'd intended to make come out of Sae's mouth because of the misunderstanding.

"So you agree."

I snorted. "If I say another goddamn word without clearing this up, you're going to actually hate me."

"Clearing what up?"

"Read the description again, Sae." This time I handed her the potion. She seemed as irritated with the obliqueness as always, but as she scanned it again, the sense of irritation faded.

"Oh," Sae said.

"Yeah."

"You... were never considering using it," Sae groaned.

"Not for a minute."

Then her brow furrowed, and she looked up at me in shock. "Wait—was this some dark psych setup to get me to argue against myself?"

"Jesus. Not even a little. It caught me completely off-guard, and someone decided to lay into me before I could correct the assumption. You already said a lot of the things I was planning to point out. The only reason I was being circumspect at all was to present all the information and let you decide." I eyed the potion, feeling some degree of relief now that it was literally out of my hands. "As much as it might seem otherwise, I don't actually know how you're doing. You mask too well, and tempting as it is to pry, I generally resist temptation."

"Generally?" Sae raised an eyebrow.

"Generally," I reiterated. "But how you're handling things? How bearable or unbearable each day is? There's only one person who can really know that."

Her mouth pressed tightly together. "What happened in the tunnel wasn't your fault. My dumbass ran away into the worst possible place. I panicked. Big whoop, shit happens. The only reason I'm even here is because you came back for me and fished me out of the dark. You've already helped plenty. So why do you keep trying to make it your problem?"

I thought back to the early days, from the first meeting at the Turkish coffee place onwards. Casting spells around Nick's backyard, strategizing against monsters, discussing system abilities and possible synergies. It felt like decades ago, even though in reality, it was less than six months.

"Just feel really bad for breaking your nose."

Carefully, so as not to wake my sister, Sae cocked her arm and slugged me hard enough to leave a bruise. I stifled a laugh. "Ow."

"Real answers only."

"Dunno, it’s… hard to explain." I breathed out, feeling more tapped out and exhausted with every exhale. The events of the day and the substances of the evening were catching up to me. "For a cop, my dad was pretty laid-back about laying down the law with us. Not really the authoritarian type. With one exception."

"Wear a condom?" Sae guessed.

"Campfire rules," I corrected. "Leave it better than how you found it." Despite myself, I laughed. "Real stickler for it too. Ellison would bitch about how we always ended up cleaning up other people's trash—other campers who hadn't followed the code—and my dad would say, 'remind me what the definition of better is, son?' And Ellison would just grumble and go back to filling his bag. Anyway, it stuck with me. Even after he was gone and we didn't really have time to go camping anymore."

"Don't tell me you were one of those weirdos walking around a park with a bag and an extension grabber."

"Nah. It wasn't compulsive or anything. Just every once in a while, if I was somewhere scenic—"

"—like a park," Sae wiggled an eyebrow.

“Like a park,” I sighed, “And there was litter or something that wasn't completely out of my way, I'd pick it up and toss it. I've never really thought of people that way. When I met you all, though, I got the same feeling. As a group you had this bond, this feeling of closeness and camaraderie that was just foreign to me. Freaked me out a little. Both because it was foreign, and I didn't want to somehow mess it up.”

“Please.”

“Like you said, I break things. And there was so much potential. I was still up my own ass about compartmentalizing, doing it all on my own, so the plan was always to leave, eventually. Help Nick clean up the trouble he was in and move on to whatever was next.”

"Campfire rules," Sae said.

"Exactly," I said, reaching down to tuck a stray tuft of hair behind my sister's ear. "But things didn't go as planned. On multiple levels. Maybe it's not possible anymore, but I guess, in some ways I'm still stuck there, trying to make sure everyone lands okay before my luck runs out and someone punches my ticket. Or I end up crossing lines that can't be uncrossed, and you need to walk away."

Sae raised her fist, and I tensed, waiting for the hit. Instead, she bumped it against my shoulder, gently. "For the record, asshole? If you died? My life would be considerably worse. So if you're stupid enough to go get yourself killed, take that into the afterlife."

"Ah, existential emotional blackmail, the rarest variation."

"Could have just skipped all that and said 'because we're friends.' Hell's the matter with you?" The words were all bark and no bite, and after a moment, Sae laid her head on my shoulder. "Maybe you somehow missed this, or need to be reminded, so let me make it clear. You've gone to bat for me more than any friend ever has. I’ve seen you do some really, really dark shit, and I’m still here. We're ride or die, Helpline. Nothing's gonna make me walk away." She cracked an eye and looked up at me. "And of course we give your sister the potion, headass. Even if you had both right now, I'm not sure I'd take mine."

"Why?"

"Because we're days away from a potential apocalyptic throw-down, and I don't want to go into that wobbling around, trying to get comfortable in my own much-more-cozy but much-less-resilient skin."

That... was pretty well reasoned, now that I thought about it. More to the point, something she'd briefly touched on gave me an idea. "Do you want to?"

"Wobble around?"

"Give my sister the potion."

The eye cracked again. "For real?"

I shrugged. "In a way, you kind of already are. Don't see any reason it can't be literal. If you've got somewhere to be in the morning, we can wake her up now. Pretty sure she'll understand."

"Morning's good. Close to morning as we manage, anyway," Sae readjusted, getting comfortable. "Tinnitus is a bitch. Put some music on?"

"Sure," I picked up the remote. "Only have what was already in the CD player."

"What's a CD?"

"Ignoring that. Your options are oldies, older oldies, and the secret third option."

"If you say oldies again, I'll punch you."

"So one note," I rolled my eyes.

"Just like your music collection. Pick whatever, I don't care."

The guitar intro to California Dreamin’ began to trickle from the speakers and I set the remote down. As much as it was clearly platonic, this was more physical contact than I was used to. Yet it wasn't all bad. Somehow it felt comfortable, warm, being surrounded by people I cared about, accompanied by a feeling I couldn't quite recognize. The TV idle screen read five-nineteen, the last vestiges of consciousness unspooling before I realized what it was.

Peace. So complete and all-encompassing that voice was little more than a distant echo in my mind.

What happened the last time you felt safe?