Lexie took a deep breath, the euphoria from the match win fading. She'd indulged in that for long enough. It was time to face her problems once again.
She clicked on the video.
It was a clip from the party. It began with Xena stomping in to yell “Listen up everyone!”
But then the sound glitched right after that, and the video was scrubbed forward to where Lexie grabbed Xena's hand and ran out there.
There was no mention of what Xena said. Lexie went out and searched more videos trying to find one that would show the truth. But none of them had any sound.
All the comments found the whole thing hilarious. Some of them thought it might have been a prank staged by [Heroes] who were not invited to the exclusive party. But the [Heroes] in attendance were clearly confused as they watched the girls run off. Yet no one made any move to stop them, as though it weren’t worth their time.
In the first video, Hawaiian-shirt did try but someone in a weird hat stopped him with a hand on his chest.
And that was where the video ended.
Lexie finally released the breath she was holding, disappointment curdling like spoilt milk in her gut.
And with that, she had to accept the mission was a total failure. Everyone thought the whole thing was a joke, so there would be no social outcry pressuring the [Heroes] into saving Evan.
And unless her dad could somehow create a potion in twenty-four hours to heal an incurable illness, Evan was going to die.
She imagined the boy's face as he threw his hand around her waist. She saw him struggling to climb into her lap.
Lexie pressed her lips together and swiped back to her system screen showed that her assignment here was as a [Card User Hero].
She sighed. She was trying to keep an open mind. But she was really starting to hate the [Heroes].
Lexie’s dad came in the next morning, looking exhausted.
Lexie was also pretty exhausted too, but that was because she had spent the rest of the night watching Top Dog Highlight Videos. She'd watched like five more of his matches, then went to a few fan sites that had exclusive information about his stats and his personal life, and who they thought he would fight once he graduated into the adult division.
And that also led her to find out about everyone else on Top Dog's team, including another fighter called Dust Bunny who fought like an acrobat on steroids.
According to her stat board, she was an A-rank Martial Arts Type Fighter and a C-rank Illusionist (she used spells to create minor illusions with dust that distracted her opponents during fights). Lexie liked her. Like Top Dog, her fighting style had flair and grace, and she made up for her lack of strength with speed and efficiency. She was the definition of death by a thousand small cuts. Plus she had a move called
The crowd loved that one especially. They also loved that, no matter how much pain or trouble she was in, or how tired she seemed, she always pulled a funny face for the cameras whenever it first focused on her. According to the Leaderboard, she was number nine in the teen division right now.
The third member of TD's team was TechnocRat. To Lexie’ knowledge he didn’t fight much, but he was responsible for most of their gear and was a B-Rank Technomage (which was a kind of Bound Magic).
When he did fight, he used rubber bullets and some fancy lasers for attack, and a jetpack to increase his speed.
Oh, that was another thing. According to the rules of the circuit, no sharp objects or excessively damaging weapons were allowed. For example, all guns had to have rubbery bullets, sharp weapons had to have blunted edges, plus a few other criteria that governed the games to make them safe, if temporarily painful, for everyone involved.
Top Dog’s team was called the Mundane Society because they were all kids of Mundanes. Lexie had done a little more research on them and by morning she was officially a Bully Pup (Top Dog's fanbase), a Mitten (for Dust Bunny), and a Fleabag (for TechnocRat). At breakfast, she was still checking out Dust Bunny’s social media page, while sipping some hibiscus tea. Rowena made her tea before she left for work this morning, and though it wasn’t as good as Aiden’s, Lexie thanked her for it.
A few minutes after Rowena left, the door opened again.
Lexie shot to her feet and turned around. Aiden stood there with his hair harried around his head, lines in his face, red-eyed and pale.
“Hey…dad.” The word came out naturally although it sounded wrong at the same time. But it didn't feel right calling him Aiden, especially because she didn’t want him to suspect she wasn’t his real daughter.
She couldn’t disclose her true identity until she got a hang of the situation and knew what the ISTS really was.
So she might as well get used to playing his daughter, at least for however long she was here.
She hurried to his side, taking his hand. “You look awful.”
He managed a weak smile and put his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks, honey bee. That’s what every father wants to hear when they get back home after a long day of work.”
“I’m only saying it because it’s true." She trailed him to the seat. “And I don’t think it’s fair that you give me hell for burning out and you look like you’re on the verge of it too.”
“Unlike you, I know my limits," he said a tad smugly, but the effect was ruined after he overshot his landing and nearly slipped right off the chair.
And Lexie couldn’t resist the urge to point it out.
“You almost face-planted, didn’t you?”
“I did not. That's just a new technique of sitting you've never heard of.” He threw his hands in the air, much like Dust Bunny would. “And see how fast I made that flawless recovery.”
Lexie giggled and rolled her eyes at the same time and he smiled.
“How did you sleep?”
“Good,” she lied. She’d probably only gotten a combined three hours of sleep all night but she hoped that Aiden was too tired himself to notice.
“You don’t look so good yourself,” he said. "Were you worried about me?”
Lexie ducked her head and she realized with surprise that she was. That was part of why she couldn't sleep. Between thoughts of Evan and Aiden and Emma and the potion, she felt so restless and helpless that she’d had to distract herself with the videos all night.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I’m also worried about Evan and Emma.”
Aiden rubbed his hand over his face. “Yeah me too. On the bright side, we managed to create a comatization potion for Evan. He’s currently in a medically induced transient state which should slow the growth tremendously and give more time for a healer to get here.”
“Do you have to wait for a healer?” Lexie blurted out because she had little faith that there were even any healers coming. “I mean, are you sure you can’t craft some kind of cure using human medicine? You said you were running experiments right?”
Aiden sighed. “Yes. We’ve tried the whole night, but it’s not proving easy. All our options need a lot of experimentation which takes time. Evan’s strain is a mutation which adds an extra layer of difficulty. There’s also the fact Evan’s mind has already been at least partially destroyed and it would be near impossible to reverse that too even if we did manage to get the potion to work. I made a potion last night, but the best it can do so far is heal him as he is, which isn't ideal, to say the least.” He sighed. “Even that needs further experimentation.”
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Lexie blew out her breath. “What if there was something he could have taken to prevent getting sick in the first place?"
Aiden frowned. "Something like what?"
"Like a potion that would give him and everyone who drinks it immunity to the disease by producing antibodies..." She wasn't sure she should continue, since she wasn't sure that antibodies were a thing here. Because when she'd checked on the NET, there had been no vaccines present in the world.
It was weird. Apparently, several vaccines had been in circulation several hundred years ago, but they stopped being produced due to redundancy. It happened around the time that the System was created, and though the article she read didn't go into detail, Lexie figured that it was the advent of Healers and Saintesses and Potion Makers that made vaccines no longer relevant.
So essentially, the advent of magic had stifled some regular human invention and medical discovery. Most things in this society seemed far more advanced than on her earth, but other things, particularly things to do with mundanes, seemed less so.
So maybe, the presence of magic and healers slowed the development of regular human medicines? It made sense. Why spend years and money to develop a cancer cure, when a magic person can just fly over and zap your cancer away?
And even as she tried to explain what a vaccine was to Aiden, he only nodded vaguely.
“Yes, that’s also part of the research I’ve been conducting at the Healing House. Only Emma knows about it. The rest think I’m merely doing volunteer work. But I’d rather not give anyone false hope in case such a thing isn’t possible anymore. A lot of the ingredients used to make them are no longer being produced.”
Lexie nodded, but she felt crushed. It was good that Aiden was thinking about making a vaccine. But it was also tragic that he hadn't made one earlier to save Evan from this horrible situation.
“Now I know I promised you a card lesson eventually but I need to get some sleep.” Aiden yawned. “I'll have to go back later today to monitor his condition and continue on the potion.”
“Can I go with you?”
“You really don't have to,” he said.
“I want to,” she said. “I’m bored staying at home and I’d rather be there doing something useful.” Although she didn’t know how useful she would be, she couldn’t watch videos all day or she would start to feel sick. And as much as Lexie wasn’t necessarily extroverted, she did need human companionship once in a while.
Aiden gave her a tired smile and reached out to smooth her hair back.
“Alright,” he said. “You can come.”
The rest of the week was much of the same.
She spent so much time at the healing house that she learned the names of almost everyone working there. There was Nancy at reception who gave her cookies and pinched her cheeks. And then Riordon, a male nurse who knew all the gossip about everyone there and was always ready to share it, doctor-patient confidentiality be damned. And of course, Ashely and Lisa who were roommates that argued as much as they got along. Lisa was also the one who threw the pen at Ashley that other day in frustration.
And then Carissa who wanted to be a social media star, Godfrey the guy who could get a needle into any vein, Tion, the elderly security guard and Rowena Lexie's occasionally babysitter. Plus Lacey, Gemma, and Horace who she didn’t know that well, only by name.
In any case, it was a small group of people and they were basically in charge of all the health needs for the entire town. Seriously. It was crazy to Lexie, crazy for her to even think about. A group of about ten people who generalized in human medicine, ran the scans, tests and did everything at the healing house.
No wonder everyone was sick all the time.
Meanwhile, while the nurses kept Lexie company, Aiden spent most of the time in the lab working. He was doing testing on a species of mice that Max had brought from a forest, which according to Aiden, were the best kind of mice to test potions on because they had a physiology even closer to humans than regular mice. Lexie had only been in the lab once to watch him work, but then he'd kicked her out after some time because he didn't know how the chemical fumes would affect growing children.
Emma rolled her eyes and told him that the fumes wouldn't do anything, but Aiden wasn't willing to take the chance with his daughter.
So, Lexie found herself exploring the hospital more often than not. Sometimes, she even found herself peeking into Evan’s room. He was in a coma, his skin looking white, body stiff as a board. Rose was constantly with him, holding his hand looking just as drawn and pale as he was. Once when Lexie stood at the doorway, their eyes met and the other woman didn’t look away.
Lexie couldn't stand the strong emotions pulsing through her, so she simply averted her gaze and kept walking.
In her spare moments, she searched the NET for information and also watched more matches on her pad. She would sometimes even read about spells or aliens or subway trains or anything else she found curious about this world. She was desperately trying to occupy her mind with something, anything so she didn't have to think of the passage of time and Evan's incoming demise.
And then she would also check her cell phone and read old messages from her brother.
She was scrolling through the phone, walking down the hallways when she nearly ran into Ashley who was coming in from the other side.
"Oh it’s so cute," Ashley said. “I haven't seen one of these in forever. Where did you get it?”
“Um…” Lexie wasn’t sure what to say. Was she referring to the phone? She'd seen it before. Lexie figured, judging from Aiden's reaction, that there were probably phones in this new world, but she hadn't seen any yet.
Probably something else that was rendered archaic thanks to the System.
Thankfully she was saved from answering by the arrival of Xena who walked in and was about to head straight down the hallway but stopped and stared at Lexie. She didn't smile, neither did she scowl. Just stared straight at her.
Despite herself, Lexie was happy to see the other kid. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Xena said, less enthusiastically. “You’re not dead.”
“I know,” she grinned. “Isn’t it great?”
“I guess.”
Lexie tried not to take her lack of enthusiasm to heart. After all, Xena was probably still worried about her mother. Lexie couldn’t forget how horrible this situation must be for Xena, especially after she risked so much to break into that party all for the video to not even show what she said.
And then suddenly, Lexie remembered Xena mentioned a…subnet? Darknet?
Undernet. Yeah that was it.
Lexie had been exhausted at that point, but she thought Xena said something about the video being in the Undernet people.
But as she opened her mouth to ask, she realized Ashley was still around listening to their conversation. If this Undernet was really like the dark web, perhaps she should wait to ask for it when they’re in private.
“Oh and I watched the fight by the way,” Lexie announced instead, mostly to take Xena’s mind off her worry with some lighthearted teasing. “Top Dog kicked Conrad’s ass.”
Annoyance replaced Xena’s wain expression. “That’s only because Conrad got distracted at the end. And Top Dog cheated.”
“How did he cheat?”
“He used his weapon to force Conrad to surrender. Even after Conrad cut him some slack in the beginning."
“Top Dog never asked Conrad to cut him any slack. It’s not cheating if you use your enemy's weaknesses against him." And in this case, the weakness was that Conrad didn't seem to take Top Dog as seriously as TD took him. Perhaps he simply thought he would win because he was stronger.
“Yeah well, it was lame of Top Dog to do that. And dishonorable.”
“He did what he had to do." Lexie shrugged. "You’re just on Conrad’s side because you think he’s cute.
“I do not!” Her face flamed. “I like that he's a good person and I like what he stands for.”
“Which is?"
“He’s not an asshole, and doesn’t want to be a [Hero] despite his [Hero] parents.”
What lofty standards. “And that makes him great, how?”
“You wouldn’t understand. Your dad was a [Hero] so you think they're all great.”
“I don’t think they’re all great. I went to that party with you, didn’t I? But I don’t think being anti-[Hero] makes him a good guy either."
“I don't care what you think. You support that cheater Top Dog with his stupid magic gloves."
“They’re not stupid and it wasn’t cheating.”
“Not that all this quibbling isn’t fun and all, because it totally is.” Ashley sounded amused. "But I have to deliver these test tubes to Emma in room 5, I'm going to go."
"I'm going there too," Xena said.
"Me three," Lexie concurred then when Xena glared at her, Lexie added, "It's not like I'm following you. My dad's there."
"Oh, he's your dad now huh?" Xena quipped.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You called him Aiden on the train."
Oh shit she had, hadn't she? "I was confused. I have memory loss, cut me some slack."
As they walked side by side still quibbling they finally met up with Emma and Aiden in a hospital room. Emma was on the bed while Aiden stood in front of her, looking grave. Emma was wearing a scarf to cover her rash, and her face looked a little strained too.
Xena instantly went to her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes I'm fine," she said quickly with a weak smile. "Just....we tried the new potion and it didn't work quite as well as I wanted it to."
"Oh." A tense silence hung between everyone in the room.
“I’ll keep going,” Aiden said even though he looked pale and like he was on death’s door, dark eye bags underneath his eyes, stubble on his cheeks. “I must have missed something small. Or maybe my calculations were wrong somewhere. I’ll run it over again.”
“It’s okay Aiden,” Emma said with a sigh. “I think you’ve done your best.”
"Mom," Xena whispered, but they were interrupted by another knock on the door.
"Um Emma." Riordon stuck his head in, his face a mixture of shock and feverish excitement. "You're not going to believe who's here."
Emma bolted out of bed and Aiden straightened. "A healer?"
He shook his head, smiling secretively. "You should probably come see for yourself."
Emma, Xena, Lexie, and Nancy all filed out of the room, following Riordon who was basically rubbing his hands in glee. He walked in hurried steps, and they matched it, their excitement building as they went.
They were scared to hope.
But they couldn't help it either.
And when they finally got to the waiting area she saw why Riordon was so giddy.
A tall, radiant blonde woman was standing at the welcome desk, chatting with Carissa. Or more like Carissa was chatting and basically fawning and the woman was merely smiling pleasantly.
Emma froze first gaping at the woman. Nancy's reaction was no less stunned.
“[Saintess],” Emma whispered.
She finally flicked her gaze over to us, and when she smiled it was like the sun parting the clouds and warming up our skin.
"Someone asked for a healer?" she said.