“Gate-crashing rates are up again this month,” one of the CDM directors said on a Friday morning. He didn’t bother introducing himself, and I had never seen or met him before.

  The entire enforcement department sat on folding chairs in the briefing room while he presented.

  “Starting Monday, we are doing an enforcement blitz. The ones we charge end up with fines and jail time, and the ones who get away will have a reminder that what they are doing could ruin their lives if they get caught. We’ll be scrambling surveillance to every gate, which means some of you will be alone at your posts for long hours.

  “Overtime is mandatory for this initiative. I’m not happy about that either, so let’s bag as many crashers as we can so we don’t have to do this again. Your direct manager will explain the rest of the process to you.”

  When we were dismissed, Grensmith made his way to the intern cubicle a few minutes later.

  “We don’t have the people to put two on a gate and still function as an organization. Leminson is exempt from solo day shifts. Everyone, including Leminson, will get pulled into at least two overnight shifts because regulations say we have to have two people on surveillance after dark. There’s a drone piloting module in your emails that will teach you the process. Get it done.”

  He walked away without waiting for questions.

  “Why do you get out of this?” Saito asked Leminson.

  “Did you not hear the part where he said I still had to do overnights?”

  “One shift is better than the chance for two back-to-back. So for real, why are you excluded from day shifts?”

  “Career day presentations,” she answered begrudgingly.

  Saito cocked his head. “Like at schools?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  Leminson laughed. “See? I’m not getting out of having a shit assignment. It’s just a different shit assignment.”

  Grensmith reappeared. “I had a boss that used to say, ‘if you got time to lean, then you got time to clean.’ I don’t have a version of that for talking at your desks, but you best be working on something.”

  I booted up the new training module on flying CDM surveillance drones. Practicing thumb movements at my desk–required for training and evaluated via webcam–was weird enough, but the motion recognition was garbage. Somehow Saito figured out he could ace every webcam assessment in the module with a karate chop.

  That didn’t make any sense, but I kept trying to do the course the right way. Eventually, I did the movements once to give the camera a chance to read my attempt, and then I karate-chopped my way to the next if it erred.

  We must have looked ridiculous to everyone else in the office.

  ***

  I had started to put my desk in order for the end of the day when Nathan texted me.

  “sooooo your sister’s here bro. idk what to do but i let her in.”

  I told him thank you and that I’d be right home. Then I put both hands on my desk and let my head fall.

  “You okay?” Megan said, putting her bag over her shoulder.

  “My roommate just texted me to say my sister showed up.”

  “Bad blood?”

  “No, but I haven’t seen her in, like, 6 years or something. I went no-contact when I turned 18, and it wasn’t like I could take a little sister with me.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Friend of mine went through something similar. Her family lived in one of those church communities, and leaving the fold was an epic act of betrayal for them.”

  “Yeah…”

  Megan put a hand on my shoulder. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Is that what’s going on here? Don’t listen to me. I’m an asshole.”

  “You’re fine, and you’re right. My parents’ church decided that the dungeon gates were the rapture, and they were chosen to stay behind to reclaim Earth from the demons attacking our world. When they succeed, Earth becomes part of heaven.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Hey, sorry for dumping that on you,” I said as I slipped out of the cube to escape. “You have a good weekend.”

  ***

  “Dorion!” my sister shouted when she saw me come in the apartment door. Beth jumped over the back of the couch and ran to give me a hug.

  She was so much different from what I remembered, but then again, that was six years ago when she was twelve. For some reason, I pictured the little sister I knew back then to be the one waiting for me.

  When we were younger, she looked enough like me that people immediately knew we were siblings. Lucky for her that she didn’t grow up to look like I did. If this situation was what I thought it was, I would have front-row seats for her entering the world of secular dating, which I believed to be quite unlucky.

  She wore high-waisted jean shorts and a crop top. Her long brown hair was in a braid.

  “Go shopping before you came here?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it cute?!” she twirled. “Mom and dad would have killed me if I came home dressed like this.”

  I wasn’t stoked about it either, to be honest, but now was not the time. “Is everything okay?”

  Her face fell. “I left. They told me I wasn’t allowed, so I just went. I don’t have a phone, or I would have called you.”

  “Did they know you were leaving anyway?”

  She sheepishly shook her head.

  I winced. “I have to call them and tell them you’re safe.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. They’ll have half the church out searching for you.”

  “Then they’ll come here and take me back.”

  I shook my head. “They won’t. Mom refuses to drive in the city, and dad won't go anywhere she won't. They’ve never come looking for me here, not once since I moved out.”

  “Fine.”

  I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts. Just before I hit call, I changed my mind and sent a text instead.

  I wrote, “Beth is here. She’s safe. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll do it directly.”

  “Are you mad at me?” Beth asked when I looked up.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “No, I’m not mad. Are you hungry?”

  “I’m not that big of a jerk,” Nathan yelled from the couch. “I gave the girl some food. A glass of water too, if you can believe it.”

  Beth laughed softly. “I’m fine.”

  “Come on. You’ll take my room.”

  “I can sleep on the couch. I don’t mind.”

  “I’m really worn out. Take the damn room, and we’ll figure out a long-term plan then, okay?”

  Beth nodded.

  “I’m even going to get you clean sheets,” I added.

  “How long have those sheets been on?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  She wrinkled her face.

  I stripped off the linens and tossed them in the laundry basket. Beth helped me remake the bed.

  “I feel gross from sitting all day,” I said when we were done. “I’m going to have a quick shower, and then we can talk. Is that alright?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  ***

  As I got out of the shower, I checked my phone. My mom had texted me back:

  “k.”

  Oh, how I missed these conversations.

  Nathan and Beth sat on the couch browsing television options. In the church, our choices for things like shows and movies were limited. Nearly everything was a devil-worshipping exercise in disguise, so we saw a little bit of public television and not much else.

  Suffice it to say, Beth was enraptured by secular programming.

  “There’s so much!” she said when I sat down to join them. “Nathan says I should ease into dungeon shows.”

  “They’re all crazy violent. I agree that’d be a rough place to start. If you want to watch something with crawlers, American Dungeon Champion is all crawlers but with obstacle courses and mock scenarios. It might be more fun to start with a comedy series, though.”

  “You pick.” She handed me the remote.

  “This show is set in a hospital. The writing is really good, and it’s serious sometimes.” I hit play.

  And that’s how the next two and a half hours passed. The three of us sat in the living room watching reruns. Seeing Beth laugh was nice. I didn’t realize how much I missed having that in my life. The joy she gave off was contagious. Somehow, jokes were funnier if she laughed at them. She had always been like that.

  “I should get to bed,” Nathan said as he stood. “I picked up a side job and have to be up early. Beth, it was nice meeting you. Welcome to Pittsburgh.”

  “Thank you!” she replied. To me, she asked, “Want to watch something different?”

  “We should stop avoiding the conversation,” I suggested. “I don’t want to have it either, but we have to.”

  Beth nodded.

  “Did something happen, or did you leave because of the usual stuff?”

  “The usual stuff.”

  The same was true for me when I was her age. There was no one singular cataclysmic moment where it all went wrong. The average daily routine within the church wore on me until I broke and had to get out of there.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked.

  “Get a job and get my own place.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “I’ll find something,” she said.

  Oh boy. She was as naive as I was when I left. “What about school? I got some decent financial aid because of my situation. Might be able to do the same for you.”

  “I don’t know what I’d study, but I’m open to it being an option.”

  “It’s okay not to know. I remember how rough the adjustment was. Honestly, life in the church is easier. There’s a lot that’s better about being outside of it, but you never had to worry about making rent and affording groceries, you know?”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “Good,” I continued. “Here’s my proposal: No big decision talk for the rest of the weekend unless you want to. I’ll show you around the city a bit. We’ll watch bad TV. It’ll be fun and relaxed. You’ll be on your own while I’m at work during the week, but in the evenings we’ll look at your options and make some plans.”

  I sighed.

  “Maybe I’ll be home in the evenings,” I corrected. “I forgot they just told us about a bunch of mandatory overtime. I don’t know my schedule yet, so there’s a chance this week ends up being a wash. That’s my fault. Not yours.”

  “What kind of school has you working that late?” she asked.

  “Being a teacher didn’t work out. I started an internship with the Center for Dungeon Management not too long ago. The hours can be rough, especially if I get called in overnight.”

  Beth straightened her back in time with her eyebrows raising. “You’re working in dungeons?”

  “Sometimes. It’s mostly paperwork.”

  “If you stayed with the church, you could have done the same thing,” Beth mused.

  “Huh?”

  “The whole community is preparing to move. Canada announced a resettlement program. Basically, if you agree to clear any dungeon on your land that is B-ranked or below, they actually pay you to relocate and give you a big piece of property. The church has been buying gates to level up demon hunters in preparation. That’s what they call crawlers now.”

  “Mom and dad going too?” I asked.

  “Yep. Dad wishes he was younger and could be on the frontlines fighting in the name of righteousness, but he’s excited to do God’s work even if it isn’t in the dungeon. They leave in a little more than a year from now.”

  “Wow.”

  “Why did you change your mind about being a teacher?”

  I answered honestly. “It’s expensive to live. If I stuck with being a teacher, I wouldn’t make enough to pay my bills. Not even close.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t say that to discourage you. It was a lot harder for me than I expected, and that was a tough lesson. I’d like to see you skip that part, for your sake.”

  “In all the shows they become waiters or bartenders,” Beth said. “I figured I’d do something like that.”

  “Those jobs make more than teachers but still not enough. I’ve had a few friends go into the trades: carpenters' union, pipefitters, bricklayers. Those kinds of jobs. I put applications in for all of them and got waitlisted. The CDM was the only place that offered me an interview.”

  “Is that where you plan to make a career?”

  I shook my head. “No, my plan was to level and then join a guild or a team. That’s where the money is, but I learned recently that might not work out. I’m working on a new life plan myself because of that.”

  “Have you been inside a dungeon gate?”

  “A few. I’ve only done two actual crawls.”

  “Was it scary?”

  “A little. The runs I get to do are like training wheels on a bike. I could probably get hurt if I really tried, but stronger crawlers are with us, so it’s pretty safe.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  “I’m going to get some sleep. Want to get breakfast in the morning?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Alright. You can watch the TV in my room if you want. The remote should be… somewhere. If you can’t find it, I’ll help you look.”

  Beth bounded across the living room and gave me a big hug. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Have a good night.”

  A few minutes later, when Beth was in my room and I was tucked in on the couch, I checked my phone.

  Nathan texted me:

  “hey man. i don’t want it to be weird, so before you get super worried about it I want you to know I’m cool with her staying here. 10 days or 10 years. doesn’t matter to me as long as she respects leftover rules.”

  Nathan was the first friend I made when I began the same journey as Beth. I bounced around shelters and hostels until I could start college, and he was my first roommate. From the beginning, Nathan was understanding and patient with me when I didn’t know something that was obvious to a normal person.

  This might sound like a weird example, but I didn’t know who Anne Frank was.

  We learned about the war like every other kid in the country, sure, but we read an account of a persecuted Christian. Normal children read The Diary of Anne Frank. I was in a college class when I discovered this gap in my knowledge, and the professor spent five minutes of the lecture complaining about how low university standards had gotten if someone too dumb to remember the name Anne Frank ended up in his course.

  Nathan, though, was nothing but supportive. I was lucky to have met him so soon after striking out on my own, and I felt even luckier reading his text just then. A surprise third roommate in a two-bedroom apartment would piss most people off, and rightfully so, but not Nathan.

  The leftover rule, by the way, put a two-dinner timer on any leftovers in the fridge. Leftovers were off limits until the night after the second dinner passed, at which point they became fair game. We had too many instances of good food going to waste and really good food disappearing when you had dreamed about eating it all day.

  We debated the time period extensively and found that two days was the right mix between the food still being edible and the original owner having enough time to eat it themselves if they were going to.

  And thus, the leftover rule was born.

  “Thanks, man,” I texted back. “You’re a good friend.”

  “8===3~~~~”