JoshuaCole374

Chapter 84: Warped

I flicked a glance behind me, worried, for one horrible instant, that I wouldn’t see anyone else. The rest of the team remained right behind me, though.

Lena had just said something that got Donica glaring at her, and was enjoying the reaction. That left only Zhizhi looking my way. Her eyes narrowed when she saw my expression.

I turned ahead and lowered my voice. “Erin, could you run the tape and see how many aisles we passed o...

Chapter 83: Distance

The door swung shut behind Lena and I panicked.

It was stupid – maybe it was stupid – but I felt absolutely certain that when I ran through that door, I wouldn’t find her on the other side. The warehouse would swallow her up and I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again.

Run I did. I slammed into the door as it swung back into the shop. It was heavier than it looked, and it looked pretty damn heavy. I shoved it out of my wa...

Chapter 82: Storefront

I’d chosen a little shop, like the one Donica and I pushed through to the warehouse on our first trip.

Not exactly alike. This one had a peculiar arrangement, the shelves forming concentric semicircles around a central display table. I didn’t think it was any kind of mystical, Third Eye shit, just a weird shop layout. But who knows? Maybe if I knew how to read the runes, I’d find the whole place represented some kind of seal holdin...

Chapter 81: The Second Time Around

Lena, Donica, Zhizhi and I donned our hardhats.

We had more gear this time, which Donica and I unloaded from the back of her Yukon. Bright orange safety vests, to which we clipped on cheap bodycams and lights. Even though we were visible from the street, Donica slapped her light to test it. Its glow illuminated a slurry of snow and gravel.

Those of us without smart glasses slipped headsets on and paired them with our phones so we c...

Chapter 80: Return

“I cannot believe I let you talk me into this,” Donica said.

Gravel rattled, dust and snow billowed, as she pulled her Yukon up to the familiar slumping fence of the construction site.

“It’s fine,” Lena said. “You got me and Bernie backing you up this time. And Cam can do whatever it is he does, too.”

“Mostly scream when he backs into doors, from what I recall,” Donica said.

Lena lay her head ...

Chapter 79: Afterparty

Lena clutched Bernie under one arm and waved frantically with her open hand. Erin paused at the railing to wave back, then bustled after Donica, who’d already reached the stairs and, as such, turned half-invisible as wind whipped the snow around.

I wrapped an arm around Lena’s waist and tugged her back into the apartment. I shut the door before a snowdrift could form around our feet.

Lena’s free arm thumped to her side. She s...

Chapter 78: Adjourned

I was pretty sure Joon Woo’s words hadn’t inspired Lena to close Third Eye. We remained six people, a tablet and a giant salamander and/or plushie stuffed into a too-small apartment.

So the temperature hadn’t actually dropped.

Nonetheless, I shuddered, and I wasn’t the only one.

“When OldCampaigner – Cameron – claimed he was going to prove we had access to actual magic, I thought it was a joke,” Joon ...

Chapter 77: Trust

“So you did know,” Lena said.

Erin blinked. “I –”

“Right from day one.” Lena squared her shoulders. “You knew it was real.”

“It was such a small change, I couldn’t rule out the possibility of it being an error in measurement, or that my thermometer connected to my phone somehow, or...” Erin backed up against the blinds. When they rattled, she jumped.

“But that’s not,” Lena said, “what you...

Chapter 76: Proof

The little metal cup on the weathervane spun in my gale.

Let’s be clear. The amount of wind I felt whipping through the apartment would have knocked knickknacks off their shelves and torn coats from their hooks. Assuming Lena could even hold the weathervane in place, it would’ve spun too fast to see.

What actually happened, as she strained to both hold its base and to keep my Wood from flying past into the kitchen, was that the...

Chapter 75: Anchor

I shook Zhizhi’s hand. Her grip was firm but not overbearing, the kind of handshake that would put you at ease if you weren’t the kind of person who found the whole handshake thing kind of inherently uncomfortable. Couldn’t be me.

Do you remember Zhizhi? After what had easily become the busiest week of my life, I barely did. Last Sunday she’d been the footnote in a story about Albie, a nosy jogger who I’d had to convince I wasn...

Chapter 74: Team Building Exercise

“If we meet like this again,” Donica said, “I’m going to have to insist one of us who has an actual house play host.”

Miguel laughed.

I started to, but I noticed Lena’s hunched shoulders. I reached over and massaged the back of her hand; she only glared at Donica a little.

“We would have a lot more space there,” Erin said. “But I don’t mind this. It’s... cozy.”

Of course Erin wo...

Chapter 73: Open Windows

The plushie didn’t move.

I didn’t know what I’d expected to see.

I turned back to Lena and started to speak.

The plushie version of Bernie lay by her feet, tucked into his corner of the pet bed. As if he’d never moved when she called him the first time.

I shot a frantic glance back at her desk. Nothing. “Holy shit!”

She looked around. “What did you see?”

I shook my head. “I... nothing. He w...

Chapter 72: First Test

Lena and I still couldn’t afford to eat out on the regular, much less at sit-down restaurants.

So naturally, the next morning saw us sitting side-by-side in a booth at IHOP, cutting wedges out of our pancakes and feeding them to each other like a couple of total dorks.

Two points in our defense:

One, when we first dated, we did it online. Not only that, but once we started going out IRL, Lena was too tense in public to indu...

Chapter 71: Wait, What?

Imagine all the things Lena could have said instead.

“I’ve realized I’m gay,” she might have said, and okay, that explains that. She would be my gay best friend and I would remind myself that it didn’t mean I’d been that bad a boyfriend.

“I’m seeing another guy,” she might have said, and that would’ve felt way worse because maybe I really had been that bad. But, still, fair enough. You might say, how co...

Chapter 70: Storytime

The apartment sweltered. Too hot. Too stale. Too small. How could I have ever wanted the landlord to turn the furnace on?

How could I have ever wanted Lena to tell me the truth?

I made myself meet her eyes. Hers were tight at the edges, like her mouth, pulled into a line.

I forced myself to say, “Okay.”

Lena looked down at my hand. She reached for it, but hesitated. “It is, huh?”

No. “I don’t know.”<...

Chapter 69: Nice

For the second time in as many days, I was, technically, breaking the law.

Well, was I?

I didn’t know if RTD regulations were laws or just rules.

And I didn’t know if Bernie counted as a pet we weren’t supposed to bring onto the bus with us. They had provisions for service animals. Did a familiar count?

Without Third Eye, he was an oversized dragon plushie occupying about as much of Lena’s seat as she did. Some ...

Chapter 68: The Beast

I staggered toward the hallway. Lena scooted back on the bed.

The monster continued to emerge.

Its body alone stretched three feet long, mottled red, glistening, slimy, with wide splayed legs and huge protruding eyes. A thick tail at least as long as its body stretched back under the bed. It opened its maw and probed the blazing air with its long tongue.

Around it, the apartment flash-fried. The carpet smoldered beneath the m...

Chapter 67: Lost World

I saw a studio apartment, smaller than ours, walls painted in antiseptic white, the same cream carpet as in the hallway, white blinds drawn over an outside window. A white wooden bed crowded into one corner beside an open white nightstand. A white desk stretched out of the far wall. A built-in range and kitchen sink, and the handles of the doors that I assumed led to a closet and a bathroom, were the only things to even show visible metal.

Chapter 66: Firebreak

I turned to face the elevator doors.

They opened on hallways running in both directions, with a series of doors  and door numbers and mail slots marking the apartments. Cream carpet, white plaster walls, a potted fern that looked like it needed way more water than it got.

All of that to the naked eye.

When I raised my phone, I saw what Lena was staring at through her Google Glass. Not that it came as any surprise, since ...

Chapter 65: Wavy Bricks

Lena was taking me to Micro Center.

She didn’t say that. When I made the mistake of asking her again where we were headed, as we took our seats on the northbound light rail from Englewood Downtown, she turned her nose up and looked out the window.

But what else could she have in mind? We switched lines at Broadway to head southeast, got off at the Southmoor station, and boarded a southbound bus. We’d made this pilgrimage every ...

Chapter 64: Steel

I woke to an unfamiliar smell. Rich, savory, just a little spicy.

I drew in a deep breath. My lips curled into a smile.

My eyes flew open and I staggered out of bed. My first thought was that the next thing Third Eye had begun to subject me to was olfactory hallucinations. Or, looking at it another way, it had started letting me smell things from another reality. Third Nose? I guess it would be second but it didn’t have the right...

Chapter 63: Two Truths And Third Eye

When I broke it down to just the facts, it turned out not to be a long story, after all. Although the three of us took seats around the kitchen counter, I’d laid out the basics before Donica even finished off her coffee.

I paused to collect my thoughts and catch my breath.

Donica got up, pitched her foam cup, and collected her coat.

Lena eyed each of us in turn. “I don’t really get it.”

I sighed. “If you weren...

Chapter 62: Warm Welcome

Neither of us spoke while Donica drove me back to the apartment. I don’t know what was running through her head. I hardly even looked at her. I stared out the window, watching strip malls and fast food joints and antique stores roll pass.

Real places, filled with real people. I wanted to ask Donica to pull in at one of the bars just so we could mingle with the crowd. The alcohol probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

But I couldn’t ...

Chapter 61: Home Stretch

I’d never been happier to see row after row of empty metal shelf frames.

The only reason I didn’t run up to the nearest and throw my arms around it and plant a kiss on its brushed aluminum side was that, technically, we were still on the construction site. I had to save some relief until we made it back to Donica’s Yukon. And maybe a bit more until she drove me back to the apartment.

Oh. Also, I didn’t do that beca...

Chapter 60: Lost

I shouted Donica’s name.

My voice echoed up and down the hall for what felt like forever. I couldn’t count the heartbeats thudding in my chest.

Then, finally, as if from a great distance, I heard her call back.

“Wait up,” I yelled.

I jogged in the direction I’d heard her voice from, even though it seemed like it was the wrong way if we intended to leave through the warehouse. I turned the corner but didn’t s...

Chapter 59: Door Number Two

Like so many Third Eye questions, this lacked an obvious answer. Another familiar refrain: the unobvious answers I thought of all sounded somewhere between unpleasant and sinister.

First of all, could you pick a more perfect place for invasion PVP? Easy to access from a major street, but away from the eyes of passing motorists. Lots of space to play around with the various options the app gave us, but blocked sight lines from which to st...

Chapter 58: Back Room

Donica brushed past me and tried the door behind the plain metal counter. It swung open. She glanced over her shoulder at me, then stepped through.

I suppressed a sigh. She needed to work on this “trying to become friends” thing.

I jogged to the doorway.

The space behind it seemed intended as some kind of warehouse or stockroom. Of course, it had no actual stock, much less wares. Is there a difference between those? If so...

Chapter 57: Under Construction

I took a last sip of my Coke and set it back into the drink holder, grabbed the last of my fries and scarfed them down, and unbelted.

I said, “I still think this is really dumb.”

“Noted.” Donica tapped something on her phone and the trunk of the Yukon swung open behind us. Did they call it a trunk on an SUV? Since I didn’t know, I defaulted to yes. She got out of the vehicle and walked around to the yawning back gate.

Chapter 56: Ex Mart

I’m not saying I went with Donica because she’d offered to treat Lena and I to dinner.

I appreciated her willingness to try again to befriend us. I thought it was good for both Lena and I to spend time with other people. I wasn’t ready to stop playing Third Eye for the day.

But a dinner offer from somebody who owned her own car didn’t hurt. An SUV, even! When we got to the parking lot, she approached a Yukon, one of those m...

Chapter 55: By Invitation Only

DeepingShadows: Are you free?

“The hell?” Lena jabbed something into her mechanical keyboard. “Are you getting this from DS, too?”

“Yeah.”

Donica sure hadn’t opened with a softball question. Was I free? It’s a free country, they say. I didn’t have anything scheduled, mostly because I kept getting distracted instead of doing so. Lena wasn’t up to scouting and I wasn’t sure how I felt abou...