Expedition- Summerlands

by Nathaniel Webb

  “You may join her at the job kiosk, Fessy,” said Mr Sorolla.

  “Sir!” squeaked Fessy. “Sir, seventeen years, seventeen years I’ve worked for you—”

  “And? So?” Mr Sorolla was stony-faced. “You think you can’t be replaced, you little scut? You bring this wild animal to my home and you expect me to give a shit for your loyalty? Get out. You’re lucky I don’t include you in the charges. Get out. Get out!”

  Mr Fessy slunk away across the lush grass and I turned to follow him. Mr Sorolla’s big hand fell heavy on my shoulder. I froze.

  “Not you. That’s a public decency violation easy. Assault and battery. Stay here until the police arrive.”

  I looked around me. I was more or less surrounded by strong, healthy men who served Mr Sorolla. Half of them looked eager to please; the other half, terrified of making a mistake like Mr Fessy.

  “She looks like an escape risk to me,” said one of them, an older man with tight skin and slicked-back silver hair.

  “Get a chair,” said Sorolla. The silver-haired man hurried through the sliding door into the house.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. My voice sounded tiny. Mr Sorolla’s lackey reappeared with a wooden kitchen chair, which he dropped in front of me. Sorolla pointed to the chair.

  “Now, you can either sit here and wait, or we can make you sit.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said.

  “Miss Burke, my police contract entitles me to one citizen’s arrest per quarter, with application of necessary force. You should feel honored that I’m wasting it on you. So I say again: sit or we’ll seat you. Your choice.”

  I collapsed into the chair and doubled over. The fight had gone out of me quicker than it had come and I cursed myself for opening my big mouth. There was no doubt that Sorolla would honor Mr Fessy’s final act of firing me.

  I could practically see the Summerlands fading away before me. The cobbled streets and white plaster buildings of Wellpoint, nestled beside an azure river that wound between emerald hills; the shadowed eaves of forests that lay at the feet of red mountains stabbing the eternal summer sky; the bright gleam of yellow gold slipping between the dusty gloves of adventurers returned from daring journeys. Jason was there, holding a real sword. All of it turned to gray as the weight of my actions settled on my slumped shoulders. The gray turned to ash and crumbled. What little remained was caught by the wind and floated away on the sound of approaching sirens.

  ***

  The police station was a blur. A young, gentle officer processed me and helped Mrs Sorolla make her statement as a rat-faced cop put a blanket over her shoulders and brought her a mug of coffee. The lines on her hand were already white and closed. Officer Porter, Jason’s killer, was nowhere to be seen.

  All of Sorolla’s men made statements as well. They’d made a game of it, laughing and sharing pocket flasks with the cops as they competed to see who could exaggerate my assault most dramatically.

  I gave my statement, my confession, to a touchscreen recorder. It played my voice back to me for confirmation and I heard a dead monotone speaking words I had already forgotten. I confirmed the statement. It hardly mattered. A court date popped up on the screen, just a week away, but there was barely even a need for me to show up. The verdict was obvious; only the sentence was left hanging open like a waiting noose.

  The police finally released me around three in the morning, long after the Sorollas and their friends had gone home. There was no bus that late, so I steeled myself for the walk back to the apartment block, the final indignity of a day that seemed hell-bent on breaking me. The station doors whooshed open with a chicken-scented puff of air.

  Cass and Noah waited just outside. Cass was pacing, hands in pockets; Noah sat against the concrete wall, making complicated hand motions over a paper cup on the ground. They both looked up as I came out and Cass immediately drew me into a bear hug. There were tears in her eyes as we broke apart.

  “God, I thought they’d never let you out! Are you okay?”

  “Hungry,” I said. Noah stood, put his cup carefully in a pocket, and hugged me as well. “It’s so good to see you guys. How’d you know I was here?”

  “They never took Dad’s police scanner back.” Cass laughed. “Come on, we’ve got a long walk home.”

  As we walked, they peppered me with questions. I had to describe slapping the glass from Mrs Sorolla’s hand a dozen times. Finally, I wound up in a detailed recollection of the sight and smell of the cow on Mr Sorolla’s grill. I’d come closer than any of Hearthammer to eating real meat, aside from Keats himself, who’d had it as a kid. Dreams of sizzling patties carried us back to the block and if I was starving by the time we made it to Cass’s apartment, at least I was feeling something other than numb misery.

  ***

  I woke up just as hungry as I’d gone to bed, and as Cass stirred in the lower bunk and Noah unfolded himself from the floor, we quickly found we were all feeling the same way.

  “Can’t wait to get at that refined protein,” said Cass as she reached down to touch her toes. “I don’t have any clients today and Emma is on permanent vacation. You working, Noah?”

  “No,” he said, imitating Cass’s stretches.

  “Then it’s a training day. Eat big and get ready to hurt.”

  “Cass.” I slid down the ladder from Jason’s bunk. “We need to talk about this.”

  “Talk about what?” She stood on her right foot, pulling her left leg up behind her back.

  “The Summerlands. Guys, I was there when they booked me. They’re putting me up on assault charges. That’s serious. Do either of you really, truly think I’m gonna be found innocent?”

  Cass looked at the floor, but Noah just kept his steady brown-eyed gaze on me, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I’m going to—” I choked, unable to finish the thought. After a deep breath, I tried again. “I’m going to jail. Not forever, but… long enough.”

  “We’ll wait,” said Noah.

  “It’ll take years to save up the money again,” Cass agreed.

  “So I get out, then what?” I spread my empty hands. “I’ll have nothing saved. I won’t be able to get a job. I’m dead weight, guys. You need to find someone else.”

  “I need to eat some goddamn breakfast,” said Cass, clapping her hands. She pushed past me and opened the bedroom door. “Dad! Dad, you up?”

  Silence answered her.

  “That’s weird,” said Cass. “He usually has breakfast on by now. Maybe he’s still asleep.”

  “Maybe he didn’t feel up to cooking,” I said. “I know he can still reach the stove and everything, but it obviously hurts more than he lets on.”

  “Let’s make breakfast,” said Noah.

  “Sure,” said Cass. “I can—hey, what’s this?” She bent down to snatch up an unmarked white envelope from the hallway floor. “Emma, you leave this?”

  “No, I was going to start putting my paycards into the bank again.” I came up to peer over her shoulder as she opened the envelope. It was lined in green and contained a folded sheet of white printer paper. Cass pulled it out and unfolded it to reveal a single sentence written in blue pen.

  “I refuse to stand in the way of your dreams,” Cass read. Her voice started strong and ended in a whisper.

  She dropped the envelope on the floor as I started yelling for Keats. There was no response. The three of us ran into the hall. I tore the kitchen door open to find it empty. A glance down the hall to where Cass and Noah stood at her father’s bedroom door earned me a quick shake of the head: no. They disappeared into the bedroom anyway and I followed.

  Cass stood by the single window. Like the kitchen window, it looked onto the fire escape and, beyond that, a collapsed chain-link fence that separated the back alley from the expanse of brown grass and dust that we used as our training grounds.

  A single tree still lived in the field, gray and leafless. Beneath its skeletal branches we could see a seated
shape next to an empty wheelchair.

  “Dad!” Cass screamed out the window, across the empty space of alley and field. Her father did not respond.

  ***

  Panicked memories of the last time I was on the fire escape rushed up my throat like vomit, but I swallowed them down as I helped Cass shake the ladder loose. Cass hoisted herself over and slid down twenty feet to the seventh-floor landing, shedding rust flakes as she went. I followed only a few seconds behind, Noah’s sneakers inches above my head. From the next balcony we took a series of switchback staircases that rattled and banged as we pounded down them two at a time.

  At the third floor landing another ladder waited. Cass kicked it loose and clambered aboard as it was still falling. She rode it down to the alley and tumbled off as it clattered home. She was on her feet by the time Noah and I caught up. We leapt the fallen-down fence together and sprinted across the field.

  Keats looked up from where he sat, his back against the bare tree, the wheelchair off to one side.

  “I thought you’d be excited, but this is a bit excessive, don’t you think?” he said, but his smile fell as he saw Cass’s horrified face. “What? What is it? Are you okay?”

  “Dad—Dad!” Cass fell to her knees and threw her arms around her father. “We saw your note and I thought—I thought you—”

  “Thought I what?” Keats’s face was a perfect mask of bemusement.

  “Oh, nevermind.” Cass slumped to the ground next to Keats. “So what did you mean?”

  “I thought it was pretty obvious,” said Keats, still puzzled. “You could say thank you, you know.”

  “For what?” Cass seemed ready to explode.

  “For the love of all that’s holy, Cassidy Keats, did you not look in the envelope?” Keats began to laugh. Cass looked back at me and Noah, and her face said she felt about as stupid as I did.

  “Go,” said Keats, and he was still laughing as we slunk away. The trip back up to Cass’s room took much longer than our mad dash down the fire escape, but as our mutual embarrassment wore off we began to move faster, drawn by the mystery of Keats’s words.

  In the hallway, Keats’s note still lay half-open by the baseboard. Cass beat me to it, snatched up the envelope, and tore it nearly in half in her eagerness to get it open. Three fat cards, lush green printed with glittering golden whorls, fell into her hands.

  I grabbed one before she could stop me. “Noah Garcia Benatar,” I read from golden letters stamped deep into the green. “Are these—”

  “Cassidy Keats,” read Cass. She was holding the other two cards, one in each hand, her eyes flickering back and forth between them. “Emma Burke.”

  ***

  “How did you even get out here?” Cass asked. “I know they didn’t fix the elevator.”

  We were together around the tree in the back field; Cass snuggled under her father’s arm, I sat cross-legged on his other side, and Noah paced a little circle in the dust. I fingered the heavy card that was my ticket into the Summerlands.

  “Mr Vogler carried me,” said Keats. “He’s pretty strong for an old guy.”

  “When I read your note and then you weren’t in the apartment, I thought…”

  “Got you,” said Keats.

  “Why do you think they print these cards?” I asked, holding mine up so the golden letters glittered in the thin morning sun. “You had to give them our SSNs and everything, right, Keats? And I’m sure when we get there we’ll have to do some biometric ID validation. Why the physical tickets?”

  “That seems like the sort of thing Noah would know,” said Cass, but he just continued pacing, staring at his own ticket.

  “They missed the accent mark on the ‘i,’” he said.

  “I’m sure they’ll still let you in.” I shook my head in wonder at his total nonchalance about the whole thing. Good old Noah.

  “I can’t believe we’re really going,” said Cass for maybe the hundredth time.

  “How is Keats going to pay his medical bills?” Noah said.

  Cass and I looked at each other. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. I’m sure I looked about the same. He was right. The money Hearthammer had saved was enough for three tickets, but that left Keats at square one with no job and no savings. Cass wriggled out from under her father’s arm.

  “Dad, what did you do? That money was for you—we all agreed! I know it wouldn’t pay for everything, but we could live—we could live—there are no refunds!”

  “Nope,” said Keats. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the tree.

  “How are you going to pay your bills?” asked Noah.

  “I’ll think of something,” said Keats. “I’ve got a month or so still saved up, so I’ve got time.”

  “You’ll never be able to get a job,” I said. I was starting to feel that terrible weight again.

  “Ye of little faith,” said Keats.

  “We can make the money.” Noah stopped and turned to look at us straight on.

  “What?” said Cass.

  “In the Summerlands,” Noah said. “We can make the money. The rangers are turning up new ruins all the time. We just have to be the first to reach one of them and bring back all the treasure.”

  Cass leapt up and took over the pacing. “We’ll have to hit the ground running,” she said. “We can support Dad while we’re still here, but once we get to the Summerlands we’ll only have a month. We’re not even ready to get in the game yet, not really. We’ve got so much more practicing to do. And I think we can afford the plane tickets, but there are gonna be travel expenses… dammit!” She kicked at the dirt. “Dad!”

  “If my worst sin as a father is that I believe in my kids too much, I think I’ll be okay,” said Keats.

  “Okay, everybody settle down,” said Cass as though her father hadn’t spoken. “Six weeks? Six weeks. I’ll take on as many hours as I can and we’ll practice every night. You two”—she jabbed fingers at me and Noah—“practice twelve hours a day. Actually, Noah, get a job. Get a job and give me twelve hours a day. Any spells you’ve been putting off, learn them. Even the ones from the Golden Apple videos—especially those ones. Emma, we need firepower. Noah, without Jason, you’re our tank, so get your buffs and heals straight. Emma, you’ll be exposed now, so we’re gonna step up your combat training. I want you to pick up something for a shield and carry it everywhere—”

  “Cass,” I said.

  “Don’t complain, it’s good for you!” she snapped. “I can see it now. One-handed magic, shield and bell, like a hybrid thing—”

  “Cass!”

  “Don’t interrupt me! We don’t have time!”

  “We don’t have time!” I shouted. Cass stopped pacing. “My court date is in a week! Maybe, maybe if we leave now I can slip away if they haven’t put me on the no-fly list. But six weeks from now? I’m gonna be behind bars. It’s now or never.”

  The Complex

  My heart pounded nonstop for hours as Cass, Noah, and I threw what little we could bring with us into a single duffle bag, took the bus to LAX, and bought our plane tickets. I kept my eyes down in the security line, willing the cops not to notice me, and we made it through without a word about my arrest. It seemed the HECZ police hadn’t thought to put me on the no-fly list after all.

  We spent seven hours in the air, then another three on a layover in New York, during which they wouldn’t let us off the plane. From there we crossed the Atlantic to Glasgow, a city in the western islands of the European Union. None of us had ever flown before and we spent the trip peering out the windows as thousands of miles of farmland, coast, and ocean unspooled below us. But by the time we were on our last connecting plane, from Glasgow to Expedition Games’s private landing strip, the novelty of flight had worn off along with our adrenaline.

  “I wish we’d had time to explore Glasgow,” I said. We were alone on the flight, which served only Expedition employees and new players for the Summerlands, and I was sprawled across tw
o seats with my feet up, eating a bag of soy nuts that they’d given me completely free.

  “It has a long history,” said Noah. He was sitting upright and proper in his seat, his seatbelt buckled neatly across his lap. “The proximity to the Summerlands portal really revitalized the city’s economy.”

  “Oh, who cares?” said Cass. She lay across an entire row with a sweatshirt over her eyes. She’d said she wanted to sleep, but hadn’t moved out of earshot of me and Noah. “Get me to the Summerlands as fast as possible. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

  “You’ve been waiting five years for this,” corrected Noah and Cass laughed.

  “Right as always, nerd.” She rolled onto her side. I threw a soy nut at her, but she didn’t notice as it bounced off her sneaker.

  “There’s the Isle of Lewis!” I said. We’d left the mainland and spent the last few minutes over gray ocean. Now the rocky cliffs and yellow grass of a large island were just visible out my window.

  “Technically it’s Lewis and Harris,” said Noah, crowding in behind me. I sat back to give him a proper view. “It’s one island with two names.”

  “The whole thing is owned by Expedition, right?” asked Cass. She’d given up on her nap and had her face pressed up against the window in the row behind us.

  “That’s right,” said Noah. “They bought the whole island right before the announcement about the Summerlands.”

  “Lucky them,” said Cass.

  The island quickly grew larger as the plane banked around for the approach to Expedition’s landing strip. We came in over the hilly southern reach of the island and headed directly towards a wide plateau of yellow and brown grass dotted with shallow ponds. I was watching for the runway and it appeared suddenly, a long stretch of gray between two flat pools that reflected the belly of the plane.

  For the third time in twenty-four hours my stomach lurched as we swept in towards the runway. The pilot brought us down neatly, but our little plane felt every bump of turbulence much more than the big airliner from the HECZ had. As we taxied to a stop, it took every ounce of my self-control to keep from throwing up the soy nuts I’d been enjoying not long before.