Michael snapped the journal shut with a sound like a gunshot in the quiet hall. The brittle cover felt like a live coal in his hands, burning with the heat of a world's ending scream. For a long moment, he just stared at the stained, faded fabric, the ghost of Paul's final, desperate vote hanging in the air between him and the two curious women.
Action. He needed motion, a problem he could actually solve. The abstract, planetary horror had to be boxed up, for now.
"Lynda," he said, his voice tight. "Your legs are good for more than cracking nuts. Find John. Now. Tell him to take the van—the old one—and get out there. Find that scavenger. The 'treasure-bearer.' Don't hurt him. Just… bring him back. I have questions." The order was crisp, a lifeline thrown to his own reeling mind.
The wolf-hybrid was gone in a blur of motion, the black-and-white frills of her maid's uniform a startling flash of incongruous domesticity against the grim backdrop of the tavern as she sprinted for the door. Under other circumstances, the sight might have been charming. Now, Michael felt nothing but a cold, churning dread. The scavenger, 'Jinx' Richard, was likely miles away by now, swallowed by the badlands. And even if by some miracle John found him, the missing pages of the journal were almost certainly gone forever, used for the most mundane and final of purposes. That history was lost.
Worse than the loss was the implication that had taken root in his mind, a parasitic idea gnawing at his sanity. Three years.According to the journal, the rift had opened in December of '23. In his world, it was… soon. The temporal math was inexact, skewed by the differing flow of time between dimensions, but the awful symmetry was there. What if the cataclysm wasn't a closed chapter in this world's past? What if it was his own world's imminent future? The image of his parents' small, tidy house, of the bustling streets of Yangcheng, of Mr. Liu's dusty wholesale mart—all of it overrun by green-skinned warriors and ice-wielding elves—was so profoundly sickening he had to grip the arm of his chair.
He knew the theories, the comforting lies of quantum possibility and branching timelines. The 'butterfly effect.' The odds of his specific reality unfolding into that specific hell were astronomically small. He had three years to know for sure. But the mere possibility, however remote, was a poison. And waiting passively for the axe to fall or not felt like a form of moral suicide. But what could he do? He was Harry Potter Michael, Lord of Cinder Town, and back home, he was Mi Gao, a middling agricultural salesman with debt and a beat-up rental flat. He couldn't warn a president. He couldn't mobilize an army. The scale of the potential disaster rendered him insignificant.
He paced, the worn floorboards groaning under his feet. The afternoon sun, slanting through the high windows, painted hot bars of light across the dust, but he felt cold.
The sound of hurrying feet, heavier and more numerous than Lynda's, pulled him from his spiral. He rushed to the tavern door, hope a brief, foolish flutter in his chest. It died instantly. Old Gimpy, his face a grim mask, was leading a small party back. In the center, flanked by Onil and two other guards, were two scavengers. Their clothes were the usual rags, but they held themselves with a taut, watchful tension that the truly desperate usually lacked. Neither was Richard.
"What's this?" Michael asked, his voice flat with suppressed disappointment and fresh anxiety.
Old Gimpy hobbled closer, lowering his voice. "A greater trouble, my Lord. I fear we have drawn the eye of jackals." He spoke quickly, his words painting a picture of subtle, gathering danger. The Sherman tank, their great steel deterrent, was hidden in a reinforced lean-to on the east side of town, perpetually guarded. That morning, Onil's men had reported scavengers—too many of them—lingering near the structure. Not just looking, but assessing. Measuring distances, noting the guard rotation. Others had been overly interested in the new wellheads, their caps and pumping apparatus. Onil, suspicious, had watched them himself. They were wrong. Their movements were too controlled, their frames, beneath the rags, too well-fed. These were not starving men hunting for a day's water barter.
"Raiders," Gimpy concluded, the word dropping into the quiet like a stone. "A warband. They're scouting us. And the tank… that is what they fear. They need to know if it is a toothless lizard or a real threat."
The news landed with a physical weight, momentarily eclipsing the cosmic dread of the journal. Pīfū wú zuì, huái bì qí zuì.The old Chinese proverb surfaced in his mind, unbidden. The man is not guilty; his treasure makes him so.He had the treasure: water, food, order. He had known it would attract wolves. He'd built his guard, his walls, for this very reason. But knowing a storm is coming and feeling the first lash of its wind are different things. His grand deterrent, the Sherman, was a bluff. A magnificent, diesel-growling, tread-clanking bluff. Against unprepared, superstitious scavengers, it was a god. Against a determined, scouting raider band? A few Molotov cocktails, a lucky shot into a vision slit, and it would become a steel coffin for its crew.
He took a long, slow breath, forcing the panic down. The potential end of his world was a problem for tomorrow. The potential end of thistown was a problem for right now. Priorities, however brutal, clarified.
He turned his gaze to the two prisoners. Their eyes, visible above their grimy scarves, held defiance, not fear. "You," Michael said, his tone conversational, devoid of the lordly warmth he'd used on Richard. "Which pack do you run with? How many? Guns? Bullets? How many of your fighters have sparked the Aura?"
One of the men, taller, with a livid scar across his forehead, worked his mouth and spat. A gob of phlegm, dark with chew, hit the dust a hand's breadth from Michael's polished shoe. He didn't flinch.
Onil, however, exploded. He stepped forward, his face a thundercloud. "Lord! Give them to me. An hour. I will have the number of their teeth, the brand of their boots, and how many times their father pissed yesterday! They will sing."
Michael held up a hand, his eyes never leaving the spitter. "Unnecessary," he said, his voice still quiet. A plan, cold and efficient, was clicking into place. He looked at Old Gimpy. "The prisoners. The ones from the rabbit-girl's gang. The ones we've been… hosting. Bring them. Have them look at these two."
Understanding dawned on Onil's face, followed by a fierce grin. The captured raiders from Audra's failed ambush had been languishing in a locked cellar for weeks. Fed, watered, kept in surprising comfort. They had watched Cinder Town transform, had smelled the cooking food, had heard the sounds of laughter from the Water Festival. More than once, they had begged, through the bars, for a chance to join, to work, to earn a place. Loyalty was a fluid concept in the Wasteland, born of full bellies and a stable roof. Michael had withheld an answer, letting the temptation simmer.
Now, they had a use. Identification was quicker, and far more reliable, than any torture. And their eagerness to please, to prove their worth, would be at its peak. The calculus of survival in Cinder Town was about to get a new, and potentially useful, variable.