Chapter 51: Night Work
"I need to check on Swetta," Ash said at last.
"Why him?" Alina asked.
Swetta’s Shade had been a fixed warmth since dusk, metronomic and constant. The hunger had finally made its intentions known, and for the second time, Ash was beginning to agree with it.
"If his team is recovering from a fight with the same creature we fought, then they’re at their most vulnerable."
"Which means they won’t see anything wrong with an ally approaching," Alexis added. "I’ll go—"
"No," Ash interrupted. "I’ll go alone. The more people that come with us, the more on guard they’ll be. Protect the token; I’ll be back as soon as I can."
He moved west of the main signature clusters and kept the creature’s smell at his back. The ground was frozen solid beneath the leaf mat. His Shade-sense ran passes across the island, detecting various human signatures in clean, readable clusters.
At the edge of legibility, two creature signals moved northeast with purpose.
The scent shifted in the trees. From the organic decay the creatures left behind to the smell of stone.
Ash finally found where Swetta’s team was camping. A small ravine that did a good job of giving them advantage spots regardless of where they were being attacked. Ash saw two of his teammates already resting against the ravine’s base wall, completely collapsed and out of it for the night.
Swetta, meanwhile, sat across from them, hands open in his lap, mid-sentence. His head turned when he heard footsteps.
"I haven’t seen you around," Swetta said. "Who are you?"
"Ash."
"Right, right. Good to meet you," he replied. "What academy do you go to?"
"Aegis Academy."
"What a coincidence. I attend that academy as well—and so do those two over there! I’m Swetta," he said, extending his hand for a handshake.
"Ash," he said, taking it.
And Swetta’s Shade realm opened.
A reception hall mid-event was already underway. The lighting was designed to flatter every guest, but that was the only real thing about it. All around him, a crowd appeared locked in perpetual arrival. Arms were raised in mid-wave, mouths forming silent greetings. Yet no one ever stepped inside.
Ash took in the scene: a reception hall in full swing, the lighting flattering every face, yet the room felt hollow. He saw a crowd forever on the verge of arriving, arms lifted in aborted waves, mouths shaping hellos that never sounded.
Then the frame shifted again, back to the original state it was when Ash entered. He finally saw Swetta’s shade. It looked exactly like him. He was talking to an incoming figure and didn’t look the slightest bit concerned about the loop his realm just did.
Ash counted each frame he was able to see. Twenty-four frames each second for four seconds long.
He walked slowly to the Shade and amplified gravity to two times baseline at the center of its mass.
Swetta’s shade went down easily. The hand he had extended slapped the floor of the banquet hall hard; his other arm inadvertently punched his chin.
Ash began to count to frames he could see.
One. Two, Thr—
The loop fired, snapping Swetta’s Shade back into place mid-gesture. Ash glanced from the Shade’s chin to its hand, now in motion again. Despite the heavy impact both had taken, neither showed any sign of it. The loop had restored the Shade to the version that existed before Ash ever arrived.
He grabbed a knife that was left on the table and used it to cut the Shade’s hair.
Ninety-six frames later, Swetta’s hair had fully regrown as if he hadn’t gone to Ash’s impromptu haircut.
He overclocked his cognitive senses next, hoping to catch whatever detail he was missing. The scene sharpened from twenty-four frames a second to one hundred and forty-four.
Ash thought he could finally understand the realm’s architecture. He was wrong. It was useless. The extra frames merely stretched the moment into a sluggish crawl, and his attempts to understand it only tangled his thoughts further. The video remained stuck in its infinite loop.
He moved to the only wall in the realm that held photographs. Each showed the same scene: Swetta shaking hands with guests he clearly knew. All were identical except one in the top right corner.
The loop continued, and Ash returned to the center of the wall. He rushed to the photographs to examine the anomalous one. It was slightly out of focus, shot from a distance. In it, Swetta stood by himself. His eyes were aimed straight at the camera, yet his body language suggested he was unaware of being photographed.
He ran back to where Swetta’s Shade was.
The weather in—Oh I’m sorry, do I know you? The Shade said to Ash.
"Yes, you do," he responded.
Right, right. I’m Swetta.
"Tell me, what’s that photograph over there?" Ash asked, pointing to the photograph on the wall.
The Shade’s head stayed locked in place, its conversation with the guest already resumed. Ash gripped its cold skull and turned it, making it face the spot.
The Shade didn’t answer.
Ash kept the Shade in a headlock. He was fully prepared to hold the Shade in position for as long as he needed until it finally responded.
The loop fired, but for the first time, a part of it was different.
Ash stayed locked on Swetta, their positions the same while the crowd looped on.
"You and I are going for a walk," Ash told the Shade.
Right, right. I’m sorry, I’ll return in just a moment, If you could excuse me, the Shade said to the figure it was talking with.
Ash dragged the Shade all the way to the wall until his face was all but touching the photograph he wanted him to see. He didn’t need to reposition its eyes; it naturally locked onto the different photograph.
I was there, it said.
The Shade’s eyes stayed on the image, and for the first time, the frame didn’t skip.
The loop fired, and guests returned to their position, mid-conversation and mid-motion. Ash and Swetta persisted at the edge of it all.
I was there, I—
Ninety-six frames passed, but this time the loop didn’t restart. In his peripheral vision, the figures carried on their conversation. His gaze snapped back to the photographs, which were now bleaching to white, color draining from each image.
Whatever his Shade tried to say, the room lacked the strength to keep its shape.
The realm wasn’t collapsing. It was running out.
The crowd was slowly thinning; the once densely packed arriving guests now had ample space between one another. The murmur of incomplete conversations went silent entirely, each sentence dying mid-syllable.
Thank you, Ash, the Shade said. Thank you for reminding me of this.
Ash’s eyes turned back to the blurry photograph. He didn’t want to see the Shade dissolve, he knew it was coming and wanted nothing to do with the aftermath. All he wanted to know was the significance this picture had to Swetta.
[ Ding! ]
[ Extraction Successful. ]
[ You have extracted the A-Rank Talent: Anterograde Static ]
[ Anterograde Static — Prevents the target from consolidating new memories of the user’s actions within a localized field. Actions taken by the user against the target are not retained in the target’s short-term or long-term memory. ]
The floor began to split. Items on the table faded, then the table itself dissolved.
Ash was immediately dropped back to the bitter frozen dirt of the island with a jarring jolt. His hand was still locked in a handshake with Swetta.
"Ash," Swetta said.
Ash didn’t respond; he was still processing the fact that Swetta had called him by name.
"Thank you for whatever you just did," he said.
"You... remember my name?"
"I now remember. I don’t know what you did, but I feel as if my life can finally continue."
"All I did was shake your hand," Ash answered plainly.
Swetta smirked and let go of Ash’s hand. It retreated into his pocket, where he produced his token. He tossed it up in the air a few times before chucking it at Ash.
"What—Are you sure?"
"For the first time in a long time, I’m not sure. I know."
"Your teammates will hate you for this," Ash responded.
"I’m sure we will figure something out."
"Alright then," Ash said, pocketing the token. He glanced at his sleeping teammates, then recoiled from the stench of the creatures.
"You seem rather sensitive to those beings. They really are nothing more than the islands’ immune system."
Ash turned around. "You knew?"
Swetta chuckled to himself, not answering the question. Ash was already walking when Swetta called out for him.
"Ash," he said. "Thank you for whatever you just did."
Ash smirked in response, continuing his retreat back to his team’s camp.
He crouched in a bush until a stray island creature passed, then slipped back into camp.
Alina was still awake when he made his presence known. Alexis, meanwhile, was completely asleep.
"Did everything go okay?" she asked.
Ash revealed the token with a grin. "Yeah. Yeah, it did," he said, tossing the token up a few times.
