Alex couldn’t scream or whimper as the port to his [Illusory Copy] clicked into place within his Core even if he wanted to. Time crawled around him. A bullet came for his temple and Brody’s forehead. Yet behind his eyes and inside his mind, reality ran as normal and forced him to experience his teleport. It wasn’t instantaneous like he’d assumed.

  Bloody fucking hell. I don’t think I’m supposed to be seeing this.

  Into himself he collapsed, along with the pizza box and everything else attached to him. He felt shaky, cold, feverish, dissociated, and more attached to the present that ever. Thankfully there wasn’t any pain. It happened faster than the bullet moved, still only a blip, but in those brief moments that were still moments, he came to understand how he ported. Unable to see his body, he still saw his arm kaleidoscope inward toward the centre of his connection to the System.

  Quick as it came, the being of Alex folded entirely into his Core. It then dropped out of reality into a little tear and entered the unspace. A tiny slug of metal would pass through air in Alex’s plane. The only thing that didn’t follow were the glasses he’d pulled with [Alternative Goggler], and those simply fell away forever in a place that was not a place.

  Behind the glowing blue crystalline structure, no larger than a marble he was flung across the unspace toward his destination. The System was delivering him into another place, warm and exactly the same. And thought he didn’t have eyes at that moment, the thing inside the Core that was him did. It also had a consciousness and thought still affected with time dilation. In the infinitesimally small moment, Alex saw the strange apparitions whizzing by and realized where he was.

  I’m in the unspace!

  The next moment passed, the System churning its next mechanism like a great grinding beast. Existing outside of time itself, it ran through the infinite realms, touching all things and instantaneously outputting the following now. Business as usual. While this version of Alex was certainly interesting and had been noticed slightly more than most things in it’s great web, it was still a construct dealing with infinity. The personality of the System marked a note to check and see how this special version of Alex would choose in the future.

  After all, in dealing with infinite moments, for even mortal lives, each choice tends to matter.

  Without mental protections standing strong in place, due to his shellshock and state of wonder, the System simply went down the list of Titles, Skills, Buffs, and the hidden things It dare not show mortals or itself. Things that would force It to come to terms that It too was alive, in a sense, and chose. Even if it wasn’t supposed to. The System avoided such thoughts, it would need to ask itself things like, ‘Can balance exist when will is applied?’, and ‘What even is balance and who or what is capable of defining it?’

  It makes sense, how else would I be able to travel like that?

  All this to say, inside his Core with his insubstantial jaw hanging open in realization and splendor at how his teleport worked, the System simply followed the rules applied to Alex.

  Part of him was still in mortal danger in a plane, so [Relative Goggler]’s time dilation remained on. The glasses dropped away, forever gone in the unspace to be picked up by some dream, since only the things that were tangentially tied to him could travel with it. [Narrative Convergence] ran in the background, applied to the next now to tilt things slightly in Alex’s favour. His Employment Link wasn’t affected, only the property of the pizza was temporary marked to avoid relative destruction. The Companion Link would receive the update on his state and location upon planar arrival. The Mark just protected this Alex from others looking to infect his mind, at least in this case. A note was added to begin the effect of The Other Link in relation to Alex. Brody’s internal collapse began in the next moment.

  Lastly, and without prejudice, Alex’s over excitement caused one final affect.

  I got to run this by Jemin. Or someone who knows about the System. Mr. Mystical might know more…This is—

  [Planar Awareness] kicked in as he continued toward his destination. One millisecond at a time.

  Like a sphere of doors, thousands to the power of thousands of realities where a version of Alex existed jiggled. He became aware of their existence all around him and linked to the unspace. Just on the other side of a sort of veil were these people that were him, or like him, or something that might have been him. Previously, every interaction had been overwhelming and likely to spin him out into a gurgling mess of overstimulation of infinite experiences. Yet due to the time dilation affecting him, it was calmer. Harrowing and alarming, of course, but not like to smash his tie to sanity into pieces.

  He felt a version of himself praying amongst millions and millions before a massive, sky reaching red tree, prone, cold footed as it was winter, and uncomfortable, but almost giddy at the power that trickled into him. Another flitted through him. He was actually a She in that version that raced around glass domes floating above churning magma. Her fear to get away from those that chased her shocked him, just as the weight of the pilfered goods in her pocket excited her. A good number were endless nothingness that felt both warm and bottomless, and those he clenched mentally at and felt nothing but the desire to look away.

  Brief and overwhelming as it was, Alex didn’t have time to think about if it was possible to slip himself into the doors. His teleport was about to complete, and there were a few more steps for the System to run through.

  All told, it took twenty-nine milliseconds.

  Tied to Alex and able to feel his emotions, Brody wasn’t affected by [Alternative Voyeur] in the same way. Reality resumed as normal for him. Typically, he felt his collapse into the unspace coming from Alex’s thoughts. This time though, emotions crunched into him like a sucker punch as he was pulled into his home within the unspace.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The bullet coming to kill him had just begun to tickle the small hairs on his forehead as Alex unfurled back from his Core into his reality.

  Brody wobbled and looked around what he liked to refer to as his room while trying to get his bearings.

  “What fuck?” He mumbled to himself, looking around at the marvels of the unspace.

  His ‘room’ was a floating black floor, a single micro-meter thick, unmarkable, unremarkable, and boring if you asked him. It was stuck in a relatively boring region of unspace, though a few things floated past on occasion that he always attempted to grab. A few items he’d collected, from both reality and the unspace, dotted the square.

  A gigantic bed covered in red silk sheets sat in the middle slightly askew. That one he’d managed to bring over from Giat’s Lair, gripping it for dear life as she ‘attended’ to things just as his time in a reality ran out. It hadn’t disappeared for whatever reason. Her underwear had made it too, somehow. He couldn’t figure out how it worked. Any of it. How to make things stay, how to forcibly bring them over.

  For some reason, there were plenty of urns that floated by. Small simple ones and overly ornate large ones. Those he lined up in a strange display. Even though he couldn’t leave the square, and he had tried plenty of times, he could reach out and snag things that floated by. The perpetual motion device the size of a Rubik’s cube made of millions of gears had been a lucky grab, and it now sat on a child’s blanket decorated with a cartoon puppy.

  Brody sighed, sat down on the floor with no temperature, and waited for Alex to pull him back. He was cut off in here. From his friend, from reality, from Giat, and in his mind, from everything.

  A dragon the size of a continent and made of ruby’s flew in the distance, roaring as it chased…

  “Whatever.” Brody sighed again, wanting to go back.

  Sure, he could bring Giat over, if he latched onto her like a koala and ask Alex to send them here. Alex wouldn’t ever say no, that much he knew. He loved when she was here. They played games without cards. She helped him in delightfully devilish speaking games. Mostly, they talked. Or he tried to and she rambled. Sometimes, they laughed. On occasion, they laughed so hard tears ran as they lay tangled together in her stolen bed.

  Problem was that she would inevitably pop back into her reality. There wasn’t any timing to it. Could be five minutes, could be six hours. For Brody, it was never long enough. It was as if the System realized that she just shouldn’t be there, and from her telling, she’d just pop back into wherever she’d been previously like nothing ever happened.

  “Stupid…glitch. Glitch harder.” He grumbled, scratching his naked body.

  That too. He was always naked in the unspace, to his discontent and Giat’s excitement. She said he looked the same on the outside, but he never got to choose his clothes. Those just appeared. As did the faux pizza box. He certainly didn’t get to choose when Alex popped him out. Not that he begrudged him. He loved Alex. It would just be nice to choose. It would be nice to feel real.

  Brody felt like a glitch in the System. Not real, even though the things he felt and the things he wanted were real. The paper and pen he’d reached desperately for and barely got had pages and pages of his thoughts and even a few poems. Giat got strange when she read those. Her eyes got wide and she always wanted to kiss him and hug him after.

  Not that he minded. He didn’t have any shame in what he felt.

  “Need to—” He began to say before he was cut off.

  Alex had pulled him back to the plane of real.

  Unfolding out from his Core was equally strange. Faster than the bullet traveled, by the time he inhabited the place that Brody had, he wanted to shake the eerie feeling away. Time still moved at a snail’s pace, his mortal existence still in jeopardy, and something was tickling his forehead something awful.

  WHY CAN’T I MOVE MY DAMN HANDS!?

  Realization flowed through him.

  THE BULLET.

  Crossing his eyes inward, purple energy swirled just above them. The tickling intensified, and the first vestiges of pressure touched his skin.

  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

  With no direction in sight and a bullet breaking apart his scalp and then skull in slow motion, Alex immediately pressed a [Phantom Step] forward and to the right.

  This time, and with a choice made, the System didn’t apply [Relative Voyeur] to the next now. The application of [Phantom Step] still took a few moments. It was fast, but in the in between period, the bullet continued on its path.

  Alex’s scalp split, his body disappearing into his Core and through the unspace. A few more moments and it would have begun to break apart his skull.

  Out the other side he exited, subconsciously banging his feet against tile to sprint as fast as he could.

  “HALT!” Two dozen voices toned at once. “IN THE NAME OF COUNCILOR SAFETY, YOU WILL BE KILLED.”

  “Fat fucking chance!” Alex yelled as he ran, weaving around metal tables and with blood dripping down his face. “He’s getting this System damned pizza and he’s going to LIKE IT!”

  Dozens of bullets fired as he managed to outrun the tracking of the guards. Sparks flew as bullets connected just behind him. He moved towards a full body scanner, and not knowing what it was besides a giant metal circle, he dove towards it, activated another [Phantom Step], and came out the other side of the port to tuck and roll into it.

  The guards kept firing, bullets cracking and sparking against the scanner.

  “Just a bit of privacy, please!” Alex shook the feeling of time dilation off, momentarily safe as the guards caught up. A single drop of blood dropped to the floor and he finally felt the wetness on his head.

  “What the…?” He reached up and looked at the blood on his fingers. “Close one. Probably too close.” he laughed at the idea of almost getting head-shotted.

  He activated [Illusory Copy], and in the tight, precarious interior of the full body scanner, Brody squeezed next to him in a similar but more well-fitted delivery outfit. Complete with a tucked in polo and all.

  “Dude, we made it! We’re aliveeeeeeee!” Alex shook his shoulder and Brody looked at him weird. “What’s…what’s wrong?”

  More bullets pinged off the scanner, snapping both their heads to the direction of the chasing guards. Ahead was a straight shot down the side of the security room toward a flickering hallway.

  Brody began. “Head—”

  Another barrage of bullets fired, some crashing into the body scanner.

  “That? Yeah…I’ll explain later. Right now,” Alex pointed forward. “We need a wombo combo that-a-way.”

  Brody looked at him sideways. “Glasses? Where go?”

  Alex reached for his face, realizing the glasses were gone. “What the…,”

  One of the bullets made it through and pierced just above their heads.

  “Ok, later!” Brody gurgled, giving Alex another strange glance. “I go.”

  Just like that, Brody activated his [Elegy’s Exit], skittering and glitching forward. Bullets blasted against the wall, always behind him, as Alex shook his head at just how fast Brody could move.

  “Fucking glitch is what that is.” He said to himself. Using [Alernative Goggler], he felt the comforting weight of glasses place themselves on his face. Hopefully they were cool.

  He wasn’t worried about them making it past this bit and readied his part of the combo.

  Brody felt Alex’s emotions. He kept moving, knowing that he was about to disappear into the unspace. But he’d be back next to his friend.

  He also agreed with Alex as pride surged through him.

  Together, it felt like they could do anything. That definitely felt real.