Alex ran as fast as he could.

  After a straight shot down the seemingly endless carpeted hallway, racing each other and dashing away from the guards, who were several hallways and corners behind, the pair, Alex and Brody, cackled and believed they had the better of the fortress. The pizza and note would be delivered. Their brains would be left intact. Together, they could accomplish any trial of running and agility, and besides, what could possibly be worse than stooges wearing stupid uniforms popping pistols and lecture shouting at them about the safety of unelected elite?

  Too fast for that shit, Alex thought as he tore towards the bend ahead. Probably another endless hallway of doom. But he pumped his legs as hard as he could. This one was personal.

  “Cheat!” Brody grunted, pulling slightly ahead. “Glasses cheat!”

  “We said no boosts or ports,” He grunted back, willing every ounce of speed he could muster. “You didn’t say anything about my cool glasses.”

  Fast as he was with his Skills, Titles, and whatever Buff he currently held, Brody had always been faster. Something about how he moved allowed him to flow like the wind, spring forward just that little bit more, and ultimately pull ahead in a simple footrace.

  “Cool?” Brody asked, turning his head around while still outpacing him. “They…hearts. And pink.”

  “Don’t be afraid of love, dude, and don’t worry, you can borrow them for your next date with Giat. AFTER I KICK YOUR ASS!”

  Alex put his head down and focused. He pumped faster, throwing one leg ahead of the other and urging himself to move quicker. It was the hardest he’d ever ran and it was just to beat his friend in a race.

  Then magically, and for the first time, Alex pulled ahead of Brody. Without teleporting and without cheating. He just ran faster than him in the oldest competition amongst boys. All while singing screaming song lyrics into a seemingly empty airport.

  “I’M GOING TO RUN TO YOU!” He shouted, closing in on the corner.

  “BRODY I’M GOING TO RUN TO YOU!!!”

  “CUZ WHEN THE FEELINGS RIGHT, I’M GOING TO RUN ALL NIGHT. I’M GOING TO RUN TO YOU! YEEEAAAAAH, SING IT BRODY!”

  Around the corner he went like the wind into the Gates, screaming a song that Brody hadn’t heard before.

  Brody skidded to a halt in the empty hallway, stunned. Alex had beaten him. He was supposed to be perfect. Faster, more athletic, stronger in every way that mattered. Sure, Alex had more experience and Brody relied on him to teach him the parts about being a person that wasn’t just physical prowess, but this was shocking.

  He couldn’t hear him screaming the silly song up ahead either. Alex was likely pulling away further down another hallway, distracting him with music!

  Stunned as he was at the loss, he hadn’t realized that his connection to Alex was off. He couldn’t feel Alex’s emotions at all.

  Anger rose in his heart at being bested before he shut that down. This was Alex. He wasn’t some monster that needed an ass kicking or a grumpy Boss that wanted to melt them in a vat of acid. It was his friend. His only friend that he loved.

  He was just feeling down and out because he couldn’t express himself, he realized, and tell Alex what he wanted properly. To stay in the real world. Frustration, though, wasn’t new to him.

  So, he took a deep sigh and asked himself the question he always did when he was trying to figure things out and learn to be a real person.

  “What Alex do?” He said, alone.

  The answer came easy. It always came easy when he asked himself that question. Mostly because any questions he asked were always answered honestly, either by his response or the fluttering emotions he could read from his friend and link to realness. He always knew what his friend would do.

  Brody grinned and took off after Alex to catch him. Unfortunately, that was the moment that someone far more powerful than him pressed on his connection to reality, and precisely then was the moment he sprinted right into the Gates of Airport Past.

  Truly alone in the real world for the first time.

  Navigating through the protective turrets and pencils outside his fortress unscathed was impressive, certainly. Shocking, no doubt. Getting the better of the [Agent]s in security, though, was unacceptable. They didn’t make mistakes, and besides that one he’d unspooled from reality, it appeared that there had been no errors he could find. The runners had just gotten past security and were on their way to the gates.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  It bothered him to no end that he couldn’t say what in the world was happening with these two, and a twinge of vulnerability wiggled into his mind.

  “Ridiculous,” Keanu said while scratching too hard between two plates on Rufus that chafed a small, itchy patch between them. “Immune to any Link changes somehow. Connections in the number that I rarely see, and bright. Where they go is blocked and hidden from me. Just the one. The other? Strangely tied together in some way. Two major links. Strong too. One to the runner and one to something that feels like an angry woma—”

  There. On the fringes of his power, he noticed something odd about the one that was already so strangely unencumbered by connections. Most people had thousands. Light threads to the shop keep, stronger threads to their secret diaries, or any of the more precarious ties to the countless weaving of cause and effect. They came and went as time trudged on, and usually he could examine them with ease.

  Unaware and seemingly uninterested in the love close to him, he sat up straight and dug his powerful hands into Rufus’s neck, causing the dog to cringe.

  “What do we have here?”

  He couldn’t predict the future, of course. But witnessing so many causes and effects gave him quite the knack for best guesses applied on the small scale in the grand scheme. It was still alarming to be casually and almost boredly snooping on someone’s threads and suddenly that air conditioning relic that had virtually zero links slipped from a window to squish them out of existence a few moments later. Quite a flash it made in the web.

  It didn’t take a genius to formulate the guess that a bruise-like connection to a sociopathic partner might result in bodily harm. Rarely, too rarely, he happened upon a sparking tendril of the first routing of love between two individuals. Those were his favourite.

  Hindsight is twenty twenty, as the adage went, and people were pretty good at knowing what would happen to people in their lives. Even if they didn’t like to say it aloud while it happened to that person’s face, everyone likes to gossip and say, ‘I always knew it, didn’t I tell you? Thought this for ages.’ after the fact or to whoever will hear them.

  For Keanu, he could simply see those rumors and worries and things that make a person rooted in their life mapped out. A friend could tell you exactly when someone lost their marbles. What slippery slope ended in disaster. That time this friend stumbled their way through flirting and how they where there to witness (and even how they were of assistance of) a beautiful, blossoming marriage. Those were the threads he could glance upon like a magazine, and if he wanted to, could sever, within his range and without the Tax Guild Stone enhancement. Just as he had with that idiot [Agent].

  Yet this one had virtually no connections. A very strong tie to the runner practically shining like a beacon and pointing at everything in an annoying way, some tendril that frankly gave him anxiety as it felt like whoever was on the other side was watching, and... whatever it was that he was looking at.

  A thread that went nowhere. But how is that possible? Keanu did not like when he couldn’t piece things out. Especially the small things. Those were supposed to come easily and give him peace while the massive problems haunted him day in and day out.

  Alone, save for Rufus, who he ignored, and without hope to ever stop witnessing countless bereavement, he gave way to the urge bubbling within.

  He pressed on the thread that went nowhere and smiled as he realized that it wasn’t immune to his powers.

  “Ah, what fun, especially in the Gates.”

  Rufus growled, and this time it was meant for his master.

  “Oh, what’s wrong boy?” Keanu said absent-mindedly. “I know you’re hungry, but I want to have fun with these two.”

  In a weird way, it was fun to be challenged by the immunity to the shining boy. Protected by his fortress and trusty Rufus, he was virtually untouchable. He didn’t want to squash the strange connection, not yet at least, but a little pressing wouldn’t hurt. See what kind of results that caused. As it involved him, the System wouldn’t punish it either.

  Rufus growled again, deeper and more menacing.

  “I know you don’t like when we’re in danger,” Keanu mused. “But I’m working here. Learning. It’s been so long since I’ve learned anything new.”

  Like a pianist, he kept his press on the strange connection to nowhere and danced his mental fingers across the bright light that was the runner sprinting headfirst into the Gates. Behind, it felt like the secondary one, the one with almost no links, stopped, likely catching his breath.

  He examined through his web of connections he’d articulated into existence within the Gates. It was always chaos in there. Unorganized, loud, and his last line of true defense before himself. A million ghosts of the past he’d risen and given form. All to squash anyone who found themselves in the stealing his Tax Guild Stone mind. No one could make it unscathed through there.

  And from his weavings, he learned something new. He didn’t like when people shouted songs in his fortress. Especially not within the Gates.

  Over the connections he picked, amused, alarmed, annoyed, and somewhat frightened that he couldn’t twist them this way or that. A particularly bright one he’d recognized as a Companion link he ran his mental touch.

  Another pang ran through him. Envy.

  Keanu tightened his grip again on Rufus as he measured the thread. How could this runner have a Companion link and poor Rufus was stuck with a weakened Familiar one?

  He pressed his ability on the connection, grating his envious mental fingernail across it, trying to pry apart the wire hold it together.

  It didn’t work. The boy was somehow immune to any Link skills.

  “Infuriating.” Keanu grinded his teeth and pressed harder again the link to nowhere. Might as well throw more of the Gates protections at him.

  And two hundred kilometers north, something felt the slight.

  Emilio opened his eyes from a particularly comfortable nap in the spring sun. He quickly examined Alex’s state from afar and purred.

  From what he could tell, Alex was having the time of his life running in that powerful Councillor’s home. The one with the ugly, stinky dog. He hated dogs. They were beneath him. Even below humans. Well, most humans. Not Alex.

  Given Alex’s mental state, his Companion wasn’t in any direct harm and was knowingly or unknowingly well on his way to earning his Title.

  That little mewling always stumbled his way through it. Still, something had altered him about Alex, so might as well send a watcher.

  Without stretching, he padded off to find Petal and Runs with Wind. There was work to do.