"Middle Triumvarate" Book 1 Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Finally got this done! I've been stalling on it a bit, trying to figure out how things are going to go. I have a better idea for the first section now, so these should come out at a slightly better rate now, at least until I get stuck on it again.

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“Wait, wait.” Scarlett grabbed Maeve’s shoulder and pulled her back from the door. “What do you mean? This System thing that’s popped up is fucking up our lives, and now it’s messing with our brains?”

Maeve looked around at the group before responding. Amelia looked queasy, but Maeve wasn’t sure if it was from the topic or the events surrounding it, Ed was getting more and more worried by the second, Scarlett was obviously concerned, and Alex was stoically watching in the direction the noises had come from.

“Why are we trusting anything this thing says?” Scarlett continued, her breathing getting heavier as she spoke, “It could be lying about all of this. We should-“

Maeve grabbed her friend’s shoulders and shook her once. “Scarlett. Take some deep breaths. Don’t hyperventilate.” She glanced over her shoulder, “Alex, watch that way. Ed, watch behind us, but stay close so you can listen.”

“Got it.”

“Okay?”

Maeve maneuvered everyone into a tighter cluster so the two guys could watch for threats. “We’re going to keep this short because we’re not safe, but when we get somewhere where we don’t have to worry about random attacks, we can talk about this more, okay?”

Scarlett nodded, her eyes locked on Maeve’s.

“I don’t know anything about what’s happening. I have the exact same amount of information as you. That being said, there are some guesses I can make with the information we have, and I’m rolling with things based on those guesses because that’s the only thing I have to guide our planning right now.” Maeve paused to breathe through her own worries and marshal her thoughts. “Okay, so, based on what the System has said to us so far, it’s claiming that it isn’t doing this to us and the rest of the planet; it’s a reaction to what’s happening. It’s said that it exists to help us or anyone else caught in this situation with this Quezeuq energy stuff. The thing with it, maybe messing with our heads, is part of that. I don’t have any evidence that it is doing that, but it's my best guess.”

Scarlett scrunched her brows together and shook her head. “How is fucking with our heads helpful? That’s what you’re saying, right? It's making us think differently to help us?”

“I don’t think it's making us think differently; I think it’s suppressing our panic, which is a bit different. What’s the first thing you’re supposed to do in an emergency?”

“Call for help?”

“It’s ‘Don’t panic’,” Alex said without looking away from the doorway.

“Alex is right. The first thing to do in an emergency is make sure you don’t panic. Panicking gets you killed because you aren’t actively reacting to your situation. If the System is really here to help as many people live as possible, then making sure the people in the most dangerous locations aren’t screaming and running randomly is a good place to start. I’m guessing that it’s some kind of emotional dampening and not mind control or whatever because we can still feel alarmed, and you were just working yourself into a panic thinking about it maybe controlling your mind, but we didn’t start losing it right away even with how fucking crazy this is.” Maeve looked over at her best friend, “Honestly, the reason I started thinking it might be happening and the reason why I think it’s a good thing is that you’re not hurling right now.”

Amelia’s expression lit up with understanding. “Oh, yeah! I’m really nauseated, but I haven’t thrown up once.”

“What?” Scarlett frowned at them both. “What are you- Oh!” Her face cleared, “I remember you throw up when you get really stressed. That would be bad right now.”

“Whatever’s in there is coming closer.” Alex suddenly commented. “Love you babe, glad you aren’t throwing up.”

“Love you too!”

“Wrapping things up, we’re feeling what we’re feeling, but it isn’t overwhelming us. Continuing to make guesses, I’d say the emotion suppressing or whatever it is will fade as we get safer, whether that’s by being strong or being somewhere less dangerous.”

“Can we really trust this System?” Ed asked, making his first contribution to the conversation. “What if it’s lying?”

“It could be, but there’s literally nothing we can do about that,” Maeve replied with a grimace. “It has all the power, and we don’t have any. We can only go forward accepting what it says and doing the best we can to verify what it tells us once we get an opportunity.”

“Like testing what it says about guns?”

Maeve quickly thought through what could go wrong. “If we can find a gun and make a way to test what happens without actually holding it, then sure, but we can’t risk something exploding in our hands.”

“Oh, that’s easy. If we don’t care about hitting anything, we can just lock the gun down with something heavy and pull the trigger with a string.”

“That’s great; keep it in mind for later. Is there anything else we need to handle right now? No? Okay, monsters over there.” She pointed at the door to the rest of the exhibit.

The group slowly moved forward toward the core section of the Civil War exhibit.

“What all is in there?” Ed asked.

“Mostly weapons and uniforms,” Amelia replied quietly. “There’s a big display showing what a typical tent and camp setup would be like, too.”

“So we’re looking at something that wasn’t alive coming to life? What are big sticks going to do?”

“It depends on what we have to fight; now be quiet.” Maeve hissed.

With Alex as their vanguard, they moved closer to the occasional noises of glass breaking and something heavy hitting the ground. A heavy thud noise that shook the wall near them had them freezing in place. The sound didn’t repeat, and they slowly and cautiously moved forward again. After a few moments of very slow walking, they got close enough for Alex to peek around the corner.

“There’s a stack of cannon balls next to a cannon, and the cannon balls are lifting up and throwing themselves through the glass.” He whispered. The wall shook with another loud impact, and he flinched back. “One of them just floated into the air and slammed into the wall. The rest are- Oh shit, back up, back up!”  Alex spun in place and pushed the rest of the group away from the doorway, using his outstretched arms as plows.

Everyone tumbled to the ground away from the door, and seconds later, a fist-sized metal ball crashed into the frame of the doorway, smashing the wood into pieces before it thumped into the ground and sat still. They all sat frozen in a pile on the ground, staring at it. It didn’t move. Alex slowly got off of everyone, keeping his eyes on the cannonball. It sat there without reacting as everyone else gingerly got up and moved back from it.

“Can it see us?”

“I don’t think it can?” Amelia whispered as they all crept back. “It missed pretty bad, and it’s not coming after us now.”

Another cannon ball flew across the open doorway and crashed into an exhibit, sending glass shards flying everywhere in the other room.

“What do we do?”

Alex glanced over at Maeve, and she shrugged back at him. He shrugged, too, then grabbed onto his flag pole and brought the decorative metal tip of it down over the top of the cannonball. There was a dull thud, and when Alex brought the pole back around, the tip was dented and crumpled. The cannonball ignored the impact.

“This isn’t going to work.” Alex said with a frown, “This wood is cheap crap, too; it’s just going to break. We need better wea-“

The cannonball rotated in place and launched forward, slamming back into the door frame and wedging itself in there. A shower of splinters was blasted out of the hole it made and rained down on everyone.

“-pons. Preferably ones that can smash, not stab or cut.”

“I have a tire iron in my car?” Ed ventured.

“Anything closer?”

Maeve pointed through the doorway. “There’s an area on the other side of the Civil War section that has some exhibits about the Transcontinental Railroad that has sledgehammers. I don’t know if they’re in good enough shape to use as weapons, but they’re a lot closer than the parking lot.”

“Through there? With the malicious moving cannonballs?” Alex moved closer to peer through the opening. “There’s only twelve or so? I could sneak through…” He trailed off as he studied the room.

Amelia looked between her boyfriend and her best friend, and Maeve could easily make out the anxiety in her expression. “I- Alex… be careful.”

“Of course I will.” He smiled gently at her before turning back and pointing. “See there? That taller display with the movable map is blocking off the side of the room they’re on.” He shifted and pointed again, “If I go behind there and-“

They’d started to ignore the cannonball stuck in the door frame. It was just sitting there unmoving and didn’t seem to have any way to sense them. As Alex moved so the people behind him could see what he was pointing at, the monster suddenly shifted. It rotated in place at surprising speed, the hole where the fuse would be put into it whirling about in a blur to point right at Alex’s finger. Maeve noticed it move, and everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. She opened her mouth to warn him while simultaneously stepping closer, reaching out for the back of his shirt. The cannonball moved faster than she could as it rocketed out of the hole it had made, launching even more splinters and large chunks of wood all around.

There was no way to know if it was sheer luck or his instincts, but Alex was already pulling his arm back as the monster threw itself at him. Maeve watched as it hit the tip of his finger, the force of the blow throwing his hand up into the air and knocking him back a step. The cannonball monster ricocheted off the other edge of the doorway and bounced to a stop a few feet to the right of the group. Maeve grabbed Alex and yanked him away multiple seconds too late to change anything, and then the group scrambled even farther back, staring at the now much more dangerous enemy that was no longer sitting placidly. The monster was now swiveling continuously, the fuse hole in it glaring around malevolently as it searched for them.

They clustered against the wall, facing the monster Alex and Ed in front, holding out their flag poles like real weapons to ward off strikes with. After a few moments of heavy breathing and watching the cannonball, it showed another new behavior as it began rolling itself along the ground, thankfully away from them.

“So it has an eye.” Scarlett breathed out quietly, “It looked right at Alex.”

Maeve shoved down the oncoming feelings of panic and pushed herself to think clearly. “It’s not an eye, I think. It wasn’t pointed at him originally; it was pointed into the wood. It swung around toward him before launching. If it was an actual eye of some sort, it wouldn’t have been possible to see him from behind it.”

“It definitely noticed him, though!” Scarlett hissed.

“I’m not saying it didn’t!” Maeve fiercely whispered back, “I’m saying it’s worse than having an eye! It can sense us all around it, not just from the front!”

Scarlett’s face blanched. “Shit.”

“It can’t hear us, though.” Ed said at a normal volume, “It would have come after us while we were talking close to it.”

Amelia pushed at Alex’s back as she tried to wiggle out from behind him. “Let us move you two; we shouldn’t bunch up like this so we don’t get hit all at once.”

They dispersed farther down the hallway, still watching the single cannonball rolling around the hall and occasionally bumping into the walls.

“What do we do?”

Maeve took a deep, calming breath. “We stick to the same plan. The range of what it can sense isn’t that far. It only reacted when Alex’s arm came like, a foot from it. So some of us distract this one that’s in the way, and Alex goes and gets the sledgehammer.”

Alex nodded in agreement. “There’s definitely enough space for me to move around in there. Most of them are still clumped up in their original display case.”

Amelia reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I hate this. It’s even more dangerous than we thought it was a few minutes ago. But the world seems to be ending, or at least changing rapidly, and we can’t afford to not take risks. Be safe.”

“I will.” He promised.

“Give yourself extra room,” Maeve added, cautioning him. “It’d be dumb to assume that they all have the same range without any evidence.”

“Right. Don’t worry, guys, I’ll be right back.”