Tactical Readjustment
Marcus stood by the kitchen doorway, the heat from the grill and the clatter of clean plates offering the only familiar comfort in a world that had ceased to make sense. The lock on the front door was flipped, the deadbolt thrown, and the chain secured. It was a pointless effort.. no amount of physical defense could stop something that arrived by folding reality.. but the ritual of locking up provided the illusion of control.
He ran a weary hand over his jaw. His muscles were loose and spent, the adrenaline and the intense intimacy with Eira having completely wrung him out. He felt simultaneously exhausted and hyper-alert, every nerve ending vibrating like a plucked wire. The coin, the hesh-kel, was a cool, heavy weight deep in his jeans pocket, no longer radiating the active heat it had during the warp.
Eira was in the small back room, getting dressed and retrieving Liri. The silence from that direction felt significant, heavier than the general hum of the diner. She hadn't spoken much after they had disentangled themselves on the bar top, only giving him a deep, knowing look that sealed their new, complicated arrangement. Their bond was now physical, undeniable, and bound by shared mortal peril.
You can't map the storm, he remembered her saying. But you know you're still on the ground.
He was on the ground, yes, but the ground was shaking.
Liri padded back into the kitchen first, her small form still clad in the borrowed, oversized t-shirt, her Slipgate ball cap pulled low over her ears. She was carrying the coffee can Marcus had used to collect the spent shell casings. Her eyes, though still wide, held a new gravity.
"The man with the truck," she said, her voice quiet. "He did not see you go?"
"He saw me standing there, then he saw me standing there a little later," Marcus explained, wiping down the stainless steel prep table. "The Gate is fast. It doesn't move through time like we do. It moves through here."
Eira followed her, her movements composed. She had changed back into her green skirt and light top, her dark, thick braid swinging over one shoulder. She looked like a woman who had just left a casual roadside diner, not a powerful being who had just used a human to ground herself from the terror of existential dread.
She walked straight to the cabinet beneath the bar.. the one where Marcus kept the "just in case" weapons.
"The Mark is quiet now," Eira stated, not looking at him. "The Gate is closed. But the Hunters know you have the stone. They know where to look. They will return when the pull is strong."
"And the pull is strong when there's an anchor," Marcus finished, nodding toward the small locked box. "Me. We need to move. Or we need to fight."
"We will fight," Eira decided, effortlessly locating the latch, which popped open with a soft thunk. She pulled out the sawed-off twelve gauge and the M164. She laid them on the bar, treating the weapons with the cautious respect Marcus had drilled into them days earlier.
"The weapons do not belong in your world, Marcus," Eira said, her fingers lightly touching the cold metal of the M16 magazine. "But they belong to this place. They are the only magic your world offers that can break the skin of the Pig Men."
"They break the skin," Marcus corrected grimly, taking the M16 and racking the charging handle, the metallic snick a familiar comfort in the tense quiet. "But they don't break the magic. They dissolved into ash once the Gate rejected them. The guns just bought us time."
"Time is life," Eira stated simply. "We need more time. We need to be ready to fight from the start."
Marcus looked at the three of them: a former combat sergeant, an elf mage with spent reserves, and a frightened girl. They were outnumbered and outgunned by reality itself.
"The Mark is a beacon," Marcus said, laying the rifle beside the shotgun. "We can't get rid of the coin, or they'll think I died and they'll come for the rest of you. We have to use it. But we don't fight where they expect us."
Indispensable People
Marcus pulled a stool up to the bar and sat down. Liri and Eira stood across from him. This wasn't a briefing; it was a desperate contingency plan.
"We are a squad," Marcus said, his voice dropping into the low, firm cadence he used in the field. "And we have three problems: immediate defense, logistics, and navigation. None of us can do this alone. Weak links get cut. We have to be indispensable."
He looked at Liri first. She was hugging the coffee can full of brass casings and looking at him with earnest concentration, her small pointed ears visible under the brim of the cap.
"Liri, you are the most indispensable person here," he said, and the praise made her eyes widen slightly. "You are our Early Warning System."
"Warning?" she repeated. "Like the coffee machine?"
"Better," Marcus said. "You were born in that world. You know the silence. The Pig Men communicate through fear, through sound that doesn't sound like sound. We are deaf to it. Eira's ears hear better than mine, but you hear with need."
He pointed to the coffee can. "That brass is loud. Any metal that comes from my world is a distraction in theirs. We will keep the kitchen and bar full of normal human noise.. frying, talking, music. But if that noise is hiding something, your job is to find the anomaly."
He leaned closer. "Any change in the temperature of the air. Any shift in the way the lights buzz. Any feeling that the floor is suddenly too soft or the silence is suddenly too heavy. You tell us immediately. No hesitation. Understood?"
Liri nodded fiercely, clutching the can to her chest. "I will listen for the lack of the real," she promised.
Marcus nodded, satisfied. He had just turned her deepest fear into a weapon.
He looked at Eira. Their eyes locked, and the shared memory of the bar top, the heat, and the urgency passed between them in a microsecond. The bond was not just emotional; it was a proven physiological link.
"Eira," Marcus said. "You are our Navigator and Tactical Asset."
"My light is not strong, Marcus," Eira warned, flexing her fingers. "I cannot blast a Pig Man right now. It takes time."
"Your light is a fuse," Marcus countered. "We won't use it for primary defense. We use it for Navigation."
He pulled the hesh-kel from his pocket and laid it on the bar between them. "I used this to pull myself back. It felt hot. That means it's a connection point. When the Gate opens, the coin will point to the strongest pull. Your job is to read it. Tell me where the Gate is pulling to.. north, south, east, west.. so we know which direction to run."
Eira picked up the coin, her long, pale fingers turning the dark metal over. She examined the engraved symbol with an intensity that suggested she was reading the future in its lines.
"And the asset?" she asked, her voice low.
"The asset is the Sky-bond," Marcus said, his eyes drilling into hers. "It's the rope. If they pull me out again, you pull me back. You don't hesitate. You grab anything I left behind that is marked.. the coin, the guns, my vest.. and you focus on the tether. Don't look at the abyss. Look at me. You are my anchor, Eira. If you panic, I'm gone."
He reached out and gently took her chin, tilting her head up so their eyes met fully. "And my final order for you: You teach me the language of this place. The signals. The difference between a hunting sound and a wind chime. We have time before they mobilize. I need to be able to hear danger before it's sitting on my doorstep."
Eira didn't nod or speak. She simply leaned forward and brushed her lips across his, a fierce, quick contact that was part promise, part affirmation of his command.
"I will teach you how to hear the world again," she vowed.
The Problem of Logistics
Marcus stood up, energized by the clarity of his plan. He walked to the storage closet, pulling out a couple of old backpacks and a large roll of duct tape.
"Logistics is mine," he said. "We have to be ready to bug out instantly. We need water, food, power. And we need to stabilize the core of the problem: the Mark."
He knelt down and began laying out the contents of the 'just in case' cabinet: ammo boxes, the cleaning kit, and the three spare magazines for the M16.
"The Mark is a passive beacon," Marcus explained, focusing on the tactical problem. "They scent the Mark, not the person. If they can't find the scent, they won't know we're here until the Gate opens again."
He looked at the M16. He couldn't hide the weapons; he needed them ready.
"We hide the beacon," Eira realized, looking at the coin in her hand. "But how? It radiates."
"We suppress the signal," Marcus said, reaching for the duct tape. "We use a Faraday cage."
He took a small, clean tin box used for storing tea and lined the inside meticulously with strips of aluminum foil pulled from the kitchen stock. The foil acted as a conductor, dispersing the heat and energy radiating from the coin.
"We wrap the hesh-kel in plastic first to keep the metal clean," Marcus explained, demonstrating the careful wrapping. "Then we seal it inside the foil box. That dampens the electromagnetic pulse. It won't stop the connection completely, but it should turn the beacon down to a faint whisper."
Once sealed, the tea tin was wrapped in a thick layer of duct tape, ensuring it was airtight and waterproof.
"This is the Mark," he said, holding up the dull, gray package. "It stays locked in the safe until the Gate opens, or until we need to read the direction."
"You are good at finding ways around rules," Eira noted, a faint curve to her lip.
"I specialized in rules that were actively trying to get me killed," Marcus said grimly.