He Pushed Me Into the Void, So This Time I Said No novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Day Nine

I asked him about it at dawn, while he was lacing his boots.

"Your talent slot says Spent."

Gabe went still, then shrugged one shoulder.

"It's been like that since Day 1. I figured it was a bug."

"And your Luck?"

"Zero. That's why the handle's a joke. Nothing's gone right for me in a week." He looked up, and there was something wary in his face. "Does it matter?"

I looked at the hard line of his jaw and thought about a hand around my wrist in the dark.

"No," I said. "I'm just paying attention."

The date on my panel said Day 9.

Brett's patch sat across forty feet of void, and Gabe laid the plank himself.

"I'll stop at the end of it," he said. "I'll be right there."

"He said alone."

"He said a lot of things."

I looked at his hands on the wood, steady and square, and I said the thing I had been holding since the night before.

"If I start to fall, take my wrist."

He did not ask why.

"Okay," he said.

I walked across alone, with the chat running wide open on the sky behind me.

Dee had turned my feed public, so everyone could watch.

Brett and Kelsey were waiting on the far patch.

They looked terrible.

Brett's fingers were gray at the tips, his gelled hair was a mat of frost, and his smile had lost its warmth.

Kelsey wore the red coat with the collar up, and her eyes were red from weeping.

"Lacey," Brett said, and went down on one knee in the dirt.

Right there on the cracked ground, for a hundred thousand players, he put his hand over his heart.

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