He Pushed Me Into the Void, So This Time I Said No novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Page Three

Lacey posts the contract's last line for the whole zone to read, Dee declines, Brett calls her crazy, and a stranger's custom bond request arrives.

It wasn't much time to talk a stranger out of a bad deal.

I typed so fast I misspelled my own name.

LaceyOrmond: [SkyDragon, do not tap Yes. Open the Terms tab on his request. Read the last line of page three.]

SkyDragon: [Hon, I am hungry, not stupid. Hold on.]

BrettMaddox: [Don't listen to her, everybody. She's my ex and she's upset. The terms are standard.]

That was true.

Every Bond Contract in the realm had the same terms, and nobody ever scrolled to page three.

Last time, neither did I.

SkyDragon: [Well. That's a sentence I don't love.]

SkyDragon: [If a bonded partner dies, all assets and talents transfer to the surviving partner.]

She had pasted it into chat for the whole zone to read.

The feed stopped moving for a moment, and then it moved faster than before.

TinyTurnip: [wait WHAT]

A player: [so if your partner dies you get all their stuff?? that's insane]

The timer was half gone.

BrettMaddox: [It's a mutual protection clause. It keeps the team together. Lacey knows that.]

I did know that.

I also knew what it paid out, and when.

LaceyOrmond: [Mutual only matters when somebody dies. Protection ends on Day 7. After that the void is right there at the edge of every patch, and he'd be the only one holding the contract.]

I did not say who would do the pushing.

BrettMaddox: [Nobody said anything about pushing. You're being paranoid, babe.]

TinyTurnip: [lol he said pushing first]

The clock was almost out.

SkyDragon: [Sweetheart, you seem nice, and I'm sure your ex is a menace. But I'm declining.]

A gray line slid across the screen.

[SkyDragon declined the Bond Request.]

My knees gave out, and I sat down hard on my patch of dirt.

It was a small win, but it was the first thing I had changed.

The chat was still arguing.

BrettMaddox: [Wow. Okay. Everybody, my ex has some unresolved stuff and she's trying to ruin my first day. Please don't feed it.]

It was a good performance.

It had worked on me for eight years.

But this was a room of a hundred thousand strangers, and none of them had a reason to love him.

TinyTurnip: [bro just answer the question, is the clause real or not]

BrettMaddox: [It's just how bonds work!]

NoMoreBadLuck: [So it's real.]

That was the second thing the man on the nearest patch had typed.

I looked over at him.

He stood at the edge of his square of dirt, tall and quiet, with his thumbs hooked in a gray tunic like mine.

He was too far away for me to see his face.

A private message pinged.

SkyDragon: [Sweetheart, I'm Dee. I don't know how you knew, but I'm taking you seriously. What's your name?]

LaceyOrmond: [Lacey. I knew because I read the page everybody scrolls past.]

SkyDragon: [Then you and I are going to get along. When I find something to cook, you eat first.]

I had a food partner.

I had not expected to cry about it, and I did, quickly, with my face turned away from the chat.

Then another red box opened on my screen, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist.

It was not from Brett.

[BrettMaddox has sent TinyTurnip a Bond Request.]

I read it, and I felt sick.

TinyTurnip: [eh. why not. free warmth lol]

A player: [dude NO]

TinyTurnip: [it's day one, what's he gonna do, push me?]

I typed a warning with shaking hands.

I deleted it.

LaceyOrmond: [Read page three first. Please.]

TinyTurnip: [relax mom, I'm good]

[TinyTurnip accepted the Bond Request.]

[BrettMaddox now controls 2 territories.]

I watched the number change.

I had saved Dee, and I had not saved TinyTurnip.

There would be a next one after him, and one after that, because every person Brett bonded was another stove for him to stand beside.

I could not warn all hundred thousand players.

But I could warn them in a way that made the warning hard to forget.

I opened the Market tab.

A list of trade offers scrolled by, mostly junk.

Slime Ooze x40, free to a good home. Slime Ooze x12, someone please take it. Slime Ooze x200, dumping.

Nobody wanted it.

Nobody knew that in six days it would be worth a hundred logs a lump and the difference between living and dying.

I started to type an offer.

Then the screen flickered, and a third red box slid over the market.

[NoMoreBadLuck has sent you a Bond Request. Custom terms attached. Please read before you answer.]

He had sent it privately, so nobody in chat could see.

I looked across the dark at the tall man on the nearest patch.

He was looking back at me.

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