Snippet #1567743

Six hours later...





The battle that had started at roughly 5 AM had taken nearly three hours, not even including the stray Spiders that people found lurking in empty classrooms and bathroom stalls for hours afterwards. It was like the worst kind of infestation. Cyrus had been saved only because that one Spider had stopped to eat the other guy, and after that a psychic with telekinesis had saved his sorry ass.

The enemies had dispersed, but that didn’t mean the battle was entirely over. There were a handful of psychics with healing capabilities, and they were constantly dragged from one place to the next, taking care of that broken bone, those lacerations. It was incredibly useful, but even the healers couldn’t take care of the most common injury: exhaustion from over-use of psychic abilities. Healers could only heal physical injuries.

Fortunately, the Spiders had never made it up the 23rd floor. Unfortunately, Spiders caused property damage everywhere they went, and those 23 floors looked appropriately like a war zone. 23 virtually unusable floors, full of sparking electrical wires and broken glass and doors threatening to fall down on people.

Cyrus spent the first few hours after the battle doing everything he could, which was mostly sending out requests for healers and people that were trapped underneath rubble. Finally, at around 2 in the afternoon, things started to calm down. All the sick/injured people had been put in several classrooms on the 25th floor (it was too exhausting to drag them up much higher than that.)

Since there wasn’t much else for him to do, Cyrus returned to his room. He washed his face. He sat on his bed. He thought faintly of sleep, but just then a knock came on his door. Cyrus recognized the knock from its urgency.

“Come in, Briar.”

Briar looked sheepish, which was a strange look on Briar. “I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay, bro? You used your powers so much today.”

“I’m fine, but I was about to sleep. What did you want to talk about?”

“Well…” Briar looked down at the ground. “Some of the three stars were saying that they wanted to send out a broadcast to the other three stars, but the comm system is broken 'cause of the attack…we were going to meet in classroom 55E14.”

So, a classroom on the 55th floor, in the East wing, classroom 14. If they’re having their meeting place so high up, then they really must think they’re already above everybody…

“That shit? No, Briar. I’m too tired. People aren’t going to really organize using that star system, are they?” He looked seriously at Briar. “If today taught you anything, it should have taught you how arbitrary that system is.”

“I know it’s arbitrary,” said Briar with a quiet voice. “If it made any sense, bro, then you would be a three star, and I would be a one star.”

Cyrus wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“I thought you might say no. I told them that. I mean, you already used your powers so much today. And we did a good job of spreading the news already. I kind of wanted to ask you…if you were in that meeting, what would you say?”

“I would say that we shouldn’t be holding a three star meeting.”

“No, I mean,” Briar frowned. “If you had to suggest stuff, what would you suggest?”

Cyrus leaned back against the wall. “We need a list,” he said at last. “Not a list of people’s stars. We need a list of names and abilities. But not just psychic abilities. Yeah, we’re going to need to know people’s abilities in order to organize them into a fighting force during an attack. But what are we going to do in-between? We have a cafeteria full of stored food – who’s going to serve it? What do we do when we run out of food? I’m sure we can go out and get more in the city, but who’s going to do that? How are we going to share it? And there are other things, too. It’s great that we have healers, but what if someone here has experience in medical school? That would be even better – healers wouldn’t have to waste strength on minor injuries. We need to use everyone’s talents, psychic and otherwise.

But those are just long-term concerns. In the short-term…what are we going to do with the Spider bodies? We probably need to drag them outside and burn them. That would be you, Briar.”

“There are also human bodies,” said Briar.

Oh, shit. How could I not think of that? Briar having to burn…

“There are,” admitted Cyrus awkwardly.

“Good advice, bro!” said Briar, his face changing to the raw enthusiasm that looked more natural on him. “I’m definitely going to suggest that to them!” And he was gone before Cyrus could say another word.

I wonder, mused Cyrus to himself, if the next time the three stars make a request of me, they’re not going to be asking.

Cyrus looked somewhat longingly at the pillow on his bed. As long as he had this pulsing headache, he wasn’t going to be able to sleep. He had a stash of Tylenol, but he couldn’t take it on an empty stomach, and he hadn’t eaten anything all day. Cyrus didn’t particularly want to eat anything…he could still see the Spider tearing flesh from the bones of that poor kid…but Cyrus was also willing to do anything that brought him one step closer to sleep.

Cyrus walked to the cafeteria on the 30th floor. Many of the elevators were now out, having been the site of conflict for psychics versus Spiders. A few other people were also pilfering food from the cafeteria. Cyrus grabbed a bag of chips, a soda, and an apple. It was no three-course meal, but it was enough for him to take some pain medication and get the hell to sleep. He sat a table by himself, chewing despondently on his apple.





Briar sat at a desk in the classroom designated as the meeting place for the three stars. A few three stars had already shown up, but it was nowhere near the crowd he would have thought. I hope they all got the message… Briar agreed with Cyrus that the star system was arbitrary, but he didn’t necessarily think that it made it useless. Someone had to step up and organize stuff, and it might as well be the three stars.

They had agreed to meet at 3. Which seemed appropriate, now that Briar thought about it. Briar looked at the round clock on the wall. 2:55…





Wednesday groaned. She hurt like hell. The last thing she could remember was watching the gigantic Spider go down, finally. She had released the force field, and promptly turned to laugh and point at the ridiculous dancing boy. Then she had fainted mid-laugh.

Wednesday sat up. She was in a classroom transformed into a sick bay, with the desks cleared out and lines and lines of unconscious people laid down on blankets. Healers ran back and forth with first aid kits.

“Hey,” called out Wednesday, her voice weak at first. She coughed and tried again. “Hey, I need help over here! I hurt like hell. Can’t one of you people do something about that?”