The thing about Neutral City was that it was almost cruel in how comfortable it was.
Not cruel in an obvious way. Not the kind of cruel that came with claws and gravity manipulation and stone floors that smelled like mold. It was cruel in the quiet way that only safe places can be, because the safer you felt the more you remembered exactly what was waiting for you on the other side of it. The warmth made the cold more real. The lights made the darkness harder to forget.
Alice sat on the steps with the others and let herself have it anyway.
They had found a spot near one of the floating buildings where the glow from the street lights didn't reach quite as harshly and the noise of the NPC vendors was just far enough away to be background instead of interruption. Someone had pulled out a blanket from their interface inventory, Alice wasn't even sure who, and it was spread across the steps between them like they were a group of people on a perfectly normal evening doing perfectly normal things. Which they weren't. But it was nice to pretend for a little while.
David had disappeared for exactly eleven minutes and come back with something wrapped in cloth that he wouldn't let anyone see.
"What did you buy," Miriam said. It wasn't even a question. It was the tone of someone who already knew the answer was going to be irritating.
"Nothing."
"David."
"I said nothing Miriam. Can a man not have privacy?"
"You spent Spades didn't you."
"I spent a reasonable and responsible amount of Spades on something that is going to be extremely useful when we need it most and I don't want to hear another word about it."
CJ looked at Alice. Alice looked at CJ. Neither of them said anything but something passed between them that was very close to amusement and it felt so strange and so good that Alice almost didn't know what to do with it.
Ace was sitting at the far end of the steps. He had been quiet for a long time now, not the aggressive closed off quiet of someone who was angry, just the hollow quiet of someone whose thoughts were somewhere far away and not particularly pleasant. He was turning a small piece of stone over in his fingers, reshaping it absently with his power, pressing it flat and then pulling it back into a cube and then flattening it again. Over and over. Like his hands needed something to do so the rest of him could stay still.
Alice watched him for a moment and then looked away.
She knew that feeling. The need to keep some part of yourself moving so you didn't have to sit completely inside whatever was happening in your head. She had been doing it herself for weeks now, just in different ways. Checking her sword. Adjusting her grappler hook. Counting heads every time they came through a portal to make sure everyone was still there.
The city hummed around them softly.
For a while nobody spoke and it was the most peaceful silence Alice could remember since the game started. Not the silence of a dungeon where quiet meant something was about to happen. Just actual quiet. The kind that belonged to people who had earned a rest and were taking it.
It was Miriam who broke it eventually and she did it gently, the way she did most things.
"How is everyone actually doing," she said. Not loudly. Just putting it out there for whoever wanted to take it.
David unwrapped his cloth thing slightly, looked at it, wrapped it back up. "Tired."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant." He was quiet for a second. "Still tired."
CJ was leaning back on his hands looking up at the floating buildings above them. "I keep thinking about the 6 of Spades. Not the fight. Just the way he talked. Like we were nothing before he even tried." He paused. "I don't want to run into another one like that."
"We will," Miriam said simply. "They're going to get worse the higher we go. We all know that."
"Yeah." CJ nodded slowly. "I know."
Alice was about to say something when she noticed Ace had stopped turning the stone over in his fingers. He was just holding it now. Still. His eyes were on the ground between his feet and his jaw was working slightly like he was chewing on something he wasn't sure he wanted to say out loud.
"I keep seeing it," he said finally. His voice was low enough that the city almost swallowed it. "I close my eyes and I'm back in that room and the weight is just..." He stopped. Pressed his lips together. "I know I came back. I know I'm sitting here right now. But my body doesn't seem to know that yet."
Nobody jumped in to fix it. Nobody told him he was fine or that it was going to get easier or any of the other things that sounded right but landed wrong. They just listened. And sometimes that was the only thing that could be offered and the only thing that actually helped.
Miriam shifted closer to him on the steps. Not saying anything. Just there.
Ace looked at the stone in his hand for a long moment. Then he set it down on the step beside him carefully, like he was putting something down on purpose, and straightened up slightly.
"I'm not going to freeze up in the next fight," he said. More to himself than to any of them. Like he was making a promise he wasn't entirely sure he could keep but was going to make anyway. "I won't."
"Nobody said you would," CJ said.
"I know. I'm saying it anyway."
Alice looked at him then and something in her chest settled just slightly. He was scared. He was going to be scared for a long time probably. But he was still here and he was still talking and that meant something. That meant a lot actually.
She stood up and stretched her arms above her head and felt her spine crack in three places that probably shouldn't be cracking.
"Alright," she said. "We have time before the system pulls us in again. I want everyone to check their interfaces and see what they have. If anyone needs to spend Spades on anything actually useful now is the time."
"Anything actually useful," David repeated, clutching his cloth wrapped purchase slightly tighter.
"David I swear."
"It's useful."
"What is it."
He paused for a long moment. Then he unwrapped it with the energy of someone revealing a masterpiece. It was a large curved blade. Ornate. Completely impractical looking. With a handle that had been carved into the shape of a bird for absolutely no reason.
Everyone stared at it.
"It's a good knife," he said defensively.
"That is not a knife," CJ said. "That is a decorative sword that belongs on someone's wall."
"It's aerodynamic."
"It really isn't."
"The man at the stall said—"
"The man at the stall wanted your Spades David."
Alice put her face in her hands. Miriam closed her eyes with the patience of someone who had accepted long ago that some battles were not worth fighting. Ace, for the first time since Level 6, made a sound that was almost a laugh. Small and short and a little rough around the edges, like it surprised him coming out, but it was there.
Alice heard it and kept her face hidden for just a second longer so nobody would see her smiling.
They spent the next hour going through their interfaces. Alice added the speed amplifier boots to her active gear and ran a short test down the empty end of the street, the world blurring around her for forty five seconds of pure breathtaking velocity before it cut off and left her standing still with her heart hammering. She was going to need to use that carefully. CJ practiced with his aura hands, pushing the green energy further than usual, testing the range and the pressure. He managed to hold a barrier wide enough to cover all five of them at once which was new and something they were going to need. Miriam ran through her blue flames, pulling them into different shapes, tighter and more controlled than before. The level up had done something to the temperature of them too. They burned hotter now. You could feel it from three feet away.
David polished his bird handled knife with his sleeve and refused to discuss it further.
Ace sat with his hands flat on the stone step for a while. Then slowly, quietly, he pressed his palms down and let his power move through the material beneath him. The stone rippled like water. Rose slightly. Reshaped itself. He pulled it back flat. Did it again. Faster this time. Then faster. Like he was reminding himself that it was still there, the power, still his, still working, still something he could trust even when everything else felt uncertain.
Alice watched him from the corner of her eye and said nothing.
Then the system spoke.
It didn't announce itself. It never did. The voice just arrived in the air around them, that flat calm tone that belonged to no one and nothing, and the sound of it was enough to make every single one of them straighten up instinctively.
LEVEL 8 WILL BEGIN IN TWO MINUTES. PREPARE ACCORDINGLY.
The warmth of the last hour evaporated instantly. Alice felt it go like someone had opened a window in winter. The comfortable weight of the steps beneath her, the soft glow of the city lights, David's ridiculous knife, Ace's almost laugh, all of it suddenly felt very far away and very temporary.
She stood up.
The others stood with her. No discussion. No hesitation. Just five people getting to their feet because that was what they did.
Alice looked at each of them in turn. CJ, steady and present. David, slipping his knife into his belt with the quiet dignity of a man who knew he was going to get teased about it forever and had made peace with that. Miriam, already holding her spear, eyes calm and focused. Ace, hands at his sides, jaw set, the fear still sitting in his eyes but underneath it something that looked a lot like determination.
"Together," Alice said. Just that one word.
"Together," CJ said.
The portal opened.