Another officer approached and informed Ronan, "Sir, the President requests your immediate report in person."
"She's here?" Ronan asked.
"Yes, sir," the officer replied.
Ronan looked regretfully at Jennifer. After a moment, he sighed and let go of her hand.
"Alright."
Then he smiled at her. Just a little. "I'll be back soon."
Jennifer watched him leave. Flynn and Hank had to go too. It seemed all the Awakeners had been called in to report personally.
Then Pandora Corps moved with frightening efficiency.
The hotel was placed under PIT CAM lockdown. Jennifer had already lost track of all the acronyms by now, but apparently it involved surveillance, magical barriers, and a complete communications freeze.
She probably would have understood more if she had actually listened to the PISS.
But WTH.
TWS.
(This was stupid.)
One by one, the reunion guests were escorted to separate hotel rooms.
It was quite lucky the incident had happened at a five-star hotel. The rooms were extremely nice.
Jennifer found herself alone in a quiet suite with floor-to-ceiling windows, an enormous bed, and complimentary fruit arranged like a work of art.
She stared at the fruit and worried about Rolly going back to the lounge and not being able to find her.
"He'll be okay," she told herself aloud.
Rolly was Ronan the Dragon. He was a big man… actually, even as Rolly he was big.
Jennifer giggled softly.
She really liked Rolly.
He was nice and cute.
Oh WTH. She sounded like she was falling in love… but no, love was never so simple before.
Jennifer had read enough webnovels to know that true love was never straightforward like this.
It wasn't that she took life advice from webnovels, but her singular experience was spectacularly exemplary of how webnovels were sometimes quite accurate.
This couldn't be love.
"It's probably just the shock," she told herself.
Now that she was alone in the quiet hotel room, she did feel a little shell-shocked.
Her thoughts drifted back to the Shilem Roach.
Urgh.
Jennifer tried very hard not to remember whatever the Shilem Roach had said.
Instead, she sank into one of the plush armchairs. It swallowed her whole. The chair was so deep, soft, and oversized that Jennifer felt like a doll. Not the beautiful porcelain kind poised for photographs, more like a rag doll left behind on a human couch. She was certainly sprawled like one.
Without a phone, she had nothing to check, nothing to scroll, no one to text. She couldn't even take photos of the five-star hotel treatment or the bowl of fruit.
Maybe next year she could buy a big bowl and a lot of fruit and ask her class to try naming and stacking as many fruits as they could into the bowl. After that they could make fruit salad. That would be fun.
As long as no one was allergic.
Normally Jennifer would have recorded the idea immediately in her digital notebook. She had forty themed sections for the school year—ten for each term—where she kept teaching ideas.
But she had no phone. Oh well.
Maybe she really would be the goddess sacrificed to Micah. In that case she wouldn't be around to teach Fruit Week next year.
Unless Micah was interested in learning about Earth fruits.
Jennifer considered that possibility.
You know… maybe he might like to know what he was devouring.
She glanced at the clock.
Twenty minutes had passed.
Jennifer sighed. She would have liked to check if the clock was slow, but you know—no phone. She couldn't even read her webnovels.
Time passed.
Jennifer considered taking a bubble bath and a nap. Both the tub and the bed were white and oversized and, in Jennifer's opinion, the true meaning of luxury. If she ever got rich, those were the two things she would buy first.
More time passed.
Jennifer regretted not taking the bubble bath and the nap. She could have finished both by now.
Eventually there was a knock on the door.
Jennifer opened it cautiously.
Several people entered.
Rolly.
Adrian. (What was he doing here?)
Duke Chevon.
Alpha Drake.
And a woman Jennifer immediately recognized because she had been on the news a lot recently.
She looked to be in her fifties, with sharp eyes and iron-grey hair cut in a modern bob. But her expression looked drained, and she sighed like someone who had spent decades cleaning up other people's catastrophes.
"Is this her?" she asked.
"Yes, President," Adrian said with a nod. Then he turned to Jennifer. "This is President Xelara of Pandora Corps."
(As usual, please forgive Jennifer's crappy naming skills.)
The woman gave a single nod.
"Just Xel is fine. I'll be brief," she said. Her voice was calm and completely no-nonsense.
Jennifer had not expected the President of Pandora Corps to go around saying it was fine to call her Xel. But she waited politely to be told how they planned to throw her into the next portal that opened as a sacrifice to Micah and stop the apocalypse.
Instead, President Xel said, "My ability allows me to read memories."
Jennifer blinked.
What?
She was also not expecting the President of Pandora Corps to go around explaining her powers.
"Not thoughts," the President clarified. "Points of view. Experiences. Like reading a narrative."
Jennifer stared.
Wait, wasn't that like… reading a webnovel?
The woman continued calmly. "When I touch someone, I can read their perspective of events."
Jennifer nodded slowly.
Because Jennifer could do that too.
Except she needed a laptop or phone.
And it only worked on characters she wrote.
And technically she could also draft future chapters, though the results were… as recent events had proven, unreliable and rather catastrophic.
For example, she had only meant to write a fun alien-invasion arc.
And now the entire world was facing an apocalypse via cockroach aliens.
Jennifer did not say any of this.
Instead—
She burst into tears.