At some point after the city-wide announcement, Walter and Sierra had made their way out of their small house and downtown towards the only other people they knew. The sensation from the sound, the feeling of every nerve on the body turning to fire as the shrill screech pierced through everything, was something Walter had trouble shaking. Things felt blurry for hours after, sometimes, as though his mind had trouble finding its grounding once more.

Perhaps it was because he was older. He didn’t see many others in their thirties, and it was possible the sound simply affected the younger people less.

Perhaps they didn’t see many older people around them because they were unable to cope with recovering from the sound and had made easy pickings. They were in a part of town that was filled with many Bara users.

Perhaps the older generations had moved to the metropolis, where he’d heard the Kara users had made their stand.

Walter stared at the small appliance before them: a rice cooker. The five of them sat circled around it as though it were a campfire. He had vague memories of going to a nearby store with the two Harris brothers, each of them hefting a 50lb bag of rice back. Then, just like that, they had food again.

A cookie moved into his field of vision. He turned and saw Sierra smiling at him, arm outstretched.

“When did we get cookies?” he asked.

“The store,” she said. “Amelia and I tailed you guys with plastic bags to fill.”

He nodded, though he had no recollection.

“I’d say you should get your head checked, if there were any doctors in this city,” Amelia laughed to herself.

Now that he thought about it, Amelia and Sierra were both in their thirties as well and they suffered none of the same effects. How could he have forgotten his own wife’s age? The blurry self-reprimanding thought faded away like many others.

“Sorry,” he said, the word feeling sticky at the end of his tongue.

“You can’t help it,” Amelia shrugged. “As long as you have someone to take care of you, you’re fine. Dandy as a spring flower.”

Steam rose from the rice cooker’s vent, disappearing before it reached the tall suspended ceiling tiles above them. Walter glanced about the room, seeing three large bags of rice, and a number of plastic grocery bags. Beside them, two giant containers of bottled water. How could he not remember? His mind did feel as though it was finally clearing, but he was angry at himself for being so feeble.

A ring resonated and echoed through the warehouse.

“Dinner’s ready,” Amelia said eagerly, shuffling forward on her knees to lift the top and begin scooping it into bowls.

As he watched her filling the bowls they had stolen from a house on their second day in the city, Walter cleared his throat. “Have we spoken about the Hunt?”

No one responded. Amelia continued to scoop their food, then a moment later. “Sierra wanted us to wait until you were in your right mind again. Ya think he’s ready now?”

He turned and met eyes with his wife. “Yeah, he’s good.”

“Alright,” Amelia said, handing them their portions of rice. “Then lets start at the top. Heroic Hunt, scavenger hunt around the city for spheres. Commands are allowed and you can steal spheres from other players. Sounds like hell on earth to me.”

“Well, it could be worse.”

“Oh, believe me, Walter, I am aware of that. Now, we all heard that there will be punishment for the losers, right?”

They all nodded.

“It could just be a trick to get people to try harder,” Sierra said, “If there is no punishment for getting a low score, then people like us would sit here and avoid the event at all costs.”

“Sky Sight doesn’t make empty threats,” Christian Harris said. Christian and Keenan both sat together, spooning their food. They didn’t talk much, those two, but they were always listening.

Sierra nodded. “You’re probably right. But we should keep in mind the possibility that it may not be true, or it may be a trick of words. It’s a broad term that could mean anything.”

The brothers both nodded their heads.

“What are we going to do?” Walter asked. “Will we stay together?”

“Of course,” Amelia said, “We’re going to move in a group, stick to the shadows, and grab any spheres we can.”

“We should stay around the areas we know and make sure we have an escape route,” Sierra said. “Whoever sees the sphere first gets it. At the end of the day we can decide how to split them up.”

“Right, sounds good to me. What about you two?”

The brothers looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure,” Keenan said.

As it turned out, there wasn’t much to discuss after all. They mentioned a number of locations they could search and a few routes through the streets they could take that might be safer than others. Then the discussion turned to the both fortunate and frightening reappearance of food throughout Agona. There were no theories as to how that was possible, but it was impossible to question when you had a belly full of it.

A short while later, Sierra and Walter were walking at a quick pace down the road, back towards the house they now called home. Nothing had changed in the city, not yet at least, and already it felt different. He scouted out the alleys and houses they passed, wondering who might be inside, if anyone was at all. It hadn’t been worth checking before, but it could be worth it tomorrow, to get enough spheres to avoid whatever punishment awaited.

“One day,” Sierra said. She was carrying a plastic bag stuffed with food. “It’s only one day; twelve hours. We can wake up and eat breakfast like normal, and then go down to meet them whenever we feel like it. It’ll only be about as long as the last event, but this time I won’t be alone.”

“Right,” Walter said. It wasn’t like her to get so anxious. “If you’d rather, we can stick together, just the two of us. We can go house to house, like the old days, except now we’ve got Commands on our side. We don’t need to comb the streets with the others tomorrow.”

It seemed he had hit the nail on the head. She nodded her head. “I do think it’d be better that way. We can spend a couple hours and grab as many as we can, then hide. We don’t have to worry about splitting them up either, as long as we both get some. It’ll be safer that way, don’t you think?”

Walter interlaced his fingers through hers. “Yes, it sounds like a much better idea. They won’t miss us anyway. It’ll be just like our old dates, we’ll do our thievery and be home for dinner.”

“Oh, Walter,” she said with a roguish grin on her face. “You know just how to steal a girl’s heart.”