“YOU ALIVE IN THERE, KID?” Came the booming voice, shocking Kayden out of his grogginess even though he’d been expecting it. It was seven o’clock on the dot, and he was leaning against the wall next to the entrance to the box trying not to fall back asleep. He’d slept damn near thirteen hours and he was still exhausted. Not only that, but he’d barely even made it back out in time.
See, Kayden figured he’d set his alarm for 6:30. It’s not like there was a morning routine for him to go through, nor would it take too long to trek through the muddy awfulness of his buggy roommates’ part of the rift to the box. He might as well get that extra bit of sleep, right? Well, unfortunately, he’d woken not to his fourth alarm at 6:37 but the feeling of countless tiny little agitated legs trying to get to his phone. Turns out alarms annoy more than just people, and hate locusts can get through mosquito nets pretty easy.
Kayden had to quickly mute his alarm and toss the phone across the room - well, cave. By the time he’d retrieved it, waited for the swarm of agitated bugs around him to dissipate so as to not risk overburdening the veil and finally made his way to the rift, it was 6:58. He had barely time to catch his breath and process the whole experience before he’d had the living daylights scared out of him.
“Alive!” He shouted, though he doubted Frank could hear it through the steel and concrete. The door opened a crack, one lone, wrinkled eye squinted through the opening, before getting thrown open wide and proper.
“You’re alright. Good! That’s… good.” Frank seemed to deflate as he spoke, energy pouring from his chest along with his words. “It’s great, even. I got my wife to bring breakfast for four this morning and some wipes because I’m not letting you eat covered in that toxic waste shit.”
“For four?” Kayden nearly snatched the wipes out of Frank’s hand - he felt positively filthy - and started washing his hands and face as he spoke. “Who’s eating with us, besides her?”
“No, no, she’s not eatin’ with us. Don’t want her meetin’ a bum, do I?” Frank chuckled at his own joke while Kayden pretended he wasn’t bothered by it, then frowned. “She’d drag you home to stay on the couch and kill me for not making you do it last night. So I told her I wanted a little extra snack since I planned on exercising during the shift to pass the time.”
That, at least, was something Kayden could be grateful for. He didn’t have very many of those, as of late.
“That accounts for two servings…” he probed, now rooting through his back since his hands were clean enough to not ruin all he touched. One step took him behind the door and out of Frank’s line of sight, where he started getting changed into clothes that weren’t caked in mud and filth.
“Well, we ate breakfast together, the ol’ ball and chain and I, as we always do. Then there’s yours.” Kayden stepped back out under the sky, which should not have been as relieving as it was, and Frank handed him a bagel wrapped in a paper towel, soaked in grease from a generous helping of bacon stuffed between. Judging by the way Frank’s eyes crinkled, the effort it took to not swallow it whole was visible.
“That’s three,” Kayden said, forcing himself to wait and appreciate what would be the best meal he’d had in the past week or so. “Where’s four?”
“It’s my snack for later, jackass. Just told you. Shut up and eat.”
Kayden obeyed, forcing himself to take tiny bites and savor every part of the greasy goodness. Non-monster meat was expensive, nowadays - he had to savor this little bit of proper Earth bacon as much as he could. Still, even though he swore he had barely nibbled at his little toasted and buttered slice of heaven, it was gone entirely too soon and only served to undercut how little he’d been eating as of late.
Frank, who’d taken up his silent post trying to intimidate all zero of the people coming by into compliance, gave Kayden a look he knew full well: expectant curiosity. The old guard wanted to know where he’d be today. The fact that he had to dictate his goings-on to a relative stranger angered Kayden like no other - this was supposed to be a step forward, towards taking his situation fully into his own hands! He wasn’t supposed to be at the whims of a single (admittedly pretty nice) guy who could just report him at will!
Still, it was the current situation, and there was nothing he could do about it. So, with a sigh, Kayden swallowed the last vestiges of grease clinging to his tongue and spoke in a quiet, reserved tone.
“Gonna head back to town in a bit, once the bus comes.” Come to think of it, he needed to get ready for that - he had a good forty minutes, but twenty of those would be walking the mile it took to get to the bus stop. Kayden started rummaging through his bag, making sure he had all he needed. “I got, uh…” he was about to say ‘cores to trade in’, but there was really nothing stupider than announcing to the world that you’ve got a bag of money on you. He and Frank may be alone in the middle of what probably used to be a park, given the grown over paths and ruined swing set jutting off to the side, but it wasn’t a good habit to be in. “Got errands to run. Laundry, home improvement. The works.”
“So you’re gonna be back tonight?”
“Mhm.” Despite himself, Kayden couldn’t help but look back at Frank with narrowed eyes. His posture grew cagey, his expression tightened with anticipation - the ol’ fight or flight reflex kicking in again. The old guard hadn’t moved. His wrinkled, thick hands were clasped behind his back, his eyes not moving from the horizon. “There… there any issue with that?”
“Depends if ‘home improvement’ is under that grey area you’re using, kiddo.”
A sigh of relief escaped Kayden’s lips, and he tried his best to keep it soft so as not to be heard. “Yeah, it’s good. ‘Ease-of-hunting infrastructure’ is the legal term for anything that helps people do rift maintenance.” One last check - bag of cores, wallet, phone and charger… good. Kayden stood, backpack hoisted around his front to keep anyone from trying their luck slipping their fingers in the pockets. Good to go. “So long as I let other people use any permanent stuff I put in, it’s all good.”
Frank nodded in understanding, which Kayden took as an end to the conversation. He set off in a half jog back towards the lone bus stop, waving behind himself for a moment before the multitasking almost made him trip flat on his face over a stray chunk of asphalt. Hubris checked and mood dampened, he shook his head and continued on.
First things first, money. Money was nice to have, and that’s why the first errand on Kayden’s list was to go back to Fish and Wildlife - a different branch, this time, both because the one he went to for his registration was too small to have an exchanges desk and because he didn’t want to risk meeting Miss Bureaucracy herself again. Thankfully, there wasn’t a single bus line in the city that didn’t have a stop close enough to walk to the main Northeastern branch, so getting there was a piece of cake.
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Kayden had seen the main branch before, of course. It was physically impossible not to see it. The building was tall - easily three times as tall as the next skyrise. You could see it from damn near everywhere in the city. It was shaped like a spire; it took up nearly the entire city block it was on, and grew thinner and thinner as you went up, tapering off in what Kayden assumed was a wickedly sharp lightning rod.
The main branch was built before the earth-moving Gifted got regulated to all hell, meaning it looked like it was carved from a mountain of marble rather than actually constructed. The first few floors, especially, were opulent in a way that was almost baroque - every inch of the walls high enough to be out of reach of the public was covered in frescos of idyllic landscapes. Yellowstone here, some mountain or another there. It was breathtaking, and made the long line much more bearable.
Apart from all the nature, there were also quite a few depictions of famous hunters killing giant beasts of some kind. The most prominent of them was right across the way from the entrance - Champion himself hoisting the giant head of a sea serpent into the air. Kayden remembered hearing about it on the news; apparently it turned the Great Lakes into just one Greater Lake. The whole ecosystem got screwed up. Champion himself was a pure white outline, looking like an unpainted hole in the scene and contrasting the grotesque features of his trophy. It was an old deed on the painting, from back when he had an afro - people jokingly referred to him as a lightbulb back then.
As Kayden waited on line, trying to keep his mind off how easy it would be for someone to pickpocket him in the huge crowd, he wondered what they ended up calling the new Greater Lake. Surely they wouldn’t do something so boring as just ‘Greater Lake’, right? Maybe they’d try separating them out again. It wouldn’t be too hard, especially compared to back before there were people who could move shit with their minds.
Finally, he got to the exchanges desk. There were a few people working there in tandem, all receiving customers. Lone cores or entire satchels were exchanged, a price quoted to be met with approval or a sigh. Sometimes, with the bigger stuff, they’d direct you to a different, smaller queue for a proper appraisal. The whole process took maybe thirty seconds each, and it went to show just how congested it was that even with three people working the line people were waiting all the way to the entrance.
“Got cores to trade in,” he said to the woman behind the desk once it was finally his turn. who looked like she was not paid nearly enough but was at least still trying to give a customer service smile. Far better than last time.
“Did you fill out the form?” she asked.
“The what?”
Another long wait in line and a good twenty minutes later, he handed the (admittedly simple) form and his collection of tiny unaspected cores to a different overworked public servant - this one a middle aged man who looked like he’d been stretched thin like a piece of gum and never quite went back to his original shape. Six and a half feet easy, probably more, and wearing pastel orange suspenders over a blue button down, of all things. Kayden was so focused on the odd outfit he nearly missed the man’s verdict.
“Yep, a hint of water and nothin’ else. Dang near pure.” Mr. Suspenders held one of the misshapen cores up to what looked to be a mounted magnifying glass on his desk, adjusting dials and pressing buttons according to some Byzantine methodology Kayden couldn’t begin to understand. “Lumpy and small, but pure. Looks like a bag of salt, though. I think I can get you maybe… a dollar thirty per? You’ll have to get it properly counted at the full appraisal line, but that should get you a few hundred over all.”
Kayden did, indeed, go to the shorter ‘full appraisal’ line, and a little bit of watching some poor woman count more than a hundred fifty nearly identical, sometimes sharp magic rocks later he found himself staring at his bag of exactly $232.70 in almost childish excitement. Once it was exchanged, and he saw the money in his bank account, he found himself giggling all the way back outside. Then, once he had sat down on a bench and calmed down, he looked again just to make sure and laughed again.
He’d made that money. He’d gone into a rift, braved the scourge of the world, went through a literal swarm of locusts for a payday. More than a week’s pay at his old shitty cashier job for the low, low cost of having to deal with bugs and mud.
Once he came down from the high (which didn’t fully fade, but at least he didn’t start laughing like an idiot every couple seconds), it was time to plan. His life still objectively sucked. He lived in a crack in the wall of a cave. It was a temporary situation, sure, but “temporary” could be weeks or months if he wasn’t lucky. He wasn’t willing to torture himself for that long, so he’d need to do some home improvement.
Out came his notebook, a bulky but necessary item; he’d tried brainstorming on his phone many a time to no success. His goofy grin slowly faded into a contemplating frown as he scribbled all the things he thought he could mitigate or, even better, take advantage of.
- The bugs don’t like loud noises. He’d need earbuds or something so his alarm wouldn’t make them swarm him - it’d be less annoying to sleep with headphones on than to miss the only bus to town.
- They’re more than capable of chewing through regular mosquito net, but didn’t try eating him while he slept - either a fluke or a sign that his talent worked while he was asleep. That meant no need to sleep in that cramped space on the far end of the cave - he could probably lay down a mat of some sort.
- The clothes he wore in the rift were probably ruined. He’d need a proper work/sleep/whatever else he might think of outfit. Preferably something waterproof that wouldn’t get him trench foot or something.
- He needed a place to shower and stuff. Gyms have showers, and gyms are also very important for not being extremely out of shape and incapable of doing hunter work. Two birds with one stone, there.
- He needed a better way to store his cores than the plastic bag he’d regretfully left in the FWMS building. There were already holes getting poked in it anyways, but at the very least a reusable store bag instead of the literal bottom of the barrel of receptacles would be nice.
It wasn’t actually all laid out in a nice list like that, of course - Kayden had two full pages of scribbled notes, including far fetched hypotheticals such as ‘build a deck above the mud to sleep on’ (he couldn’t do that sort of handiwork to save his life) or ‘see how much a proper hate locust core is worth’ (a good way to make a giant swarm of bugs realize there’s fresh meat in their midst, his talent be damned).
In the end, even though he bought his new rainboots and thick jeans from a thrift store and only had to pay maybe a dollar extra for one of the surprisingly decent quality reusable bags at the same store he got a plastic mat that was apparently meant to go under tents to keep mud and water from seeping in too much, Kayden only had enough for a meal of fast food before his mighty payday was reduced to a mere $3.79. He didn’t look homeless enough for the gym to turn him away when he asked for a membership, thankfully, so he was at least clean.
“Might need a loan,” he thought as he toweled himself off, before violently shaking his head. The thought of taking out a loan, even a minor one like that, scared the crap out of him.
Still, as he took the bus back to the developing area with the rift he’d have to start calling home, Kayden knew he’d need a little more than the few hundred bucks a week clearing out the locust pools would get him. The whole hunting thing was supposed to be a side gig while he got back on his feet, but he could already that wasn’t the direction things were going. Putting aside the money, the feeling of the whole process. It was his money, from beginning to end. Kayden harvested those cores. Kayden sold them. No hourly wage to deal with. No managers or indignities to endure so he could make rent.
It was a heady feeling. Enough to make him barely hesitate when he nodded to Frank and stepped back into the concrete box that he could already feel himself starting to call home. Enough to cool his head as he laid his new mat and sleeping bag down on a section of the cave where the mud was thickest, feeling tiny legs crawl over his closed eyes until he fell into a dead sleep.