“Before we become one big happy family,” I say after closing my stat sheet. “I think we’d all be a bit more comfortable if we knew about each other.”

  “I’m close range,” Jes says. “She’s fireball. He’s charge. You’re mid-range control.”

  “Not what I mean. I mean, like, I don’t know. A dating profile?”

  Jes looks at me sideways. “Jes. Twenty-Six. I like killing spiders and long walks on the beach. If you want to sit around and get cozy, I don’t think this is going to work. I’m not into touchy-feely sharing. I’ve done fine this far, and I’m not about to spend my time sitting still. Thanks for the sparring.”

  “Don’t go,” I say.

  “Why not?” both Sadie and Jes say.

  Because I can’t talk about cinnamon topped lattes with Sadie. Because someone else here knows what cheeseburgers are. Because we’re just Lost Boys looking for a way to make it in or off Neverland. Or a lost boy and a girl.

  “We’re doing fine without her, she’s fine without us,” Sadie says.

  “If you need other dance partners, there must be more of us,” Jes says.

  “How sure are you?” I counter. “It’s been a day, at least. You seen anyone else from California? Tokyo? New York? What if we’re it?”

  “We’re not it,” Jes says quietly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “How many thousands of us were on campus? We’ve walked miles. Dozens of miles. And you’re the first human we’ve come across. We have to come to terms with the fact that it might be us.”

  She turns, spitting mad, literally spit coming from her mouth with each word. “We’re not the only ones!”

  I recall she mentioned her mother earlier, before our sparring.

  “I had,” I start, “I had friends. People. I know you’re looking for your mother, but—”

  She buzz slips next to me, labrys out, arm high, ready to chop. “Don’t. Say. It.”

  I take a slow step back. “Okay. You’re right. You can’t prove a negative and we have no reason to believe that we’re the only ones here. For all we know, everyone on campus was spread out over a twenty-mile radius. We know nothing.”

  She puts down her arm. “And since we know nothing, I have to assume my mother is out there. Okay, asshole? There’s an eight-foot-tall man with a bull’s head running around somewhere. There is no reason, there is no evidence, that my mother isn’t also out there. In fact, finding you is the best source of hope I’ve had. I thought I was completely alone. Me. The spiders. The snakes. Then you tell me you’re from Cali?”

  She turns away and takes a few steps.

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  “You’re my hope that she’s here,” she says.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say carefully. “But I think it would be better for everyone if she wasn’t here. Maybe only some of us fell through. Maybe your mother is comfortable, sipping a latte at the coffee shop right now.”

  She turns back to me. “Then I have to find the way back. Right now. If she’s here, I have to find her. If she’s not, I have to go back. In either case, neither of those solutions involves standing around some goddamned dungeon.”

  Sadie puts her hand on my shoulder from behind. “Let her go, Dom. She’s not one of us.”

  “Stop that,” I say. “She might not be a bondling, but she’s human.”

  I finger my horns. She might be more human than I am. I don’t know if Earth, California, the campus and the coffee shop still exist. My last ties to what was me is this person I barely know. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new version of me. The several new versions of me that have been me since I’ve been here. But that doesn’t mean I can just leave behind everything that ever was and everything that brought me here.

  “My name is Dominic Ahlfors. I live with my dad on the outskirts of Piedmont. Lived, I guess. I’m allergic to latex. My major is history, focusing on how ancient mythology impacts our modern world. I wanted my thesis to be on how myths have changed our modern language. Did you know Thursday is Thor’s day? All this, this wherever we are, it’s part of our innate history, fictional or not. Every hour, I’m learning how not fictional it all is. I have a sister, Daria, who I can’t stand. She’s vapid and gross. She’s at school in New York, which may or may not have gotten hit by whatever happened. My mom died of lung cancer when I was eleven. I love egg rolls. I have a drivers license, but no car. I love singing hard rock, and I can kind of play guitar, but not leads. I had a girlfriend, until I found her and my best friend lying on the beach together, late spring. Now I don’t have either. I like old cars. I like art. I don’t like photography, especially not with phones. I truly, truly have no idea if it’s just you and me or what. But since you are the only other person we’ve run into, I’m pretty sure we should stick together.”

  Jes looks me in the eye, relaxing her weapons. I take it as an invite to continue.

  “If there really are more of us out there, Jes, you know we’re better together.

  She interrupts. “Maybe we complete a task and it frees us.”

  “Believe me, I’ve considered that. Long term, if we’re stuck, the more of us the better. We get out of the labyrinth, form a base camp, learn what we can, figure out if we can go home.”

  “Find my mother,” she tags on.

  “More chance of finding her if there’s ten of us than just you,” I say. “We need resources. Resources are people.”

  Jes runs her finger over the edge of her labrys. “You play that flute?”

  Sadie’s jaw drops and she pats the pan flute at her belt. “I can. But I don’t want to here in the maze.”

  Jes nods. “The sound would carry too far. Smart. Listen, here’s what I know. Because of those notifications, I think we’re in a game. Let’s say a simulation, because a lot of the shit I’ve been through ain’t exactly fun. I’m thinking we fell into some mash up of Clash Of The Titans and The Matrix.”

  “The original one is so much better,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Clash Of The Titans. The one with Harry Hamlin is better than the one with Sam Worthington. But, go on.”

  She takes a deep breath and leans her back against a wall. “Jes Evans. You call me Jessie and I will snap your neck. Jessica. Jes with one S…because. I’m an EMT, field paramedic, pre-med track. Looking to become a trauma doctor, ER. Live with my mother, Eena. I do the shopping, she does the cleaning and works at a pharmacy. Never knew my father and don’t care to. Three half-brothers, all younger than me. Eli, Thomas and Freddy. Freddy’s an asshole, hangs with the wrong kind of people, I like the others. Got a dog named Bowser. Was walking on campus when I got sucked through the sidewalk. Woke up next to some dead guy on an altar. Took everything he had and it resized to fit me. That was my clue one that this ain’t real. How often you play a game, you take some dude’s hat and it says ‘sorry, it’s not your size’? That doesn’t happen here.”

  “Safest option is to treat it real,” I say. “Because if you don’t treat it that way and it is, you’re doomed. If it’s just a simulation, then no harm in being cautious.”

  “Exactly. Because, if we die here…”

  I cut her off. “I already did.”

  “Excuse me?”