No, I don’t know that.” The decision to bear my secrets and explain things should have been easier, but as they say, once burned. This time, though, the stakes could be life and death. Except, Dorian had only helped. It was the only reason that I spoke the next words. “In fact, I don’t know anything about Oresiani, ?ttir, or Volki.”

  “You are joking.”

  “No. Where I am from, other races are a thing of myths.”

  “How are you here?”

  “That is the first question you ask? Not ‘Where are you from?’ Or ‘How is that possible?’” Then it clicked. In a world of levels, I shouldn’t be here. I should be dead. My personal experience made it hard to argue otherwise. I barely survived 10 minutes in the wilderness, much less trekking multiple days through monster-infected lands. Did teleportation exist here? “I don’t know.” He frowned, and I threw up my hands. “One minute, I was home, and then, in a flash, everything and everyone I knew was gone.”

  His eyes softened. “Sorry. It is hard to lose people.”

  “That’s not…” what I meant? But it was true in the general sense, and my heart ached as if it was. I missed my home. This had been as much a hell as anything I could conceive. If I was a religious man… But I wasn’t, and that path led nowhere good. “I shouldn’t be here. I am useless. My job has been completely replaced by magic. Since I have been here, I have seen what some would call miracles each day with my own eyes.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. What exactly do you mean by magic?”

  “Anything not involving—” How could I describe modern medicine to someone who didn’t know about electricity and microbiology? “Let’s just call it any healing that uses potions and skills.”

  “That is all healing.”

  “Maybe for you! We didn’t have any of that.”

  “None of that? Did you not have skills either?”

  “We have skills. We learn and train them over years, but they don’t have the power they do here.” It was a close enough truth.

  He rocked back his chair, silent. I swallowed at his look but waited for him to process my bombshells. Finally, he spoke more to the room than to me. “By the gods, I never thought them real, and here I am meeting someone from one. You’re from a null zone—“

  “A null zone?”

  “—with an isolated population at that.” The pace of his words matched his excitement, which bubbled out of him like a shaken bottle of pop bursting open.

  He eyed me up and down. “You are far less primitive than I would have expected. I know it isn’t unheard of for groups to flee and then get cut off by monsters. But the numbers are always small. The last time a significant pocket was reported was centuries ago. Even then, that was chalked up to rumors. With larger groups, society tends to crumble fast as strength and skills fail in the negligible Aether density. But if what you are saying is true, then your people survived and explored…“

  He jumped up from his chair. ”Your clothes! How long had you been traveling—it doesn’t matter. If there is even a chance, we have to tell her. Of all the people, she could make it work. You may have been wearing an Aether mine without even realizing it.”

  He didn’t even wait for me as he rushed to the door. I stared at the empty room and the door, swinging closed after bouncing hard off the wall.

  ”That didn’t go as expected,” I said to the empty room.

  Then Dorian popped his head back through the doorway, ”Are you coming?" When I didn’t move immediately, he made an exaggerated wave. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”

  An explanation, but that didn’t seem to be coming any time soon. There were also worse ways for the conversation to have ended.

  I followed him out into the twilight. Glowing blue lights hung from the buildings and walls. Except for rare stragglers stumbling from the Commons to the longhouses, the only other people outside manned the walls. An occasional whistle came the above. I couldn’t help but look up, but the cliff face had long fallen to shadow. Electric lights made it so easy to forget the horrors that could hide in the dark, but here, they hadn’t forgotten.

  For Dorian, it might as well be the middle of the day. His excitement had not even started to wane. He had only increased his speed after he saw that I had exited the building. If not for my longer legs, I would be jogging. “Dorian, where are we going?”

  “To Avin—Kyria Rhaptis, of course. You may have what we call ‘null gear.’ Do you understand what that means?

  “Obviously not. Did you not listen to what I said?

  ”I did, and that's why we are rushing. Null materials let you do amazing enchants. It isn’t too hard to find the null metals, but with organics, it is next to impossible.”

  “So they are valuable?”

  “Yeah,” he replied as if that word didn’t do it justice.

  “Do you think I can sell it to get rid of my life debt?

  “I doubt it.”

  “But didn’t you just say it was valuable?”

  “To the right person, it is priceless. Unfortunately for you, the only person who would want it is Kyria Rhaptis. You might finagle some amount to pay down your debt, but she knows you have no other option.”

  “Can I save it?”

  “No, it will become tainted with time. Who knows how much you have already lost?”

  I had a treasure that could free me from debt, but I couldn’t use it because I was in debt. I gritted my teeth. This was too sickeningly close to horror stories I had regarding patients who couldn’t afford their meds, causing them to go to the ED only to rack up more bills. “Would she really—“

  “Bend you over a barrel? Yes. I have personally seen her make a grown clan leader cry in negotiations, and I have heard of far worse. Never forget, no matter how she appears, she isn’t nice.”

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  “So I am screwed.”

  “Not at all.” He stopped before the door and, before knocking, added, “It is tempting to try to trade for your debt, but you have a real opportunity. Forget the basic stuff. She enchants for nobility, and now you can demand it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she can level.”

  Before I could say another word, he pounded on the door. He only gave it seconds without an answer before he pounded again. After the fourth cycle of knocking, a voice dripping with anger finally called from behind the door. "This better be good, or I am going to turn you into ash and bury you so deep no one will find you.”

  ”It will be."

  “I cannot believe I recognize that voice. Dorian, you have already bothered me once this evening. I don’t care who your mother is. It looks like you will need a more direct lesson on the importance of other people’s time.”

  Suddenly, a green light bathed the door and wall of her shop. A wave of heat followed, rising up my legs to my face. The source was not hard to find. On the ground, red cracks had begun to form. I took a step back and sank into the ground as it was the softest of clay.

  “Dorian!”

  He ignored me and the fact that he, too, had sunk inches into what used to be solid earth. “Daniel, the Human, might be from a null zone. A null zone!”

  The green light disappeared in a bright flash. With it, the heat vanished, and I was thrown or, more aptly, bounced upward. I stumbled as gravity reasserted itself and almost missed the blazing eyes that cast a red pall on the gold-tone face inspecting us from the open doorway. By the time I blinked, a kindly grandmother had replaced the demonic visage.

  Maybe I am in hell.

  She waved Dorian in as if nothing had happened. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I just found out.”

  “Did he not—of course he wouldn’t.” She rushed to the back of her room, tossed a few bags to the side, and found the one with my clothes. "Do you have any others besides this?”

  "No, that's all my clothes from home.”

  She pulled out clothes from the back and laid them down on the table: a white coat, a pair of blue scrubs, a white undershirt, black boxers briefs, and a pair of partially chewed athletic socks. They were a mess, though only the white coat and socks were in true disrepair. The rest were heavily soiled by my work.

  She examined as if she was a master craftsman from a movie. At times, she put her face inches away from the fabric. Other times, she dusted off the dirt and lifted them to the light. She punctuated her work with random comments such as “such consistency,” “so elastic,” or “how did they get the colors without tainting the fabric?” There was a reverence in the way she handled my dirty clothes. Though, when she lifted my sock and boxers to her nose to smell them, it did diminish the effect.

  She finally looked up from her bench. “This is almost too late,” she admonished. “If it had been anyone else, they would have been useless.“

  I frowned, and then Dorian’s previous words echoed in my mind. How much of this was negotiation and how much of this was truth? I wasn’t a negotiator, and my experience in creative wording to get medications and imaging approved by insurance companies would probably be of little use here. But as they said, fake it until you make it.

  ***

  I stared down the demon disguised as a kindly grandmother. “Please. Almost means that they are still useful. And since this gear is related to my allotment, you can charge the Alfa for at least some of the cost of the enchantments?“

  She howled. “That is a stretch. They would never allow an enchantment like that. This is way out of an acceptable range. That is, of course, if it will even take a high-level enchantment.”

  “I am sure they will. This is organic.” If my time here had taught me anything, it was that wood or, as Dorian implied, organics had a special ability to channel Energy. All my stuff was cotton, even my undershirt. On my resident’s salary, the extra cost of athletic wear never seemed worth it. Boring white shirts worked fine. Only my boxer brief’s waistband and my socks should have synthetics.”

  “What do you know about fabrics? This is nothing like wool or spider silk.”

  I was out of my depth. She was right. I knew nothing about fabrics, and there probably were differences. But when in doubt, bluff. “It may be neither of those, but I know it will work. It’s clearly organic. It’s—“

  The hunger in her eyes stopped me long enough for my brain to catch up to my tongue. This shouldn’t be an argument. It was cotton, the most common fabric for clothing—back on Earth. Here, they may not have cotton or the means to produce thread in massive quantities. I wasn’t the only one bluffing.

  “You don’t recognize this fabric.”

  She didn’t school her face quickly enough, and Dorian let out a low whistle. “That has to be a first.”

  ”I can tell you what it is.” Thankfully, the labels made that easy, “but you will have to add that info to the tally.”

  She scowled but didn’t object. “Fine. Deal.”

  “Almost all of this is cotton.” The fabric name rolled off my lips without a hint of a translation failure, meaning it did exist here. Pointing to my socks and boxer briefs, “These will have some other fabrics to give elasticity, but they are a small component.”

  She dove back to studying the material. She pulled tension on my scrubs and undershirt and then brought them up to the light. “It can’t be. It is so thin and too uniform.”

  “It is.” I grabbed my scrub pants and found the label. “Cotton: 100%.” They couldn’t read it, but it served to drive home the point.

  “Where are you from?”

  Shit. In our haste, I had forgotten: the only way for two people to keep a secret is for one of them to be dead.

  Dorian came to my rescue. “Even if he could, you know he shouldn’t answer that.”

  She eyed me and Dorian for a long time before nodding slowly. “You can keep that a secret for now. I can see why that knowledge could be dangerous for those involved.“ She pulled the waistband of my boxer briefs. “This can’t be cotton.”

  “No. It isn’t.” I checked the tag. “It is spandex.”

  How did you explain synthetics to someone who didn’t understand plastics? You don’t.

  “I don’t know how it is made.” Not a lie, though, as soon as I even thought of chemical reactions, a picture of a page from an organic chemistry book containing a few key elements and reactions entered my mind. It was just one of many.

  [Eidetic Memory] again? Spandex seems like a stretch for the medicine, even if it came from an Orgo book.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she decided not to push further. She reached out a hand for the piece I took and spread it back out on the table. After pondering the selection, she offered, “How about this: I will offer to enchant your coat or both your blue shirt and pants for the rest of the pieces.” I snorted in disdain. “What? Without my help, this cloth is worthless. If you don’t want to take it, you can leave.”

  Dorian had described her as a master negotiator, but she was displaying less skill than a novice used-car salesman. Then, the answer to why became apparent.

  The room began to hum with Energy. The familiar tingling danced along my skin, and the hairs on my arms rose in response. An oh-so-subtle reminder of who had the power in this room.

  Why negotiate when you can intimidate?

  Except Dorian’s eyes were alight with amusement. It was so at odds with the situation unless….

  I played the one card he gave me. “That won’t work. I know you need this far more than I do. I may not understand why, but you can level from this. I’m guessing a level is worth a lot to you.”

  She snapped a vicious look at Dorian. “You told him? ”

  He couldn’t quite suppress his smile. “Of course. It is his stuff, and maybe if you hadn’t been so mean earlier this evening, I would’ve been more inclined not to give away a major bargaining chip.”

  Rage flashed across her face, and I would have sworn the temperature in the room increased by a few degrees. However, both disappeared in a flash. She swung back towards me and gave me a sweet smile. I’d seen that smile from my grandmother…when she lured me closer with a cookie and then pinched my cheeks.

  Enough was enough. I was a doctor, not a merchant. “Can we just skip the negotiation and find a mutually beneficial deal? It is getting late.”

  Dorian laughed. “It’s not very often that you get stuck with such a poor hand.”

  Kyria Rhaptis screwed up her face, and for a brief second, the room whined, not hummed.

  “Fine,” she sighed. The room returned to normal, and I let out a breath I was holding. After this, Dorian and I were going to have a long talk about using me to provoke authority figures. “That little brat took all the fun out of it.” She continued, each word seeming to pain her. “It looks like I’m not gonna get the bulk of this, but I am sure we can work something out.” She studied the clothing. “First thing first. Which of these articles of clothing have the most significance to you.”

  “Significance?”

  She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Dorian. “You told him how to undercut my negotiation, but you didn’t tell him about what he was negotiating for?”