The Chariot

Take The Reins, Seize Momentum, Guide Your Fate.

Choices Define Us.

The Path Begins.

“This is sooo nice,” Kevin said. “Pass me the soda.”

“Mmf.” Shadow made noises around the snack cake he had stuffed into his mouth and handed over the cold can.

Kevin snagged it, his hand immediately soaked by the condensation on the chill aluminum. The crack-pop of the opening tab was music to his ears after over a year of deprivation. He tipped it back, not caring that it dribbled a bit from the sides of his mouth. The flavor was crisp, the bubbles fizzy, and the sugar— “God I missed this.”

The pair of them were sat atop a flat roof in the early afternoon. It was a hot day for late May, and the twins were skipping classes. When Kevin had come through his door he’d walked right into his old high school hallway, just outside Mrs. Merriman’s class. No one was in the halls and the faint murmur of voices told him everyone was already busy learning—or at least pretending to. It had been weird to say the least, showing up in the building he hadn’t seen in over a year. Weirder still, he’d found Shadow just around the corner, idly poking around in his old locker.

“I missed it too.” Shadow swallowed the snack cake and fished out another from its crinkly wrapper. “Is that why we’re both here? I thought these Paths were individualized or something.”

“I just really hope it’s not a twin thing.”

Shadow laughed. “It’s always a twin thing.”

All their life they’d had to put up with comments and assumptions. “Do you have a special language?” was the most heinous one, but also “do you feel when the other twin is in trouble?” was a recurring idiocy they’d heard from friends and adults. Just a mess of made up baloney they’d never experienced being parroted back at them by people who’d watched too much TV. Kevin hated it so much, though being forced to dress up in matching outfits well through middle school was a close second. Being identical twins was fun for pranks and having a built-in friend—when they didn’t hate each other—but other than that it was a solid pain in the ass.

Kevin ate another handful of chips and chugged his soda. It burned, too carbonated to go down smooth, but he enjoyed it anyway. Drinking was another experience that was unexpectedly weird now that they were Human again. He’d just gotten used to having a snout, and now things got all rearranged on him. As it was, he wasn’t too thrilled being back in his old Body. Shadow was psyched to be tall again, but he’d muttered more than a few times about how awkward moving felt.

They’d quickly left the hallways of the third floor and climbed up to the roof, a spot where the brothers had often frequented when skipping classes. It had a number of amenities: a ladder for easy access, being taller than all the other roofs as thus unable to be spied on by roving teachers, and for the vending machines. It was located right by the access door to the lower roof, and, if you shook them just right, they’d drop all sorts of goodies out for free.

Hence: the feast.

Snack cakes, chips, pretzels, pastries, and two packs of gum were surrounded by six cans of soda and a large bottle of water. It had only been thirty minutes since they’d arrived and they’d already demolished a good portion of the spread. In the past, they had been pretty careful in how much they took—teachers had gotten suspicious when too much was missing from the vending machines—but that didn’t matter to Kevin now.

“I haven’t eaten this good in like a year!” Shadow moaned through the spicy puffs in his mouth. His pale blue shirt was streaked with orange and bits of cream from a pastry, but Kevin knew he was no better. “I don’t even care that we’re on the same Path.”

“But aren’t we supposed to…do something?”

Shadow shrugged. “Like what?”

“I dunno. It’s like…Felix gave us that rundown of his Path. Said he had to make a bunch of decisions and then get out quickly.”

“He also said a doorway would show up at some point.” Shadow looked around, arms outspread. “You see one? Stop worrying. We’ll figure it out.”

Kevin supposed his brother was right. Worrying about the Path seemed like an easy way to freak himself out. Still, though, there was a nagging sensation at the back of his head. As if he were forgetting something. “Did you get that System message?”

“About the Chariot?”

“Yeah.”

“‘Guide Your Fate. Choices Define Us.’ Pfft.” Shadow laughed and chucked a crumpled wrapper across the roof. It went right over the edge. “How obvious can you get? System’s been telling us that stuff since we got here.”

Metal rattled. Kevin closed his eyes. “Devin, did you lock the door behind you?”

“Uh, no. How else are we gonna get back in?”

“Idiot! We can just climb down!” Kevin stood up.

“We got you now, jerkwads!”

A voice, deep with a thread of squeak through it, rang out from the lower roof. Kevin flared his Perception out of habit and got a glimpse of what lay beyond the edge. Two security guards, both overweight and sweating were hanging by the ladder. One was bent low…investigating a piece of crumpled snack wrapper on the ground. Behind them was the owner of the voice—their nemesis, Bobby Ryan.

Kevin suddenly remembered why this day felt familiar. “Holy crap. Today is when we filled Bobby Ryan’s car with shaving cream.”

Shadow snorted. “Oh man! I forgot about that!”

The ladder across the roof was shaking now, as if something heavy were climbing up.

“There’s nowhere to run, idiots!” Bobby shouted.

With barely suppressed grins, the twins grabbed what they could and ran, edging along the thin strip of roof behind the HVAC unit, where the upper roof dropped forty feet down to the next level. The wall was studded with bricks and the pair of them had descended its face more than once in the past, but as they shimmied closer Kevin was struck by memory like a punch to the head.

“Shadow! Stop!”

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His brother was already bent low, readying himself to climb down. “What now?”

“This happened last time! We ended up on the roof after the car prank, we got caught, and tried to climb down—”

“And I fell.” Shadow swallowed. “I remember. Shit!”

His brother had fallen and in his effort to save him, Kevin had gone over as well. The pair had broken an arm and a leg between them, gotten expelled, and worse, had to watch Bobby Ryan’s gloating face the entire time it took for the ambulance to get there.

Shadow spat. “Jokes on Bobby! I’m not the same dork I was back then!”

He chucked his loot, the sodas spitting as they hit the roof, before leaping straight off the side of the building. Kevin’s stomach dropped, his blood turned to ice, but it lasted only a second before Shadow flipped in the air and landed gracefully on the lawn nearly sixty feet below.

Oh! I’m an idiot!

Kevin did the same—minus the showboating flip—and landed just as easily. The pair of them traded grins and without a glance back, they took off running.

By the time the guards got to the top of the ladder, the twins had vanished down the street.

“Hah! Did you see their faces?!” Kevin crowed, leaping off the asphalt a good twenty feet. He landed with a stumbling thud. "Bobby Ryan was pissed!"

Running through their small town was the most exhilarating ten minutes in Kevin’s life. It wasn’t battling to the death in some jungle, but using his stats and Skills in the real world was a heady experience. Racing down the empty midday streets with his brother, he felt like a superhero.

Shadow glanced back. “You think they even saw us?”

“Not a chance. I might be able to see my stats here, but you’re faster than me and I was bookin’ it.” Kevin grinned as he looked back over the low sprawl of their town. “If that’s what the Path means by making choices, then I’m all for it.”

“I mean, not breaking my leg is an improvement, but…” Shadow swallowed. “If that’s today, then—”

“We avoided that too,” Kevin said firmly. “Dad’ll be at work until ten tonight.”

They slowed down outside the Welker Hill Cemetary, where the edges of town stretched thin across the train tracks and abandoned factories. It was a short trip across the hill of gravestones to their house, but they took it slow. There was no rush.

Home was just how they’d left it.

Seeing their house was strange. It felt a lot like seeing their high school. It was familiar but out of place. They felt too big for it, or maybe it had always been that small. Kevin and Shadow walked through the overgrown lawn where one of their dad’s projects was laid out on cinder blocks. The sagging chassis, streaks of rust, and clinging vines around the hubcaps spoke to how long it had been since the man had actually touched the thing—Kevin didn’t remember when there wasn’t a beater half mutilated in the lawn.

The house wasn’t much better. The roof had moss clinging to it, the gutters were streaked with dirt, and the siding was a shade of gray that had once been white. The front door was scratched up by a dog they used to have, and pieces of it were dented, especially near the beat up lock and latch.

Kevin swallowed. “I don’t have a key.”

“Me either.”

“We could leave?”

“But what if the Path wants us here?”

“For what? This day normally ended at the hospital with dad flipping shit on us. Again.”

Shadow ignored him though and walked up to the door. He peered through the water-spotted window to the left of the entry and perked up. “Looks like our old way in is open.”

Kevin sighed and followed his brother around the corner of the house. Not having a key was normal for their whole lives; their dad thought they’d lose it, and they’d get robbed.

Who would want to steal from us?

The beating he’d gotten from that question had taught him two things: don’t ask dad anything, and how to break into his own house.

Around the corner was a window marked with a piece of duct tape. The tape stuck off the side, folded over itself and scrunched together as if it had been compressed many times. Shadow sidled up to it and, with a firm tug on the tape, lifted the window up. It sqeaked and scratched against the frame, but it opened easily enough for the pair of them to slip through.

Inside the house was worse than the outside, but at least it was tidy. Mostly. The living room just on the other side of the entryway was freshly vacuumed and picked up, but the recliner still had a couple empty beer bottles balanced precariously on the arms, and the TV remote had been tossed across the room. Pieces of it were scattered across the tile near the stairs.

“You search upstairs,” Shadow said. “I’ll look in the kitchen.”

“Fine.”

They split up, but the house wasn’t particularly big. It took them all of five minutes to reconvene in the living room in the milky light of afternoon.

“There’s nothing here. Not a door or anything.”

“Yeah I didn’t find anything either.” Shadow drummed his hand on the countertop that separated the living room from the eating nook next to the kitchen. “There’s gotta be something, right?”

“I dunno. I just don’t like being here.” Kevin rubbed his arms. “Feels…spooky. Like a monster movie.”

A heavy clack-clik startled both of them as the front door unlocked itself. “Boys? You home?”

The door opened with some difficulty—not creaking but definitely misaligned on its hinges. Still, the man who shouldered it open was familiar, and not at all what they expected.

“Uncle Jerry?” Kevin ran up to him, giving the older man a hug.

Jerry huffed a surprised breath as not one but both boys clamped onto him, both hugging tight. “Hey boys! Been a while! Is your dad home?”

Kevin and Shadow traded glances. “No.”

“Oh, well that’s alright. Been looking for him but he’s probably still at the shop, yeah?” Shadow shrugged. Jerry seemed worried for a minute but recovered. “I brought dinner.”

He lifted two paperbags, the bottoms of which were nearly transparent with spilled grease. Rooftop feast or no, Kevin’s mouth watered and Shadow just about bounced on his toes.

“Is that from Mr. Eddie’s?”

“You bet your ass it is.” Uncle Jerry laughed. “Here, take it. I brought enough for an army.”

The pair of them fell on the meal like ravenous beasts. The smell of fried rice and eggrolls were siren songs neither of them could deny, not to mention all the rest of it.

His Uncle, however, was quieter than usual. The man was boisterous as they came, the cheerful sun to their dad’s gloomy moon, but now he toyed with his chicken as if it had secrets to reveal.

Kevin lowered his chopsticks. “Uncle Jerry, why’d you come here?”

The last time they’d lived this day, their uncle had come to visit them in the hospital, but he’d left before their dad showed up. Worse, it had been the last time they’d ever seen the man.

He’d vanished soon after.

Uncle Jerry swallowed his mouthful of diet cola and grimaced. “I’ve…got a problem, one I was hoping your dad could help solve.”

There was only one reason their uncle ever came to their dad. He needed muscle for something.

Kevin glanced at his brother, but Shadow was already leaning forward. “We can help.”

“No!” Jerry held up his hands. “I can’t ask you kids to do that. It’s…not safe.”

Kevin bit his lip. He’d always had an inkling their uncle was into some…less than legal stuff. It was part of why he didn’t get along with their dad, a man who, for all his vices, was rigid as an ironing board. He’d help Jerry with bodyguarding or intimidating some idiot, but outright breaking the law was something their dad would never do.

“That’s ok.” Kevin lifted a pan from the sink and, with a grunt of effort, folded it in half. “We can handle it.”

Uncle Jerry looked between the two of them and smiled. “Kids, you may have just saved my life.”