The rest of my watch passed without comment, and I woke Jye for their turn. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was unconscious. That slumber was exhausting with dreams of people I loved dying without me being able to do anything. Again and again, I watched as my beloveds breathed their last breaths while I sat by their side, simply witnessing it, eyes blank and empty.

When Jye shook me awake, I felt more tired than I had before sleeping, but it looked like my stamina had regen’d to almost full. That was good at least. They seemed to restore faster with rest. It made sense. Axel had recovered faster when sleeping as well. Now we just needed to master actually falling asleep. It was something I was bad at even before all the Gates appeared.

Wren was already awake, and was chewing idly on some jerky.

“So. I guess I should explain,” she began as everyone gathered around.

She passed the packet to me, and I took a handful before giving it to Jye.

“That would be nice,” Axel oozed.

Rolling her eyes, she said, “By now you guys have guessed that I’m not just a Scourge.”

We all nodded. She had healed Axel, which definitely wasn’t a debuff.

“And that I’m also a Synergist.”

Again, we nodded. This much we all knew from the party information accessible via the status window. I’d mentioned it to Jye and Axel in passing whilst Wren was still unconscious. Axel hadn’t seemed surprised. Jye seemed delighted that there was another glitch character like them.

Wren cleared her throat. “All right, well. How to explain… I can swap between the two classes. I was originally a Synergist, but…” Her hazel eyes darkened.

“But?” I prompted, intrigued.

“But everything was so confusing when it started. I felt such a strong need to enter the CBD Gate. I didn’t even think about it. I crawled out of my bed, and went into it. There were a bunch of people in it already. Maybe seven of us?”

I guess I hadn’t been wrong when I thought she’d been through the gauntlet. However, this was far more complex than I’d been imagining. I thought maybe she’d lost her parents to the Gate, and then got separated. This was so much worse. Jye’s eyes were wide as they listened, but Axel had crossed his arms over his chest. There was a sceptic tone to his stance. Axel didn’t believe her? Why? What would she gain from lying to us?

Wren shivered. “It was like the arctic in that Dungeon, none of us were prepared. But it wasn’t like this one. The entrance was still there, the same Gate but inside the Dungeon. We could’ve all left. We could’ve all lived.”

“What do you mean?” Axel asked sharply.

Her eyes shot over to him, lips quivering. “No one wanted to leave except me. They…” She took a deep breath, “They demanded to know my class and abilities and threatened to hurt me. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Understanding of the situation was beginning to dawn on me.

“They made you join their party?”

She nodded softly, and her voice broke as she continued, “I told them everything I could see on my screen. We went further into the Dungeon. Eventually, we got into a fight with some sort of monster. It was big and furry, with sharp teeth. People got hurt. They screamed at me to help them. When I couldn’t heal them quick enough, they…”

It didn’t need to be said.

“Then what?” Jye asked, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“The remaining party members blamed me. Said I was the reason everyone had died. I did my best!” She was crying now, sobbing. Snot trickled out of her nose over her blubbering mouth.

Jye pulled her into a hug, letting her tears absorb into their shoulder.

In between gasps of air, she continued, “They left me there. In the middle of the Dungeon, as they went further in. They kicked me out of the party. I tried to track my way back to the Gate, but it was all white, the sky was white, the floor was white. My footsteps in the snow disappeared as I moved forward. And it was cold.”

She was shaking now in Jye’s embrace. “I couldn’t feel my fingers, and I knew that was bad. So I tried to use [Healing Hand] on myself. But I was low on mana. It drained me, like it did when I used it on Axel. I blacked out.”

All of us remained silent, waiting for her to finish.

“When I woke up, I was outside the Woolworths you found me in, and my class had switched to Scourge. I have a trait that appeared then. It’s called [Mercurial]. It lets me switch between my classes.”

That meant someone had to have helped her. But it sounded like her party had abandoned her. Maybe someone else had come across her, but hadn’t wanted to take on the responsibility of her proper, and yet still couldn’t leave a child to die. It wasn’t beyond the scope of reasonability. I mean, we had picked her up and she hadn’t even been in that dire of a circumstance. The possibility of other samaritans wasn’t that low. Though I guess leaving her alone without protection while she was still unconscious downgraded them to something closer to an anti-hero than a do-gooder. Still, I silently thanked them for helping her, whoever they were.

Axel pursed his lips in thought. “That’s why you wanted to know if we were going into the CBD Gate?”

“I didn’t want to go back in.”

He didn’t look convinced, but Axel was like that. Despite his social butterfly tendencies, he still believed the worst of everyone. Maybe it was because of them, actually. He knew a lot of different people and lived between rumour and gossip. But a child was not the same as the type of people he hung out with. Besides, what did a ten-year-old girl gain from lying to us about herself? Even if she wasn’t telling us the full truth, stepping up to take care of a kid is what any decent adult should do. Not what had happened…

“You could’ve told us,” Jye said, pulling back from her.

“You might’ve been just like them,” she said.

“You’re right.” The words I wish someone had told me when I was young suddenly found themselves pouring from my mouth. “You were right to distrust us.” The words would’ve protected Chrissie. “Sometimes adults can’t be trusted.” God, I wish someone had sat me down properly, and set me straight. “Sometimes adults are bad.”

I smiled at her, as kindly as I could. “But thank you for telling us now. And thank you for saving Axel. You didn’t have to.”

Axel cleared his throat. Not meeting her eyes, he said, “Yeah, thanks for that.”

She laughed through her tears. “You’re the first ones to thank me for using my abilities.”

“It won’t be the last time we’ll be thanking you either,” Axel replied.

He wasn’t wrong. A healer in our party was crazy beneficial, especially when we still didn’t have a tank to take on damage. I reflected on the current party composition. It was still incredibly unbalanced in regards to ranged positions. Axel did frontline damage and had some crowd control, Jye did backline damage, Wren could cast debuffs and buffs from a distance, and I could only barely use anyone else’s skills without levelling up.

“Your old party was shit and that’s not on you,” Jye said.

“Right. You did what you could. And I’m sorry I forced you into a situation where you had to reveal your second class,” I continued, the guilt of Axel’s injury still incredibly fresh in my mind.

“It just sped up the sharing,” Wren admitted. “I was going to wait until we got out of the Dungeon, and if nothing had happened like the CBD Dungeon, I was going to tell you all.”

I nodded. It was a smart plan, though incredibly optimistic. Sussing us out, making sure we could be trusted. Good instincts for such a young kid. Chrissie had always been too trusting because there had been no need for caution in the small hometown of Charleville. Stupid. I’d been so stupid.