Chapter 111: Apparently, It Takes a Whole Support Group to Fill Alex’s Shoes

Dash drove, Emily rode shotgun, and Magnus sat in the back beside Naomi, who had been waiting at the curb outside her dorm when they pulled up. Sofia had texted her the bare minimum the night before: Alex is okay. The situation between her and Magnus is complicated. Don’t contact her. I’ll explain soon.

Naomi asked nothing in the car, which from Naomi was louder than any question.

Harper opened the door before they could knock. She arched an eyebrow at the lack of Alex, but said nothing. Danny was at school since it was a Monday morning. The laptop was already set up on the coffee table, and within five minutes the grid had filled with faces from across their respective campuses and dorms.

Jade was on her own tile, apparently still at the beach house, sitting at the dining table with her laptop, and taking advantage of her extended work-from-home stay while her apartment building issues were resolved. Sofia and Jordan shared one cramped tile from a bench on campus, camera angled up from a bag on their knees with a slice of quad grass behind them. The rest of the group joined from their respective dorm rooms across different institutions, with the couples sharing screens: Maya and Chloe crowded together in Maya’s room; Camila and Ethan sharing a chair in Ethan’s engineering dorm; Rachel and Aaron side-by-side at Aaron’s desk; and Miguel and Carmen sitting together on Carmen’s bed. On separate individual tiles were the rest of the singles in their respective rooms: Valeria with a fresh clipboard resting on her desk, Nicole with her coffee mug, Tori, Jasmine, Katie, and Priya.

Valeria spoke first, tapping her pen against her clipboard. “Before anything else. Last night Sofia removed Alex from every group chat and told us not to contact her. Would someone like to explain?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sofia said from the bench, unmuting her mic briefly. “It’ll make sense in a second. Magnus?”

Every face turned toward him, both in the room and across the screen. Magnus hid his face in his hands for a moment before exhaling and retelling everyone about the new Special Monthly Quest. The fact he had done it last night for Sofia, Emily, and Dash didn’t make it any easier this time around. Reciting it all — Alex leveling up, the beam of light from his own hand, her collapsing in his arms, and the details of the quest conditions — as if the story had nothing to do with him was the only way he could have gotten through it without breaking down.

“That’s why she’s out of the chats,” Sofia added quietly when he finished. “The truth has to stay classified from her. A chat full of System talk is a failure condition waiting to happen.”

For a moment nobody said anything. Then everyone did.

“She what?” Maya’s voice cracked through the speakers. “I’m going to find that System and punch it.”

“Can we punch the System?” Ethan asked.

“No,” Aaron said.

“If it could be punched—” Jordan scoffed. “—I would’ve already done it.”

Chloe had both hands over her mouth. Carmen was shaking her head slowly. Tori swore very creatively.

Harper walked over and pulled Magnus into a hug. She didn’t say anything. She just held on, one hand cupped at the back of his head like she was used to doing for someone much smaller. Magnus stiffened in surprise, his hands hovering awkwardly for a second before settling against her back. He hadn’t realized how badly he needed someone to do that until his shoulders started shaking, and by then it was too late to pretend otherwise.

“It’s okay,” Harper murmured.

It wasn’t, of course. They both knew that. But she didn’t tell him everything would be fine or promise they’d find a way to fix it. She simply held him until he was ready to let go.

Around the room and across the screen, everyone gave him a minute. Naomi’s eyes were wet. Emily and Dash leaned against each other, probably imagining themselves in his position. When Harper finally let go, a dozen people were asking some version of the same question: Are you okay?

“I’m okay,” he said automatically, wiping his face with his sleeve. “…No. No, I’m not okay. But I’m still here, and I’ll live.”

“…Thanks, everyone,” he added after a moment.

Aaron cleared his throat. He sounded gentler than usual, but he was still Aaron. “I hate to be the one to ask. But how does the memory-blocking actually work? Because if we don’t understand the mechanism, we can’t plan around it.”

“We talked to her last night,” Sofia said from the bench. “Dash, Emily, and me. I’ll start.”

She told them what she’d seen in the Health Center. Alex remembered everything else about her life. Her classes, her family, her friends, the cheer squad, even the Student Council and the fact she’d agreed to join it.

“It’s like a Magnus-shaped hole,” Emily added. “Everything around it is intact. And the interesting part is what she didn’t lose. She remembers agreeing to join the Student Council, she remembers us talking about that decision at Dash’s place, but not what led to that discussion or what we were doing right before it happened. She remembers her reason for joining was mutual benefits and that it was something important to her—” She glanced at Magnus. “—but she can’t remember the details.”

“Which suggests the block targets memories of him,” Dash concluded, “not the consequences of them. She kept what she decided. She lost what she felt.”

“We tried to jog her memory,” Sofia went on. “Starting with something she did remember, then branching off in the direction of things that were connected to Magnus, and asking her to think about them. At first, she’d try. She’d frown and look like she was reaching for something she almost had—a connection that wasn’t there, or that was glitching. And then she’d just stop. She just… wouldn’t remember what she’d been trying to figure out, or even why she’d started thinking about it in the first place.”

“Like her brain just skips over it,” Emily said.

Magnus suddenly recalled the way Alex kept frowning at him earlier that morning. That memory now felt even more like a gut punch.

“I suspect it’s the same mechanism the System uses to keep law enforcement from investigating it,” Dash added, looking at the screen. “It doesn’t forbid the thought. It just makes the thought quietly stop going anywhere. It was one of the possibilities you two brought up.”

Both Jade and Aaron nodded.

Then Aaron exhaled, rubbing his forehead. “Then getting her to remember on her own is probably a long shot. Maybe even a pointless one. If the block self-corrects every time she gets close, we can’t exactly expect to talk her into remembering things she’s not supposed to.”

“Doesn’t hurt to keep trying, though,” Ethan said.

“No,” Aaron admitted, to everyone’s surprise. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Wait—what?” Ethan nearly choked on air. “You’re agreeing with me?”

“Shut up, Ethan!”

“Bro!”

“Shut up, you clown!”

“Somebody, mark the date,” Camila deadpanned. Then, she pushed Ethan’s face aside and leaned into the shared camera. “So, we’re here for Operation: Get Magnus and Alex Back Together, right?”

“Yes!” Maya practically shouted.

“Obviously.” Rachel smiled.

Several others cheered. Katie was nodding hard.

“Honestly, it’s not even gonna be that hard.” Priya snorted. “It’s Alex. She’s gonna fall for him all over again all on her own. And we’ll all laugh about this in a few weeks.”

Tori and Valeria seemed to agree with that prediction. Magnus wasn’t sure he shared their confidence — memories of the way Alex looked at him when breaking up with him last night and the way she stayed five feet away this morning flashed under his eyelids — but he appreciated everyone’s support.

Then, Naomi raised her hand. “W-what if… we try to recreate some of the significant moments in your relationship with Alex? Even if it doesn’t jog her memories, maybe it’ll make her feel the same way she felt again.” She paused, then added, “I… I do have my files.”

“Right,” Sofia said. “You have a whole shrine slash murder board and several encyclopedia-worth of files dedicated to them. You’re perfect for this, Naomi!”

Naomi blushed. “Does everyone already know about that?”

“Kinda,” Jade confirmed.

“It’s a little bit creepy,” Ethan said. “But no one’s judging. And I mean, it actually helps in this case—a respectable purpose too, so… go get ’em, girl!”

Naomi laughed nervously at that.

Magnus almost smiled. For the first time since last night, he could imagine a future in which things might not remain like this forever. He didn’t know whether Alex would remember him, or whether they could rebuild what they’d lost if she didn’t. But at least he wasn’t going to have to figure it out alone. Which made the next thing he had to tell them feel even worse. Still, there was no avoiding it.

He raised his hand. “There’s… another problem.”

All eyes were on him again. Magnus exhaled and said it before he lost his nerve. “I have another conquest target this week. Hannah Coburn.” He gestured at Emily and Dash. “She’s supposed to work with me and Alex this week, Student Council thing.”

He went over what had happened that morning, how he’d been introduced to Hannah as someone who would be helping with a problem, and how the System had promptly decided to make her his next Conquest target.

By the time he was finished, the room had gone quiet again. Nobody needed any extra explanation; they all understood it: this problem wouldn’t have been a problem at all any other week, but stacked on top of the Alex problem, it had just become another life-or-death conundrum on top of a moral dilemma for Magnus.

Harper was the one to break the silence. “Magnus, can I ask you something?”

When he nodded, she continued. “Are you more worried you won’t be able to complete the quest, or are you more worried that you wouldn’t want to do it even if you could?”

Magnus opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed his mouth again and stared down at his hands.

“Sorry,” he said finally. “I need some air.”

He stood up and walked over to the balcony, slipping outside and sliding the door shut behind him. Harper, Emily, Dash, and Naomi all stared at his back as he stood there, gripping the railing and looking down at the street below.

“So,” Harper said without looking away from Magnus, “Sofia, Naomi, and Dash and Emily, too. Can I ask a favor?”

Dash cleared his throat. “What do you need?”

“This Hannah Coburn, can you four arrange something between Magnus and her?”

“What do you mean?” Sofia asked. “Like, a sexual thing?”

“I mean, whatever Alex would have done—whatever he might need to complete the quest,” Harper clarified. “So, if it comes to that, yes.”

They all took a few minutes to consider it. None of them answered right away.

“It’s not impossible,” Emily said slowly. “Hannah’s already working with both of them this week. We could make sure of the proximity. And if it goes anywhere, we could be present. Participating, even, if he needs a buffer.” She hesitated. “But, strategic value aside, this doesn’t feel entirely right… Should we really do this behind his back?”

“That’s what I’m wondering, too,” Sofia admitted.

“Yes, do it,” Harper said without hesitation. “He can choose not to go through with it. I’m not asking you to force anything. And we’re not deciding for him he must do this. I just… want him to have the option.” Her voice softened. “Alex would want the same thing for him. If she still had her memories, she’d have set it up before he’d even finished panicking. She’d have already got a plan in place by now if it was any other week.”

“You’re not wrong,” Sofia agreed.

Emily and Dash exchanged a glance and nodded.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Dash said.

The balcony door slid open a few minutes later. Magnus came back in looking slightly less pale. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m okay now.”

“Well,” he added after a moment, “maybe not entirely, but I think I can talk without breaking down or something now.”

Naomi waited until Magnus had settled back into his chair before raising her hand. “Um, Magnus? I don’t want to pile more things onto your plate or anything, but about Professor Marquez. Alex and I had already made plans for this week, before—” She stopped, clearing her throat instead of finishing the thought. “Anyway, do you want to continue as planned? I mean, I’ll probably have to come up with something to tell Mia about what happened between you and Alex, but it shouldn’t affect her willingness to help with the whole situation either way.”

Magnus considered it. It felt strange, picking up a thread Alex had been holding and continuing on without her. But dropping the thread felt like another kind of loss, and it wasn’t as if the System would stop threatening his life and wait for him to deal with his issues.

“Yeah, sure,” he said eventually. “We should, yeah. Let me know what I need to do.”

Back on campus, as Sofia watched Alex come out to the quad after her Intro to Film Studies class finally ended, she suddenly remembered something. She glanced back at her phone and said, “Hey Magnus, have you checked Hannah’s quest for Hidden Objectives yet?”

“Oh. Right. I haven’t,” Magnus admitted. “I’ve been a little…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “…I’ll check right now!”

Several people reacted. Alex had briefed everyone on the function sometime last week, but given everything going on and the fact that Magnus himself didn’t understand much about the new function at the time — and then, when they did have more information, there were so many other more pressing concerns to address first — everyone was still a little hazy about it.

“Good thinking, Sofia!” Aaron said.

“Yes, good thinking, Sofia!” Harper agreed.

Magnus, meanwhile, had brought up the quest screen only he could see.

He focused on the Hidden Objective line, and it was exactly the same as with Emily’s quest last week, save for the target’s name.

“Yeah, there’s a Hidden Objective,” Magnus told everyone. “No idea what it is yet, though. Same as last week, I have to figure out what it is first.”

“That’s something at least,” Ethan said.

“What?” Magnus asked skeptically.

“You’re working with her anyway, right?” Ethan offered. “Try to figure out the Hidden Objective while you’re doing that, then if you can finish that, too, there’s a fifty-percent chance of no death penalty.”

Magnus considered it and slowly nodded.

Then he frowned again. “But what if it lands on the extra power again?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Harper cut in. “Focus on what you can do now, Magnus. Worst-case scenario, you got new dolls from completing Sofia’s quest last week, didn’t you?”

“Right. Yeah,” he replied. “I guess it’s better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself.”

“There you go!” Ethan clapped his hands together. “Now, what’s the pow—”

“Guys!” Sofia cut him off. “We may have another problem! It’s about Alex…”