Page 10

“WHAT DO YOU mean it reverses the plus four back to Kavya?” Ruby crushed the card in her hand and flung it onto the dining room table as Kavya groaned.

Lucas, his brown hair clipped short and neatly combed, reached out with practiced patience.

His dark glasses caught the overhead light as he smoothed the card against the table, his large nose wrinkling slightly at Ruby's outburst. “It has both the plus four sign and the reverse sign,” he said calmly, but with a playful edge.

“Just like it did the last two times you tried to play it on Jonah.”

Jonah, sitting across from her, sipped his beer, the corners of his mouth twitching as he failed to hide his delight in her confusion.

Empty beer cans and soda bottles crowded the edges of the table, and a half-empty bowl of popcorn sat precariously close to the card deck.

The faint smell of butter and salt mingled with the cheap lager Lucas swore was "an acquired taste. "

“Bull. Shit. That is not a real card.” Ruby threw her hands up, glaring at the offending piece of cardboard. “It’s fake. This is fake Uno, you cheaters.”

Lucas leaned back in his chair, adjusting his glasses. “It’s real, and you’re mad because you didn’t pay attention when I explained the rules.” His expression was as serene as ever, but the faintest smirk betrayed his amusement.

“No, no, no. I play Uno. On this thing.” She gestured toward her phone. “I’ve played with strangers for months now. There’s no way I missed an entire card.”

Jonah snorted. “You play Uno online? That’s kinda sad.”

“Sorry, some of us have hobbies outside of drinking piss beer and posing for a camera,” she bit out, scratching her nose with her middle finger, “this version is almost as stupid as the twister game you made us play.”

Her last words were pointed at Lucas, who had insisted the team needed a “bonding experience” and invited (threatened) them to his apartment for a game night.

Lucas's apartment was a mix of nerdy charm and practicality—Lego sets lined the bookshelves next to well-thumbed cookbooks and Marvel anthologies.

A throw blanket featuring a galaxy print hung over the back of his wheelchair, and a stack of board games teetered precariously in the corner.

“You won that game,” Lucas reminded.

Beer sloshed gently over the edge of Jonah’s mug as he set it back on the table. “Only because she cheated.”

“Proof?” Ruby asked, passing him a napkin, knowing full well he was telling the truth. When Lucas had spun the color picker, she had karate chopped the back of his knee. Kavya hadn’t ratted her out, snickering as Jonah collapsed to the floor.

Lucas threw the rest of his beer, half the can, back and nodded at Kavya. “Want another?”

She shook her head. “Picking up the wife from book club after this.”

“I’ll take one,” Ruby quipped and Jonah rolled his eyes.

“That wasn’t funny the first time, much less the sixth one.”

Ruby threw a card, ninja-star style, as his head. He ducked and it fluttered harmlessly against a bookshelf. “Kill joy.”

Lucas chuckled, unlocking his wheelchair and heading to the fridge.

Ruby counted her cards as she waited—only five remained, four of the same color and one plus six, another addition she was convinced was concocted for masochists.

Everyone else had at least seven cards, maybe more, if her calculations were correct.

When Lucas returned, he played a plus four. Jonah also played a plus four, grinned directly at Ruby, and called out “Uno.”

“Bullshit!” Ruby stood, thrusting her finger in his face. “You had like five cards.”

He leaned back, pushing the front two legs of his chair into the air. “Yeah, like four turns ago. Your turn, honey.”

She sat, thinking, plotting, planning his demise.

Glancing at Kavya, she willed her new co conspirator to understand her look.

Kavya caught on, nodding slightly. Next she turned to Lucas, who winked.

With a wide grin, she placed down her plus six.

Kavya also played a plus six, followed by Lucas’s plus ten.

“Your turn,” she mocked, leaning toward Jonah, “ honey. ”

Jonah sighed and she mentally prepared her victory speech. “Oh no, however will I win?” His sarcastic tone whipped through her confidence and her eyebrows furrowed. “Read it and weep losers.” He tossed his final card, a plus ten, onto the deck.

“Bull sh—”

“Cop out!”

“Lame.”

Ruby, Lucas, and Kavya called out, melding into one angry mob as Jonah smiled, taking it all in with his hands up. “It’s called strategy ladies and gentleman. Can’t help winning with a brain this big.”

“Given how large your head is, you probably have five brains in there,” Ruby grumbled. “I need a smoke.”

“You can use the bathroom vent, down the hall, to the right.” Lucas offered, gathering the cards and shuffling them.

“Thanks.” She grabbed her purse and trod down the hallway.

A series of old movie posters lined her walk, including a Japanese Star Wars poster and a yellow-edged Night of the Living Dead poster.

She remembered when the latter was released, ironically she told her friends she didn’t want to see it as zombies freaked her out.

Now she was one, a weird, hybrid version, but a zombie nonetheless.

Whoever said God, or whatever creator was out there, didn’t have a sense of humor, was obviously mistaken.

She shut the door to the bathroom, flipped on the fan, and flinched at the horrifying groan and grinding noise it let out.

The sound was deafening, each pass of metal shrieking through the small room and down Ruby’s spine.

With an annoyed gag, she tugged a pair of earbuds from her purse along with a metal lighter and a tin of rolled herbal cigarettes.

The headphones connected to her phone while she took a long inhale of the phlogiston releasing into the air. The green gas flitted between her lips and she exhaled in relief as warmth flooded through her body.

Plopping herself onto the toilet seat cover, she opened up a game on her phone and swapped colorful candies on a grid. The bright, peppy music drowned out the grating of the fan and she bobbed her head to the tune and sound effects of the level she’d been stuck on for a week.

Thud .

The ground shook beneath her and she rolled her eyes. Jonah had probably dropped his drink. Or maybe he had tripped, busting his ass in an embarrassing manner that Kavya caught on camera. A girl could dream .

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Damn it.” Her finger slid across the wrong square, thrown off by someone slamming into the walls, losing her the game. “Jonah, you asshole, how drunk are you?”

She stood and flicked the cigarette into the sink, turning on the water to extinguish it. As she bent to grab the soggy butt, her earbud slipped out, and the screeching ventilation system gave way to a chaotic medley of shouting voices. Ruby froze for a heartbeat, then bolted out of the bathroom.

A tornado might have torn through the apartment, and Ruby wouldn’t have questioned it.

Uno cards scattered across the hallway like fallen confetti.

The dining table had skidded halfway across the living room, now precariously balanced on the couch’s edge.

Beer bottles crunched like brittle bones beneath her sneakers.

Kavya stood in the kitchen, gripping a knife with white-knuckled desperation, her shouts lost in the chaos. Jonah, bleeding from a gash on his arm, lunged toward a blurred green figure.

Ruby’s skin prickled, heat rising beneath the surface as she traced the inhumanly fast frame through the living room.

Thermy.

The intruder, a tall woman with hair so pale it gleamed white, closed the gap to Kavya and snatched the knife from her grip.

She wore jeans under a green apron, a name tag reading “Greta” pinned to the top.

Jonah pivoted sharply, his face tightening with effort as he struggled to keep up with the woman’s movements.

Greta charged forward, catching Ruby by surprise.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ruby asked, dodging to the side as the intruder swiped at her with the knife.

“You’re a thermophile.” Greta swung again and Ruby caught the knife.

The cold steel bit her palm. She yanked it free, holding it by the blade.

Blood dripped onto Lucas's carpet as Greta straightened her spine, her head cocking to the side as she examined Ruby. “You don’t look like Ruby. They said you would be the strongest of us. You’re just a—”

Flipping the knife in her hand, Ruby kissed it across the woman’s throat, ending her speech with a gurgle. As Greta’s hands flung to her bleeding neck, Ruby kicked her flank. She fell to her knees.

“Just a what?” Ruby taunted. She leaned against the fridge and gestured for Kavya to make her way out of the kitchen. Kavya scurried out, passing Jonah as he made his way to Ruby’s side.

“Girl.” Greta coughed out, skin knitting back together.

“Honestly? I thought you were going to call me a slut or something. And that just wouldn’t have been—” Greta lunged before Ruby could finish her sentence.

Ruby rolled her eyes, hip checked Jonah to one side and stepped to the other.

Greta ate a mouthful of steel refrigerator, her movement too fast to halt, and slumped back to the ground.

“I wasn’t done with my mini lecture on feminism. It’s rude to interrupt.”

The fridge dented inward on the side. Greta’s nose was vaguely discernible within the pit. The contents rocked inside, objects shattering and thudding along the shelves.

“You couldn’t have stopped her before she wrecked my fridge?

” Lucas complained from the dining room.

His glasses were skewed, one side of the frames bent at an odd angle.

He muttered for a moment into the cellphone pressed against his cheek.

Setting the device back on his lap, he narrowed his eyes at Ruby.

“Where the hell were you when she broke my door down?”