EARTH ONLINE

Chapter 8 — One Cheat Code Short of a Protagonist

It was a knife. Cole knew it from the shape of it through his coat — a hard point pushing a small dimple into the wool.

The man behind him couldn't wait. "Wallet. Now. Or I cut you."

"Ease the knife back a little," Cole said, calm. "Let me stand up, and I'll give it to you."

"Quit stalling." The point withdrew an inch.

Cole rose, careful not to turn his head, and held the wallet back. It was snatched away in an instant. The man swore. "That's it? This your car? Keys in it?" The knife jabbed. "Don't you move, or I'll gut you."

The knife left his back. Cole heard the car door open, the engine turn over, test, and stop; the door slammed.

"My luggage is in the trunk," Cole said, raising his voice. "Can I grab it?"

A pause. "What is it with you. Your stuff's mine now. Get lost."

"It's getting colder out. I just want a coat. Cold like this can kill a man — one coat, that's all."

The man cursed, then opened the door, set the knife to Cole's back again, and growled, "Make it fast. One coat. Push me and you're dead."

Cole turned, finally, and got a look at him: a furtive, rat-eyed man, hair greasy, clothes blotched with grime. The instant he caught Cole studying him he flinched like a startled animal, hating the attention. "The hell you looking at. Get the coat."

A thief, Cole thought.

He went to the trunk and lifted it.

"The hell's that? A match?" the man said, puzzled.

Cole bent for the luggage and dragged his palm hard across the trunk's steel latch on the way — the soft skin at the center of his hand, sharp metal — and it left only the faintest pale line, no cut, almost no pain. His eyes settled. His left hand closed on the Giant Match, and he swung it behind him like a man swinging for the fences.

"What is that thing — you—augh!"

The match cracked across the thief's skull and blood sheeted down his face.

Even Cole hadn't expected the force. The thing weighed nothing in the hand, light as a stick of ordinary pine — but the sound of it landing was an iron bar on bone, and the man should have died on the spot. Instead he only staggered two steps back, lifted that bleeding face, and roared, "I'll kill you—"

He came in with the knife.

Cole sidestepped right and drove his left heel into the man's gut. The man yelped; the knife dropped and dragged down Cole's shin, slicing his trouser leg open — and skating across the skin beneath with a sound like a blade on flooring, leaving only a scratch no deeper than a fingernail's.

The man clutched his stomach and charged again.

Cole brought the match up to meet him. Edge met pine — crack —

The knife snapped in two.

Cole blinked. The thief blinked.

Cole recovered first and swung the match down at the man's head. He was too close to dodge it — and then, out of nowhere, a torrent of red hundred-dollar bills poured down out of the empty air, a landslide of cash that no one could have counted, banking up into a wall between the match and the man, cushioning the blow so that it only knocked him sprawling.

"Don't kill me — don't kill me—"

Cole stopped, match raised, and crouched to touch the money.

"Where'd you get this? Where did it come from?"

It was real. Every bill.

The thief eyed the giant match in terror and babbled. "I'm a thief. This morning everyone on the street just — vanished, so I went and lifted whatever I could. Hit a bank in the afternoon. Took every dollar I could carry—"

That wasn't what Cole wanted. "Where did you store it?"

The man raised his right wrist and showed him a pale blue-green tattoo. "Out of this. When I was grabbing the cash I found out I could — store it in the tattoo. Had it for years, it only holds money. When you nearly caved my head in just now I just — pulled it all out without thinking—"

Cole nodded slowly, and looked down at the mark on the man's wrist.

In a blink, a half-foot knife appeared out of the air and drove straight at Cole's eye.

"Die, you—"

The match whipped up. Without so much as a flinch Cole batted the blade out of the air, the red head of the match carving a clean arc that ended on the crown of the thief's skull. Something broke with a wet crunch. The man's eyes went wide, disbelieving, fixed on Cole and the stick of pine in his hand, and his heavy body toppled and hit the concrete with a thud.

Cole's face changed. He reached for the man's nose.

"…Dead."

He looked at the body for a while, something complicated in his eyes, then moved on. He lifted the right wrist and studied the tattoo. In the dark, from a distance, he'd missed it: the mark was a dollar sign. He lifted the left wrist too, and found a second tattoo — a knife.

He watched a moment, and then the tattoos vanished, and two more knives appeared on the ground; and when he looked back at the right wrist the dollar sign was gone, and a fresh little mountain of cash had heaped up beside the body.

Cole went to the car and brought back the book.

He turned to the second page. Sure enough, the lines rose out of the white.

> 【 Ability: One Cheat Code Short of a Protagonist 】

> 【 Owner: Quill Sandoval (Stowaway) 】

> 【 Type: Special 】

> 【 Function: Seal touched objects inside the body, manifested as tattoos 】

> 【 Level: 2 (can store two kinds of inanimate object) 】

> 【 Restriction: Same-type objects only; no living things 】

> 【 Note: Quill never dreamed that what stood between him and being the protagonist wasn't a cheat code — it was a single match. 】

All of it was in black. At the very bottom, one line in red:

> 【 Cole's User Manual: one-time use, single object type, non-replaceable. So, friend — decided what you'd like to store? 】

"Stowaway," Cole murmured.

He looked at the word a long while and couldn't make it give up its meaning, so he set it aside for now. The book did nothing but crack jokes — but it was his ability, and through it he understood the dead man clean enough: a thief who'd woken a power, who could seal lifeless objects inside his body and draw them out at will, any number of a kind. Cole didn't know what Level meant; if powers could be leveled, then Quill could currently hold two kinds of thing.

He'd chosen money. And a knife.

A small man with small eyes. In a world like this, cash was wastepaper — and the man had still hoarded it. Had he stored some second hidden blade instead of bills, he might have had a real chance. He'd been clever enough to lie about the tattoo, to keep his power secret, to buy himself the opening for that conjured knife — and if Cole had relaxed for one second, it might have worked.

Cole picked up the Giant Match and pressed it flat to his own wrist. A flash of red light, and the match was gone; a small red match-tattoo sat on his left wrist now. A concealed weapon with a brutal punch — the next Quill Sandoval would find him a harder mark.

He looked at the book. Quill's ability had changed:

> 【 Ability: One Cheat Code Short of a Protagonist (Used) 】

He turned back to the first page — his own ability. Same as before, no change. He didn't give up; he held the blank, expressionless, and after five minutes the lines crept out:

> 【 Note: By now Cole's worked it out — when he killed the man, he ate him clean and skipped the check. 】

Cole's eyes narrowed. His fingers tightened on the page until it trembled.

"So it's only by killing…"

A minute later, another line surfaced.

> 【 Note: But why on earth would I tell Cole he can take an ability without killing anyone? 】

A book was hurled, without mercy, into a pile of money.

Three minutes later, its owner retrieved it, cold-faced. He scooped a heap of bills over the thief's face and buried the man under the cash he'd loved, climbed into the car, and drove on, toward New York.