Free DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) by Andrew Seiple Page A

group turned off the heater, and started hauling it back to the shack. But the mood was still good, the people seemed much happier than they had been an hour ago.
    Joan moved up next to me, grinning from ear-to-ear. “You fix our showers, you fix our power situation... we're lucky to have you, hun.”
    I shrugged. “You gave Dire hospitality. It's really enlightened self-interest, she sleeps here too.”
    “Maybe so, but we still owe you one.” She embraced me, before I could react. Blinking, my arms stuck awkwardly out, I folded them around her back and tried to ignore the smell of the woman.
    I relaxed into her embrace. It felt good. I hugged her back, patted her shoulder awkwardly.
    She let go, smiled. “You remind me of my sister.”
    “That's good, Dire hopes?”
    “Oh yeah. Only one who stood by me after... well, after some bad times.” Her smile faded, and she stared off into the darkness. “Haven't seen her in years. She calls now and again, but I... ah, you don't need to worry about any of that.”
    “If you say so,” I said.
    “Here. Minna and I will take care of the dishwashing, don't worry about it. That's something nice we can do for you.”
    “All right.” I watched her go, and as I turned my head back to the fire, I caught Martin staring at me from across it, his eyes white, with the rest of his dark face lost in the shadows. He looked worried.
    I raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head, but I felt his eyes on me throughout the hour that followed, as the stars rose beautiful and beyond number without the city lights to hide them. As time passed more and more people headed in to shelter, and Roy pushed Sparky into the sickbay, after confirming with me that the siphon was safe to leave on him overnight.
    As the camp grew quiet, the noise from the city grew. Gunshots, distant screams, and once an explosion that sent a plume of fire into the sky from the towering buildings downtown. Worse than it had been last night, and I frowned as I listened to the sounds of a city driven to chaos. Why? It made no sense.
    “You got a weird look on you,” said Martin. I looked up, to find him moving closer, scooting around the fire to take the lawn chair that Minna usually occupied. He settled about ten feet away, moving slowly the whole time. I noticed that we were alone out in the flickering light of the fire.
    I gestured toward the tall buildings to the southwest, and the smaller, older structures of the Brownstones neighborhood north of it. “Trying to figure it out. This is the second night, and it's no worse than the first. One would think the disruption would be less, not more, as people come to terms with it.”
    He shook his head. “Ain't how it works,” he said. “Kind of the opposite.”
    “How so?”
    “First night everything's dark, power's off, maybe some places have water maybe some don't, but it's like oh, we've been through this before. Just gotta wait for the authorities to fix shit. Then it'll be fine.”
    “But they didn't,” I said.
    “Naw, they didn't. Can't, maybe. This why-two-kay thing people was afraid of looks like it came true, so maybe they won't fix it for a while. Maybe months. Maybe years... Probably not gonna be that bad, but some people gonna think that.”
    “Why Two Kay?” I asked. “Second time Dire's heard that term. Or something like it.”
    “It's  Y-2-K, stands for year two thousand. It's like a flaw that was built into old computers. Ones that are too important and too limited to change. Folks said that when January first came, the computers would shut down, and everything they ran would crash until the computers were replaced.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “Pretty sure that's not how it works. At worst you'd have to adjust time-stamps, maybe do a few hard reboots.”
    “But here we are, and it started on midnight on January first, so who knows?” He shrugged. “You ask me maybe it's some supervillain pullin' shit. But no one asks me, so hey.”
    I looked at