The man in the doorway filled the space, a mountain of mud-stained wool and coiled muscle. Toris Dren’s eyes, the color of wet slate, swept over the chaos of the room: the splintered door frame, the lingering dust motes, and finally, the kids still smeared with the unfamiliar brown paste. His gaze snagged on Tazien, then flicked to the small, shiny silver foil scattered on the floorboards. He didn’t shout, didn’t rage. Instead, his voice was a low rumble, the kind that preceded a distant avalanche. “Explain.” Tazien felt a familiar, unwelcome tremor of fear, a ghost of the pushover she’d replaced. But it was quickly drowned by the volcanic fury that had become her default setting. Explain? Explain to *him*? The man who’d been gone for months, leaving her and the children to starve under Grizza’s tyranny? He had no right. She snatched one of the last remaining foil-wrapped bars – a sleek, metallic silver – and shoved it into Bramm’s hand, then another at Nika, who was still eyeing the floor for crumbs. “Explain what, Toris?” Tazien’s voice was sharp, a shard of glass. “Why your children aren’t wasting away from hunger? Or why my mother-in-law decided to declare war on a three-year-old over a spoonful of gruel?” Toris took a heavy step into the room, his boots crunching on splinters. The air grew thick, taut with accusation. “The village council convened an emergency session. This evening. To vote on your exile, wife. What ‘war’ could possibly warrant such a decree?” His eyes narrowed, catching sight of the metallic gleam of the empty wrappers. “And what in the blight-cursed Republic are those… scraps?” Tazien’s jaw tightened. Exile. Grizza worked fast. But the immediate, theatrical violence still worked. The portal timer had reset. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not without a fight. A glint of mischief, sharp and dangerous, sparked in her eyes. “Rations? No, husband. These are… *necessities*.” She reached into the large, battered canvas sack she’d tossed onto the table, rummaging past a small, cylindrical object. Her fingers closed around a stiff, crinkly bag. She pulled it out, holding it up. The plastic shimmered, a garish neon blue, with alien script printed in stark white. Inside, thin, undulating crisps of the same impossible blue winked under the dim light. Toris blinked. His cold gaze seemed utterly incapable of processing the object. “What… is that abomination?” “It’s a chip, Toris,” she said, her voice dripping with mock-sweetness. “A potato chip.” She plucked one of the iridescent blue slices from the bag, its edges strangely uniform, and practically shoved it into his face. “Here. Have a taste of the future. It’s certainly more palatable than Grizza’s gruel.” He recoiled slightly, the movement barely perceptible, but his expression was a masterpiece of utter confusion. His eyebrow twitched. He looked from the vivid blue chip to Tazien, then back again, as if she’d just handed him a live grenadier worm. But Tazien, fueled by a simmering resentment and a perverse desire to shatter his rigid composure, pressed it against his lips. “Go on, hero. Or are you afraid of a little potato?” His pride, or perhaps a deep-seated military discipline to assess unknown threats, won out. He opened his mouth, a fraction, and Tazien pushed the chip past his lips. His jaw worked once, twice. His gaze, usually impassive, narrowed and flared. A peculiar, floral scent, mixed with savory dust and citric tang, hit his tongue. He chewed slowly, his brow furrowed in a deep, analytical frown. The sound of the chip’s crunch was surprisingly loud in the small hovel. “It… tastes of… citrus and… salt?” he finally managed, his voice a low, bewildered growl. “And… something else. Unnatural.” He looked at the bag again, then at Tazien, bewildered and grim. The bafflement was almost comical. Tazien savored it, a small, dark triumph. Before Toris could launch into another interrogation, a soft rasp sounded at the window. Mila Krov, Tazien’s niece, a wisp of a girl barely old enough to see over the sill, squeezed through the grimy opening, landing with the agility of a starved field mouse. Her gaze darted from Toris to Tazien, then to the remnants of the outlandish blue chips. “Aunt Tazien! Uncle Toris!” Mila whispered, her voice a frantic flutter. “Grizza! She’s coming! With the commune watchmen! They’re searching for contraband! She said… she said she knew you had something ‘illegal’.” Mila’s gaze, despite her panic, fixed on the shimmering blue bag. Her stomach rumbled audibly. Tazien’s mind raced. Grizza. The watchmen. Contraband. Her blood ran hot, not cold. This was it. The next plot point. Time to ruin Grizza’s fated rise. “Mila, tell me everything. Now.” Mila wrung her hands. “She told the commune chief you were hoarding. That you had ‘foreign goods’ hidden away. She wants to find it, Aunt Tazien. She wants to prove you’re breaking the communal conformity laws. She said… she said if you’re exiled, she can claim Uncle Toris’s military pension. For the ‘family’.” Tazien felt a chill, not of fear, but of cold, calculating fury. Grizza wasn’t just trying to starve her; she was trying to steal Toris’s pension, a lifeline in this brutal world. That explained the urgency. “And you’re telling me this, Mila?” Mila’s eyes flickered to the strange blue bag again, then to Tazien’s canvas sack. Her loyalty, Tazien knew, was as fickle as the wind, dependent entirely on immediate, tangible benefits. Tazien reached into her bag. “What’s your price, spy?” Mila parted her lips, breathless. “Anything, Aunt Tazien. Anything to escape that hag.” Tazien pulled out a small, brightly colored cardboard box with a tiny, attached straw. It depicted a cartoonish, anthropomorphic orange. “This is a ‘juice box’. It’s sweet. And it’s all yours, if you tell me every dirty secret Grizza has. From now on.” Mila snatched the box, her fingers trembling. She tore at the straw, plunged it in, and sucked noisily. Her eyes rolled back in her head at the shocking burst of sugar. “She hides a sack of milled grain under the floorboards in her room, Aunt Tazien! She told the watchmen you hoard! She said she wants your house for herself once you’re gone!” Tazien nodded, a grim smile touching her lips. Excellent. She had a new informant, completely compromised by the future’s forbidden fruit. “Toris, help me.” Toris, still reeling from the blue chip and Mila’s frantic warning, stepped forward. “Help you with what, Tazien? The watch will be here any moment.” “Hide the evidence, of course.” Tazien gestured to the sack, the remaining snacks, the discarded foil. “Everything. Quickly.” She thought fast. Grizza wanted to frame her for hoarding. She couldn’t let her. But she could leave *other* evidence. Bait. For Toris. And for Grizza. She grabbed the canvas sack. The portal interface gave no sound, but as she thought of the secure space, she felt the familiar pull. She pushed the sack through the shimmering distortion that only she could see, into the pocket dimension of her antique shop. The scraps of foil vanished as well. The children, wide-eyed, watched her perform the impossible. [PLOT POINT RUINED: Grizza's Plan to Frame for Hoarding] [COUNTDOWN TIMER: + 01:00:00] [TOTAL: 25:00:00] The digital clock, hovering in her vision, pulsed a silent affirmation. Good. One down. Now for the bait. She reached back into the portal, her fingers brushing past the ancient Drevkan artifacts she’d yet to catalogue. She pulled out the tactical flashlight, its black casing sleek, its lens a pristine circle of glass. It wasn’t a snack. It wasn’t hoardable food. It was something else entirely. Something modern. Something that would raise questions. Something that would make Toris think. She placed it deliberately on the rough-hewn wooden table, directly under the flickering oil lamp. Its dark form stood out, an anachronism, a challenge. “Toris,” she said, her voice low and steady, “Grizza wants your pension. She wants you to be a widower so she can live off your service. Think about that.” Toris’s gaze landed on the flashlight. He picked it up, his thumb running over its textured grip. His military training, his logical mind, would be screaming questions. He looked at Tazien, then at Mila, who was still greedily sucking on her juice box. His expression hardened. A glint of the cold, stern officer returned to his eyes, but this time, it was directed outward, not at her. Heavy footsteps pounded down the dirt path outside. Shouts, gruff and authoritative, echoed from the village square. The village constables. They were here. “Hide, Mila,” Tazien hissed. Mila, startled, darted back through the window, disappearing into the twilight. The hovel door, already shattered, shuddered as a heavy boot kicked at the remaining splinters. The first constable, a burly man with a permanent scowl, shoved his way in, followed by Grizza, her face twisted in spiteful glee. Behind her, two more watchmen, their drab tunics indistinguishable from the first, fanned out, scanning the meager room for any sign of ill-gotten gains. Grizza’s gaze, sharp and predatory, immediately swept to the empty table, then the bare shelves. Her triumphant smirk faltered, replaced by a scowl of confusion. “Where is it?!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with fury. “Where’s the contraband?!” But her words died in her throat. Her eyes fell on her son, Toris Dren, standing rigidly by the table. His hand wasn’t on the strange black object anymore. Instead, he held his standard-issue military rifle, plucked from where it had rested against the wall. He had just finished racking a round into the chamber, the metallic *clack-chick* echoing through the suddenly silent hovel. He didn’t look at the watchmen. He looked at his mother, Grizza, his slate-grey eyes narrowed into lethal slits.

Neon Snacks and Night Raids