Try Again Later

Three words. Try Again Later. That's what my screen said when I knelt down to heal Marcus and the spell went out like a match in wind. Three words in a font that was almost ours and wasn't, and I've been standing here since staring at the after-image of them, because those three words are not supposed to be able to exist.

Let me tell you what I do. I fix things. That's the whole of me, if you boil it down — the nurse at work, the one who packs the first-aid kit for the camping trip nobody else thinks to pack for, the one who says let me see it before you've even finished saying you're hurt. It is not a hobby. It is the load-bearing wall of who I am. If you took a core sample of me you'd find it all the way down: she fixes things.

Healing doesn't fail. I need you to understand that this isn't me being dramatic. In this system, healing is not a coin flip. You cast, it works, the way water is wet. There is no version where you kneel down over someone you love and the machine says try again later like a coffee shop app that can't process your card. Marcus was hurt — really hurt, the pain-that-shouldn't-happen kind — and I did the one thing I am for, and the world told me to try again later.

I cast it again. It worked that time. Then the next round it fizzled again. On, off, on, off, like something was deciding whether to let me help based on a rule I can't see and didn't agree to. And that's the part that's got its hand around my throat, quietly, where nobody can see it: I always thought the worst thing that could happen to me was failing to fix someone. I never once imagined not being allowed to.

I keep my hands busy when I'm scared. It's a tell — Kael pointed it out to me once, years ago, gently, the way he points things out, and I've never forgiven him for being right. When I'm frightened my hands start cleaning whatever's nearest, tidying, ordering, doing. Right now my hands are on my staff and they want to do and the doing keeps not-taking, and I don't have a plan for a version of me that can't do. I've never needed one.

The glow is the other thing. My hands are glowing — this silver light at the seams of them, brighter than it should be, and here's the part I haven't said out loud: I didn't cast it. It's just there. The regen aura isn't supposed to unlock for two more levels and I never triggered it and it's leaking out of me anyway, like the system decided I should have it and didn't think to ask. I should be glad. More power, when we clearly need it. Instead it makes my skin crawl, because power I didn't ask for and can't switch off isn't a gift. It's a leash you haven't found yet.

So here's my checklist, and it's a short one tonight, and I hate how short it is:

One. Marcus is stable, for now, no thanks to me.
Two. My hands won't stop glowing and I can't make them.
Three. My healing works when it feels like it and fails when it feels like it.
Four. There's one more thing out there in the dark, and if it hurts one of us the way it hurt Marcus, I am not certain — for the first time in my adult life I am not certain — that I can put it right.

I've spent my whole life being the one who's certain. Cross it off, verify it, move on, sleep at night. The list came up clean last time. This time the list is looking back at me, and half the boxes won't check, and I'm going to follow everyone down that tunnel anyway, because the alternative is standing here alone in the dark, and a healer who can't heal is still not going to leave her people to walk into it without her.

Try again later. I'm going to keep trying. That's the only word in it I get to keep.

If you want to understand what it does to a person to reach for the one thing they've never failed at and have it refuse them — start at the beginning, on the good side of the night.

This is the world of Overlayed Echoes — a near-future LitRPG about found family, the masks we wear for the people we love, and the weight of being the one who holds the story together. Progression fantasy with a beating heart and a knife behind its back.