Bethany answered the door as soon as Heather identified herself, and let the three of them in. “We’re doing a lot better today,” she said. “Seriously, though, I can’t thank you enough for just heating up our lunch yesterday, you don’t even know what a relief that was.”

  “I was glad to do it,” Akari said staunchly, and Heather nodded in agreement.

  They found Cassy sitting at the counter, rather than in bed. A familiar camp stove with “canned heat” can in its little fire box sat behind her, and to her right was what looked like a mostly complete scroll. In her hands, she held a piece of bamboo and her Decision Day knife; but when she saw Danielle, she dropped them both and hopped off the stool to give Danielle a hug.

  “You’re awake! I’m so happy you’re feeling better!” Cassy exclaimed. “Guess what, guess what? I’ve been getting so many Skills from the mana pox!”

  “Has it been going through your Careers?” Danielle asked, recalling vaguely that the pox mana was supposed to roll through the Career list like a mana burst did, but slower.

  “It has! Between a double youth Career and buying one at the Access Point, not to mention the one in the care packages, I have five if you can believe it; and as of yesterday evening, four of the five have dropped Skills for me this week!” Cassy said excitedly.

  “Wow, that’s great! What did you get? If you don’t mind saying,” Danielle asked.

  Cassy grinned. “Well, I got Purify Water on Sunday while we were waiting for our turn at the Dome, which I think confirms that we have the right plan for getting Sterilize Object on our own.”

  Danielle nodded. “You purified a lot of water for us on the two campouts,” she said. “No surprise that one was unlocked and ready to go.”

  “Exactly! Then Monday I got Identify Plant – obviously from Camper, because I was working with you guys on your training a little; and then Tuesday morning I woke up with Tune Pipe, which is making my pan pipes go so much faster Danielle, you don’t even know. That’s what I’m working on right now! Oh, but I also finished a scroll yesterday. Haha, I’m not having trouble spending mana this week! I mean, I might have made a token or two earlier when I wasn’t feeling well enough to work on stuff.” Cassy grinned, but Danielle realized that behind her excitement, she was still showing signs of exhaustion like everyone else seemed to be.

  “That’s great – you’ll finally be able to use that communication Skill, huh?” Danielle said out loud.

  “Exactly!” Cassy actually bounced on her heels with excitement. “And then yesterday I got Search Text, obviously from Cloistered Scholar, so all that’s left is Food Processing. If I understand the booklet right, I might not get that one – I’m feeling too well, and my extra production is dropping, but I still have a chance for a last-day enhancement!”

  “Oh, speaking of that, I have a bag for you,” Danielle said. “I, uh, don’t remember much of the last few days, but apparently I needed to use up mana and decided I should practice my enhancement Skills. It seems like a normal 15% boti bag. Are you still up for trading your unenhanced bag?”

  “Oh, right, Heather told me you’d done that – I emptied out my bag for the trade. Just a second,” Cassy said, and went for her footlocker.

  Bethany had retreated to her bed, where she’d been watching Cassy and Danielle with some amusement, but now her eyes widened with disbelief. “Are you serious?” she asked. “You’re for-real making boti bags? Like, by yourself?”

  “Using my own Skill, yeah,” Danielle said. “I’d be more cautious about just giving them away to my hunting party, but they’re only tier 1, it’s not a very big expansion. The catalog is selling tier 3 bags for such a big discount, I figure anyone who can afford to think about an enhanced bag right now will get that, and I’ll be out of luck until I hit tier 3 myself. Oh, except I complained to the Sending Authority while I was hanging around headquarters and the clinic Sunday night, and they’re going to sell me a kit to make some smaller bags – something that’ll fit a different niche, so I can practice up my Skill without just wasting materials. So that might be a thing in another month or two.”

  “Whoa. I thought the whole Saint thing was a big deal, but now you’re an enhancer? That’s actually useful,” Candice said.

  “Um. Thanks?” Danielle said uncertainly.

  “Speaking of useful, these three all got a Skill on Tuesday, so it’s not just us crazy purple tomato eaters with mana Traits that get stuff,” Cassy said, handing her Decision Day bag to Danielle. “I bet everyone will get at least one, maybe two.”

  “It would make sense,” Akari said. “We’ve all cleared out our active Career’s buildup with mana burst Skills once or twice in the last three weeks, but a lot of people haven’t been near a big enough burst for that, so they’re clearing out everything now.”

  “Ooh, that would make sense,” Cassy said. “If that’s the thing, then my having so many Careers is actually part of why I got so many Skills – once my active Career and my Dome Career had both gone, then my youth Careers were next up with whatever buildup I brought with me from Inside; so they both went pretty fast. Other people would get their Dome Career and their youth Career, and then they’d have to come back to the Dome Career, but without any buildup to make it go faster.”

  Danielle nodded. “And with a lower base mana generation, they’re making less pox mana too, if I understand right. Whether they even get that second Skill from their academic Career will depend on when it last dropped a Skill for them Inside – if they got a new Skill right at the end of the school year, they probably won’t.”

  “But if it had been a while and they were about due, it could go real fast once their active Career from the Dome goes!” Cassy said with a grin.

  “It’ll be interesting to hear what each of the guys has picked up,” Danielle said. “I’m a little afraid to ask in front of Zephyr, though. He’ll want to know how many I got, and Systemists always get so upset with me when I tell them I haven’t counted.”

  “You could just count them before you ask,” Adrian suggested practically.

  Danielle shook her head, perhaps a bit over-vigorously. “Nope,” she said, “don’t wanna know.”

  “More Skills than you have Careers?” Cassy asked.

  Danielle sighed. “Cassy, did the others tell you about how the Rangers asked me to do an emergency job for them, and they fed me that cheese from the catalog so I’d have enough mana to finish it? The cheese that provides mana and has a chance to drop a goat Skill on your System too?”

  “Yeah? Weird stuff if you ask me,” Adrian said, even though Danielle hadn’t exactly been talking to her.

  “I ate so much cheese while also having mana pox, that I got two goat Skills,” Danielle said. “And then the Healers said I’d ‘inflamed the mana’ of the disease, and I spent, um, three days apparently, having such high mana generation that I was hallucinating.”

  “She’s still hallucinating,” Heather muttered.

  “I don’t know, Heather, the arm thing might be real,” Akari reminded her.

  “Arm thing?” Cassy asked.

  “Oh yeah! Cassy, you have to use your mana sight on it!” Danielle said, holding out her arm with the watch on it.

  Cassy was unfortunately giving Heather an uncertain look. “You want me to look at the mana on your arm?” she asked, without actually looking.

  “On my watch,” Danielle corrected excitedly. “It’s so cool!”

  “I, uh – ” Cassy finally looked back at Danielle’s watch, and flicked her eyes for the Skill. “Oh, I do see – is that an enhancement? On your watch? What crystal is it even attached to?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I have no idea, but it feels very solid,” Danielle said. “Can you see the gear-ish, disk-ish structures? Or is that something I’m getting from the way Mana Sense translates things into, um, tactile feedback?”

  “No, I can see them,” Cassy said, taking Danielle’s hand and gently turning it over, then lifting to bend her elbow, trying to see it at different angles.

  “Oh stink, now she’s got Cassy doing it,” Heather said.

  Akari chuckled. “I think we’re going to have to give in and admit that one wasn’t a hallucination,” she said. “I’m not saying everything she blurted out or looked at that didn’t seem to be real was necessarily just a mana thing, but this one is almost certainly a mana thing.”

  “Do we know what it does?” Cassy asked.

  “It’s an alarm clock,” Heather said dryly.

  Danielle pointed out pieces of the structure to Cassy. “See this, how there are four of these smaller gears on top of the big one?”

  “Yeah,” Cassy agreed, “And more on the bottom side of it, too.”

  “I think the big one is attached to the part of the watch that keeps time; the four little ones are the alarm settings, and the ones on the bottom are the different chimes it can do. That’s how I can have three that chime with, um, chimes, and one that chimes with a gong,” Danielle explained. “Um, take that with a grain of salt, though, I might’ve done some of that figuring out while I was still out of it enough to think that ‘totally eradicate disease’ was a 3rd level Medic Skill.”

  Cassy and Heather both laughed at that, and Akari favored Danielle with an ironic grin. Adrian asked, “What’s so funny about that? It sounds like a medical Skill to me.”

  “Systemic Antibiotic might be able to ‘totally eradicate’ a disease from one person, but it’s a Healer Skill not a Medic Skill, and we know for a fact that it’s tier 10,” Danielle explained. “My loopy-days advancement plan for Class level 2 is, shall we say, less than perfectly realistic.”

  “Heh. I suppose the fact you can realize that now is part of how they knew you were safe to go out, huh?” Cassy asked.

  “Yeah, that was part of it,” Danielle said. “Also, finally noticing we have canned soup. I’ve been convinced the noodles were part of the hallucinations for a couple days, I think.”

  Even the ABCs could appreciate the humor of that one. Once everyone was done laughing, though, Heather said, “It’s really good to see you guys are doing better. Since it looks like Cassy’s well enough to handle your soup today, though, I guess we better move on. I’ve got a pool to empty on taking temperatures, and I think Danielle’s planning to spend some mana on it too, today.”

  “Ah, yeah, and once we’re done with that, I want to go visit the guys in building one,” Danielle said.

  “And it’d be nice if we still got back in time for our own lunch,” Akari added.

  Danielle checked her watch. “It’s almost eleven – we might want to do our own lunch and then visit the guys. Either way, though, Heather’s right. We should get moving.”

  “Good luck next door,” Candice said. “I saw those girls in line at the Dome, and I get the feeling they were already not doing so great even before they got sick.”

  The girls in 6002 refused to answer the door at first. One of them responded to the knocking only with a loud groan, and the one who finally came to crack open the door just mumbled something garbled about “not wanting any.” When Heather would have moved on, though, Danielle called in, “Would you like someone to wash your mugs and heat your soup for you?”

  That got a different response. The girl that let Danielle in was obviously leaning against the wall as she walked, almost to the point that Danielle could understand how it could be described as “walking on a slant,” as Sadie had described it when Danielle was doing it. The room stank, and Danielle could see that they hadn’t been keeping it clean even before that week; there were at least two full weeks of pemmican packaging wax just tossed on the floor under the counters, for the most obvious evidence. An untreated rabbit hide and some bones might have been casualties of the disease, but certainly weren’t helping the atmosphere. Danielle used Sterilize Object on the bundle of rabbit remains while Heather propped the door open to let in cleaner air.

  Someone had gotten as far as getting out the camp stove, at least. “Did these come in the crates?” Danielle asked.

  “Yeah, they didn’t make any assumptions when it came to making sure we had food,” Akari said.

  “Except assuming we had a tinder box in the room,” Heather objected from the door. “But I’ll admit, they gave us tinder boxes already, so I guess it’s not so much an assumption as something they figure they took care of earlier.”

  It took Danielle an embarrassingly long time to get the little stove lit. Then she went into the main bedroom area, where all four girls had their crates sitting open next to their beds. She collected a can of soup and a Decision Day canteen, and put Akari in charge of stirring the canned soup while she rinsed and sterilized the canteen and refilled it with water. When the girl objected that she didn’t like water because “it tastes bad,” Danielle talked her into putting in an Urgent-C tablet. Working back and forth between the bedroom area and the sink, she washed and sterilized all four mugs and all four canteens for the room, talked the four girls into taking their Urgent-C and a dose of Fever-Ace, and got warm soup into everyone’s hands.

  Heather didn’t do much in that room besides hold the door open, but considering how bad the festering rabbit bits had been stinking up the place, Danielle was inclined to see that as a significant service. Akari mostly stuck to stirring the soup while Danielle washed things. Besides the mugs and canteens, Danielle also washed a washcloth that they’d apparently been using for some kind of cleaning, but not properly washing out and drying afterward. She didn’t sterilize that one, but she did soap it thoroughly, then rinse it thoroughly, and finally use General Dehydrate to make sure it got properly dry. It smelled much better afterwards.

  Danielle did ask if they wanted their temperatures taken at the end, but when they again gave a strident if garbled no, she simply told them, “That’s OK, you don’t have to, I was just offering. Make sure you finish your soup by dinner time, and get down your water however you have to, you need it to get better. Have a restful day!”

  As they stepped out and closed the door, Akari said, “I get the idea that at least a couple of them are with the party that thinks the Rangers are out to get them.”

  “Is that what they were trying to say?” Danielle asked. “I wasn’t following it at all. I just hope they recover OK, though – it can’t be good for them, hiding in a room that stinks of rot and not drinking water because the smell makes everything taste bad.”

  “Do you think that was the problem?” Heather asked. “I have to admit, I was kind of assuming they were just too spoiled to drink plain water. I might just be biased, though – I mean, that was Argenta that first told you the water tasted bad.”

  “What, really? Argenta from school?” Danielle asked, startled. “I didn’t even recognize her. I’m not sure if it was the sickness and mumbling, or if it was the sweaty slept-in uniform. Argenta was always big on being fashionable whatever it took, and rot the dress code.”

  “Yeah, and she was a picky eater, too,” Heather said, leading the way around the end of the building. “So you can see why my first thought wasn’t ‘maybe she’s got a good reason’ when it was about the supposed flavor of water, you know?”

  “I can see it, yeah,” Danielle said. “They say smell is half of taste though, so it could have been a little bit of both in this case.”

  None of the rooms across the front of the ground floor were that bad. Most people were taking their Fever-Ace if they felt feverish at all, and most rooms had someone who felt well enough or determined enough to run the camp stove for their roommates. Danielle kept to the background where possible, letting Heather do the talking. The girls in 6001 complained about the Now Hear This messages at medicine time, but were otherwise polite and handling things well. Heather used another point of mana checking the highest temperature in room 6005, but it was under 101 again.

  In 6011, the Lemonade party girls were doing well, and Danielle ended up demonstrating her Numeric MedVet Thermometer version of the temperature Skill as much so they could see it as because they were really worried about temperature. Dana was at 99.1o, which Heather said was “practically normal.” They had all picked up a Skill on Tuesday, like Danielle’s own roommates, and the word from building seven was that Nathan had gotten two Skills and was cautiously doing his own rounds there, while Marc had taken a very rough turn on Monday evening and spent most of Tuesday delirious like Danielle, but was doing better as of “third medicine call” on Wednesday (which evidently meant Nathan had seen him a bit after 6pm). Lauren and Danielle agreed again to get their parties together for dinner and a good long talk as soon as things calmed down enough.

  6015 was another room where everyone was too tired to move on their own, so Heather, Danielle, and Akari handled a little light dishwashing, got everyone’s soup warmed, and passed out water. Danielle had to step out for a few minutes when her watch started chiming at noon; she couldn’t remember how to stop the mana-based alarm. When she finally figured out that the gesture to turn off the alarm was a simple tap on the glass over the watch face, she was just as glad there wasn’t anyone outside to see her embarrassment. She flicked her eyes at the System, opening her planner and initiating the Now Hear This message that read the correct script from it, then stepped back into the room while the System voice read the message to the town. She was just in time to see Heather taking the temperature of a particularly nervous girl, but it was just barely over 100, not even close to the 102o threshold to call the Ranger Healers like she wanted them to.

  As they stepped out of that room, Heather said, “Well, that’s it – I’m dry, and it’s lunch time. Let’s head for our own room.”

  “There are only two more to check in with,” Danielle objected. “I have plenty of mana left to do a couple of temperature checks if they need it.”

  “Let’s go ahead and check in with them,” Akari said. “It’s always nice to know people care if you live or die, and chances are they’ll be fine and it’ll be a quick stop.”

  Heather grumbled about “working with optimists” but allowed Danielle to knock on the door to 6021. The stop was as quick and simple as Akari had predicted; they had a girl who was doing better than the others (though she still looked exhausted; everyone in camp seemed to be exhausted). They found that girl already lighting the familiar little camp stove. Everyone already had canteens they were drinking from, soup cans were lined up on the counter, and the girl even recognized Danielle and thanked her for the medicine-time messages!

  Danielle was in a fairly good mood when she knocked on the door of 6025, but it evaporated when the girl who opened the door there asked them, “Can you tell if someone’s alive or dead? I – I’m not sure if Mandy’s still, um. Alive.”

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