“OK, then, let me put up my privacy Skill again,” Danielle said, and when they all nodded, activated Bubble of Silence. “Gideon, back off, you’re inside the Skill boundary,” Danielle said.

  “Oh come on,” Gideon objected. “I already know, don’t I?”

  “You know the least possible details. These guys need a few more details,” Danielle said.

  Gideon sighed. “Were you always this paranoid?”

  “No, it started when people started trying to kill me,” Danielle said sharply.

  Ainoa chuckled. “You were a little paranoid before, too, though.”

  Danielle gave her a questioning look. “Do you really think so? I’m pretty sure you saw what happened when I let Vanessa catch up with me.”

  Ainoa gave a small shrug. “It looked to me like you thought people were out to get you more than they were, but I admit that Vanessa was out to get you. Horrible girl. She is one of the reasons I didn’t try to get into the Christian interest club at school. I just think she spent less time chasing you than you thought she did.”

  “You too?!” Gideon said, dismay written across his face.

  Ainoa seemed confused by how upset he was. “Me too, what?” she asked.

  “You were avoiding the whole CYC club because of Vanessa Vandere?”

  “Oh. Yes. She gossiped a lot, and I had a lot of trouble from gossips. My parents are Systemists, and they wanted me to have ‘the right kind of friends,’ and of course they required me to attend the temple of the elements on weekends. Can you imagine what kind of things she would have said about me? I had enough trouble with the Systemists saying I was unpious and underskilled, and whatever else the insult-of-the-week was.” Ainoa frowned into the distance.

  “Are you a Christian, or are you here for the after-meeting hangout?” Danielle asked.

  “Oh! I am Christian, for sure. Didn’t I ever mention that?” Ainoa asked, apparently startled.

  Danielle blushed a little. “I, uh, I’m not sure we ever actually talked enough for it to come up. We mostly just overlapped our hiding places sometimes.”

  “Well, that’s true. The Sending is a relief, when it comes to religion,” Ainoa said. “No one is forcing me to attend either meeting now! I really miss my Bible, though. There were times, in school, when it felt like the Bible was all I had, and then the Sending Authority took it away with all the other things, and put me in a room with girls I don’t trust. I was in a bad place until I heard you singing, that first Sunday.”

  “Well, I’m glad I was helpful to you then!” Danielle said, awkwardly but happily. “Seriously though, Skill-time’s burning. Out Gideon!”

  “Fine, I’m going,” Gideon said resignedly, and walked over to where Jordan was still talking to Angela and her roommates.

  “All right,” Danielle said when he was outside the bubble, “Here’s the short version. The Rangers and the Sending Authority have to use Sent for things related to our town or other Sent, maybe even some stuff that they just generally can’t do with their people and would get Insiders to do if no Sent could do it – not sure of the details. That’s relevant to me, because I have a rare Skill they’re paying me to use for them. That’s something I don’t want getting out, for fear some person or people in camp might decide they should control that Skill, or get rid of it.

  “However, I did some of that work yesterday. During the time I was working and then negotiating payment, I overheard some things that led me to believe there was a risk of an epidemic in camp – I don’t know what disease, but I also overheard one Sending Authority agent telling another that Sent camps usually have three epidemics their first year, because apparently there are Outside-specific diseases, and obviously none of us has had them yet.

  “With that in mind, I decided to tithe my payment by providing a Skill token that is of use to Healers to some Christian Healers,” Danielle said. “It’s a mana Skill that lets you recover your pool mana faster. There’s a limit to how much mana it’s safe to get from Skills like this, and/or from foods like that mana cheese in the catalog; the total you get from those two types of sources has to be less than three times your base mana generation. However, it’ll let you get some mana in a relatively short time if you need it because, say, you’re activating your best Skill for dealing with epidemics as many times a day as possible.

  “I want to give you this Skill now, because I think the first epidemic is happening now, and I’m convinced that either the System is going to be giving people disease-fighting Skills somehow, or else the SA is – otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to just handle the epidemic the way the Agent seemed to think we will. The deal is, I’ll give you the token, you quietly put it with your care package tokens. Next time you have a chance to go to an Access Point, you announce your intention to use the care package tokens – the Career at least – go along, slip in the token I give you, and after that you just mysteriously have a little more mana when you really need it. If your luck is extreme – and I won’t presume to say whether it’d be good or bad luck – you’ll use it enough to unlock actual mana Traits, and then you’ll always have a little more mana, and it’ll be easier to use other Skills without dropping your healing reserves to dangerously low levels. I’m given to understand that mana Skills and mana Traits each have a whole tree to unlock, and I don’t know of anyone who needs that access more than Healers!”

  Nathan had been keeping a pretty good poker face until Danielle started talking about unlocking the Skill Tree and Trait Tree. By the time she stopped talking, the other two Healers were looking worried and thoughtful, but Nathan looked excited.

  “I’m into that,” he told her. “Unlocking more mana Traits? Yes, sign me up. That could snowball hard after a few levels!”

  “I hope so,” Danielle said with a grin. “That was what first got me looking into Regen Burst for Healers – the idea of giving you a way to snowball your mana production to the point where you don’t have to be holding back on your Skills all the time for fear someone will need you and you won’t have the mana to handle it.” It was hard to get too excited through the exhaustion and headache, but watching the other two Healers catch on to what she was saying kind of made all yesterday’s efforts feel worthwhile.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “OK, you’ve convinced me I want the token, and it’s worth keeping your secret to get it,” Louis said. “That said, though, how sure are you about this ‘epidemic on the way’ thing?”

  “I’m sure that the Sending Authority is planning to quarantine Inside volunteers who made deliveries here yesterday, to make sure they aren’t bringing a disease Inside. I’m sure the reason for that quarantine is that they noticed enough symptoms around camp to be mildly concerned there was already disease in camp. I’m sure that the Sending Authority believes we will see three epidemics in camp within the next 15 months. I can report that as of yesterday, mid-afternoon, they were thinking it was just a precaution, and weren’t really convinced the first epidemic was now. However, I’m sure that at least two members of the town council were already sick enough to be walking funny last night as of the end of the council meeting. Everything beyond that is informed speculation, but what would you conclude from that set of information?”

  “Speaking as someone who took Weaken Disease up front, I am concluding that I should go to the Access Point at the first opportunity,” Ainoa said seriously.

  “I agree,” Danielle said, pulling a token out of her pocket and handing it to Ainoa. Then she offered one to Nathan, and finally to Louis.

  “I’ll have to wait a little, maybe,” Nathan said. “My party was just there, and I don’t have any disease handling Skills yet. Lauren escaped the council, too, so she won’t be motivated to go right back. Besides, we’re all really tired after two big trips and Saturday’s ‘excitement’ and all.”

  “Fair enough, but maybe remind her that Food Processing includes food preservation, and anyway, any Career is a mana channel in the event of a bad mana burst,” Danielle said.

  “How far is it?” Louis asked.

  Nathan grimaced. “Not that far, now that we know the way. I’d say it’s a little further north than the river is west. Starting from camp, that is. We got a tiny bit lost the first time, but on the way back, we chopped open the right path where a tree had fallen across it, so now the recently-chopped tree trunk kind of marks the right path.”

  “Is that why people were saying the trail was hard to find, even though the Rangers all said it was easy?” Ainoa asked.

  “Hah, no, that’s just because everyone was looking right along the Dome Road,” Danielle said. “Don’t spread that around where you don’t have to, though, it’s in the whole town’s best interests if the Wolf Pack doesn’t catch on. The trick is to keep walking north when the Rooms Road dead-ends. Go around the ruins that are in the way, and the path is there, due north of the road. It was cobblestone, though it’s obviously been neglected a while; I figure the last group of Sent to use this base paved it themselves.”

  Danielle’s Skill ended. “Oops, privacy Skill’s gone. Anyway, don’t panic the whole camp about the possible one-out-of-three I think is starting, please. Just get ready as best you can. Oh, and if you’re going to the Access Point, there’s a campsite there that may also be something the last Sending made, but remember that you’ll move faster if you aren’t carrying tents and junk. It can be a day trip, maybe just a long afternoon even, if you travel light and let your team’s Scout or someone with Speed Enhancement set the pace.”

  Louis laughed and Ainoa groaned. “Speed Enhancement is the best!” Louis said.

  “For the one who has it, maybe; for the rest of us, Speed Enhancement is the worst,” Ainoa said.

  Danielle chuckled. “Just wait until they start leveling it,” she said. “Re-learning what normal walking pace is after the level-up is a pain.” Ainoa made a comically horrified face, and they all laughed.

  Gideon came back over, then, with Jordan trailing him, and the group exchanged some more small talk (and a few poorly veiled attempts by Gideon to learn what token Danielle was handing out, which she was encouraged to see getting nowhere). Danielle was once again about ready to just sit down on the spot she was standing in when Cassy found them to tell the SHAD party members that the stew was ready.

  Danielle managed to walk to the spot where her hunting party was gathering around two pots of stew, and accept a mug of what turned out to be venison, squirrel, cherry tomato, and wild onion stew with just one biscuit of hard tack per pot to thicken it. She belatedly realized that she had never passed off the spice shakers to her roommates, but it turned out Ezra had brought his set, and the stew wasn’t half bad. The party used up the last of their salmonberries, too; most of them had eaten at least half of theirs on Saturday. Akari sat by Danielle and made sure she ate all of hers. “They’re probably full of vitamin C and other stuff you need if you’re sick,” she explained.

  Danielle wasn’t terribly hungry, but she was content to sit and slowly eat her way through a canteen full of salmonberries while conversation flowed around her. Tom, Jordan, and Sadie asked Cassy and Akari questions about the Bible reading, like “why would Jesus say he was going to make them fish for people” and “if Jesus didn’t want the guy he healed to talk about it, why tell him to go show off to the priests?” Some answers they knew; others they had to admit they didn’t know, or couldn’t remember very well. Later, a bunch of Healers got together to discuss the idea for a Healer’s org and collecting donations for clinic rooms; Danielle thought there were nine actual Healers, though a number of other friends and roommates were there talking, too. She had to participate a little in that conversation, letting them know she’d laid some groundwork for the rooms when she was talking to the Rangers and the Sending Authority. One person said, “Oh, is that why you were in the tent instead of just in the regular line?” Danielle uncomfortably admitted that that was part of it, and went back to her berries.

  In between the big topics and all around, smaller conversations were happening. At one point people behind her were discussing whether it was worth it to try to learn shield combat using a book and a Skill token (and a shield of questionable design). At one point people beside her were speculating on how news of the Sending was getting to the Inside (or if it really was). At one point she heard a group arguing about whether there were really new wildcat sightings, some saying the reports were credible and others saying they were too inconsistent with each other to be true. At one point she found herself trying to follow a complicated discussion about which set of Skills would be most ideal for a lone person going off to the hills to try to survive on their own for a while, going on in front of her, while behind her a loud and distracting girl argued (not to say fought) with two opponents on the subject of whether or not Danielle was indeed a saint.

  The longer the day went on, the closer Danielle was to dozing off; she certainly wasn’t tracking any conversation well enough to participate anymore. At some point, she had finally run out of berries and switched to constantly sipping at a water canteen to give herself an excuse not to be talking. Most of her party was starting to look tired, too – or was she projecting?

  She was considering the possibility of actually going to sleep when the messages started. “Now Hear This, a message to Danielle, um, of the Camp Constanza Town Council, from Zephyr. If you aren’t already on your way home, you should get moving. Brooke just collapsed, and the Rangers said it was time for the epidemic kits already. I don’t know what – ”

  The message ended abruptly, then started again: “Now Hear This, a message to Danielle from Zephyr, Sorry for the cut-off. There’s a word limit. I don’t know what the Rangers meant about epidemic kits, but they told Lithios to stay close. I say she just collapsed, but it was an hour ago. It took time to get here. Anyway, I’ll meet you back at camp as – ”

  “Hoo boy. Time to head home,” Danielle said, heaving herself to her feet.

  “Pft, says who, the voice of God again?” Heather joked.

  “Nope. Voice of Zephyr. He used his token so he could tell me stuff’s happening. Huh. Is he at the Access Point right now?” Danielle leaned on her staff a bit, checking her bag to make sure she had everything. “Activate Now Hear This: A message to Zephyr from Danielle. When did you even use your token? Are you at the Access Point now? Also, did the Rangers say why she collapsed, or why Lithios was supposed to stay in camp? Anyway, see you in a few hours, I hope. Bye. How do you end this? Oh, right. End Skill.”

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