“I am honestly worried about the members of my team with unreliable roommates enduring the disease, I want to be fair if I’m going to give big gifts to team members, and I’m a little bit infuriated that someone thinks they can tell me not to take care of the people that I have a System-backed agreement to take care of,” Danielle said. “Also, I’m honestly worried about Heather’s safety if she ends up going between buildings a lot trying to take care of everyone, and helping out the most vulnerable party members makes it less likely she’ll have to. Oh, and I want the party to have plenty of Sterilize Object Skills, but none of the ones without good support around them are going to pick that until they have Boost Recovery, because why would they? Survival tools before work-saving tools. Which comes back to the fact that they’re in a tough spot, and I should be helping them. Morality and practicality are in agreement here. So that’s all of my reasons.”
Agent Bea blew out a breath, not quite a sigh, more of small determined sound. “All right. Far be it from me to tell a Skill Sharer she is required to be selfish. Miriam, may I borrow your radio?”
“I can make the call,” Ranger Miriam said.
“I’d rather talk to Ranger Chadrick myself, thank you,” Agent Bea said. She held out an imperious hand, and Ranger Miriam tried to put on professional poker-face as she handed it over. Danielle gave her credit for effort, even if she still looked annoyed and impatient.
Agent Bea fiddled with the settings, choosing a different channel (and something else; the Ranger radios had settings the Decision Day radios didn’t). “Sending Authority Station Manager Beatrice Apira calling Firmitatem Ranger Communications, urgent, (over and holding),” she said.
The response came almost immediately. “Firmitatem Ranger Coms, Ranger Chadrick responding to Station Manager Bea Apira. Got a message for me? Over.”
“SA Layer 1 Outstation requests two messages. First one is to – remind me the name of your hunting party’s org, please?” Agent Bea asked Danielle.
“Our org is called the SHAD Party,” Danielle said, “spelled ‘S-H-A-D’ if that matters. No E.”
“And everyone you need to contact is considered a member, per your charter, correct?”
“Correct,” Danielle said with a nod.
“Sorry for the aside, Ranger-comms; first message is to all members of System Organization ‘the SHAD Party’ (shade being an acronym spelled S-H-A-D). Message reads, All members of the SHAD Party are to report to the Ranger Headquarters Building, Quartermaster’s Counter, to discuss temporary room access alterations to facilitate medical recovery. Ask your driver for directions before leaving the Dome area, or if necessary, seek out a driver for transportation back to Headquarters. Message ends.”
“Ranger Comms confirms: Message to the SHAD Party from Sending Authority Layer 1 Outstation via Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 message relay. All members of the SHAD Party are to report to the Ranger Headquarters Building, Quartermaster’s Counter, to discuss temporary room access alterations to facilitate medical recovery. Ask your driver for directions before leaving the Dome area, or if necessary, seek out a driver for transportation back to Headquarters. Message ends clean at one mana, go ahead.”
“Message readback is clean,” Agent Bea said. “Second message is to all Firmitatem Rangers assigned to Layer One and further assigned to transport Firmitatem Exiles to Access Points today. Same requirement description, action item reads, Please give all necessary instruction and transportation to members of the SHAD Party to ensure efficient processing of meeting-dependent paperwork. Message ends.”
“Ranger Comms confirms: Message to all members of Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 Outpost currently assigned to transport Firmitatem Exiles to Access Points, from Sending Authority Layer 1 Outstation via Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 message relay. All members of the SHAD Party are to report to the Ranger Headquarters Building, Quartermaster’s Counter, to discuss temporary room access alterations to facilitate medical recovery. Please give all necessary instruction and transportation to members of the SHAD Party to ensure efficient processing of meeting-dependent paperwork. Message ends clean at one mana. You need me to repeat that to someone in Layer 1 HQ? Over.”
“Station Manager confirms message clean, and no thank you Chad, I’ll be headed there myself momentarily. I won’t beat your message, but I expect I’ll beat the Sendlings in question all the same. Agent Apira out.”
“No chance of getting an explanation then? This is one of the stranger messages you’ve ever handed me, Pollen Power. Over,” Ranger Chadrick said, rather less formally than before.
“Results of bargaining with the new Skill Sharer, but if I was willing to let that get around I wouldn’t have called you on a coded channel. Apira out, Chad.”
“Should I be worried?” he asked, apparently not taking a hint.
Agent Bea snorted. “What part of ‘out’ are you having trouble with? But no, nothing to worry about unless you plan to threaten her friends, it seems. Won’t it be nice having a Skill Sharer with a proper sense of loyalty? Over and please say out soon.”
“We already do have a couple of those, just not on top of the heap. World’ll be better for having one more, though, no lie. Anyway, Ranger Comms confirms messages ready to send. Over and out.”
“Apira out,” Agent Bea said. She handed the radio back to Agent Miriam. “Let’s get moving, everyone. Are you sure you don’t have any tokens to bring, Miss Falconer?”
Danielle checked that her token pouch was in her satchel – but of course it was, she’d used mana tokens from that pouch earlier today. “They’re already in my bag,” she said. “Is it going to be OK for me to use the ones I got yesterday, now that we know my light-headed moment was probably from mana pox and not taking Skills?”
“Oh, yes - It was from the combination of mana pox with taking Skills, but you should have several days of downtime to let new Skills settle after this, so I won’t object if you do take them,” Agent Bea replied. “You definitely did use the Career token yesterday, too, right?”
“I did. I hope it gives me something for deboning, or trimming out blood vessels, or something like that. Eventually I kind of want to be able to just activate Skills and turn a carcass into all its different categories, like Ranger Helm!” Danielle said.
“That’s nice, let’s talk about it on the way. Come along, all of you,” the agent said, and headed out the door.
The Now Hear This message came as they were filing out. Danielle glanced down the walkway toward Cassy’s room, and saw her stick her head out, possibly looking for someone to ask about transportation. “I think we confused Cassy,” she said, pointing. “Ranger Miriam, can you go tell her if she’s supposed to come now or wait?”
“Better yet, can you give her the spiel and ask what she wants?” Agent Bea asked. “She’s in the bottom of building six, her room will be among the last making the trip.”
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“Can do,” Ranger Miriam said, and jogged down to talk to Cassy. Danielle settled for giving her a thumbs up as she and her roommates followed Agent Bea around the corner and out of sight.
The box unloading process was done; now, Rangers guarded Sending Authority agents while the agents hauled the wooden boxes up the stairs, stacked them on hand carts, and rolled them around the balconies to rooms. The ones at building six were working the top floor, but the ones visible on building five were in the ground floor walkway. Building one, meanwhile, had the pairs escorting room groups back up to their rooms. Danielle assumed they were coming from busses or something on the road.
“Why is everyone under guard?” Sadie asked.
Agent Bea grimaced. “We know a lot of your peers will be bringing care package tokens, as you are; and we’re not sure there aren’t people in camp foolish or desperate enough to try to ambush people and steal tokens – especially if they expect the plain mana tokens to be in play. Thus, we are trying to keep everyone in their rooms when not actually at the Dome or in transit. We guard them on the way down so no one can take anything from them, and on the way up so they can’t take anything from anyone else.”
Ranger Miriam caught up with them as they passed between buildings 1 and 5. “That’s one request for Boost Recovery and one for Local Antihistamine,” she said.
Agent Bea sighed. “Is the Boost Recovery really necessary?” she asked.
“The girl has a mana Trait, and she has a logical plan, already in progress, for unlocking Sterilize Object on her own,” Ranger Miriam said with a shrug. “Her logic is, once she’s healthy, she can work on cleaning the normal, character-building way. Given evidence that she was, in fact, already working on another of the Skills we want to see spreading, I didn’t have much excuse to tell her no.”
“I suppose not. Well, let’s get moving,” Agent Bea said, climbing into the passenger side of another small truck.
“You girls go ahead and get in back,” Ranger Miriam said. “It’s configured for passengers right now, seatbelts and all.”
Akari led the way around to the back end and they climbed into the cargo area. Two benches were bolted down, one along each side, with safety belts attached under the benches and above on a sort of rail on each wall of the cargo section. Ranger Miriam showed them the trick to getting the straps untangled and properly fastened, then left to get in the cab, and moments later the vehicle was moving.
“Do you all know what you want?” Danielle asked.
“I’m not sure I want a handout,” Sadie said. “I think you’re right to offer it to everyone. Jordan and Cassy should definitely go for it, because of Mana Improvement, and I get what you were saying about Zephyr and Tom not having roommates who will help them. We have a good room, though, and I don’t need – well, any of that. I’m not a medical professional, I can unlock Sterilize Object on my own, and I don’t have risk factors.”
“What if I asked you to think about it as a chance to unlock the ability to self-perform on more medical care?” Danielle asked. “Or for your kids, someday. Or even when epidemic number two comes around – I really want to ask Cassy if she knows what “the speeds” are, it sounds almost as ominous as mana pox. If you unlock the Medic or Healer Skill trees, and things get bad later, you’ll have options to do something about it. Don’t get me wrong, though, if you want to train Sterilize Object the normal way, that’s fine – the methods are obvious, and we’ve got fires, and pots to boil stuff in. I’m going to collect the Skill so I can tokenize it if I need to, which means I can also do big stuff like bedding for us as soon as I’m better.”
“I’m going to take Sterilize Object and whichever of the other two is getting picked least,” Akari said. “Like Danielle was saying, I don’t see it as just a handout, I see it as a starting point to get to bigger and better things.
“I’m taking Detect Temperature like they asked me to, and probably Local Antihistamine, and I brought along mana from the care package to get Weaken Disease and Disinfect Wound,” Heather said. “I was thinking about trying to get Herbalist, if I’ve unlocked it – I have to be close! – but I don’t think those Skills can wait. Lucas was at the campout; he’s going to be sick soon too.” Heather was looking away from everyone, but Danielle could hear the frustration in her voice.
She didn’t like hearing it. Heather didn’t deserve to be caught between her own needs and everyone else’s that way. “Promise to take good care of me even when I’m hallucinating and totally out of it, probably saying I can see angels or whatever?” Danielle asked.
Heather gave a weak chuckle. “I promise. I really wish you hadn’t landed in the center of this whole religious thing with people yelling about you being a saint or whatever, but I’m not forgetting that you protect me from crazies and wildcats and – and Melanie, and it feels stupid to still include her, but she still scares me, and you talked to her for me, so yeah still that too. Not to mention how much you’ve been keeping me sane and, you know, working on food and Skills and all that instead of falling apart and having depression days and stuff. I mean, you all have,” she said, looking around the cargo compartment, “but you know.”
“Danielle especially,” Sadie said. “Using bossiness for good instead of evil.”
Everyone laughed at that, even Danielle. Heather even got a proper smile on her face! “Yeah, that,” she said.
Danielle smiled back and reached into her bag for her token pouch. She slid out another 300-mana token, and handed it to Heather. “Consider this advance payment for all the care I’m about to get, then,” she said, “and also for that trait bypassing Skill we both know you’re going to end up taking eventually because of me. Go ahead and take Herbalist if you have it available, buy Skills out of this.”
Heather gaped. “Danielle, I – I mean, I can’t, this is so much – “
“You know you’re going to earn it, though,” Danielle said. “I don’t think it’s wrong for me to contribute towards you getting Skills you’re going to use on me, especially not ones that you basically need specifically because I in particular am in your party. The Rangers gave you 40 mana just for showing up, before. I’m expecting in-house care for, what, three or four days? Between that and the Skills, I really do think it’s fair. Not that you aren’t going to get more use out of them than just me, but if it wasn’t for me, you could wait.”
“Are you going to take any new Skills, Danielle?” Akari asked. “I mean, I know you’re taking all four of the ones they’re handing out, but what are the ones the Sending Authority lady was asking you about?”
“Oh – right. There were five Skill tokens in my payment for all the tokens I made for them yesterday. Some of them will help me manage door access for Org-owned rooms, others are supposed to help me stay away from Vince and anyone who’s mad at me for existing with a miracle in my System. Oh, and there’s Ultrasight, because I got Infrasight on my own, and the way to get Ultrasight is just to use Infrasight a lot, which I’m going to do anyway but this way I can start using them together sooner. I have mana tokens with me too, though, so I should check if there’s any Medic Skills I should add – what.”
Danielle interrupted her own babbling because there was a message waiting light in her System Interface. “How is there a System message – did it come in while I was asleep? I keep clearing messages and still finding more messages.” She opened the message.
- ? Excess mana detected! Seeking additional mana reservoirs.
- ? Career skill Mana Veil (T2) added at level 1.
“I just got a Career Skill. Is this from the mana pox already? Ugh, it’s a stealth Skill. Which, I guess, I shouldn’t complain about, because assassins. Or anyway, because Vince.” Danielle sighed.
“Is it at least a cool stealth Skill?” Akari asked hopefully.
Danielle checked the skill description and shrugged. “It goes with my other stealth Skills to keep people from detecting me by the stealth Skill’s own mana, it looks like. I won’t say I don’t need it – it’ll keep someone from breaking my leg the way I broke Vince’s leg.”
“You did what??” Heather gasped.
“Uh, did I not - ? Maybe that was when I was talking to Jordan. I mean, Cassy was right there, it’s not like nobody knows,” Danielle blustered.
“Danielle. What happened,” Akari asked flatly.
“I know I told you I got attacked by an invisible guy who was probably Vince,” Danielle said.
Akari folded her arms and gave Danielle a Look. “And?”
“And it was an invisible guy, but he attacked me – Flash Shield went off. So I swung my staff low but hard at the general area the invisibility Skill was covering, and something went ‘crack.’ Then this morning, Jordan tells me that Vince has a broken leg and he got in another loud public fight with the Wolf Alpha about it, because I guess Close Wound doesn’t do broken bones? Anyway. Now he’s saying I’m an unkillable miracle worker who can see through stealth.”
“And exactly none of that is true, right?” Heather asked.
Danielle shrugged again. “I mean, I can kinda see through stealth, or at least, see the stealth itself. It’s not like he’s probably thinking, but yeah. It’s not a miracle thing, though, it’s a thing other people could easily do with the right Skills. That’s a problem if I need to be stealthy in a life or death situation, and it looks like Mana Veil is specifically the solution to that problem. It ‘veils’ my Skills as seen in mana-sensing Skills or Traits, unless they’re, uh, ‘stronger’ it says. Not sure what that means.”
There was a long silence then, and Danielle fidgeted nervously in her seat, wondering what the others were thinking.
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