Danielle felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “May I ask why not?” she asked, pretending to be calm, though she wanted to scream.

  “You gave that token to Nathan. He won’t talk, but I know it was you,” Gonzo said.

  “What? Token? What are we talking about?” Danielle asked, genuinely confused. She had given Nathan a Skill token, but had no idea why Gonzo seemed angry about it.

  “Let her in!” Nathan’s voice called from inside. “There’s some kind of Wolf fight going on out there!”

  “No! She did this to you!” Gonzo called over his shoulder.

  “Gonzo, I seriously don’t have time to play guess the rumor,” Danielle said. “Tell me what you’re accusing me of.”

  “You gave him that Skill that made him so sick!” Gonzo said hotly. “He was delirious!”

  “So was I, but that doesn’t come from a Skill,” Danielle said impatiently.

  “I might have overused a Skill you warned me about,” Nathan called past Gonzo.

  “What Skill? What warn- oh. Oh, no. Nathan, you didn’t use that while you were sick did you?!” Danielle said, suddenly realizing what they meant.

  “So you knew what it would do!” Gonzo accused.

  “I didn’t know about that when I warned him he had to be careful of how much mana that Skill produced!” Danielle said. “I found out later, when they were taking us all to the Dome – and I found out the very, very hard way, Gonzo. I was so out of it I can’t even remember Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday; my roommates say I was hallucinating bad. What I warned him about, was that the Skill produces mana in a certain category. At the time, I didn’t know that category of mana could interact with any diseases.”

  “The Ranger Healers warned all of us Sent Healers about it, Danielle, it’s not your fault,” Nathan called. “Gonzo, let her in, or I’m going to come knock you out and drag you out of that door so the rest of us can use it!”

  “She’s not alone!” Gonzo objected.

  “I have bodyguards, because I was doing temperature checks for floor 1, and someone down there set off Ranger Michael’s danger sense,” Danielle said. “I think they just killed that guy, can we please get off this walkway so I can call the Rangers?”

  “I said no, and I – heeeeey!” Gonzo shouted as someone grabbed him from behind. The roommate that had been giving him a hard time pulled him back into the sink area by the back of his collar, danced around his unbalanced flailing, and shoved him into the bathroom.

  “Welcome to our humble abode,” the roommate said, closing the door on Gonzo. “Any enemy of the Wolves is a friend of mine. Please, come inside!”

  Danielle came in and stepped to the side, gesturing for the other three to go further in. “Thank you,” she told the boy, not bothering to hide the intensity of her relief. “I need to radio the Rangers to get the body, I think. Unless you guys know more about the, uh, procedure for this than I do?”

  “Oh, yeah, we gotta keep the door open until you make contact,” the boy said. “I think the wards interfere with the radio signal. I’ll stay here and stand guard while you make the call.”

  “Thank you again,” Danielle said, and raised the radio to her mouth. “Here goes. Medic Falconer calling Ranger Dispatch.”

  “Ranger Dispatch responding. Do you need mana pox response? They haven’t closed down on you,” the radio came back.

  “Um, I’m afraid we’ve been closed down from another direction,” Danielle said. “We got attacked by a boy we presume to be another member of the Wolf Pack sys-org; the fight went deadly, and our attacker’s body is now on the ground level near building seven, the corner with the brazier. You know, where room zero would be if it was a room.”

  “Whoo. That is not where I was expecting a call from you to go,” the dispatcher said. “Any other injuries? Over.”

  “I think everyone in my group actually managed with shielding Skills and group coordination,” Danielle said. “He attacked four of us, all by himself! What was he thinking?!”

  “Not my place to speculate, Medic. Are you in a safe location? Over.”

  “Uh, we’re in Room 7214, where we have friends,” Danielle said. “My party’s a little bit in shock, we need some time to, you know, process, make sure we didn’t miss any cuts or bruises, maybe patch things up with our Healer friend’s angry friend – that’s unrelated – sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “You might be babbling a little. Dispatch hears you are taking refuge in 7214 to manage post-battle stress and check for injuries. Is the attacker confirmed dead or just down and not moving? Over.”

  “I have the mana burst message, over,” Danielle said.

  “Attacker is confirmed dead, body located near fire-circle corner of building seven, at ground level. In the walkway or out? Over,” the dispatcher asked.

  “I don’t know – he went over the railing, and I didn’t look down, myself,” Danielle said.

  “Out of the walkway. He landed on his sword, I think,” Akari said. “Not sure.”

  “My friend says he’s not in the walkway, over,” Danielle relayed to dispatch.

  “All right. Please remain in 7214 until one of our people comes to take your statements,” the dispatcher said. “Keep your radio – scratch that, you’re in a room. Go ahead and close the door. We’ll message you via Skills if we need further communication before they arrive. Dispatch over and out.”

  “I acknowledge instructions to remain in 7214 until Rangers arrive to take statements,” Danielle said. “Medic Falconer over and out.”

  The boy who had let her in closed the door. “Hi, I’m John Drillmaster. And yes, before you inevitably ask, that is my real original name. The ancestor who changed his name was back during the Spread, and he was really a drill master for one of the drill teams that worked on the first mana sanctuaries. He decided that was more important than whatever his name had been before, and his descendants have been getting heckled over it ever since – except in Rainier State, where the Drillmasters are still one of the big families.” He grinned to let her know he was teasing a little, not taking offense in advance.

  Danielle laughed in spite of herself. “Hi, John. I’m Medic Falconer, of medication time fame. Please don’t hate me, I’m officially done messaging the whole camp,” she replied, keeping her own tone light, and smiling back.

  “Oh-ho! No wonder you didn’t want to be in public – I’m sure you’ll be much safer after the whole camp has managed to get a full night’s sleep though,” he joked back.

  “You guys sound like you’re joking, but there probably are a bunch of sleep-deprived people that seriously want to hurt Medic Falconer,” the fourth roommate said.

  John rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind Ron, he’s one of those depressing realist types that can’t let you enjoy a nice day without reminding you that eventually it’s going to rain.” John leaned outward suddenly, and Danielle realized that he was still hanging on to the bathroom door, which jolted closed under his weight.

  “Let me out, John!” Gonzo called. “It’s my room too, blast you!”

  Danielle opened her mouth to try talking Gonzo down, when Akari suddenly called to her, “Danielle, are you planning to take this Identify Foreign Skill thing?”

  “What? I, uh, maybe?” Danielle said. “I’m actually getting kind of decent at identifying some of the more common Skills using Mana Sense, but that won’t always help with ones I haven’t encountered before, so it’s on my second-priority list, you know? Why do you ask?”

  “I’m leveling up,” Akari said. “I wasn’t expecting – I don’t know what to take for a Trait. I’m trying to decide if that Trait: Scouting Skills is likely to be worth it.”

  “Probably, yeah, but it might take a while. It’ll probably be useful for more than one reaction Skill, you know? Plus, you don’t have Mana Sense, so Identify Foreign Skill would be a good tool for you.” Danielle hesitated. “Are you OK? Got any pain or anything?”

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  “It didn’t feel that different from any other mana burst,” Akari said. “It was like the deer. Is it wrong to compare them like that? I still – I can’t – someone died. What am I even doing, worrying about System stuff when someone just died?”

  “You’re settling the mana in your personal System so you don’t get mana-sick and dizzy from it,” Danielle replied promptly. “Never put off level-up choices any more than strictly necessary.” She walked further in, to the kitchen, where Akari was sitting under the counter against the wall of the bathroom/sink area.

  “Ah. Right. OK.” Akari fell silent. “All my school Skills levelled.”

  “Why are you under the counter?” Danielle asked.

  “Needed to sit down, didn’t want to crowd the people who live here,” Akari said shortly.

  “Ah.” Danielle slid a stool aside and sat down opposite her, against the half-wall, under the other end of the U-shaped counter space. “So yeah, youth Skills and school Skills – I think most of us had our youth Skills maxed and ready to level before we even came to the Dome. I know mine levelled as soon as my base level was high enough. I’m guessing that’s pretty normal; probably even for Insiders. Did you get any extra Skills or anything?”

  “Speed Improvement levelled, even though it’s a new Trait from the Dome,” Akari said. “That and my youth Skills, and I got a new Skill from the level itself.”

  “Sounds about right. Remember to switch your absorption to your Class,” Danielle reminded her.

  “Oh, yeah. Wow, I have to think about leveling time now, like you,” Akari said. “That’s such a weird thought.”

  “Take it seriously,” Danielle said. “It’s sounding more and more like there’s going to be some kind of big fight that me and these two are going to have to get involved in, and I’m almost three weeks safer than you are if we were both hit by a big mana burst tomorrow, you know?”

  “What’s safer mean?” Gonzo demanded from the entryway.

  “They tell me the risk of mutation from rapid leveling isn’t a strict wait time with cutoff date kind of thing,” Danielle said. “It’s a risk that gradually goes down over time. Four weeks is where it goes past some threshold and meets some standard for ‘safe enough to deal with’ but it’s still safer to wait five weeks if you can, and safer yet to wait six weeks. I don’t know at what point it’d actually be zero risk. Maybe never, technically. I get the impression it’s one of those curves – like a bell curve, you know, where the further out you go the more like zero it gets, but technically it’s never truly zero.”

  “I hate those things,” Gonzo said, glowering at her over John’s shoulder.

  Danielle shrugged. “I hate being attacked by hostile lunatics. Wanna have a pity party and complain about the stuff we hate?”

  “Uh,” Gonzo began, but John elbowed him, hard. “This might be a good time for some perspective, instead,” Gonzo said through clenched teeth. “Ow, man.”

  “That was the fourth mana burst in the last two days,” Nathan said. “Two were confirmed deadly fights – yours makes three. We’re not sure about the last one; it happened in this room on our floor that wouldn’t answer the door for temp checks or anything. The Rangers figured out where the dead body was by Skills somehow – nobody seems to have seen that. No Sent, I mean. It got noisy after that, though; they threatened to take the other guys’ names off the door if they didn’t open up. They took the guy, the body I mean, and his footlocker out of the room. I don’t know why it surprised me that the footlockers can move, but it really surprised me.”

  “That’s weird,” Jordan said. “Tom’s roommates both died, but they didn’t take out any of the footlockers. He’s still got ‘em in the room, three big old footlockers he can’t even open.”

  “Yeah, Nathan and Gonzo have come up with some wild theories between them, but I think the Rangers just didn’t want to sort out his personal effects in the room when they were that unwelcome,” John said.

  “You taking up conspiracy theories to pass the time, Nathan?” Danielle asked.

  “It’s the fever,” Nathan said. “I get tired and dizzy and it starts to seem like it makes sense.”

  “Seen any guys in white uniforms?” Danielle asked.

  Nathan barked a single laugh. “I think I have, but Gonzo and Marc insist there’s no one there,” he said. “The ‘no one there’ seems to be able to manhandle me anyway, though. He won’t let me go down the stairs. Marc walked down the stairs just fine, but not me. The guy that definitely isn’t there just took me by the shoulders, turned me around, and gently but firmly shoved me back across the walkway.”

  “Oh, wow. I was joking, but that totally sounds like one of the same messengers that was hanging around outside my doorway while I was delirious,” Danielle said.

  “What, really?” Nathan sat up in bed. Danielle realized she could hear the rustling more distinctly, and the creak of the springs. “Uh, where are you?” Nathan asked.

  “I’m sitting under the counter,” Danielle said. “We really didn’t mean to invade your room and get you out of bed and stuff, so we’re staying out of the way.”

  “I’m staying out of the way on the outside of the counter,” Gideon said. He was almost exactly behind her, Danielle could hear. His voice was coming from low in the room – sitting on the floor with his back against the counter, probably. She closed her eyes and listened; Gonzo was shuffling and fidgeting behind John, who was standing quiet; the fourth roommate was on another bed – reading a book? He’d just flipped some piece of paper. A book or notebook page would make sense.

  “You’re not hiding from the two of us, right?” Jordan asked, anxiety as clear in his voice as his position was clear from its echoes.

  “No, no, I just decided to show under-the-counter solidarity with Akari,” Danielle said. “The guy came at us three times with a sword – four, even. He literally told us it was kill or be killed, after Gideon told him he should walk away before our patience wore out. And as far as throwing him over the railing, Gideon warned him. His blood is as much on his own head as any of yours. Uh, did you all get tagged?”

  “Deadly Defender,” Gideon said quietly. He sounded oddly both proud and yet also shamed.

  “Me too,” Jordan said. Danielle thought he was still sounded simply anxious about – what? Her response?

  “I didn’t get one,” Akari said, and that sounded like suppressed relief. “Just the level,” and now it was suppressed guilt.

  “Don’t feel bad about the level,” Danielle said. “Mana is mana. Once it left him, it was going to either become System for someone new or run wild. Your System was in a position to make more System out if it, that’s all. How about you guys, did you level? Any bonus Skills?”

  “I got a burst message for 500 mana, and that Body Shield Skill,” Jordan said. “I think it’s the same one Gideon got from the pox.”

  “I used that Skill tonight,” Gideon said. “He broke the shield with one hit – twice, even. It stopped that one hit completely cold each time, though. Sounded like he hit a suit of armor.”

  “Is that what his sword was clanging off of?” Danielle said. “I saw him hit your leg – I thought that one was going to be serious, but instead it was just noisy.”

  Gideon rustled. Jordan said, “Doesn’t help to nod at someone that can’t see you, man.”

  “Ah, right. Yes. That’s what was making that noise,” Gideon said. “A-anyway! I got 500 mana too, and that Hostility Sense Skill – same as Akari was using earlier, I think. I guess if we’re doing that ‘training each other’ thing tomorrow, she can teach me how to use it.”

  “Probably not, actually,” Akari said. “It kind of does nothing unless there’s someone hostile, and we shouldn’t have that available during training time. A better way is to scan your building with it.”

  “Or this building – never a shortage of hostiles here,” John said. “I think the entire building got that Skill from the pox, because boy do we all know we need it.”

  “Be fair,” the fourth roommate said. “Quite a few of us got it before that, from mana bursts, or the care package mana.”

  John awarded him a dry chuckle. “OK, Ron; the entire rest of the building, then, everyone who didn’t already have it.”

  “Some of us are saving that mana until we have enough information to do something intelligent with it,” Gonzo said snidely.

  “Easy for you to say, Gonzo, you already have a decent Class!” Ron complained.

  “Did you take a new Class at the beginning of the week?” Gideon asked.

  Ron rustled – another headshake? “I have one in mind, and I was hoping, but apparently I haven’t quite hit the thresholds to unlock it yet. I decided I needed to make sure I had threat detection locked in, so I can feel safe going out the door; now that I have that, I can work on the rest in relative safety while I save back up the mana I spent on Hostility Sense. And hey, the pox gave me one of the good prerequisite Skills I was working on, so I came out even as far as that goes. Heh, it also gave me the academic Skill I was working on back in school, which feels like a cruel irony, but with all those books we got in the green bags, maybe it’ll be useful after all.”

  “Huh. I guess that’s one thing I missed out on by going to the other building for the week,” Jordan said. “Hostility Sense, I mean.”

  “I don’t think staying would’ve helped you there,” Danielle said. “I’m pretty sure the messengers have been delivering messages to people’s Systems, and when it comes to God sending his messengers to tweak people’s Systems? Well, you literally asked for it.”

  Jordan laughed. Gideon sighed. Nathan got up and padded over to the counter in his sock-feet to look at Danielle. “Are you being serious?” he asked.

  Danielle nodded. “I’m pretty sure they’re messing with my pox Skills too. For one thing, the most recent message included instructions to use a Skill that I didn’t get until today. And used for the first time at the end of the fight.”

  “Is that what you were muttering at the end? Just a Skill activation?” Akari asked.

  “Well, um. The guy fell, and I didn’t think he was going to survive so I activated the Skill while you three were leaning over the railing talking about going down to check, and then the mana burst happened,” Danielle said. “So I was muttering about how it’s not always fun to be right.”

  “What Skill do you activate right before a mana burst?” John asked.

  Danielle shrugged uncomfortably, but with three of the boys from the room looming over her, she didn’t feel like she could get away with just not answering. “I’m regretting my choice to sit a little; you guys don’t know how much you look like you’re looming,” she said.

  “I’ll loom more if you don’t answer the question!” Gonzo said. Evidently he wasn’t past thinking of her as hostile to his friends.

  “It’s called Burst Recycling. It turns part of a mana burst into pool mana, apparently,” Danielle said. “It creeps me out, because I have no idea how I unlocked it or why I would need it.”

  “How is your mana right now?” Akari asked.

  “Well, uh. I mean, I have the mana from Burst Recycling,” Danielle said. “In terms of what’s immediately available.”

  “So, you were completely dry before the guy hit the ground?” Nathan said. “That does kind of seem like a situation where you’d need the Skill, honestly.”

  “Except he’s dead; the fight’s over. I mean, I guess if I was still fighting someone else, it’d be different,” Danielle admitted uncomfortably.

  “Or using your Medic Class Skills to treat battle injuries,” Akari said. “Or abusing your privacy Skill to help you sneak away from your opponent’s hostile allies, which we might have done if we didn’t have friends here to visit.”

  “I am prone to using Skills in ways that aren’t in their original descriptions,” Danielle admitted with a sigh. “Maybe it’ll be more useful than I think. Want to be a guinea pig for the weird-sounding Skill I just got from the mana burst?”

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