The days before the next scavenging mission were a haze of practicing.

  Beth could level her dimensional space almost every day without altering her official levelling schedule at all, but it wasn’t levelling she was training for. She was training precision. The second stage of dimensional space was the ability to store and remove discrete, non-living, objects. The first attempts had required Beth to pick an object up and view it from all sides before it succeeded. Then she had progressed to being able to mentally ‘tag’ an object without viewing the back side, even when she had misconceptions about the shape and colour of the unseen parts. More vital, it turned out, was a rock-solid certainty in the purpose of the object. If Beth thought too deeply about containers as secure storage, then she would fail to collect a bottle if she happened to notice it was missing the corresponding top.

  She trained, and trained, until she could collect an object barely seen, while only laying a single finger on it.

  Along the way, she passed a personal checkpoint she had forgotten to worry about. She officially had more points in skills other than accelerator than she would have had if she’d never bought the accelerator in the first place. The skill hadn’t stopped working. It hadn’t been a scam. The delay hadn’t been enough to kill her. The pause had been forever, but it had been a blink. She had slowed her growth for some mere four months but would have an advantage for the rest of her life. Not that she’d been worried, of course. It had just been a conspiracy theory to make people who didn’t have it feel better.

  And all that time, she was eating well. She needed it to sustain her effort, but she wasn’t going to lie to herself. She would have eaten anyway. She simply could not afford to give food away. Not without risking losing it all and leaving her family without. The allotment committee had made some very gruesome examples for some very minor crimes, banning people from the allotments for life for swapping their home grown produce for official rations. The committee was discussing making it against the regulations to take food away from the allotments at all. The only thing still preventing that was the number of allotment locations that didn’t have any food preparation facilities. They were thinking of ways to force the matter anyway.

  Beth and Sophie’s recipes changed and changed again to use whatever they had on hand. They now featured peapods, early carrots and a few of their very own early potatoes. It had been a great relief that they had been so successful. Beth had saved her own set for the following year and presented the tribute potatoes back to the committee. One down, two more to go to repay the faith that Theo had shown in her. As a bonus, that demonstration of faith was enough for her and Gwen to be permitted to place their names down for additional allotments in the future. They spent some idle lunch breaks planning their future orchard.

  Through all of it, Beth was consumed with the smuggling she was planning to do.

  The petty irritancies of life still managed to itch, like mosquito bites repeatedly forgotten until absent-mindedly scratched again. Her father’s complaints about the twins. Oakley’s complaints about the lack of a room. Sophie’s irritability about every chore Beth was not available to do. Gwen was sympathetic without proposing a solution. They both knew what the solution was already – Beth could always move into the school. They both knew why she wouldn’t – if she did, then she wouldn’t be allowed to take the food she was growing home.

  Gwen was herself walking a fine line on that matter. She didn’t take food back to George, but she did invite George for meals at the high school. The raised beds at George’s house were heavy on herbs and other strongly flavoured plants, and the more often George ate with Beth, the more he had to spare to take into his own school. It was a risk they had decided was worth it, but they were aware it was a risk, nonetheless.

  A week remaining, then days, then hours, then she was on the boat, heading for the next scavenging mission. In one last, forlorn hope of decency and common sense, she rechecked the list of items to collect, posted on the boat. She wasn’t surprised when it hadn’t been altered.

  Her team came to join her, all three scheduled at the same time for the run.

  “Why are they still asking us to collect medication, anyway?” asked Helen. “Even if it hasn’t expired, everyone uses healers.”

  “Not everyone,” said Seb. “Maybe they’re supplying the Pure Humanity people.”

  “Sure,” replied Helen. “They’d absolutely bother catering to them. Out of the pure kindness of their hearts.”

  Beth said, “I figure it’s because this way they can pretend they’re collecting alcohol for medical purposes.”

  “Don’t see why they’d bother to lie,” replied Seb. “They don’t with all the electronics they take.”

  “You mean the vital government equipment?” asked Helen.

  “Yeah, exactly. That.”

  They exchanged eyerolls and smiles but let the matter drop for the rest of the trip. The boat stopped at an unfamiliar jetty, but a very familiar system. It was fortunate that Beth could complete the process without conscious thought, because her conscious attention was dangerously consumed with the smuggling. Beth was so preoccupied with her crime plans that it took her some time to notice that Helen and Seb were acting shifty themselves.

  “What’s up?” she asked after the third meaningful glance along a small stretch of suburban street.

  “Selling zombie locations—it’s not a thing, anymore, right?” said Seb, sounding wistful. “I mean, that guy who was boasting about it got himself booted.”

  They’d found another infected. Although this time by accident, Beth was willing to bet.

  “It’s not a safe thing at the moment at least,” said Beth. “They might loosen up about it in a few months, though, like the ebb and flow of crackdowns.”

  “Or when they think that all the available zombies have already been discovered,” said Helen.

  “Because someone else will probably find it at some point,” said Seb. “Well, Helen said you think we’d only get a small fraction of the token value from selling it anyway.”

  From Seb’s tone, he was hinting to perhaps considering more. Beth wasn’t interested. Beth hadn’t signed on to kill infected. She knew she didn’t have any sort of moral high ground. There wasn’t any ethical difference between doing it herself or benefiting from the military doing it. She had even come to accept that the party line was also the truth – the infected were already dead. She just didn’t believe the additional danger to be worth it.

  “I think Helen was the one to point that out,” said Beth. “But yes. The killing of the infected is the difficult part. I think I even agree with them. It’s more danger than I’d be willing to face, I think, all things considered.”

  “Guns are still very highly regulated,” agreed Seb.

  That wasn’t quite what she had meant, but it was close enough.

  Beth asked, “I have to ask, is it … safe?”

  “Absolutely. A deeper than usual basement, we figure, and a very low-level sensor that managed to miss it. Believe me, if there was any chance of the zombies escaping, we would have reported it officially.”

  “Yes, sorry,” said Beth. “I do know. I just had to make sure.”

  From the corner of her eye, Beth saw movement. She swirled to face it, and the others turned as well in response. It might have been a bright summer’s day, but none of them had lost their paranoia. As they had just established, the military hadn’t been entirely thorough in clearing the infected.

  It wasn’t infected. It was worse. Slinking into view at the bottom of the street were feral dogs. First three, then five, then even more movements in and out of sight further out. Beth had the chance to get a good look at one as it stilled, head down. It was lean but it was not emaciated. These were animals that had successfully adjusted to living without humans. It was long past the point where an abandoned cat or dog would approach humans in the hopes of food and attention. The dogs that had survived this long had faced off against the infected and won.

  The fragile calm broke, and the barking started. The dogs pranced from side to side, ears pricked and tails wagging in excitement that had nothing to do with friendliness. The dogs weren’t hunting. Three adult humans weren’t anything they’d ever pick for a meal. Beth still felt like prey.

  “Good doggies,” said Beth.

  “Good doggies?” repeated Helen incredulously.

  “The posters say to talk to them firmly and calmly!”

  “And you thought that ‘good doggies’ was the most appropriate option in the circumstances?”

  A gust of wind brought the stench of urine and musk with it. The barking picked up in intensity and volume. The dogs hadn’t made a decision on what to do, not yet. But it was heading that way. They were a gang of teenage thugs, trying to egg each other on to be the first to attack.

  “It’ll be fine,” said Seb. “We just need to stay confident and back away. They don’t want to get into it either. Not really.”

  As if to intentionally contradict him, they immediately heard barking coming from the opposite side of the street. Beth glanced back over her shoulder. Two—no, three further dogs, summoned by the noise. One charged but scattered sideways before reaching them. With silent agreement, Beth slowly swivelled to face that group of three, while Seb and Helen faced the six or seven original dogs. From even further out, a deeper bark answered the growing cacophony. The sound echoed between the walls of the enclosing houses. The dogs they could see were all mid-sized, but that was the voice of a much bigger dog.

  Perhaps lent confidence by their approaching backup, the dog charged again, faster and closer. Beth cast pushback. She wished she could claim it had been an intentional and measured experiment. It had been simple trained reaction. She had drilled herself over and over again in that precise set of actions, so that when it came down to it, she wouldn’t have to think. When she had no time to think, it was what she did. Even though she knew it didn’t work on anything but infected.

  But impossibly, it did. The dog yelped as the invisible force sent it tumbling. Not as powerfully or easily as it would have worked against infected, but it was something. And unlike the infected, the dog did not instantly and mindlessly resume the attack. It retreated, tail tucked and lips curled. The barking from the others seemed to pause, before resuming with a more cautious tone.

  “My pushback worked on them,” said Beth. “Can you—”

  “We’ll have to back towards a building—"

  “Here!” interrupted Helen, reaching out.

  A second later a small wood lattice surrounded them. A second after that, Seb touched it. The dogs didn’t immediately flee, but they did move backwards more often than they moved forwards. The barking slowed in intensity and speed. Then, as invisibly as they’d appeared, they started disappearing. Like a wave fading back into the sea, the street emptied of dogs

  Helen muttered good doggies under her breath, and Beth resolutely ignored her. Beth put a hand on Helen’s structure, still charged with Seb’s repel, to support her weight. She changed her mind and lowered herself entirely to the ground. “Well, that worked.”

  Helen snorted, created some smaller crates, and nudged Beth until Beth moved up to sit on one.

  “That was certainly something,” agreed Helen.

  “When did you develop this?” Seb asked Helen, knocking on the wooden frame.

  Helen shrugged. “It’s just temporary. My boyfriend… I decided to see if I could level it up to the point it could be used as scaffolding, and I could pick up some extra work that way. I’d kind of given up on the skill when it turned out to be useless for zombies, but…”

  “Not so useless when combined with repel.”

  “No,” said Helen. “It turns out not. And when on earth did skills work on animals? Have you been holding out on us, Beth?”

  “No, I had no idea either. I wasn’t actually expecting it to work. I just didn’t see any harm in trying.”

  “Good thing you did,” said Seb.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Someone must have tried before us,” Helen protested.

  “Maybe it works on intent?” theorised Beth. “Maybe an angry enough human would also be affected.”

  “Huh,” said Seb. “Might be a bit tricky to test out.”

  “How long does the repel last, anyway?” asked Beth, scanning the street to see if there was any new movement.

  “Six and a half hours,” replied Seb. “We have all the time in the world.”

  “We have two hours,” corrected Helen. “Then the framework will collapse.”

  “We’d better start working, then,” said Beth. “Facing them once was more than enough for a day.”

  “Dogs usually just avoid us, don’t they?” asked Helen. “Warning posters aside, I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone being attacked.”

  “We’re probably invading their territory here,” said Beth. “They might be feeling defensive. They could have puppies somewhere.”

  “Or,” said Seb, “animals are just getting more aggressive the longer they’re exposed to zombies.”

  They all considered that rather grim possibility.

  “How about we start setting up repel every time we scavenge?” asked Helen.

  “An excellent idea,” said Seb.

  Beth frowned. “Why doesn’t the repel work if you cast it on a locket or something? Or does it, and all those anti-zombie charms actually do work after all?”

  “No, it stops working as soon as the structure moves. Bad news, good news, really. Bad news, I don’t have that convenient source of secondary income. Good news, I don’t have to worry about the military disappearing me.”

  Beth said, “You know, you could probably get decent payment from predator-proofing chicken coops.”

  “If it works against that kind of aggression,” said Seb. “And if I was happy to pop past every six hours.”

  “It’ll get longer,” said Beth. “Shall we?”

  Beth stood up and shook herself. The remaining adrenaline was dissipating nicely. Every time Beth went through this, it took less time to feel normal again. Some part of her felt disconnected. Even with the safety net of The Book, it felt like it should take her longer to get over nearly becoming brunch for a pack of feral dogs. The others also stood up, and Helen dismissed the framework. They walked to their chosen house and waited while Seb cast repel again. They quickly started stripping it of the items on the list. It didn’t take long at all to find a wardrobe with things not on the list. Beth’s grand smuggling plans slammed back into the forefront of her mind.

  I don’t have to do this, whispered a little voice. This isn’t my responsibility.

  Then, more insidiously, I don’t have to do this now. I can practice more so it’s less obvious. I can make a few runs with an empty space just to make sure it doesn’t get noticed. I can wait and see if the situation improves by itself.

  Beth considered those very sensible thoughts. She also considered Steve, the twin’s classmate who’d wanted a real job. Some farming family had offered to adopt him, for the low, low payment of working for that family, all day, every day, for years. Despite active encouragement from the government, the teachers had managed to talk him out of it. That time. The next time, they wouldn’t be able to. They might not even try, when staying behind was worse.

  Beth knew deep in her soul that if she chickened out, then she’d never have the courage to do it. The excuses were just excuses. She had practiced this. She could move clothing from a pile in a drawer by dipping her hand into it and concentrating on the feel of the fuzzy textiles. No one would notice. Even if they did, she didn’t really suspect that Helen or Seb would report her. She was already walking through the border with an unregistered dimensional space. The presence or absence of smuggled goods inside that space wouldn’t substantially change the punishment she would face if she was caught.

  She didn’t even need to search out any specialised or rare equipment. She just needed things normal to every house. T-shirts, pyjama sets, socks, underwear, sheets, pillowcases. For when winter came around again, duvets, blankets, mattress toppers, dressing gowns, fleeces. It wasn’t at all difficult to make a private sweep of the linen closet and spare bedroom wardrobes. Just the few houses they’d targeted was enough to fill her space to capacity.

  As she walked back to the boat, she stretched through her whole body, like she expected the weight to show somewhere, disturb her balance somehow. Nothing. No-one would know unless she was stupid enough to reveal herself with her own actions. She just had to act normal.

  Easier said than done. She kept second guessing herself. She didn’t want to be too nervous, but she didn’t want to be too confident either. Walking past that gauntlet had always worried her, a little. Even more since she’d heard about the healer. It was always possible that she’d collected some scratch she hadn’t noticed that would get her arrested for failure to report. Acting like she didn’t care now would not be ‘acting normal’.

  She distracted herself by concentrating on the conversation with Helen and Seb. She didn’t go out of her way to look at the officials on the pier, or to avoid looking at them. She walked, and talked, , and kept an eye on The Book. Step by step, until she could turn the corner and was no longer in sight. She could feel the relief flowing from her shoulders down her back like the first moments of a hot shower. She’d done it. She’d smuggled all sorts of useful things through, and she hadn’t been caught.

  Now what?

  That thought almost brought her to a halt.

  Now what?

  All that time and planning and worrying had been to get to this point, and she hadn’t the faintest clue what she was going to do with the goods now that she had them.

  She stumbled home and had a sleepless night. The next day, she was the one acting shifty. She almost said something to Gwen multiple times before Gwen finally lost her patience. Once they were back at the high-school, Gwen dragged her off to a private room.

  “Beth, luv. What’s wrong, then?”

  “I can’t,” said Beth miserably. “You’d be at risk for knowing.”

  Gwen went outside to check no-one was likely to interrupt and then led them to the far corner where they could speak without anyone overhearing. Beth checked The Book to see if it was updating, squinting against the glare. The bright evening sun streamed through the windows but left their corner in deep darkness, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

  “We’ve spoken about this before,” said Gwen. “You promised me. You said you’d talk to me before you did anything. Remember?”

  Beth hadn’t remembered. Talking to her brother – and then her mad, impractical scheme to smuggle goods – just hadn’t seem to fall within the limits of that promise.

  “It’s not the same,” defended Beth.

  “Because of that brother of yours? What is his position, anyway?”

  Beth paused. She knew she’d downplayed it because she’d been ashamed of it. But she hadn’t fully realised she’d been hiding it to the point that it had become a lie. “Deputy mayor.”

  Gwen’s response was what Beth expected. “Deputy Mayor Peter Griffiths. The Deputy Mayor Peter Griffiths. The Deputy Mayor Peter Griffiths who put in place all the new rules. That’s your brother.”

  “It wasn’t him,” said Beth. “Well, it was, but he was set up to take all the blame for the rules. I think that’s why he was put in the deputy position in the first place.”

  Gwen looked sceptical, and Beth found herself explaining the whole situation with the de la Hayes. By the time she finished, Gwen didn’t look convinced, but she did look more thoughtful.

  “Alright, then,” said Gwen, taking time between her words. “Whatever you do, they’ll hush it up to preserve his reputation as a hard-liner. You think you’re safe because you could set fire to every building on the main street, and you’d still be snug as a bug in a rug.”

  Beth froze.

  “Do you think that?” asked Gwen.

  “Well, it’s certainly possible,” said Beth. Eventually she succumbed to Gwen’s eyebrow and continued. “Or they can just disappear me to achieve the same thing. He doesn’t have any power himself, from what I can tell. Whatever support they’re giving him has strings attached. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t extend to helping his family as well.”

  Peter had been too terrified to even recommend Beth for a job, let alone try to talk someone out of finding her guilty. Alistair may have been charming, but Beth didn’t believe he’d ever acted on simple emotion in his entire life.

  “You’re absolutely sure it’s the de la Hayes that are running things.”

  “As certain as I can be,” said Beth. “Peter hasn’t told me anything. I could be seeing shadows in the dark. But think about how you instantly associated all the negatives of the new rulings with him. With how powerful the de la Hayes seem to be, it’s hard to imagine they couldn’t have stopped that. If they’d wanted to.”

  “Alright, then, let’s put that to one side,” said Gwen. “It isn’t the weasel that’s been tearing your thoughts to pieces, is it?”

  “No,” said Beth, but then came to another halt.

  “And luv?” said Gwen. “What I’m hearing is no, it isn’t any different for you. You’re just as screwed as all the rest of us.”

  “There’s still the difference between one person knowing and two people knowing.”

  “Come now, you know better than that. If someone comes sniffing around after you, they’ll just sweep me up at the same time, what with the file they already have on me. Do you think they’ll care whether or not I actually knew? If anything, you’ll be keeping me safer by telling me.”

  Beth couldn’t argue. She hated that it was true, but she did agree it was true. She was already endangering Gwen. Anyone else she asked for help – and she would need help from someone – would just place both herself and Gwen in even more danger. Still paranoid after what had happened with her brother, she toggled open The Book to check again. Still no change.

  “Alright,” said Beth.

  Showing was easier than explaining. Two seconds later, the meter cube of stuff was a heap on the floor, slowly toppling out of its neat shape.

  Gwen cursed, long and low, and utterly uncharacteristic of her. “You have an unregistered space.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you know what the penalties are for having an unregistered space?” Gwen was practically hissing. “The penalties introduced by that exact same bunch of regulations everyone is blaming your brother for?”

  “I know.”

  “Okay,” said Gwen, looking at Beth. “Okay. Sorry.”

  She reached over and placed a hand on Beth’s chest. “Breathe with me. There’s a luv. You can do this.”

  Beth thought she was already as calm as she could hope to be but decided not to argue about it. Mimicking Gwen, she took a deep breath, and then another. She raised her hand to wipe her eyes and noticed her hand was trembling. Oh. Gwen pulled her fully into a hug and waited for Beth to recover her composure.

  “I don’t suppose you know much about the black market?” asked Beth into her shoulder. “Not just the Square by the Wall, the real anonymous stuff? I want to donate this to George’s school and the shelters, and I need an explanation for where it came from.”

  “Are you expecting to get even more of this stuff?” asked Gwen. “And who already knows you have it?”

  “No-one else knows,” said Beth. “I wanted… I was going to ask to do it inside the rules, you know? Bring things back officially. I had this whole plan to talk to my brother about it. Clear up his reputation. Help everyone who needed it.”

  “Okay,” encouraged Gwen.

  “But then I got the feeling that if I did try to do that, things would go badly for me. Like, life-changing negative attention badly.”

  Gwen snorted. “That does seem probable, yes.”

  “I chickened out. I just gave up on suggesting anything. Because I was scared.”

  “Very sensible of you.”

  “Except, you see, I already have that unregistered dimensional space. Taking some stuff without authorisation is easy. No-one keeps track or would ever notice that it was going missing. Smuggling things don’t require me to be brave. I can just grab them. And now they’re here.”

  “Okay,” repeated Gwen, sounding strangled.

  “But now I don’t know what to do with them.”

  “And you thought about the black market?” asked Gwen.

  “Maybe?” Beth asked. “I mean, if I claimed that’s where they came from. Then I wouldn’t have to reveal my space.”

  Gwen opened her mouth and closed it again.

  Beth asked, “Terrible plan? Don’t people sell clothes on the black market?”

  “No, they do,” Gwen said. “It’s just that it isn’t much of an excuse.”

  After a second, it clicked. Beth felt like an idiot. “Right. ‘I didn’t get them through this one illegal method, I got them through this entirely different illegal method’. The authorities would be thrilled.”

  “You could probably get away with it if it was just one or two outfits,” said Gwen. “You can claim they’re ‘yours’ and provide enough grease that no-one asks any inconvenient questions. But all of this? And more every two weeks?”

  “Yeah, every run,” said Beth. “I’ll be able to grab even more, next time. My skill will have levelled up, so it’ll be a bigger space.”

  Beth hadn’t realised she’d already made the decision to continue until she spoke, but it was true. If she could do it once, then she could do it as often as she had the chance.

  Gwen nodded. “The black market isn’t a terrible idea, just as the destination, rather than the source. That’s what the market is for, isn’t it? Distributing goods?”

  Beth frowned when she realised what Gwen meant. “You mean I should sell them?”

  “Not ‘you’, all named and in person, naturally,” said Gwen. “We’ll have to find a middleman. Someone who already works with the fishing boats. Perhaps call in some of those favours you’ve got hoarded up. But yes.”

  “I’m not—” Beth stopped herself from saying she wasn’t a thief. Because she was. Denying it now was dangerously dishonest. “I don’t want to make a profit from this. It’s one thing to do this to help people out. It’s another if I’m making ceeps from it.”

  “Easily solved. The black market runs on supps.”

  “I don’t want to make supps off it either!” said Beth.

  “You won’t be,” said Gwen. “That’s the whole idea behind selling them. You can’t risk donating clothes without someone investigating where they came from. There’s nothing stopping you from donating supps to whoever you want. Then if they happen to buy some useful items from the black market…”

  “Donate anonymously?” checked Beth.

  “Sure, if you want. Someone will take a little off the top, but it’s easy enough.”

  Beth was already pushing everything to the limits of what she could realistically spend from her income, and then slipping over it by implying the supps that she used when cooking came from the twins. She couldn’t afford the attention of having even more income to give away to charity. But if she could donate them without revealing herself, then it was all fine. It had always been fine. She could always have donated supps, and she just hadn’t cared enough to look into how.

  “Would the stuff I bring in even get to the refugees?” Beth asked.

  “I can promise you that the refugees have multiple ways for supps to get lost in the shuffle and somehow end up purchasing things they happen to have lost the paperwork for.”

  “Good to know, but that’s not what I meant. Won’t it just be rich people who can pay more getting them?”

  “I guess the best quality stuff might get diverted to the rich. But that drives down the prices for everything else.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Even if they can’t buy anything, even just the extra supps will be appreciated.”

  “The supps themselves?” asked Beth. “But surely people already have supps. It’s all the rest they need.”

  “It’s the rest that the new rules screw with, true enough. But not everyone’s well enough off to care about the taste of their food. No-one knows how long the food shortages will continue. The supps might have to last us for the rest of our lives. People are rationing.”

  “Oh,” said Beth.

  Even with all her future knowledge, Beth couldn’t say whether they were wrong or not. The food situation was teetered on the balance of increasing crop yields and decreasing supplies. She’d been mentally treating the supps as a way to get past the first two years of the transition, not as a long-term requirement. But that was easy for her to risk when she still had hundreds of points she could convert later.

  Besides, it was the height of arrogance to demand that someone else benefit from her charity exactly the way she’d intended.

  “You think we can do this, then?” asked Beth. “Sell these on the black market?”

  “Put them away for now,” said Gwen. “But yes. Let me have a word around. We’ll find a way to do it safely.”

  Not completely safely, of course. Just as safely as possible, in the circumstances. The best they could ever hope for.

  “Thank you, and I’m sorry,” said Beth, then put up a hand to stop Gwen replying. “Not for putting you at risk in the black-market stuff. I know you’re doing it with me and not for me. I’m sorry about breaking my promise. You were absolutely right. I said I would come to speak to you first and then I didn’t.”

  She had every possible opportunity to ask Gwen for her advice and hadn’t considered it. Then as soon as Beth needed help, she’d expected Gwen to step up anyway. And Gwen had.

  “I’m not thrilled, mind,” said Gwen, “But you did come to me before it was too late. I get it. You’re used to having to solve your own problems. You’re still learning that you aren’t alone.”

  That was a very charitable interpretation of Beth’s actions. She’d take it.

  “Come,” said Gwen. “Let’s get back to the allotments before anyone comes looking for us.”