Chương 101: 98: Highest Priority

I escaped from the enclave with my dignity intact. Barely. Because, honestly, I was pretty blatantly running away. But no, I did not want to meet Aquila and Rodi. No, I did not want to look at my million messages. No, I didn't much want to participate in the meeting with the township, either. I did give Emma the police chief's gun, so that she could give it back if she felt so inclined.

Instead, I claimed—not completely falsely—that my dogs needed their own kibble for their dinners, which meant we needed to go home. Straight home. No passing Go, no collecting $200, just my own kitchen, my own couch, my own blue throw. I did have to promise to come back in the morning. I'm not going to say that Emma twisted my arm or that Jack badgered me until I agreed, but if Pen hadn't looked slightly forlorn about being left behind, I would have kept my fingers crossed.

As it was, I fed the dogs; considered whether my moldy bread would still make an edible grilled cheese sandwich (no); and ate plain tuna from the can and mandarin oranges while I contemplated life without electricity in Florida. Yeah, it was hot. Fortunately, we were heading into winter, so it wouldn't be sweltering for long, but I needed to figure out how to take my solar panels off-grid. Long run, that would be more useful than trying to keep the generator running. I should also check my fence line.

Back when I'd been waiting for the Barrows to show up, approximately a million years ago, I'd drawn a line in the dirt, concentrating on [Verdant Sanctuary]. It was an ability that caused territory "under my protection" to develop natural defenses over time. I didn't know what the timeline was and I didn't know what the natural defenses looked like, but I was pretty sure it was why my bougainvillea had impaled and killed one of the Barrow brothers.

I really hoped that it hadn't needed to be so helpful a second time, but I'd been gone for a couple days so I ought to check. I didn't. It was too hot for my cashmere throw, but I collapsed onto the sofa in my sunroom and just… tried to process. Everything was fine, everything was good—well, as good as it could be during the apocalypse—but really, we were in great shape, the dogs and me. My to-do list was about a hundred items long, though. I should just start at the top and work my way down, right? I didn't.

I took a cold shower, not unpleasant in the stuffy house, and went to bed. I slept the sleep of a person who'd spent the day fighting a nine-foot-tall boar, a tidal wave of tiny spiders, and an arrogant asshole, and who'd also spent the previous night on a couch. In other words, the nightmares, if they showed, weren't enough to wake me. The next morning I didn't even bother moping around my kitchen. The dogs got their breakfasts and then we all went into my RMI.

"Coffee, please." I yawned, before sitting at the table and closing my eyes. I wasn't going to fall asleep, but I wasn't going to pretend I was really awake, either. I might have fallen asleep, because it felt like the coffee appeared in front of me between heartbeats. I took a grateful sip, studiously did not wonder how many people worldwide would kill to be drinking this coffee right now, and eyed Chelsea.

She wasn't wearing her silk pajamas or her streetwalker outfit, just her typical professionally neutral clothing.

"You can wear whatever you want, you know." I held my coffee cup between my hands like it was freezing out and I was keeping my hands warm. It wasn't, but holding a warm cup still felt comforting.

"Thank you." She sounded pleased, but she didn't change her clothes.

"Do you have plans for the day?" I didn't groan. Not aloud, anyway. Hunt rats today? Zelda sat up. She'd been lying by my feet, awake but head on her paws. Good rats. Bear had been sitting by the counter. She swiped a paw over her nose, saying, No spiders. Bad crunch, spiders. Explore more? Or… Her back end started to shimmy, just a little. … pup cup pie plate? Good day, pup cup day. Riley stretched. People place? Many small sad people. He really should have been a therapy dog. He would have been so good at it.

I dropped my hand to Zelda's ears, took another gulp of coffee, and set the cup down.

"We have some business to deal with, I think. Quests, and I'm allowed to choose a Rare ability from one of my achievement rewards."

"Yes!" Chelsea clasped her hands together.

"Quests first?"

"Sure."

"I'm afraid you've still got a long way to go with your Field Documentation Protocol quest. We submitted one rift report, so that's one out of ten complete. If you'd like me to, I can also fill out a rift report for the Thorn's Edge rift, but you do need to step through the gate and confirm that it leads to Rhesca before finalizing the report."

"I will add that to my to-do list," I said, voice dry. Along with everything else, sure. I'd get to it sometime next year, maybe.

"You've completed Local Population Stabilization, with eight qualifying rescues. It's a repeatable quest, so you'll get the reward for five of those saves now, and three will be banked for later. Credits… oh, yes, lovely." Eight? Apparently I was getting credit for every person saved from the spiders, as well as Kara and her dad. I wasn't going to argue with the System, obviously, but I sort of wanted to. How would I have killed the boar on my own?

My shovel was undoubtedly the best shovel on the planet, but unless [Verdant Reprisal] triggered, I would have had a tough time beating a creature that big. And if the spider had simply ignored me, I would have been helpless, unable to reach it. I'd have had to resort to throwing canned goods at it or something equally ridiculous. But if I wasn't the one who killed the monsters, why was I getting credit for saving the lives? The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site.

Support the author by reading it there. That said, if the System wanted to give me credits, who was I to disagree?

"You'll receive 114 System credits for that quest, and your [Mana Absorption] ability has improved incrementally, allowing you to safely absorb more mana."

"What am I supposed to do with the mana once I absorb it?" I asked. I'd been wondering ever since the swamp rift, when I poured mana into [Wild Sanctuary] in a desperate attempt to not explode. The sanctuary was supposed to be based on the work I put into creating it, not the amount of mana I used, but it had been the only thing I could think of to do.

"A wonderful question. You should pick up an ability that uses mana, sooner rather than later."

"How convenient that I have that Rare ability to pick, then," I said, only a little sarcastic.

"Abilities can also be purchased with System credits. Or you could visit San Celeste and see if the Sarathi have any other ability stones. But yes, you could also use your Rare ability to… in fact, that would be… oh, if it works…" Chelsea started to mumble, and her eyes glazed over. And then she smacked the table with her hand.

"Ha!" I grabbed my coffee cup before she could spill it.

"Ha, what?" I asked warily.

"Mana Conduit. It's a terrible ability, no one ever takes it. But you should." I blinked at her and then drank some more coffee.

"It's a terrible ability and no one ever takes it, but I should?"

"Exactly." Chelsea stood and went back to the counter, rummaging in the baked good display, before re-emerging, triumphant, with a pastry held between tongs. She dropped it onto a plate and brought it over to me.

"Here." It looked like fruitcake. Not good fruitcake. Not like strawberry shortcake or a raspberry torte. Like classic Christmas fruitcake, chewy, dense, and tasting unpleasantly of excess.

"You want me to eat that?"

"Mana Conduit. You're going to love it."

"I really don't think I am." With a sigh, I poked at the edge of the slice of cake. It crumbled at my touch, unlike any fruitcake I'd ever met, so I picked up a crumb—a literal crumb—and tasted. It was delicious, spicy and sweet, almost like really good gingerbread. I broke off a bigger piece, and tried a full-size bite, and it remained delicious.

"All right, I was wrong." I kept eating and looked in my HUD for the ability. If Chelsea hadn't told me I could buy more abilities, I might have argued longer about taking this "terrible" one. But she hadn't steered me wrong yet, and I had too much to do to spend hours debating pros and cons and agonizing over my choice. Mana Conduit: Channel mana into a chosen target. Results depend upon the target, mana type, and amount of mana used.

"Um…" I didn't want to be critical but that sounded like the most boring ability on the planet. What was I supposed to do with it?

"Yeah, this looks like a terrible ability."

"Oh, it is," Chelsea agreed cheerfully.

"For everyone except you. Mages have better uses for their mana; non-mages don't have enough mana for it to be useful."

"But what's it going to do?"

"It depends. You'll have to experiment and find out. But if you channel mana into a weapon, it's bound to be interesting."

'Interesting' was really not as good a word as 'useful,' in my opinion. I reread the description.

"Targets. What does that include? Monsters?"

"Potentially. But I think the sky's the limit. I mean, not really, of course, you probably don't want to just dump your mana into the clouds. Although maybe if you did, you could control the weather? That might be fun." Fun. Right.

"I guess I'll experiment." I drained the remnants of my cup of coffee.

"One more quest?"

"Right! The Threat Reduction Initiative. Nice job on this one. Finished it twice and you're over halfway to your next completion. System credits, 468." Not only the easy quest, but also a profitable quest. Ten rift reports were only worth 100 credits total and would take days. But I suppose most people didn't kill rats by the dozens.

"I'm afraid I don't have any new quests to offer yet," Chelsea said, sounding apologetic.

"But you're making good progress on the repeatable ones. Would you like to work on the Field Documentation Protocol today? We could visit a few new rifts. Claiming a second rift has expanded your list." I glanced at the menu above the coffee counter. I hadn't noticed when I'd come in, but there were more readable entries than before, with Thorn's Edge at the top, Durham to Anvar second. The third entry was N7W12S#731, which was the fire elemental rift I'd visited on the way to Jack's.

The fourth entry was an unfamiliar string of numbers. It must be the Spruce Gap rift that we'd used to get to the enclave.

"It doesn't list the San Celeste rift," I said, pointing out the obvious.

"You didn't claim it. And at the time, you only had one tame rift so you could only add a single wild rift to your menu. Now that you've claimed a second, you can add two wild rifts to your menu. It'll always be the last two you visited, though." She screwed up her face, thinking hard.

"You might call it a Recent Files feature? Recent Projects? I'm not sure I understand this element of your mental model." I ignored her digression, since I understood the concept just fine, and asked, "Enclaves don't count?"

"They're a different type of mana domain, so no. However, since you're registered at Team Fellow Survivors, you'll always be able to easily access the address."

"It's not like the map is hard to use."

"True. Most people don't have access to such a sophisticated interface, however. The combination of a mid-tech world and your mental models has been very interesting." I accepted that as a compliment that had nothing to do with me, and added 'Claim the San Celeste rift' to my mental to-do list. I wasn't excited about adding more responsibilities to my life, but I definitely wanted easy, quick access to that rift. At least until I found Jules and Toby. And, actually, probably beyond that.

It wasn't like I'd immediately abandon Danny and his family to their fates once I'd found Jules. More selfishly, access to the Sarathi's ability stones was priceless and would likely remain so for a good few years, until humanity figured out how to make them ourselves.

"So, rift reports?" Chelsea said brightly.

"Not yet." I tilted my coffee cup up and peered mournfully at the empty bottom.

"I apparently have a million messages to go through, and I promised Emma I'd at least look at some of them."

"Only 8, 641," Chelsea replied. She looked at nothing, then added, "8, 645, now. They do seem to be coming in quite quickly. Looks like about three a minute."

"You can see my messages?" I would have been horrified by the number, except that it was clearly much better than a million. And I was more surprised that Chelsea had access to them. I couldn't see them. They weren't in my HUD. Emma had told me I'd need to review them in the core building, from either those Star Wars columns on the ground floor or her administrator access panel in the ridiculously elaborate conference room on the third floor. Given the number of messages, she'd promised me a chair at the table.

"Oh, not read them," Chelsea said hastily.

"Not without your permission. Obviously as soon as you read them, I'll know what they say anyway, but there are still niceties to be observed."

"You can't read my mail, but you're going to know what it says as soon as I read it?" I confirmed, and when Chelsea nodded, I waved my hand and said, "I hereby grant you permission to read my mail. Please organize it for me, most important first, and sum up as many as possible, so that I never have to read them myself."

"How would you like me to determine what's most important?" Chelsea asked.

"You've been basically inside my brain for a week, right?" She winced.

"That's an unappealing image. I don't think I'd be comfortable in there." I laughed.

"I'm often not that comfortable in there myself. But by now, I think you should be able to figure out my priorities."

"Yes." Chelsea's eyes glazed.

"There are no messages from dogs," she reported.

"There are no messages about dogs, either, which is perhaps more surprising." I rubbed my forehead, trying to imagine how awful it would be if a thousand Betsys lined up to ask me to confirm that their dogs were safe. It was just as well no one knew about that encounter.

"Oh!" Chelsea sounded surprised.

"Yes, this is the highest priority message, definitely." She glanced around the coffee shop, then pointed toward the door. A bulletin board hung next to it now, in the classic location to collect local business cards, notices about classes or lost pets, information about social services. And messages. Smack dab in the middle was a folded piece of purple paper. I leapt to my feet and raced to the board like it was on fire, but paused before I pulled the message off.

The purple was the exact color of the Honda Civic Jules had driven when we were both in college. Vintage Plum Pearl. That did not, of course, mean that the message was from her. But it didn't mean that it wasn't. My heart in my throat, I pulled the message free, opened it up, and Jules appeared beside me.