> Only one new monster during cycle six? That’s highly unusual, but with only six more hours left, it looks all but guaranteed. There was a new Titan and the first Threat, so there was plenty to keep viewer interest… but even so, people are commenting.

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

I woke up with Cassie’s heel digging uncomfortably into my forearm.

Vince was curled up to my back, one arm draped over my torso to keep me close, but we’d foregone privacy, filling our Fort Autumn bedroom with mattresses and sharing the space with the kids. We were lucky enough to have two other rooms if we needed alone time, but both of us slept better with our children in arms’ reach and Pointy standing sentry.

Even the smell of the room was restful, which cracked me up whenever I thought about it. Who would have thought the salty scent of my family’s sweat would be something I’d not only get used to, but kind of appreciate? We did our best, scrubbing faces and armpits with washcloths and hiring people to do our laundry, but a slight locker-room funk lingered. But even if the bedroom didn’t smell pleasant, it smelled safe. Safety - even stinky safety - was worth cherishing.

I pulled my arm away from Cassie’s foot and tried to find a comfortable spot to rest it without waking Vince.

Then, on the other side of my husband, Micah rolled over. He pulled the sheet off my feet, exposing them to the cool underground air.

I flinched and stifled a moan. Well, fine. I guess I’m awake! I probably haven’t lost that much sleep. The hallway is loud. Plenty of people up and about already. Hm… we don’t usually sleep past eight, but I should make sure…

“Hey, Pointy! How long until Deadline?” I didn’t bother to whisper, trusting the turtle to muffle my words.

“Approximately five and one-half hours.”

Blearily, I did the mental math. “Wait… so it’s only five a.m.?!”

“It will be in four minutes.”

I groaned. “Then why are so many people awake already?!”

“You know the answer to that.”

I frowned. “Yeah.”

There’d been five previous Challenges, and I’d gone to three of them. Gavin and Micah had gone to two. I’d had to run a fatal footrace, negotiate my way through a high-stakes version of king-of-the-hill, and lead a hundred other people through a dinosaur war as volcanoes erupted around us. The two I’d missed had apparently been a massive monster melee and a labyrinth filled with deadly surprises. There wasn’t really any common thread that would let me predict much about today’s Challenge, but I still had experience.

On top of that, I’d been active in preparing my kids to fight alone if needed, ever since they’d been whisked to the first Mandatory Trial without me and Micah had lost part of his foot. I wasn’t relaxed about the day to come - especially not with Cassie being taken to a Challenge for the first time - but I wasn’t nearly as panicked as most people were. “Resigned” was a good way to describe how I felt.

For thousands of people from Fort Autumn, this would be the first Challenge they were attending, and worse, their kids would have to go too. We’d posted signs in Commonwealth Standard asking the alien viewers not to share links to children’s streams, but the request hadn’t been very effective. In fact, some kids had rocketed toward the Novelty limit faster than the adults. It was a sobering reminder that not everyone out there in the galaxy was as altruistic as our pro bono space lawyer friends on the radio. The Maffiyir was popular entertainment, and not everyone was cheering for humanity.

I’d been called on to give a number of pep talks over the past several days, and I felt sure I’d be pestered with anxious questions the moment I emerged from the bedroom. Questions I couldn’t answer... but people were worried, and that nervous energy was going to go somewhere.

“You still haven’t gotten any hints from the system, have you? About what to expect today?”

Pointy rolled her eyes. “As I told you yesterday, if I find anything out, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Mmm. I wonder if getting in touch with her was a good thing or not. For humanity, I mean.”

“She slowed down the monster spawns!”

“I guess. But we got Threats early and another Titan on the same day as the last monster.”

“That wasn’t her fault! They forced her to implement those, I’m 99.5% certain!”

“I don’t care, Pointy. Her fault, not her fault… what does it matter? If they’re willing to override her, the impact is the same. She’s not giving us any information we couldn’t get otherwise-”

“I think she’s very restricted in how and when she can communicate with contestants. I don’t think she’s choosing to be coy.”

“Does it make a difference, if the effect is the same? And even if I appreciate the slower introduction of new monsters, I wonder if it really makes a difference in the long run. It seems like anything she does to help, the Maffiyir company will manually counter.”

“Would you prefer that she didn’t even try to help?” Pointy’s voice was shrill.

“No.” I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I brought it up. Maybe I’m not as calm about today’s Challenge as I thought I was.”

There was a pause, then Pointy chuckled. “I must say the same. It is a relief that I will be accompanying Cassie, and that she has Bigkitty and her transport, but we could still get unlucky. I have been running predictive processes near-constantly, but the sheer volume of possible scenarios is… disquieting.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I grunted in agreement, then was silent for a while, toying with the idea of going back to sleep. Then I started trying to figure out if I could slip out of bed without waking anyone. I knew the answer was “no,” but sometimes it’s hard to give up on a bad idea, especially when you’re anxious. All that nervous energy wants to do something, even if doing nothing is more productive.

Pointy took pity on my twitchiness and distracted me by filling me in on radio broadcasts I’d missed.

What she shared with me wasn’t anything important, at least not to most people. Vital information, like speculation about Threats and abilities, had been shared publicly. I knew two people in Fort Autumn who’d adjusted their planned ability choices to try and join up with Voices for Non-Citizens after the Maffiyir, taking Biological Augments to improve their ability to survive in places without breathable atmosphere and a variety of abilities to improve their ability to learn new languages and communicate. It was a brave thing to do, since their ability choices didn’t synergize very well and weren’t really optimal for combat. But both had worked in law before the apocalypse - one as a public defender and one as a personal injury lawyer - and seemed excited by the opportunity.

What Pointy shared with me now was more… personal. The Voices for Non-Citizens lawyers camouflaged their information for us amidst a sea of less-relevant transmissions. Some were dry and routine - things like attendance sheets, work hours, and quartermaster lists for their ships - but others were more enjoyable, friendly chatter between Fluffy and their co-workers. Greenfern, a newer lawyer who had apparently been a victim of a recent Maffiyir, was apparently trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a girl back on his home planet even as he tried to help us, and regularly asked for advice on poems he wrote for her. Phrases like “You and I twine together like snack food under dim light” made it clear that something had been lost in translation between his native tongue, Commonwealth Standard, and English. But even if the resulting poems were kind of hilarious, his sincere affection was obvious and sweet.

Eventually, my giggles over “What large herbivorous amphibian could compare to your quick wit?” woke Vince. Even if Pointy was muffling the noise, she couldn’t keep my body from shaking. But it was after seven by then, and it wasn’t an unreasonable time for my family to wake.

When we left our room, I stopped by the shrine Helen had erected by the ramp out of the quarry. An artistically-inclined Fort Autumn resident had drawn the pattern, letting Helen use her stone-shaping to engrave it in more permanently. A large, irregular circle spanned the wall from top to bottom, textured lines within mimicking the woodgrain circles found in a tree stump. The pattern broke periodically to make space for the names and faces of those who’d fallen against the large treezilla. Three of the circles were still empty, since we were waiting for photos to be found of some of the dead, but the ones for the soldiers who’d been part of my floor, Greg Horne and Jamie Moore, had been filled. Eidetic Memory and my Basic Hologram had been equal to that task, at least.

I rested my hand on the memorial. I’m sorry. You deserved better. I hope your souls are at peace.

I knew Vince didn’t like my morning ritual, but we didn’t argue about it. He’d tracked down someone with counseling experience and bullied me into talking with her. I’d reluctantly agreed, but only if he did the same. Vince was having a lot of nightmares, bursting awake in a panic and not relaxing until he’d touched each of us in turn. He’d had only had a few days to process the necessity of putting our kids in danger, and accepting that had been a multi-month journey for me. I understood his fear, and I sympathized… but it would be good for all of us if Vince could sleep better.

Each of us had gotten only one session so far, because anyone with the slightest hint of counseling experience was swamped: we were all traumatized. I knew that improvement would take time, but I was doing my best to follow the instructions I’d received, trying to contextualize the situations I felt guilty about.

Yes, I’d made mistakes: that was something I had to accept. On the other hand, I hadn’t created any of these situations, and I wouldn’t have blamed anyone else for such unintentional imperfections. Taking a few minutes each day to grieve and acknowledge the guilt I felt had been a counterintuitive suggestion that had helped a lot. Planning in time for this each day helped me deal better with intrusive thoughts and emotions. Now, when I packed those feelings away to focus on the present, I was being practical, not callous.

We had a leisurely breakfast, made better by the fact that Vince and his friends had brought back a Minor Matter Replicator they fully owned. Even though they were using a lot of it to help Fort Autumn, none of them hesitated to copy a few creature comforts for friends and family, so my kids could put chocolate chips on top of their spacecakes on special mornings like this one. Kurt had moved his wife and daughter to Fort Autumn, and they joined us, although Davi, Byron, and John were still sleeping.

I felt sorry for John… I hadn’t known him well, but of all of Vince’s co-workers, he’d had the hardest homecoming.

Davi had been relatively new to Huntsville before the apocalypse, and hadn’t made many close friends or acquaintances outside of work. She was still worried about her family, who lived on the east coast, but she wasn’t running out the door. The Arsenal had been happy to find another volunteer who had decent levels of synergy in Flight, and she had been added to the list of people waiting for Siphons. “I’ll get there faster if I wait and go as part of an official team,” she’d told me.

Byron had friends in the area he’d reunited with, and a girlfriend, who he hadn’t. She’d been found, and was still alive, but she’d moved on and was dating someone else. Byron had taken the news with good grace. It was clear he’d been disappointed, but he didn’t seem to hold any hard feelings.

John…

John had lived to the northeast of us, with his wife. We’d gone with him to search his neighborhood twice, but we hadn’t found her, or anyone who had seen her. He was holding out hope that she was still alive, but it seemed clear that she hadn’t been home when the apocalypse hit, and he was just one of thousands and thousands of people trying to reunite with family. He’d traveled across five states to the town where his wife lived, but he still couldn’t find out if Miriam Christiansen was alive or dead.

My gratitude to John was deep, and we were already scheduled to go out with him again tomorrow, to make a trip to the area around his wife’s favorite thrift store, but I was kind of relieved not to have him here now. My emotions were heavy enough.

The morning dragged on.

I checked and rechecked everyone’s backpacks a dozen times. All the supplies I’d lost during the treezilla assault were replaced and organized carefully, and we’d made up a backpack for Vince as well. After I realized I was making the packs less organized with my searches, I stopped and drilled the kids on what they’d do in various emergencies until all of them were thoroughly irritated. Even after all that, we still had hours to go.

Vince tried to get me to relax - to get us all to relax - by telling us more stories about his time away. It was less calming than he intended, though, because every time he came to a problem or a danger, he’d interrupt his story and go on a massive, impassioned tangent on how the kids and I could keep ourselves safe if we found ourselves in a similar situation.

Finally the time came.

“Thirty seconds to Deadline,” Pointy chirped.

Vince wrapped his arms around us and Gavin’s tail snaked around our waists. Nearby, the Turners were in a similar huddle, and the Quarry was filled with dozens of other groups that had done the same, families and friends clinging together, hoping that proximity would let them weather the Challenge as a team.

A familiar system message offered insincere congratulations for reaching the end of the sixth duodenary and let us know we’d be transferred to a Challenge. I was just in time to close my eyes before the clear casing snapped around me, avoiding a five-eyed view of the nauseating scenery during the transfer process.

When I opened my eyes again, I stood in a cloud of swirling fog.