> Hmm… Three Dispatch-class ships just left the system from the Maffiyir headquarters. That’s unusual. I wonder what messages needed more than their standard encryption?

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

Gavin was here somewhere: I needed to stay focused. The unnamed man could be remembered and mourned later. I knew my son wasn’t the person I was heading toward now - they were far too tall, for one thing - but maybe this person could help me find him. Even if not, I hadn’t forgotten about the system’s mention of “Titan-equivalents.” If I got jumped by anything like that, I wanted allies at my side.

After a slight detour to avoid what was either a large plant or a very patient monster, I caught up with the next person, shouting a "Hello?" as I approached a Nordic-looking man. He drew back as I emerged from the mist, wary. Fortunately, he quickly noticed the black-and-white stripes emblazoned on my shield. He gestured toward it with his weapon, a Shop-purchased hammer. “Ah… Friend? You are friendly, hey?”

I nodded. His accent was thick, but perfectly understandable, and he’d clearly understood my Announcement. Thank God. “Yes. Want to travel together? My son is here somewhere. My name is Meghan.”

“From the Announcements! I am Sem. We will find your son.”

He fell in beside me and we started walking. It seemed a little odd to trust a stranger so swiftly, but Sem had clearly decided to trust me. He seemed so genuine, so matter-of-fact, that returning his trust felt natural. As we moved, I summarized my abilities, and, bracing myself, asked about his. I couldn’t help but relax when I found out he didn’t have Healing Touch. Strictly speaking, we were worse off not having a healer with us, but if I’d known the injured man had died fifty feet away from help…

Well, it wasn't the case. Focus! I yelled at myself.

We didn’t make contact with the next woman we got close to: as soon as I started calling out to them, bolts of fire disrupted the mist and an angry voice rang out in response, warning us away. In English, no less! Here was someone I could communicate with perfectly, but whatever experiences she’d had made her unwilling to let us get close.

I exchanged a quick glance with Sem as we retreated. He shrugged, which about summed up my feelings. There wasn’t any reason to tangle with someone who wasn’t willing to work with us. It was a shame, but it was a lot of risk for no real reward.

The next woman we met didn’t speak English, other than a few errant words. I would have missed her if not for Life Sense. She had some kind of illusion ability hiding her almost perfectly from our vision, making her look like one more patch of rain-pocked ground. When it became clear we knew she was there, she dropped the ability all at once, revealing a stocky barefoot woman in jeans and a brightly patterned shirt. She returned our tentative “Hello?” with her own and cautiously drew closer, extending an open hand toward me shakily and slumping in relief as I took it. She put her other hand to her chest and introduced herself as Lindani, then asked, without much hope. “Xhosa? Venda?”

I had just enough phonetic Xhosa memorized to offer to work together and understand her affirmative response. Excited, she’d tried to say more, but took it in good grace when I shook my head helplessly.

I projected a small hologram of one of my favorite photos of Gavin and myself, then pointed to the mist in several directions successively, then shrugged. Lindani bit her lip, tapped her chest, then put a hand to shade her eyes... Then dropped it, gesturing with irritation at the mist above us.

It wasn’t a hard game of charades: I was looking for Gavin, but didn’t know exactly where he was. One of her abilities was either Clairvoyance or a vision augment, but all the mist was rendering it useless. My Intensifier gem let me identify her most powerful ability as Camouflage, the active version, not the passive biological augment one. Thanks gem, figured that much out already...

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We found another set of footprints and started following it. I was mentally reassessing the likelihood of finding the rest of my family here. So far I’d found a man from somewhere in Asia, Sem from the Netherlands, Lindani from - if I had understood correctly, South Africa - and the angry woman who spoke English, but didn’t seem to be from anywhere near Huntsville. She certainly hadn’t been from Fort Autumn! That meant we had people here from at least five different areas of the world.

When we ran across a Korean teenager who introduced herself as Cho Ha-yoon, my hopes dropped even further. Whatever language the first guy had been speaking, it definitely hadn’t been Korean! Ha-yoon, thankfully, did speak some English. Quite well, honestly, even though she blushed and apologized, calling herself a bad student. It was a pretty funny concern coming from someone with clawed hands and a mouth full of fangs. To my relief, Ha-yoon also shared that she had Healing Touch.

We still hadn’t found Gavin, which was gnawing at me. What if I was leading everyone directly away from him? I’d never find him by sitting still, though. Part of me wanted to make another Announcement, but since he wouldn’t be able to communicate back, and I didn’t know how to direct him toward us without any landmarks, I had to admit it would be useless, a way to tire myself out without accomplishing anything. Still, I was anxious and frustrated, which is probably why I led us into an ambush.

I’d felt small sources of life, but there were plenty of weeds on the ground ahead, bedraggled and yellowish - the same kind that had failed time and again to react to my shears - and I hadn’t looked carefully. I’d ignored the rough stones at their bases until the stones came to life, legs popping out as they unwound like pillbugs, scurrying toward us from every direction.

It was the worst sort of enemy for me, the kind of thing we relied on Micah’s area-of-effect attacks to counter. I did my best, mashing my iron plates down atop the oncoming swarm, but I didn’t do more than slow them. The soft sand gave way underneath the roly-polies, leaving them to wriggle out the other side of the plates unharmed. The pillbugs that had reached me bit down, stinging pain erupting from my legs as they tore through my clothes to rend the flesh beneath.

Ha-yoon made a tremendous leap, easily clearing the swarm and attacking from the back, savagely tearing the critters apart with her bare hands. She didn’t even flinch as the bugs nearby turned on her, ignoring them as they swarmed over her body.

I slipped as a step sent me crashing to ground that had suddenly turned to ice - probably Sem’s work. A thin layer of moisture still covered the top of the ice sheet, making it fiercely slippery, and I failed the first time I tried to get up. Then Sem seemed to notice me, and the ice disappeared in a small circle around me. I scrambled to my feet, furiously knocking the pillbugs that had swarmed me down onto Sem’s ice, where he froze them to the ground, leaving them unable to move. Lindani had managed to stay standing and was systematically cleaving insects in two with a pair of machetes.

A minute after the attack had started, it had finished. We were all bleeding. I’d been worried for Ha-yoon, since she'd been attacked by more of the roly-polies than the rest of us, but it looked like the claws weren’t her only Biological Augment. The teen’s skin was tough. Her shirt was in tatters, but the skin beneath was more scratched than cut, her injuries even shallower than my own. Lindani was the worst-off. She hadn’t been able to share her full ability list with us yet, but whatever it was, it looked like she lacked Ha-yoon’s defenses, my inflated Points total, or Sem’s elemental defenses.

Ha-yoon carefully sealed Lindani’s wounds, although I noticed she stopped the moment they scabbed over. With all her physical augments, she should have good synergy in the ability, so I could only imagine that she was scared of tiring herself out, not willing to entrust us with her safety. It was fair, but also disappointing, a sobering reminder that even though our group had just worked well together, we were all allies of convenience who’d met only minutes before. Lindani looked unhappy, but didn’t complain, offering Ha-yoon a tight smile and a nod.

I apologized for missing the enemies, taking the lead again with a little more shame and caution.

I was moving us toward another human I sensed - probably an adult woman, based on height and slender build - when I spotted something amazing.

Cutting across our path was a wending pair of cloud-print tire tracks.

I changed direction immediately, much to the confusion of my companions. A flickered hologram of Cassie’s cloudcar answered some of their questions, but didn’t fully allay their concerns.

“Slow down!” Sem called. “The monsters here are sneaky. We must be careful, hey?”

He wasn’t wrong, but… my daughter was here somewhere! She was too far away for me to feel her yet, but surely any route she and Pointy had traveled would be safe to follow. Unless the monsters moved, of course. Begrudgingly, I paused to let the others catch up… and flinched as a massive drop of liquid emerged from the fog and splattered atop my head.