> Linked users? If I’m translating that correctly… Has the Maffiyir lost control of their AI?
>
> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens
Nobody liked my idea.
“Meghan, you can’t go outside when there’s a literal horde of dinosaurs here to kill you personally,” Vince pleaded.
“Arsenal leadership is begging you to to stay put and wait for bodyguards!” Marie said.
I was stubborn. “What do you want me to do? Gallivant around town and stand at each Points Siphon for a small eternity? Arsenal leadership turned around. Travel isn’t easy right now. I can’t stay weak! In a little over eight days I'll be taken to a Challenge where I’m completely in Hamlet’s power. Right after that, he gets to pick a new Threat, and I’m guessing it’ll be custom-designed to kill me and the other linked users to whatever extent is possible. Eventually, he’ll get to send more Titans at us as well. Anyone want to bet he won’t send a mole-Titan to dig me up and eat me for breakfast?”
Vince frowned. “Is there a mole Titan? D-Rex, Bonefur, brontosaur, ankylosaur, triceratops, stealth flyer. I’m not forgetting one, am I?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing like that right now. But… I’m not going to feel safe again until I’m strong enough to punch out a D-Rex. If Hamlet can send anything at me, that’s what I need to be ready for.
I glared at the ceiling. “Hamlet’s restrictions mean that getting powerful enough to be safe might be possible. They don’t mean we can relax.”
People still looked skeptical.
“Look, guys. I’m going to be in danger. Choosing to expose myself to controlled danger might let me be strong enough to survive unavoidable danger in the future.”
Marie raised a hand. “Um, Arsenal leadership is getting bodyguards for you together. Can you wait for them to arrive?”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“I’m… not sure. We’re still trying to figure out transportation. Even if we kill the Titans quickly, they’re still causing damage to the roads. Especially the snakeropods!”
“I can’t wait indefinitely!”
“Take the kids,” Vince interrupted.
I looked at him, confused.
“Me too,” he said. “Whatever you want to do to get stronger and earn points, I want the kids and me in arm’s length of you. Me, so I can protect you, and them so you don’t take too many risks with your own safety.”
I made a face. It was much easier to brave a dinosaur horde than to take my kids out to face it, especially if they were going to be standing in arm’s length of the danger magnet I’d become. But… it was hard to argue with Vince’s logic. If it was safe enough for me, it would be safe enough for them. If it wasn’t safe enough for me, I shouldn’t be risking myself.
Not when so much was depending on me.
And… the kids needed to get stronger too. The Mandatory Trials were supposedly over, but with weekly Challenges, that was almost irrelevant. The Meghan-in-my-memories never stopped thinking about how to wring out any advantage for her children.
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Reluctantly, I nodded.
“While we’re waiting for the bodyguards, we should build some kind of lookout tower,” Pointy suggested. “We’ve had people keeping watch from the tops of the walls, but that leaves them vulnerable to the stealth flyers. We need something made of stone, or even metal. None of the monsters have strong electric attacks, and it would let Meghan see over the walls without being in range of snakeropod bites.”
“We should put big spikes on the roof too!” Micah said. “Then if the new flying Titans dive at Mom, they can get spikes through them.”
My oldest son’s voice was bloodthirsty and vindictive, and I suddenly remembered that he had recently been on the receiving end of a similar trap during the last Challenge. It wasn’t a bad idea, however, and if it helped him work through his trauma, all the better.
“That’s a good plan. We should have you help forge them, too. ” I said. “Marie, can you call Alexandra in? If we’re going to wait for bodyguards to arrive, I want to use every moment of that time. We’re going to need her to approve a lot of work orders.”
…
When the next morning dawned, a new tower rose from the center of Fort Autumn, its base resting partially on the foundation of my demolished home. The walls of Fort Autumn had encompassed most of our property and two of our neighbors, but the walls had still had to be expanded slightly in one place to make space, and the amount of above-ground space we had for people to congregate had dropped sharply.
No one had complained about that. The different combat groups were working on reliable methods of countering the stealth flyers. They’d been named “Alien-22s”, a joke by the large aerospace population in the area about their resemblance to F-22 planes. Since that was a bit lengthy to shout on a battlefield - especially while under attack by said Titans - they were colloquially referred to as “twotwos.”
The twotwos’ speed and toughness made them hard to detect and counter. We’d been reasonably successful, but there’d still been three local deaths in the past day. People only went above-ground if they needed to.
The deluge of Titans hadn’t stopped. That made a sick kind of sense, with thousands of local residents bearing the Intensifier bracelets. What was more suspicious was the way that the Titans seemed drawn to Fort Autumn. Colonel Zwerinski had been doing the bulk of our surveillance, and our other Clairvoyants had been stretched thin by his death, but Alexandra was eventually able to confirm that few Titans were turning aside to attack the Points Siphon. The Shop was in the center of Fort Autumn, true, but I was confident that wasn’t what was drawing them.
They were coming for me.
Hundreds of defenders had earned enough Points to earn Specialties… which had actually led to one death, when the orb of swirling colors had popped out unexpectedly from a man defending our walls, pushing the woman beside him over the edge and under the feet of a snakeropod. After that, people had been more careful to monitor their points and withdraw to safety if they were getting close to the breakpoint.
Our rock and metal shapers had been among the first to achieve their specialties, and between their increased strength and Helen’s expert architectural direction they’d truly outdone themselves.
We were calling it a “tower,” but the edifice they’d built only nominally fit that description. It rose about four stories high and was about fifty feet wide at the base, narrowing slowly as it rose to a roofed battlement about twenty feet across. The result was something kind of like a pyramid, but with a steeper slope. The tapered, near-solid structure should be almost impossible to knock down.
There wasn’t even a door: we entered through a vertical central tunnel that led from the battlements into the Quarry. Monsters could try to climb the outside, but we should be able to see them coming. If they wanted to sneak up on us from behind, they’d have to come in through the main entrance to the Quarry and fight their way through the hundreds of people living there to get to the tower’s access ladder.
Or be able to phase through stone.
That wasn’t a thing yet, thank God.
Once we’d scaled the ladders, we were protected by crenellations that rose to within a foot of a roof just as impressive as the rest of the tower. The roof was made entirely of metal. Supports had been sunken throughout the battlements, not just around the edges, ensuring that the structure wouldn’t sag or collapse even under immense amounts of force. The roof was slightly curved and festooned with spikes, each three inches thick and more than five feet long. Some had been forged by Micah and his buddies, but someone had the bright idea to use some of the rewards from the onslaught of Titans to purchase Initiate Spears and integrate the system-provided weapons into the construction.
They hadn’t stopped there, either.
The sides of the tower were sloped, but not smooth. They ascended in a skinny stair-step pattern, like an ancient Mayan temple, except that every step was lined with foot-long spikes of metal or stone that promised crippling damage to any monster that tried to climb it.
In addition, a grid of thick copper cables had been spread over the outside of the tower. They didn’t quite reach the ground, and they submerged into the stone a foot before they reached the battlements. A hand-sized length of cable protruded from the stone inside, letting an electric specialist blast the entirety of the outside of the tower.
“I’m impressed,” I said, as I finished my climb on one of the internal ladders. “Everyone has really outdone themselves.”
Vince had reached the top just before me. He lifted Cassie off his shoulders and peered out at the war zone around us. “Let’s hope it’s enough to keep you alive.”