> Yet another Challenge that pushes the rules in terms of difficulty… This contest isn’t close to finishing, but the violations we’ve recorded already will keep our whole staff busy for the next several Maffiyirs! I’m surprised the Clothes-Lovers are handling the elevated danger so well.
>
> -Intercepted transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens
“Oof!”
I grunted as I was thrown back against the thin bars of the stone cage.
Gavin dove forward into the space I had vacated, staring at the metal floor intently. The moment it parted, his hand shot forward, clawed fingers sinking deep into the brain of the monster that had tried to ambush me. Foe dispatched, he glanced over.
“Sorry, Mommy! He moved his tunnel at the last minute!”
The cheerful tone was at odds with the gore dripping from my six-year-old’s fingers.
I grabbed the bars and pulled myself to my feet. “Nothing to be sorry for. You did great, thanks! I wasn’t hurt, just surprised. I don’t think I even damaged Helen’s barricade.”
Helen shook her head. “No, it was fine. There’d be no point in putting it up at all if it couldn’t resist that amount of force. Not that there’s much point to anything I’ve done in here…”
I looked over the arena for this Challenge. Vince lunged past me, spearing another eel-like monster as it tried to wriggle onto the platform. Cassie smiled at me from her place on her father’s back, her fingers wiggling as she tried to wave.
It hadn’t taken long for us to decide that the ground was too dangerous a place for our youngest to be, even with the protection of her cloudcar. Within minutes of entering the Challenge, Vince had dumped the contents of his backpack and ordered Cassie to climb inside. The backpack hadn’t been meant as a child carrier, but Micah had used Heat to fuse parts of the zipper while I’d sliced holes in the bottom of the pack for my daughter’s legs. The end result wasn’t that robust, but I’d sliced up a sheet Vince had been carrying and tied strips of it around his torso at varying angles as reinforcement until my Analyze ability suggested that Cassie was relatively secure.
Relatively immobile, yeah, but also relatively secure.
My kids, my husband, and Helen stood with me atop a metal disc about 21.8 feet in diameter (according to my Analyze). Seventy-eight feet of frothing water surrounded us on all sides before hitting a curving metal wall that rose into a dome. There wasn’t any stone or dirt to be seen, so Helen had only the rock she’d brought in with her to work with, and she’d shaped it into a thin cage around the platform, shifting a thicker section of reinforcement around as monsters emerged from the water or the doorways above.
“At least you’ve kept us from falling in the water,” I told Helen. I used my telekinesis to slide the corpse of Vince’s most recent kill back into the viscera-filled lake. “It’s been dangerous the whole time, and now it’s absolutely disgusting, too.”
“Yeah, and it is really slippery here,” Gavin said, sweeping a foot across the slimy platform.
I winced as I looked at my middle child. I’d given up on shoes for him; at this point, his feet were tougher than any rubber sole, and he’d used his Shapeshift ability and Natural Weapons augment to create super-sharp spikes to replace his toe nails. His latest kill was only the most recent in a long series of gruesome slaughters. He didn’t have to kill things with his bare hands (or feet). He had a bow and spear, and he’d gotten pretty good with both, but he’d had trouble using them effectively in such a tight area. After the second time he’d clipped Micah with the end of his spear as he dove across the platform to counter a monster attacking from below, I’d suggested I hold it for him.
I could sense the subterranean attackers too, with my Life Sense, but there was no shortage of things for me to focus on, so I was leaving them mostly to Gavin and his Seismic Sense and focusing my efforts elsewhere.
I used my Telekinesis to maneuver a wire net in front of an oncoming flying monster, fouling its wings and causing it to crash into the stone cage, where a pair of Cassie’s Summoned Seekers savaged it.
I grimaced. I couldn’t disagree… but… Rock-shapers were the MVPs of the last two Challenges. We both agreed that it made sense to bring her, if the group size was six.
Not happening, Ariel. We’re stronger together.
You can’t optimize the groups. You don’t know what’s coming! Plus, all of us are going to be distracted and anxious if we’re worrying about the others.
I don’t want to hear it, Ariel. I need to focus. How long do we have left?
“Almost there, guys! Three more minutes and we can head home.”
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“Oooo,” said Micah. “That means I don’t have to be so careful!”
A fence of sharpened icicles shot out from the sides of the platform, catching another eel in the stomach as it leapt up.
I floated a sawblade into the wing joint of a slim green bird-monster as it emerged from a door in the domed ceiling. The impact didn’t kill it outright, but it sent it fluttering ineffectually down into the water below. It wouldn’t reach us before time was up and we were sent home. Micah’s gas mask concealed his expression, but I could tell from his posture as he eyed the water around us that he was thinking about trying to freeze the whole damn thing. “You can cut loose a little, but don’t wear yourself out. It’s been twenty-four days since the ground-swimmers arrived, so we’ve got another Threat due today.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Micah’s shoulders slumped.
I sighed. Two battle-crazed boys. I couldn’t really blame them. They were kids, not trained soldiers, and fighting made up so much of our life now. Still, it worried me a little, wondering how they’d deal with a return to normal once this all ended.
Then I caught myself. That’s crazy, I thought. Even if we stop the monsters from coming tomorrow, life won’t be normal for a long, long time. If ever! People know aliens are real now. We - our family - owns technology so far beyond anything humanity could create that it might as well be magic. If I need to get the boys counseling or therapy or whatever… those are great problems to have. Much better than “a monster might paralyze and kill them slowly in their sleep.” If we can get to a point where mental health is our biggest worry, well… I yearn for that.
I felt another attacker coming from below and stepped aside before Gavin could “help” me get out of the way, my sword striking the moment the ground split open. I hadn’t even needed to use Assisted Strike on that one! Life Sense and my own experience had been enough to let me execute a perfect execution on our attacker. I was still using my left hand to swing my weapon, but an encouraging portion of my injured right hand had regrown. In another month, it ought to be as good as new. And hey, with all the left-handed practice I’d gotten, I was almost ambidextrous now! My life didn’t seem likely to present a chance to re-enact the “I’m not left-handed” swordfighting scene from The Princess Bride, but you never knew. If an opportunity arose, I’d be able to go for it!
Helen and my family didn’t speak much for the remainder of the Challenge, taking out attackers with quiet efficiency until the casing snapped around us to take us home.
Another obstacle cleared, I said to Ariel, trying to distract myself from the stomach-churning vistas during the transfer. Another step closer to victory. How are we doing on claiming the oceans?
<36.3% liquid surface claimed. 8.4% land surface claimed.>
And I hadn’t had to ask about the land area! It had been easy to predict that I’d want that information too, but I was still happy Ariel had volunteered it. Taking initiative didn’t come naturally to her, but she was getting better.
And how many linked users do you have?, I asked.
If I could have breathed right now, I would have gasped. Someone died?
Right, you can’t tell me. But… then… you were able to link to another user! Your backup plan worked. We don’t need to be so terrified. This is actually good news!
We knew where I was, of course, and we’d located one other person, a man in Winnipeg, Canada. He had a bunch of US military guarding him now, just like I did, but the other two Linked Users were a mystery. Our best guess, based on satellite observations from Voices for Non-Citizens, was that one was somewhere in Sudan and the other was in Australia, but we weren’t even sure of that. Over the course of the last two challenges, we’d made tenuous contact with people across the globe, but mostly in the form of Ruler-Follower relationships, so the amount of information we could pass was limited. Local groups were searching for my remaining counterparts, but if they’d found them, we hadn’t yet gotten word.
Most likely, we’d been too late for one of them.
I’d gotten a list of people with the Compatibility Specialty - the same one I had. Ariel was happy to give me that list, and information about their locations. I’d even physically written out the information. Once we got back, I could ask her for a new list and compare it. Anyone missing from it would probably be her new Linked User… since our new status gave us the privilege of some privacy.
I’m sorry to hear that, I told her. But wait… he didn’t even try to claim the Linked User spot? What systems did he target?
Holy shit. So if he’d gotten all of the connections…
Would you lose control of more systems?
I shuddered. Can I give you a command now? If you ever lose the ability to verify my authority, please keep doing your best to protect humanity.
I shook my head. Let’s do our best to avoid that, then.
I know. I’m just trying to be encouraging. For me, as well as you. Tell me I’m wrong here, but… if your access to that database has been limited that severely, there’s no way you’re going to beat Hamlet to the punch the next time a Linked User goes down.