Passing through the gate, Danielle was practically assaulted by the noise from the growing crowd on the other side. The kids – the new adults – the young people sitting in the squares were all chatting loudly across the boundaries.

  A Ranger greeted her brusquely. “Name?” she asked, handing Danielle a juice carton.

  “Danielle Falconer.”

  The Ranger tapped at a data pad. “Your room number is 6024. Go find the matching square and sit down in it. You’re allowed to talk about whatever, but no moving squares and no shouting; all the kids still inside get to make their decision without coercion, same as you did.”

  “I don’t think a few hints about how the Access Point interface works count as coercion,” Danielle said dryly. “I could’ve saved at least a full minute if I’d just known the right terminology up front, instead of fumbling to figure out the right wording for my choices.”

  The Ranger raised an eyebrow at her. “Your feedback is noted. Find square 6024 please.”

  Danielle resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him long enough to get out of his immediate line of sight, and examined the field. Up close and free to adjust her point of view, it was clear that all the squares had numbers painted in them. The lowest number was 1001, and five large blocks were defined by the lead digit of their numbers – one, three, five, six, or seven; for some reason, six was the only even-numbered block. Within the thousands-place blocks, the hundreds places of the room numbers could be zero, one, two, or three, but no higher. The numbers were sub-grouped by those digits –the 300s were furthest from the road. Within the sub-groups, the range of numbers was 01 to 25, so her spot would be near the back corner of the 6/0 group and subgroup, on the end away from the gate.

  Sure enough, walking up the open strip between the 6000s and 7000s, she found that the last room numbers in each row all ended with either 12 or 25. 6024 was only the second row from the road, second room from the end. No one was in 6025 yet (or maybe they’d been and gone already) so she didn’t even have to worry about avoiding other people’s feet or hands or bags as she moved to her assigned square and sat near the back-center, not blocking the number painted along the line closest to the road. She took a minute to set all her bags down, and stretch, and look around for anything resembling a restroom. It was construction-site port-a-potties, to her bemusement, lined up across the road, with the truck that brought them parked just beyond; a Ranger stood under a nearby sign reading “Bag Babysitting,” with a couple of wooden crates.

  Danielle chuckled, and opened her juice carton. It was hot, and she was starting to wish she’d filled her canteen before getting on the bus. No one else was in her square yet, which stood to reason given the way they’d been lined up, so she soon found herself listening in to conversations around her (hah, eavesdropping already, after she just told herself she didn’t need that Skill).

  Most people were, understandably enough, either talking about what they saw and got during the advancement, or about what they were planning to do next. From the discussion about the Advancement, a few things started to jump out at her fairly quickly. First, nearly all of what they got when they first activated the token was the same: There was always the upgrade to Adult, downgrade to Exile, a new Career and automatic “career change” from Academy Student to the new Career. They were always granted Skill: Token Manifestation, and always get the same three token templates. They were always granted the Payment Plan Trait, and they are always given 800 mana for advancement.

  The Career was not always Survivor, though. Some people were Campers, some were declared Lost Boy or Lost Girl, a few were Woodsmen (including a pair of girls who were loudly bragging that they would get better Career Skills than any “mere” Camper). There was talk of some people getting Minimalist as a Career, but apparently no one in the field at the moment had it, so either the people who did had moved on, or it was just a rumor. A couple of tall muscular boys a few rows back in the 7000s block were bragging about getting Predator; Danielle found most of their boasting unnerving at best.

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  Of course, a lot of what people were saying about the Careers was speculation; Careers absorbed mana slowly, building up to one Skill or Trait at a time. You could influence what came out by what you did while it was building, but in the end, the System decided what ability to drop from a Career. Nobody would really know which Careers were best until they’d all had time to build up the mana for some Career Skills. It should be faster Outside than it had been in school, though – so, more than one per year.

  Camper, Survivor, and Lost Boy/Girl seemed to be the most common Careers, in that order. Again, though, it wasn’t as if anyone had solid information – at least, no one who was talking. The patrolling Rangers were on high alert, watching the edges of the cleared area, and keeping an eye on the field, too (especially those Predator boys). They were not participating in the conversation at all, even the ones who walked between the blocks of room-number squares.

  The Skills and Traits people unlocked during the Advancement were apparently wildly different from person to person. Danielle supposed this was where the effects of life history and recent preparation really started to show. She was unnerved to realize that most of the people talking had notably fewer unlocks than she did. It was pretty common to get Study, Staff, Sword, Bow, and one other Skill tree from the “Academy Student” search block, but most only got one or two unlocks from their new Career, and they could be individual Skills or Traits as easily as Skill trees or Trait pools – Danielle had four, counting Trait: Planner.

  The “Lost” Careers usually granted a Pathfinding Skill tree, “Survivors” almost always got the Determination Skill tree, and Campers usually got the Campsite and/or Campfire Cooking Skill trees; beyond that what came up was highly variable. A number of others in various Careers got the Observation Skill tree and Trait pool, always together if they appeared at all; it appeared in both Survivor and Camper lists, but none of the Lost Boys or Lost Girls seem to have it. As for individual Skills and Traits, literally everyone had “uncovered” a Body trait at some level, though for some it was 0. The Predator boys both bragged of having Body 3. Likewise, everyone had Mind at some level. If the level of either was 2 or higher, it brought along its associated Skill tree (for mind, it was Puzzler, which Danielle didn’t altogether understand, but figured she could look into later). Beyond those, most people had one additional Skill tree, with a solid minority who had two, but what that one (or two) could be seemed to have dozens of options.

  Individual Skills weren’t uncommon, and those were often unique, but again, most people had from one to four beyond their full Skill tree unlocks; not massive numbers. Danielle herself only had three, and that was if she included “Hidden Trait: Mana Improvement,” which apparently wasn’t an unlocked choice so much as a belated announcement. With seventeen unlocked Skill trees compared to an average of nine or ten, though, she found herself increasingly disinclined to share her own results; she couldn’t imagine Vanessa, for example, taking it as anything but bragging if she admitted to that, no matter how humbly she tried to present it.

  She did mention getting Improvised Tools, when some girls near her were discussing how various Skills and Skill trees got unlocked, and suggested it might have been because she brought a number of things from the store that she intended to use in ways beyond what they were theoretically made for. The idea spread across the field in waves, and eventually a consensus developed that yes, that option popped up a fair amount, and having a lot of gear with creative uses in mind might be a common trait among people who got that Skill tree. Improvised Weapons, it seemed, sometimes came along for the ride, but could also be absent, or could appear by itself.

  Nobody seemed to be mentioning Mana Improvement, so Danielle kept it to herself. It was honestly a little unnerving. Her daily mana generation had jumped all the way to 12, and from various comments, practically everyone else had a mana generation of 6. That also seemed like a difference that wouldn’t go over well if she just casually mentioned it to the crowd at large.

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