As the crowd around them laughed and started planning to meet by the river the next week for a group picnic, Danielle glanced over to Heather and Sadie; the look on their faces pretty much read as ‘what have you done,’ she thought. That seemed fair. She looked around for Cassy and Akari.

  Akari, it turned out, was standing right behind her. “You know that’s not going to be the end of that,” she said, very quietly. Danielle thought it was probably true in more than one sense, but she was pretty sure Akari was referring to the confrontation with the Wolf Pack.

  “It wasn’t the beginning of it either,” Danielle told her. “Did you see the guy with the bent sword?”

  “Yeah. He should be embarrassed, carrying that thing around,” Akari said.

  “Well, that’s the guy I knocked down when I was getting Nathan to help with the cougar problem,” Danielle said, “and I strongly suspect his sword got that way when I threw it off a second-floor balcony, so if he is embarrassed, I’m the one that embarrassed him. I had to speak up, because I think they came here looking for me.”

  “I think so too,” Dana said, approaching from the side. “You, or us. At least you’ve been upgraded from rabbit to dog, huh?”

  “Oh, hooray,” Danielle deadpanned.

  “Do you think getting out of town will really keep them from coming after us?” Dana asked.

  “No, but I think if we put the river to our backs, that’ll be one direction they can’t easily attack from,” Danielle said. “Here, they can sneak up on us from the south forest, the east forest, or any of the balconies on building six. An open spot by the river only offers that kind of cover on one major direction, and involves a lot fewer completely unknown bystanders. I don’t exactly mind the observers, and I have no problem with more people coming afterward for a picnic hangout, but rumor has it there are a couple wolfish girls in our building, and not knowing if they’re among the people watching up there gives me the creeps.”

  “Ah. That makes a lot of sense,” Dana agreed.

  “Um, hi,” someone said from off to the other side. Danielle turned to see a pair of the archers from the party of six. “I’m Juan Smith, and this is Anita, we’re from the Six Points hunting party,” the boy introduced himself and his partner, and offered his hand to shake.

  “Nice to meet you Juan,” Danielle said, shaking his hand. “I’m Danielle Falconer, SHAD hunting party.”

  “I just wanted to thank you for saying that, about how we were protecting ourselves,” Juan said. “I don’t exactly think of myself as a wolf but I don’t care for being called a sheep either.”

  “It was nothing – I mean, stating the obvious, really,” Danielle said. “I don’t know how they expected this to go down, but practically everyone here was armed, so walking up to like 30 or 40 of us and demanding a rabbit tax of all things? That was never going to end well.”

  “You’re completely right about them not ruling building seven, too. Just for the record.” Juan said. “The pack may be one of the bigger orgs in camp, but there are still only a dozen of them, and some of them are in building 3.”

  “Rumor has it they’re up to 20, including girls,” Anita corrected.

  “That’s still only five rooms worth of people,” Juan said, “across at least three buildings, and everyone else hates them. They’re not going to get elected to rule a single floor, let alone a whole building.”

  “That’s a good point,” Danielle said. “I have to keep reminding myself, there are over a thousand people in this camp. 20 bad apples isn’t a huge number, even if they were all in one place. Not to mention, some of those 20 people might change their minds when they learn about rapid leveling maybe keeping you from going back Inside. At the fields around the Dome of Decision, everyone was bragging about how fast they’d get back in, but they hadn’t told us about spacing out levels to avoid mutations back then. Now we know that anyone who hits level 10 in less than ten months is probably locked out forever. It changes things.”

  Juan frowned. “Yeah – if that’s true, it changes a lot of things. The girls from my party told me you said that. How do you know, though? Was it in one of the books?”

  “I learned it from the Rangers,” Danielle said. “Apparently, it’s a thing we’d have already known if we’d gone through high school before being Sent. There seem to be a lot of things like that, actually. From how the Rangers talk, I get the idea that the adults all see this stuff as common knowledge, and the Sending Authority kind of forgot that people commonly get that knowledge when they’re a little older than we are, here.”

  “Well, that’s terrifying,” Anita said. “What else are they not telling us?”

  “If only we actually knew, right?” Danielle said. “It’s going to be super weird when we do get back Inside, too, because normally Sent finish school first, but with us, what are we going to do, go back to high school starting at age 19, or even 24?”

  “If we can get Inside in time to only miss one year of school, it won’t be so bad,” Juan said. “Being stuck Outside all winter is still going to stink, but it should be doable in a year.”

  “I dunno,” Danielle said. “The Rangers said that Sent usually come back in five to ten years. There has to be a reason that’s the normal spread. Besides, even if you hunted enough cougars or whatever to get back Inside in time for school next year, where would you go to school? Everyone else in your class is out here.”

  Juan and Anita both frowned at her. “You didn’t say that before, about the five to ten years,” Anita said.

  “Well, that’s because I don’t know the details,” Danielle admitted. “Maybe it is possible to get back Inside in a year, if you push it as hard as you safely can; I just don’t know. I think most Sent want to get back in as soon as possible, though, so if it takes most people at least five years, there’s probably a reason I don’t know about yet. Without knowing what that reason is, I can’t say whether it’s something someone could overcome, or whether it’s another important hole in our educations.”

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  “Ugh, this all stinks like a burst-field,” Juan said. (“Language!” Anita protested.) “It seemed so easy on day one, you know? Even if we stuck to their plan - 1200 mana is a lot of rabbits, but it’s doable. Two rabbits a day, or one of those giant-ground-squirrel things, level up in four weeks easy; faster once we found even bigger stuff. Now you’re saying, can’t go faster, it’ll get you locked out as a mutant, but four weeks is pretty close to a month anyway, so maybe ten months; fine. Then on top of that, maybe some other reason but nobody knows it?”

  “Well, I do know one thing that’s wrong with that math for sure,” Danielle said. “Level 2 costs 1200 mana, but level 3 is 1800. I’m betting level four will cost more than level three, but I haven’t exactly found a chart.”

  Juan and Anita looked like she’d just told them the sky was actually red. “It’s not the same?” Anita said.

  “How do you know,” Juan demanded.

  “I’m level 2, I can see the cost for the next level in my interface,” Danielle said.

  “Any chance you know the secret to seeing other people’s interfaces?” Juan asked testily.

  “Um, maybe? Level 2 has default Skill unlocks for that,” Danielle told him.

  “Can you see my interface?” Juan asked in alarm.

  “No, I was kind of leveling in the middle of an emergency, I took stuff I was already aware of and read the actual notifications later,” Danielle said. “There are separate Skills for reading people’s Systems or reading creature Systems, and a pair of Skills you have to take together that will let you identify a Skill that’s just been used on you. Oh, and a Skill that lets you know the mana density around you and stuff.”

  “The one for seeing creature Systems sounds useful for hunting,” Dana said. “It might let you know how much mana a creature would give you, so you could focus on stuff that’s worth your time.”

  “Yeah, but with the Wolf Pack on everyone’s minds, I think it’s a safe bet the one for reading people’s Systems will be more popular in a month, when everyone that isn’t running into emergencies every few days starts getting to level 2,” Akari said. “It might not show you a lot at first, but when our guide was giving us the orientation that first day, she implied that it’s pretty easy to see people’s organizations, and I’m betting that’s how.”

  Juan looked thoughtful. “If it only showed, like, level, Class, and orgs, I could live with that,” he said.

  “Do you think the Wolf guys have it?” Anita asked anxiously.

  Danielle shrugged. “If their so-called alpha is really level 3 like the rumors say, he has to know they exist. Whether he’d see them as valuable? Hard to say.”

  “I’m glad I know about them,” Dana said. “It’s not as big a deal as the warning about mutations, but it’s another hole filled in, and I can plan better now that I know.”

  “Oh, well, glad to help then,” Danielle said.

  “Do the Rangers know you’re going around telling everyone all these secrets?” Juan asked.

  “They’re not secrets,” Danielle said. “The Ranger’s Guide book mentions general Skills, even though it doesn’t list them out; in a month or two, literally everyone will know what they are for level 2. The mana cost for level 3 is the same – I found out early because I leveled early, but pretty soon everyone will know. The warning about not leveling twice in a month? They told me because I was there when they came to heal people, and they could see that I needed to know; I asked if I could share that and they said yes.”

  “Did you really kill four people?” Juan continued.

  “What? No! Where did you get that idea?” Danielle sputtered.

  “You said you’d seen four mana bursts,” Juan said.

  “Including the wildcat, yes, I have,” Danielle said, “but the cat wasn’t a person. It did kill a person, which accounts for another one. The third one was a murderer, and I did land the fatal blow on that one, so I have a single Deadly Defender tag; the fourth was the guy he killed.”

  “Huh. I guess that’s what your friend meant about running into emergencies,” Anita said.

  “Yeah. We also got attacked by a wild mana monster, but it was pretty low-tier, so I didn’t count that one,” Danielle said.

  “Besides the cougar?” Dana asked.

  “Yeah, it was some kind of vine-creature. It tried to steal our rabbit,” Danielle said. “I think I got more just from my assist on the cougar than our whole party got out of the vine monster, though.”

  “So a cougar’s good for leveling up, then?” Juan asked.

  “Well, if it’s three levels above you, and you survive the fight,” Danielle said. “It took out three people from a hunting party of five, though; one died and the other two needed serious healing. The Rangers had to send their Healers for the last one, and it took two Healers from camp to take care of the one they even could take care of. It cost a lot of token mana, too.”

  “You are an endless fountain of roadblocks,” Juan said.

  “I’m – sorry? I know it’s probably disappointing if you were really hoping to be inside before winter, but it’s still better to know the size of the mountain you’re climbing than try to climb it blind, right?” Danielle said.

  “I guess,” he said glumly.

  “Look at it this way,” Danielle said. “Everything you hunt has two purposes – it’s mana, and it’s either food or materials. Or both – three purposes, then. Hunt enough, and you can trade it to people who want to be safer and spend more time doing other things, and you’ll still be the first one inside. Maybe it’ll take you two years instead of one because of things we don’t know yet; but any time up to year five you’re ahead of the curve!”

  “Yeah, but any time after the first year, my chances of getting back to a normal life are kind of shot,” Juan said. “There’s always a few people who get held back a year; it’d be embarrassing but not that weird, you know? I’m in the younger class out here, so I’d be joining the class that’s still there, no problem. Two or three years difference, though? That’s different.”

  “Being level 10 and legally adult when everyone else is still a youth might be pretty different, too,” Danielle said. “I guess you’d have to work that out with the Sending Authority when you showed up to demonstrate Aura Control and turn in your Advancement Token and stuff.”

  “If you had Aura Control, you’d be safe to have in the neighborhoods anyway, so maybe they’d have you do home tutoring,” Akari said. “It’d be a convenient way to get around the question of what grade level you are.”

  “What? I don’t want – the goal is to go back to school and be normal!” Juan exclaimed.

  Danielle took a breath to say something else, then hesitated. “I sincerely hope you find a way to make that happen,” she said. “The Rangers do seem to be able to answer questions if they’re in town already, and we know they’ll be here for the catalog thing in a few weeks. Maybe you could run your revised plan by them that day, and see if they know of any other gotchas you need to watch out for. It’s possible that older Sent just aren’t as desperately motivated as a lot of us are – they don’t have to worry about how they’re going to finish their education, after all. The Rangers seem to have a lot of former Sent, though, so they’ll know things about how Returning goes.”

  Juan narrowed his eyes at her. “You thought of another gotcha already, didn’t you,” he accused.

  “Well, maybe, but it’s kind of philosophical and I’m not positive it’s true,” Danielle said. “There’s no point in being a downer over something I can’t even confirm. If the Rangers say your plan is theoretically possible, but it’s just too hard? Prove ‘em wrong!”

  “Hah! You better believe I will!” Juan said. “The Six Points are pointed straight back Inside by the shortest route!”

  “Here’s hoping you show us all the way!” Danielle said with a grin.

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