Danielle could actually feel the ‘skin’ of a privacy Skill similar to Bubble of Silence when she entered; it stretched until the tent flap fell closed behind her, and then the Ranger sitting inside snapped it efficiently to the ground, bringing her properly inside the Skill even as she physically handed Danielle a plastic ziplock with three balls. “Two-ball goes in your preferred candidate’s box, one-ball in your backup choice, zero-ball in your negative choice. Any votes you don’t want to cast can go to the empty box. Ziplock goes in the recycling bin by the back flaps,” the Ranger recited in a bored tone of voice.

  Danielle gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’ve literally said that 200 times in the last two or three hours, haven’t you?” she asked, moving to Lauren’s box and dropping in the green ball with the number 2 on it. The little flap under the hole sprang back up as the ball fell past it, and Danielle heard a click - perhaps the promised locking mechanism to prevent extra votes. She didn't hear how far the ball fell before it landed, though, so maybe the flap was also keeping the privacy Skill out of the box.

  “Only if we’re almost done,” the bored Ranger said.

  Danielle put her black ball in the box for the Safety in Order girl, and paused, considering whether to actually vote for Cassy or respect her preference for staying out of the council. Nobody seemed to care that Danielle didn’t want to be on the council, but then, she had convened the party meeting of her own free will, and she’d realized the risk well before they took the final vote to ratify the charter.

  “I’m in the middle of the pack for candidate votes, so yeah, almost done,” Danielle finally said, spinning the one-ball on her fingers. The trick worked better than it usually did – was that her Dexterity Improvement showing? After a few seconds of deliberation, she finally tossed the ball lightly into Ember’s box. “Catalogs are outside the tent?” she asked.

  “Yep. Good luck on the election,” the bored Ranger said.

  “Thanks,” Danielle said, trying not to sound ironic. The inside of the tent was eerily quiet; this woman was probably anchoring a two-way sound barrier, and depending on how long she’d been in here, might not even have heard the speeches. She was just being polite, so Danielle gave her a polite, “Have a good day,” in turn, and stepped out.

  The angry Ranger was waiting for her with catalogs in hand. “Here,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry I lost it earlier. You don’t – you don’t even understand how – no, this isn’t an apology-but. I’m sorry for losing it. The System has marked you for greatness in literally six different ways, and I have no business disrespecting you just because you’ve misinterpreted one of them that even I don’t properly understand. It would probably help if you told your local court about a few of them, though!”

  “Telling the local not-quite-elevated Water about one didn’t help much,” Danielle countered. “She had me thinking I’d done something wrong by unlocking element Skills, and then she got mad at me for asking if it was a problem. Also, did you notice the rocks two hours ago?”

  The Ranger pressed her lips down to a thin line. “I can see why you’d feel more threatened than honored,” she admitted tightly. “It’s hard to take, you know, seeing a denier with – with things like – ” she broke off and simply gestured to Danielle.

  “Like all of my everything?” Danielle summarized with a sigh. “I liked being obscure, you know? There’s nothing wrong with obscure. Unless it stops you from helping the people around you, I guess, that seems to be how I keep getting myself in trouble – spreading around the warnings, working with the Healers, admitting to having Skills that turn out to be rare. I don’t even know what all of your six things are, I don’t think – not sure I even want to, really.”

  “You do if you want to stay low profile,” Ranger Miriam said, coming around the corner of the tent. “Half your problem is how you drop massive, big-deal information like it was just an everyday thing.”

  “Yeah, well. Tell me another time. Catch up with me at the question tent, maybe,” Danielle said. “I have to get inside and get my ‘Government Pretending to Care’ package, and besides, I can see Ember standing right over there, trying to look like she’s not eavesdropping.”

  The angry Ranger sighed. “I can probably clue you in using general enough terms that it’s not giving too much away. The first one is what you need to see Healer Flo about. The second one is your current active Career. Your third one is, shall we say, river-like. The fourth is sheer impossible numbers – well, I should be more careful using the word impossible around you, but improbable numbers, though the third one obviously helps with that. The last two are Classes you haven’t taken yet, but if you haven’t realized you need extra Classes yet, well. You do. Your passive leveling is going to speed up, following the current of your river.”

  Danielle froze. “Oh no. Please tell me that doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means.”

  Ranger Mirriam said, “I have no idea how you’re getting meaning out of that last line, honestly.”

  The angry Ranger said, “Look, you should know by now even if you didn’t when you first hit the Dome; your passive mana absorption, whether to base level or whatever Class you’re pointed to, is equal to your base mana generation. Your base level goes up? Passive absorption to the pointer also goes up. Does that reminder paint in enough of the picture for you to fill in the rest?”

  Danielle closed her eyes, feeling the headache pressing in on her again. “I did say I was taking Light Shaper next. If Healer Flo has business for me, I guess I’ll expedite, because I do see where you’re going with that and the relevance to extra Classes.”

  “You do know that the thing about not leveling too fast is fact and not rumor or conspiracy, right?” the angry Ranger asked.

  “Of course I do,” Danielle said. “Flo told me over a week ago – who do you think has been trying to spread the word around camp? I even told the Systemist meeting, though they seemed more interested in hearing about the level 2 general Skills. Maybe they already knew, I don’t know. I need more water. Thanks for the extra warning. See you around, maybe.”

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  She had taken all of three steps away from the tent when she heard, “Now Hear This: A message to all Exiles of Firmitatem on layer 1, from the Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 Outpost. All buildings are now finished voting or are receiving their final candidate votes. This is your thirty-minute warning to return to your rooms to receive Care Packages. As a reminder, we will make only two attempts to deliver these, once now and once in two weeks. Only you can sign for your care package, and care packages will be delivered only to your originally assigned room. First delivery attempt will commence in thirty minutes. Skill ends.”

  Danielle started for her room, frankly grateful for the excuse. A few paces from the tent, Ember called out to her, “Hey, ‘medic.’ Who’d you vote for?”

  “I voted for the candidate I nominated!” Danielle told her with forced cheer and kept moving. After a few seconds of internal debate, she added, “And my second choice was you!”

  “You didn’t even vote for yourself?!” Ember exclaimed.

  “I never actually planned to be a candidate,” Danielle called back to her, nearly yelling just because of the distance now. “I look forward to working with you, though!” she added, and broke into an actual jog. “Ugh, what’s wrong with me? Do I want them calling me a prophet next?” she asked herself in a whisper.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Ember said, jogging after her. “What makes you think so? (Dang, you’re fast.) Wait up!”

  Danielle had to slow down anyway, because she was at the corner of the walkway, and wanted to jump down and go into her room – preferably after Ember went past.

  “Look, I’m just guessing,” she told the Systemist girl. “It’s just that as best we could figure out yesterday, your party and mine are the biggest parties in camp. Since I got nominated after all, and my speech turned into a whole dramatic thing instead of just a quick verification by the Rangers that half the paranoids would ignore anyway, well. I’d like to believe that more girls than I expected will have voted based on analyzing everyone’s goals and plans and stuff, but these are the same people that were voting for Middle School student council less than a year ago, so I think it’s going to fall out as you, then me, then either Lauren or Cassy. It’d be different if we had more of our schools’ respective movers and shakers in our building, but as it stands? Yeah. I wouldn’t put money on it, but that’s my guess.”

  “Huh.” Ember stared at her for a long moment. “I did hear everything Ranger Dolina said to you.”

  “Great. Any chance of actually convincing you to keep it quiet?” Danielle asked tiredly.

  “I will,” Ember said. “I just - are you really going to take the Light Shaper Class, um, soon?”

  “Well, it’s that or Fire Shaper, and I’m kind of worried about what would happen if I accidentally became the first official Fire Shaper in camp,” Danielle said, then almost immediately regretted it. She didn’t need to be blurting out this stuff, what was wrong with her?

  Ember paled. “Fire Shaper is critical for wildfire control, though,” she said, though it sounded to Danielle like it was costing her something to get the words out.

  “Can you honestly tell me it wouldn’t cause you problems if I got it before you?” Danielle asked. “Given that I’m apparently terrible at keeping my own secrets.”

  “It would, but not as deadly a problem as an out-of-control campfire,” Ember said.

  “I think I’ll stick with Light Shaper,” Danielle said. “Jealous and/or religiously angry people with swords are deadly too. Tell me the specific Skill that helps with fire control, and I might work on that, though.”

  “Fire Control is what it’s called,” Ember said. “The obvious unlock is by actually controlling fires – be the one who adds wood, rearranges wood, banks the coals, re-lights it from coals, puts out the fire, tends the fire. That’s half of what they were doing when you were cooking last Sunday and Zephyr came over to talk to you.”

  “They were working on Fire Control? Huh. I thought Robin was going for water,” Danielle said.

  “He wants water, but he’s got a smoke Skill, so fire and wind are his best bets for a rapid elevation,” Ember said. “And right now, speed is everything.”

  Danielle snorted. “Haste makes waste. Speed is only everything if someone is in contention for the council – uh, the court I mean. I think. I don’t know what I’m talking about, I should shut up and go take a nap.”

  “Huh. Sleep well, I guess,” Ember said, reluctantly moving off. She looked back. “Aren’t you heading for the stairs?”

  “I’m in the bottom floor,” Danielle admitted, dropping into the walkway.

  “Oh, hah. Right, well. Have a good day,” Ember said, and finally walked off.

  Danielle waited for her to be around the end of the building, then a few seconds more, then quietly opened the door to her room, stepped inside, and closed it equally quietly. In the main room, she could hear Sadie, Heather, and Akari discussing the possibilities of the “weird” care packages; Heather said something she didn’t quite catch, and the three of them laughed.

  “I’m back!” she called. “I’m refilling my canteen, be there in a second!”

  “Welcome home – are you officially a town council member yet?” Akari asked.

  “There were still a couple candidates in the voting line when I left,” Danielle said. “I suspect it’ll be me and Ember for sure, though, and then either Cassy or Lauren. The rest either didn’t give good reasons for people to vote for them, or gave reasons that only sound good to the paranoid, the severely misinformed, and the insane.”

  “Your proof-of-miracle stunt probably guaranteed you the Theocracy Party vote,” Akari said. “I’d question whether that was a good thing or not, but it beats letting them get in a candidate who actually thought the camp should be a theocracy. I may not be a professional historian, but even I know that always sounds good until power goes to people’s heads, and then it’s all bad theology and abuse of power and things going wrong.”

  Danielle flopped down on her bed. “I’m exhausted,” she said into her pillow.

  “I can’t hear you,” Sadie said.

  Danielle rolled over. “I’m super tired,” she said. “I think it’s the short night of sleep, after the long night of nightmares. Plus stress, because that was stressful. Especially the part where they were throwing kinda big rocks at me. I’m considering a nap. I’m not sure you need to stop your – ”

  “Now Hear This: A message to Council Members Danielle Falconer (called Medic Falconer), Ember Stanton, and Cassiopeia Stellana (called Cassy) of the town council of Camp Constanza, from the Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 Outpost. Congratulations on winning the town council representative slots for your district. Please report to the Catalog Questions tables at 5pm to be introduced to the rest of the town council, and receive a small congratulation present from the Sending Authority. Oh, and dinner, since we do realize we’re taking up a lot of your time today – nothing special, just basic brown-bag meals so you won’t be distracted figuring out how to get dinner during your first council meeting. Since we realize you don’t all have clocks available, a 20 minute warning will precede your meeting time. Skill ends.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Danielle said.

  “Hearing voices again?” Heather asked snidely.

  Danielle sighed. “It was a Now Hear This message directed to – “

  “Now Hear This: A message to Medic Falconer from the Healer Flo via Firmitatem Rangers Layer 1 message relay. Please come to the Catalog Questions tent as soon as your care package is delivered; we have some urgent business. It’s not just Field Medic this time. Message Ends.”

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