Akari held up a hand to shush her, and Danielle fell silent while Akari pressed her ear to the door. Everyone in the room waited for a long, tense minute. “Girl said we were so rude, and she can’t believe you hit her staff that hard; boy said she was asking for it and they better get out of here before they made things worse. They agreed that if you complained to Zephyr and he made a stink about it, the lead six would be mad at them. I think they left around the end of the building.”

  Danielle activated Detect Mana Source. “Yeah, I can see them – oh, I think they’re knocking on the door of the room behind us?” she watched as someone in 6025 moved towards the door, and her mana source fluttered with the use of a Skill. “Yeah, they must actually be going door-to-door. I’m amazed we didn’t cross paths with them on our way in.”

  “Well, I think we’ve only got six or eight rooms with people in them back here,” Akari pointed out, “and we can be pretty sure Cassy’s roommates wouldn’t give much time to people who introduce themselves as Systemists.”

  “I think I saw them on the second floor when we were walking between the buildings,” Sadie said. “They must have started at the top and worked their way down.”

  “Ugh. Political parties,” Danielle said, returning to her bed and sitting down. “Three political parties and two armies? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised about the first part of that. It’s what happens when there are elections Inside, right? The political parties go campaigning?”

  “Maybe we should’ve let them tell us who their candidate is, so we’d know not to vote for her,” Akari said.

  “Better a Systemist than a Wolf, though,” Sadie said.

  Akari sighed. “That’s true. I hope we have a better choice than that, though.”

  “Maybe if we don’t know who we want, we should talk it through and figure out what we want,” Heather said. “Danielle’s good at taking a bunch of random ideas and turning them into a coherent plan; maybe she can give the winners a suggestion to work with and we can win the politics regardless of how the election goes, that way.”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” Danielle said. “We should talk about that after dinner, when we have Cynthia to give us a Systemist perspective and make sure we’re not putting in anything they’d feel like they have to fight with. I mean, it shouldn’t be a big problem, but you know.”

  “Cynthia and Zephyr – the guys are supposed to join us after supper, remember?” Akari said. “I just hope he doesn’t actually try to convince us to vote with his party.”

  “I don’t think that’s really his thing,” Danielle said, “but either way, it’s a problem for after the nap.” So saying, she lay down again – just in time for another knock on the door. “If they’re all going to knock on our door, I hope they get it over with soon,” Danielle grumbled.

  “I’m good for another Hostility Sense,” Akari said, heading for the door again. “I was about to be maxed. Heather gets the next one, though.” This time, she opened the door a great deal more carefully. “Hello?”

  “Hello, we’re representatives of the Rapid Return Army,” said the person on the other side. “Would you be willing to talk to us for a few minutes about our sys-org and tomorrow’s election?”

  “Just a sec,” Akari said, and closed the door. She turned back to the others. “They asked politely and didn’t crowd the door,” she said. “Do we want to maybe go out and sit outside the room for a while, where we can see them coming, and see what we can learn about the situation?”

  Danielle groaned again, but still got up and got her staff again. “Yeah, OK. It’ll be better than acting out a vid-stream running gag where someone knocks on the door every time I try to lie down.”

  Akari opened the door again. “You actually waited! For being polite like that, you’ve earned our attention. Just give us a sec to fill water bottles, we might have gotten a little dehydrated this morning. We’ll be out in a minute. We can sit on the grass right above the walkway, there.”

  “Oh – you want us to walk around, then?” someone outside said.

  Akari shook her head. “Only if you have trouble climbing the wall. If you wait, we’ll help you up it, though; we’re getting used to it. The best place for a cooking fire is back there, if the corner’s already taken, and walking all the way around is annoying.”

  Everyone filled up their canteens, and Danielle took a dose of ibuprofen. Then they filed outside, climbed the retaining wall, and helped the girl up. There was already a boy at the top. The six of them sat down in a circle, and the two from the Rapid Return Army (“we call it RRA for short”) started explaining that their political party was focused on making sure the laws of the camp didn’t prevent anyone from pursuing their fastest possible return to the Inside. On the face of it, that sounded good; and as soon as Heather admitted that out loud, the two started in on a pitch to get them all to join their organization. A few questions later, however, it became clear that “fastest possible return to the Inside” actually meant, “killing as many people as it takes to get out of here.”

  “That’s why we’re an army, and our members are soldiers,” the boy explained earnestly, as if he wasn’t talking about mass murder (or at least, serial killing). “When soldiers fight, they don’t get murder tags because war deaths aren’t murders. There’s a different tag, but it’s like Deadly Defender – it says, yeah, you killed people, but you’re not going to go off your nut and kill just anyone.”

  “You’re not legal soldiers of Firmitatem, though,” Danielle pointed out. “The Inside government still might not like it, and there’s no guarantee the System will recognize it just because you used the words. There could be more requirements to be considered a soldier for System purposes – Class or Career stuff, even. Besides, if you get mutations from leveling too fast, it’s out of the government’s hands either way – at that point, it’s a mana containment problem, and you’re stuck Outside forever.”

  “That’s just a rumor,” the girl scoffed. “Nobody ever got a mutation from leveling up – the whole point of the System is it prevents mutations.”

  Danielle frowned and leaned forward. “It’s not just a rumor,” she said seriously. “I levelled up to two with a Deadly Defender, and the Rangers warned me not to level again for at least a month, because the closer together you get two levels, the higher the chance that mutations come along with it. The way they said it, they implied that even after a month it’s not perfectly safe, just unlikely. They were really concerned about me, and got pushy about convincing me to re-point my absorption to my Class to protect against another unexpected level-up too soon.”

  The two ‘soldiers’ stared at her for a moment, a swirl of emotions playing across their faces. Danielle’s hand tightened on her staff as she realized she might have just taken two people who were already desperate enough to kill people to get back Inside, and threatened what they thought of as their only hope. They didn’t attack her, though; instead, the girl eventually spoke up and said, “It’s a conspiracy with the Rangers to keep us on the slow path, then. Or they were pranking you in particular because they didn’t like how you handled the fight where you got the Deadly Defender. If you aren’t just making that up to begin with! Come on, let’s get out of here.”

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  She stood, and her campaigning partner joined her. “Um, the rest of you are still welcome to join, if you aren’t controlled by gossip and you aren’t willing to play the government’s game and live Outside like savages for ten years.”

  “I believe what the Rangers told us,” Heather said. “It doesn’t have to be ten years, but it does have to be ten months. I can handle living Outside that long, since that’s what it takes to be sure I’m actually allowed to come back in.”

  “It makes sense,” Akari added. “It takes ten or twelve whole years for the System to get us to level one; needing a month to settle each level after that is actually pretty fast considering how much more we’re getting in the meantime, now that Classes and Careers are in the mix.”

  “You don’t have to take our word for it,” Sadie added.

  Danielle nodded vigorously. “Ask the Rangers yourselves. Then it won’t be second-hand information, and you can see with your own eyes whether they look like honest people who just know stuff nobody mentioned to you yet, or like conspirators.”

  The girl stalked away without another word. The boy said, “I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here, but thank you for talking to us politely about it all.” He followed the girl around the end of the building and out of sight.

  Danielle flopped back on the grass. “Headache’s worse,” she said. “I don’t think it’s just the water anymore, though.”

  “No kidding,” Sadie said, though she followed it up with a long drink from her canteen. “There’s a whole party of those head-cases.”

  “Two whole parties, it sounds like. We don’t know how big, though,” Akari reminded them. “It could just be a couple dozen people.”

  Heather groaned. “I can’t believe they just – just decided not to believe the truth.” Sadie gave her an exasperated look, and she defensively demanded, “What?”

  “Aren’t you the person who told me I was seeing things because I said Danielle’s miracle actually happened right in front of me?” Sadie asked.

  “That’s different!” Heather protested.

  “Incoming,” Akari said, and pointed back down into the walkway, where another boy-girl pair was coming down the row of doors, knocking on certain ones and skipping others.

  The four girls watched for a few minutes as the two waited at their certain doors, then moved on; nobody seemed to be answering. “I wonder how they’re choosing doors?” Heather asked.

  “Not all the rooms have people,” Akari said. “They must know the pattern.”

  “Isn’t it just every other room? They just knocked on two side-by-side,” Sadie said.

  “I think it’s more of a one-two-one deal,” Danielle said. “It might be different on the back and front, too; I’m pretty sure the rooms ending in 01 and 02 both have people, even though they’re not back-to-back, but we know our room and room 6025 both have people even though they are back-to-back. Something’s not lined up the same.”

  “Huh. I never thought to wonder about the exact arrangement,” Heather said.

  The two people in the walkway looked up and out at them. “You look like a room group,” the girl of the pair said. “Are you from building six here?”

  “Yeah, we’re in 6024,” Akari said. “Are you from one of the political parties? You can climb on up if you want to sit and talk for a while.”

  “We’re from the Game Breakers Military,” the boy said. “We’re kind of a party but mostly an army; our thing is ignoring all the rumors and lies and getting our levels and getting back inside before the games they’re playing with our lives break us.”

  “The thing about getting mutations if you level up too fast isn’t just a rumor,” Danielle tried again. “I’m one of the people the Rangers personally warned about it. If you ask the Rangers yourselves, you can get the story straight from them, and it won’t just be second-hand information anymore.”

  “As if!” the girl said. “They’re just the government’s enforcers, trying to make us play out their game for whatever sick reason they think excuses all this.”

  “What if it’s a good reason?” Akari asked. “If we don’t know the reason, then we can’t be sure breaking the setup isn’t actually going to make things worse. I mean, it’s not like this is all OK, but if we just start smashing their plans without learning why first, what keeps them from exiling us for real, or throwing us into the jaws of whatever they’re trying to prevent?”

  “How do you know that isn’t what’s happening already?” The girl challenged. “How do you know we aren’t out here just to twist some Inside power struggle in someone’s favor?”

  “I know it’s not that one because the people in power aren’t getting the benefit,” Danielle said. “All our parents are mad, and the general public is freaked out enough to be telling the Sending Authority what to do – like the Now Hear This guy was saying about the ‘care packages’ right? Whatever they’re trying to stop has to be worse, for at least them, than all of that.”

  “OK, that’s kind of a good point, but I’m still not going to play along while they lie to me about it all,” the boy said. “I’m going to get my levels fast and get back Inside, and make them tell me the truth!”

  “What if they weren’t lying, though?” Akari asked. “Maybe they’re just not telling the whole truth. The Rangers keep complaining about not being allowed to just tell us stuff; what if the plot is actually to get us locked out by not telling us that it’s dangerous to level too fast, and Danielle giving the Rangers an excuse to get around the gag order and then spreading around the truth is the way to break their game?”

  “You can’t prove any of this!” the boy said angrily. “Just piling on maybes doesn’t help anyone!”

  “Can you prove any of your theories?” Akari asked. “If you’ve actually got proof, I definitely want to hear it, because that would be big.”

  “I don’t have theories yet, I’m just trying to get out from under their thumb so they have to tell me the truth,” the boy said.

  “I meant, the theory that they’re lying about there being a ‘too fast’ for leveling, that can cause mutations,” Akari said. “Because I know someone who said he’s personally seen the Wolf Pack guy’s mutation, and that seems like evidence that it’s the truth.”

  The two campaigners gave Akari a horrified look. “You – you haven’t seen it yourself, though?” the girl asked. “It’s still hearsay.”

  “I’ve never been that close to the guy,” Akari said, “but he’s here in town, so it’s checkable. Maybe ask around your army and see if any of them have see him, or stake out his room and see if you can get a good look at his hands. The claim I heard was that he has serious claws, and was showing off to his party that he could cut wood with them.”

  The boy paled. “Is that what that log – uh. I think we better go ask around our party, like you said. Thank you for talking to us. If you do decide you want to join the Breakers, you can catch our general in room 7305. See you later.” With that, the two hurried off around the end of the building, muttering animatedly to each other.

  “I wonder why they’re all going the same way?” Akari mused. “It’s like they’re following each other around.”

  “Maybe they really are?” Heather said. “It’d be easier than crossing paths all the time.”

  “Yeah, but whoever’s last in line will always be talking to people who have already heard four pitches,” Akari said. “That can’t be helpful.”

  “So far, they don’t seem like the kind of people who think things all the way through,” Danielle said dryly. “Besides, one group could be first around one building and last around another.”

  A door opened down in the walkway, and someone stuck her head out, looking cautiously back and forth before stepping fully outside the room. Danielle belatedly realized it was Cassy’s room as her roommates all filed out, with Cassy herself coming last. Akari and Sadie were debating the most efficient path around a building as the other four girls walked towards them in the walkway. The ABCs looked grimly determined, and weren’t looking around much, but Cassy spotted the rest of the party up on the grass and called ahead, “Bethany, look up and left – they’re already outside!”

  The residents of Room 6006 lined up at the base of the retaining wall, looking out at Danielle and her roommates. “What are you all doing out here?” Adrien asked.

  “We decided instead of staying in and letting people interrupt us every few minutes, we’d come out here where we could see the campaigners coming,” Heather told them. “What’s going on with you?”

  “We’ve come to join your party,” Bethany said dramatically. “Or help you make one, whichever is better.”

  “What?” “Are you serious?” “This is sudden,” Danielle’s roommates exclaimed. Danielle herself just squeezed her eyes closed against the headache, wondering if it was dehydration at all, or just a matter of being over-pressured with people.

  “What Beth’s trying to say,” Candice clarified, “is that we’ve talked to four of allegedly five political parties out there so far, they’re all crazy, and we really hope you’ll help us make a better one. You’ve got the best sys-org we know about, and you have an attitude toward this whole Sending thing that isn’t scary to live next to, so, um. Help us? Please?”

  Danielle sighed. “Well, when you put it that way, how can we say no?”

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