As Beth waited for her appointment to register her inner dimensional skill, everything seemed to conspire to make her life more stressful. Oakley and their father had a screaming argument about Oakley’s things all over the living room – which was also Oakley’s bedroom. That had caused weeks of silent and not-so-silent battles that spread out to involve the rest of the family. Beth tried to stay neutral, but at some point, to make no action was an action in itself.

  Then, her co-worker Helen had been temporarily replaced for allotment clearing, with no warning given and no explanation. While the replacement was a perfectly decent person, he did not have the unspoken understandings with the rest of the crew, leaving them even further behind in their clearing operations. It was starting to get darker earlier as well, so even with as much overtime as they could safely do, they were accruing performance metric penalties.

  Finally, Beth had come down with either allergies or a mild cold that wasn’t severe enough to pay a healer for. It was unpleasant. Beth had wondered if Sophie would break her silence and treat her for free, but she hadn’t. Not that that proved anything one way or another. It was possible that Sophie did have a healing skill, but not one that would have worked on a cold.

  The night before her appointment to register her inner space skill, she was at last recovering from the cold. The post had been restored, and she had been sent the paperwork to fill in in advance. She did the first pass in pencil. She re-read her answers over to double check her information and reflexively checked The Book.

  Updating.

  Beth flinched so hard that she rattled in her chair, drawing the curious glance of Calley. It had been so long since The Book had had anything meaningful to say that she’d almost started to ignore it. Beth checked and waited and waited and checked. Night fell, and she lay in the darkness, staring at her interface. At last, the words formed.

  Elizabeth was asked about the price of Wandering Fragments in the second auction. Surprised by the question, she made up a vague answer, guessing it to have been two or three hundred. Little did she know that it had been more than five hundred, and that the registration office was already of the opinion that she could not have afforded it. They knew she was lying.

  Beth paged forward in dread. There weren’t very many pages between that and Continued in Book 2. Just a description of her being detained for community service. All that working and scheming and it had all been for nothing. Or perhaps nothing more than a night’s warning, instead of the few minutes she would have had if she’d filled in the paperwork at the interview itself, like earlier registrants. It was no more than that, because extra warning or not, it was entirely too late to change her mind and not register.

  Beth pulled out her documentation, erased the date of the second auction and replaced it with the date of the first. She waited again, falling briefly into a disturbed sleep before shaking awake to check the update. An unknown time later, she was rewarded.

  Elizabeth was required to serve community service hours but was allowed to continue the rest of her life undisturbed.

  Good news, she hoped. That, at least, sounded like real community service, and not just execution with extra steps. It was probably just making her into a pack mule, she told herself. She just had to hope The Book could accurately predict her lying skills.

  The next morning, far too early and with no real sleep, she braided her hair up and away from her face. She debated with herself whether wearing a headscarf with it would make it look more, or less, professional. After trying it both ways – and having to re-braid her hair when she accidentally caught it on a pin – Calley interrupted her to veto the scarf. It made her look like a ‘real’ adult, apparently. Which, fair enough. If Beth could gain extra sympathy by still appearing young, then that could only be a good thing.

  Beth was shown through to the little office precisely on time and was warmly received. The inspector was affable in a way that screamed artificial, and Beth wasn’t entirely sure whether she was meant to be taken in by it or not.

  “I see you’re here to register Wandering Fragments at Stage Two,” said the inspector. “You picked up the skill in the second auction, correct?”

  The temptation to lie was so strong that it was almost out of Beth’s mouth before she had time to bite it back. But she knew better. Her paperwork even said differently.

  “No,” said Beth. “I got it in the first auction. I bid a low amount on a bunch and managed to pick it up and then forgot about it, really. But when my two defensive skills reached Stage Three, I decided to start levelling up the inner space skill. I put in to register then. I’ve reached Stage Two in the meantime. It took some time to get an interview.”

  “Yes, we have been overwhelmed a little with the second auction registrations,” he said. “How often do you level up, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  And probably even if Beth did mind him asking. “Mostly every second day. Every few weeks, I’ll have an extra level.”

  That would be enough to cover for her having reached Stage Two too quickly, because now she could have started before the second auction. Not much, because she hadn’t reported her increased defensive skills until after, but that could easily be attributed to a habit of mild carelessness on her part. Not a reputation she wanted, but the safest, under the circumstances.

  “Are you aware that you were required to register this skill regardless of your skill level?” he asked, still smiling too pleasantly.

  “Well, I am now,” said Beth. “I found out when I applied to register.”

  “Oh dear. You didn’t hear any of the announcements?”

  “I did, I guess,” said Beth, “But I somehow just didn’t make the connection. I guess I’d just mentally postponed levelling up the Wandering Fragments skill until after the defensive skills and didn’t put the pieces together. I know I should have.”

  ‘Somehow’. Really convincing argument there. Still, Beth had heard worse excuses out of other people often enough.

  “Did you acquire other skills you’ve postponed levelling?” the inspector asked.

  That was safe enough. Her defensive skills and the short-range teleport had already been registered as part of her scavenging job, and nothing else was of concern.

  “Yes, I banked Heartfelt Offerings and Strengthened Essence in the first auction,” said Beth. See how open and communicative I’m being? “And Hale Breaths in the second. I can’t justify putting levels into them, yet, but maybe when some of my existing skills max out. Or when anyone figures out what they even do.”

  The inspector laughed without conviction. “I’m doing something similar with the assessor skill, Preserved Character. Perhaps someday.”

  As far as anyone had levelled up the assessor skill, it still only showed information about inanimate objects that the skill user already knew. Beth had considered it for herself but dropped it because it would almost certainly bid high. If it followed the path of the other useless skills, it would be worth it at some point.

  “One of the ones I didn’t succeed in winning was animal communication,” confided Beth. “I’d been hoping for intelligent pets, like a fairytale princess. It turns out it improves animal husbandry skills. Like farming animals, animal skills.”

  They shared another polite laugh, still pretending to have an entirely different conversation to the actual interrogation. The conversation wound around a few times, gently and persistently, diving into just how she’d spent her levelling skills between the two auctions. Beth was glad she’d spent so long working out the exact details, and glad almost all of it was already explicitly reported. There were some forty levels she could have hidden without the accelerator, but there weren’t the additional seventy-two to take her to Stage Four. They should have no reason to suspect she could possibly already have sub-divided her space. Eventually the inspector was satisfied that he had learnt everything from Beth there was to know.

  They moved to the most dangerous part of the interview, when she was confirmed as having exactly Stage Two’s worth of inner space. If it hadn’t been for the reassurance from The Book, Beth thought she would have been outright faint with fear. As it was, she was simply nauseous. They moved to an old meeting room where Beth had to wait in a queue, and then the cube she needed had to be unearthed from the bottom of a pile. The unexpected delay didn’t do anything for her nerves.

  Beth placed the cube into the correct space, prodding it mentally twice more to confirm. The skill user tagged a dice and handed that to her. Beth focused. She had done this flawlessly for weeks while practicing. She could do it now. The skill user nodded abruptly and verbally confirmed the success when the inspector prompted. Beth turned away, and the skill user irritably reminded her that she still had to return the cube. She did so with embarrassment.

  It was done. She had succeeded. They returned to the inspector’s office, where he began to stamp and sign her paperwork. Then he pulled out new paperwork.

  “While I thank you for coming forward now, I’m afraid there are going to be consequences for failing to register for the last three months.”

  Well, she had mostly succeeded.

  “I understand,” said Beth. “I am very sorry.”

  “I don’t think we need to be too harsh,” said the inspector with another artificial smile. “I don’t believe there was anything malicious or underhanded in your oversight.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You are already qualified for salvage operations, which does make things easier when it comes to consequences. I believe we can send you out with the specialty teams for four weeks.”

  “Are the specialty teams… military?”

  “No, not at all. You’ll just be heading out with various technical groups.”

  They were going to turn her into a pack mule.

  That was good, Beth told herself. It wasn’t disappearing her. It wasn’t even pulling her household registration.

  “What about my current job?” she asked.

  “We’ll organise a leave of absence there, no need to worry. Unpaid, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Beth didn’t bother to hide her flinch. For all she knew, they might increase the punishment if they thought it wasn’t painful enough. It was painful. She’d built up a little savings from her income, but a month’s rates and taxes would take them all out – unless she could get a dispensation of some kind, considering she wasn’t working? That was something to check. She’d have to pause overpaying back the loan, as well. At least, since she was so close to paying it off entirely, she wouldn’t be accumulating much interest.

  She was soon guided out of the office with a notice to return once she’d levelled up to Stage Four. A concern she would worry about later. It wasn’t long before she arrived at the designated preparatory meeting. She didn’t have to worry about the military, and she told herself that she shouldn’t worry about her fellow community service workers either. After all, the other inhabitants of the holding pen when she’d been quarantined had been completely innocuous.

  “Beth?”

  Even after her pep talk to herself, she hadn’t expected her company to be so very familiar. “Helen? Wait, so you were missing from work because you were pulled off for community service? What happened?”

  “There was a bit of a domestic incident,” said Helen with a very grim smile.

  “Oh. You don’t have to say—”

  “I might as well,” said Helen. “Everyone else has already heard all about it. Do you remember my boyfriend?”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “The researcher?” asked Beth.

  “That’s the one. I came home unexpectedly early to find he’d invited all his fellow researchers over. They were out in the communal garden, and they’d opened up one of the crab-apple ciders I’d been brewing. A little irritating, because I’d been planning on the income from selling that, but never mind. I was more upset that they hadn’t just asked, you know? Since it seemed like a gathering they’d planned in advance. I opened the window to call down to them, when I hear his friends talking about me.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Yep. They were telling him that they appreciated his sacrifice in sleeping with me for the ‘grant money’.”

  Beth didn’t know what to do with her hands, lifting them and then letting them fall. “Helen, that’s not— I mean, how did your boyfriend react?”

  “He laughed and said he was going to demand a raise.”

  “Oh no,” repeated Beth uselessly.

  “If I’d been sensible, I would have just walked away and dealt with it later on. But I was just the slightest bit angry, so I ran down and confronted them. It got so loud that one of the neighbours ended up calling the police.”

  “And they gave you all community service?” Beth asked.

  “No. Just me. Their behaviour was perfectly reasonable, according to the police. I was the one causing all the fuss.”

  “You were the only one with skills that could be useful.”

  “I can’t imagine it wasn’t a consideration. But they were also… you know, let me stop there. I don’t want an extension. What happened with you?”

  “Ah,” said Beth. “I screwed up on registering my inner space skill. I hadn’t realised we were supposed to register it back when they had that last change, so I only applied to register it when it was going to hit stage two. That was too late, apparently.”

  “Sure,” said Helen. “It absolutely wasn’t that you were intending to keep it secret and then chickened out.”

  “Exactly,” said Beth, blushing a little.

  Helen’s assumption wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t entirely false either. She wondered if that was exactly the same assumption the inspector had made.

  Beth continued, “They called a replacement in for you at the allotment clearing, and I guess they’re doing the same thing with me. How does this work, anyway? Where are they getting those people from?”

  “They match us to high priority, high risk jobs based on our skills. Then we take over from the paid employee, who is seconded to some other role who displaces someone there, and so on, until someone’s available for our original job.”

  “Really?” asked Beth.

  “Really. And yes, it would be so much easier to just have us do our normal jobs without pay. Shuffling everyone around like this is ridiculous and inefficient. But I guess someone decided that would be a bad look, so this is what we get.”

  “Then it’s just normal work we do here?”

  “Normal work on the mainland,” corrected Helen. “But nothing more dangerous than our scavenging runs. Just every day instead of twice a month. Oh! Oh, dear.”

  “What?” asked Beth.

  “I just realised that we’re going to have to work some magic so that you aren’t scheduled to work on the same teams as Kenneth. They’ve made him Support Team Leader, you see, and he likes joining the groups with community service workers.”

  Mister Sulky Harraser himself. A problem that Beth hadn’t even realised she’d have, now that she wasn’t scheduling her own time.

  “How on earth did he get made Support Team Leader?” Beth asked. “Why do we even need a leader? There’s usually only three or four of us anyway!”

  “The questions answer each other,” said Helen. “Kenny managed to convince Campus it would be more efficient to have someone to make all those final decisions in the field, and since he was the one to bring it to their attention…”

  She trailed off and spread her hands. “It’s not the first time someone’s created a job for themselves by identifying a problem and volunteering to solve it.”

  “Except we all know there wasn’t a real problem to start off with,” said Beth. “We can all do our jobs unsupervised.”

  “We know that. Management has less faith in people that are the type to be sentenced to community service. And I think you’ll be surprised at how many decisions Kenny can find the need to make.”

  Beth wondered if she could have prevented it by reporting him. If she had, he might not have been promoted. But hearing Helen’s story, she might instead have already been serving a good deal more community service for ‘disturbing the peace’ herself. Beth’s face must have gone pale, because Helen was quick to assure her that she’d figure something out.

  And for the time covering Kenneth’s next scheduled meeting, she succeeded. She had them both assigned to the solar collection team she had worked for previously. That was headed by the lead technician and had no role for a Support Team Leader. Helen was the person they really needed, but there was an argument to allow Beth to join them to carry the heavier – and more fragile – batteries and transformers. The solar panels themselves would be transported on trailers attached to bicycles.

  “We used to qualify for an actual truck,” griped Assistant-Tech, as they half-pushed, half-rode the bikes towards their first location. “Not anymore.”

  “All the diesel is reserved for farming, and the petrol for the military,” said Lead-Tech with an eyeroll. “We aren’t considered essential for the preservation of life since, like, the third week.”

  “Sure, but we should qualify for an EV,” said Assistant-Tech. “We’d pay for our own usage in no time at all. You know, seeing as how we’re bringing in the ability to generate more power. At the very least, they could give us e-bikes!”

  Helen agreed politely. Beth got the feeling that this wasn’t the first time she’d heard that particular piece of wisdom.

  “Yeah, well,” said Lead-Tech, “some analyst decided that the limiting factor was the hours of daylight we could spend on the roofs, not our transport back and forth. The streets are safe enough to cycle in the dark now, you see, so it doesn’t matter how long the journey takes. And it’s not like there were all that many e-bikes on the island in the first place, you know that.”

  “Doesn’t that leave you more tired for the job?” asked Beth. “That seems like it would make things less efficient. And more dangerous.”

  “You’re not wrong,” he said, “but it’s pretty hard to argue when the other things they need the electricity for is heating, lighting, and cooking. We’ll live until we have enough power for everything.”

  “Or until the skills replace the need,” suggested Helen. “We’re already using skills for things we used to need power for.”

  “Another reason we can’t trust them,” said Assistant-Tech darkly.

  “Trust what?” asked Beth. “Skills?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “They’re a trap. I mean, they’re way too powerful for our zombie problem. No way the aliens would have given us even more than we needed out of charity. They’re waiting for us to become completely dependent on them, and then WHAM! Trial period over. Pay up or be screwed over.”

  “Cut it out,” said Lead-Tech sternly. “You know what Pines policy is on rumour mongering.”

  “It’s not a rumour if it’s true,” said Assistant-Tech under his breath.

  Lead-Tech wasn’t the only one to give him a look about that. It was a rumour if Pines said that it was a rumour. Pines’s official policy on skills was that they were purely beneficial. That was ‘the truth’ now.

  They arrived at the first location on the map. Watching the team get setup was fascinating.

  “I thought your structures were only, like, a meter high,” said Beth to Helen. “Was there a stage upgrade?”

  “No, it’s a combination of two skills,” she said. “First, I create the first level. That’s when the real magic happens, with my new skill.”

  “What skill did you get?” asked Beth.

  “The ability to perform other skills at a distance.”

  Beth had considered getting that for herself, instead of the teleport skill she’d decided on. The descriptions hadn’t been informative enough for her to risk it. Maybe in the third auction.

  “Really? How does that work?”

  “I link pairs of marbles. Then one of us places one of the pair where we need another level. I cast the framing skill while holding this one of the pair. And repeat. We can put up scaffolding anytime, anyplace. It doesn’t matter how awkward the space or if it’s difficult to reach. One frame, no crane required.”

  Beth laughed. “That’s ingenious. What made you think of linking them?”

  Helen ran her fingers around her ear, looking pleased. Her hair was tied back and covered with a scarf for good measure, but ‘pushing her hair back’ was so habitual that she performed it even when there wasn’t any hair to push back.

  “You know how I got the scaffold skill in that very first auction?” Helen said. “The idea was that I could use it to make myself a safe place to hole up if I was ever caught out by zombies.”

  “And then you realised we wouldn’t be facing the infected directly anyway?”

  “Yeah, and that it wouldn’t even work. The zombies would still be able to hear me. They wouldn’t just get bored and go away. Eventually my skill would fail and I’d be exhausted and facing the zombies tired. Not very useful.”

  “Not without something like Seb’s repelling skill,” agreed Beth.

  “Yeah. I was tempted to try for one of the secondary skills in the second auction. Except all the ones I could think of were going to be expensive. And really, anytime it would be useful there’d already be someone like Seb around.”

  “Then you realised you could use the skill for scaffolding?” Beth prompted.

  “Exactly. It was a gamble about whether it would work, but it was worth the chance. With proper supports we wouldn’t have to worry about something like Elijah’s fall again.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Helen. “But I also know that we’ve been falling behind because we’re being more cautious. When they start to look for people to fire…”

  She trailed off meaningfully. They both grimaced, knowing how their new criminal records had changed that equation. They didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

  “My water creation skill is the one that will really go to waste,” said Helen, changing the subject. “There are too many people with that skill to earn anything from it now days.”

  Beth considered that combination. “Was that from the first auction? You wanted to hide with your own source of water until the infected went away?”

  “Exactly,” said Helen. “Luckily that wasn’t the kind of world that we ended up in. I mean, unless I wanted to head out on some great zombie road trip across the mainland. Which I don’t. Well, most of the time I don’t. Recently, I have been a little tempted.”

  Beth laughed.

  Lead-Tech yelled from the roof, and Assistant-Tech came to fetch Helen. Beth was left to her own devices. A quick sweep of the house for any authorised or unauthorised loot was almost instinctive. Beth harvested an unopened bag of white rice that had been missed on the first clear. As she opened another cupboard, she found two long hot water bottles, still in their packaging. She remembered Alistair’s comment that this was the gift he would have preferred, and the temptation to call his bluff was too much to resist. If she took it back openly, it had about a 50/50 chance of being confiscated from her on inspection, but she wouldn’t lose anything by trying.

  Beth finished her sweep in the garage. Assistant-Tech was already there, looking for the battery and other electrics. Assistant-Tech was right – almost. The homeowner must have been concerned about the width of their car, because the battery was in a little metal shed bolted onto the side of the garage, with a little window between the original structure and the makeshift cage. Beth would have been impressed at the homeowner’s DIY skills if it hadn’t resulted in a contraption that they had no idea how to open.

  “That’s a fire hazard, that is,” complained Assistant-Tech, his hands on his hips, staring at it like its very existence was an insult to his religion. “Don’t they know that batteries are fire risks? If that thing catches, it’s taking the whole wall with it, no question. No room for a fire fighter to even try to get to it. Gary! Gary, you need to see this.”

  “What do you—" asked Lead-Tech as he ducked under the garage door. “What in seven hells is that?”

  “I know!” said Assistant-Tech.

  “No way that got signed off. Not even by the most yahoo of yahoos.”

  Assistant-Tech tutted and shook his head in agreement. “Break in, or let it go?”

  Lead-Tech tutted himself. He prodded the contraption with a wrench. “We’ll have to let it go. Not worth making the trip back to pick up the equipment to break in.”

  “Does it matter if some of the connections get severed?” asked Beth.

  It would be a little painful for her to serve no value, after all. For a start, she’d have less chance of being asked again.

  “Do you think you can get it out without dismantling the cage?” asked Lead-Tech. “I thought the space skill only worked on things you could actually touch.”

  Beth didn’t bother reminding him about her teleport skill – the battery was far too heavy for that anyway. “It does. But I was wondering whether Helen’s linked marbles could be used by anyone, not just her.”

  The wording in that level one description at the auction had very much reminded Beth of the description of Seb’s skill once it could be triggered by other people.

  Beth could see Lead-Tech light up himself at the idea. “Let’s find out.”

  They walked back out onto the driveway to ask Helen. She didn’t know either but was willing to experiment. Beth took out her lunch box and placed the ‘remote’ marble on top and then took three large steps away. The first attempt technically failed, pulling in only the two marbles into her space. But far more important was that it had done anything at all. After the linking was done, it could be used by other people.

  Helen talked her through the process a few more times until Beth figured out the mental image. The lunch box returned to her space, and the remote marble fell to the ground. One more attempt, and both returned at the same time.

  “Who was the best at marbles when they were a kid?” asked Beth with a grin.

  After a few minutes of good-natured competition, they had the marble just touching the battery. With that, the battery was safely in Beth’s storage, and Helen had her marble back.

  “That was amazing,” said Helen.

  “That’s going to make some things so much easier,” agreed Lead-Tech.

  Beth enjoyed the rush of the accomplishment. The team were nice people. The job was straightforward and useful. She might not be getting paid, but she guessed it was okay to be a pack-mule for a bit.

  They quit for the day just before twilight. The streets had all been cleared and double checked by scavenging crews. They were safe to walk down, even that late. Even if some infected had still been missed, they could only have been somewhere they were solidly trapped. Beth still felt a primal fear of the dark. They all hurried to make it back to the pier before the light disappeared entirely.

  By the time they returned to Pines, it was late enough to be a different set of guards to the ones Beth was used to. The guard picked up the hot water bottles with a supercilious expression, and Beth concealed a sigh.

  “We try to be a little understanding about contraband when it’s clearly something brought back for personal use,” he said. “But I do not think that two counts as personal use. Let me guess, you think we should let this pass because you intend to gift one to the deputy mayor?”

  It was the very first time that Beth’s relation had been recognised by anyone official. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling of being stripped of her anonymity.

  “Ah, no, actually,” said Beth, surprised into the truth. “I intend to gift it to Captain Alistair de la Haye. I heard they were running mail deliveries back to base.”

  Beth immediately regretted mentioning him. While she’d expected to mildly embarrass him with the gift, she thought she would amuse him more. She hadn’t ever intended to embarrass him in front of other people.

  “Oh,” said the guard, now looking nervous. “Yes, we can arrange that for you now if you like.”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Beth. “That would be very kind of you.”

  A very quick change in attitude. Beth wondered if the confrontation had been intended to demonstrate that no-one was above the law. If so, it had rather backfired in proving that Alistair, at least, very much was. Beth wrapped and labelled the bottle.

  Saw this and thought of you. Happy (early) Christmas! Beth Griffiths.

  Beth had the uncomfortable feeling that she was once again owing Alistair a favour, one far more valuable than a simple hot water bottle. But if it helped her get through the community service period without further incident, then she was selfish enough to be glad.