While the kids rested, I had a busy afternoon. I didn’t rush to pick my new ability; I wasn’t planning to fight for the next few hours, and I didn’t want to regret making a hasty choice.

My interaction with Robert McKlasky had galvanized me. Maybe he had reasons to reject everything I’d said, but most people had a better chance to listen. I’d drafted out a short note, as concise as I could make it:

Information gained from ability (probably reliable)

Houses likely safe for for 7 or fewer days, total

Trial event likely in a few weeks, everyone must fight to survive

(may be able to go as groups, unclear)

Killing weird things gives points

About 144 points gives new ability

Leaf-rodents incapacitated by capsaicin in eyes or mouth

Your friends, 105 Lavender Lane

I was planning an expedition. I’d gotten the collapsible wagon out of the back of the minivan - a real trick when I didn’t have space in the garage to open the van’s back hatch - and started armoring it. Two diaper boxes combined to give me the start of a roof, with little arrow-slit windows around the outside and a tiny 1-inch skylight at the top. Folded sticks of cardboard kept it from sinking into the bed of the wagon. Both my beloved complete vintage run of Animorphs and the kids’ incomplete but extensive collection of Magic Treehouse books were sacrificed, along with a roll and a half of packing tape, to add armor to my ersatz tank.

On top, I’d attached our dish-drying rack. The basket gave us an accessible place to keep two spare water guns, and the rows of cup holders kind of worked to hold the kids’ spears. It wasn’t a perfect solution. I'd attached rubber bands to the handles to keep them from sliding out, but the spearpoints stuck well off the back of the wagon, and the butt of Micah’s spear was long enough to bump into me as I pulled. They also weren’t the easiest to grab for the kids, high up as they were. Some kind of hooks hanging off the side of the wagon would have been better, but I didn't have any.

The wagon’s tag boasted a 300-pound weight limit. I’d been surprised, but I hoped it was accurate. I didn’t think we’d be pushing that, but I was sure we’d be well over 100 pounds once we loaded Cassie in. Not only were the books heavy, we'd be bringing our 5-gallon water cooler and a few other supplies. Only aboult half the wagon was left open for Cassie and Pointy. Not a ton of space, especially if it took us a long time to get to the Turners, but she’d be fairly safe. Somewhat uncomfortable, possibly, but comfort was a luxury.

I sat back to inspect my work. It looked… solid. I was proud of how quickly I’d put it together. The kids had all fallen asleep on the couch, watching me. Even Micah! I couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept during the day.

But did I really need to do this?

The trouble was that in the short term, the answer was a big and obvious “No.” We’d be absolutely fine in the immediate future just hunkering down in the house. We practically had an ocean of drinkable water. We had plenty of food. We had cooking capability courtesy of Micah, and Gavin could fix up any mild or moderate injuries that popped up. From that perspective, heading out with the kids was nothing short of the idiocy Robert McKlasky had accused me of.

A few things that were pushing me toward the door anyway.

First, and most importantly, I believed we could do it. The boys and I had spent over a half-hour outside earlier, and the only reason we’d taken any injury whatsoever was the fact that we’d let a water gun run low without noticing. I knew Priya Turner was home, for sure - we’d been texting yesterday morning - and it was only a 10 minute walk to their house. Clearly it would take much longer than that to fight our way over, but the kids would wake up sometime between 3 and 4 p.m., and at this time of year the sun didn’t set until close to 9. That gave us plenty of time to make the trip.

Secondly, my neighbors were in danger. In a few days, the leafenrats or other monsters would likely start invading homes. If people didn’t realize that, they might be killed in their sleep for no other reason than that I didn’t pass along the warning that I had. That was leaving aside this supposed trial we’d all be forced into.

If those were my only reasons, though, I still might have decided to stay home.

I know, I know, horrible. Just leaving people to die? Even many people I was close to, good friends with? People I baked cookies for at Christmastime, people who brought my family meals after the kids were born?

Standing aside to let them die would have hurt. I would have felt hellishly ashamed. But... I might have made that choice rather than drag my kids so far from safety. I valued their well-being more than everyone else’s by far.

The deciding factor that pushed me over the edge? I guess you could call it “the future.”

Thanks to Pointy, we had a rough idea of what the next few weeks would hold, but very little about what came after that. From the aliens’ own announcement, it was obvious things would get worse. What had happened so far was bad, yes, but not “wipe out 95% of humanity” bad, unless we really were all supposed to starve to death slowly in the coming months. That didn’t sound like good television to me, but I couldn’t apply my tastes to a bunch of extraterrestrials of various races. Clearly their civilization had very different values than ours, if they regularly pulled this “Maffiyir” crap and broadcast it. Yeah, humans had been entertained by similar things in the distant past, like all the slave battles in the Roman Coliseum, but any blood sport that still existed now took place in shadowy crime-ridden corners, not prime-time TV.

So, yeah, there was an outside chance the aliens would let us all starve and freeze to death, but I thought it was far more likely that there’d be more threats like this upcoming trial, surprises designed to shake us out of whatever rut or comfortable patterns we fell into. Pointy could confirm that enemies would get at least somewhat more difficult, but where would that stop? Would we end up fighting off the equivalent of packs of wolves? Lions? Dragons?

What did seem clear was that there would be things I couldn’t plan for. Even with the challenges I faced today, I could think of dozens of useful non-combat options for my new ability choice. The stench from the bathroom reminded me I needed to figure out our toilet situation. The ability to just make poop vanish or instantly break down into soil was tempting. What if one of us got sick? I was sure that there was an ability that let you cure diseases. I’d saved some seeds from the ghost peppers. Was there an ability to accelerate plant growth? We could have an unending supply! Or what about a communication ability? Maybe I could find out if Vince was okay. Even if the ability was much shorter-ranged, that would be invaluable for keeping in touch with neighbors and sharing information. Maybe an ability to magically repair the damage to my boots and armor-vest?

Obviously, I wasn’t taking any of those. I needed to take something that actually helped me detect the monsters, kill them faster, or defend myself and the kids better. I doubted I’d feel free to take utility abilities like that next threshold either.

But maybe some of my neighbors had them already. Who knew?

Plus, alien-granted skills were hardly the only things my neighbors might have to offer. Our area had a ton of engineers. Surely some of them worked from home part-time? The nearby middle school had gone to state for archery a few years back. The hospital wasn’t far. Could there be an off-duty doctor or nurse in the neighborhood?

If we - if humanity - worked together, maybe we could reach the other “win condition” of this death game, the one where more than 5% of us lived.

I could hope for that, but I couldn’t affect the world at large right now. However, even if humanity did careen toward near-extinction, I was sure it wouldn’t do so evenly. If I could give the area around me a head start and convince the people around me to share resources and start working together, maybe we’d be a pocket where 20% or 50% survived instead of an area where nearly no one survived.

When I asked myself, realistically, if I could keep my kids alive while threats wiped out 95% of the people around me, I couldn’t honestly tell myself that I could. But keeping them alive while threats killed half of those around me? I was pretty smart. My kids were smart. We were all hard workers. That was something I felt we had a shot at.

Long term, having a community of strong people around seemed like the best hope for my kids to make it through this. And that meant that I couldn’t afford to wait around. Danger was coming, so we had to get our information out before it struck.

How much time had gone by? A little over a day? That didn’t seem right to me and I had to go over everything that had happened multiple times before I could accept that I’d remembered correctly. It felt so much longer. Yesterday morning I’d been exhausted by getting through a few days of perfectly normal suburban life without my husband around. Now I had no idea when I’d see Vince again… or if I’d see Vince again. So many of my priorities had been downgraded. Healthy meals and a balanced diet? Any diet at all was a good diet now. Clean house? Nope, here I am cutting holes in our garage door with a hatchet. Education? Only if you counted learning to kill things.

I sat down in the recliner, kicking my feet up and absentmindedly making copies of my note as I pondered. I'd ruled out a lot of options for my ability, but deciding what I should do with it was harder. Having a choice available meant I could sort of browse the system. It didn’t offer a complete list of options, but you could request an ability and it would show you options along those lines. As long as you didn’t choose any of them, you could do this as much as you wanted. Unsettlingly, the system seemed to be able to listen to my thoughts. I’d mostly spoken to it out loud, before, but thinking back I realized that I hadn’t always announced my ability. The very first time, I’d just really wanted to use it.

I had very mixed feelings about this system capability. On the one hand, it was practical: if you had to call ability names out loud, many abilities would become useless. On the other hand, it was incredibly creepy. Letting someone listen to my thoughts was an intimacy I’d hesitate to extend to my own husband. Now, I had an unremovable spectator in my own mind. Maybe more than one. I didn’t even question if they could broadcast what I was thinking, but would they? Would people care about that? My privacy depended entirely on the apathy of the audience.

I couldn’t afford to dwell on my discomfort too much, at least not while I could do nothing about it. While working on the wagon-tank I’d queried the system about a whole range of abilities. I’d been relieved when my requests for various forms of mind control hadn’t returned anything, instead serving up a list of options like Draw Attention, Paralyze, Toxic Cloud, and Illusory Hazard. Long story short, it seemed like you could control an opponent’s body, drug them, or confuse them, but not straight-out steal their will. Time manipulation also seemed to be off the table. You could physically make yourself faster or slow down an opponent’s motions, but there was no option to freeze or rewind time itself. Other than those two categories, everything I thought to ask about returned results.

Many of the abilities - Paralyze, for example, but also Flight and Shapeshift - were highlighted with a standardized warning: “Insufficient support! Not recommended.” The opening message had said something about “properly supporting” abilities as well. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but didn’t feel like being a guinea pig. There were plenty of compelling options without that warning, so I’d focus on those.

One option was something defensive. Force Shield sounded pretty useful, especially since I could use it on myself or on one of the kids. I was a little hesitant, though, because defense wasn’t really an issue with these first opponents. I was sure something nastier would appear eventually, but for the time being our armor seemed sufficient.

Another was an offensive ability. There was the Powerful Blow in the starting abilities list they’d mentioned, but I’d found an ability I was more interested in called Assisted Strike. I wasn’t sure exactly how it would work - the description just said “guides your strike toward its target” - but it was tempting. I was, to be blunt about it, inept. An ability like Powerful Blow was just going to be a waste if I used it to embed my weapon in a tree root. The past few days had shown that I could just about kill something slightly larger than a raccoon, assuming it was stumbling around blindly, completely distracted, and not fighting back.

The other one I was strongly considering was an ability called Life Sense, described as “sense friends and foes all around you.” I could be the first mom who really did have eyes in the back of her head! Or something. The “all around” definitely implied that I could sense living things without seeing them, and I hadn’t forgotten about that first leafenrat that had blindsided me from out of the tree. If I’d known it was there, I would have been in far less danger. We’d also be able to enter and leave the house through the front door if I could sense that the bushes surrounding our porch were clear, freeing us from running the backyard gauntlet anytime we wanted to enter or leave the house. Plus, if an enemy got on the kids behind my back, I’d know even if they didn’t - or couldn’t - let me know.

Thinking about it more, my choice became clear. The problems I faced today were big enough - I needed a choice that would benefit me now. Tomorrow Meghan would have to take care of Tomorrow Meghan’s problems. Force Shield would have to be shelved for another day, as would Life Sense. Both could be hugely beneficial to me, but the enemies we faced now weren’t that strong or that sneaky, and after we made it to the street there were limited spots we could be ambushed from. On the other hand, if we had to fight multiples, being able to take them down quickly could be a lifesaver, literally.

You have selected: Assisted Strike: strike is guided toward your target. Confirm choice?

“I confirm,” I said. Immediately, I felt a strange tickling feeling moving up and down my body. That was odd. Had I felt that the first time I’d chosen an ability? I tried to remember... I thought I might have felt afraid. What I was feeling now could easily be mistaken for a fear reaction, but I certainly wasn’t feeling scared at the moment. Maybe I’d felt this the first time too, and missed it. Was this system… changing me? I stretched out my hand in front of me, turning it this way and that. I couldn’t see any difference, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“Pointy,” I stage-whispered, trying not to wake the sleeping kids. “Do you know what this system is doing to us? How it works?”

Pointy lifted her head and responded quietly. “No. I am still working on translation. I’ve been sorting the recordings by category and running frequency analysis on the logograms. I have some solid guesses on the meaning of a few common words, but I’m still quite far from anything like true translation.”

“Any theories, based on what you’ve seen so far?”

“I would prefer not to speculate. Such speculation is unlikely to be accurate and could lead to undue alarm or misinformed choices.”

Cassie stirred, squishing Pointy more tightly against her face and I let the topic drop for now. I had my own theories, and I didn’t like them, but my discomfort was largely irrelevant. What was I going to do? Whatever the aliens had done seemed to have affected the whole planet, and I’d been able to see the interface before I even selected an ability. I didn’t really have the option to avoid whatever they were doing, and I probably wouldn’t have taken it if I had. I needed strength.

I got up and started looking around the house for a good target. Assisted Strike was an ability I was actually comfortable testing, which made me kind of excited. The first time I’d used Draw Attention had been in active combat against one of the leafenrats. It had worked as I’d expected, but going into a fight without being sure of how it would work had been a huge risk. Testing it on one of the kids had seemed too cruel. There were nightmares enough ahead of them without their own mother putting them through torment, and I imagined it would be quite scary to have your eyes and head move without your say-so.

Assisted Strike was a very different story.

In the kitchen, I spotted what I was looking for - a mosquito that had invaded our home. Here was the perfect target - fast, evasive, and completely deserving of anything bad I could do to it.

I grabbed a piece of paper off the counter and rolled it into a thin stick. Not the easiest thing to kill a mosquito with, but a good challenge for my new ability.

The mosquito flew out of the kitchen and around the corner into the hall, out of sight. I activated my ability experimentally, keeping the bug in my mind. Maybe I’d throw the stiff paper like some sort of ricochet master, nailing the out-of-sight insect. Instead, I simply got an uncomfortable feeling, the mental equivalent of trying to bend a joint the wrong way. It didn’t hurt, I just felt immediately that this wasn't going to work.

I hurried around the corner. As soon as I saw the mosquito, I activated my ability again. This time, something happened. My whole body moved without my direct commands. I took a step forward and turned. My grip adjusted on the paper slightly, and my arm swung, fast. I could see I wasn’t moving it to where the insect was, but to where it would be. I connected, batting it toward a wall. The mosquito bounced off and fell to the floor, twitching.

With the strike completed, my body returned to my control and I stumbled. That had been… weird. I was glad I’d tried this outside of battle. I’d need to be ready to catch myself after my strikes ended.

I was pleased, though. Even if I wasn’t in control of my body during the strike, I could still feel the way my muscles moved. If I paid attention, this could help me get better at a whole host of issues with how I fought - stance, grip on my weapon, proper striking form. This might be exactly what I needed.

I gave my interface one last look.

Meghan Moretti

Novelty: 8

Abilities:

Draw Attention (140%)

Assisted Strike (140%)

Points: 144

Money: 12

Blueprints:

Defensive Door (10 money)

Small Light Source (20 money)

That was interesting. I was sure that the last time I’d looked at Draw Attention, it had been listed at 100%. Picking my second ability had put it up to 140%, and my new ability had the same percentage. That seemed good, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.

I would have liked to test Assisted Strike more. How many times could I use it before I got too tired? But doing that right now would just run me out of energy when I’d need it. I couldn’t feel the effects of a single use at all. I’d get better data tonight, before I fell asleep.

Now, it was time to head out.

…

The kids got up from their nap. I fed everyone a snack and made sure we all abused our poor stinking toilet. At least I’d managed to keep us all using the same bathroom, so the whole house didn’t smell, but wow, was that a problem I didn’t want to deal with. I actually had to stand with Cassie and plug her nose before she was willing to use it. It wasn’t a great way to wake up, for sure, and it put all of us in a bad mood. I had a way to change that, though. I clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Alright, kids! Who wants to go and have a surprise sleepover at the Turners’ house?”

The Turners were a nerdy family who lived in the neighborhood, with three kids aged near ours. When a new movie came out, sometimes I’d go one evening with Priya while Vince and George would watch it the next night. Occasionally, we’d trade off watching each others’ kids so we could actually have date nights without breaking the bank, or we’d just get together and let the kids play while the adults did an escape-room-in-a-box or a board game. Cassie and Arnav were still small enough to need a bit of our attention periodically, but the older kids got along well enough that they rarely interrupted their own play to bother us.

My question brought instant excitement. Gavin yelled “Yes!” and flung his limbs out in something that looked like a cheerleading move. Cassie started shouting “Turners! Turners! Turners!” while hopping around in a circle. Micah wasn’t as expressive as his younger siblings, but he offered me a big smile. “Really, Mom? That would be cool. How can we do that, though?”

I gestured toward the middle of the floor. “I turned the wagon into a kind of tank. If Cassie is willing to sit in the little fort I’ve made here, I think you and me and Gavin can guard her as we make our way over.”

Gavin peered through one of the arrow-slit windows I’d left. “Ooooh, that’s so cool. I want to ride in it.”

“Maybe some other time, but I want to bring some things with us, so there’s only really space for Cassie.”

“Awwww…”

Cassie looked nervous. “I don’t want to go in there by myself!”

Oops. Misspoke. “Ah, I meant there’s space for you and Pointy in there. Can you go in there with Pointy?”

“Oh. Ummm....” This prospect was obviously far less intimidating to Cassie, but she still seemed uncertain.

“Here,” I said. “Let’s just try it out for a second. We won’t go outside yet.”

I took the top off the wagon and lifted her in. I could feel that her muscles were taut. The mention of “outside” was not making her happy. I put the lid back on. “How’s that? Isn’t that a cool little house you have there?”

“It is really dark.”

“I know,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with positivity and excitement. “It’s it great? That’s to keep you secret, so the leafenrats don’t know you’re there.” Bulllllllshiiiiiit, I mentally heckled myself. Ah well, time to complete the sale. “And look! Hit the sides and the roof. Feel how strong they are? Even if something wanted to hurt you, it couldn’t get in.”

I heard a cautious knock. Then another. Then I saw the wagon shake a little and heard a giggle. “Wow, it is strong!”

Score! “Yep!”

I lifted the roof off for a minute and tried to hand Cassie two small squirt guns. These weren’t the big ones the boys were using for pepper oil, or even the medium-sized one I’d had Cassie use earlier. No, these were some cheap squirt guns barely bigger than an adult’s hand that the boys had gotten as favors from a birthday party they’d attended. I’d filled them with water only; this kind of brittle plastic gun was prone to springing leaks. Cassie refused to take the guns from me, and scooted away from them when I set them down at her feet.

I pushed them farther away from her, and she looked up at me, surprised.

“You don’t have to use these,” I told her. “But they don’t have any demon pepper in them, and if you want to, you can shoot them at the leafenrats through your little windows. Sneaky, like a ninja! You might distract them and help Mommy and your brothers out.”

She didn’t move to touch them, but I could see her thinking about my words. I didn’t really think the rats would be distracted by a little water, of course. My goal was different. Cassie had gotten points from the one fight she’d been involved in, where she did literally nothing but be jumped on by a rat and thrash a little. That strongly implied to me that you just had to be involved in a fight to get a cut of the rewards - actually doing damage wasn’t necessary. If I could get Cassie to “attack” the leafenrats, she could earn points, and maybe get stronger. I helped her on with her vest, goggles, and helmet. It might be overkill with her inside the wagon, but I’d rather not take any chances. Then I got myself and the boys ready before I lifted the top on.

“It’s a wagon! It’s a tank!” sang Gavin, making up his own song. “It’s a waaaaaank! A beautiful wonderful wank!”

I spluttered. “No. No, it is not.”

Gavin smiled at me. “Get it, Mommy? Because ‘wagon’ starts with a ‘wuh’ sound and ‘tank’ ends like ‘ank!’”

When I was younger and I heard people talk about the wonderful innocence of children, I had a sort of idyllic vision of my head of children in white clothes in a field of flowers, beautiful and pure. After more than nine years of motherhood, I knew this was nonsense. This, right here, was what everyone meant about childhood innocence: the ability to inadvertently find the absolute most inappropriate things to say and to commit to them, hard.

“How about Tagon? Or Tankon?” I tried. “Wank… wank means something else.”

“What does it mean?” asked Micah, curious now.

“Uhh…” I said, floundering. “It’s, um, a private thing for grownups? Kind of rude to talk about in public.”

I might have been able to explain more to Micah - we’d given him a bare-bones version of The Talk - but Gavin had absolutely no context, and in any case this really wasn’t the time!

I was getting skeptical looks from both boys. Into the silence, I could hear Cassie begin singing, her voice muffled by the books and cardboard shielding her: “Wanky tagon, wanky tagon, wanky wanky wanky tagon.”

I had tried. Hopefully, I’d have better luck against the monsters.