The sky was starting to dim by the time we finished dinner. It was probably well after my kids’ usual bedtime. Priya and George had kept cooking until we were all completely stuffed.

“Everyone sure they’re not hungry?” George asked. “I can make more.”

I laughed. “Feels like being at my grandma’s house! Really though, I can’t eat another bite.”

“Me neither!”

“I’m full.”

Everyone seemed in agreement.

Priya frowned. “It’s too bad. I’ve got another three pounds of chicken in the freezer, but I think I’ll have to pitch it. It’ll be all thawed by morning.”

George shook his head. “Let’s wait and see. Just because it’s started to thaw doesn’t mean we have to pitch it yet. If it’s still got any ice crystals on it in the morning, it’s safe to eat. We could do it for breakfast! Chicken and waffles, hold the waffles.”

Priya laughed at him, and I turned away. It was good to see my friends, but watching them support each other was a constant reminder that I was in this alone.

For now. Surely, just for now.

A tug on my sleeve distracted me from these thoughts.

“What’s up, Micah?”

“Did they just say they were going to throw away food?”

“Well… yeah. It’s meat. If meat thaws out, it gets dangerous to eat real fast.”

“So if it could stay cold, they wouldn’t have to throw it away?”

“Yeah. Why do you ask?”

“Well… I was looking at my interface, and it said I have an ability available. I was thinking, if I took Freeze, I could use it on their freezer and they wouldn’t have to throw away their food.”

I blinked. When I’d arrived, I’d been distracted by Darryl and focused on sharing the information we’d made the trip to give. But I didn’t have much excuse for not checking my interface since then, and I definitely didn’t have any excuse for not checking in with the kids. I’d known they weren’t far from the threshold. I glanced at mine briefly. I was up over 260 points, but I didn’t have a third ability available yet. Made sense, since Darryl said he was over 300 points, and he hadn’t had a third ability yet either. It looked like I had more money and more blueprints, but I could check those out later. Honestly, I wasn’t convinced the blueprints weren’t a bit of a trap. All the ones that had dropped so far seemed like minor conveniences - things that would be nice to have or make us marginally safer, but not game-changers. It seemed like we gathered money slowly. The last thing I wanted to do was waste it on trivialities and find out if I’d kept it I could have spent it on… I don’t know. Weapons. Armor. Food?

I brought my attention back to Micah. “That’s definitely a great idea in general… but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I feel like that would act pretty similarly to your Conjure Flame in combat, wouldn’t it? Just deal a little bit of damage from range and tire you out? It would definitely be useful outside of combat. It would help the Turners, and let us save the rest of the food in our chest freezer too. I think you’re right that someone should take it, but maybe that person should be Gavin. I think he has an ability choice too.”

Micah looked offended. “Gavin shouldn’t take it, Mom! If it’s like my Conjure Flame ability, he could get tired just using it once if he does something big. Who’ll heal us then?”

I frowned, trying to think of an argument against that. The way Micah was describing Conjure Flame made it sound very different than my own abilities or Healing Touch. If Freeze had a variable cost, it might take more discretion than I could really expect from a six-year-old.

Micah saw me hesitate. “Besides, I can do a lot more with it than just hurt a monster a little! I could freeze the ground and make it slippery. I could, um… Make spikes maybe?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not gonna last long in Alabama summer.”

“Uggghhh. Mom, Gavin can’t take this ability. He’ll be bad it and I’ll be good at it. And…” he got a little quiet. “I really want to help Anju. I don’t think her ability is very good. She tried to show me that she could fly, and was cool at first… but she only showed us for a second and she wouldn’t show it again even when Gavin begged. And her parents don’t have good fighting abilities either. I guess Samar will have to fight all the monsters.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Her mom and dad will definitely be able to fight the monsters. They’re big and strong, even if they don’t have fighting abilities. But… fine. I can tell this means a lot to you, and maybe you’re right that it’s not a good ability for Gavin.”

“Yesssss!” Micah yelled. His eyes grew distant and then he shivered. “I’m going to go fix their freezer!”

“Be careful,” I said. “Don’t collapse.”

He brushed me off. “It’s fine, Mom. If I fall asleep, just put me in bed or something.”

I rolled my eyes and followed, ready to catch him so he didn’t hit his head as he collapsed.

The noise of the freezer opening prompted a yell from George. “Hey!” he said. “Keep that closed.”

“Don’t worry,” announced Micah grandly. “I am going to fix it.”

A wave of cold air blasted out of the freezer drawer as the beading of moisture on top of the products instantly solidified.

I dropped to my knees, ready to catch my son.

He didn’t fall.

He glanced over his shoulder at me and laughed. “Mom! I’m fine.”

I stared up at him. What the hell?

“Gavin collapses after partially healing a few small wounds, Mr. Turner falls asleep cleaning out one gut wound, and you took a three-hour nap earlier today after lighting one leafenrat on fire. Now, you freeze 10 cubic feet of food like it’s nothing?”

It didn’t make sense. Maybe he’d only gotten the top layer? I lifted a bag of frozen peas. Underneath it was a bag of corn, with chunks of ice pooled in folds of the bag where moisture had condensed, run downhill, and been refrozen.

“It wasn’t nothing. It was kind of hard, but way easier than burning the rat. I only had to lower the temperature a little bit. Even the hottest parts weren’t more than 5 degrees above freezing.”

Five degrees? That caught my attention. “How do you know what the temperature difference was?”

“Um... When I started using my ability, I just knew what temperature this stuff was at.”

“Could you tell the temperature of your fire before?”

“Just by, like, how it felt on my skin. And the color.”

“What about now?”

Micah summoned a small flame above one fingertip and peered at it. “The center of this is 600 degrees. Coooool. Or hot!” He laughed at his own joke and waved the fire away.

This was definitely new.

“Cassie!” I called. “Can you and Pointy come in here?”

“I’m coming,” she yelled.

In fact, everyone was. When Priya saw what Micah had done, she went nuts, hugging him and praising him. George stooped to go through the freezer, checking package by package. After picking up six different items and finding them frozen, he shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a hero, buddy. Thank you.”

In the hubbub, I picked up Cassie... and Pointy by extension.

“Any idea what’s going on?” I asked the turtle. “Why can he sense temperatures now? Why does Freeze seem so much easier to use than Conjure Flame? Was it really just that it was already pretty cold in there?”

“200%. Both of his abilities are listed at 200%.”

“What?” I squawked. “Did I hear that right? Draw Attention and Assisted Strike increased to 140%, and his abilities go up to two fricking hundred?” Mind you, I didn’t know what the numbers meant, but it sure looked like they meant something good. Finding out I’d gotten less than half the boost my nine-year-old had was a little embarrassing, not to mention worrying.

“Yes.”

My mind whirred. Micah’s abilities had gotten to 200%, and they’d gotten not only easier to use, but categorically better. I wasn’t sure how useful being able to exactly tell the temperature of his targets was, but knowing was obviously better than not knowing. That was exactly the kind of thing we all needed, the kind of powerboost we should reach for. We had to figure out why his percentages had gone up so much so we could replicate this.

Conjure Flame and Freeze. I hadn’t wanted Micah to take them both at first.

Why?

Because they were both so similar.

“Synergy,” I breathed.

Conjure Flame heated things up. At a molecular level it was just... adding energy. Speeding up the motion. Raising the temperature. Freeze did just the opposite, lowering the temperature, slowing molecules down, taking energy away. They were different sides of the same coin.

Compare that to my own abilities. What did Draw Attention do, really? It targeted other things and made them turn their eyes or ears or whatever toward me. It reached out to enemies and controlled part of their bodies. Assisted Strike controlled my body for the strike, which might explain why I had some synergy, but otherwise it was pretty different. It was something I did to myself, not an enemy, and there seemed to be a strong predictive element, moving my weapon to where the thing I wanted to hit was going to be, rather than where it was.

“I feel the evidence supports that hypothesis,” said Pointy. “I advise proceeding as though you are correct.”

“Correct about what?” asked George.

“Micah’s abilities,” I said. “His old one is boosting his new one, and vice versa. By a lot, I think. A lot more than my second ability improved my first.” I hadn’t even noticed a difference, honestly. “I think it’s because they have so much synergy.”

“Fire and ice,” he said skeptically. “Like, an elemental thing?”

“No,” I said. “Or, at least, I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I think it’s because they do the same thing, but in opposite directions. Adding energy or taking it away. Manipulating temperature.”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “So then… if I leveled up, I should take… uh. What would synergize with Cleanse? Maybe a disease curing ability? That’s not going to help me fight.”

It really wouldn’t. “What was the ability description on Cleanse?”

“Removes unwanted impurities.”

“Maybe something else that takes stuff out of other stuff, then? Or moves stuff around?” I couldn’t think of anything specific. “But Samar could take other projectile abilities, or maybe Anju could take stuff with air or gravity or something. Depending on how her flight works.”

Huh. This was honestly really hard. Most of the obvious ability synergies I could think of were utility-oriented.

Maybe I was making this too hard on myself.

I tried opening my interface and focusing on my abilities. If I thought about the ability names, I could pull up a description, but I couldn’t get the displayed percentages to react in any way.

“Gavin, you have an ability choice, right? Can you ask the system for an ability that synergizes well with the one you have?”

“What’s synergize?”

“Uh… works well with? One that works well with the one you have?”

Gavin scrunched his face up as he read the air in front of him, then shook his head. “It says it won’t advice me.”

“Advise you,” I corrected. Damn. One last idea.

“You have any info on synergies, Pointy?”

The turtle shook her head. “I’ve been focusing my analysis on attempts to translate. I can try to identify contestants with multiple abilities and make note of any that seem to be powerful combinations, but it won’t be easy. I’ll have to refine my image recognition to even differentiate between members of that species properly, and it will be difficult to differentiate stronger abilities from one that was used at a higher intensity or used multiple times.”

“Would you see what you can do tonight? Gavin has an ability to pick and we have to head back tomorrow morning. We need to get Micah home to our freezers while they’re still salvageable. If we can give the Turners any guidance before we go…”

“I suppose. Don’t expect much,” she squeaked.

“We’ll take whatever you can find for us.”

“I can’t pick my new ability yet?” Gavin’s voice was sad, and the reason was obvious. Anju and Samar had followed Micah into the other room, and he was proudly answering their questions and showing off with little flames.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” I put one hand around his shoulders, and waved the other to get Priya’s attention, raising my voice slightly. “I just want to try to find something really amazing to go with your Healing Touch ability. It’s bedtime soon, so if you go to sleep, hopefully we can figure out something in the morning.”

Priya, bless her, caught on. She looked back and forth between me and Gavin, then surreptitiously pointed toward George. I gave her a thumbs up, and Operation Cheer Up Gavin was a go.

“You have Healing Touch?!” Priya’s delight was probably a little overacted, but Gavin wasn’t a harsh critic.

“Yeah…” he said, smiling shyly.

“Oh wow!” she said. “I have Healing Touch too. I got it to help Samar’s daddy when he got really really hurt. But… I got really tired and I couldn’t heal him all the way. Do you think you can help me before bedtime?”

Gavin grinned. “Yeah! I will fix him all up!”

“Oh, thank you!” said Priya, ham of the year. “Let’s get the sleeping bags set up, and then we can go tell Mr. George the great news.”

I followed her upstairs, lost in thought.