It felt wrong walking away from Robert’s body like I had from the others.

Had he still been alive when I went outside? He might have been. Especially the first time I went out, to find a ram and test its capabilities. If I’d checked his backyard instead of going for the one on the corner...

I’d been upset when I’d found the other bodies, but I’d mostly been sad for them and angry at the aliens who’d set this all in motion. Finding Robert made me feel guilty. Maybe it wasn’t logical, but this guy lived in sight of my house. I knew his name. I’d spoken with him.

His death felt like my responsibility.

I couldn’t leave him here, nearly-unrecognizable, on the floor of his own kitchen

Yeah, you really can’t. His house is close by and easy to scavenge from. If you don’t clean him up, you’ll have to see him again every time you come over to look for scrap wood or needle-nose pliers or whatever, whispered my inner pragmatist.

The thought upset me. I mean… yes, it was true, but that wasn’t why I thought I should take care of his body!

Oh really?

Sometimes my mind was my own worst enemy. The critical thoughts didn’t let up as I went through the nauseating process of dealing with Robert’s damaged corpse. I couldn’t bury it. Alabama soil was basically clay. When we’d wanted to plant some bushes along the side of our house, Vince had dug for over an hour and ended up with a hole barely a foot deep that was still too narrow for the damn bush. We ended up hiring landscapers, and they’d rolled up with some sort of golf cart-sized excavator.

In the end I couldn’t figure out anything better than wrapping him in a quilt, trash bags, and a tarp, tied tight to discourage animals. The bundle he made was light in my arms for its size, lighter than I felt an adult man should be. The sensation was a product of my new strength, but it added to the disjointed feeling of unreality. I laid the ugly bundle down behind the bushes in his backyard, and offered a prayer.

Not exactly a respectful burial.

I made it worse by walking away from his body to scavenge an armload of valuables to carry home with me - food, batteries, and tape, plus a gun safe I'd found under his bed. I didn't know how to unlock it, but since I couldn't do anything with the guns for now I didn't bother trying to figure that out.

My kids were excited to see me, although Micah was a little subdued.

“Did you save anyone, Mom?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I did. I was able to help out a bunch of people.”

“Did you save everyone?”

I gave a weak laugh, and jerked my head meaningfully toward his younger siblings. “Everyone? In the entire world? That’s a lot of people. I think it would take me more than a couple hours to save everyone.”

Micah looked confused for a minute. I pressed the younger two kids into a hug, then mouthed “Not everyone” silently at my oldest above their heads.

Did I think about lying? Of course I did! But he wasn’t a stupid kid. He’d figure it out soon enough.

I tried my best to soften the truth. “I saved people from eight different houses, including the Olsens! I brought the lady who lived next door to stay with them. Maybe she can help them out now. Oh! And I talked to the Turners on the walkie-talkie. They’re okay, and they want to come over to stay at our house soon, if they can figure out a way to do it safely.”

“Samar wants to come to live at our house?” Gavin was delighted, and his innocent happiness was like a Healing Touch for my heart.

“Yes!” I said. “With his whole family. Wouldn’t that be great? We could play board games all the time when we’re not fighting monsters.”

Micah seemed torn, a little teary at the news of my failures, but definitely interested in the idea of live-in friends. The deaths were upsetting to him, but still abstract - a situation I would do my damndest to maintain as long as possible. I tried to give my oldest a hug too, but he dodged me.

“No thanks, Mom… I just… I’m gonna lay down for a while.”

I was pretty sure he was going to go cry, and just didn’t want his emotions on display. That seemed… probably healthy? I’d keep an eye on him.

In the meantime, I pulled up my interface. I’d gotten an absolute mess of points while I was out - over 300 more, leaving me at 1174 points. It really drove home how much the kids were slowing me down, and I felt a moment’s regret that I wasn’t my younger college self, unfettered by the world.

Just a moment, though. I wouldn’t give up my kids for anything, and even on a pragmatic level I wasn’t sure I could claim that they were slowing me down. Yeah, if you looked just at our points-farming excursions, I was getting way less… but if it wasn’t for Gavin, I wouldn’t have been able to go out this afternoon. Without Cassie’s Pointy, I wouldn’t have known I needed to go out. Micah hadn’t really accelerated our points, but he’d greatly improved our food situation. I knew a lot of people were starting to run low, but we would still be good for a while, even if we had to share with the Turners.

I had an ability choice available. I’d been monitoring my points while I was out whenever I had a safe moment, trying to pinpoint the new threshold accurately… I thought it came at 1008 points. That would mean every level required double the points of the previous one… a restriction that would make it difficult to get many more levels if monsters kept offering only 12 points a kill.

I spent the rest of the day going through the system, trying to make as comprehensive a list of ability choices as I could. Gavin’s Touch of Decay had given me a bit of a brainstorm, and I pulled out our tabletop roleplaying manuals for ability ideas. I read through the lists of feats, items, and skills, querying the system for abilities with effects like the ones described.

It helped me get a better idea of what was possible. For example, looking for something like D&D’s Spider Climb spell found me Surface Gravity, an ability that allowed a user to redirect gravity in a small area by designating a new surface as the “floor.” It wasn’t immediately useful to us, but who knew what else I’d find?

I read the abilities I found out loud. Even across the room, Pointy assured me she could hear and record what I said.

I still made my own notes for some abilities. The turtle greatly sped things up, but I wasn’t about to rely on her completely - she’d proven she was willing to lie, and providing us with an abbreviated list of abilities would be an easy way to control our choices.

There were a lot of abilities in the system, and the ones I found made me suspect that there were whole categories I didn’t know how to ask for and hadn’t found. I did notice another odd omission: I’d seen earlier that the system didn’t allow for mind control or time manipulation, but now I realized it also lacked spatial magic - no teleport or portal spells, or even expanded space abilities. I’d definitely been hoping for something like a videogame inventory or a Bag of Holding. It would have made an expedition to one of the nearby stores much more valuable.

There were a number of other abilities that would help with such an expedition, like Biological Augment: Strength, Animate Machinery, or a Rideable Assistant ability… but the latter two were marked with “Insufficient support.” I wondered what would happen if you took them anyway. Maybe you’d be able to operate a can opener, instead of a car? You’d summon a horse, but it’d be duck-sized? Nothing at all?

I found lots of good options for all my children. These got committed - with full descriptions - to paper. I could talk about them with the kids and Pointy later.

For myself, I had a lot of options… but no obvious choice. I’d thought earlier that Analyze seemed like it might have good synergy with Life Sense and Assisted Strike, but I definitely couldn’t take that right now. I really wanted to take Paralyze. It was still marked as being insufficiently supported, but even incomplete paralysis could be deadly if I timed it well. Lock up a ram’s leg as it charged and the thing would probably trip and break all its own bones. It was a potential answer to the new monsters, but it was also a huge gamble.

With a sigh, I rejected it. Too risky.

There were multiple defensive Biological Augments, everything from growing spikes to scales. These were not very attractive to me. I told myself there’d been enough upheaval in my kids’ lives without their mother suddenly turning into a Cheap Sci-fi Alien. The asshole voice in my head whispered that this was just an excuse, that I was just being vain. If there’d been an obvious choice among those Augments I would have had to make some hard decisions, but none of them sounded so amazing that I felt I had to discard the impact on the kids - and my - mental health.

There were also a few Augments that sounded like they wouldn’t necessarily alter my appearance, like Resilient Skin, Rapid Recovery, and Sleepless.

Yeah, okay, you got me - Sleepless wasn’t a defensive ability. It wouldn’t help me tank the rams. It was just incredibly tempting. Never getting tired? Having 30% more hours in the day? Think what I could do with that!

If I’d been able to trust Sleepless to work smoothly, I might have grabbed it, impracticality be damned! But my experience with Life Sense and Gavin’s with Extensible Limb made me leery. What if it just made me not need sleep, but I still wanted it? What if I lost the ability to sleep, but still needed it to make my brain work properly? Nah, I could hold off. If I heard that someone else had taken it and hadn’t completely lost their marbles after a few months, maybe I’d give it a shot.

There were several aura-type abilities as well, but I rejected those for now. It would be nice to share a benefit with those around me, but the effects would probably be too subtle for now.

The abilities I was considering most closely were a trio of active defensive abilities - Force Shield, Defensive Surge, and Parry.

Force Shield seemed good, but I doubted it would have any synergy with what I had already.

Defensive Surge, I wasn’t sure about the synergy. The description just said, “Greatly increase your resistance to harm for a short time.”

Parry was described as “Imparts extra force to an attempt to redirect an oncoming blow.”

I read their descriptions over and over, hoping more clues would spontaneously appear.

They didn’t.

I read the descriptions to Pointy, and asked if she had any more insight into which would have the best synergy.

She frowned. “I doubt any of them will be very good. Your abilities to date have been centered around information and manipulation. It’s possible to use those for self-defense by dodging and so forth, but they won’t really stop an impact. That’s what you want, yes?”

I grimaced. “I feel l don’t have a choice about it if I’m going to keep bringing the kids out. Any insight into which might be the least bad?”

“Perhaps Parry? If it has a guidance effect in addition to the force, it might at least have good synergy with Assisted Strike.”

“I was thinking that too. The wording is a little unclear, but I feel like it must - otherwise it’s just a more limited Powerful Blow.”

Even if Pointy hadn’t been able to give me any new info, having her confirm my thought process made me feel better. I was reading through the ability one more time when Pointy spoke again.

“I may have more insight into why abilities synergize.”

That got my attention. “What do you mean?”

“In the recordings, there are a few symbols that come up over and over when they pull up the previous contestants’ screens and highlight their synergy percentages. I have guesses about most of the meanings of those words, but there was one that was stumping me for a long time. Announcers use it frequently - more frequently when discussing ability screens, but not only then - but there’s never any obvious context to give me any clues. However, the symbol itself… the right half is the same as that for a symbol that means something like fog or cloud or mist, and the left half matches a symbol they’ve used frequently in conjunction with the anomalous devices… I’ve been assuming it meant something like ‘technology.’”

“Technology mist?” I asked.

Pointy nodded. “I think it may refer to nanomachines.”