We worked until dinner offered a minor disruption. The only way to stomach a ration bar was to eat it quickly; there was nothing to be gained by dragging out the experience. Most people didn’t hop right back to work, though, taking time to stretch, talk, and admire what we’d accomplished.

Helen didn’t even take a break to eat, taking bites off a ration bar as she continued to experiment. We knew that pacing yourself was the best way to get the most use out of your abilities, but figuring out what that meant was a different story entirely. Abilities differed. Healing Touch, for example, had discrete “uses;” two people with the same synergy could use Healing Touch the same number of times in the same period of time before tiring. Other abilities, like Micah’s Freeze or Conjure Flame, weren’t so simple. How much it tired Micah to freeze something seemed to depend on a variety of factors, including volume, weight, and starting temperature. The Shape Metal/Stone/etc. abilities were more akin to that, so far as we could tell, tiring the user based mostly on the weight and volume of what had been moved, as well as how far it had been moved.

Figuring out how much ability use she could sustain without tiring was critical to actually getting a lot of stone moved in short order, as was figuring out the best size to cut the stone blocks. Smaller blocks meant more cuts and more work, but larger blocks meant only a limited subset of our workforce could carry them.

We settled on a size slightly larger than a cubic foot, which was easy for our strongest people to carry. Those with less generally couldn’t carry it solo, but we set up pairs of people to load and unload wheelbarrows, allowing our weaker members to continue to help. Anju and Micah were stationed at the bottom of the quarry, while Gavin had been paired with a teenager to help unload near the wall. Cassie was technically strong enough to help, but she was physically too small to help Gavin... even if she’d had the emotional focus, which she did not.

Instead, she and Samar were building mud-castles in the remains of the dirt piles. I wasn’t sure how we would get the dirt off of them without ability use or copious amounts of water. With the arrival of the Shop and purchasable clean water, we’d relaxed enough to start using dirty water to flush the toilet occasionally. That had done wonders to make me feel more human, but I still hesitated to waste the large amount of water a shower would take.

I was musing on how inappropriate it would be to ask Helen to pull the dirt off the kids when I saw another Combat Group turn the corner. That wasn’t unusual; it was common for the groups to swing by the Shop while they were out, to allow their members to purchase food for the day.

What was unusual was the young girl walking in the middle of their group. I wasn’t sure exactly how old she was - maybe a few years older than Micah? Thirteen or so? She was barefoot and holding a tablecloth around herself. She looked exhausted.

I took a moment to glance at my kids. I was surprised Gavin and Micah had been diligently working for so long, but they had held out. The teen working with Gavin had been excellent with the younger boy, giving him high fives and treating him like an equal in spite of the ten-year age gap, which I’m sure had helped immensely. I was less clear on what had kept Micah going, but maybe he was running on pure smugness. The stone blocks he and Anju were moving were just barely liftable for a pair of single-ability adults, but the nine-year-old team was moving them with ease, not with strain.

The boys would be fine for a few minutes on their own, and Cassie and Samar hadn’t yet tired of their dirt-castle game. There’d been more hiccups there, as Cassie accidentally destroyed Samar’s constructions, or Samar used “Cassie’s dirt,” but they were playing happily now, and George and Priya were nearby. I was fine to go.

I jogged down the street. As I got close, I caught a badblanket on the edge of my Life Sense and was about to call it out, when a man at the front of the group pointed at it. I blinked in surprise as a flurry of missiles rained down on the monster, and a woman with a baseball bat charged forward to knock the monster away when its flailing motion brought it too close to the group.

“Wow. You’ve only been at this for a couple days, but you seem like a well-oiled machine,” I said.

“Thanks.” The man in front’s response was gruff, and he hesitated, casting an uncertain glance over at the girl in the tablecloth. “Uh, this is Ava. We, um, found her. Over on Sienna.”

Close to Cotton Acres, then. I’d already been alarmed, but that ratcheted my worry up a few notches.

I tried not to let it show on my face or in my voice. Whatever had happened to lead her here, this girl had clearly had a difficult day. “Hello, Ava. Would you like to come and sit down in my house? You look tired. And we can find you something a little more comfortable to wear.”

Up close, it was clear that Ava wasn’t wearing anything under the tablecloth. I’d suspected as much - we hadn’t gotten to the point where tablecloths were a common fashion choice - but I’d wanted to be wrong. There weren’t a lot of good reasons for a young girl to be missing all her clothes.

Ava glanced behind herself. “I don’t know if I should stop. They might be looking for me.”

I gestured behind me. “Look at all those people down there, working together. That’s my lawn they’re on. Well, used to be my lawn. It’s my pit now, I guess. Anyone coming for you would have to get through all those people, and a lot of us are pretty strong.”

Ava looked uncertain.

“Come on,” I said gently. “I’ll stay with you. You’re clearly tired. You need a rest.”

I extended a hand toward her. We both looked at my hand for a minute, and then I realized both of hers were occupied holding the tablecloth shut for modesty. I flushed as I pulled my hand back and muttered an apology. My embarrassment made her laugh, and she nodded and moved forward to start walking next to me.

As we got closer to the house, I caught Priya’s eyes, waving one hand in a circle to indicate our children. She nodded and flashed me a thumbs-up, so I moved inside. Responsibility had been officially passed.

“Follow me,” I told Ava, and cut through the master bedroom to my closet. I was significantly taller than Ava, not to mention chubbier, but I could at least do better than a tablecloth. My eyes scanned the racks of my clothes until they landed on a stretchy blue sundress. I pulled it down and handed it to her. “This will be big on you, but…”

She wriggled it over her head, the knee-length dress hanging down near her ankles. “It’s fine, thanks. I had to take off my clothes to escape, and I didn’t want to stop and look for more. I guess… you’re the boss here?”

Take off her clothes to escape? I wanted to hear her explain how that made sense, but I still relaxed a little. It sounded like her nudity was a choice she had made, not something that had been done to her. I was certain she hadn’t made that choice lightly, but her agency the situation still erased a variety of dark possibilities.

“I’m not the boss,” I laughed, leading her back out. “We don’t really have a boss. Maybe Colonel Zwerinski, but not really.”

Ava frowned. “If you’re not the boss, then why are all those people working for you? I saw the wall they’re building around your house.”

“It’s not my house they’re protecting. That other little house, the one you saw on my front lawn?”

“The weird-ass one with the red mega-telephone-pole at the top?”

“That’s the one. It’s not a house, it’s a Shop. We can buy food and water from it.”

Her eyes flew open at my words. “You have more food? You really can buy food?”

I could have kicked myself. She was a refugee from Cotton Acres. Obviously she was hungry. “Yes. Here, take a seat and I’ll get you something to drink and eat. I’ll warn you: it’s not pizza and hamburgers. It’ll fill you up, though.”

“You’re just going to give me some?” She looked at me with disbelief, and I could see her eyes glistening.

“Of course.”

I went to get her a ration bar, and resolved to add a square of my own dark chocolate to what I offered her. Whatever Ava’s story was, it was pretty clear that she needed kindness.