In a movie, that beautiful healing moment would have erased the anger from the hearts of those watching. Bitter enemies would have come together and tentatively extended hands of friendship. After a moment, someone would have commented on what fools they had been, and everyone would have cooperated to fix the harm they’d mutually caused.

What actually happened wasn’t nearly so tidy, but the joint healing was still a turning point.

It helped that the injured man turned out to be Karim, the peacemaker with Mental Speech who’d contacted Flip earlier. He’d been pulled in with his eight-year-old daughter and had been doing his best to keep her safe. At first, that had been advocating for attempts to negotiate, but when Orange’s dinosaurs had attacked their group, peace had seemed impossible. His daughter had been safely ensconced with Green Team’s healers, but Karim himself had joined the fighters, where he’d been disoriented by gas and nearly fried.

I wasn’t sure what had kept the girl back until we’d arrived: maybe just an inability to locate her father? We’d ascended right after the gas had died down.

In any case, she’d literally leapt at the opportunity to save him, and given everything she had. She was still asleep; I’d be surprised if she awoke before we left.

Even sitting with his daughter nestled against his side, Karim was a godsend. He spoke both English and Arabic fluently, and he was committed to making peace work, especially after it was made clear that the initial violence between the teams’ dinosaurs was unintentional.

That should have made things go smooth as butter, but his team didn’t recognize him as leader, and there was a wealth of ill-feelings to overcome. Yes, most of the casualties had been from dinosaur attacks… but not all of them, and it was inarguable that both teams had attacked - and killed - people from the other side. Even if they’d done so based on a misunderstanding, it was hardly something that could be pushed aside and forgotten. Lives had been lost.

In short, it was one thing to walk out and help a little kid, and another thing entirely to join hands with the adult who’d swung a sword at you.

Preventing further bloodshed was no easy task.

The first step was both teams agreeing healers could come out to help the wounded.

I used Analyze to help with triage, directing healers toward those with only moderate wounds and away from those who were incapacitated but not in danger, like people who were suffering from gasylosaur attacks.

Healing was… limited. A few weeks ago, Gavin had collapsed after stabilizing one major wound. Healers were much stronger now, with many able to heal a dozen wounds of similar severity before exhausting themselves. The trouble was, we still needed more healing than we had available. It had taken all the power Karim’s daughter had, plus help from another healer, to bring the Egyptian man back to consciousness. There were a dozen others in comparably dire straits, and I doubted we’d be able to save all of them.

For now, I called them out as “alive, but lowest priority.” Perhaps we could get to some of them after we tended to the less-injured individuals.

Healers picked their way gingerly across the battlefield, eyeing one another suspiciously. The effect was a little ruined by the snot continually running out of nearly everyone’s nose, but that was an advantage too, in a way: I don’t think it escaped anyone’s notice that I and the Arsenal soldiers were standing tall, watching with clear eyes and steady breathing.

Well, I looked like I was watching. In reality, I couldn’t keep my focus away from my rear eyes, which were locked on the slowly tumbling line of trees, now at least halfway to the mesa.

“I need to bring my ki-... my team up to safety,” I announced. “What’s left of Red Team too. That means we need to make space up here. The dinosaurs need to go.”

The suggestion didn’t make people comfortable, but the fact that the plateau was overcrowded was undeniable, and I wasn’t the only one who could see the advancing lava. Now was the time to push.

“If you guys will agree to be part of it, I can let some of your people go down and execute Purple Team monsters. Ideally, I’d like every team to leave here with 24 score, same as we started with… but with all the monsters dead.”

When my suggestion was translated, it set off murmurs of interest, but concern too. The healers had been walking around, but most of the healthy-ish team members were still crouched “safely” behind their dinosaur wall.

“Which team wants to go first? If they let their opponents execute one of their dinosaurs, I’ll let them kill three purple dinos.”

“Hey,” hissed Darlisa. “We still need six more kills.”

“I know,” I whispered to her. “Don’t worry. We all need to end up with 24 eventually. I just need to get them to buy into the plan. I think they’re going to be more amenable to Red Team coming close to them than their ‘enemies’ anyway. They don’t have anything against you guys. You’ll get your kills.”

“We will take your deal!” called the Orange Team spokesperson.

Karim was only a beat behind, calling out that Green Team would take the deal too.

Actually getting the kills exchanged was a headache. We didn’t want to kill any dinosaurs on the top, where they’d take up space we wanted for people, but getting them off the plateau without harming anyone was difficult. Even with all the care we took, it was fortunate that we had a few flyers available - our two, plus two from Orange Team - to catch people accidentally shoved off the edge.

Many were unhappy about giving free “score” to other teams. Even my own team had discontents. Getting it to happen required a lot of cajoling and convincing and, quite honestly, distracting people.

We had a cadre of people who were wholly on-board with the plan: most of the Purple Team members wearing Team Humanity stripes, yes, but people from other teams too. Many were there with vulnerable children, but some were just sick of bloodshed or angrier at the aliens than the people who’d directly harmed them. I put Clarice in charge of this group and tasked her with “actually getting the dinosaurs killed properly,” while Darlisa and I and a few others went out to listen to angry people and nod seriously in response to their complaints. Not to actually, you know, go along with anything they said, just to give them a target for their anger while shit got done.

Clarice made sure the last dinosaurs alive were Purple ones. If anyone was going to try to upend the scores, the very end would be the time to do it, when we would have no chance to adjust and correct. There were definitely people eyeing the last dinosaurs thoughtfully, casting me and the people from the Arsenal sideways looks.

I gave a little speech, carefully translated into other languages by Darlisa, Karim, and a Japanese translator.

“You might be able to mess up the score distribution. It’s possible. But we still have close to two hours before we go home, and a very small safe area. Do you want to spend that time fighting for your life or swimming in lava?”

Even stealth abilities wouldn’t really give someone a good chance at survival when they were trapped in a small dome with two hundred others angry at them. And even after giving Darlisa eight guns and a backpack full of ammunition - all she could carry - we still had a bunch of gun-toting men and women in military gear standing at attention.

It wasn’t something anyone decided to tangle with. The final dinosaur deaths went smoothly.

Three snakeropods stood at the base of the ramp, heads lowered and obediently frozen as teams of Red, Orange, and Green people carried out the final executions. Then, all the dinosaurs were dead and every single person had 24 score. My sash was emblazoned with 24 identical red hexagons, while the other teams’ bore a particolor mix.

It hadn’t been a fast process, and the lava had come inexorably closer as we’d debated. By the time all the dinosaurs were slain, the temperature in the caldera was very hot and only a few trees remained.

There was one positive surprise: nearly twenty stragglers, people who’d separated from their teams early on, arrived at the mesa just ahead of the lava. They hadn’t known the terrain, but the molten rock had steadily herded them toward the only spot of safety. Included among our number were the four Purple Team who’d separated from us earlier - not the three who’d taken the Mini-Rex, the ones who’d left amicably. They got some dirty looks for running off during the hard part, but not from me. I was just happy to see more people alive. I was even happy to see the strays from Red Team who arrived, claiming they hadn't been among our attackers. Their eyes, reddened by gasylosaur emissions, made that questionable, but they'd clearly fled the group of attackers early on if they'd evaded us, and there was little motive for them to fight us now. They seemed content just to sit within the border of the dome. Even if I kept some wary attention on them, I was glad to see more humans surviving.

The Challenge had been brutal. Even with the late returnees and the handful of prisoners we had, over half of Red Team had died. Orange and Green Teams were barely in better shape, with 33 dead on Orange Team and 35 dead on Green. My own team had gotten off by far the most lightly, but we’d still lost six people. All in all, over a quarter of the humans who’d been brought to this Challenge were dead now, and I had to imagine that in most Challenges, casualties had been higher.

Hard to ‘win’ the Maffiyir if all your standouts keep dying, I thought to myself. We’ve got to stop this. They're goading us to eliminate our own strongest. Everyone who dies in a Challenge dies with Money that could have been used to buy land and win... and if they're dead, they certainly won't turn into troublemakers like Fluffy.

It would be better for the contest-runners if the only humans to survive this were weak-willed cowards, disinclined to stand out; the kinds of people who never got high Novelty and just got enough Points to scrape through and keep themselves alive.

Well, we were doing our best. The Arsenal soldiers had spread out, each attached to anyone who could translate, trying to deliver their prepared speeches and ask and answer questions. They'd passed along information about heirs and an entreaty to don the black-and-white stripes of Team Humanity. I'd suggested the color scheme just because it would be easy and accessible, but watching the soldiers attempt to persuade the multinational crowd in front of us, I was grateful I hadn't suggested the more American red-white-and-blue. The monochrome palette wasn't associated with any major countries, so it shouldn't evoke any national prejudice.

While the soldiers talked, healers worked to save who they could, Clarice organized the points distribution, everyone else hadn’t been idle. Someone on the Japanese team had the idea of sending people down to gather bamboo and large leaves, and anyone with any sort of skill or Ability for construction had been pressed into service building a large canopy to at least provide some shade. With clouds of ash already blocking out the sun, the area under the canopy was almost dark, but it was ever-so-slightly-cooler. The dome seemed to be blocking most of the ash, but it was accumulating on the surface of the forcefield and falling in large clumps, presumably once it got too big to be considered "particulate" anymore. The leafy ceiling kept the falling ash off of us.

At least hydration wasn't a concern. Almost everyone had brought water, and we’d been able to retrieve more off the bodies of the dead.

It was still hellishly hot.

Purple and Red teams got the choicest spots under the middle of the canopy, our bodies forming a wall of neutrality between the other two teams.

I made my way under the ramshackle roof and plopped myself down next to Micah, who was sitting with Samar next to a sleeping Priya and Gavin and barely-awake George.

“I’ve got them now,” I told George, who closed his eyes in relief, not even responding.

Gavin had worn himself out after they’d come up, but managed to stabilize an Egyptian man whose lungs had been shredded when his ribcage had been caved-in, and helped a great deal with a Japanese woman who'd received serious burns to her face and left arm.

George had kept himself conscious, but only barely. The gas had done a number on people, spreading through lungs and throats, irritating noses, eyes, and mouths. There was too much damage, and too few people capable of fixing it. The only blessing was that the gas didn’t appear to be lethal. My friend had focused on helping people’s irritated eyes, which seemed to be causing the most discomfort, but he’d stopped when he reached his limits, not wanting to leave the kids unsupervised.

Not that they were causing trouble. Samar had a small crowd watching him. Every minute or so, the six-year-old would shoot another Ice Bolt at the ground near his feet, the projectile shattering into blessedly cool shards of ice that were immediately snatched up and pressed against hot necks and foreheads.

Micah sat nearby, but ignored the ice chips. He was hugging his knees, face pressed against his legs.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I’m not too hot,” he said. “I have resistance to hot. I mean, to heat.”

The error was uncharacteristic, even with the quick correction. Mispronouncing words he’d only read and never held aloud? Sure. Simple speech mistakes? Not so much. Micah might have calmed about volcanoes in recent years, after realizing there were none near Alabama, but it was clear that his old nightmare hadn’t lost all its power over him.

He didn’t need this.

“You could still cool it down for everyone else. We’ve got….” I flicked on Analyze “about 250 people in a small area.”

Micah turned his head to the side and looked at me through slitted eyes. “It would only last a second. There’s no walls here to keep the cool air in. It wouldn’t really help anybody. You know that, Mom.”

“You could do it anyway, until you’re too tired to stay awake. Fall asleep like Gavin, wake up safely back in Huntsville.”

Micah was quiet for a moment.

I put a hand on his back. “I know you’re really stressed, and it would be fine to-”

“That’s a giant waste! Using my ability so much and doing nothing with it?”

“You’d be protecting yourself! You’ve been so brave lately. It’s okay not to want to stare down one of your biggest fears.”

My son sat upright, pushing my hand off his back and glaring at me. “And then I would have to live the rest of my life knowing I’d been stupid.”

I’ve heard people talk about diarrhea with less disgust than Micah packed into the word “stupid.”

“What if I could find a smarter way for you to use your ability? Maybe if you-”

“Mom! I don’t want to go to sleep!” he shouted. Heads turned toward us and he hunched self-consciously, continuing in a more moderate tone. “I mean, yeah, it’s really scary, but I want to be ready in case you need help. What if something else happens? You’d only have Samar awake.”

I frowned. I didn’t think anything else would happen, but… he had a point.

“Gavin shouldn’t have gone to sleep either,” Micah said. “He can’t be anyone’s king if he’s asleep. He should be a king to far-away people.”

“That’s good thinking,” I told Micah. “But it will be okay. Flip’s awake, and so is Darlisa, and there are two rulers among the Egyptian contingent. None from the Japanese group, but… they’re working it out. I don’t know what the range limit is on Ruler messages, if there is one, but we’ll still be able to test.”

“I guess Gavin can’t speak Egyptian anyway,” Micah said, grudgingly. “And he only knows the names of aikido stuff in Japanese, and not very well. He always calls tai-sabaki ‘taisee-docky.’”

“They speak Arabic in Egypt. But you’re right, Gavin would probably have a tough time if we asked him to be a translator.”

“He can barely read English,” Micah said.

I shoved him. “Your brother can read very well for a six-year-old! He’s three years younger than you, you know. Do you remember how you were reading at his age?”

“I guess not.” Micah looked away from me, embarrassed, then shuddered as his eyes came to rest on the glowing orange horizon. “I wish Pointy was here. I don’t want to go to sleep, but it’s hard not to think about the lava.”

“I wish she was too… Even if I’m happy Cassie didn’t have to experience this. I’m worried we’re going to have negative Novelty when we get back, again.”

Micah groaned. “That would suck! Then I couldn’t talk to Pointy all week!”

I rolled my eyes. Micah’s boredom was not the major tragedy of that particular situation. I wasn’t about to give him a hard time about it, though. He was struggling and needed any distraction he could get. Hmm…

Gently, I lifted Priya up. She didn’t awaken. “Scooch over, Micah, Samar. I’m moving Ms. Priya to where you’re sitting, so we take her spot. We can hear Darlisa talking with Andy if we move over a little bit. It’ll probably be pretty interesting, finding out about how things have gone in, um… Bogotá.”

Thank goodness it was written on Darlisa’s bucket hat. I’d have never remembered the name of her city otherwise.

The move proved to be a good one, in more than one respect. Darlisa and Andy had finished exchanging all the most critical information they had, and Andy was struggling trying to come up with other good information and questions. I was able to help a little bit, throwing out specific abilities to be wary of, and then Micah chimed in.

“And don’t make Information Assistants at all!”

Darlisa looked confused. “What are those?”

It took us a little while to explain, since the ability name wasn’t as obvious as many and Darlisa didn’t seem to actually know what they were called. It didn’t help that every Information Assistant seemed to have its own unique appearance, but after a little confused description, Darlisa clapped her hands. “Ah! The robocitos! But why should we not make more? Everyone loves them!”

“Well, expect them not to be able to see you for the next twelve days or so,” I said. “Information Assistants and Shops get messed up when your Novelty goes negative. Um, Message as well.”

“Yes, yes, Andy explained the negative Novelty. That does not seem to be a reason not to take the ability.”

“No… Micah’s just passing along a request from my daughter’s Information Assistant. Earth media seems to be giving her a bit of an existential crisis, and she thinks it would be unfair to bring more AIs into being in her situation.”

“Hmf. Without music, I will have a crisis. I am sorry, but too many good things have been lost. If the robocitos can keep one alive, they must suffer to do so.”

I exchanged a look with Andy, who looked just as lost as I felt. “Music? Pointy - our, uh, robocito - can only play a few clips from her databanks. That’s not what you’re talking about, right?”

Darlisa stared at me like I was crazy. “No! Songs from records. If you can find a record, the robocitos can play the songs.”

“How does that work?” Andy asked.

Darlisa shrugged. “I do not know. I just know everyone on my block brought their records to Carlita, and her robocito plays music for five hours from the balcony every day. She is not the only one in Bogotá, either. I know of one at la universidad, and another in Puenta Aranda.”

I frowned. “I think record players are pretty simple. It’s just speakers that are hard. Maybe you can fix a record player, and then their hearing is good enough to hear the unamplified signal? Or maybe they just have good enough vision to see the grooves on the record?”

Darlisa looked met my questioning stare with a blank look. She clearly didn’t know the details.

“Well, either way, it should be easy enough to figure it out,” I said.

“Yeah! Then we plan a trip to Nashville to raid the Country Music Hall of Fame!” Andy put in gleefully.

“There’s got to be an easier way to get records than that,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “But my way sounds like a helluva lot of fun!”

Micah looked back and forth between us. I thought he was about to criticize Andy’s plans of larceny. Instead, his face scrunched up in confusion. “Records? Are those real? I thought they were just in Minecraft.”