Major Eugene Fitzgerald’s arrival had been a divisive force in our still-forming community. The major himself hadn’t done anything particularly incendiary in the day or so since he’d arrived, but his presence, and what it implied, was inflammatory enough.

A small group completely accepted his authority, excited that the Arsenal was reaching out. They hadn’t trusted our leadership like they’d trusted the US government. In addition, some had taken the major’s arrival as a sign that a wave of troops was just behind him, riding in to save us from these aliens. I’d heard the major himself had been clear that this was not the case, but distasteful facts have a hard time competing with delicious fictions.

The rest of those completely willing to accept the major had either been part of the military themselves, or military-adjacent, like the colonel’s wife Tammy. Priya said Tammy was actually a little upset by the major’s arrival, but she’d complied with all his commands. She’d been around the military too much to do otherwise. You get an order? You follow the order.

A minor faction was truly incensed by the Arsenal’s interference. Many of these were the same group who’d been objecting to Fort Autumn to begin with, mistrustful of all authority. A few were literally wearing T-shirts with the anarchist “A” on the front. They had been talking about breaking away to make their own fort, but they hadn’t found a way to manage the logistics of making one without a Siphon-empowered stoneshaper. That meant, of course, that they wanted use of our Siphon, a demand that upset everyone outside of their faction.

Those two groups together made up maybe a fifth of the Fort Autumn residents. The vast majority of people weren’t at either extreme, but felt some amount of resentment and uncertainty at the major’s arrival.

“After all,” Priya told me, “Major Fitzgerald has not signed the charter. By our charter, he does not have authority. He’s not going to sign it, either. He says he can’t do so in good conscience when he might be reassigned. It’s understandable, but it means that a lot of people do not want to listen to him. Most people were listening to Tammy, with the colonel gone, but now…”

“They just see her as a spokesperson for the major,” I said.

Priya nodded. “It’s bad, and Tammy knows it, too. We were going to hold an election for a local leader five days from now, but when she heard you were on your way back she asked our specialist to send out an Announcement that we’d be holding elections tomorrow instead.”

“Tomorrow?” I asked surprised. “That’s… a good idea, I guess.” If we had a duly-elected local authority, that would give most people someone to unify behind, whether that person went along with the major’s orders or not. “Who’s running?”

“A lot of people want you in charge.”

“Ew. There’s got to be someone better. What about that guy on Russet? The one who used to work as a public defender. He knows law and how people try to get around it. Or… or… isn’t there a marriage counselor who lives on Sienna? They’d be better at resolving disputes than me.”

Priya laughed. “I feel like you’re grasping at straws. They might be qualified, but most people don’t know who those two are. They also don’t have many abilities, which makes a lot of people trust them less.”

“Well… what about Tammy?”

Priya gave me a flat look. “That would be too much like having Dane in charge of civil matters as well as military. Tammy’s not running.”

I turned to George. “How about you? You’re a hero who joined the rescue group. You have lots of abilities.”

He looked at the ceiling, embarrassed. “There are actually a few people who want to vote for me. I don’t know, though…”

“I do! You’re perfect! Look at all the work you did mapping out the neighborhood and the city and figuring out foodstocks. You’re a math-minded organizer. Who could be better?”

“I just did the numbers stuff,” George said, uncertain. “There’s more involved in leadership than that, but I guess I can give it a try.”

“That’s the spirit!” I turned to Priya. “Anyone else getting a lot of attention?”

“Carlos and Alexandra have both been campaigning pretty hard.”

“That’s like… the only two people worse for the role than me. Ugh. Anything else happen while I was gone?”

“Other than that hang glider woman dropping off Major Fitzgerald, everything went pretty much as you’d expect,” George said. “We had a lot of new groups send trucks or cars over to purchase rations, but travel’s slowed way down since yesterday’s Deadline.”

“Slowed down? Not stopped?”

“Some people did the metal wheel thing that you guys did. A couple groups just drove on popped tires, real slow. One group just took the flatbed trailer off a truck and welded some handholds on. Animate Machinery doesn’t use the engine anyway, so it didn’t matter that they didn’t have one. They actually made it here with their tires intact, ‘cause they had people actively defending every side of it from the stabcrabs the whole way.”

I laughed. “Nice! No need for an engine when you have abilities.”

George smiled. “Only other news we have is personal. Anju and Samar got their fifth abilities. Anju can hover indefinitely now.”

“Oh, wow! That is big news. Wait. Shit.”

George and Priya both gave me concerned looks as I hurried toward our chatting kids.

I called back over my shoulder, “Gavin’s going to want her to take him flying!”

We got to the kids in time to prevent unsupervised experimentation and lay down some ground rules. Anju was excited to take Gavin up, and the darkness gave us a good excuse to ask her to keep the flight short and not fly higher than the streetlights. The flight concluded safely, but I vowed to make some kind of harness before I let Gavin fly with Anju again. Gavin had been delighted by the flight and had stretched one limb out after another, waving them in the wind. I did not trust him to keep a tight hold on Anju. While I was certain he would survive a 20-foot fall, especially with us adults around to catch him, I was less sanguine about a 50- or 100-foot plummet.

The Turners had moved most of our stuff to our rooms in the Quarry, so our surroundings were a little unfamiliar, but it was good to sleep on our own mattresses again. Actually, between the big walls of the fort, the narrow entrance to the Quarry, and the plentiful defenders at all hours, I felt completely safe for the first time in weeks. I’d thought I’d felt safe before, but it wasn’t until now, when I really let my guard down, that I realized how much tension I’d still been holding. “Safe, because Pointy will wake us up in time” or “Safe, because a monster can’t get to us quickly” is a different thing than “safe.”

But here, nestled in the Quarry’s too-cold walls, I did feel safe. Even my overactive imagination had a hard time seeing how any of the monsters could get to us at all. The only sneaky monsters, the badblankets, weren’t mobile. Anything else would have to fight through dozens of people to even get within sight of our door.

I wasn’t worried about human threats either. Major Fitzgerald had designated me a “strategic asset” and posted two guards outside our bedroom. Since I’d set heirs, my death shouldn’t disrupt the Shop’s function, but I wasn’t about to share that information. I was 100% on-board with everyone wanting to keep me alive, since it made my kids safer. Telling anyone who my heirs were would just put my kids and the Turners in more danger. Nah. Bring on the guards!

Cassie was out almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, a soft smile on her face as she nestled up with Pointy under familiar blankets. That let the boys and I experiment a little with efforts to get Pointy to acknowledge Micah and me. We didn’t succeed, but we did find something interesting: Pointy could take Micah and I into account when providing survival-oriented answers, even if she seemed otherwise unaware of our presence.

When Gavin asked the turtle something frivolous, like “How many hugs would I have to give to hug all the other humans in this room?” she told him “One hug.” On the other hand, when he asked “How much food do we need to feed all the humans in this room tomorrow?” she responded “Between 6,500 and 8,500 kiloCalories,” an answer that seemed about right for the four of us, but far too much for Gavin and Cassie alone.

The turtle had reacted to our presence before by navigating around us if we were in her way, but it was interesting to see that she could, on some level, recognize us as humans.

When Gavin asked her further questions about her food answer, she locked up and then forgot the discussion. That made it hard to be sure if we were really getting anywhere, but it gave me things to think about.