Chapter 150: Nineteen Days

Thirty-one trailers went into the Inventory one after another under my palm, the ’wall’ of the place coming down one snapped-out-of-reality trailer at a time, then the big RV at the back going in with the rest, then a tanker full of nearly four thousand liters of diesel and another one of petrol, months of food from a truck stop into the dry-goods trailer.

The two women Nia had untied were sitting in the doorway of the fuel shack with blankets round their shoulders and mugs in their hands, watching me empty their prison into thin air, neither of them speaking until Kara came down off the trailer, crouched in front of them, and told them, flat, that there was a farmhouse nine kilometers up the road with thirty-one women in it and a wall, and room for two more. They looked at each other. The older one nodded, and that made thirty-three.

Nia’s rig was the last thing on the lot, and she was standing in front of it with her arms crossed.

"It’s mine."

"It’s a forty-foot sleeper, Nia... And last I checked, you didn’t have a pocket big enough for it... neither does the ghostbird."

"It’s got a bed, a shower with pressure, and I killed twenty-two men for it."

"Look, it’s still yours... I’m just safe keeping it."

"Nikki." She put a hand flat on the side of it. "The rig’s mine."

I put my palm on the rig, with Nia patting the empty air where it had been, smiling at me with paprika on her lips, and that was the end of that argument, same as every argument with her.

Back at the farmhouse, the thing I’d been carrying since the ditch came out onto the kitchen table in front of Nora: a flat black disc a little bigger than a coin, nothing written on it, a faint blue line running round the edge, dropped into the Inventory last night as a reward for that said Enhanced Learning, and I’d spent the whole flight working out who to give it to, landing on the same answer every time.

"What’s that?" Nora looked at it, then at me.

"A skill."

"A what?"

"The System handed it over for Hallam... You put it on someone, and they get the skill." I slid it across the table. "This one’s called Enhanced Learning."

She looked at it and didn’t touch it.

"Why me?"

"Cuz you’re an idiot."

"I’m twenty."

"You were nineteen yesterday."

"I rounded."

"I know exactly how old you are."

She picked it up it went into her palm and stopped being there, was just gone within a second, as though her palm absorbed it, and the very next second, a panel came up in front of me that she couldn’t see.

-Ding!

{

Skill Token applied.

Recipient: Nora Woodbrew

Skill acquired: Enhanced Learning

Effect: Accelerated skill/knowledge acquisition and retention.

}

She looked up at me, chin damned near pointed at the ceiling, and announced with enormous dignity that she’s going to learn martial arts and beat Nia one-on-one, and went out onto the porch and started punching in the air.

[Okay... that’s the kid sorted. Now... let’s see if I can buy these things...]

That had been sitting in my head since the quest first came up. The System handing me a skill token as a bounty reward, casual as anything, after three weeks of selling me rifles and helicopter upgrades and injectors and three-meter walls without once mentioning it could sell me one.

So I opened the Shop and went looking, and it took me less than a second to find it thanks to the little search bar at the top.

{

SKILLS

Enhanced Learning: 1,200,000 Credits

Marksmanship (Fundamentals): 800,000 Credits

Field Medicine (Fundamentals): 900,000 Credits

Mechanical Aptitude: 750,000 Credits

Close Quarters Combat (Fundamentals): 1,100,000 Credits

Endurance (Fundamentals): 650,000 Credits

.

.

.

}

[...Are you kidding me... nearly three weeks buying guns for people who can’t shoot, when I could’ve bought them the shooting... Fine. I know now. Kara gets Field Medicine the second I can afford it, Leo gets Mechanical, Norton probably teaches the System something... Later. All of it later. I’ve got nineteen days and a hundred and fifty million to make.]

I closed the Shop, opened the enhancers, and did what I’d been putting off since the wall: four Physiological, four Cognition, one of each for Kara, Leo, Nora, Mr. Norton. Each purchase of those enhancers increases the price a little higher, and now, prices were starting at seven hundred and fifty thousand and climbing, all eight bought without letting myself read the totals, knowing I’d stop if I did.

-Ding!

{

Physiological Enhancer ×4: 3,300,000 Credits

Cognition Enhancer ×4: 3,300,000 Credits

Delivered to Inventory.

}

[Been on a spending spree lately...] I could help but rub my face.

But then again, I had a plan.

We left at eleven, and I hadn’t expected to mind.

The whole property came out for it, thirty-three women now, fourteen in plates, the rest in coats, filling the yard between the house and the gate, Bill pushing through the front of them with a tray of tomato seedlings, and shoving it into Kara’s arms without asking.

"Best of the lot."

"Bill, that’s-."

"There’s more." Bill glanced back at the greenhouses, trying to hide a smile. "There’s a lot more."

The girl with the braid brought coffee for the road and stood too close, handing it over, one last time, and out of pure habit, Nora took the mug out of her hand without looking at either of us.

Vera shook my hand once, hard, and let go. Dana stood at the back with her arms folded and told me nothing whatsoever about the future, which I appreciated more than she knew.

The prisoner from the barn sat at the very back on a crate with his leg out straight and a tray of seedlings in his lap, Ruth having already decided what happened to him, which was carrying trays for Bill until Bill said otherwise.

Bill had looked him up and down, ruled "He can carry trays," and that had been the whole trial.

[Fair... Honestly, that’s fairer than he’d have gotten from me.]

Ruth came last. She stood at the gate with the DMR over her shoulder, looking at the Ghostbird warming up on the field with Nia already in the door and Tikki in the cockpit, then at me for a long time, wearing the face from the porch on the first night.

"I never thanked you."

"You called me handsome more than thirty times." I chuckled, " I’m content."

She didn’t smile, but her eyes did.

That hit me under the ribs where I hadn’t braced for it, and I didn’t have anything clever to put after it, so I didn’t try.

"You radio us twice a day," she reminded me.

"Wouldn’t dare skip it." I chuckled.

"And if something happens, you come straight back here... Don’t make me come find you, handsome. I’d have to leave the wall."

"Then don’t."

She nodded once and stepped back, and I went round the house to the field where the Ghostbird was already turning over, Nia in the door with her boots hanging out, Tikki in the right-hand seat looking at me as though I was running late.

Up in the air, I looked down once, which was a mistake, all thirty-three of them were still there, standing in a row in the cold with their rifles and their coats, watching the helicopter go, none of them waving as though I would suddenly decide that the farmhouse looks a lot like home from up here.

With a simple comman, the Ghostbird pointed its nose down toward west, and the wall was gone behind the trees inside a minute, the road white and empty underneath us.

Nobody said a word on the intercom for ten kilometers. Leo and Kara and Nora and Norton strapped in behind me with a box of tomato seedlings on the cabin floor between their feet, nobody touching it.

"Nikki," Leo was the first one to break the silence.

"Go on ahead, dude."

"Those injectors this morning you bought... There were four, right? One each?"

"One each. Norton’s got them."

"Right." A breath in the headset. "And the wall came out of the same pot... the lights. And whatever the second list cost."

"You want a receipt, man?"

"No, I... That’s not..."

"He’s asking what everyone back wants to ask," Nora put in for him, "... he’s just being polite about it."

"Nora." Kara shot her sister a look. "Let him."

Beside me, Nia leaned into her mic without looking away from the trees. "If it’s a headcount, I’ve got a plan going."

"Not helping."

"Wasn’t trying to~"

"Nia’s clock has nineteen days left, big bro... and now that you’ve cleared your conscience..." Leo’s voice had gone level, the careful part of it used up. "How many people are you going to kill for the next one-fifty million credits?"