“I knew Drew had a brain injury, but I always assumed it was from his surgery.” Vince says. “A lot of early divers had that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah.” Cassie mumbles, staring off into space, lost in her own thoughts.

  Silence fills the room, a silence I don’t feel like I can share. I never knew Drew, I can’t join in this mourning. I turn my attention back to my city until Ivy breaks the silence.

  “How about we leave it there for tonight?” Ivy suggests. “We can pick back up when Lucas gets back.”

  “Works for me.” Cassie tries to shrug nonchalantly, but all of us can tell it’s just for show. “I think I’m going to head to bed.”

  She stands up and heads straight for the door. I glance at Ivy who gives a miniscule nod before following her.

  Cassie heads straight for our room and leaves the door open behind her. I step through, finding her sitting on her bed, head in her hands.

  “What’s wrong?” I gently sit next to her, putting an arm over her shoulders.

  “It’s just more fresh than I thought.” She replies.

  It takes me a moment to realize who she’s talking about.

  “How long ago did Drew die?” I ask.

  “A few months before we found you.” She lets her head drift to the side and rest on my shoulder, not bothering to hide her tears. “He’s far from the first person I’ve lost. But I guess he’s my oldest dead friend.”

  “I'm sorry. I should have warned you.”

  Cassie shakes her head against me.

  “It’s nice to hear new stories about him.” She takes a deep breath. “I just wish he was here to tell them.” Silence fills the room, leaving me with no idea what to even say. “The two of you would have been best friends.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, without a doubt.” she reaches up to wipe her eyes. “Any more times Silver and Drew ran into each other I need to be prepared to hear?”

  I quickly skim C-1’s records.

  “Nothing before Silver recruits him to the gang.”

  “Alright, good.” She leans back, and I follow her down to the bed. “I should probably get some sleep.”

  “Alright.”

  The two of us get comfortable beneath the covers. I keep my attention on her until she slips into sleep, and focus once again on my city.

  I ping Monary, who sends me a list of everything I've missed. It only takes a few moments to go through everything.

  The city has been pretty quiet. Of course, there's always things that need to be done, but my assistants can keep things running without me at this point.

  I send a few bodies off to meet up with the people I'm assigned to help. Emma can't be everywhere at once, and instead focuses on those who need her the most. The rest of us help whoever we can, which goes a long way towards keeping us from stagnating.

  I spend a few hours going over what everyone else has been doing. I don't need to keep an eye on them, I trust everyone absolutely, but I'm not going to get complacent and have anyone suffer for it.

  A message interrupts my work, a converted analogue voice whispered into a receiver in my makeshift prison.

  “What are you going to do if we tell you what you want to know?” The voice isn't the person in charge of the caravan from Yellowstone.

  I display a message on the CRT installed in each cell.

  “That's up to you. You can go home or stay here if you don't feel safe returning. Or I can help you get wherever you want to go, whatever you want.”

  “What if you don't like what you hear?” Her already quiet voice drops even quieter, barely even able to be picked up by the microphone.

  “Why would that change anything?” I ask. “All I want is to protect my citizens, to let them live happy, safe lives. I want the same for you too. Punishing you doesn't make my citizens safer, it doesn't fix the damage that's already been done, it just makes your lives worse.”

  The person on the other end is silent for a long few minutes. I just wait. If she wants to talk, she will. Finally, another signal comes through.

  “We work directly for the government of Yellowstone.” She admits.

  “Thank you. What were they trying to do?”

  “I don't know.” She says and goes silent again for a long time. “There's talk of war.”

  One worry dominates my mind.

  “I sent a caravan there of people who wanted to leave. Are they still safe?”

  “I don't know. We got information about your construction from somewhere though.”

  What do I do about that? Am I responsible for that?

  Don't panic. I know for a fact that some of the top floors would sell me out. The chances of people not giving up that information willingly is non-existent. Kismet and the Rangers probably have a good idea what's going on there, they would tell me if something went wrong.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “What was the goal? To destabilize my city?”

  “I think so.” She replies. “This was the first step. We're making more pucks.”

  I'll need to check with Ray to make sure my conclusions are probable, but that makes a lot of sense. Under C-1, only those well off could afford cybernetics, leaving those who need them, but can't afford them, to rot. We've fixed that, but other cities probably don't know that yet. Trying to injure the poor and addicted would reduce the number of purely unmodified humans I can use to fight. With the pucks denying my bodies from fighting, and most scrappers I can call in to help being at least partially modified, it would make taking over my city through force fairly simple and safe.

  “That makes a lot of sense, thank you. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “I wasn't told anything.” She admits. “None of us were. I just overheard a few things.”

  “Ok. Thank you, it really helps.” I display. “How do you think we can do this safely? I don't want your friends to suspect anything if I suddenly let everyone go home.”

  She lets out a large sigh of relief.

  “I thought I was going to die here.” Her voice is shaky. “Just- just say you found everything you needed in our caravan.”

  “I can do that. I'll leave the same offer for everyone, asking if they want to go home or stay here. It won't be safe to send you home until the next storm passes, but I'll have your cars fully restocked and ready to go as soon as it has. Thank you again.”

  “Thank you.” She can barely force the words out of her mouth.

  I fabricate a message explaining to everyone what has happened and the offer, leaving it on their individual TVs to get discovered in the morning.

  At least lying though text is easy.

  I dive into the network and ping Monary, Ray, Zenith and Saccharine, pulling them all into a private conversation.

  “Zenith? Saccharine? Can you two connect me to Kismet? We need to have a discussion.” I pass everyone my memories of what happened, getting everyone up to speed.

  Zenith and Saccharine pull open reality, connecting us to Kismet. Zenith reaches through the tear and connects with one of Kismet’s tendrils, passing along my information.

  With everyone up to speed, I start the conversation.

  “How do we keep our city safe?”

  Ray is the first to offer a solution.

  “Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main weakness of the puck is the range. Focusing our defensive efforts atop the tower would be a good foundation to build off of. Large rifles, similar to Ivy’s, and bodies stationed up there permanently.”

  Kismet speaks next.

  “We will send the most recent schematics we have for the denial of those devices. The most vital piece will likely need to be manufactured in our plant, and will be sent over with the next caravan. Mounting it atop a few cars working in unison with a power cord trailing behind it, connected directly to your geothermal plant, will keep a small area safe. The power requirements may necessitate disabling the dome while active, but we’ll leave testing that to you. The trouble comes from protecting it without stopping it from working. We are already searching for a solution, and will contact you when we have one.”

  “Thank you.” I say. Kismet passes me the blueprints, including the parts they’re going to construct for me. I forward those blueprints to S-21 in the manufacturing plant, who softly hums happily from the new challenge.

  “Ray and I have been hard at work building a group of unmodified humans we can rely on.” Monary adds. “We have ten people with experience who are willing to fight, and we’re training twenty more.”

  “That’s a good start, thank you. What else can we be doing?”

  “Do you plan on retaliating?” Ray asks.

  “In what way?”

  “Any. Politically, militarily, anything.”

  “We’re not going to attack them.” I stress. “I’m not going to hurt their civilians just because of what the leaders are doing.”

  “They would not, and are not, showing you that same kindness.”

  “I don’t care.” I go silent for a moment, while my mind churns, trying to work through potential consequences of an idea. “I think it’s reasonable to warn every city we can contact about them and the device.”

  “People will attempt to replicate it.” Kismet reminds me. “Or buy it and use it for their own purposes.”

  “We can tell them about the countermeasures as well then, and keep them updated as they develop.”

  “Then we lose the element of surprise when they attack.” Ray says. “If you want to reveal the existence of the device, I recommend we use it to lure them into a trap. Tell people it exists and that we’re working on countermeasures but have nothing yet. Word of that gets back to Yellowstone and they rush their plan while they think they still have the advantage. They attack before they have finalized their preparations, meanwhile we are fully prepared.”

  “But how does that help anyone?” I ask. “They send an army to die, and then what? They lose people, people that could be protecting their civilians, putting them at risk. Nobody wins. The goal should be to avoid a conflict, not provoke them into one.”

  “Do you believe conflict can be avoided forever?” Kismet asks.

  “I’m guessing you’re about to say it can’t?”

  “In almost every future.” A wave of affirmation flows through the tear. “I’m sorry, but that is the truth.”

  “Then we’ll be ready. But I won’t bring that conflict here on purpose. I’m not going to cause deaths when I don’t have to.”

  “Permission to speak freely?” Ray asks.

  “Of course, always.” I remind him.

  “Do you take responsibility for just the people in your city, or for everyone? If others' decisions result in their deaths, that holds no bearing on you. If you want everyone to be safe, then why are we not sending out groups to kill or capture raiders and slavers? Why are we not planning on killing Zero?”

  “I’ve talked about that with Emma.” I admit. “I do want to help everyone. I want to go out there, to remove everyone’s problems. But where that line of thinking leads if I stagnate and take it to the extreme is horrifying. Wanting to help people turns into restricting what they can do, stopping anyone from ever having a single bad emotion. They’d become prisoners. Happy ones, at least I hope, but prisoners nonetheless. I can’t decide what’s objectively correct. Is killing raiders objectively correct? Probably. But what about taking over other cities and imposing what I believe is right on them, regardless of what they want? What about killing others so they don’t disturb those in my city? I don’t know. The most I can do is to run this city the best I can, and reduce the number of deaths that causes without over-reaching. Provoking someone into reacting and killing who they send this way? That’s crossing a line I don’t feel safe to do.”

  “We understand.” Kismet says. “We came to a similar conclusion, although ours was born more of fear for our species than compassion.”

  “What will you do then?” Monary asks.

  “We inform everyone and give them what we have about countermeasures free of charge. In exchange, we ask that they share any breakthroughs they have on the topic with us as well. Do you think there’s a safe way to tell Yellowstone that we know what they’re doing, and to ask them to not pursue this further?”

  “Easily.” Kismet says. “Our future says they would not dare to shoot the messenger if the messenger is a Ranger. They have a permanent outpost in the city. Just hand us the message you wish for us to deliver.”

  “Ok, thank you. And I’ll take care of sending out the messages to other cities.” I quickly form two messages, one to Yellowstone, and one to everyone surrounding both of our cities. I pass one to Kismet and get to work delivering the other to courier groups.

  “Do you need anything else?” Kismet asks.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we wish you luck.” Kismet retreats, and the tear stitches itself shut once again.

  Everyone slowly disperses, returning to our tasks. I do the same, settling in for another comfortable night.

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