The truck rumbled forward again, slower now, tires crunching heavily through white sand as it eased through a massive gate frad by tall sh wire fencing topped with coiled razor wire that glinted under the sun. Inside, white tents stretched in every direction, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, arranged in orderly rows and clusters with the lived-in logic of a place that had stood long enough to develop its own rhythm.
Clotheslines sagged between poles. Smoke curled from cookfires. Children darted between gaps like quick silver fish.
The truck rolled deeper into the heart of the camp and finally stopped with a low hydraulic hiss.
In the boot behind us, the girl had started kicking again. Hard, rhythmic thuds against the tal. The tranquilizer was burning off fast.
"Destination reached," rcury announced from the front, voice dry.
Outside, n jumped down from the truck cab and sides, boots hitting sand with heavy thumps, laughing and calling to each other in rough, easy voices that carried clearly through the windows. One set of footsteps approached our vehicle. I caught his head first in the side mirror, completely bald, gleaming with sweat, massive enough that it forced my brain to recalibrate what a human skull could look like.
He stopped beside the truck and gestured with one enormous hand. You can co out.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Host has been delivered.]
I pushed the door open and stepped onto the flatbed. The height surprised . The truck sat high off the ground on enormous tires, white sand spreading out far below like a bleached desert. I jumped. My boots sank several inches into the sand on impact, grains spraying outward. Sinn landed beside a second later.
The giant helped the girls down one by one, huge hands careful, almost gentle. rcury first, then May, Harmione, Sherry. rcury’s boots hit the sand and she looked around with wide eyes. Code dropped last, landing light as always.
"My na is Hod," the giant said. His voice rolled out deep and resonant, exactly what you’d expect from a man built like a small building. "We an you no harm."
"General Sinn," Sinn replied, the introduction automatic.
I turned in a slow circle. The scale of it hit hard. Tents in every direction, more people than I’d seen gathered in one place even inside the walls. Children ran barefoot through the rows, laughing. Won carried water buckets and laundry. n repaired canvas and sharpened tools. No visible class lines. No extraction stations. No ability assessnts. Just life, raw, ordinary, persistent.
"Welco to Eleanor’s camp," Hod said. "She summoned you herself."
"How?" Sinn asked imdiately. "And why?"
Hod didn’t answer. He simply started walking. We fell in behind him. Kids waved openly as we passed, small hands flashing, curious eyes tracking us without fear.
"I didn’t know places like this existed," Sherry said quietly beside , her shoulder brushing mine with every step.
"Neither did I," I murmured.
Two won waited ahead at the edge of a wider path. One dark-skinned with intricate braids, the other pale with matching braids. Hod stopped when we reached them.
"My wife," he said, nodding to the dark-skinned woman. "Guen. She’ll take you to your shelters."
"Are we captives?" Sinn asked, straight to the point.
Guen laughed, warm and unbothered. "No."
Hod turned and headed back toward the truck without another word. Guen and her friend started leading us deeper into the camp. rcury fell into step beside Guen instantly.
"Can I ask you sothing?" rcury said, not wasting a second.
Sherry shot a quick sideways look.
"Your husband is enormous," rcury continued. "How do you manage?"
Guen’s friend started laughing before the question even finished.
"She’s an ability user," the friend said, matching rcury’s energy perfectly. "That is literally her ability."
rcury actually stopped walking for half a second, sand shifting under her boots. "Her ability is what exactly?"
"Swallowing giant staff," the friend answered, grinning wide.
"Co on," rcury said, walking again, voice rising with disbelief. "That cannot be a real ability."
I kept my face neutral and kept walking, eyes fixed ahead on the only permanent structure in the entire camp. A large, solid building rising at the far end like a grounded ship among the sea of white tents. It looked built to last.
Eleanor.
Whoever she was, she had reached out across the plain in the middle of the night and lifted an entire armored vehicle like it weighed nothing.
I wanted to et her.
****
The tent had a thin mattress on the sand floor, a jerry can of water, a new toothbrush still in its wrapper, a small tube of toothpaste, and a sealed container of rice and tomato soup resting beside the bed. Everything placed with deliberate care. They had prepared for exactly seven people. Which ant they had known we were coming long before we did.
[You have reached a point of inflection.]
I sat down on the mattress, the fabric sighing under my weight. I picked up the container, peeled the lid, and started eating. The rice was still warm, steam curling up in thin, fragrant threads. Soone had tid our arrival down to the hour.
Point of inflection. The system had chosen those words carefully. Not a warning. Not a mission objective. A marker. A line drawn in the sand that said: everything after this is different from everything before.
I kept eating, spoon scraping the bottom of the container, thinking about every move the system had made since the Life Layer. The skills it had forced into my body. The girls it had steered toward. The charge it demanded. The warnings about Vince, about Celestine, about Sophia. All of it building toward sothing.
And now we were here, in a hidden camp led by soone nad Eleanor who had reached out and plucked our armored car off the plain like it was nothing.
Why ? I thought, swallowing another bite. Why was I the one the system chose at the Life Layer? A boy from the plain with no ability.
I didn’t have the answer yet. But I was becoming more and more certain I was about to.
A shadow fell across the tent entrance. Two light taps on the canvas, the polite version of a knock.
"Abram." A woman’s voice I didn’t recognize, speaking my na like it already belonged to her. "Eleanor wants to et you."
I looked up at the silhouette cut sharp against the bright white fabric. The shape of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, calm, expectant.
How do you know my na?
I set the half-empty container down on the sand, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and stood.
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