Ten minutes. Around when I got here with the Core.

  Lily's back arches again and a sound escapes her throat. Not words, not her voice. Something older, ancient even, something that resonates in my chest the way the doe's final message did, a frequency that bypasses the ears entirely.

  With a bang I can hear the creatures outside the fire door now. They are wailing on it and somehow despite being restrained I can see Lily's hands and fingers spelling something in fragments. Not ASL though, not any sign language I recognize. It feels more like a language from across a multitude of oceans, none of which I can name.

  She's translating something. Or something is translating through her.

  The Core blazes against my thigh like it's answering her.

  Grasping it I pull the Core of Stability out of my pocket. It flares in my palm, hotter than ever before. Painful really, but I do not let go.

  Sofia scrambles back at the sight of it. The light of the thing is different here than it was in the garden. No more silver, not even gold, pure white as if it was the sun viewed from space. The size of a swelling watermelon, wrapped in luminescence that shifts when I turn it in my palm. Perhaps if it was a thing, it would have wanted me to call it beautiful.

  I think about the doe instead. The way she offered herself. The way she looked at me while I held the blade. The impression she left behind, that sense of necessity, of small voices crying out in confusion.

  Voices like Lily's.

  I push the thought away and try to focus on the Core. There should be an activation sequence. The quest mentioned a blueprint. Blueprints require assembly, and assembly requires steps.

  Intent I can manage. Sacrifice concerns me. The System loves its costs. Loves making you pay for everything twice. Once in effort and once again in something you didn't know you were spending.

  I look at Lily, at Sofia pressed against the far wall with her hands shaking. At the Core pulsing in my palm like a heart waiting to be told what to beat for.

  The System wants its sacrifice. Fine, I've been paying since the world ended and I'll keep paying until one of us runs out of currency.

  But Lily needs this. Lily needs walls that don't depend on generators and perimeters and compromises to her health. She needs something I can carry with us when we have to move.

  I close my eyes. Focus on the Core. Focus on the warmth of it, the pulse of it, the sense that something inside is waiting for permission.

  I give it permission.

  The warmth spreads up my arm and across my chest. The light behind my eyelids brightens from gold to white and I feel something beginning.

  The last word hangs in my vision. Required, not requested, not optional. The System does not give freely.

  Something grasps the hem of my shirt. I look down and find Lily's hand there, curled tight, straining against the restraints. Her eyes are open. White, milky and somehow totally aware. Her eyes locked on the Core of Stability. At the light in my hands.

  The Core flares and I feel it start to drink.

  Sofia gasps and staggers, catching herself on the wall. The terror drains from her face in a way that should be relief but isn't. Her eyes go glassy and unfocused, like something essential is being siphoned out of her.

  My own legs nearly buckle too. But not from a cold this time. From emptiness. From three weeks of running on fumes and the Core is taking what fumes remain. Every sleepless night, every calculation made on exhaustion, every moment I told myself I could rest later. It pulls all of it out of me in a single long draw.

  But unlike the both of us, Lily doesn't flinch. If anything Lily's grip tightens on my shirt and something flows out of her that I can't name. Not fear, not exhaustion, something brighter. Something that feels like refusal. Like a small voice saying no to the dark and meaning it.

  The Core detonates in a bloom, blue light erupting outward in a wave that passes through furniture and walls. It rolls across the room and keeps going, soaking into every surface, painting the world in azure for one long heartbeat.

  Then it vanishes.

  Silence.

  Lily's hand slips from my shirt. Her eyes flutter once, twice, and then close, her breathing steadying into sleep. Not fever dreams or psychotic episodes or the restless half-consciousness her fever has trapped her in for days.

  Just sleep.

  I fall now and catch myself on the edge of her bed. My legs don't want to hold me anymore. The exhaustion pulled from me leaving me empty.

  Sofia slides down the wall until she's sitting on the floor. She looks at me, then at Lily, then at the door that is no longer shaking at the creatures no longer desperate to get in

  I awake with a startle, having nodded off to sleep. Before me Lily lies, her breathing steady, deep. The sleep we all hope for, that comes after something great has been spent. Sofia is also passed out.

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  With a thought I let my notifications swarm into my vision.

  I pull up the ability description.

  Repositioned and reactivated, two words that matter more than anything else in the description. ‘System abilities can modify the parameters of the space.’ What defines a System ability? Could it fix the power issue? Could it help her hide while I was out hunting?

  I examine the next notification, a series of kill notifications that do not specify a source as if the blue beings I had fought were incapable of having names. I don’t dwell on it though as there is enough XP to push me over into the next level.

  I close the notifications and pull up Pocket Sanctuary again. Not the description this time. The configuration tab, the one that I somehow instinctively know is there.

  I’m met again with the System and its love for nested options.

  I request the System to define Experience Pool.

  What it sends back is long and superfluous but it boils down to the experience pool being separate from my own leveling pool, with its own progression track and because of that distinction it is capable of receiving multiple donations to it.

  I scroll deeper.

  Every kill, every completed objective. The same pool, now with a second mouth to feed.

  I've split revenue streams before. I know what it costs and what I might stand to gain. I set the allocation to its maximum of 25%. Because a Sanctuary that never improves is a Sanctuary that becomes obsolete.

  The menu accepts my contributions. New options then appear.

  Power? I find myself trembling at the words. Power implied the ability to drive things, which implied energy sources. A solution at least to my generator issue? One can only dream...

  I gesture to the power generation options, smiling, perhaps we could do more than dream.

  I read them again, five options, five different philosophies on the subject.

  Ambient Conversion is the baseline obviously. Two units per hour, always running, no cost except time. Ambient mana and environmental evolutions are both interesting and yet ultimately pointless for exploration given my current set of problems.

  Kinetic Recovery is next, it rewards activity. Movement, labor, the simple fact of living generates power. Five units per hour assumes normal habitation. Lily does not move normally. Lily lies still for hours at a time, conserving what little energy her condition allows. Sofia in theory could generate something from her hour to hour tasks but the option is clearly designed for many multiple inhabitants.

  Combat Siphon is elegant in a way I can appreciate. Turn the thing trying to kill you into the thing keeping you alive. But it requires threats. Active, sustained threats. A defensive option that only triggers when my active hunting has failed us.

  Sacrifice Integration is the wildcard. Materials into power. The System assessing value. I think about the Core, about the doe, about all the things I have killed and harvested. It would do wonders if it all could be converted, even more so if it can drain the gas in the generators. Could I do the same to tanks of material GW has stockpiled?

  Biological Resonance is the one that I least consider.

  One unit per hour per occupant, mild fatigue. For a healthy person, it's trivial. For Lily, whose body already runs at a deficit, whose condition already drains her in ways we aren’t even able to categorize.

  I eliminate it immediately. The Sanctuary would protect Lily, protect us, it would not feed on her.

  I notice then that each option does not have a cost associated with them, only an output after acquisition.

  Ambient Conversion. The passive baseline. It costs nothing to run and it starts generating the moment it activates. Two units per hour is slow, but slow is still forward motion. The pool fills while we sleep, while I plan, while I hunt other things.

  I set it as my first priority.

  For the third priority I select, Sacrifice Integration. It was important that I could fuel the core with what I scavenged but it wasn’t more important than using the power Ambient might provide. So for my second priority I considered what was in the other sub menu options, such as ‘Obfuscation’

  Visual Obfuscation is the obvious choice. Five units per hour to make this place look empty. To make whatever comes hunting see nothing different from everything else. The other options matter, but sight was a main sense of most predators, including humans.

  I select Visual Obfuscation as my second priority.

  Now what else was left to do?