The tank was never inducted; it vanishes to who knows where. Four eighteen-year-olds land sprawling at the Boston induction point and immediately get hit with a wave of general-purpose healing magic while the second healer starts checking them over for injuries.

"I'm fine I'm fine--Annisa--" she's not here but that doesn't mean anything, she would have gone back to Indonesia--"I need a phone!" Then there's a phone in her hand and she hasn't seen a qwerty keyboard in four years but she stumbles through a text to the number Annisa gave her.

This is Marcy ar you OK

We are all fine

She doesn't get a response for ten minutes. 

Then

Annisa is injured

 

Is this her alliance? I will send updates when we know more

She spends those ten minutes becoming increasingly convinced that Annisa is dead and her parents are too busy grieving to answer a text.

The others keep texting the rest of their contact list, telling everyone they're alive and getting back "I'm ok" and "I saw Jessica go down" and "Ferdinand lost his left leg but he'll make it, he'll text you all when he wakes up". And of course a lot of nothing, from a lot of people.

Marcy's phone buzzes and she jumps, because she had forgotten what it felt like when phones did that, but then she reads the text and almost cries with relief.

Injured. Not dead. She's not dead. And whatever else you can say about her parents they definitely cared enough to have a healer at the ready, and an adult healer with reasonable supplies can do a lot. There are never any guarantees, but she still has a chance. Marcy takes a deep breath and types complete sentences this time.

Yes, this is her alliance (Boston enclave). Are you her parents? Please tell us whatever you can when you know. Thank you.

It's another twenty minutes.

She was stabbed in the heart. Her heart is not functioning but we think she's not brain dead. She is in magical stasis now. If you have referrals for anyone who can treat that, they would be appreciated. 

 

 

We would need a long term payment plan.

Through all of this their parents are hugging all of them, and their older siblings and their younger siblings and as many aunts and uncles and grandparents as could cram into the induction point, because they are ALIVE and they are OUT and everyone is way too emotional to care how terrible they all smell. The healers pronounce them all in excellent health Given The Givens and will probably start lobbying for them to start taking twenty-seven kinds of nutrition supplements any minute now.

"Mom, Dad, Annisa--our ally--she needs help. She got stabbed and she's alive but she's in stasis and there's got to be a healer somewhere who can fix it, right?" She can tell she's being incoherent but she can't actually stop being incoherent so she just shows her mother the text.

"It would have to be one of the top healers in the world, to fix that."

"If you were ever the person I remember you being--"

"Of course, Marcy, of course we'll help."

"We couldn't've done it without her. I can get a job."

"Oh, Marcy."

She isn't quite sure what that means but Mom already said the important thing so she can text back now.

I'll get some names for you. We can help with the money, she's one of us. I don't know any numbers yet but I will figure something out.

She knows she has no idea what she's committing to, here, but she can become one of the best enclave guards in the world, or something, and that should be enough to pay one of the best healers in the world, probably. There are four alive people in the squad and they only need to hire one person. They went into the Scholomance and came out intact; they can do anything.

Thank you

 

Do you happen to know anything about Annisa's younger sister Ovi.

She's alive and doing okay. Annisa made her wards and a mal detecting rod and things.

Marcy has three younger siblings inside already and a fourth one going in in a couple hours, by far the most nervous of the hugging family member pile. Between texting and fretting about healers Marcy has been memorizing her face and giving her advice she's already heard a hundred times.

Thank you.

You are welcome to visit if you would like but she won't notice.

 

We will send regular updates on her health.

Visiting someone in stasis is a waste of time she could spend fixing the problem.

Thank you.

They stay at the induction point long enough to see off this year's freshmen, including Marcy's sister Eliza and Franklin's cousin Roku, and then they all go back to the strange and unfamiliar houses they lived in for fourteen years.

Franklin knows, in words, that he can relax out here, but he still checks every room he enters and every piece of furniture he sits on and scrutinizes his dinner before he eats it. His parents assure him it will wear off eventually and he doesn't know if he hopes they're right or not.

The enclave is just like Kevin remembers it and objectively it's a perfectly reasonable size, but parts of it are "outside" and outside is Too Large. He doesn't know the layout as well as he knew the Scholomance blueprints and the farthest things he can see are too far to focus on and the spaces are too large to scan in one sweep of his head and everything is such bright colors. The fake sun is too bright and the fake sky feels so much wronger than a void ceiling. You know where you stand, with the void. It has edges. The fake sky is confusing the issue and also it's too far away.

That night he lies awake for an hour, and then concludes that the problem is that his bedroom is too large. There could be something skittering across the floor in the far corner and he wouldn't know. There isn't, of course, but that's not the point, the point is that he can't sleep. He pulls all his blankets off the bed and piles them on the floor of his closet, which his parents have helpfully stocked with three sets of clothes in various guesses of what his size might be. He evicts the clothes so he can see the walls and ceiling of the closet and then it's almost like sleeping in the tank. He dreams in three hundred and sixty degrees.

Abigail is used to seeing her whole squad at breakfast every morning and has a minor freakout at the kitchen table in which she texts Marcy and Franklin and asks them to confirm they're okay. They're all fine, of course, and they all agree to meet up at her and Kevin's place for lunch. Franklin finds a phone setting that makes your location visible and they all turn it on. It's not quite as good as knowing where each other are, just their phones, but it's still nice.

They all have a dozen things to do. They need to see all their relatives again, and share a year of news, and hear a year of news, plus three years of details that didn't make it into the letters. They need to get their power-sharers retuned to the enclave's main sink. They need to get set up with bank accounts and credit cards and the monthly stipend they get from the enclave's endowment. They need clothes and shoes and toiletries. They need to update the photographs on their fake drivers' licenses and their genuine passports. They need to get more detailed medical workups and get prescribed the inevitable cocktail of nutritional supplements, plus other things. Kevin needs contact lenses. Marcy needs her wisdom teeth out.

The nice thing about having a cell phone is that they can all research and contact healers while they do all this stuff.

A couple days after graduation, Marcy gets a text from an unknown number. 

This is Julian. Annisa hasn't been answering my messages – do you know if she's alive?

She hadn't told anyone the first day, because she had been hoping it would be simple. Then when it became complicated she still hadn't wanted to tell anyone. But it was already becoming clear that she couldn't wait for a fait accompli. 

She's badly injured and in stasis. I'm looking for a healer who can fix a fatal chest wound.

The typing indicator is on for a long time. Then: 

I'm flying to New York in a couple of days. I can ask if they know of anyone. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.

Thanks. I will. 

A long pause.

How is Naima doing?

She's alive. In Paris. I don't have a good way to contact her right now; I'm going to see if she can take physical letters. 

And then, a few hours later: 

Heard from New York HR. She says they don't have anyone Boston wouldn't already know about. I'm sorry. 

Marcy doesn't respond to the second text for a few hours either.

Thank you for trying. Tell Naima we're all glad she's alive. I asked and we don't have any particular connections in Paris, not that New York doesn't.

And, in another few hours (which, if anyone is paying attention, imply that Julian is staying up at very odd hours for Hong Kong): 

She'll appreciate that you tried. Please let me know if anything changes with Annisa. 

I will.

It's just like it was inside, in some ways. You solve your problems and your allies' problems and other people solve theirs. Maybe out here someone will actually run out of personal problems and start having the resources to work on something else.

The first five healers they try are all useless. Two of them say right out that they can't help. One totally fails to respond to all attempts at contact and has no known address. One says he could get Annisa out of stasis and restart her heart, but it would take so long she'd be a mindless vegetable by the end. The fifth has stopped taking cases entirely. Eventually he recommends his brightest former student, a woman named Yan Gao who makes optimistic noises and agrees to fly out to look at Annisa. She refuses to discuss payment until she's seen the problem.