Redtail became Lena’s two days later.
The wire transfer hurt.
There was no other word for it.
One moment, Lena had spent years building savings, investments, and retirement accounts.
The next, $143,500 of that security belonged to three strangers, and Lena owned a neglected farm.
She signed the last document electronically from her apartment.
Twenty minutes later, the agent called.
“It’s recorded.
Congratulations.”
Lena looked at the countdown.
24 DAYS : 14 HOURS : 51 MINUTES
“Thanks.”
She hung up.
The System exploded across her vision.
QUEST COMPLETE
A PLACE TO BEGIN
Permanent settlement secured.
Settlement: Redtail Farm
Viability: A
Rare Trait: STABLE GROUND
Rewards
Settlement Appraisal : UNLOCKED
Spatial Inventory: 500 m³
Basic Settlement Interface: UNLOCKED
Bonus Reward: Settlement Anchor
Lena shot upright.
“How much space?”
SPATIAL INVENTORY
Previous Capacity: 50.00 m³
New Capacity: 500.00 m³
Occupied: 11.42 m³
Available: 488.58 m³
“Oh, hell yes.”
Yesterday, fifty cubic meters had seemed potentially miraculous.
Now she had triple that.
Still nowhere near enough for every insane possibility on her lists.
But enough to stop thinking in shopping carts.
Lena focused on the unfamiliar reward.
“Settlement Anchor?”
Designates one location as Primary Settlement.
Benefits:
Enhanced Settlement Appraisal
Remote settlement status monitoring
Quest generation
Infrastructure tracking
Limited interaction with Stable Ground trait
Designation permanent until Transition +365 days.
“Redtail.”
Confirm Primary Settlement: REDTAIL FARM?
“Yes.”
A pulse passed through her.
Not painful.
Just strange.
For half a second, Lena had the unmistakable sensation of knowing exactly where Redtail was despite being miles away.
Then it disappeared.
PRIMARY SETTLEMENT ESTABLISHED
REDTAIL
Population: 0
Water Security: B+
Food Production: D
Independent Power: F
Shelter: C+
Medical Capacity: F
Communications: D
Livestock Readiness: D
Overall Preparedness: D+
Lena’s celebration ended.
“Rude.”
She arrived at Redtail that afternoon.
The keys were waiting in a lockbox.
Lena opened the front door to her farmhouse for the first time as its owner.
It smelled like dust, old wood, and somebody else’s life.
She stood there for approximately five seconds appreciating the moment.
Then:
“Okay.
Work.”
She had already ordered basic supplies during the closing period.
Not apocalypse supplies.
Farm supplies.
Fire extinguishers.
Smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors.
Heavy-duty extension cords.
Work lights.
Tarps.
Buckets.
Basic tools.
Two chainsaws.
A serious first-aid kit.
Water-testing kits.
A portable generator.
Fuel cans.
Two-way radios.
A water filtration system.
Things she knew she’d need regardless.
Everything had gone into Inventory as she acquired it.
Now it came back out.
For the first time, Lena truly understood how absurdly useful her ability was for moving.
No truck.
No trailer.
No unloading.
She walked through Redtail depositing supplies where they belonged.
Generator.
Retrieve.
Tool chest.
Retrieve.
Cases of bottled water.
Retrieve.
Forty-pound cases that would normally have destroyed her back appeared neatly against a wall.
“This is fantastic.”
Ruth appeared less than an hour later.
Lena was beginning to suspect the woman possessed a supernatural ability to detect poor agricultural decisions.
She drove up in an ancient pickup, got out, and looked at the new generator.
“That’s too close to the house.”
Lena stared at it.
“Hello, Ruth.”
“Hello.”
“Nice to see you.”
“You’ll put exhaust through a window.”
Lena moved the generator.
Progress.
“You got the place?”
“This morning.”
“So you’re really doing this.”
“Apparently.”
Ruth looked toward the eastern pasture.
“Fence guy coming?”
“Cancelled him.”
“Good.”
“I found someone to inspect the barn tomorrow.”
“Who?”
Lena gave the name.
Ruth considered it.
“He’s fine.”
Coming from Ruth, that apparently constituted a five-star review.
“I also need someone to look at the well.”
“I know somebody.”
Lena waited.
Ruth sighed.
“Give me your phone.”
That was how Lena acquired the number of a man named Earl who apparently understood wells, pumps, irrigation, and, according to Ruth, “anything else involving water that isn’t the ocean.”
Lena texted him.
Then Ruth noticed the notebook.
“You still making lists?”
“Several.”
“Show me.”
Lena hesitated.
Then handed it over.
Ruth read.
WATER.
POWER.
FENCE.
BARN.
FIRE.
FOOD.
MEDICAL.
TOOLS.
RADIOS.
SEEDS.
CHICKENS???
Ruth tapped the last one.
“No.”
“I put question marks.”
“Not enough of them.”
Lena took the notebook back.
“What should I be doing?”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Figure out what you already have.”
That was annoyingly sensible.
For the next three hours, Lena and Ruth walked Redtail.
Ruth did not offer to help.
She simply kept walking in the same direction as Lena while commenting on everything.
The main well worked.
Good.
The pump depended on electricity.
Bad.
There was an old hand pump near the second barn.
Very good.
It did not currently produce water.
Less good.
The pond held more water than Lena had realized.
The seasonal creek couldn’t be trusted.
One barn was structurally sound but needed roof repairs.
The other was usable for storage.
A small workshop contained an ancient drill press, workbench, shelving, and enough forgotten hardware to make Ruth say:
“Don’t throw any of this away.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“City people throw away good things.”
“I am a city person.”
“I noticed.”
The farmhouse had a woodstove.
There was also an old propane tank behind the house.
“How full?”
“No idea.”
“Find out.”
Lena wrote it down.
By four, her priorities had changed.
Again.
She didn’t need solar immediately.
She needed ways to survive without solar.
Generator.
Fuel.
Propane.
Wood.
Hand tools.
Manual pumps.
Then solar could make all of those supplies last longer.
Redundancy.
That was the word.
Not one way to get water.
Not one way to cook.
Not one heat source.
Several.
The System approved.
SETTLEMENT PRINCIPLE IDENTIFIED
REDUNDANCY
Single systems fail.
Resilient settlements maintain alternatives.
Minor reward: Settlement planning efficiency increased.
Lena wasn’t entirely sure what that reward did.
She’d take it.
By sunset, Ruth had gone home and Lena had spent another alarming amount of money.
Not recklessly.
That was the frustrating part.
Every purchase was reasonable.
Fuel.
Propane delivery.
Lumber and roofing materials for the barn repair.
Fencing supplies.
Water-storage tanks.
A second generator, smaller than the first.
A solar contractor was coming tomorrow to give her an estimate, but Lena refused to mentally spend that money yet.
She ordered bulk food too.
Not Costco quantities anymore.
Restaurant-supply quantities.
Rice.
Beans.
Sugar.
Salt.
Oats.
Cooking oil.
Powdered milk.
Canned meat.
Canned vegetables.
Spices.
Coffee.
A lot of coffee.
She found a regional restaurant wholesaler that allowed public pickup and placed an order large enough that the website asked whether she was sure.
She was.
Then she ordered hygiene supplies.
Soap.
Toothpaste.
Toothbrushes.
Shampoo.
Menstrual products.
Diapers in several sizes.
Baby wipes.
Laundry detergent.
Dish soap.
Bleach.
Toilet paper.
Lena paused over the diapers.
She didn’t know exactly who would end up at Redtail.
But babies had an inconvenient habit of showing up and changing sizes.
She added formula.
Not a warehouse.
Enough that if one of the people she cared about had a baby, Lena wouldn’t discover that she’d prepared eighteen kinds of beans and nothing the baby could eat.
Medical came next.
OTC medications.
Bandages.
Antiseptic.
Gloves.
Masks.
Thermometers.
Splints.
Electrolytes.
First-aid supplies.
Anything legal that a normal person could buy.
Her Inventory swallowed it all.
And preserved it.
Lena pulled up her inventory.
447.31 m³ available.
Three days ago that would have sounded infinite.
Now?
“Not enough.”
She needed another expansion.
Which brought her back to the livestock quest.
GOOD FENCES MAKE LIVING LIVESTOCK
Secure perimeter fencing: 31%
Livestock water: 44%
Essential shelter: 67%
Secure feed storage: COMPLETE
Quarantine enclosure: 0%
Lena frowned.
“Feed storage is complete?”
Second barn meets requirements.
Nice.
Tomorrow she could make serious progress on the rest.
Her phone buzzed.
Not a government call this time.
A news alert.
Lena opened it.
SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATE UNEXPLAINED CHANGE IN NEAR-EARTH ASTEROID’S ORBIT
Her stomach tightened.
The article was cautious.
Very cautious.
No danger to Earth.
No known explanation.
Additional observations underway.
Nothing about Lena.
Nothing about Transition.
But the story was public now.
She checked social media.
Mostly jokes.
Aliens.
Bad astronomy takes.
People arguing that NASA was lying.
Normal internet behavior.
For now.
Lena looked at the countdown.
24 DAYS : 02 HOURS : 08 MINUTES
Twenty-four days.
Except that wasn’t really what she had.
The asteroid was public now.
Scientists were still being cautious.
The government wasn’t telling people to prepare.
Nobody was panicking.
Yet.
But every unexplained observation made that less stable.
One bad press conference.
One convincing leak.
One new piece of evidence nobody could explain away.
That was all it would take.
And once enough people decided something was wrong, Lena wasn’t going to be the only person trying to buy generators, bottled water, rice, fuel and medical supplies.
She had no idea when that would happen.
Tomorrow.
Two weeks from now.
Maybe not until it was already too late.
Which meant she couldn’t plan around twenty-four days of normal commerce.
She had to use whatever normal time she got.
Lena opened her spreadsheet.
At the top, above everything else, she typed:
BUY FIRST.
ORGANIZE LATER.
Then underneath:
ASSUME AVAILABILITY GETS WORSE.
She looked around the farmhouse.
The base was hers.
Water was coming.
Repairs were starting.
Supplies were accumulating.
Her people would have somewhere to go.
That was enough for tonight.
Tomorrow…
Lena glanced toward Ruth’s property.
Tomorrow she was going to learn how to build a fence.