Abigail straightened the papers stacked across her desk. Things in Green River had settled over the last month, not because the monster population had dropped, but because most of the creatures now lingered outside the walls instead of inside them. Refugees still arrived every few days, begging for a place to stay, and her father-in-law always accepted them.

  The city was growing fast. Growing cities meant growing paperwork and paperwork was her job. It was paid well, but was quite boring.

  She thanked God every day that they had discovered a type of wasp that dropped a sigil that facilitated the creation of paper. Without it, they’d be scratching names on scraps of wood. Names had to be recorded. Powers had to be logged. Work had to be assigned. And all of that fell on her desk.

  “All right,” she muttered, jotting a note. “Got a room for the Gohal family next…”

  She flipped to the next file, another family, a husband, a wife, and three kids. The sight of it sent a small, sharp ache through her chest. How did some people manage to cling together in the middle of an apocalypse while she’d been stranded across an ocean and two continents from her own husband when everything went to hell? She sighed. Abigail knew she was being ungrateful. She wanted Silas back more than she wanted anything but the truth was, she was objectively better off than most of the world. She was fed, comfortable, alive. Her sigils were developing at a reasonable pace and neither required her to chase danger. Both of her parents were alive and healthier than ever as were her brothers. Most of her friends had survived and her in-laws loved her.

  All of it mattered. Just not as much as the one piece that was missing.

  The bell attached to the top of the door jingled taking her from her morose thoughts. Someone pushed into her office. Abigail looked up and found a big man about her age grinning at her.

  “Oh, hello, Gareth. What brings you here today?” She asked.

  The silver rank adventurer flashed her a winning smile. “Just checking if there’s anything I can help with. You know how it is everyone’s gotta do their part these days.”

  Abigail fought back another sigh. Why couldn’t she be more like him? Gareth had lost his wife and child, and instead of collapsing under grief, he’d dedicated himself to helping others in the same position. She supposed everyone coped differently. He just seemed happier than she did.

  “Things are going fine,” she said. “The Gohal family is settling into the old grocery store. We’ve given them a cubicle until they can build a real home.”

  Gareth chuckled. “One good thing about the apocalypse housing prices plummeted.”

  Abigail laughed with him. “That they did. And building with your bare hands is easier than ever.”

  They shared a smile before his expression shifted.

  “Sorry to add more to your workload,” he said. “My crew was out hunting monsters and we ran into a few refugees. One of them said he was from the government, like government with a capital G, so I sent him straight to Titus.”

  Abigail raised a brow. “Really? What’d he say about Denver? Last I heard, Owen and Tucker were doing a lot of good up there.”

  Gareth shook his head. “Not Denver. Government government.”

  “You mean presidential government?” Abigail asked, tone tinged with a small amount of disbelief.

  “Yeah. The guy rolled up in an eighteen-wheeler packed with refugees. Only had a handful of soldiers with him. Though it looked like they had a rough time getting here,” Gareth shrugged.

  Abigail found that hard to believe. The government wasn’t exactly known for being helpful. From everything she’d learned in American history, two hundred years ago they might’ve cared about the common man. Now? They cared about interest groups, she had seen the news and how they overlooked crimes so long as they went with their agenda. So why help Green River?

  Well, maybe Green River was an interest group now. Tucker was absurdly strong. And according to Owen’s letters, Green River might have one of the strongest fighting forces in North America. That made them valuable.

  She shoved those thoughts aside.

  “So what were the people like? You can cram a lot of folks into the back of an eighteen-wheeler,” Abigail asked, getting back into work mode.

  “Well, they were dirty and dehydrated, the soldiers basically ran the truck nonstop for three days to get here. Also, I got these gifts for you,” Gareth gave her a crooked smile and held out a stack of driver’s licenses.

  Abigail groaned. “Oh. That.”

  She suddenly understood why the old DMV had always been so slow. Paperwork was miserable and no one could do anything about it if Abigail decided to be slow. She was here because of nepotism. That and she had Lesser Visionary Chronicler.

  She flipped through the licenses, mentally counting. “There’s got to be at least fifty here.”

  Driver’s licenses had turned out to be the best identification they had, as almost everyone kept theirs on hand out of habit. Anyone with the Visionary Chronicler sigil could verify the information. It wasn’t about detecting objective truth, however, it was about detecting deceit. Since the owner had to intentionally provide the information for the license, Chronicler sigils could easily determine if a person was who they claimed to be.

  Owen had the highest level of that schedule, but he wasn’t the only Chronicler in town. Abigail was one and there were two others, one worked in the police department while the other had started a contract business. Once the licenses were stamped, Abigail sorted families and sent them for processing.

  If someone didn’t have an ID, there were other methods. Electricity could still be made using a copper coil and a crank. It was less convenient, but functional, and could be used to power their laminator. From that, they created Green River identification cards. Not a perfect solution, but it was workable.

  Abigail wasn’t sure why Titus was so obsessed with identification, but he was the boss, and he had been a cop. It probably came from that. After twenty minutes of work, she realized Gareth still hadn’t left. Abigail hadn’t dismissed him, but she had still assumed he would have let himself out. Glancing up she saw him leaning against the doorway with a complicated expression.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, there was one other thing the government folks said, ” Gareth started with a wince.

  Abigail’s heart stuttered. “What?”

  “They asked to talk to you specifically. Wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

  “Why me?” she demanded.

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  Gareth shrugged. “I tried to figure it out came up with a few possibilities. One, they think you’re gullible and want to use you to control Titus. That’s stupid. Titus is too smart for that. Two, they want to sneak someone into the city but have to get past you. Also stupid, they could just hide a person in the refugees and so long as his info is true they would slip in. Three, they’re looking for a different Abigail. There is another one here, but she’s about ninety, and in a nursing home, so… no. Finally, the army guy knows something about another army guy who happens to be very closely related to you.”

  Abigail’s whole body went rigid, “Really?”

  “Really. And that last one makes the most sense,” Gareth said.

  Her chair scraped back as she shot to her feet so hard it nearly toppled, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go talk to them!”

  “Hold your horses.” Gareth lifted both hands. “I already sent him to Titus. I’m here to make sure nothing happens until we know he’s safe. You’ll see him soon.”

  Abigail grit her teeth, pacing. She wanted to yell at him, but yelling at Gareth felt like yelling at a teddy bear. She tried to push past him anyway, but he blocked the doorway easily. A silver-rank adventurer was part of the top twenty percent of all fighters. His sigils involved condensing and shaping metal so she was sure his body stat would make the stone wall beside him an easier obstacle to get through.

  “It’s okay, Abigail,” he said softly. “You’ve waited four months for word from him. You can wait a few more minutes while Titus makes sure it’s not a trap.”

  “I know,” she let out an explosive sigh that bordered on a whine, “But I don’t want to wait. I want to go now.”

  “How about this, let’s get some coffee. As soon as the guy comes downstairs, we go and talk to him,” Gareth offered.

  She sighed. Coffee probably wasn’t smart her nerves were already wired. But doing something was better than pacing around her office like a caged animal, “Fine.”

  Gareth opened the door and guided her into the common room.

  The government building was Green River’s pride and most of the citizens had pitched in to help build it. It was actually four newly built structures mashed into one. No old-world materials were used in its construction. Half bunker. Half fortress. The basement could probably survive a nuke as long as it didn’t hit directly overhead.

  One wing housed the police office, another held the adventurers guild, and wedged between them was the government office. The difference between the two branches was stark.

  The police side was all sharp angles and clinical precision. Officers wore navy blue uniforms reinforced with metal plates along their arms and legs. They were a striking mix of law enforcement and medieval knights. They carried firearms and many had axes strapped across their backs.

  It was all business, many of them were middle-aged men and older. Most of the previous police department had joined it. Cold, orderly, serious. Not all that different from pre-apocalypse precincts.

  Then there was the adventurer wing. Abigail still couldn’t believe how many young people threw themselves into adventuring the moment the world collapsed. Instead of cold professionalism, the place had the warm, chaotic ambience of a Starbucks though with alcohol.

  Round tables with heavy wooden chairs filled most of the room with a giant noticeboard taking up an entire wall. People in homemade armor carrying weapons that ran the spectrum from modern firearms to primitive clubs with nails in them sat around tables chattering away or inspecting the board for a job. A counter ran along one wall where a receptionist stood. Notices, rank changes, and drink orders would be processed there. The receptionist was also wearing a tunic and cat-ear headpiece for reasons Abigail decided not to examine too closely. Yes, they were killers, yes, they hunted monsters daily, and yes they were also a bunch of nerds.

  “Hey Gareth!” A few young men waved at him. They were a group of five adventurers who had been farmhands just a few months ago. They had all lost their parents and bonded over that fact. Titus had been worried that they would develop into a gang before Gareth formed a hunting party with them. They had named themselves the Green River Bulls after the local high school football team.

  “Hey guys, Tom can you make space for two more,” Gareth grabbed two chairs from an empty table and pushed them into the space made by his party, “Abigail, what would you like to drink?”

  “Uh, well…” Abigail started to say coffee, then decided, to hell with it, “Get me a beer.”

  The adventurers cheered, and the one called Tom raised his mug, “It's five o’clock somewhere. I’m so glad that the drinking age got lowered.”

  Abigail sat in the offered seat with a smile. If Green River had heroes, Titus and Tucker occupied those positions. Both were far and away the most powerful of Green River's residents. However, if they were the heroes, then the Green River Bulls were the mascots. A bunch of rambunctious well meaning teens who spent most of their chaotic energy on monster hunting.

  “So how are things going Mrs. Cane?” Tom asked.

  Abigail didn’t particularly want to talk about it, but this was supposed to be a distraction. She decided to lean into it, watching the stairs would only make the wait feel longer.

  “Busy, Green River is getting big fast, we’ve almost hit twenty thousand people. I’m just glad that there seems to be a sigil for everything or we would be having severe housing and food shortages,” Abigail said.

  The group around the table nodded. John, a boy known for always wearing his team's green face paint, nodded, “Yup, Mayor Harold has a standing bounty on any of those stone turtles or plant monsters.”

  Abigail asked a question, “So how are your hunts going?”

  They were more than happy to tell about their escapades. The team’s healer also was more than happy to point out how they had messed up. By the time Gareth sat down, Abigail found herself smiling and laughing along at their antics.

  The drink helped settle her as well. She wasn’t typically a big drinker. Maybe some wine in the evening, but even that was rare. They were finishing up a story about a three way battle between them, a pair of werewolves, and a family of skunks when it finally happened. Titus descended the steps from the second floor.

  He turned towards her office. Abigail didn’t let him get to the door. She stood so abruptly that her chair would have fallen without Gareth catching it.

  Titus glanced over at the noise and changed direction. He greeted the adventurers, “Thank you, Bulls,” he flicked over a silver coin, “get another drink on me.”

  That had been something that took Abigail by surprise. Titus, the cop, wasn’t opposed to people drinking before age twenty-one. In his words, if some is old enough to fight and die defending their country, they’re old enough to have a drink.

  “So what did he say?” Abigail asked, not wanting to wait for answers.

  Titus grimaced, “Don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. We did make sure that his sigils weren’t of the mind altering variety. Greater Flesh Lord and Greater Sturdy Gatherer, no personal one yet. All I know is that it’s not a trap.”

  Abigail resisted the urge to sprint up the stairs ahead of her father-in-law. He led her up to the second level, which was all offices. Abigail would have been placed up here as well if she wasn’t necessary to update adventurer registrations.

  Titus opened the door to Mayor Harold’s office and gestured for her to enter. Inside Harold sat with an armed police officer just behind him. The glow of phantasmal claws and antlers showed that the officer was ready for a fight.

  Across the desk from the mayor sat a man in worn fatigues. He looked a bit off, most soldiers didn’t have beards and his hair was a bit too long. His posture was also twitchy, like some of the adventurers before they got used to the fighting and death.

  “Ah, good,” Harold said, “Abigail, this is Specialist Gabriel. He claims to have a message and was told to only give it to you.”

  “Well,” Abigail prodded impatiently.

  Gabriel stood from his chair rigidly turning to face Abigail, “Abigail Cane, the President of the United States has an offer for you.”

  Those were not words that Abigail wanted to hear, so she interrupted, “Do you have any information about Silas. He had just enlisted and was stationed in Germany.”

  Gabriel’s face didn’t change, though his expression did soften a bit, “He is the reason this message was a priority. Now if you will let me finish.”

  Abigail smiled at that, Silas was trying to get in contact with her. How he had gotten a message from Germany was a question she would ask later. She motioned for Gabriel to continue.

  The soldier nodded, “The Hero of Berlin, currently the strongest person we know of, sent a message with a group of soldiers he sent home,” Gabriel pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and started reading, “I am Matteo, though most people know me simply as the Hero now. I am sending this message to the current leader of the United States requesting the safekeeping of Abigail Cane. I owe a debt to her husband for saving my life at the cost of his own. If having me owe you a debt is worth anything, please find her and keep her safe. If there is any other living family of his, I would ask you to care for them as well. Once Europe is clear of this infestation I will head to America and assist you with clearing out your lands as well.”

  Abigail took a step back from the man. A feeling of numbness was coming over her. She must have misheard. It had to be a different Silas.

  Evidently, Titus had the same thought, he stepped forward threateningly, “Is this all the proof that you have that my son is dead?”

  Gabriel took a step back, face paling a bit.

  “Back off Titus,” Mayor Harold said, “I know those words are painful, but don’t take out your frustration on the messenger.”

  Titus took a deep breath and repeated his words more calmly, “Is that all the proof you have that my son is dead?”

  Gabriel shook his head. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small bundle of letters. Abigail sank to her knees when she saw them. After all, she had written most of them.