Chapter 14: BUILDING DAYS
The hammer hit my thumb instead of the nail.
"Fuck!"
Ruth looked over from where she was hauling a steel beam. "You okay?"
"Fine." I shook my hand. Blood under the thumbnail. It would heal. "Just—I'm not a carpenter."
"No shit."
Day seven of the construction push. We'd decided—by vote, using our shiny new rules—to expand infrastructure before more people arrived. The office building needed to be habitable. The tower needed assessment. We needed workshops, storage, actual walls around the perimeter.
The System helped. I could spend CP to enhance construction, make salvaged materials work better than they should. But the physical labor still required hands. And hammers. And me occasionally hitting my own thumb.
James walked past carrying a chunk of concrete that should've required a forklift. His rock skin made him impervious to the weight. He set it down exactly where I'd marked.
"What's next?" he asked.
"Foundation for the workshop. Six more sections like that."
He nodded and walked off. No complaint. Just work.
The new arrivals from two weeks ago had recovered enough to contribute. One of them—his name was Victor—turned out to be a former electrician. He'd been studying our salvaged equipment, muttering about voltage and amperage.
"This is ancient," he said, holding up a generator. "But functional. If I can get it running, we could have actual power. Lights. Heat without burning Danny out."
"How long?"
"Week. Maybe two. Need parts."
"Make a list. We'll scavenge what we can."
He grinned. "Actual electricity. Above ground. That's—that's something."
Another arrival—Maria, the one who'd cried at her birthday—had farming experience. She'd taken over the gardens from me with relief on both sides. She knew things I'd only read about. Companion planting. Pest control. Soil pH.
"These should harvest in two weeks," she said, examining the sprouts. "If we're lucky. First harvest won't be huge, but it'll be food."
Two weeks. The trash pickup from Hendricks was keeping us fed—barely. Hunting had improved with Miles teaching three others his trapping techniques. We weren't comfortable, but we weren't starving.
"Can we expand the gardens?" I asked.
"Yeah. But we need more water. The purification system maxes at fifty gallons. We're using forty for drinking and cooking. Only ten for crops."
"I'll work on it."
She returned to the plants. I added "water system expansion" to my mental list that never got shorter.
Day twelve. Ruth's deadline passed without ceremony. May seventh came and went. She never mentioned it. Neither did I. But that evening, she found me by the fire.
"Thirty days," she said.
"I remember."
"You did it. Built something functional. Proved it works."
"We did it."
"You organized it. There's a difference." She sat down. "I'm in. Fully. Not trial basis. Not waiting to see. I'm with this until it ends."
"Hopefully that's a long time from now."
"Hopefully." She stared at the flames. "But eventually someone's going to try to destroy this. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"When that happens, we need to be ready. Real defenses. Walls. Weapons. Training."
"Agreed. After we finish housing."
"After housing. But soon."
Day fifteen. The aquatic mutant arrived.
She collapsed at the perimeter, gasping. Tom found her—gills on her neck desperately trying to pull oxygen from air they weren't designed for.
Miles got there first. "She's drowning. In air. We need water. Now."
We'd built a makeshift tank in forty minutes. Salvaged metal, System enhancement to seal it, water from the purification system. We filled it and lowered her in.
She breathed. Underwater. The gills worked properly again.
Her name was Caroline. Sixteen. Kicked out when her mutation manifested. She'd been living in a lake, stealing food from campers, completely alone for three months.
"Can you survive out of water at all?" Miles asked.
"Maybe thirty minutes. Less when stressed. I need—I need to stay wet."
"Then you stay wet. We'll build you proper accommodations."
Her tank became the first truly System-heavy construction. I spent 150 CP making it self-filtering, temperature-controlled, oxygenated. It looked like an aquarium designed by someone who'd never seen an aquarium but understood engineering.
Caroline cried when she saw it. "I can stay?"
"You can stay."
Day eighteen. Population hit twenty-five.
The notification appeared while I was directing roof repairs:
[POPULATION MILESTONE: 25 CITIZENS]
[REWARDS: +500 NP, +750 EXP, UNLOCK ADVANCED CONSTRUCTION]
[FOURTH BOND SLOT UNLOCKED]
[LEVEL UP!]
[YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 10]
[MAJOR MILESTONE: THIRD MAIN FUNCTION UNLOCKED]
[POPULATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ACTIVE]
New menus flooded my vision. Population tracking. Skill matrices. Morale monitoring. The System had been tracking this information, but now I could see it clearly. Who had what skills. Who worked well together. Who was unhappy.
Most people showed green—content, productive. A few yellow—uncertain, struggling. Emma was red. Deeply unhappy, traumatized, barely functional.
I need to do something about that. But what? I'm not a therapist.
The Advanced Construction unlock was more immediately useful. I could now build actual structures, not just enhance salvage. Walls. Gates. Towers. Everything we'd need for a real settlement.
But it all cost CP. And CP was finite.
Day twenty. Sofia found me in the workshop.
"We need to talk about Emma."
"I know. She's not adjusting."
"It's worse than that. Her thoughts are—Marcus, she's thinking about hurting herself. Not constantly. But the thoughts are there."
Fuck.
"What does she need?"
"Safety. Real safety, not just the physical kind. Someone to care about her specifically, not as one of twenty-five people. Stability. Time. Probably professional help we don't have."
"Can you help her? Your telepathy—"
"I can monitor her. Make sure she doesn't act on the thoughts. But I can't fix what's broken. That takes more than reading minds."
"Okay. I'll—I'll figure something out."
I didn't know what. But I'd figure it out.
Day twenty-one. We had actual birthday candles.
Someone—I didn't track who—had found them during a supply run. When Maria mentioned her birthday was coming up, they'd hidden the candles. Saved them.
We gathered around Danny's fire. Someone had made a small cake from flour and honey and determination. Twenty-five candles—one for her age, not number of years.
Everyone sang "Happy Birthday." Badly. Enthusiastically. Maria cried. Again. But happy tears.
"I never thought—" She couldn't finish. "I never thought I'd have this again. People who care. A place to be. Thank you."
"You're family," Danny said simply. "That's what family does."
The word hung in the air. Family. Twenty-five people who weren't related by blood but by choice. By circumstance. By the decision to build something together.
Family.
Day twenty-five. Three weeks since the rules vote.
I walked the perimeter at dusk. The office building was habitable now—twelve more sleeping spaces. The workshop was functional—Victor had the generator running. Actual electric lights. We had walls around half the perimeter. Not tall walls, not defensible against serious attack. But walls. Boundaries. Definition.
The gardens showed green everywhere. Two weeks to harvest, Maria said. Maybe less. Food security was still precarious but improving.
Twenty-five people. Up from six. Infrastructure that worked. Governance by consensus. Skills diversifying. Hope.
I allowed myself one moment of pride.
Then my brain immediately went to problems. We needed better defenses. Winter was six months away—we needed heating solutions. Medical supplies were running low. Cash was gone. We were dependent on Hendricks's goodwill for supplemental food.
Always more problems. Never enough solutions.
But we were building. Day by day. Brick by brick. Life by life.
Ruth found me at the perimeter.
"You're brooding again."
"Thinking."
"Same thing for you." She looked out at the territory. "It's working, Marcus. You see that, right? This insane plan is actually working."
"For now."
"For now is all we ever have."
She was right. Tomorrow would bring new problems. New people. New crises. But today, we'd built something. Today, twenty-five people had homes.
Tomorrow we'd do it again.
The System pulsed contentedly.
[NATION STATUS UPDATE]
Territory: 10.4 sq km (60% developed)
Population: 25
Infrastructure: Moderate
Cohesion: 42
Nation Tier: 1 (Settlement - Established & Growing)
[NEXT MILESTONE: POPULATION 50]
Fifty. Double our current size. It felt impossible.
But so had six people in a ruined factory. And we'd made that work.
"Come on," Ruth said. "Dinner's ready. Victor got the lights working in the dining hall."
Dining hall. We had a dining hall now. With lights.
I followed her inside. Twenty-five people gathered around tables made from salvaged metal. Electric bulbs—actual bulbs—cast warm light. Danny wasn't providing heat for once. He sat with the other kids, laughing at something Jason said.
Miles was showing someone how to properly clean a wound. James and Eva were arm-wrestling—she was losing but making him work for it through sheer speed. Sofia had her eyes closed but was smiling. Tom was visible for once, not phasing nervously.
Caroline's tank sat in the corner, temperature-controlled water keeping her alive. She waved from inside it.
Family.
We ate together. Rice and beans and vegetables from Hendricks's trash, cooked by people who'd learned to make limited ingredients taste good. Not much. But ours.
After dinner, I returned to my corner—I'd claimed a small space in the office building. Private for the first time since arriving. I had a cot. A desk made from scrap. A single electric bulb.
Luxury.
I pulled out my notebook. Tracked progress. Population: 25. Food: stable for now. Housing: adequate. Security: improving. Morale: generally good, Emma excepted.
Three weeks of intensive building. We'd transformed New Haven from campsite to settlement.
And tomorrow, we'd keep going.
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