Cale acted like he belonged as he stood in the elevator with everyone else. If someone looked at him, he smiled at them and waved and tried to look as focused as possible so that nobody would talk to him. Surprisingly, all the rebuttals he had come up with in his head were unneeded as nobody stopped him from getting off the elevator.

  With no issue at all, he found himself standing in the main lobby of the tower, appreciative that nobody stopped him. Before the doors closed he turned and made sure to wave at all the people still in the elevator and gave them a big smile, they waved and smiled hesitantly in return.

  When he was in the elevator, staring at the humungous feet of the guy next to him, he realized that there was no way his parents wouldn’t find out about his outing, and since he refused to quit, he figured he would be as nice and as well behaved as possible, so when his parents did find out, they would only hear good things.

  With a pep in his step, he activated his movement script and enhanced it by humming to himself, which made him feel a little like he was dancing. Using his new movement speed, he found himself able to keep pace perfectly with the people leaving the lobby. The guards didn’t search anyone coming or going so it was surprisingly easy to just walk out of the building as long as he stayed with another group.

  The second he was out of the lobby, he found a spot off to the side and let himself enjoy the moment. For the first time in his life, he was free to roam, unsupervised. He breathed in deeply as the fresh air graced his nose, which was quickly accosted as the smell of fresh animal dung wafted by him.

  He noticed that there were a lot of animals inside the walls, way more than what he had seen before, and because of it, the place stank like a livestock yard in a Texas summer. Wanting to get out of the stink, he moved farther away from the bustling center and ended up next to one of the outer walls.

  Seeing that nobody was paying attention to him, he opened his interface and pulled up his drawing of the base to try and get his bearings. Maggy helped him figure out which wall he was standing by, auto rotating the drawing as he moved, making the next part a lot easier. His interface program had him do all sorts of measurements, and not all of them were just distances.

  One of the measurements required him to hit the wall with a rock to see if anything chipped off, another was a vertical test where he had to run his hand up along it to see if it angled one way or another. Another required him to push against the wall as hard as he could to test how strong it was. But all that test did was tell him he wasn’t strong enough to get a good reading, which made him sigh as he suddenly remembered he was in a kids body.

  When he got done taking all the measurements from the ground, he climbed up one of the ladders to see what else was left, and to get a better view of his surroundings. When he got to the top, he did see a lot of guards around and on alert, but they were all facing outward, so he was able to find a little nook next to some supplies where he had a decent view but was out of sight of the guards.

  He found himself happily sitting up on the base wall as he modified his rendering of the base. Some of his proportions had been a bit off, and he was really liking how it turned out after his changes. Once he was happy, he made a copy of it and saved it in case he needed to start over. He then went about making changes to see how they could possibly keep the base from being overrun while hopefully still saving some of the animals.

  After his first experience with the Moon’s Fury, he was surprised to find out that the animals were normally much more docile, and he felt bad for them. In a way they had lost their freedom, and that resonated with him. He was finalizing up one of his renders when he heard a loud commotion coming from below with a lot of shouting, and people getting very heated. Cale peeked out from his nook and saw the current Administrator on top of a wagon being pulled by one of the pack animals, many people surrounding him and shouting angrily.

  “You can’t just leave us like this!” he heard one of the shop keepers say, others chiming in agreement. He had recognized the first person as the vendor for the fajitas that his mom liked.

  “Look, I have to leave with these documents. If this base falls then all will be lost!” The man on the wagon said.

  “Administrator! You cannot believe that; we do not believe that. You could have someone else do that job while you organize the base. Who else here is going to do it?” An unrecognized voice from the crowd shouted to him.

  “This is an important job and I must see it through!” The man on the wagon yelled back. “But you are right, you need someone to lead you, someone with experience… Olter! Where is Olter?!”

  Cale watched the people murmur before a section of the crowd split, revealing Olter walking toward the man on the wagon.

  “Administrator,” Cale heard Olter say, the words clenched between his teeth, “What is it that you need?”

  “I am leaving. Heading south with these documents to the nearest city. You are to guide these people until my return.” The Administrator told him, almost dismissively.

  “You would abandon your people during a time of need?” Olter asked him, the accusation clear in his tone.

  “Abandon? Oh dear no, I am making sure all our hard work is saved and am putting an experienced Administrator in charge while I am away. Are you not up to the task, Olter?” He challenged, “Have you not stayed here to make amends for these people? But when asked to help, you refuse?” The Administrator had stood up by this point and was making a big show of his statement.

  Cale held his breath as Olter stood before the wagon, just inches from the Administrator. He could see the fire beneath his eyes burning and Cale thought Olter might throw a punch with the way he was clenching and unclenching his fists. Cale liked Olter, he had met him a few times when his family had him over for supper and his dad constantly talked about how hard working he was and how he had been a great partner out in the woods. Granted, Olter had screwed up, and not properly prepared the place for a Moon’s Fury, but he had not shied from his duties, even when stripped of his title. A quality that Cale found admirable.

  “I will do as you ask,” Olter finally responded with no emotion, “May the divine guide you along a safe path.”

  “Finally, someone that listens. I expect you to keep everyone safe while I am away, Olter. Don’t fail these people again.” He said smugly. The Administrator picked his chin up, snapped the reins connected to the animal, and off he went through the gate, leaving a crowd of bewildered people behind him. The most bewildered looking person of them all being Olter.

  Soon the crowd dissipated and Cale moved from his watching spot back into the nook. He hadn’t expected the Administrator to turn tail and run. After everyone left and the shouting stopped, he reviewed the footage of the conversation and he could see the desperation in the people.

  In his heart he despised the Administrator that had left the people to their own fate. What kind of person left their people just to save their own skin? The very notion made him upset and Cale took a snapshot of the Administrator and made a note next to it: ‘worthless scum.’ If the man ever showed his face again, Cale would make sure to confront him. But that was for a later time, for now he needed to focus on getting back. He peeked around the corner, and noticed that everyone had finally gone and the coast was fairly clear.

  He thought of the look on Olter’s face as the Administrator pulled away, and Cale couldn’t help but think the man needed some help. Now that Olter was the Administrator again, Cale wanted to see what he thought of his plan, but he didn’t think he would take the plans of a child very seriously. He needed another way to get him to look at them.

  Maybe if he drew them out and left them on his desk… Maybe then he would take them seriously? If that wasn’t enough, maybe he could get his parents to take him seriously and present the idea to Olter. Regardless, he only had a few days, and his plan required a lot of work from everyone at the base, the sooner he could convince Olter, the better. Now he just had to do the hard part, sneak back into the building and Olter’s office, and somehow have him look at the plan without being seen. He hoped it was easier than it sounded in his head.

  ***

  Cale stood in the elevator, once again faking his confidence in being there. His faking it had worked well so far and he didn’t see a reason to try anything different. When he had snuck back into the tower, he had been spotted by one of the guards. However, with the room packed with all the foot traffic due to the emergency looming over the base, he was able to quickly sprint into an elevator going upward before the guard noticed he had left the room.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He knew he was on a time limit now, there was no way one of the guards didn’t question his parents and it wasn’t like people hadn’t noticed him already. Thankfully nobody stopped him from getting off the elevator on the floor of the Administrator’s office and he was able to walk in freely. Once inside he found it weird that the place was so open, but then again maybe nobody was expecting someone from the inside to go snooping around during an emergency. Especially a kid.

  It didn’t take him long to find a stack of blank papers and some ink sitting on the desk. He laid out nine sheets in a three by three square and used his interface to overlay the render on top of the paper to make it easy to draw. Once he was satisfied everything was in place, he got to work drawing out his rendering.

  He started out by drawing the current base layout in the bottom left corner of his schematic. He quickly annotated the different parts of the drawing, and noted a few of the current flaws he saw in the design against their current predicament. Happy with how it looked on paper, he drew his new design on the remaining part of the page.

  Cale didn’t think they needed to stop the creatures from breaking through the walls, they just needed them to pass by them without doing too much damage. So his plan was simple, instead of barricading the walls and manning the towers, killing many creatures, putting his own people at risk with a chance of violent death and then afterward with diseases. From what he had heard the night before, the city walls had held, but only barely, and now this horde had a few more days to build, how did their little base stand a chance?

  That was what his design was for. His idea was to dismantle the center parts of the walls and use them, along with the gates, to fortify the center tower in a diamond shape. His thought was that the rampaging creatures were not actually out looking for them, instead their fort was just in the way. So if the beasts had the freedom to just run by them, like running through a piece of trees, while everyone hid down under the ground, then in theory, the night should go by pretty smoothly with all the animals simply passing through. Removing the entire reason to fight the horde at all.

  He hummed to himself as he followed the lines of his schematic, bringing his idea to life. It made him miss the professional grade printers that he had on Earth and wondered what the odds were that there was a working printer sitting somewhere in this world.

  “Finally! Found you, Cale!” His mother yelled as she rushed into the Administrator’s office. “I have been looking all over the place for you! Whatever in the world possessed you to do such a thing?!” She asked with one long breath before bending over and placing her hands on her knees as she tried to breath, exhaustion in her posture evident.

  Cale, who had recovered from his startle, did his best, but failed to only raise one of his eyebrows as he looked at her. Seeing that she only looked normal-mad, Cale figured he didn’t really need to give an answer but instead could just show her what he was working on.

  “What do you think of my idea to save the base and its people?” He asked her calmly, and pointed to his drawing. He watched his mom’s face go through a myriad of expressions as she processed the words, looking at him, then the drawing, and then back to him. He was impressed that she didn’t immediately take him home, but instead walked over to the table and observed what he was working on.

  “Is this why you disappeared today?” She asked him.

  “Yep!” He proudly exclaimed, “I heard what is happening and I wanted to help everyone after they helped me.”

  “Of course you heard,” she said, exhaustion still on the edges of her breath. He felt his mother’s arms wrap around him in a hug. “I keep forgetting my little boy is only little in size. Not in heart.” He smiled at her words and was glad she didn’t seem really mad that he was out and about, it was more like she was just worried about him.

  “Can you explain this design to me?” She asked him. “It is very well drawn and I am impressed at the details. Are these measurements on the side here accurate?”

  “Sure! I used my interface to draw a three dimensional schematic which I overlayed in a two dimensional form onto this paper. Which I then copied since there isn’t a working printer.”

  “You have no idea how jealous I am that your interface functions correctly.” She stated to him flatly. “But what is a printer? I haven’t seen that script ever mentioned,” his mom asked him.

  “Uh, not a script… I don’t think. It’s typically a machine that writes for me on paper…” Cale said.

  “Write for you? Never heard of one. Where did you hear this word, printer?” she asked him.

  Cale froze, he had just messed up, his familiarity with Maggy was bleeding into this world and his mother had not missed a beat in capitalizing on his mistake.

  She looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes squinting as she seemed to try and look underneath his skin before deciding to move on. “Anyway, continue.” She finally said.

  Cale was suspicious his mom hadn’t pressed him harder. Then again he did have a new interface that was working, so maybe she assumed he had learned it there. Since she wasn’t asking, he decided to continue before she took his silence as a reason to ask more questions.

  Cale pointed to the walls in his drawing and started his explanation in the most adult voice he could muster, “My idea is to remove the gates on all the walls as well as the entire middle sections that no longer support the gates. Then we re-use the walls that were dismantled to fortify the center tower, and create run lanes for the animals to go all the way through the base so they can exit unimpeded.”

  “That is a good idea. What are these center areas for?” She asked him. “It looks like a gap is in between the building walls.”

  “Kill zones,” He replied, “These areas use some of the smaller doors from the guards towers to open vertically like a sideways gate, allowing the guards to fire out, and even pull in an animal if needed. I figured that there will be some death just due to the number of beasts, so we will need a way to potentially clean up some of the dead animals if they start causing problems.” He explained. “Over here I proposed switching out the ballista bolts with some sort of hook, that way if animals clog up a pathway, they could be pulled out of the way.” He pointed out.

  “This is very well thought out, Cale.” His mom told him, and for the next few minutes she asked him detailed questions on guard placement, wall design, what happens if something breaks, and all sorts of random things. He really appreciated her taking the time to look at it instead of just dismissing it. He and his mother talked about his plan in detail and it wasn’t until they were interrupted by Olter walking into his office that Cale realized what his mom was doing.

  “Olter, glad to see you finally found a moment to escape. I have something I would like to show you.” Diana told him as she moved Cale behind her with one of her arms. Cale was impressed by her quick thinking, she had been asking him questions so that she could present the plan, she obviously knew that Cale’s ideas would be dismissed due to his size, but if she presented it, it would be taken seriously, which is all Cale had wanted.

  “Oh… you are here Diana, it seems that everyone has an emergency ever since that dastardly man... That bastard left me a mess.” Olter told her with a scowl on his face. It was obvious he had been having an interesting day.

  “Olter, I am here to present to you a solution. Something for your focus and something to put the people’s attention on and give them hope." His mother told him boldly.

  Cale’s eyes widened at his mother’s proclamation and he heard Olter scoff, but he didn’t tell her to leave.

  “A solution you say? Well, why is the little one here?” Olter questioned.

  “I haven’t been willing to leave him at daycare all day after the incident. I find being away from him for long periods to be hard.” Diana threw in a sniff to solidify his sympathy.

  Cale peeked out from behind his mom to see Olter looking at him, giving that questioning look as if he was trying to decide if he should make them leave or not. He watched Olter sigh loudly before walking over to the desk, he opened a drawer and pushed something that made a click from inside the desk. Olter then moved his hand farther into the drawer and pulled out a small bottle of something brown.

  “Ha. That idiot never even found the secret spot in this drawer.” Olter opened it and took a swig, before holding it out, motioning for his mom to take a swig. Cale watched his mom take the bottle and take a full swig without so much as a stutter or cough, she then followed it up with a classy burp.

  Olters eyebrow raised at the display before he continued, “Sit for a moment you two. Phil will be up here shortly with a few other people, we were going to talk about our options, and if you have an idea, I’m sure everyone would like to hear it.”

  They didn’t have to wait long before people started to trickle in and soon there were about ten people in the room, not counting Cale and his mom. When his dad entered, he gave them a questioning look and sat next to them. His mother just pointed to the drawing, and then to Cale, causing the look of confusion to go away and it was replaced by his dad giving him a thumbs up and a smile.

  Once everyone had found a place to sit or lean, Olter started, “Thank you all for joining me today. As we are all well aware, we are in an ugly situation. We have a limited number of supplies, people, and weapons. Current estimates range anywhere from a few hundred thousand animals, to almost a million of them heading in our direction.”

  Cale gasped along with everyone else, he had imagined a possible few thousand of a variety of animals, not a literal horde!

  “How can this be?!” Someone he didn’t recognized asked, with everyone murmuring along in curiosity with them.

  “The Moon’s Fury is not just enraging animals in an area, after looking at the reports the previous Administrator received before his departure, each night overlaps with the previous one, pushing the animals together.” He paused to let them absorb this. “That alone would be a lot, but the enraged animals, after multiple nights in a row, keep their enragement longer, causing the other animals in the area to clear out. This effect has been compounding for a few days, and if it continues, there will be enough creatures hitting our base walls that night to grind everything, including the tower to the ground.”

  After those words, not a single peep could be heard in the room, it was as if everyone was holding their breath, afraid that breathing meant they had to acknowledge the situation they were in.

  “Thankfully this base is full of smart people!” Olter’s voice boomed in the silent room, snapping everyone out of their torpor. “Our own researcher, Diana, who many of you know, has a plan she would like to present to everyone. How she found out about our meeting and was able to draw up plans already… I don’t know. But let’s hear her out. Everyone, please gather around the table as Diana goes over her plan.”

  Cale looked up at his mom, expecting her to look panicked, but instead she looked calm, collected, and as if she was in full control of the room. And just like that, all of a sudden it made sense why his mom had asked him so many detailed questions earlier. Clever… he thought suspiciously as he opened his interface, and moved her name up higher on the list of candidates he suspected to be 005.