Slumdog Hero

Fii drifted back into consciousness like surfacing from deep water, reality assembling itself in fragments. Cool stone against her cheek. The smell of mineral water and something medicinal—sharp, antiseptic. Voices floating at the edge of hearing, too distant to parse into words.

Her head felt cracked open, skull held together by spit and stubbornness. Every heartbeat sent fresh waves of pain cascading from temple to temple. She tried to lift her head and immediately regretted it, the world spinning like a broken gyroscope.

"Easy there." Familiar voice, but not Luke or Serena. "Been out for two days straight."

Tev's weathered face came into focus, concern etched into the lines around his eyes. He sat on a low stool beside what appeared to be a medical cot, a collection of improvised monitoring equipment humming quietly nearby.

"Two days?" Her voice came out as a croak.

"Phase sickness hit you hard. Soren said you burned through about three months' worth of exposure in thirty seconds." He held a cup of water to her lips. "Drink. Slow sips."

The water tasted of minerals and mercy. Each swallow seemed to wash away another layer of cotton from her thoughts. Around her, the medical bay revealed itself—carved directly from the living rock, walls lined with salvaged equipment that had been retrofitted into something resembling a functioning clinic.

"Luke and Serena?"

"Fine. Worried sick about you, but fine." Tev adjusted something on one of the monitors. "Serena's been helping our tech crew with some modifications. Luke's been working with our scouts, teaching them some new tactics."

Fii tried to sit up again, moving slower this time. The world stayed mostly stationary, which felt like a victory. "How long before I can travel?"

Tev's expression suggested that wasn't the right question to be asking. "According to Soren, you shouldn't use those powers of yours for at least a week. Maybe two. And even then, only in emergencies."

The prohibition sat heavy in her chest. A week without her gravikinesis felt like being asked to hold her breath underwater. But the memory of reality twisting around her, stone flowing like liquid, was still fresh enough to make her skin crawl.

"What exactly happened back there?" she asked.

"You tell me. One minute you're fighting that phase-shifter, the next you're on the ground bleeding from places blood shouldn't come from, and the corridor's twisted into shapes that make my eyes hurt to look at."

The memory came back in flashes—the Netherling's chittering shriek, gravity crushing inward, something fundamental giving way inside her. She'd felt her power connect to something vast and alien, like touching a live wire with her bare soul.

"I lost control," she admitted. "Powers went haywire."

"More than haywire. Soren thinks you tore a hole in local spacetime. Small one, but still." Tev leaned back in his chair. "Good news is, it sealed itself after you passed out. Bad news is, doing that kind of damage to reality takes a toll."

Fii flexed her fingers experimentally. The familiar tingle of gravity responding to her will was still there, but muted, like hearing sound through thick glass. Even that small test sent a fresh spike of pain through her temples.

"So I'm benched."

"For now."

Footsteps approached, and Soren appeared in the doorway. "Good to see you awake. We were starting to wonder if you'd sleep through the next sandstorm."

The Collector leader looked different somehow—less guarded, more approachable. She carried a tray of food that smelled like actual cooked meat rather than the protein paste Fii had grown accustomed to.

"Real food?" Fii asked, accepting the tray.

"Lizard stew. Caught fresh this morning." Soren settled onto another stool, watching as Fii dug into the meal. "You saved Kess's life back there. That phase-shifter would have gutted her without your intervention."

The stew was rich, seasoned with herbs that grew in the hydroponic gardens. Actual flavor, complex and satisfying in ways that made Fii realize how much she'd been surviving on rather than eating.

"She would have done the same for me."

"Maybe. But you didn't know that when you acted." Soren studied her with those sharp eyes. "That tells me something about your character."

They sat in comfortable silence while Fii worked through the meal, strength seeping back into her bones with each bite. Through the medical bay's open doorway, she could hear the sounds of Haven's daily life—voices calling to each other, the hum of machinery, the distant sound of children playing.

"How many people live here?" she asked.

"Forty-three, counting you three. Was forty-six last month, but the Rust Jackals took three of ours during a salvage run." Soren's expression hardened. "We haven't seen them since."

The loss sat heavy in the older woman's voice. In a community this small, every person mattered. Every absence left a hole that couldn't easily be filled.

"I'm sorry."

"Desert takes its due. Always has." Soren shook her head. "Point is, we don't have people to spare. When someone puts themselves at risk for one of ours, that means something."

Over the next few days, as Fii's strength returned, she began to understand what Soren meant. Haven operated like a family unit—not always harmonious, but bound together by necessity and genuine care. Everyone had roles, responsibilities, ways they contributed to the collective survival.

Luke had thrown himself into their defensive planning, his military background earning him quick respect among the Collectors.

"The problem with your current setup," he was explaining, pointing to a crude map carved into a stone tablet, "is that you're only watching the obvious approaches. A smart enemy will find the paths you're not covering."

The scouts—four women and two men, all bearing the weathered look of people who spent their lives in hostile territory—listened with the attention of students who knew their lives depended on the lesson.

"So what do you recommend?" asked one of them, a compact woman named Vera who carried more scars than anyone her age should have.

Luke traced alternative routes on the map. "Overlapping fields of observation. Motion sensors at the choke points. And most importantly—" he tapped the tablet "—redundancy. Never rely on a single point of failure."

Fii watched him work with the scouts, drilling them in combat tactics and small-unit strategy, and for the first time, she glimpsed him in his element. Disciplined, focused, leading with confidence rather than force.

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"Learning anything useful?" she asked during a break in the session.

"More than I expected." Luke wiped sweat from his forehead. "These people have survived out here for years using nothing but scraps and determination. There's a lot to respect in that."

Fii nodded. "I thought you'd be trying to persuade them to evacuate."

"I considered it. But after seeing what they've built, how they're not just surviving but adapting..." He shrugged. "They deserve better than to be collateral damage in our problems. If we can't stop the Netherlings ourselves, at least we can give these people a fighting chance."

Serena had found her own niche in the technical workshops, where her hard-light constructs proved invaluable for prototyping modifications to salvaged equipment. Fii discovered her there on the fourth day, surrounded by a fascinated audience.

"The trick," Serena was explaining, "is to think of the construct as an extension of my intention, not just a shape I'm projecting." Golden light flowed from her fingers, forming a complex cutting tool that she used to modify a salvaged circuit board.

"Can you make it sharper?" asked one of the tech crew, a young man who couldn't have been much older than Fii.

"Sharper, duller, more flexible—depends on what I need." Serena adjusted the construct's properties as she spoke. "The real limitation is complexity. The more intricate the tool, the more concentration it requires."

The workshop was a cave in the rock that had been expanded and equipped with a dizzying array of salvaged equipment. Circuit boards hung from the walls like electronic art. Workbenches overflowed with components in various states of disassembly and modification.

"Mind if I take a look?" Fii asked, nodding toward a half-disassembled communication unit on the nearest bench.

"Be our guest," said the young tech. "Been trying to get that thing working for months. Problem is, half the components are fried, and we don't have replacements."

Fii picked up the unit, turning it over in her hands. The housing was cracked, revealing a tangle of wiring and components that looked like the aftermath of an explosion. But underneath the damage, she could see the bones of solid engineering.

"What's it supposed to do?"

"Long-range communication. Frequency hopping, encrypted. Military grade, from before the Fall." The tech's eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "If we could get it working, we could coordinate with other Collector groups across the Wastes."

Fii studied the damage more closely. Months of working with Quinn and Tweak had taught her to see past surface problems to underlying systems. This unit had been well-built originally—overengineered, even. The kind of redundant design that could survive significant damage and still function.

"What if you're thinking about this wrong?" she said, tracing a finger along a series of damaged traces on the main board. "You're trying to repair what's broken. But what if you bypassed the damaged sections entirely?"

She pointed to a cluster of intact components near the unit's edge. "These subsystems are still functional. You could reroute the signal path around the damaged areas, use these as repeaters to boost the signal."

The young tech—his name was Marcus, she learned—leaned in to follow her reasoning. "That... could actually work. It wouldn't be pretty, but it might give us basic functionality."

"Pretty doesn't matter if it works."

They spent the next several hours bent over the device, Fii's knowledge of systems integration combining with Marcus's deep familiarity with the specific hardware. It was satisfying work, the kind of problem-solving that engaged her mind without taxing her still-recovering powers.

"Where did you learn this?" Marcus asked as they tested their modified signal routing.

"Friend of mine back home. Quinn. He can fix just about anything if you give him enough time and spare parts." The memory brought a pang of homesickness. "He taught me that most problems have more than one solution. You just have to be willing to think sideways."

"Sounds like someone I'd like to meet."

"Yeah. Me too." The admission surprised her with its honesty.

Their jury-rigged modification worked. Not perfectly—the range was shorter than spec, and the encryption was patchy—but it functioned well enough to establish contact with two other Collector settlements within a hundred kilometers.

The celebration that night felt genuine, unforced. Fii found herself at the center of attention in a way that would have made her uncomfortable a week ago.

But these people weren't celebrating her as some kind of superhero savior. They were acknowledging a contribution to the community, a problem solved that made everyone's life a little easier.

Soren found her later, sitting apart from the main group and watching the stars through one of Haven's skylights.

"Not much for crowds?" the older woman asked, settling beside her on the stone ledge.

"Not used to them," Fii corrected. "Back home, I kept to myself. Safer that way."

Soren laughed, a warm sound that echoed off the carved walls. "I know that feeling. Used to think keeping people at arm's length was the smart choice." She inclined her head toward the circle of revelers. "Then I ended up here, surrounded by people who needed me as much as I needed them. Realized maybe safety comes in different forms."

"Didn't take you for the philosophical type."

"Hard to spend a lifetime collecting scraps of history without picking up some big ideas along the way."

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the Collectors move through their evening routines. It struck Fii how efficiently they functioned—no wasted motion, no unnecessary conflict. Everyone knew their role and performed it without complaint.

"You used to be Kurigali," Fii said. It wasn't a question.

Soren nodded. "Long time ago. Different life." She traced one of the faded tattoos around her eye. "These marks meant something once. Told everyone what clan I belonged to, what role I played in the community."

"What happened?"

"The world changed. My people couldn't change with it." Soren's voice carried old pain, carefully controlled. "The Kurigali way of life worked fine when we had territory, resources, spiritual sites to maintain. But when the corporations started expanding into the Wastes, when the tears began opening and bringing through things that shouldn't exist..."

She trailed off, lost in memory.

"The elders wanted to maintain the old ways. Stick to traditional territories, follow traditional practices. They couldn't see that tradition meant nothing if it got everyone killed." Soren shook her head. "I tried to argue for adaptation. New tactics, new alliances. Pragmatism over purity."

"They exiled you."

"I left. Took about a dozen others who agreed with me. Some of them are here now—Tev, Vera, a few others. The rest... some found their own paths. Some didn't survive the transition."

Fii thought about her own time with the Kurigali, the sense of belonging she'd felt during the rituals. But even then, she'd noticed the tension between tradition and necessity. The elders spoke of preserving the past while the present demanded adaptation.

"Do you regret it?"

"Which part? Leaving, or staying long enough to watch good people die for the sake of principles that couldn't keep them alive?" Soren's smile was bitter. "I regret a lot of things. But not building this place. Not keeping these people safe."

Below them, someone had started playing a stringed instrument, its melody weaving through the conversations and laughter. Not Kurigali music, but something new—born from the fusion of old traditions and new necessities.

"The marks still mean something," Fii said, nodding toward Soren's tattoos. "Just something different now."

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just too old to have them removed." But Soren was smiling now, the bitterness replaced by something warmer. "What about you? Planning to complete your trials when you get back?"

The question caught Fii off guard. She'd been so focused on immediate survival that the larger question of her Kurigali heritage had been pushed to the background.

"I don't know," she said finally. "Feels like something I'm supposed to do. Like it might explain why I am the way I am, make me feel less... different." She hesitated, searching for words. "But it also feels like running backward. Looking for answers in the past instead of finding them for myself."

"Answers rarely arrive alone. Past and future are more intertwined than people think." Soren placed a weathered hand on her shoulder. "The important thing is to keep asking the right questions. The answers will find you."

As the evening wound down and people began drifting toward their sleeping quarters, Luke and Serena approached. They moved differently now—less like outsiders, more like members of the community.

"Glad you're fitting in," Fii said.

"Seemed unwise not to," Luke replied, a hint of his old formality returning. "Given that our chances of survival may depend on it."

Serena rolled her eyes. "What he means is, he's been having fun playing soldier." She turned to Fii. "And you. Heard about your little engineering project."

"Just trying to help where I can."

"Well, don't wear yourself out," Serena said. "We'll need those powers of yours at full strength sooner or later."

"I'll keep that in mind." Fii gave her a mocking salute.