Nate enters the portal realm. Greywall learns a warehouse picker can locate food. Mira Vale records the first acti...
Nate Corr hit the pallet jack shoulder-first, skidded under the broken shrink wrap, and watched forty cases of canned pears slide toward the open dock door.
There was no dock door beyond it.
Blue light stood where Bay Twelve should have shown rain, asphalt, and the sour glow of Brockwell Distribution Center's lot lamps. The scanner in Nate's hand screamed a mispick warning. The pears crossed the threshold first, vanishing one case at a time. Nate grabbed the last plastic strap because letting inventory vanish felt worse than breaking his arm.
The strap yanked him off the concrete.
Cold air punched him. Then mud. Then voices.
"Drop the crate or lose the hand," a man barked.
Nate opened his eyes with his cheek against a wooden pallet that smelled like wet grain and old blood. A spearhead hovered two inches from his wrist. Behind it stood a captain in patched mail, a half-circle of hungry soldiers, and a freight yard made from broken carts and stone bins. The pears were gone. His scanner still blinked: `PICK SHORT`.
"I am not stealing your crate," Nate said, because warehouse policy had trained him to answer accusations before pain. "Also, that is not a crate. It is a pallet."
The spear moved closer. "He speaks like a toll clerk."
A young woman with ink on her fingers pushed between two soldiers. "Captain Pell, wait. The gate spat him with a marked tool."
Nate lifted the scanner. Its cracked screen flashed his last Brockwell assignment: the eighteenth aisle, bin C-04, canned pears, forty cases.
The woman stared as if the numbers had bitten her. "A pick list."
"Mira," Captain Pell said, "tell me why I should not search him for knives and throw him into the ditch."
Mira Vale crouched beside Nate and pointed at the scanner. "Because Ashfield Gate does not bring useless things. It brings wanted things badly. If his list can find food, we test him before Greywall loses another company."
Nate sat up too fast. The yard swam. Beyond the broken carts, people stood in a ration line with bowls pressed to their chests. No one talked. Children watched the soldiers' sacks instead of the soldiers. A donkey nosed an empty trough and gave up.
He knew that look. Not the armor, not the mud, not the impossible blue tear hanging in the air behind him. The look was shortage. Every person in that yard had started calculating before he arrived.
Captain Pell grabbed Nate's vest and hauled him upright. "Find food, warehouse man. Dawn issue is three hundred soldiers. We have sacks for eighty."
"I need locations," Nate said. "Bins. Labels. Anything you count against."
The captain laughed once. "We have hunger. Count that."
Nate pulled free enough to look around. Brockwell would have failed this yard in ten minutes. Grain sacks leaned against damp stone. Root bundles sat beside lamp oil. Three bins had chalk marks crossed out and rewritten by different hands. A cracked door under the yard's north wall had mud scraped away from the threshold, too clean compared with everything around it.
His scanner chirped.
Not a normal chirp. The screen, which had no business understanding mud and spears, rebuilt the pick list in green lines.
`NEEDED: BARLEY MEAL. COUNT: 220 RATIONS. BIN: NORTH WALL / UNMARKED. ROUTE: TWO CARTS, FOUR HANDLERS.`
Nate stopped breathing for half a second.
Mira saw the light on his face. "What does it say?"
"Your north wall bin is not empty."
Pell's jaw hardened. "That store was checked."
"By someone who wanted you to stop checking." Nate pointed at the clean scrape. "Door opens out. Mud would pile against it if no one used it. Those chalk marks are location labels, except somebody scrubbed the one that matters."
The captain's hand went to his sword. "If you are wrong, I hang you from the gate chain."
"If I am right, stop mixing lamp oil beside food."
For the first time, one of the soldiers snorted. It sounded surprised to still have humor available.
Pell jerked his chin. Two soldiers dragged at the north door. It stuck, then burst open with a wet wooden groan. The smell of barley rolled out, dusty and sweet. Sacks filled the hidden room shoulder-high. Not enough to end a famine. Enough to change the morning.
The ration line made a sound that was not cheering. Cheering needed spare breath. This was a single pulled inhale from a hundred mouths.
Mira touched the scanner with one ink-stained finger. "How many?"
Nate read the green count, then looked at the sacks, the carts, the slope of the yard, the tired soldiers. The number was not magic unless someone moved it. "Two hundred twenty full rations if you stop issuing by rank and start issuing by job. More if I sort old sacks first. Less if any are wet."
Captain Pell stepped close enough that Nate could smell iron on his coat. "You will put that in bowls by dawn."
"Not alone."
"You are in no position to bargain."
Nate looked at the spearheads, then at the hollow-eyed line. "No, Captain. You are. I need four handlers, two carts, one dry table, and nobody pulling rank at the sacks. Give me that and your eighty becomes three hundred light rations. Refuse, and you can explain to them why your sword was easier to lift than a bag."
The captain's face went red. His soldiers went very still.
Mira straightened. "I will record the count."
Pell held Nate's stare for three hard seconds, then snapped, "Jor Venn! Four carters. Now."
A broad man with rope burns on both palms stepped out of the line. "If the stranger feeds my boy, my cart moves."
The work hit Nate like a second fall. Sacks came out in pairs. He had them lay the oldest near the table, dry sacks behind, questionable sacks apart. He tore strips from a ruined Brockwell safety poster in his vest pocket and wrote bin marks with Mira's ink: `A1 DRY`, `A2 CHECK`, `A3 ISSUE FIRST`. His hands shook from cold and adrenaline. His shoulder burned. Twice Captain Pell tried to send a soldier's bowl ahead of the children and twice Nate blocked the scoop.
"Army eats first," Pell said.
"Army marches better if the carters do not collapse," Nate shot back. "You want food moved or admired?"
Jor laughed under his breath and lifted another sack.
By the time the grey edge of dawn touched Hollowgate Yard, three hundred bowls held barley mash thin enough to offend every cook Nate had ever known and thick enough to keep bodies upright. The hidden room was nearly empty. His scanner's battery icon showed one red bar.
Mira wrote the final count on a board and turned it outward.
Captain Pell looked at the bowls, the carters, the soldiers who had stopped glaring at Nate long enough to eat. His voice lowered. "There are eight more camps between here and Greywall."
Nate's stomach sank.
Above Ashfield Gate, the blue tear pulsed. A new line crawled across his scanner.
`NEXT PICK: ARMY SUPPLY. DESTINATION: GREYWALL BORDER CAMP. REQUIRED BY DAWN.`