The shovel bit into the soil with a satisfying crunch. I'd been working for three hours straight, clearing a new section of field for spring planting, and barely felt winded. Superior Endurance combined with the physical conditioning from my various jobs meant manual labor that would exhaust most people was tolerable at worst. At least the work served as warm up and training to recondition my body.

Beside me, Sienna worked with similar ease, her movements efficient and purposeful. Where I used brute force and endurance, she applied precision—her Structural Reinforcement knowledge letting her identify exactly where the soil needed to be broken, her Material Efficiency ensuring no effort was wasted.

"You two are machines," called out Marek, one of Elliot's cousins, leaning on his own shovel about twenty feet away. He was a broad man in his forties, weathered by farm work but clearly struggling to keep pace. "How are you not even breathing hard?"

"Practice," I said simply, not willing to explain the System skills I had that made this possible.

"Practice nothing," Sienna added with a small smile. "We're just stubborn."

Elliot, working on the other side of the field with his uncle Tomasz, laughed. "Stubborn is right. Most city people last about an hour before they're begging for breaks."

"We're not most city people," I replied, driving the shovel down again.

"Clearly," Tomasz said, his Polish accent thick but his English functional. "Though I still don't understand what you did before this. Sienna says construction work, yes?"

"Something like that," Sienna confirmed, her auburn hair tied back in a practical ponytail. She hefted a particularly stubborn root system that would have required two normal people to move, carrying it to the collection pile without visible strain.

Marek watched her with wide eyes. "That's at least sixty kilograms. And she just... carried it like a bag of flour."

"Strong back," Sienna said modestly.

I caught Elliot's eye and saw the knowing look there. He understood more than the others—had seen enough during our time together to know we weren't ordinary. But he kept that knowledge to himself, letting his family think that I was the crazy individual with multiple jobs and Sienna just happened to be an unusually capable workers.

The sun climbed higher, and we continued. By the time lunch rolled around, we'd cleared twice as much area as Elliot had estimated.

"This would have taken us a week," Tomasz said, surveying the progress with obvious approval. "You finish in a morning."

"We're motivated workers," I said, wiping sweat from my forehead.

"Motivated is one word for it," Elliot muttered, but he was smiling.

We returned to the main house for lunch, and I found the others in various states of activity.

Alexis was in the barn with Anika, examining one of the dairy cows. Her medical knowledge translated surprisingly well to veterinary work—she'd been checking the animals daily, catching potential health issues before they became serious.

"This one has an infection starting in her hoof," Alexis said, pointing to the cow's leg. "Not serious yet, but it will be if left untreated."

Anika nodded, taking notes. "I'll tell my aunt. She handles most of the livestock medication."

"Tell her to clean it twice daily with this solution," Alexis said, mixing something from the farm's medical supplies. "Should clear up in a week."

I watched from the barn entrance as Alexis worked with the same focused precision she brought to human patients. Biometric Insight and Emergency Diagnostics adapted to animal physiology with minimal adjustment.

"She's good with them," Anika said quietly, noticing my presence. "The animals trust her."

"She's good with everyone," I replied.

Inside the house, I found Camille in what had been converted into a temporary workspace. Wool and fabric surrounded her—raw materials from the farm's sheep, transformed into clothing through her skill.

"This is so much harder without my proper equipment," she complained, not looking up from the spinning wheel she was operating. "Do you know how long it takes to process wool manually?"

"I don't, actually," I admitted.

"Forever," she said dramatically. "Literally forever. I've been working for two days and I've barely made enough fabric for one outfit."

Elliot's mother, Zofia, sat nearby with her own spinning wheel, moving at a fraction of Camille's speed but with the practiced ease of decades. "You work very fast for someone who complains so much," she observed in accented English.

"I complain because I care about quality," Camille replied. "This wool is excellent, by the way. Your sheep are very well-maintained."

Zofia smiled, pleased by the compliment. "Forty years we raise sheep. My mother before me, her mother before her. Good wool is tradition."

"It shows," Camille said genuinely. Then, glancing at me, "How are you not exhausted? You and Sienna have been working the fields all morning. I'm tired just from sitting here spinning wool."

"Different skill sets," I said.

"Different genetics, more like," Camille muttered. "Normal people get tired, Rey."

"We're not normal," Sienna said, entering the room with dirt still on her hands from the field. "We've been over this."

"Still unfair," Camille insisted.

Lunch was a communal affair—the whole extended family gathering around a large table. Simple food, but substantial. Bread, cheese, vegetables from the farm, meat from recent livestock processing. The kind of meal that sustained people who worked with their hands.

Conversation flowed in a mix of English and Polish, Elliot translating when needed. His family had accepted our presence with surprising ease—whether because they trusted Elliot's judgment or because they genuinely didn't follow international news closely enough to care, I wasn't sure.

"You work hard," Zofia said, addressing me and Sienna specifically. "Good workers. You stay as long as you need."

"Thank you," I said sincerely. "We appreciate your hospitality more than you know."

"Family helps family," she replied simply, as if hosting five fugitives was no different than having distant relatives visit.

After lunch, Elliot distributed afternoon assignments. More field work for those of us who could handle it. Animal care for Alexis and Anika. Continued textile work for Camille and Zofia.

Evelyn, notably, had been absent from lunch.

"Where's the blonde one?" Marek asked. "The one with the blue eyes?"

"Working," I said vaguely. "She has... administrative tasks."

"In a farmhouse?" Marek looked skeptical but didn't push.

Elliot knew better. Evelyn had been holed up in a small office room since we arrived, compiling data on Mark's broadcast, tracking news coverage, analyzing the global response. It's not that she couldn't work at the farm - she did get my firefighter job artificially after all, she's physically capable - but rather she had a more important task at hand. Building a complete picture of exactly how bad our situation was.

The afternoon passed like the morning—hard work under clear sky. My body moved through familiar motions, muscle memory from various jobs letting me work efficiently without much conscious thought.

Sienna and I developed a rhythm, working in tandem to move heavy materials and clear stubborn sections. Elliot and his family members kept pace as best they could, but the difference in capability was obvious.

"It's not natural," Tomasz said at one point, watching Sienna lift a fallen tree branch that should have required machinery. "But I don't ask questions."

"Probably for the best," Elliot agreed.

By the time the sun started setting, we'd accomplished more in one day than the farm typically managed in three. Elliot seemed pleased but also slightly unsettled—like he was being reminded that we weren't just ordinary people hiding out.

We returned to the house as twilight settled over the fields. Everyone was tired—even Sienna and I felt the day's work, though definitely not as severely as the others.

Camille immediately collapsed onto a couch. "I changed my mind. Farm life is terrible. I want my penthouse back."

"You've been sitting all day," Alexis pointed out.

"Sitting and working are not the same thing," Camille retorted. "My fingers are going to fall off from all that spinning."

"They won't fall off," Alexis said with medical certainty.

"You don't know that."

Dinner was being prepared—Zofia and another family member in the kitchen, the smell of cooking filling the house. Comfortable. Domestic. So different from the chaos of our normal lives.

Then Evelyn emerged from the office.

Her expression stopped all conversation. That professional evaluator mask was firmly in place, but I could see the tension underneath. The carefully controlled worry.

"Everyone sit down," she said quietly. "I have news."

We gathered in the living room, the family members sensing this was private and moving to give us space. Just the six of us—me, Sienna, Camille, Alexis, Evelyn, and Elliot, who'd earned the right to hear whatever this was.

Evelyn set her tablet on the coffee table. News articles and data displays covered the screen.

"I've been tracking Mark's activities since we arrived," she said, her voice professionally neutral in that way that meant the news was terrible. "Monitoring public perception, political movements, official responses."

"And?" Alexis prompted when Evelyn paused.

Evelyn's jaw tightened. "The UN held an emergency session yesterday. They voted on a new World President. Someone to fill the void left by Hugo Vale's death."

My stomach dropped. I already knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth.

"Mark just became the World President."

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