“So should I just make fifty sets?” Leslie asked.

  Mira nodded. “Yeah. That works. We’ll push mana exposure and see who can pick it up. Start with making them for the Black Masks who are Cracked.”

  Reed crossed his arms. “Wait. Since you’re pulling the mana fragments from us, CraftNest deserves ten of those sets. We’ll run our own experiments.”

  Leslie shrugged. “Fine. I don’t care who gets them. I just need the data.”

  Lorena leaned forward. “One full set should go to someone who’s pregnant and living inside the Living Core.”

  Ren, who had been laughing a second earlier about everyone looking punk rockers, froze mid-smile.

  “You are not serious,” he said.

  Lorena met his eyes. “Pregnant women are a valid area of study. Especially if they’re living in the Living Core.”

  Ren shook his head. “Any pregnant woman in the Living Core should be kept as safe as possible. That includes protecting the baby.”

  “And if the Living Core benefits the mother,” Lorena replied evenly, “then it stands to reason it benefits the baby. Additional enhancement could help both.”

  Ren opened his mouth.

  Closed it.

  Opened it again.

  For a second, he genuinely looked like a fish trying to process oxygen.

  Everyone else stared at the two of them.

  Leslie finally broke the silence. “Are you pregnant, Lorena?”

  Reed blinked. “Wait. Really? Are you?”

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  Kanuka turned slowly. “When did this happen?”

  WickerBasque just stood there, eyes wide.

  Lorena crossed her arms. “Wait wait party people! Don’t be too excited! It’s not about me. I’m saying it’s a valid area of study. We should choose someone in the Living Core who fits those qualifications.”

  Kanuka pulled up the medical registry. “As far as I know, based on our records, there’s only one pregnant resident in the Living Core. File number 46682456.”

  Lorena tilted her head. “Oh.”

  A small pause.

  “I guess then it is all about me!” she said with a ludicrously wide smile.

  Ren started to speak.

  He never got the chance.

  Chairs scraped back. Everyone was suddenly on their feet, rushing Lorena with hugs and congratulations.

  “Oh my God.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “You’re going to be incredible as a mom!”

  A few of them clapped Ren on the shoulder as they passed.

  “Congrats, Ren.”

  “You did it, man.”

  Ren stood there, blinking.

  ‘Hello. I am fifty percent of this equation. Why am I being treated like the second banana?’

  After the cheering finally settled down, Ren clapped his hands once.

  “Okay. This has been a really, really long meeting. I swear it’s almost at the level of the Voice meetings I have to suffer through. At least here we’re actually making progress together instead of fighting over benefits.”

  Mira smiled slightly. “You’ve gotten really good at running meetings, Ren.”

  Leslie blinked. “Hey. I thought I was the one running this.”

  Ren lifted his hands. “Sorry. Leslie, anything else you want to cover in your meeting?”

  “No,” Leslie said, while laughing. “And you’re a jerk for that joke.”

  Ren laughed. “Fair.”

  He looked around the table. “I know we’re all busy. Really busy. And I know most of you are going to corner Silk and see how much loot he can funnel into your pet projects.”

  Silk grinned.

  “I’m just glad we’re still on the same page,” Ren continued. “Sometimes I look at us and think that little pickup group in a ten-man slum room somehow turned into… this.”

  He gestured vaguely at the round table, the data screens, the budgets.

  “I worry about bureaucracy. About losing whatever made this work in the first place.”

  Mira tilted her head. “What made it work?”

  Ren hesitated. “I don’t know. I never wrote it down. I just asked, what do I want? What’s good for me? What’s good for my friends?”

  Mira considered that. “That’s not exactly a formal doctrine. But District One feels stable. It feels… intentional. Let’s keep up the same type of initiatives. We need to have everyone in the MegaPatch onboard.”

  Ren pointed at her. “See? That. That’s the political moves that keeps this whole place running.”

  Mira blinked. “What?”

  The room laughed.

  Ren pushed his chair back. “All right. I’ll see you all soon. We’ve figured out how mana is changing the world—and how we’re going to use all this new loot.”

  With that, the chairs scraped back.

  One by one, they filtered out of the meeting hall.