The first week was pure adrenaline. Every creak of the bamboo sounded like a tank breaching the wall. Grace slept in the bathtub (which I had woven out of waterproof vines). Bells spent eighteen hours a day in the buried truck, hand on the door handle, ready to fight.

  By the first month, the adrenaline faded into anxiety. We paced and bickered. Sal built a deck of cards out of dried bamboo leaves and taught Aiya how to play poker. She cleared him out of his snack rations in two hours.

  By month three, it was just life.

  We were submarine crewmen. We had our routines and our shifts. The terror of the siege had been replaced by the boredom of existence.

  I sat on the bamboo sofa in the common area, watching the holographic screen. It was Month 3 of the Siege of Southfield.

  The news anchor, a woman named Veronica, was pointing at a graph.

  "The Detroit Economic Index has reached an all time high," Veronica said. "Driven by the ongoing conflict between White Hill and the Eden Remnants, demand for logistics and raw materials has skyrocketed."

  A chart appeared on the screen and a purple line was shooting straight up.

  "Seaside Logistics is now valued at one trillion Spirit Stones," she announced.

  I choked on my water.

  "Trillion with a T?" Sal asked, looking up from his card game.

  "That's a lot of zeroes," Aiya noted.

  "White Hill remains the largest consumer of military hardware," Veronica continued. "While basic munitions are manufactured domestically in Warren, advanced guidance chips, drone arrays, and heavy mech hydraulics are sourced exclusively from Seaside Technologies, a subsidiary of Seaside Logistics."

  I started to laugh.

  "Of course," I said. "Mister O is selling the bullets and the bandages."

  It explained everything. How he bought the port and how he maintained the pristine bubble of Sector 1. He was a megacorporation.

  "I will never catch him," I realized aloud. "Even if I mine every stone in Adam, even if the vein goes down to the core of the earth... I can't compete with a global logistics monopoly."

  Strangely, the thought calmed me and the shame I felt about buying the Terramotta vanished.

  "I don't feel bad about being his customer anymore," I said. "Everyone works for Mister O. Even Axehill."

  "This war has benefited Seaside more than it has us or White Hill," Sal said, throwing a card onto the table.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Megacorporations always benefit in war," Aiya said, slapping down a winning hand. "Nothing new there."

  The report shifted and the graph disappeared, replaced by footage of a breadline in Warren.

  "However," Veronica’s tone grew somber. "Reports indicate that the White Hill economy is showing signs of strain. The prolonged siege of Sector 2 and Southfield is burning through reserves at an unsustainable rate."

  "Cracks," Bells said, walking into the room. He had just woken up from a nap. "Took them long enough."

  "White Hill didn't expect us to go into hiding," I said, watching the footage of tired soldiers handing out meager rations to angry civilians. "Axehill thought we would fight. Or sue for peace. He thought he could crush us in a week and loot our coffers to pay for the war."

  "Instead, we vanished," Bells grinned. "And left him with the bill."

  The numbers on the screen were staggering.

  White Hill was burning millions a day. They had to maintain the tanks, fuel the APCs, and pay the soldiers. But the real killer was the population.

  "Population estimates," Veronica said. "White Hill: One Million."

  "One million," I whispered. "He has to feed a million people."

  The screen showed the other factions for comparison.

  The Cove: 100,000 (Unknown).

  Seaside: 50,000 (Mostly workers and sailors).

  Eden: [Unknown].

  "We're too insignificant to even chart," I said to the screen. "If you include the colony, we have maybe a thousand people max."

  I leaned back, running a hand through my hair.

  "I really messed up, didn't I?" I said. "Had I known White Hill had a million civilians to support, I would have never attacked. I would have just given him the tomatoes."

  "Hindsight," Grace said from the corner, not looking up from her game on the laptop. "You didn't know."

  "Regardless," I said. "His size is killing him."

  A million people was an empire. But an empire without trade, without a strong economy, without the looting income Axehill relied on? It was a starving beast.

  "A couple more months," I predicted. "He can't keep this up. He will have to retreat. A prolonged war is not sustainable for a military state. For Seaside? Yes. For us? Yes."

  I looked around my bamboo bunker. We had infinite food. We had infinite water. We had infinite air from the moss. Our overhead was zero.

  "This is how we bleed them," I said. "Not with guns. But by existing."

  I stood up and walked to the back of the house, entering the garden proper.

  In three months, I hadn't been idle.

  I looked at the ground.

  [Spirit Soil (Grade 6)]

  I looked at the walls. The bamboo was hard enough to stop a railgun.

  [Heavenly Bamboo (Spirit Grade 6)]

  And the moss. My pride and joy.

  [Heavenly Moss (Spirit Grade 6)]

  [Generation: 24.6 Qi / Hour]

  I was a walking nuclear reactor. Just breathing in this room kept my reserves capped.

  I walked past the new room I had woven for Bells. He had stopped sleeping in the car weeks ago. There was no point. The Whispervine was perfect; the soldiers outside never looked twice at the overgrown lot. The "Siege" had become boring.

  I sat down in the center of the bamboo.

  Everyone had adjusted. Grace was gaming. Aiya was gambling. Sal was trying to brew moonshine from Heavenly Potatoes.

  This was the new normal.

  I closed my eyes, syncing my breath with the pulse of the soil.

  "We wait," I whispered to the dark. "We wait for the fire to burn itself out. And when the ash settles... we reclaim the city."