Raven arrived at Wilkins Feed & Seed as the sky began to gray over with the weight of a coming storm. The parking lot was mostly mud and gravel, the snow pushed into dirty piles at the lot edges. She parked the Ironhowl X4 near the loading dock and stepped out into the icy air, the door shutting with a satisfying thud behind her.
The old building looked like it had been a barn once, before getting retrofitted into a distribution hub. Heavy siding, wide plank floors, and the smell of feed and oil in the air.
She stepped inside.
Behind the counter stood an older woman in her late sixties, gray hair twisted into a thick braid, and a pair of square-rimmed glasses hanging on a chain around her neck. She was leaning over a battered clipboard when she noticed Raven.
“You lookin’ for fertilizer or seed?” she asked without looking up.
Raven walked straight up. “Raven Salvatore. I was told you’re the best place to buy in bulk.”
The woman finally looked up, eyeing her cautiously. “That so? Who told you?”
“Margery Boone.”
That got a nod. “Dilly Wilkins. I run this place.”
Raven glanced at the rows of stacked grain bags, galvanized bins of seed, and lined shelves of industrial-grade packaging. “I’m looking for seed. The kind you sell to farms, not hardware store hobbyists.”
Dilly smirked. “What’s the occasion? End of the world?”
“You never know when you’ll need some crops for a rainy day.”
Dilly chuckled but didn’t press. “All right then. Follow me.”
She led Raven past the front area and into a massive walk-in storeroom where pallets of seed sacks were labeled with black marker and stacked to the ceiling. The room was cool and dry, the kind of place that understood how to keep time from spoiling what mattered.
“All right, Salvatore,” Dilly said, crossing her arms. “What’re you after?”
Raven began listing without a beat of hesitation.
“Corn. Wheat. Rice. Barley. Oats. Soybeans. Potatoes—starter kits, not just seed. Carrots, onions, spinach, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, beans. Sunflowers. Medicinal and cooking herbs.”
Dilly raised both eyebrows. “Hell, you planting a nation?”
“I’ll take three tons of each.”
The older woman let out a slow breath and then scratched at her clipboard. “Well, I got it, but it won’t all go on one truck.”
“Doesn’t need to. I’ve got a facility waiting on standby. Deliver it to Salvatore Procurement, Manhattan. Warehouse 6.” Raven handed her a slip with the address.
Dilly took the note, glanced at the warehouse name, then at the girl in front of her. “You’re not joking.”
“I don’t joke with food.”
“You paying now?”
Raven pulled out the black credit card as she smiled at the thought of spending even more of her father's money.
Dilly took it with a nod and gestured to a younger assistant. “Start stacking pallets. Priority load.”
While the order started processing, Raven stepped outside and leaned against the Ironhowl. The wind had picked up, but there was no bite in it yet. Just a whisper.
The system’s cool blue glow blinked quietly in her mind.
> **[Notice: Livestock Integration Stable. Automated Resource Scaling in Progress.]**
>
> **[Sanctuary Crop Cultivation System Active]**
> - Nutrient balance and pest suppression engaged.
> - Water cycling calibrated.
> - Crops harvested and moved to stasis storage on maturity.
> - **Time acceleration active: 5:1.**
> - Estimated yield output: 2x daily growth rate.
> - Caution: Overproduction may require storage allocation updates.
Perfect. She was now running her own closed-loop ecosystem. Meat, milk, eggs, grain, and green. A working supply chain at five times the speed of the world outside.
That would be her leverage. Her currency. Her future.
When she stepped back inside, Dilly was writing up the final invoice.
“You’ll get two full hauls tonight. Three more by morning. That work for you?”
“Just make sure they get to the address. Everything else will be handled.”
Dilly tilted her head. “You don’t sound me like your father. He always wants to be the center of attention.”
“I prefer results over appearances.”
“Attagirl.”
Raven signed the manifest and stepped back into the cold, loading a few select seed packs into the Ironhowl for personal handoff to Sanctuary. As she moved to the rear, she tapped the interface.
One by one, labeled sacks of barley, corn, and beans vanished into her dimensional space. The interface glowed faintly, tallying them.
Everything was on track.
As she climbed into the Ironhowl and shut the door, she pulled up a new search query.
Her next target wasn’t glamorous—but it was critical. Salt. The one mineral no one could live without.
She found what she needed: a rural bulk supplier not far from the feed depot.
**Stonevale Mineral Supply Co.**
Commercial-grade salt. Large-scale distribution. Off-grid location. The perfect place to stock up.
She started the engine and turned toward the horizon, tires spitting gravel behind her.
Salt was next.
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