A week after the Awakening, Evan was stacking crates on Pier Nine, and it was going about as well as he'd expected.The job came with the F-Class packet. Six pages, one of them a list of approved employments, all of them physical, none of them requiring what you might call a mind. He'd taken the pier because the night shift paid more, and because his mother slept badly, and there was no point lying awake in a flat that small listening to her not sleep.The work was simple. A crane lifted containers off the ships. A crew opened them. Evan and three other men moved what was inside onto pallets. Nine hours, three breaks, hand truck, no talking.In that week he had learned that Connection worked exactly the way the Registry said. Touch two things and they stuck together for about six seconds. That was all.He had tested it. Extensively. At three in the morning, out behind the pier, with a bent nail and a scrap of canvas and fog so thick he couldn't see his own hands.Nail to canvas: stuck

The Registry's official description of Connection was three hundred and forty words long, and Evan had read every one of them.He'd read them the week after the Awakening, sitting on the floor of his room with the pamphlet under the lamp. There's a particular kind of person who, when told he's worthless, goes and reads the fine print to check.Connection (Class F). The user creates a temporary link between two inanimate objects in physical contact. Linked objects remain joined for approximately six seconds. Links do not persist beyond that interval. Links do not transfer energy, mass, or properties. Links have no measurable effect on living tissue. The ability is of limited practical use and is not recommended for advancement.Not recommended for advancement.Evan had underlined that. He'd underlined a lot of things.Now it was half past two in the morning, four days after the drowned church, and he was standing in the back alley of Pier Nine with his coat over his head against the ra