He couldn’t bring himself to look upon his brother’s corpse for more than a few seconds, shame overwhelming him.He didn’t deserve this.
And then he thought,Mom is going to be so pissed.
“I don’t know what I can do. Even if I do get down there, the best I can do is maybe kill a crawler or two before the system AI rips me apart.”
“You have your primary target. As you will be attached to the fairy crawler, you will likely have multiple opportunities to strike. If you can find a way to make it look like an accident, perhaps you might survive.”
“How? How can I possibly survive this? I don’t really watch the show. You say I will only be half-corporeal? I am treated like a non-combatant? Anything I do that takes more than a nanosecond is going to get stopped by the AI.”
“We’re hoping your presence isn’t considered an outside influence. If it truly believes you’re your brother, we hope it won’t be so quick to stop your actions as long as it believes youractions. So act the pervert for some time. You have your primary and secondary target. Get them all at once if you can.”
“But at this point, what will that do? Sir, I know I’m not supposed to question orders, but I feel I need to understand.”
Captain Fresh paused.
“Look, son. This is a suicide mission. You know it, and I know it. But I cannot reiterate how important this is. We are doing everything we can to nuke that entire system off the map before it can spread even farther. We are losing. That AI is stopping everything we throw at it and answering in kind. We have a few assets in place already, but none amongst the crawlers. We believe that a surgical crawler kill will destabilize the whole group, causing a systemic collapse, which will cause the Ascendency game to kick off early and allow our other assets to quickly react. I can’t say more than that. I don’t like sending good soldiers to their deaths, but we have no other choice. It’s us or them, and if we don’t do everything we can to stop it all, we will face extinction.” He waved his hands, indicating Linus’s filthy apartment. Multiple suspiciously stained posters of Elle McGib littered the walls. “And no offense, but idiots like your late brother are just as culpable for everything that’s happening because they won’t stop watching. So it comes down to us to protect the citizens before it’s too late. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Minus said, standing rigid, hand against his chest in a salute. “Whatever it takes, sir. Whatever it takes.”
[ 52 ]
“You havetwo Golden upgrades to pick,” Hedy said, looking at her tablet. Despite our winning, she could read the room and was acting unusually subdued. “You got a key, too, meaning you can go into any of the old houses in the cul-de-sac. If you’re thinking you might want to trade vehicles, maybe you should be considering doing that first before you pick.”
“We’re going into the house of One Fine Pig,” I said. “If it’s there, it’ll be that armored vehicle, and by this point, I think ours is the better choice. They spent too many of their upgrades on weapons.”
Hedy nodded. “You could try to get that Onikuma. It’s a good mount.” She gave a nervous look at Donut. “Or, you know, Old Shuck?—”
“No,” Donut said.
I let out a humorless laugh. “I thought you didn’t like mounts?”
Hedy shrugged. “Always good to have options. I think vehicles is better, especially when my life is on the line. But it might be nice to have a beastie in here, too. We’ll maybe get another gremlin if you pick one up. But it ain’t no matter to me.It’s not like I’m lonely or anything.” She turned her attention back to her tablet.
Imani: Zhang and Tran are with us at the Lollipop. Come when you can.
Donut: IS ZHANG OKAY?
Imani: Not really. We’re working on a plan right now. Elle went over to their guild to try to talk Li Na into coming out. She says Na is just sitting there meditating. Her health is in the yellow. She’s been poisoned, like you said.
Carl: Going to finish our upgrades, use the key, and pick up some things from Mordecai, and we’ll be out there.
Imani: Louis just used his key to add a gecko to his garage. He followed your advice about the hidden room, and he found an engineer in there. But there were mobs in the house, so be careful.
Behind us, the truck swarmed with the generated gremlins, who still continued to shriek and flip me off whenever I made the mistake of looking directly at one. Jamal was there on the ground with Mongo, watching them work. Bigs and Samantha had both wandered out here the moment the race was over and both were riding atop Jamal’s head, heckling the workers.
I could still taste Lucienne, and no matter how much water I drank, I couldn’t get the terrible tang out of my mouth. We hadn’t stayed to see Dwight cross the finish line, but Jasha and Radoslav had found the unicorn sitting there, spinning in a circle just outside the exit. They’d dragged him in.
I still didn’t know if that was a mistake, but it was done.
Of the fifty-five hundred people who’d made it to this floor, we now had fewer than three thousand left. These last few races were going to be brutal.
“It says we need vertical climb and inverted racing, and we need to cover gaps of more than a hundred meters,” I said.
Hedy nodded, flipping through her table. “I’m thinking we do one Golden upgrade and three regulars. That way we can use that regular option to upgrade your Bubble Buddy shield to the Golden version, pick two more regular upgrades, and then pick a good Golden one. We definitely need the shield upgrade. Your containment will protect you, but containments is gonna be breaking left and right. It’s gonna be a crowded race. The full Bubble Buddy will protect against molten steel and whatnots. But not for the whole race, so you gotta be careful.”
“The regular version is a good shield. It held except when we were getting hit by all the gingers.”
“Yup,” Hedy said. “It’s great for smaller critters. But it don’t float. If we upgrade it all the way, it’ll be much better.”