“On it,” she said, shooting a magic missile just as Osvaldo’s team also shot some sort of bolt at the metal wall. The whole thing, which was the size of an airplane hangar door, blasted outward, falling and disappearing as we approached the edge.
“Blow the roof. I can’t fucking see,” Pontiff yelled.
“Hang on,” I called as I activated the small charges I’d placed around the tommy gun.Bam!The plastic gun shattered, and the whole truck rocked. I stood and punched, and a whole section of the ceiling peeled up and away, unfurling like a sardine can.
“Jumping!” Pontiff called as we pushed off the edge of the duct and into the room. He let us fall some before engaging the bubble. We were quickly passed by the diving and tumbling Bruna the gnu. We eased through the air, slowly and gently falling.
Entering apartment 712.
Bruna sprouted wings, Pegasus-like. Team Free Love’s van floated on a cushion of air and angled downward easily.
But most surprising was that Dwight was right there alongside us, floating down, keeping pace but slowly accelerating.
“Carl, how’s he doing that?” Donut yelled.
“Probably got the self-driving upgrade,” Pontiff said.
“Wait, that’s a thing?” Donut asked.
“Costs two Golden upgrades,” the mercenary said.
We floated frustratingly slowly, though it did give us a few extra seconds to take in the room. Pontiff tapped the rockets, angling us toward the area of the front door. Far across the room I could see others falling from other ducts, and what appeared to be a long funny car emerged, driving from underneath a door leading off to another room, and then racing across the floor.
The room was filled with hazy smoke, like there was a literal fog machine going somewhere. I spent a precious moment trying to take it all in. It appeared we were dropping into the living room of an apartment. There was a tattered couch covered in blankets and a small table leading off to a kitchen with a counter covered with vegetables. A pot boiled on the stove.
Dwight was literally unconscious, bobbing in the weed, but they were starting to angle away. I jumped up, standing on my chair and popping my head out the roof. I noticed something interesting. There was a tiny hologram similar to Dr. Metcalf sitting there, shrieking at the passed-out unicorn. I loaded a sticky explosive and tossed it. It bounced off their shield, flying off at an angle and disappearing into the fog.
The vine dropped away and angled straight down, not shooting back.
Music blasted ridiculously loud.
Louis was right. We weretinycompared to the rest of the apartment.
“This is weird as shit,” I muttered as we fell.
“There’s the ring!” Donut called, pointing. It was on the floor underneath the kitchen table. We’d have to pass through it, get to the sixth floor, get into any apartment, find the ring, and repeat. We’d do this for all floors except the “mandatory” one, which was on the second floor.
Standing behind the oven was a wrinkled Asian woman wearing a robe; she was about sixty years old, maybe a little older. She was hunched over the pot and had a cigarette dangling from her mouth, ashes threatening to drop directly into the stew. Proportionally, I knew the woman was tiny, but she was like a giant to us.
As I examined her, a name popped up, but no additional information.
Hoa. Human Shell. Level 99.
“What’s a human shell?” I asked.
“I do not know,” Pontiff said.
Passed out on the couch was an old man wearing nothing but white underwear and an undershirt. He also had a cigarette in his hand, though he was sleeping. An ashtray sat on the floor, strategically placed to catch the ash from the sleeping man’s cigarette.
An. Human Shell. Level 99.
Against one wall was the source of the blaring music. It was a television, and it showed a woman dancing onstage while the tinny, ear-piercing pop song blasted.
There were crosses all over the walls, covering every square inch of the wall space, with the exception of a large Jesus portrait over the television.
Jesus’s eyes, however, were crossed out on the painting.Weird.
“Uh, what the fuck?” I said upon seeing the eyes of the man on the couch. I had assumed the man was asleep becausethrough the haze, it appeared that his eyes were closed. Theywereclosed, but the man’s eyes were sewn shut with thick black wire. Over each eye was also a large “X” made of similar wire, just like in the portrait of Jesus.