Chris, as expected, refused to take a deal if Imani was staying. He did convince his teammates, Erin and Erin, to exit, leaving him alone in charge of his big rig. Florin said Lucia wasn’t going to do it, either. Jurgen was there with her now, doing his best to talk her into it.
Prepotente was in Hungry Eyes, walking along the long line of crawlers queuing to enter the Outreach Guild, collecting last-minute items from their inventories as they moved on. He said so far of all the people who’d gone in, not a single one had comeback out, which was somewhat encouraging. It suggested that the deals being offered were at least decent. I was tempted to jump in line just to talk to Quasar, but we never knew how long that would take, and we didn’t have much time.
Donut and I were also in Hungry Eyes, collecting food-based upgrades while we walked Pontiff to the entrance of the Desperado Club. We’d agreed to keep him on the payroll while he attempted to carefully investigate what was happening with the missing strippers. Honestly, I expected the same thing to happen to him as had happened to the others, but I figured it was worth a shot. We’d recently had to re-up all of our mercenary contracts, and it was starting to be a lot, especially since none of the mobs on this floor were dropping gold. Still, it was worth a try.
As he entered the club, we ran right into Britney as she was coming out.
“Hi, Britney!” Donut called, waving.
The crawler’s head jerked up, surprised.
“I thought you were with Louis and Elle,” I said.
“No,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “Elle wants us to run. Louis won’t do it, and neither will I, and Elle is being too insistent, so I had to walk out. I had to leave and get some air before we do the last race.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to hang out with us? We’re just getting some last-minute food buffs.”
“No, thanks,” Britney said. “I... I need to get back to Louis. He’s jockey, and I need to make sure he’s prepared. We are switching to the gecko for the final race because it can fly.” She stood there, swaying. Her red-rimmed eyes moved up to meet mine.
I was reminded of that moment on the fifth floor when Chris had come to our bubble. He’d been taken over by Maggie My. Whatever was happening to Britney was accelerating. Mordecai,Imani, and Rosetta all thought we needed to figure it out before we confronted her because they were afraid whatever it was would react. But after what had happened with Dong, I was afraid we were running out of time.
“Goodness, Britney,” Donut asked. “Are you doing okay?”
“Of course,” she said, saying it too quickly.
I looked over her shoulder. “What were you doing in there?”
“I went to get a drink because the Lollipop is still closed. Anything else, Dad?” She turned to leave.
I reached over and grasped her arm, conflicted. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She firmly pulled free, hands shaking. She paused and then pressed her hand against my chest.
Don’t worry about me, Carl. You just need to survive. Do you understand?
I froze at the voice. It was Britney, but it was spoken in my mind. As she pulled back, I felt the tendrils between us still connected for just a moment, reminding me of that time I’d gone into Imani’s and Katia’s minds. But this was different, a less intimate, less pure, yet somehow rawer connection.
Britney stepped back, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
After we grabbed our food, we headed back out toward our garage, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange connection. What did it mean?
A message came in.
Pontiff: Several of the new guards are former assassins and wall rats. The whole place is tense. Bucket was telling me about why you sent them into the casino in the first place, and I think they steered you incorrectly. The Wheel of Fortune now has “Nothing” on the wheel, but it’s now in suspicious quotes. I willattempt to find out what it is and if it is indeed a dimensional exit.
Carl: Goddamnit. Really?
I paused. We were out of time.
The original plan had been to go to the casino and take it over. We would manually hit the Nothing spot with the Wheel of Fortune game. Akuma had insisted that even though the Nothing was broken, the spot would remain on the playing tables. And when it opened, the portal, as far as we were concerned, would work much the same way it had while the Nothing was active. But because the Nothing was now gone, the portal would transfer to some sort of catchall holding area I didn’t understand. Herot, inside the Pineapple Cabaret, had access to that holding area and would be able to pull the people out. A version of that same holding area was how they plucked out the NPCs for the seventeenth floor.
It was, according to Akuma, a safer, more reliable method than the cleaner bot. Plus, it would’ve allowed for more of us to go at once.
I hadn’t trusted the method, but Rosetta confirmed that such holding areasdidexist. And that those with the proper permissions did have access to the contents of those holding areas. To me, this method seemed much more susceptible to fuckery from the outside, especially to liaisons or showrunners who didn’t want us making an escape. But Rosetta replied that she was pretty sure by this point the showrunners just wanted us all out of the dungeon by any means necessary, and the bigger concern was the AI itself.
Pontiff: I will know for certain in a little bit.