The bugs were, indeed, gone. But something very strange happened.
Imani was there. The giant Imani. She was sitting in the middle lobby, clutching onto Gucci the Maltese.
We carefully eased forward. Most of the others had already gone through. I wasn’t sure how it worked with non-shells. I knew she wasn’t real-real, but I wanted to avoid hurting her if we could.
“It won’t let me leave the building,” she said. She was talking to us, I think.
If there were any bugs left, I didn’t see them.
“I don’t know what’s happening. This is like a nightmare.” She paused. “I should have left when I had the chance. I just felt so responsible for them because they’re all idiots who can’t take care of themselves. They’re family, you know. But... it doesn’t matter anymore, I guess. I should have left.” She pulled the struggling dog, who wanted to chase our truck, to her face. “I stayed, and they’re still killing themselves one by one.”
“Oh, darling,” Donut said, her voice suddenly amplified. She was using her headset microphone. “This is nothing but a dream. Out in the real world, you’ve already left them behind. You moved from Detroit, and you went to Washington, and you started a new life. You made the most wonderful friends, people named Yolanda and Brandon and Elle and more, and you met a man named Chris, and you fell in love, and you lived happily ever after. It’s all right. All you need to do is close your eyes and wait. It’ll be over in just a second.”
The giant Imani lowered her head into her dog and started to cry.
I clicked the rocket button, and we moved toward the stairwell, leaving this cursed level behind.
HORRIBLE TWO
A PARADE OF HORRIBLES
INTERLUDE
QUASAR
“Oh, thank the gods,” Quasar muttered, watching the chicken truck enter the stairwell. He’d been fully expecting for there to be some last-second fuckery. He shook his head. “That makes 203 people who’ve made it to the eleventh floor.” He looked down at the tablet. “Look at this. So far, 172 have taken deals, with a few more expected.”
“It’s insane,” Kiki said. His fellow attorney was about twelve drinks deep. She’d been parked at the attorney bar longer than he had. She snorted. “The deals all look to be the same offer as the one they were giving the folks at the end of the tenth. One season indenture as game guide, full medical, life stipend, gag order.” She let out a second snort and slapped the bar. “Another!”
In law school he’d been able to keep up with Kiki and her drinking, but he’d also been a lot younger. Plus, she was a dromedarian. He was pretty sure those humpbacked bitches were raised on distilled trivium. She turned to Quasar. She didn’t even seem drunk. “You better get your tie on. They’re gonna call you in at any moment.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Quasar said. His own drink had been sitting on the bar for an hour now, untouched, as he remained riveted to the display, watching the end of the floor.
Kiki and Quasar had been good friends for a long time. They seemed an unlikely duo from the outside, but the moment you thought about it, it made sense. He’d had to sue just to be allowed access to his school to get his degree. Up until that point, Nullians were “equal” with “equal-access rights,” but in practice, it was all bullshit.
This had been years and years ago, but the lawsuit to gain access to the school had caused a mini uproar on the net. A student suing a law school? What a story that had been, especially since he had won. The judge—Judge Victory—had caught some flak for dropping a decision in his favor.
Kiki was the daughter of one of the galaxy’s most notorious mob bosses. She’d been running her whole life from her past. Quasar, meanwhile, had been dragging his past with him the whole time, determined to make anyone who so much as looked at him acknowledge who he was, what he was, and know, fucking know, he was where he was despite all that bullshit prejudice that had been heaped upon him.
They’d met at orientation, and they’d been best friends ever since.
Other screens showed disaster after disaster unfolding across the galaxy. Random gods from the goddamned dungeon were popping up, wreaking havoc, and disappearing. The “attacks” were all the same. The gods would appear, usually within two light-seconds of a tunnel-node exit. Just the Plenty-built physical nodes and not the communication pinholes. They’d look around, confused, before disappearing again. Most of the visits didn’t last longer than two or three minutes. There were very few casualties so far, but the fact it was happening at all was causing mass panic. Those with access to the center system wereall fleeing home. While the tunnel nodes all originated from there, it was clear the insane AI didn’t have access to anything the center system AI controlled.
Kiki waved a hand. “Don’t mind me. I’ll be sitting here, drowning my sorrows.” Her tablet beeped. “Oh wait, wait... Yes. I just got the ruling. He’s been disqualified. Not dead. That’s good, at least.”
Quasar grinned at his friend as he pulled a tie from his satchel. Today’s tie was a new one. Something called a koala bear. It was an Earth animal. Their existence had gone completely viral after an earlier episode of Earth Beautiful where everyone learned about how sexually active the little STD-ridden creatures were. According to the program, the small mammals looked sweet and cuddly, but they were vicious carnivores, often dropping on unsuspecting hikers as they walked past on the wild, untamed continent of Australia. It was said they could devour a full-sized human in two minutes straight.
Shirts and ties with their likeness were everywhere. He’d just bought his niece a real pets companion one.
Kiki’s one surviving client was Daniel Bautista, who instead of taking a deal had gone with the other crawlers into the cleaner bots in that insane gambit to get off the playing field. Apparently, it worked, but they weren’t showing anything. Not even to their attorneys. Kiki would get a notification if he was dead, but would the AI even know at this point? The crawlers supposedly had some weird garden system that kept track, but Quasar had no idea how it worked.
Quasar was just glad that his butt was sitting well outside the tunnel system. They still had real-time communication now thanks to the repeaters, but his system was on the ass end of the Franciscan arm. If he wanted to physically get to one of the transfer nodes, he would need to get on a transport and travel for a few days to jump into one of the old Borant gates.
He slipped the tie around his neck and started looking for an available tunnel booth. Most were still occupied, but there was a free one at the end. He started moving toward it.
His tablet beeped. He lifted it, fully expecting to receive the deal memo, but he was surprised to see his niece staring back at him.
“Tempest?” Quasar asked. “Listen, kid, I’m a little busy. I’m about to...” But he paused, seeing the panicked look on her face. Was that blood on her temple? “What’s wrong?”