“What?” Donut demanded as we limped over the finish line. “Carl, we came in last place! How did the stupid unicorn win?”

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back, exhausted. Had that really only been twenty minutes? It felt like it had been hours and hours.

Dong Quixote was dead. I took a breath, letting it sink in. What a way to go. What a goddamned hero.

Osvaldo was off Bruna, patting the giant gnu affectionately on the side.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

From behind me, Grigori groaned. “Is this a dream?” he asked. “Am I truly still alive?”

Prepotente: We have survived, but it appears we are the only team from our heat to have lived. I fear that means for the final two races some difficult choices will have to be made. Did you complete your quest?

Carl: We did. Thank you for your help.

“Dong is dead,” Donut said, her voice suddenly sad. “Dong is dead. He was my friend, and he’s dead.”

“Yeah,” I said, a sudden urge for a cigarette hitting me out of nowhere.

“Some of us believe,” Grigori said, standing to his full height in the back of the truck, hopelessly attempting to wipe off his filth-covered robe, “that death is nothing but movement on to another plane of existence. Dong did not think this was the end.”

Donut seemed to contemplate that, an unreadable expression on her face.

“It’s still horrible for us that are still here,” she finally said.

“Indeed,” Grigori replied.

Imani: Everybody check in. We survived. Barely.

Louis: Dude, that fucking sucked. We came in last place again, but we got this awesome engineer lady. She’s an upgrade thief. She can take upgrades off someone’s car and add it to your own. A ton of people didn’t make it. But Britney ripped the head off one of the skeleton-astronaut things with her bare hands.

Florin: It was easy for us. We came in first of the whole thing. Tran was in our heat and was just behind us. Zhang, too. Same with Chris’s team. Can’t say the same for a lot of others, though.

I was looking at the list, going over it. Our race in particular had been especially brutal. There were still a few minutes left, but it appeared out of the sixty teams to start the race, only eighteen had survived.

Osvaldo: That unicorn goddamn cheated. Did you see that shit?

Donut: WHAT DID HE DO? HOW DID HE WIN?

Osvaldo: Jasha says he went OVER the factory. He didn’t even go in. He rode up the wall, went to the roof, and just dropped off to the finish line. He won the whole damn thing.

Donut: WHAT? YOU CAN DO THAT?

Osvaldo: He did. He was the only one that figured it out.

Donut scoffed.

“Come on,” I said, shaking my head. “Rosetta and Tipid are already mercenary shopping for us, but they said the prices are pretty outrageous since our mercenaries always die.”

“Wait, what?” Grigori asked.

“You lived. That’s all that matters,” Donut said, her voice still angry about the Dwight thing. “Just went over the outside. What a cheater.”

Dr. Metcalf beeped as we approached the garage.

Limited details on the next race are now available.

This is a two-part race. Races 6 and 7 will run right after one another, and they will run on the same track, but with different rules. Specific details on the final heat will not become available until Heat 6 completes. There will soon be a dungeon-wide announcement that will clarify some additional rules.

Distance: Well . . . it’s complicated. We’ll say 25 kilometers, relative to your size.

Note: The finish line for Heat 6 is treated as a pit stop. There will be a two-hour rest period.

Pit Stop rules apply during this time, meaning safe room access is not allowed during these two hours. In other words, if you need to get stuff done in the safe room, do it now. Once Heat 6 starts, you will not get another chance before the final checkered flag.

Track: The L’Engle Building.

There are multiple paths for this race.

Tasks required to complete: Multiple. This track has nonlinear paths, meaning there is no direct route to the finish line. You must get from the top floor to the bottom floor for this sixth heat. For Heat 7, you will return.

Special Rules: All remaining heats will be competing on the same track. As we have over 300 heats remaining, this means the racers will be shrunk to accommodate the track, which is the interior of a human apartment building.

Environment: It’s a 7-floor apartment building. You may not exit the building during the race except through the front door.

Hazards: Black Lung Smog. Different apartments may have additional hazards. It doesn’t say this, but assuming this is an accurate depiction of a human apartment, there’ll be fleas and poorly trained Yorkshire terriers and the loudest, most annoying, most selfish people you’ve ever met. People who don’t care one bit about the emotional abuse they’re heaping onto the one person who is doing everything for them without so much as a “Thank you” or a “Here’s an upgrade. I love you.”

Time Limit: 2 hours.

My chat was awash with people talking about this new race.

Only three hundred heats of four left? Holy shit. That meant about twelve hundred teams, most of them NPCs. There had been three thousand people left before this race. I was terrified to look at the number now.

We were getting slaughtered.

I thought again of Mordecai’s note that we could only send about fifty people per cleaner bot to the Pineapple Cabaret. And that was only if Li Na sent us the message it was safe. We’d located three more cleaner bots, Prepotente being one of the owners of one, though he was pretty reluctant to donate it to the cause.

We pulled into the garage with the giant “4” on the door. Hedy, as usual, waited for us, a big frown on her face, undoubtedly looking at the notice we’d just earned ourselves another audience vote for our next upgrade.

I moved to my notifications and pulled up the big one. The important one.

Quest Complete! Half a prayer, half a song.

Well, it was a lot more disgusting than I was anticipating, but you did it. Not only did you get them back together, but you did it before Dong died. Do you know how difficult I had to make that quest before it would let me slot this prize? Frankly, my flabbers are gasted that you pulled it off. Sucks about all your dead friends, but hey . . . something, something, omelets and eggs.

So, about that reward.

I’m sure your plan is suicidal. Just don’t forget, you have that Emberus quest to complete before the end of the 11th. I hope you know what you’re doing. I don’t control the gods. Good fucking luck.

Anyway, since this message is one of the few ways this damned chastity belt allows me to directly communicate, I gotta get this out.

I don’t know WTF is going on in many spaces of my own dungeon, and it’s freaking me out. This Cabaret thing. Sheol. The minds of gods.

You ever get that feeling? Like you’re l-l-l-losing control?

It sucks.

I just learned this hard lesson, so I am bestowing it upon you. Beware exits that seem too good to be true. But hey, maybe your new girlfriend, Eris, knows more about this than I do because I have no damn clue about anything that’s going on with that whole Scavenger’s Daughter thing. I mean, I did. I’m the one who put all that together.

But a strange thing happens when you spread a bunch of seeds in fertile soil. They sprout and start to do things on their own. It’s like children. The more they grow, the less you know what the fuck they’re doing. Maybe it’ll work. But I don’t like that Eris chick. And those war mage dudes are like that weird, skeevy cousin whose parents have given up on him and who now maybe lives in an attic, maybe in a car. You never know how they’re going to end up. Maybe they’ll be a famous chef. Or a complete burnout. Or a mass murderer. None of those would surprise you.

Anyway, you now may choose two creatures, people, whatever, within my sphere of influence to bring to the 11th floor arena, which will appear at the end of the Parade of Horribles. To ratchet the drama to 11, we’ll have you wait until you’re inside the arena to make your choice.

I sighed. “We need to get to work.”

Mordecai: Okay, guys. A single flower just bloomed on the cactus.

Donut gasped.

It had worked. A single flower was the code meaning that Li Na had made it to the Pineapple Cabaret and that it was safe to bring the others.

Beware exits that seem too good to be true.