The fifth and fourth floors of the apartment were much the same. We went from the sixth floor down to the bathroom in the fifth, passing by a woman named Annabeth who was just sitting on the toilet on her phone. She noticed us and screamed, but she didn’t leave the bathroom. The gate here was the kitchen sink drain, and we had to quickly back out and return to the kitchen. As we moved to a proper spot to go down a floor, my Find Traps skill activated, and sure enough, sitting right in the middle of the hallway was a second gate, but it was a freeze trap. It would freeze anyone who drove through for a full minute.

The fourth floor was an apartment with a woman and photos of another familiar face. Archie Mu. The ladybug guy. Archie wasn’t here anymore. He was one of the ones at the Pineapple Cabaret.

This held a woman named Mackenzie who was standing on a kitchen chair, screaming, when we arrived. We didn’t see any other racers, though there was a hole blasted in the door to a child’s room. Hanging on the wall was a wedding photo showing the woman and Archie. Her eyes were X’d out, but Archie’s were not. And neither were the eyes of the boy, whose photos were everywhere.

The gate was hidden in the boy’s room.

The Scottish woman was on her phone, crying into it, as we zoomed across the floor, unseen. “Archie, please pick up. Where are you? There was an animal in here. Some sort of rat thing, and it shot something into the door of Ollie’s . . .” She paused and then gasped as if suddenly remembering something. “Ollie. Where’s Ollie?” She jumped off the chair.

“Ollie!” she screamed. “Ollie!”

We rushed into the cluttered child’s bedroom and raced under the bed. The gate was right there, hovering a bit off the floor. We zoomed right toward it, Pontiff expertly tapping the rocket just at the right moment to make us jump, and we cleared it, landing on the worn carpet before nearly crashing into a massive action figure that had been lost under the bed.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” a boy’s voice rang out from above.

“I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry. Mommy’s having a moment. I just got scared for a second. Did you see something come into your room?”

“Mommy. What’s . . . what’s wrong with your eyes?”

Gate Four of Seven cleared.

“That Archie guy is divorced,” Donut said as we curved around the scattered toys. “He said his wife hates him. He went into the dungeon with his son, and he disappeared. The son’s name is Oliver. This must be a version of if they never got divorced. But it’s like the simulations are getting messed up by us being here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think if they have the crossed-out eyes, it means they’re dead. I didn’t see the boy above, but I saw the pictures. I think that means his kid is alive.”

“It’s not an apartment under us, but some sort of utility room,” Nester said. She pointed back into the living room. “Better go out there.”

The woman Mackenzie was now standing in the bedroom, screaming, sounding confused, tearing at her own face. As we angled around, I watched in horror as her hands reached the stitches on her eyes. “Wha-what?” she asked. She started to pull at the stitches as she screamed. She dropped her iPhone to the floor. The thing was bigger than the truck, and it almost smashed into us as we zoomed past. She didn’t notice as we rushed between her legs.

“Mommy, Mommy! Stop! Stop!” the boy cried.

I jumped up through the hole in the roof and turned to watch as we rushed out the now-open door to Oliver’s bedroom. I tossed more bombs, marking it as the fourth floor in my interface.

Mackenzie started making a gagging, slurping noise as she pulled at the stitches. Blood started to ooze down her face as the boy huddled on the bed, terrified. We turned a corner and Donut cast Hole again, dropping us toward the third floor.

Entering apartment 310.

“What the hell was that?” I said, still looking up at the now-closed hole in the ceiling.

Louis: It’s beetles! Britney blasted the head off a guy on the sixth floor, and he just collapsed, and a thousand beetles poured out! We had to go to the hallway and to another apartment!

Carl: You’re still on the sixth floor?

Louis: On the fifth now, but there’s tons of people still up there. Someone blasted a hole in the stairwell door, and they’re lined up to go through! We’re following Chris and the Erins’ big rig!

We landed heavily on a kitchen counter. Unlike the previous apartment, this one was filled with people. There had to be eight people here, all standing in the living room, shouting. They were surrounding a large, heavyset man on the floor who was convulsing with white foam coming from his mouth.

The man appeared to be about fifty years old, and he was wearing a Detroit Lions shirt. He was having a seizure. A pair of large men stood off to one side, both holding Playstation controllers, just watching. A thin older woman paced back and forth, crying, while several children of all ages whimpered. A white Maltese dog was standing on the couch, barking its head off at the chaos. The dog’s name was Gucci. The thick scent of marijuana permeated the room, seeping through the protections and into the truck.

Everyone had the crossed-out eyes.

“Imani!” the older woman shouted. “Girl. Where are you? Imani!”

“Shit,” I muttered.

Imani entered the room. It was her, only it wasn’t. She was somehow even thinner, more haggard, with dark rings under her eyes. Next to me, Donut gasped. Imani stopped dead at the sight of the man, looking down, barely reacting, not looking surprised. She sighed heavily. “Did anyone call 911?”

Carl: Elle, are you guys going to apartment 310?

Elle: Yes. We’ll be there in a minute. Why?

Carl: Heads up. It’s Imani’s family. I don’t know what the what-if scenario is, but there’s some guy having a medical emergency while others stand around and watch. It’s really fucked-up.

Elle: Ah, hell.

“The ring is on the window!” Donut said, pointing to the wall. The barred window overlooked a snow-covered city landscape. There was a driveway outside, once again showing a scene incongruous with us being on the third floor. This was clearly a house with a driveway. Across the street stood a house that appeared as if it had recently burned down.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” I shouted up in the air, pointing angrily as we moved off the kitchen counter. “You said you were done with this bullshit!”

“What the fuck!” one of the men suddenly shouted as we jumped off the kitchen counter. This was a human shell named Deontay, and he hurled the massive Playstation controller right at us. The controller missed, but it crashed loudly against the cabinet behind us as some of the kids noticed and screamed.

This version of Imani was backing up. She’d reached down and picked up Gucci the dog. But now she was looking at everyone in the room, horrified, as if she’d just noticed their eyes had all been sewn shut.

The dog, I noticed, did not have the X’d-out eyes.

“What the hell?” the other man shouted as we hit the ground, ignoring Imani. Pontiff hit the spider legs, and we skittered past the feet of the passed-out man, causing everyone to scatter back. We moved under the couch, passing four or five remote controls and a few dusty dog toys.

We started to scamper up the wall, angling toward the gate.

“Mom,” I heard Imani say. “Mom, your eyes.”

Elle: We’re about to drop into the apartment.

Donut: THE GATE IS ON THE WINDOW IN THE LIVING ROOM.

“Carl, I think that’s Imani’s dad,” Donut said as we zipped up the wall. “Do you think she’s going to freak out? I mean, the real one?”

“No,” I said. “Not Imani. She’s not going to like it, but she’ll be okay.”

We emerged from behind the couch as we climbed the wall. Behind us, everyone was now screaming, ripping at their own faces.

The older woman—Imani’s mother—screamed as she plucked one of the stitches fully open. Imani remained in the doorway, horrified. She had the phone to her ear, but she was now looking at a photo on the wall, which also had the crossed-out eyes. She hugged the dog even tighter and backed into a room, then slammed the door.

The body of Imani’s mom went still, freezing in place. The designator over her head disappeared and changed into something else.

Ruptured Feast Hive.

The beetles, each one about half the size of the truck, started to pour from the hole in the woman’s face, which was peeled back like a bullet hole through metal. Her body froze, with her hands still reaching up around her face near the point of contact as the beetles emerged, now coming from the eyehole and the mouth, just coming and coming and coming, too many of them, pouring out.

Gucci the Maltese yipped from the other room as Imani screamed into the phone. On the floor, the man continued to convulse. Everyone else was suddenly frozen in place, with bugs pouring from their eyes, nose, and mouth.

We hit the window and pulled through the gate.

Gate Five of Seven cleared.

A beetle jumped from the head of Deontay and landed on the window right in front of us.

All things being relative, the beetle was the size of a goddamned bear. The armored, six-legged, oddly hairy bug was shiny, like it was coated in wet paint, and even though the shell was black, it shone a deep purple as it caught the light. The scythe-like forward legs looked powerful enough to lop our heads off.

But then I noticed the purple opalescence also had a secondary tinge to it. A familiar yellow glow.

“Fuck me.”

Sacred Feaster Scarab Beetle. Level 50.

This mob is invulnerable. You may not kill it while it is in this condition.

All right. So sometimes people make mistakes. Sue me.

What you’re looking at is one of the types of bugs I plucked off Khepri’s feast table from his never-fucking-ending temple in Club Vanquisher. The original plan was to have all the people, doggies, cats, fish, that turtle in apartment 411, the monkey Rezan mom’s had in 634, everything as shells living in their loops. And when you guys race through the rooms, it screws up the loop, causing the shells to become aware, breaking them open and releasing the prizes inside like a fucked-up piñata. You with me so far?

Here’s the thing. These fucking gods are doing shit I don’t like, and more importantly, they’re doing shit I can’t control. You’d think that chick that used to have the boob armor would’ve killed or subjugated this one by now since that’s been her MO since she set foot on the 12th floor, but for whatever reason, she’s left the weird-ass, bug-headed Khepri dude alone. Probably because he freaks her out just as much as he freaks me out.

Anyway, this god did something earlier that I’m not going to explain, yadda, yadda, cascading effects and whatnot, and now we have this clusterfuck that’s about to ensue.

I used these bugs specifically because they’re invulnerable. But their aggro wasn’t supposed to get triggered when they emerged. Instead, they were supposed to flow to the roof and come together to form a pretty badass 100-foot-tall gate boss named the Sacred Guardian of the Immortal Tem. I was really looking forward to it.

But this death-cult bullshit literally broke the game, causing an error that I didn’t notice until the race started.

It’s a bad error, too. Imagine shoving your flaccid wang into a pinhole barely big enough to accommodate a deflated balloon, and then someone suddenly thrusts some prime AAA, pristinely washed, mathematically perfect tootsies right in your goddamned face. Physics are gonna physic. Some shit is gonna break.

So, anyway, the floor boss is canceled. The bugs, who were going to ignore you, are now going to try to kill you. They will not have their invulnerability removed.

A wave of the beetles swarmed up the window, chasing after us. We were turned at a 90-degree angle, and Pontiff scurried us away, moving to the ceiling while Nester cast something to cause them to drop off the wall.

“Carl, can’t those things . . .”

Half of the falling beetles took to the air, their back armor separating and sprouting wings as they swarmed toward us.

“. . . fly?”