Carl: Listen, Osvaldo. Let’s talk.

Osvaldo: Fuck off, Carl. I don’t give a shit what sort of big plan you got going on. I don’t want anything to do with it. Filipe and I aren’t going anywhere.

Filipe, actually, was taking a deal. I didn’t know the Brazilian crawler at all, but he and Donut had been talking, and she’d convinced him to take one. He’d been the jockey for the sixth heat, so he wasn’t completely screwing Osvaldo, but he’d made Donut promise not to say anything until he was already inside the guild, which was where he was headed now.

Of the 989 crawlers remaining, representing 353 teams, we had confirmation that 715 were planning on stepping into the Outreach Guild and not coming back out.

These crawlers who were leaving were tearing apart their vehicles and trading upgrades, and they were all using Milk’s method to add a spell into the Book of Voodoo before they disappeared, leaving the dungeon behind.

That left us, so far, with 274 crawlers and 103 teams. Of those, we knew of twenty-one heats that had at least two crawler teams in the final race, and we also knew of two heats where all three teams were all refusing to take a deal.

If Osvaldo refused a deal, then Imani and Elle’s team and Donut and I both had locked-in-place heats where we were both against one other crawler team for the final heat. We were up against team Sparkles and Team Flamengo. And Elle and Imani were against a trio of Russian crawlers I didn’t know and the Minister of Blood-Letting and his Wienermobile.

Elle called the Russian guys the Tracksuit Troika even though that wasn’t their name. All I knew about them was that their car was a Cadillac and they mostly kept to themselves. They’d been under Jurgen during Faction Wars, and he didn’t hold a very high opinion of any of them.

Florin and Lucia had been the only survivors of their heat. Same with Chris and the double Erins and Prepotente and Jurgen. Louis and Britney had one open slot. According to Imani’s efforts, we had a pretty good chart of what our possible matchups were. We didn’t have a full picture of all the heats where the sole crawler team had died the last heat, so we didn’t know for certain, but Imani believed there would be anywhere from sixty-five to seventy heats for this final race. So if we wanted to ensure that the remaining empty slots didn’t create more crawler-on-crawler matchups, we needed to make certain at least thirteen more full teams took deals. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anything we could do.

That wasn’t going to happen, and we all knew it.

Chris, as expected, refused to take a deal if Imani was staying. He did convince his teammates, Erin and Erin, to leave, 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 come back 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 will attempt 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 areas did exist. And that those with the proper permissions did have access to the contents of those holding areas. To me, it seemed 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.

Carl: Okay, be careful. Then get out of there. I have a bad feeling about all of this.

The line outside the Outreach Guild was now gone, but Prepotente remained, waiting for any last-minute stragglers. He was sipping on one of his sodas.

“How’s it looking?” I asked.

“I believe nobody else will be taking a deal,” Prepotente said. “There’s less than three hundred of us left, Carl. A somber day indeed.”

“What about Osvaldo?” I didn’t know why I was bothering. I would’ve received a notification if he’d left. He had not.

“I’m afraid not. I guess I’ll be going to my vehicle now.” The caprid paused. “You know, the ending of this floor feels a little anticlimactic compared to the rest. Usually it’s a big fight, but I have analyzed your plan, and I do feel it’s going to work quite well, and this final race will be a nonevent.”

“Prepotente, darling,” Donut said, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, and I want you to know that I am telling you this with nothing but love in my heart. But please kindly shut the fuck up. Don’t ever say anything like that out loud again.”

I had my hands over my ears in time. The scream still startled a food vendor across the street, who stumbled and glared at us.

I laughed and patted the goat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m sure something horrible is going to happen at any moment.”

He nodded sadly. “Okay, then. Let’s do our good-race hug and get on with it.”

“Uh,” I said as Prepotente wrapped his arms around me.