Entering Hungry Eyes.

An AI notification popped up the second we returned to our cul-de-sac.

Listen, dumbass. You’re going the wrong direction. The race is the other way.

We backed up with Samantha at the wheel, Donut working the pedals, and me navigating. Samantha kept jerking the steering wheel, running off the road.

The boil on my back was starting to hurt, and I knew I’d have a new slug at any moment. We needed to get to Imani as soon as possible so she could finally cure me.

“Stay here,” I said to Jamal as Donut and I jumped out. It took me a second to figure out how opening doors work, but I just sort of had to swipe at the door and will it to open, and it did. I didn’t know why something like that would work but the action of rolling down the window would not. There didn’t seem to be any true rhyme or reason to it. “Guard the truck! Samantha, you’re with us.”

“Oh boy,” said Samantha.

I jumped down into the street and blinked, unused to this perspective, being so close to the road. Everything suddenly seemed so far away. The scent of the road, like rubber and oil and all the mounts, reached me, and I had the overwhelming urge to just put my nose down and sniff it all up.

All the garages now had X’s on them. All except our own, which still had a number “2.”

How lonely, I thought.

We started jogging toward the entrance to the Vendor Village.

Donut and Elle were in the chat, going back and forth.

Elle: Don’t you worry about it, Donut. Those tracksuit idiots had a way out, and they chose not to take it. They told us they were going to try Carl’s idea, and then they tried to trick us. They would’ve killed me, Imani, and Chris if they’d made it to that exit. After all the stuff me and Carl said at the fuck-Linus party? Yeah, screw them.

Donut: I KNOW. IT DOESN’T UPSET ME AS MUCH AS IT USED TO. I’M JUST SAD I HAD TO DO IT AT ALL. I NEVER EVEN TALKED TO THEM.

Elle: If you had, you’d be even less sad. Ivan was all right sometimes, but even he had it coming. He told me he and his friends dismantled an entire metal bridge once in the middle of the night so they could sell it as scrap metal. The whole thing caused a train accident, and he thought it was funny.

Donut: OKAY, THAT DOES MAKE ME FEEL BETTER.

We jogged through the arch and entered the Vendor Village area. It was completely abandoned. Not even the regular food vendors were out, which was eerie as hell.

I whimpered in pain.

“Ew, Carl. You got something gross growing on you,” Samantha said. She turned to Donut. “We’re going to have to put him down.”

Donut: IMANI, CARL NEEDS HELP. HIS STUPID SLUGPOX IS BACK.

Imani: Carl, what happened to the potion that Mordecai was going to make for you?

I felt my tail sag and ears droop.

Karl: We forgot to bring it.

I had kept the slugpox active because I could keep it under control with my Emberus ring. I wanted it ready in case I ever needed to use it. Pretty much everyone had thought this was a terrible idea, but I had argued that the birth of Bigs on the previous floor had saved my ass. Mordecai had made me a potion to cure it, but it was still sitting on the crafting table along with the backpack.

Pop!

I let out a yelp as the level 30 slug burst from my back, coming from under my cape, showering blood and pus everywhere. The slug slurped onto the ground with a splatch!

“Yo, what’s hanging, daddy man?” this new slug called, sitting up and shaking his head. His name was Lil’ Mello Haze, and his voice was even raspier than usual. Despite being a level higher than Bigs, he was significantly smaller, likely due to my own size. This one had a goddamned backward baseball cap hanging off its eye sockets. Instead of the standard hatchet coming out of somewhere weird on its front side, it had the head of a mace for a tail. I panted as I healed myself. Already I could feel the next boil starting on my stomach. I increased my pace.

I called for the sluggalo to follow us, but he wandered off in the opposite direction. I barked after him to come back, but he didn’t respond.

Oh well.

Karl: Is that story true, about the bridge?

Elle: Does it matter?

Karl: No. I’m just curious. They were scared, I think. Just like Osvaldo. I keep thinking I should be mad at them, at him, and I’m not, especially when I try to put myself in their position. I understand it. We can’t hate each other. There’s so few of us left.

Elle: I agree. Look where we are and look what we’re doing right now. We’re doing our best, and we’re risking our necks, again, to just save a few people. I wouldn’t have it any other way. At least we have another crazy Carl plan to chase. I don’t know if you realize how important these things are to us. In the end, it doesn’t even matter if they work or not. I mean, it does matter, ’cause, you know, we’ll die if it doesn’t. But we will die with hope in our hearts alongside our friends, and that’s gotta mean something.

We turned the corner to the street with the Hairpin—the entrance bar to the Desperado Club—and I saw them all there waiting.

Karl: That Corky guy said something similar to Dong once.

Elle: Don’t ever mention that Corky guy again. Donut won’t stop talking about his weird wang.

I let out a laugh, but it came out as a bark, which was followed by a Donut hiss.

I paused before the group of about thirty crawlers. They all stared at me open-mouthed.

I blinked, looking at the man standing there next to Imani. I hadn’t seen him like this in so long.

Chris. It was Chris. He’d been transformed from an Igneous to a werewolf. But that werewolf form spent most of its time as human, and I hadn’t realized until just that moment what that meant.

He was wearing the same clothes as when I’d first met him. I knew he’d obtained a lot of random equipment along the way, but he didn’t need most of it. The man in his Meadow Lark work overalls looked so strange, and it hit me with a pang of sadness that someone dressed so normal would now seem out of place.

God, his eyes. It struck me how sad he appeared, but then, just like that, Imani turned and looked up at him, and everything changed. His entire soul smiled in a way I hadn’t seen in so very long.

I remembered the conditions for the transformation to end. It would time out when we went down the stairs. If we did this correctly, Chris would never go down another set of stairs again.

Elle had turned into a goblin wearing her ever-present socks. Next to her, Prepotente stood fingering his now-glowing Apito crystal. I was surprised he’d even come, as he was usually the first to jump down the stairwell. But then I spied Jurgen, talking to a pissed-looking Lucia Mar, who stood in the back. Prepotente couldn’t leave without Jurgen, and Jurgen wouldn’t leave until he knew Lucia was safe. The crawler was in her beautiful-woman form.

Donut and I padded forward, and everyone continued to gape.

And then, as one, they started howling with laughter.

Despite all the death, all the horror, they laughed. This wasn’t just a random chuckle, either. This was a bent-over, struggling-to-breathe, screaming thing. All of them. From Imani to Chris to Jurgen to stoic Prepotente to even Lucia, they each fell all over themselves.

They were laughing at the sight of me as a dachshund.

“And I thought the kangaroo was funny,” Imani said, laughing so hard, tears rolled down her face. She stepped forward, scratched me under the chin, and cast a spell.

You have been cured of Slugpox!

Ahh, man. I loved those little fuckers.

She carried a tiny red starfish in her right hand. This was Jacobus, temporarily changed. Water squirted from the sea creature.

Everyone continued to howl with laughter.

“Dude, your dick is peeking out,” Louis said.

Donut scoffed. “He saw Imani’s purse dog, and it hasn’t retracted since. The Princess Posse is going to be scandalized.”

“Laugh it up, assholes,” I muttered, though I was secretly relieved. “Let’s go rob a casino.”