But she rocketed back from around the corner just a minute later.
“Carl, Carl! He’s here. He’s in the bathroom! The women’s bathroom. The killer! The guy who killed Rebecca W!”
I leaped to my feet. I immediately saw the blue dot on my map, right there.
How? Surely I would’ve noticed it the moment I woke up. I’d gotten used to keeping one eye on the map. I was always looking out for others. I mentally kicked myself as I rushed forward. I focused on the dot.
Crawler Frank Q.
That was him, all right.
“Come on,” I said. I pushed my way toward the side hallway with the bathrooms.
We met in the hall, the man stepping out of the restroom, smiling apologetically. We came to a stop just a few feet away from one another. We just stared for a couple moments, sizing each other up. Donut stood between my legs and started hissing.
He was a tall man, lean, but not quite as tall as me. About forty. I pegged him as either military or a cop based on the way he carried himself. He was a white dude and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. Good looking, but not remarkably so. A Seahawks beanie covered what I guessed to be a bald head. He wore filthy, ripped jeans and a black t-shirt. He was also equipped with what appeared to be football shoulder pads, but they were made of glowing black metal, obviously enchanted. The shoulders were spiked. It wouldn’t let me examine the properties. He wore heavy boots, which I eyed jealously.
I assumed he had a gun hidden away somewhere, but I didn’t see it now. Instead, he carried a massive battle axe over his shoulder. The iron, single-headed weapon looked well-used. He also wore a belt with a line of throwing knives.
I examined his properties as he did the same to me.
Crawler #324,119. “Frank Q.”
Level 8.
Race: Human.
Class: Not yet assigned.
He did not have any stars by his name, which meant he’d never killed a boss. But he had something else.
Three skulls.
I knew exactly what the skulls were going to indicate even before I focused on them.
Crawler Killer X 3.
I suddenly felt very cold.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle your cat,” the man said. He had an authoritative voice. Definitely a cop, or some sort of law enforcement. They taught you to speak that way in training. “That is a cat, right? I thought if I slept in the bathroom, nobody could sneak up on me. I didn’t realize the bathrooms in the safe areas were different than the ones out in the hallways.” He paused. “Where are your pants? And your shoes? Have you been walking barefoot this whole time?” He looked me up and down, alternating between me and the cat, a look of wry amusement. “Also, what’s up with your name? Royal bodyguard?”
“So you were asleep in there, in the women’s room?” I asked, ignoring his questions.
He paused. He tilted his head, as if deciding whether he wanted to answer or not. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours. I found this safe room, dragged one of those cots in there, and I passed out. I must’ve been out for 12 hours straight. Stupid, I know.”
If that was true, then he’d have been asleep when we’d arrived. Hadn’t Donut used the bathroom? I couldn’t remember.
Carclass="underline" Donut, did you use the bathroom before we went to sleep?
Donut: I DID NOT I WENT IN THE HALLWAY BATHROOM BEFORE WE FOUND THIS ROOM.
“I never saw your dot on the minimap,” I said.
“You don’t see the icons of sleeping crawlers,” he said. “Have you ever seen someone outside your party sleeping in a safe room? Their bodies become translucent. If you touch them, your hand moves right through them. Are you from Seattle? I’m still pretty close to where I came in, but I haven’t been able to find any staircases down to the second level.”
Donut, who had been hissing and growling this whole time, couldn’t take it anymore. “You killed Rebecca W!” she shouted.
The man just stared at the cat for several moments. “Holy shit,” he finally said. “I thought that’s what I’d heard. A talking cat. This fucking place.”
Donut hissed in response. Behind us, I heard the clash of steel on the television screen. They’d started showing the day’s recap.
“Did you know her?” the man asked. “Rebecca Wong?”
“He admits it! The criminal has confessed!” Donut cried. “I’m gonna hit him with a magic missile.” She jumped up on my shoulder and started to wiggle her butt.
“Wait, wait,” he said. He took a step back and held up his hands. “I didn’t… It’s not what it looks like. I didn’t have a choice.”
“We didn’t know her,” I said. “We just came across her body.”
He seemed to relax. “Look, I can explain,” he said. “It wasn’t just her. There were five of them. My partner got one, I got three, and you would not believe the thing that killed the fifth guy. It’s a long story. Can you, uh, put down your cat?”
“Put me down?”
“That’s not what he meant,” I said. “Donut. Chill.” This was the first living human we’d run across, and I wanted to get his story. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but I wanted to hear what he had to say first.
Donut grumbled something under her breath.
“Where’s your partner?” I asked.
He paused. “She’s dead. Shot.”
After a moment, I nodded. “Let’s go to the other room. We’re missing the show. We can talk in there.”
“Okay,” he said. He eyed Donut warily, who made a spitting noise. Her fur was completely poofed out.
“Did you see the last episode?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man—Frank—said. He took a seat about 10 feet away, near the exit. He draped his left arm over the chair, trying to appear casual, but I could see his entire body was tense. “There’s another rest area about three miles east of here. That one has a restaurant in it. That whole block is now overrun with thorny, creeping plants that will eat you whole. I found this place while looking for the stairs. The rot stickers outside pack a punch.”
On the screen it showed a group of about 40 middle-eastern men fighting a borough boss. The creature was an armored, elephant-sized, six-legged rhinoceros-like monstrosity with tentacles on its back. The tentacles seemed to have an ability that turned the men into stone. The monster had been hurt badly, but it ended up killing all 40 of the men. Half of them had been turned to stone. A moment later, the creature fell over and died. The display froze, and Match Draw appeared on the screen.
“Tell us your story,” I said, “and then we’ll tell you ours.”
I kept one eye on the screen, which was showing one adventuring disaster after another, and one eye on the man as he recounted his tale. Frank claimed he and his partner, a woman named Maggie, worked for “Customs Enforcement,” which was a nice way of saying he was a fed, and he worked for ICE. They’d been in plain clothes, outside in that ridiculously cold weather doing some sort of surveillance on a warehouse. The place was right on the water, supposedly employing a large group of undocumented Chinese workers. When the collapse came, the warehouse disappeared, revealing a group of about 15 men and women who’d been outside, smoking on a patio. Frank and his partner identified themselves, and everyone just started shooting at each other. The dungeon opened up right in the middle of their firefight. His partner, Maggie, stumbled into the stairwell, and it wouldn’t let go of her. So he went in with her. Five of the others, for reasons he said he couldn’t fathom, followed them in.
He went on to recount a firefight in the hallway. Of a confrontation with their leader—Rebecca W—who’d shot him three times before he got her right in the heart. He’d thought he was going to die, but he’d healed amazingly fast. He’d looted her body and chased down the last one, only to see the man get eaten by a plant monster, a thing that came out of a giant pod. It was called a vine creeper. I’d seen one of them during the show’s premiere. From there Frank found a tutorial guild, his wounds were fully healed, and here he was. He’d been using his gun and the ones he’d looted from the others, but he was now out of ammo.