“That one,” he said. “Rebecca. Rebecca Wong. She was the boss of the operation. A human trafficker. A modern-day slave driver. We were days away from taking down the whole operation.”
“You poor man,” Donut said at the end of his story. Her demeanor toward him had made a complete turn. “I am just devasted about your partner.”
He shrugged. “I appreciate that.” He went up and grabbed a cookie. He ate it, and the +9.8 EXP notification dinged over his head.
“Was this Rebecca the one who killed your partner?” I asked. I watched the notification over the man’s head fade away.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. The man sat back down. “It was one of her goons, the same guy who got killed by the vine creeper. He shot Maggie.” The man lowered her head.
The show had moved to the second half of the program, showing humans who were performing well. A woman dressed in snow gear and what looked like a Valkyrie helmet had an enchanted crossbow that shot firebolts. It showed her plowing through a group of dog-faced goblin things. Gnolls.
“Hey,” I said. “Since you looted those guys you killed, I don’t suppose you have any pants that might fit me in that bag of yours? Or shoes?”
He paused. “Sure, boss. If you don’t mind wearing the clothes of a dead man.”
Carclass="underline" Donut. Do not say anything out loud. Can you see this?
Donut: WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Carclass="underline" Don’t type in all caps. I think Frank is going to try to hurt or incapacitate us. This is important. Do not react. Do not fight back at all. Whatever you do, don’t fire a magic missile. Just let it happen. Trust me on this. I’m going to present an opening. I want to entice him into action.
Donut: WHAT DO YOU MEAN. FRANK IS AN AMERICAN HERO.
Carclass="underline" Frank is full of shit. He’s lying. I think there might be somebody else in here with us, and they are getting ready to jump us. I’ll explain in a minute. We’re going to have to run. Get ready.
Donut: I DO NOT LIKE THIS, CARL.
A pair of khaki pants appeared in his hand. They had an enormous blood stain down the side of them. He tossed them to me. “These are the biggest pants I have. I don’t know if they’ll fit you or not. I have a couple pairs of shoes in here, too, but it doesn’t say what their sizes are.”
“Thanks,” I said. I paused, waiting to see if he would toss me a pair of shoes, but he was making a show of pretending to sort through his inventory. He wanted me to try the pants on first, which I noticed right away were much too small. And they were women’s pants. I sighed. Oh well.
I stood and turned my back. I made motions like I was pulling my kneepads off.
Everything that happened next occurred over the course of less than a second.
I saw the blue dot appear in the bathroom hallway, just as the woman emerged from around the corner. At the same moment, Donut leaped into the air with a panicked yowl as Frank pulled his weapon from his inventory and fired at the cat.
The woman, pistol aimed directly at my head, also fired.
On the television, Lucia Mar, along with her two rottweilers, Cici and Gustavo 3, tore through a group of red, demon-like monsters. The girl was like a demon herself, savagely swinging her mace.
Donut landed on the table with the cookies. Her body slid, moving through the plate, which disappeared and reappeared as if it wasn’t really there. Her feet scrambled as she plummeted off the edge of the table. She hit the floor and bounced back up, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Carl, Carl! Help!”
“I’m here,” I said. “We gotta go now. We have less than two minutes.”
She paused, looking back and forth between me and the two frozen Crawlers. Both had the word Naughty blazing over their head. I recounted my earlier discussion with Mordecai. This was after Donut had eaten the enhanced pet biscuit and while we’d waited for her to transform.
“You said they teleport out of here if she turns into a monster. So monsters can’t ever get into safe areas? What if I leave the door open? They won’t be able to wander in?”
“Oh, they’ll wander in,” Mordecai said. “Always close the door. If it’s a mob, it’ll teleport away the moment it attacks you. But they’ll trash the place, too.”
“What if Donut doesn’t turn into a monster, but she also doesn’t recognize me? She sometimes bites people she doesn’t recognize. Will she teleport away then?”
“No. It’s different for crawlers. There’s no violence and no stealing in the safe rooms. It’s a strict, ironclad rule. You get three strikes. The first time, you freeze in place for about 100 seconds while you get an automated lecture on playing nice. The second time it’s for an hour. The third time you’re stripped of all your gear and teleported into a mob nest.”
So when Frank Q and his partner—her name really was Maggie. Maggie My—decided to kill us to take our gear or whatever the hell they were doing, they made the mistake of using a safe area as their point of attack. It obviously was their first—and last—attempt at doing it that way.
“But how did you know?” Donut cried, looking between the two frozen people. They had been frozen the very moment they’d pulled the triggers. The bullets didn’t appear to have even left the barrels yet. “Are you psychic? And where did this lady come from? I just don’t understand. This is very distressing.”
“We don’t have time,” I said as I added the pants to my inventory. I had a vague notion to pick Frank up, rearrange him so his gun was facing his partner, but I was afraid the system would count that as an act of violence on my part. “We gotta go now.”
Before we rushed outside, I took a precious second to examine the attributes of Maggie My.
She was about the same age as Frank, so around forty years old, athletic. A white woman with closely-cropped, brown hair. She wore shining, metallic pants and boots. She wore a leather jacket similar to my own—though hers had both of their sleeves. She didn’t appear to hold any weapons other than her gun.
Crawler #324,116. “Maggie My.”
Level 9.
Race: Human.
Class: Not yet assigned.
She had five skulls next to her name.
Between her and Frank, they’d killed eight people. Eight. They both had the ability to go completely stealth. I doubted they had been sleeping in the bathroom. They’d likely heard that explosion from earlier and tracked us to the safe room. We’d left a wake of dead rot stickers along the way, a literal path of destruction to this space.
Frank had said people turned translucent when they slept. Was that true? It certainly wasn’t true for Donut, but she was also in my party. Maybe they had meant to sneak up on us and kill us in our sleep, but when they realized they couldn’t, they’d gone to the bathroom to wait. Maybe the plan was to sneak up on me from behind while I went to the men’s room. I didn’t know.
We jumped outside, and I plotted a path to the closest main artery. I downed an Iron Skin potion and gave one to Donut, making her drink it. A couple of red dot clusters appeared between here and there. I didn’t want to waste time fighting them. The hallway was too thin, the ground too bumpy to use the chopper. Plus, one blast from a rot sticker was likely to turn the powered bicycle into a bomb. So we ran. I wanted to avoid the mobs if we could. Every mob we left alive was one they’d have to deal with.
“Why are we running?” Donut asked. “We can take them.”