“Okay,” I said. “I have a few more explosive satchels to place at the back of the train, and then you’ll be ready to go. Goodbye, Brandy. Goodbye Tizquick.”
“Carl,” Brandy said as I stepped off the train. “I understand now. I understand what this is. You must help us. I know you have your own people to help, but we shouldn’t be enemies in this.”
“No,” I agreed. “No, we shouldn’t.”
The train backed up to the edge of the trainyard, whistled twice, and then sped toward the portal.
“Another floor ending with a big explosion,” Katia said after the train disappeared.
“Spoiler alert, Katia,” Donut replied. “It’s always going to end with an explosion.”
Zhang climbed back into the cart and turned off the portal. Li Jun and Li Na stood off to the side, talking amongst themselves. I remained there, staring at the empty space where the portal once was. Fire Brandy had just killed herself to save her from losing more children. Tizquick had killed himself because his daughter had been a lie.
I thought of my own mother, who’d attempted to kill my father and then herself as a goddamned birthday present to me. She’d only half succeeded.
I thought of everybody here with me now. They’d all jumped into certain death, just to save me. Me. I couldn’t have survived without them. All my life, I’d felt alone. And now, at the edge of the apocalypse, I finally realized how much I needed other people.
Donut jumped to my shoulder. “How long before we know if it worked?”
A line of notifications appeared. Experience notifications flew past, one after another.
“It worked,” I said. “Hey Katia, bad news.”
“Oh yeah?” she said. “What’s that?”
“I’m a higher level than you now. I just hit 41. Got a fan box, too. It looks like we killed lots of monsters in the abyss, and I got at least partial credit for it. Don’t know why, but I ain’t complaining. I don’t think we killed the province boss, but that’s okay. Plenty of time for that later.”
Bautista: You did it. You bastards did it. We just felt the generator explode. We’re going to move in toward the stairwells now. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Donut purred heavily in my ear.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Donut,” I said as I reached up and scratched her. “You risked yourselves, and you risked the cart.”
“I wasn’t just going to abandon you, Carl,” Donut said. “Who do you think I am? Miss Beatrice?”
“No,” I agreed. “You most definitely are not.”
We walked up the employee line and returned to station 36. Ghouls still appeared occasionally, along with full-sized Krakaren monsters. But Imani held the line. The entire group waited for us. The stairwell had been open for some time now, but nobody had gone down yet. They all waited for us.
“Carl, Carl!” Donut cried as we approached the stairwell. “We never tried to sell my hats!”
I had, actually, tried to sell one while she was in the training room. The proprietor had laughed at me and said nobody was buying them anymore. Not even for a single gold. I hadn’t the heart to tell her.
“We’ll try on the next floor. They’ll be collectibles by then.”
She gasped, light glinting off her oversized sunglasses. “You’re right. We’ll sell them on the next floor. We’ll be millionaires!”
“If I never see another train again, it’ll be too soon,” Elle said as she went down the stairs. “See you guys on the other side.”
“Be safe,” I said.
I moved to step down the stairs, but they suddenly turned into a ramp. I turned to see a familiar crawler pushing a squeaking shopping cart. Agatha. She was now level 8. It still said she was human and that she hadn’t yet chosen a class.
“Agatha?” Imani asked.
“I see you lot are still kicking,” the old woman cackled. The pink flamingo still stood in the front of her shopping cart. The entire group watched, open-mouthed as the woman moved toward the stairwell.
Imani moved forward to intercept her. I held out a hand to stop her.
“Don’t,” I warned. “We’ll talk later.”
“But,” she began. “I… What? What is happening?”
The woman disappeared down into the stairwell.
Loita (Admin): Odette is waiting for you. I’ll be joining you in the green room to discuss our new arrangement.
Donut: WHERE IS ZEV?
Loita (Admin): We’ll discuss it in person.
“Goddamnit,” I muttered as we went down the stairs.
Here’s the thing. These poor bastards are just as much victims as we are. Not just the NPCs, but the mobs, too. That doesn’t mean don’t kill them. Hell, I realized something today. Killing them is actually the best thing we can do for them. But you know what I also realized? All of you, all twenty-four of you who have come before me? You’ve all failed in one thing. If we’re really going to burn this place to the ground, we need to actually do it and not just talk about it. We need to start killing them, too. I don’t know for sure how to do it yet, but I’ll come up with something.
They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me.
But I will break them.
This is my promise to myself, to my friends, and to you, anyone who reads these words.
I will break them all.
- Crawler Carl, 25th Edition of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
Epilogue
Loita stood atop the table that normally contained our snacks in the production trailer. She looked very much like Zev, but maybe a little taller and thinner. She did not wear the deep-diver suit but instead had a simple, rebreather-like device around her fish neck. She stood in a puddle of brackish-smelling water. A shiny, blinking pin sat on her breast area. It was the dahlia-like symbol for the Bloom. I tried to commit it to memory. I was no artist like Katia, but after this, I would do my best on the scratchpad. I’d already drawn out the symbol for the Syndicate and several other symbols I’d come across, like that toy company who made Bautista’s stuffed animals.
Keeping track of that stuff was something the cookbook sorely lacked, and I would make certain that was fixed. Symbology seemed important to the mudskippers, which meant it was important to the crawl and the future floors. The last floor had proven we really needed to pay attention to stuff like that.
“First off, put that thing away,” Loita said, pointing at Mongo, who’d rushed up and sniffed at the admin. She did not flinch at the dinosaur’s attention.
“We can’t use our inventory,” Donut said.
The production trailer was above the surface, meaning we were in the secondary zone. I still didn’t know what that really meant, but I knew certain dungeon-specific items and protections didn’t work here. That was something else I was determined to find out about.
Loita raised her hand. “Your inventory is open for twenty seconds. Put him away. Put that book away, too, Carl. Katia, store the backpack.”
I had pulled one of the horror novels out of my inventory as we descended the stairs. Last time we’d had to sit here for almost an hour, and I wanted to make sure I had something to read. This one was an old, beat-up novel called Stinger.
Katia had been in the habit of keeping a smaller backpack and just a few pieces of mass when she was in her “regular” form as a way to make herself taller. But when she appeared in the trailer, she’d been her human self with the heavy backpack straining on her shoulders. It appeared her doppelganger abilities did not work in this area. That was strange. She put the backpack away.