The man drunkenly watched me take the ring and slip it onto my left index finger.
“Vengeance is mine,” he said.
20
The production trailer was a submarine, not a boat. We ended up being late for our appointment, but this time it was because Zev had delayed it. She said my conversation with Frank and my “stunningly controversial decision” to wear the ring along with “Donut’s amazing lap dance” at the male bordello were the top two feeds in the world during that hour. I didn’t want to know what had happened in the strip club.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Yvette, and of her mother choking her until she died. The ring hung heavy on my finger. I was never going to use it, but Frank was right. I’d be an idiot not to take it. A five percent bonus to my stats was too good to pass up. I just wouldn’t ever use the Marked for Death skill. I’d taken it off just to make double sure it wasn’t cursed, though Mordecai had once told us that we couldn’t get cursed items in loot boxes. I put it back on, though I wasn’t fully certain it was a good idea to keep it on my hand. I kept going back and forth on whether I should keep it on there. I’d pulled it off a half of a dozen times until I decided I was being a wuss. I knew some people would probably think I was an idiot for putting it on, and maybe they were right. But I needed every advantage I could get, and if people didn’t like it, they could suck it.
I’d ask Mordecai’s advice once he returned, but for now, it stayed on my finger.
“You weren’t worried about what Frank might’ve done to me?” I asked Donut just before we were teleported away.
“No,” she said. “One look at him, and I could tell he wasn’t going to hurt you. And Sledgie said his wife left him, so I wasn’t worried about her, either. He’s still there at the bar. Hasn’t moved since we left. There’s another crawler talking to him right now, but it’s not a woman.”
“Wait, how do you know that?”
“I have Sledgie in my chat. I showed him how to do it.”
“Huh,” I said. It never even occurred to me to even attempt something like that.
“Anyway,” Donut said, “sometimes you can just look at someone and see that they’ve given up. I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately, even in people who are pretending to hide it. It’s quite scary. But it’s worse in some, and with him it was the worst I’ve ever seen.”
“Those are the ones we need to worry about the most, Donut.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When someone has given up, they no longer care about the consequences of their actions. That can be dangerous.”
Zev pinged us, and we zapped away. The moment we reappeared I could tell we weren’t on a regular boat. I took a few steps in the lavish, velvet-covered room, and the floors felt odd. Then my eyes caught the massive picture window at the end of the room, revealing nothing but a sea of dark blue, punctuated by a blinking light that revealed we were under the surface.
I realized with a start that my interface didn’t disappear like it usually did. My health bar still appeared, and I had access to my inventory. I walked to the counter and pulled the entire bowl filled with Snickers bars into my inventory to test it. It let me.
Donut rushed to the round window which extended from the floor to the ceiling. She put her two paws up on the glass, gazing out. A floating menu appeared in Syndicate Standard. Lights On?
“Yes, yes!” she said. An exterior floodlight snapped on, revealing a vast, sandy ocean floor. Squat, round plants dotted the ground as far as we could see. It reminded me of the desert. Furtive movements disturbed the silt-covered floor, and a wide, flat fish darted away, causing dirt to swirl. Donut’s mouth hung open in amazement as she swished her tail.
I looked about the room. It reminded me of the lavish production trailer we’d borrowed from Manasa the day she was murdered. There was a bathroom, a kitchen with a row of shelves that kept items cool, as if it was a refrigerator without walls. Multiple, expensive-looking chairs filled the room, along with a makeup table with a light-up mirror. This was a real makeup table, not the thing Katia had in the crafting room. This was obviously one of those trailers meant for off-planet celebrities and not crawlers.
A now-familiar, robot-like frisbee descended from the ceiling. The soothing, female voice was similar, but not quite identical to the robot voice of the last one of these things we’d seen, which had been in the standard production trailer that had been rented for the Maestro’s show.
“My name is Mexx-6000. You are in a deluxe rental trailer owned and operated by Senegal Production Systems, Unlimited. Since this is a security trailer, your location is not being disclosed. The producers of Planet Beautiful are not privy to your exact location, and the only entities on board are you and myself. We will be ready for you to enter through the door in approximately five minutes. Please make yourself comfortable. I see you’ve already discovered the refreshments.”
“Mexx?” I asked as I moved to the couch. I pulled one of the full-sized candy bars out of inventory and unwrapped it. Donut remained at the window, looking out.
“Yes, Carl?” she asked.
“Do you know why my interface hasn’t gone away? Usually I can’t access my inventory or other systems. But here, it works.”
The blue light on the floating robot blinked. “A normal crawl consists of multiple, tightly-focused system zones networked under a single system AI. Under traditional circumstances, each floor has its own, individual core and boundary zone. In such cases, once removed from the zone, you would lose access to all system upgrades and non-internal enhancements. Think of it like wi-fi. However, in this iteration of Dungeon Crawler World, the Borant Corporation has opted to use a dual-layer planetary zone system instead. The main zone extends from the planet’s core to sea-level. The secondary zone extends an additional five kilometers above the surface. So while you are in a surface trailer, you will not have access to your primary interface, and you will only have limited access to certain personal upgrades and systems. This trailer is still in the main zone, as it is below the planet’s sea level. Traditionally, in such circumstances it is customary to create an administrator bubble around the trailer, limiting your access to certain features. This season, Borant has elected not to implement this feature. Therefore you have full access to your regular systems. You should note, however, being in the main zone you are still subject to the system AI’s purview and its rules and regulations.”
“I don’t understand a word of what the fuck you just said.”
The robot sighed. “I apologize, Carl. Let me translate it to earth monkey speak. The mudskippers are cheap bastards who have built this entire crawl with spit and duct tape and items they have purchased at the equivalent of an interstellar swap meet. Everything is built with very little regard for system security and is done as cheaply as possible. The fact it hasn’t yet broken down or bitten them in the ass is a testament to the very real existence of the concept of ‘dumb luck.’ Do you understand now?”
I gave the robot a thumbs up. “Got it.”
“Carl, do you think there’s ever been a cat under the ocean before?” Donut asked. She was making an odd, chirping noise as she watched the occasional fish dart by.
“Lots of them,” I said. “I don’t know if any have had this sort of view, but navies have a long history of keeping cats on board. Remind me sometime, and I’ll tell you the story of Unsinkable Sam. He was a famous cat from World War II who survived multiple ship sinkings.”
“I didn’t know about this,” Donut said. “So he was a hero cat?”
“Every boat he served on ended up at the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know if that makes him a hero.”