He was talking about a Sheol Glass Reaper Case. The same protective case my Kimaris figure had been in, but now housed Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. My Kimaris figure was a demon. It was also Unique, not legendary or rare.
“You just rip the tags off, and they appear?” I asked.
“That’s right. But you can actually rip the tag off inside of your inventory, which is what I do. It takes about two seconds off the summoning time. You gotta be careful, though, because if it’s a monster you’re not familiar with, you don’t know how big it’s going to get. Or how mean. Some of them are huge. Also, the sprite lecturer. His name was Atwin, by the way. He said these are actual summonings. So you must be careful. It looks like you’re making a new one because of the way they die. But you’re actually teleporting one of those creatures to you. I don’t really see the difference, but he insisted that was a big deal. I guess there are spells that say they’re summoning, but they’re really just creating a temporary, fake version. This is a true summoning.”
I thought of Donut’s clockwork triplicate spell. That was most definitely not a real summoning.
“What was the name of the one you had?” Bautista asked.
“Kimaris.”
“I don’t have that one. You should probably hold onto it until you know how valuable it might be. Anyway, I am worried I’m going to run out of these things. My class is something called a swashbuckler, and I need to practice more with my sword.” He patted the glowing, orange sword on his belt. “But I’ve been relying on these monsters a lot. That’s why I’m glad I got sponsored by Jaxbrin. I hope maybe they can replenish my supply.”
“You should train with your sword as much as you can anyway,” I said, suddenly worried for the man. “You can’t rely on somebody else’s goodwill to keep you supplied. Also, some of your friend’s levels are too low. The guy with the sling is good at 28, but his friend is only 21. That’s not enough. He’s getting left behind.”
“I know,” Bautista said. “We’re doing the best we can.”
Bautista and his team’s plan was to go find that free station 72. He promised they’d train on ghouls on another line until it was time to go. Apparently Tizquick, the dwarf with the daughter who never existed, was standing vigil at station 60, helping all the passing crawlers to find their way from one colored line to the next. I was starting to get worried about too many people congregating in the same place at once, though apparently there were actually two different stations 72s with blown ghoul generators now. And there were rumors of a station 12 that had also blown. The last I’d looked we still had just under 275,000 people running about the floor, and it would be much too easy for too many of them to crowd into the same place and get overrun.
In fact, that number of remaining crawlers actually seemed too high based on the number of people we had in our circle. I had at least one person in over a dozen different station 36s, but none of them had more than a thousand people. Most were more like 50 to 100. I talked about this some with the others, and we realized we simply didn’t know enough about the true nature of the floor to get an accurate picture of where all these people really were. Katia had, for a few days now, been saying that we were missing something when it came to the way the Iron Tangle was set up. She kept saying, “I don’t understand how there can only be six station mimics.” I told her it didn’t matter, not as long as we had an exit to our back and we’d done everything we could.
We said our goodbyes to Bautista’s team, and we found ourselves on the zomp line. We had two interdiction carts. The “E” cart, the one we’d driven all the way up the line, and the “Q” cart which we now called the Def Leppard cart. We dragged it behind us, facing backward so we were sandwiched between two portals, both tuned to the abyss. Nothing could get to us while we were on the track. Not unless it attacked us from the sides.
The plan was to make our way to Imani and Elle and Li Jun and reunite with their teams who were now camping and guarding station 36. They said they hadn’t seen a real monster in hours except an occasional ghoul. I told them we’d be there later. And to stay away from trainyard E, which now featured a brand-new resident.
In the meantime we were going to pick a random transit station and hit the safe room, open Katia’s boxes, watch the recap show, and then have ourselves a reunion.
We ended up stopping at station 59. The track was filled with ghouls and baby krakarens, who were now all about the size of small dogs. We teleported them all to the abyss as we rushed up the line. The only time we were in any sort of danger was as we passed station 24. The juvenile monsters covered the platform. There were thousands of the octopuses, swarming over each other. I tossed a precious jug o’ boom off the side of the train as we passed. Even then, almost a dozen of them were fast enough to leap onto the cart. Katia’s crossbow made short work of them. They didn’t drop any loot at all, and their blood sizzled against the metal deck of the cart.
We stopped the two carts outside of platform 59 and left the portals on, both tuned to the abyss. Then we sent a message to everybody to stay off the zomp line. As long as the batteries held, and they appeared to last a really long time, nobody would mess with the carts. The transit station also had six other lines attached to it, but it was all clear as we walked to the saferoom, which was down stairs this time instead of up.
The swarming Krakaren babies appeared to be remaining close to station 24. For now. Meadow Lark was setting up a flame-thrower based kill zone at the choke points in case they were invaded. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
The saferoom at station 59 appeared to be a restaurant from Costa Rica called “Soda.” We pushed our way through the small room, past the Bopca, and into our personal space. It seemed like we hadn’t been here in forever.
“Open your boxes now,” I said, collapsing into the chair. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Katia straightened. “Okay. I’m doing the fan box first.”
We’d already agreed we had to get this done as soon as possible, before Mordecai got back. The last thing we needed was that Chaco guy showing up and getting into another fight.
But we needn’t have worried. Two items popped out. A goddamned baseball bat and a shield. The shield was tall, about six feet high, and curved, shaped like a half cylinder. There were loops in it for her to either hold with both hands or to slide a single arm through.
There was a small, plastic-like window in the top of the shield for her to see through.
It had the words “Get Back” in Syndicate Standard emblazoned on the front in white, blocky letters.
“It’s a riot shield,” I said.
The baseball bat was actually a police baton, I realized. At first glance there didn’t appear to be anything special about it. But as Katia rolled it over in her hands, eyes wide, I could see the slight glow of enchantment. Her lips were tight with what appeared to be both irritation and fear.