Book Eight Finale Extravaganza Chapters 79-80 (Patreon)

Okay, folks. This is how this is going to work. It is done. For the next several days, we will have 3-4 chapters a day @ 6 PM PST until it is done. Every single drop from now on will end on a cliffhanger. WHEN I post the last chapter, I will drop an epub of the whole thing.

I haven't finished scheduling this yet so I don't know the exact day it will end.

There are a metric fuckton of retcons here and there, though most involve cutting things out. Big additions you should know about...Carl gets a backpack in a lootbox earlier that's a Hangover-style baby backpack for Donut, which allows spells like Oozy form to work on both of them. He gets a potion called Bomb Blankets, which stop smaller bombs like grenades from exploding.

The Agatha interlude and the Sheol interlude are gone. The Sheol one is moved to prologue for the next book, I think. The Agatha one has to be reworked. The book of boom chapters are removed except in the chapters where they actually use the spells.

For this particular drop,

There has been some serious hack and slash editing before this point which caused the chapter numbers to get all messed up. To keep it congruent here, I'm renaming the next chapters to 79a and 79b to course correct so it's not confusing to you. This is a 3-chapter drop.

The whole book is 98 chapters plus the epilogue.

Chapter 79a

System Message. The Outreach Guild is now available in Hungry Eyes.

Donut harrumphed. “As much as I would like to see how your wife is doing, Carl, I think I will skip this one.”

We passed Dwight, who remained sleeping in his vine. I took the opportunity to toss a sticky, timed explosive into the back of the vine, but it just popped right out. Dwight snorted, woke up, and started to look around, bewildered.

“Fuck you,” Dwight whispered at us before turning into spot number one.

“This is ridiculous,” Donut grumbled. “What’s the point if the thing is just going to drive itself? Cheaters. Everybody is cheating.”

That’s what happens when you keep winning. You get upgrades that make it so you can’t lose. And they’re going to get more. And now it’s too late for me to even get a good upgrade. I agree with the unicorn. Fuck you.

“I swear to the gods old and new,” Pontiff rumbled as we eased into the crowded garage. “It’s a miracle any of us are still alive.”

Nester was turned around in her chair, looking toward the apartment building, which now loomed in the background. “I can’t believe we made it through.” She shivered.

Florin: None of the NPC teams were given mandatory gates. That’s why we lost so many.

Elle: Of course. Typical dungeon fuckery. The good news is it’s convincing more of the people on the fence to jump into the outreach guild.

Carl: Do we have numbers yet?

Imani: I’m compiling now. A lot of people didn’t make it. I think we’re under a thousand left.

I felt a numb chill. We’d started this floor with 5,500 people. A little over 200 went to the cabaret. More than 80% of us hadn’t made it, and we still had one race to go. And when you compared it to the millions of people who entered the dungeon in the first place?    

Silence filled the chat for a long time.

Florin: I’m trying to talk Lucia into going into the guild. Wish me luck.

An announcement came over the system. This was a new, male voice I’d never heard before. He didn’t identify himself, but both Pontiff and Nester jerked at the announcement. This did not sound like a kua-tin, but was more human-like.  

Hello, Crawlers.

I hope you’re all getting properly settled. Just a reminder that safe room access is not available while you prepare for the final heat. I have a few updates for you about this last heat and the next floor.

“Carl, who is that?” Donut demanded. “Where’s Zev?”

Pontiff snorted. “That’s Damien. Must be running low on employees. He’s one of the few that’s always around, no matter who is running the season. Does a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff.”

Donut: ZEV ARE YOU OKAY?

 While all this was happening, Damien continued.

The outreach guilds are now open. They will close once the final heat starts, so if that’s your plan, get going now. Despite rumors, I assure you that it’s completely safe to take a deal, and you are very much encouraged to do so. Remember, all former crawlers who aren’t deemed terrorists are given center-system citizenship post indentureship. This is an opportunity very few in the galaxy are afforded, and you should consider yourself lucky for the privilege.  

Also, I have been asked to directly address this so-called Pineapple Cabaret exploit many of you are using to shirk your duties as a crawler. We, the showrunners, do not endorse any such methods and we are not responsible for anything that may happen to crawlers who venture into unauthorized areas of the World Dungeon infrastructure.

Now, onto the business at hand.

For survivors of this next heat, your garage and the contents will transfer to the 11th floor. Because of this change, special dispensation has been made for just this level. Any hired NPCs that you wish to keep for the 11th floor will transfer with you if they are in your garage or your vehicle when you descend. Furthermore, once the heat begins, saferoom access will open back up.

Upon arrival at the 11th floor, you will have 90 minutes to create a themed parade float using the resources within your garage and saferoom.

Donut gasped. “A parade float!”

That is all. Good luck, crawlers. And seriously, between you and me. I’ve been doing this a long time. Take a deal. You will not survive this next heat. There are a lot of those bugs in that building right now. Yes, things are fucked. But trust me in this. It’s better to get shuffled away into pre-indentureship.

“That guy is a little bitch,” Pontiff said. He opened the door to the truck and stepped out.    

I shook my head. A goddamned parade float.

Hedy was standing there with her tablet along with several mercenaries, plus Samantha, Bigs, Jamal, Rosetta, Bucket Boy, and even Tipid. Only Mordecai remained inside the saferoom, and I realized belatedly that we’d never had a chance to say goodbye to him for this floor. Which, honestly, was a relief. I did not like his strange form.

Carl: Who has keys to the other garages? Make sure you steal the other vehicles!

Donut: STUPID DWIGHT HAS TWO, AND I DON’T THINK HE USED THEM.

Zev: Sorry, Donut. I’m fine. Things are a little chaotic here in the headquarters. Cascadia “accidently” took too much of her medicine, and when the AI intervened, a goddess nobody has heard of appeared inside the submerged wings and caused an uproar. I’m currently on lockdown waiting for it all to be sorted out. One of the satellite headquarters on the surface is temporarily in control of everything.

Donut: OMG BE SAFE.

“Okay, so no golden upgrade for the last heat,” Hedy said, all business, as I pulled myself out, stretching my back. “What’s your pleasure?” Donut released Mongo as gremlins swarmed. I held up my hand as more updates came in. Imani was in the chat, coordinating our response to this final heat, taking note of all the heats that currently had more than one crawler team. There were several.  

Imani: Did you place the explosives? Unless it gets changed again at the last minute, it sounds like your Tower of Power plan might work.

Carl: I have them all in place, mostly in a vertical line. Unless they’ve changed the integrity of the apartment complex itself, it’ll work.

Everyone who was taking a deal were first upgrading their vehicles and then allowing those of us with thief-class upgrade engineers into their garages to steal as many upgrades as possible. It was a massive, complicated effort being spearheaded by Imani, with Mistress Tiatha, Rosetta, and Tipid helping.

I wondered, once again, how we would’ve gotten any of this done without her. Without Imani.

That alien had been correct to target her for assassination. As much as Donut and I were figureheads in this, it’d become clear since the beginning of faction wars that Imani and Katia were the true bedrocks of our ability to stay organized. Without them, none of this would’ve even been remotely possible.

Look for the helpers. It was a goddamned Mr. Roger’s quote, told to a child to comfort them during times of upheaval. But damn if it wasn’t true.  

It was clear for some time now that the system wasn’t allowing any heats to exist that didn’t have at least one crawler team, going as far as having heats with one too many teams to make it work. I didn’t understand the math, but if a certain number of teams left us, most of the final heats—not including ones that already had more than one crawler team—would be one crawler team versus two NPC teams, which was the most desirable outcome.

As it was, we still had several final heats with multiple crawler-on-crawler battles, and it was almost pointless to talk one team into taking a deal if all that would happen was that they’d just be replaced with another set of crawlers. That is, unless we had enough crawlers take deals and more than 66% of the remaining teams were NPCs.

The thing was, Osvaldo was correct. Especially now. Despite what this Damien guy had just announced, with every day that passed, it sounded like taking a deal was more and more of a dangerous idea. Even forgetting the offered job itself, there was a very real chance those who took deals were going to step into stasis and never wake up again.

But was it more dangerous than staying?

All of these were impossible choices. But one thing was for certain. The dungeon was going to follow its own rules, and for this last heat, three teams would enter and only one would exit.  

Carl: Is Elle talking to Louis and Britney?

Imani: She’s over there right now. I’m going to talk to Chris and the Erins. Florin is working on Lucia.

Louis had become crucial to the team. But everything past this was going to be all but impossible, and the odds of any of us surviving was very, very low. Louis couldn’t exit the dungeon via the Pineapple Cabaret because of his gills, but he would be able to survive in the indenture system. That was his only realistic choice. 

I took a breath, and then I sent it.

Carl: And what about you? You know what’s coming next. Elle already said she’s not going anywhere. But you’ve done enough, Imani.

Imani: Oh fuck off, Carl.

Carl: Why? You know what we’re about to do on the 11th. Even if we survive, everything afterward is completely fucked. You also know Chris isn’t going to take a deal if you don’t. What about him? You’ve gotten us so far. You can rest now. You don’t need to go on.

Imani: I can’t run from this any more than you can. What about Donut? Are you going to try to talk her into a deal?

Carl: Yeah, I already brought that up and it went about as you might expect. She’s already pissed enough about me leaving the party.  

Imani: I thought so. Carl, I know we’re fucked. But, you know what? I think this is the right call. If we’re going to lose, I want to go down fighting. 

I pulled back from the chat to see Hedy glaring at me.

“Okay. Sorry. We need a jumping upgrade,” I said to Hedy. “We’ll need to rocket up from the first floor all the way to the roof.”

She nodded. “That’s easy, then. For your final upgrade, we can improve your existing rockets to the golden upgrade version. Better maneuverability, can be used to increase your speed on the ground, and can be on the whole time. Can launch the truck into orbit if you let it.”

“Okay, good. Unless you have a better idea, let’s go with that.”

Chapter 79b

Carl: Listen, Osvaldo. Let’s talk.  

Osvaldo: Fuck off, Carl. I don’t give a shit what sort of big plan you got going on. I don’t want anything to do with it. Filipe and I aren’t going anywhere.

Filipe, actually, was taking a deal. I didn’t know the Brazilian crawler at all, but he and Donut had been talking, and she’d convinced him to take one. He’d been the jockey for the sixth heat, so he wasn’t completely screwing Osvaldo, but he’d made Donut promise not to say anything until he was already inside the guild, which was where he was headed now.

Of the 989 crawlers remaining, representing 353 teams, we had confirmation that 715 were planning on stepping into the Outreach guild and not coming back out.

These crawlers who were leaving were tearing apart their vehicles, trading upgrades, and they were all using Milk’s method to add a spell into the Book of Voodoo before they disappeared, leaving the dungeon behind.

That left us, so far, with 274 crawlers and 103 teams. Of those, we knew of 21 heats that had at least two crawler teams in the final race, and we also knew of two heats where all three teams were all refusing to take a deal.

If Osvaldo refused a deal, then Imani and Elle’s team and Donut and I both had locked-in-place heats where we were both against one other crawler team for the final heat. We were up against Team Sparkles and Team Flamengo. And Elle and Imani were against a trio of Russian crawlers I didn’t know and the Minister of Blood-Letting and his Wienermobile.

Elle called the Russian guys the Tracksuit Troika even though that wasn’t their name. All I knew about them was that their car was a Cadillac and they mostly kept to themselves. They’d been under Jurgen during Faction Wars, and he didn’t hold a very high opinion of any of them. 

Florin and Lucia had been the only survivors of their heat. Same with Chris and the double Erins and Prepotente and Jurgen. Louis and Britney had one open slot. According to Imani’s efforts, we had a pretty good chart of what our possible matchups were. We didn’t have a full picture of all the heats where the sole crawler team had died the last heat, so we didn’t know for certain, but Imani believed there would be anywhere from 65 to 70 heats for this final race. So if we wanted to ensure that the remaining empty slots didn’t create more crawler-on-crawler matchups, we needed to make certain at least 13 more full teams took deals. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anything we could do.

That wasn’t going to happen, and we all knew it.

Chris, as expected, refused to take a deal if Imani was staying. He did convince the rest of his other teammates, Erin and Erin to leave, leaving him alone in charge of his big rig. Florin said Lucia wasn’t going to do it, either. Jurgen was there with her now, doing his best to talk her into it.

Prepotente was in Hungry Eyes, walking along the long line of crawlers queuing to enter the Outreach Guild, collecting last-minute items from their inventories as they moved on. He said so far of all the people who’d gone in, not a single had come back out, which was somewhat encouraging. It suggested that the deals being offered were at least decent. I was tempted to jump in line just to talk to Quasar, but we never knew how long that would take, and we didn’t have much time. 

Donut and I were also in Hungry Eyes, collecting food-based upgrades while we walked Pontiff and to the entrance of the Desperado Club. We’d agreed to keep him on the payroll while he attempted to carefully investigate what was happening with the missing strippers. Honestly, I expected the same thing to happen to him as the others, but I figured it was worth a shot. We’d recently had to re-up all of our mercenary contracts, and it was starting to be a lot, especially since none of the mobs on this floor were dropping gold. Still, it was worth a try.

As he entered the club, we ran right into Britney as she was coming out.

“Hi Britney!” Donut called, waving.

The crawler’s head jerked up, surprised.

“I thought you were with Louis and Elle,” I said.

“No,” she said, not meeting my eye. “Elle wants us to run. Louis won’t do it, and neither will I, and Elle is being too insistent, so I had to walk out. I had to leave and get some air before we do the last race.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to hang out with us? We’re just getting some last-minute food buffs.”

“No thanks,” Britney said. “I... I need to get back to Louis. He’s jockey, and I need to make sure he’s prepared. We are switching to the gecko for the final race because it can fly.” She stood there, swaying. Her red-rimmed eyes moved up to meet mine.

I was reminded of that moment on the 5th floor when Chris had come to our bubble. He’d been taken over by Maggie My. Whatever was happening to Britney was accelerating. Mordecai, Imani, and Rosetta all thought we needed to figure it out before we confronted her because they were afraid whatever it was would react. But after what happened with Dong, I was afraid we were running out of time.

“Goodness, Britney,” Donut asked. “Are you doing okay?”

“Of course,” she said, saying it too quickly.

I looked over her shoulder. “What were you doing in there?”

“I went to get a drink because the Lollipop is still closed. Anything else, dad?” She turned to leave.

I reached over and grasped her arm, conflicted. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She firmly pulled free, hands shaking. She paused and then pressed her hand against my chest.

Don’t worry about me, Carl. You just need to survive. Do you understand?  

I froze at the voice. It was Britney, but it was spoken in my mind. As she pulled back, I felt the tendrils between us, still connected for just a moment, reminding me of that time I’d gone into Imani and Katia’s minds. But this was different, less intimate, less pure, yet somehow more raw of a connection.

Britney stepped back, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

~

After we grabbed our food, we headed back out toward our garage, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange connection. What did it mean?

A message from Pontiff came in.

Pontiff: Several of the new guards are former assassins and wall rats. The whole place is tense. Bucket was telling me about why you sent them into the casino in the first place, and I think they steered you incorrectly. The Wheel of Fortune now has Nothing on the wheel, but it’s now in suspicious quotes. I will attempt to find out what it is and if it is indeed a dimensional exit.

Carl: Goddamnit. Really?

I paused. We were out of time.

The original plan had been to go to the casino and take it over. We would manually hit the Nothing spot with the Wheel of Fortune game. Akuma had insisted that even though the Nothing was broken, the spot would remain on the playing tables. And when it opened, the portal, as far as we were concerned, would work much the same way it did while the Nothing was active. But because the Nothing was now gone, the portal would transfer to some sort of catch-all holding area I didn’t understand. Herot, inside the Pineapple Cabaret, had access to that holding area and would be able to pull the people out. A version of that same holding area was how they plucked out the NPCs for the 17th floor.

It was, according to Akuma, a safer, more reliable method than the cleaner bot. Plus, it would’ve allowed for more of us to go at once.

I hadn’t trusted the method, but Rosetta confirmed that such holding areas did exist. And that those with the proper permissions did have access to the contents of those holding areas. To me, it seemed this method seemed much more susceptible to fuckery from the outside, especially to liaisons or show runners who didn’t want us making an escape. But Rosetta replied that she was pretty sure by this point the showrunners just wanted us all out of the dungeon by any means necessary, and the bigger concern was the AI itself.   

Pontiff: I will know for certain in a little bit.

Carl: Okay, be careful. Then get out of there. I have a bad feeling about all of this.

The line outside the Outreach guild was now gone, but Prepotente remained, waiting for any last minute stragglers. He was sipping on one of his sodas.  

“How’s it looking?” I asked.

“I believe nobody else will be taking a deal,” Prepotente said. “There’s less than 300 of us left, Carl. A somber day indeed.”

“What about Osvaldo?” I didn’t know why I was bothering. I would’ve received a notification if he’d left. He had not.

 “I’m afraid not. I guess I’ll be going to my vehicle now.” The caprid paused. “You know, the ending of this floor feels a little anticlimactic compared to the rest. Usually it’s a big fight, but I have analyzed your plan, and I do feel it’s going to work quite well, and this final race will be a non-event.”

“Prepotente, darling,” Donut said. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, and I want you to know that I am telling you this with nothing but love in my heart. But please kindly shut the fuck up. Don’t ever say anything like that out loud again.”

I had my hands over my ears in time. The scream still startled a food vendor across the street, who stumbled and glared at us. 

I laughed and patted the goat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m sure something horrible is going to happen at any moment.”

He nodded sadly. “Okay, then. Let’s do our good race hug and get on with it.”

“Uh,” I said as Prepotente wrapped his arms around me.

Chapter 80

“Is your flamethrower working properly?” I asked Jamal as he awkwardly backed himself into the truck.

“Oh yes, Mr. Carl. It is quite primed and ready to cause much melty inconvenience to any nasty cars who attempt to get to the finish line before us.”

“Okay, good.” 

I turned to Hedy. “Thank you, Hedy.”

The little gremlin smacked me in the ass.

“Why you sayin’ goodbye, boss? It sounds like I ain’t going nowhere if you actually win. You’ll be stuck with me for the next floor, too.”

I smiled sadly at the small gremlin. I patted her on the head. “Nevertheless, thank you. You’ve been a great asset to the team.”

Elle: Ah, hell guys.

Carl: What’s wrong?

Elle: We just got a notification that the Bleak Congregation left the realm. It says a new team will replace them for the final heat. This screws up all our math.

Donut: THAT MEANS THE MINISTER OF BLOOD-LETTING GOT ACCEPTED INTO THE UNHOLY CHOIR! HE’S BEEN WORKING SO HARD! I KNOW THIS IS A BAD THING, BUT I’M VERY PROUD OF HIM.

Elle: You do realize that dude was evil incarnate, right?

Donut: JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DRESSES LIKE A FUNERAL PROCESSION EJACULATED ON THEM, IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE BAD. HE WAS A VERY NICE PERSON FOR AN UNDEAD NPC. HE SAID WE CAN DO A DUET IF HE EVER RECORDS HIS REQUIM FOR THE VILE ALBUM.   

Elle: He would change the lyrics to his songs so they were about sacrificing babies to the dark lord.

Donut: HE TOLD ME THAT WAS A METAPHOR.   

We watched Bruna step from the garage and move toward the starting line, Osvaldo sitting stubbornly on the back.  

“Do you think anybody told him the plan?” Donut asked.

“Most of his friends are dead or have taken an exit,” I said, watching the man. “He got a bum deal, and it really sucks. But he had a way out, and he refused to take it. But, yes, Donut. I would guess he knows the plan.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice small. She read a Size-up potion, watching the back of Osvaldo’s head.

While we waited, Dwight appeared, awake and sober. His vine trailed a wheeled cart behind it. On the platform was a spinning, high-tech looking missile launcher.

I grunted with amusement. That goddamned unicorn.

Donut sighed. “Osvaldo took the splooge like you thought. Also, his dexterity is really high. It’s 285 with all his buffs. He has a deflector ability, and his Jump skill is level 15.”  

“I figured,” I said. “What about Puddle Jump or Phase?”

“He has Puddle Jump, but it’s only level 8. So it’ll have a ten second countdown. I don’t see any phase or teleport abilities, but he might have a scroll. Oh, wait. He has Launch. That’s level 14. And Super Speedster.”

“Damnit,” I said. 

We’d spent some time game planning the situation if we were in Osvaldo’s shoes.

We had to assume that he knew the plan, despite us keeping him out of the loop. I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to do. It was a good plan. It was a smart plan, even if a little fucked up. I couldn’t see any other options if I were him, especially since he had to wait for us to first blow open the path. We had to be ready for it.    

“I hate this, Carl,” Donut said.

“I know.”

Jamal was the only mercenary we were adding to the heat, and that was only as a backup in case something went wrong. I was driving with Donut firmly ensconced in Dorota, who was still muted.  Despite the four-hour timer, if all went to plan, this final heat would take less than a minute to complete.

But only if they didn’t pull any last minute fuckery with the rules. I was girding myself for whatever it was.

Pontiff: The new croupier at the top floor casino used to be a wall rat. His name is Mitch. He’s an ass, but he’s a crafty one. I bought a portal examination spell from the market and waited at the casino for someone to open the new Nothing slot. I am not sure what the results mean. I just spoke with Rosetta regarding this, and she has a new theory based on the numbers I relayed to her from the scroll results. She suggests that if I step into the portal, and I do not die, but I stay hired as a mercenary then this portal is not what you want it to be. But if I step in, survive, and I am removed from your employ, it suggests I have been brought from the holding area into an area of the dungeon outside the playing field. That suggests the original exit plan is still viable.

Carl: Okay, thank you. It’s not necessary for you to try to kill yourself for this. The final race is starting.

Pontiff: I am not so certain. Carl, I am going to do this. I keep thinking back to the type of person I once was. I have made a change. But knowing what I know now, I know simply changing myself is not enough. I do not know if this will help you, but no matter what happens, you will have information. And this information may help those who I once called friend.

I was too tired, too emotionally spent, too stressed to argue with him.

Carl: Okay, Pontiff. Thank you for your help.

But then I had an idea. A just in case.

Carl: Wait, Pontiff. One more thing. I want you to tell Herot something for me.    

We pulled up to the starting block. Unlike in the previous heat, we didn’t just suddenly appear in an AC duct. There was this strange moment when we changed size, and the effect was like a camera trick from a Hitchcock movie. Even though the apartment looked normal-sized from our garage, the closer I drove toward it, the larger the apartment appeared. We drove under the awning, and then we were suddenly in the large lobby of the building.

We were still tiny, but we were about three times the size as we were before. We went from the size of a Lego brick to about the size of a computer mouse. We were under a curved, metal awning, right next to Dwight. Osvaldo sat alone upon Bruna on the other side of the unicorn. We were close enough that I could reach out and grab the side of the vine.

“You’re going to suffer as you die,” Dwight said. The missile launcher attached to the back of his vine hummed. I wasn’t worried about the missiles. He wouldn’t be able to fire them until he was out of the starting blocks. The ceiling was much too low.   

His GPS unit’s avatar was a tiny, holographic fairy that he’d programmed to look just like the late Lucienne.

“You and your low-tier GPS are fucked,” the fairy said. She even had Lucienne’s voice. 

I rolled up the window, not responding.

I reached over to the control panel of one of our new weapons, which we’d borrowed from another crawler’s vehicle, and I clicked over to the potion-delivery shotgun. I then warmed up the three-times-a-race hole punch gun, designed to pop a large hole in any shield for three seconds.   

“Dr. Metcalf,” I said. “Load up the updated potion that Mordecai made and time the weapon to fire the exact nanosecond the light turns green. Hole punch then potion.”  

You got it, boss. If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to add the electrical disrupter potion ball to the third cannon. That will fry that bitch of a GPS. I’ll show her who’s low-tier.

In addition to a few extra weapons, we’d managed to snag a group of three separate GPS upgrades. We got one standard upgrade so we could now see our place in the heat, an integrated weapon’s control system, and a golden-tier cloaking upgrade that greatly increased her processing power, allowing her to overclock certain vehicle systems, and most importantly, make it so other GPS units could only see what we wanted them to see.

Still, the upgrades were more than enough to satisfy Dr. Metcalf. Her acerbic attitude had completely changed. Though she still refused to remove the gag on Dorota.

For the first time, we could now see the other teams at their own starting blocks.

The room was a massive, typical lobby to an apartment building. There was a door to the outside, a bank of mailboxes, a bike rack, a pair of doors that led off to the first-floor apartments, the elevator door, the entrance to the main stairwell, and a few more utility rooms.

We were all lined up in a square in the lobby, just one square-shaped awning after another with a small wall separating each heat.

The moment we entered into our awning, we’d transported from outside the apartment to our space along the wall, facing the massive bank of mailboxes. I couldn’t see any of the racers on either side of us, but I started to examine all the heats directly across from us.

Strangely, I could see the multitude of cul-de-sacs behind each heat. I turned, and sure enough, I could see our own street with our garage in the distance. That was unusual and inconsistent with all the previous heats. Usually once we entered the starting block, we were cut off from going back to our garage.

“Weird,” I said.  

I spied a heat with a polar bear, a giraffe, and that same yellow AMC Pacer I’d noticed on a previous heat. I couldn’t see the driver, but I could see the polar bear was jockeyed by a pair of NPC orcs. The giraffe, likewise, had a single slime NPC on the back.

“Carl, that yellow car is Team Yokai!” Donut said.

“Wait,” I said. “That means all three teams in that heat are NPCs.”

A horrible realization dawned on me. All that work, all that planning meant nothing if they were allowing NPC-only teams for the final heat.

Race starts in four minutes.

And then I saw it the same moment the message came in. The next two heats next them, right in a row, a double set of gut punches.  

“Oh no,” I said.

Donut gasped. 

The grouping was a Cadillac floating on a cushion of air, Imani and Elle’s APV, and a red semi-truck.

Imani: No. No, no, no, no, no. 

Elle: Fucking hell.

Chris was now in the same heat as Imani and Elle.

It got worse.

The next heat over featured a gecko, an NPC-driven sedan, and a moped with Florin at the controls and Lucia Mar sitting behind him in the back.

Louis and Britney were now in the same heat as Florin and Lucia.