Chapter 91 (Patreon)

 Bautista: Yeah, you’re a little late there, buddy. Can’t talk. The whole damn station is a city boss. We gathered about 400 people on the train, and when they went up the stairs, it swallowed the first twenty of them like it was eating Cheese Rings. We’re on the platform now fighting off its tongue and its minions. It belches and these walking mouth things pour out of it. They’re too strong. Waiting on the next train to escape. Don’t know what we’re going to do. Half of these guys sold their hats. 

Carl: Holy shit. Be careful. You’re going to have to fight the boss at 435 and try the employee portal exit. I’ll try to find out about them now. Keep me updated.  

Bautista: Talk soon.            

How had he gathered 400 people? That seemed like too many at one place at one time.  

I turned to Madison. “The Kravyad. Tell me about it. Now. Quickly.”

“Which one? We have a few dozen on shift right now.” 

“Does it matter? Are they different?” 

“Of course they’re different,” she said. “One of them is always whining he wants to go home to visit his girlfriend. Another is demanding hazard pay after getting stabbed by a crawler. She was highly offended as she’s not designated as a combatant. They’re just as different as you and your little hairy friend.” 

“Not a combatant? So they’re not bosses?” 

“Bosses? Hardly. They’re actually part of the human resources department.” Madison straightened, standing proudly. “They work directly under me. Part of management’s initiative to increase productivity.” 

“Holy shit, lady. Start with the basics. What is a Kravyad? And do they attack people? Like the station mimics attack people?” 

“Like I said, they’re part of a money-saving initiative. A very successful one, I might add. The conductors and porters are less likely to demand time off if they don’t remember their between-shift breaks. They end their shift, go into what we call a pre-production stupor, and they awaken ready for their next shift. They’re still quite dazed until the moment they get on the trains. And by then it’s too late to request time off. It has increased productivity by 35%. The Kravyad are responsible for maintaining this program.” 

I refrained the urge to choke the woman out. All of this information about how they abused their workers was infuriating, terrifying, and painfully familiar, but it was also irrelevant. “But what are they? Are they wizards? Giant owls? Elves? Tell me what they look like and what sort of powers they have.”    

She gave me an are-you-really-that-stupid? look. “Do you know what a naga is? They’re kinda like that. But blue and with six arms. They take their payment by getting to eat one or two dwarves a shift. It saves the company a lot of gold.” 

“What kind of magic do they cast?” 

“They hypnotize the dwarves and grapples getting off the train. They keep them around for eight to twelve hours depending on the lines attached to their station, and they send them through the portal when it’s almost time for their shift to start again. It saves me from having to tell them that overtime is mandatory. Though sometimes they gather enough wits about them to ask for time off before they get on the train. Then they get a trip to my office, and I give them the gold armband.” 

“Armband?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.  

She beamed. “It was my idea. We tell them that if they wear the armband during one more run, the Kravyad will know to teleport them straight home at the end of the shift. But really it lets the Kravyad know they’re troublemakers who are okay to eat. It added another 5% to our productivity in Q2. Even Rod was impressed.” 

Donut: I DON’T LIKE THIS LADY. SHE’S ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO IS REALLY MEAN BUT DOESN’T THINK THEY’RE MEAN. 

Carl: No kidding. 

I took a deep breath. “Tell me about the employee portal. If the workers go through it, it just takes them to the platform? Can anybody pass through it?”

“That’s right,” Madison said. “Straight to the platform. I suppose others could go through. We’ve already had a few of you lot sneaking through. Of course it’s lifebound to the Kravyad. So if something happens to them, then it snaps closed. They insisted on that when we wrote out their contract. It was a big point of contention.” 

Fuck. “So the creature has to remain alive for the portal to work?” 

“That’s what I said. Now are you going to take me back?”

That station number 435 was another sort of trap. You could only get through if you kept the Kravyad, boss or not, alive. I paused to send all this information to Bautista. He and the survivors had retreated from the mimic back onto the train, which was thankfully still running. 

You can’t save them all. This was something Bautista and his group would have to figure out on their own. I’d done all I could from here.

“I have a few more questions,” I said to Madison. “Tell me about the ghouls that almost killed you.” 

She frowned. “Those filthy things are not my job. Doris over at substation B is in charge of that. This is her fuck up. That husband-stealing whore couldn’t even get that right. I told Rod that she’d be the death of him, but of course he didn’t listen. She’s in charge of keeping the Krakaren happy, which meant she was also in charge of excess citizen disposal. But she wanted to impress Rod, of course, with her money-saving concept. An extra train on an existing line was much cheaper than a dedicated conveyor line. And look what happened. The good news is Substation B fell before E did. I hope the ghouls ate that fat bitch and popped her oversized implants.”   

I was about to ask her another question when Elle pinged me. I held up a hand. As I talked to them, Brandy knocked on the furnace door. I opened it. She started grilling Madison about her paycheck while I stepped outside to escape the heat. 

Carl: Hey guys. What’s the news? 

Elle: It’s not a train like we thought but a roller coaster with no cars. You know those rolling carts they have in the robot rooms? The robots fill them with these ghoul things and roll them down to the coaster. It’s a pretty far hike. At least it was for us. The robots push the roly things and the bottom of the cart catches on the roller coaster, and off they go. It’s like the thing they have at the hospital that takes your trays away. But a hell of a lot faster. 

Carl: Yeah, the carts end up back at the trainyards. The ghouls are then supposed to be moved to a train that takes them all the way to the Abyss to get rid of them. 

Elle: Why would they send them all the way back to the start just to turn them around and send them back? What sort of inefficient bullshit is that?

Carl: You were never in the military, were you? 

Imani: It’s designed to break down, I think. Or maybe they’re just terrible at design. Maybe both. At least we’re free of monsters in this tunnel. Only the ghouls can enter the robot rooms. The other monsters aren’t allowed in for some reason. But the ghouls actually get into the cages themselves. And then the robots lock them in and roll them down into the tunnel and put them onto the conveyor. 

Carl: Something is going to happen when enough of them get to the same place. I don’t know what. 

I quickly went over everything I had discovered, and I gave them an update on what was happening with Bautista. I’d already sent out a mass warning about the station mimics at station 433. 

Imani: We’ve been camping and killing the ghouls as they rush by, but they give shit experience. Carl, there’s a lot of them coming now. A whole lot. Also, there’s another type of ghoul sometimes in the mix called a wrath ghoul. I think it might be what happens at the end of stage 2. They are very strong. Be careful. We were just debating on whether or not to hijack a few carts and get onto the carousel ourselves or going back to the main track and hiking to the transit station. 

Shit. That was a scary proposition. 

Carl: If it was me, I’d take the conveyor. But it’s super risky. I don’t know how gentle it is, plus when you land, you’ll end up at the service station. If you end up at Stations B or E, the gate is down, and there’ll be less ghouls. But if the fence isn’t down yet wherever you end up, you’ll be surrounded by literally thousands of the monsters. It’s a huge gamble.  

Elle: But it also sounds really fun. By the time all those best roller coasters were popping up around the country, I was too old to do it. My Barry used to puke cotton candy after just the tilt-a-whirl, and I never got to do the real rides. Now’s our chance. 

Imani: I’ll let you know what we decide to do. Take care, Carl.

Donut: CARL, YOU BETTER GET BACK IN HERE. THEY’RE FIGHTING! 

I grumbled as I returned to the cab. 

“Well we just don’t need your services anymore,” Madison was saying to Brandy as I returned to the cab. The entire room was sweltering. The cry of a baby emanated from the furnace. 

“You can’t fire me,” Brandy said. “I only deal with Portia.” 

“Portia!” Madison scoffed. “I have two weeks more on the job than Portia, which makes me her senior. I will not have my employees mouthing off to me like this.” 

“Your employees? Why is it everyone in human resources always thinks they’re the boss? You’re not, you einzeller. You may be the one who does hiring and firing, but it’s not your decision. You are ze boot, not ze foot. Besides, I have contract. We demons take our contracts very seriously. You can’t make decisions like that without running it past an exec, and we both know it.” The demon’s black orbs glowed, and I feared she was about to blast the human with a fireball, which would probably be bad for everybody in the room. Brandy was level 75 and Madison was only level 10. 

“Ladies,” I said, interrupting. “You guys can discuss this later, preferably after the ghoul outbreak. Nobody is getting fired right now.” I grasped onto the towel and gently pushed at the furnace door. Brandy made a face like she was going to protest, but then another baby came, and I took the opportunity to slam the hot door while her face was scrunched up in pain. 

Madison cross her arms and pouted. She was literally quivering with anger. 

Donut: CARL, SHE REMINDS ME OF SOMEBODY BUT I DON’T KNOW WHO.

I laughed out loud. 

Carl: Do you think you can guard her while I go up that ladder and peek into station 24? Maybe you can use that charm of yours and get more info out of her. 

Donut: OKAY, I’LL DO IT. 

Carl: Cool. Don’t let Brandy out again.

“I’ll be right back,” I said out loud.   

“Can I come?” Katia asked. 

I’d been planning on going up the ladder and sticking my head through the trapdoor to look and see what was up there. If there were mobs, we’d come back to clear them later. That quick shot we’d seen of Lucia Mar had showed her fighting waves of ghouls before she had to retreat, and I wanted to see if this station was the same. But it was rare for Katia to want to do something dangerous, and I didn’t want to shoot her down. 

“Okay,” I said. “But we’ll just be a minute.” 

~

“I’ll go first,” I said, climbing up the ladder. The ladder led to a trapdoor about 25 feet up. Unfortunately it was a regular door, not a subspace portal, so I couldn’t use my skill to see through it. 

Katia got on the ladder behind me. She was in her normal, human-sized, non-enhanced body. We ascended quickly. I grasped onto the door and pushed it up. Dust cascaded down over me as I pressed. I emerged into a large, well-lit room with rocky walls and ceiling, the size of big warehouse. Five stairwells sat in a circle in the middle of the room, light shining directly up over them like blazing spotlights. The moment I saw them, they marked themselves on my map. I didn’t see any mobs or any other features in the room except the exits. Ten of the exits circled room, leading down to regular train platforms. Each one had a sign over them. All were colored lines except one, which was Escape Velocity III. 

That gremlin mechanic had been right. There was a named train that looped back. I already had one person on my chat who said he’d seen the Escape Velocity Train, but he hadn’t tried it. Also, the name didn’t have a number after it, which suggested all of the trains that looped back might be called Escape Velocity. 

Then again, the Iron Tangle employees were also trying to talk people into the mouth of a station mimic, so who knew what was safe and what wasn’t. 

The trap door I’d pushed through was disguised as a rock outcropping. It made me wonder how many hidden and secret doorways we’d walked right past. My Escape Plan skill supposedly had the ability to find hidden doorways, but it didn’t seem to work very well. I needed to talk to Moredecai about that once he got out of jail. 

I hesitantly pulled myself up into the room, looking about. Katia popped up beside me. 

“There’s nothing here,” I whispered. Whispering felt appropriate. The stairways all emitted a gentle, pulsing hum. I knew they wouldn’t open up until there was six hours left, which was ominous. There had to be a reason for that. 

“Maybe the ghouls are on the train platforms,” Katia said, pointing at the exits. “I don’t have anything on my map.” 

“Weird. It feels like a trap. Let’s leave it be for now. Maybe we’ll look at stops 36 and 48 and see if they’re the same.” 

“Hey,” Katia said as I turned back to the trapdoor. “I wanted to talk to you alone for a second.” 

“Sure,” I said, pausing. “You know you can always private message me, too.”

“I know,” she said. “But the messaging always feels so impersonal. This is really important.” 

“Okay,” I said, starting to feel a little apprehensive. “What is it?” 

She was clearly nervous, which made me nervous. “Remember when I said some of my parts, like my eyes and mouth need to be flesh? What it really says is at least two of my eyes need to be flesh. Which made me wonder, does that mean I can have more than two eyes? So I’ve been practicing, and it turns out I can make as many eyes as I want. The problem is, it makes me want to vomit if I have more than two. And the acuity is not right. I’m very near-sighted with them. I’ve gotten it to where I can have a third eye, and as long as the field of vision doesn’t overlap with my other two, my brain can handle it. You’d think it’d be the other way around, that it’d need to overlap for it to work better, and maybe that’s so and I’m doing it wrong, but for now I’m training myself to see directly behind me while I walk. It’s like watching two shows at the same time, and it’s hard to remember which one is which even though it’s obvious. I keep it closed most of the time, but I can open it a minute or two at a time before I get a really bad headache. Hopefully soon I can train my mind to understand a full array of vision all around without going insane. That would be very useful. It’s just, I feel less, I don’t know, human when I do it. I know I’m not human anymore. I need to get over it. I know that. But it’s hard.” 

“That… that’s wild,” I said, “And it will be really helpful. But why is this a secret?” 

“That’s not the secret.” She wrung her hands worriedly. It was something she did often, no matter what size she was. “Donut did something when she didn’t think anybody was looking. I talked to Hekla about this, and she thinks it was a setup. That you had her do it on purpose to test me. But I think I know you better than she does, and that’s not the sort of thing you’d do. Besides, you didn’t know about my third eye, so how would that be a setup anyway? Donut did it so nobody would see.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Katia?” 

She pulled a little slip of paper out of her inventory and handed it to me. 

“The other day when you got hit by the Nightmare and were gone, Donut and I went back out on the tracks to clean it. I saw Donut pull this from her inventory and then stuff it under the track so nobody would find it. But I was practicing with my third eye, and I saw her do it. When she wasn’t looking, I grew a new arm, slid it along the track, and I grabbed it.” 

I examined the paper. It was a black ticket with a familiar, gold leaf skull embossed on it. I felt a chill rush through me as the description appeared. 

PVP Coupon. 

Ah, betrayal. Sweet, delicious betrayal.   

If you have this coupon in your inventory, and you kill the crawler whose name appears on the backside of this coupon, you will receive the following rewards: 

Gold Savage Box
Gold Weapons Box
Gold Apparel Box
Platinum Adventurer Box (This benefit may only be redeemed a max of 3 times)
+1 Player Level (This benefit may only be redeemed a max of 3 times)

I flipped the paper over. The slip read:

Crawler #4,122. Carl. 

“What the hell?” I said. The sight of my name on the paper gave me a second chill. “Where did she get this?” 

“PVP means player versus player,” Katia said. “I didn’t know that. Hekla says when someone gets one of those skulls next to their name for killing a crawler, and if they’re in a party, they get a Savage box, and it contains the coupons.” 

“That means she got this after she killed that guy in the club, and she didn’t want to tell us about it.” I felt myself relax. This wasn’t a big deal. Was it? She had gotten rid of it. The system gave out the coupon to be a dick. I imagined in a less tight-knit party, the existence of such coupons could cause a lot of paranoia and damage. But the idea of Donut wanting to hurt me was ridiculous. It was a waste of a prize, and she’d gotten rid of it so she didn’t have to deal with having it. End of story.   

Katia continued to wring her hands. “There’s more. I thought this was a good thing at first. But later, I told Hekla about it, and she said they don’t just get one coupon. They get one for every member of the party.” She paused. “This was the only coupon Donut got rid of.” 

Shit, I thought. I could now see why Katia was freaking out. She thought Donut still had one of these coupons with her name on it.  

“Maybe she got rid of your coupon at another time,” I said. “And how does Hekla know this anyway?”

“My friend Eva. I told you about her already. She was with me before. We went into the dungeon together. She has a skull. There was a man. We didn’t know him, but we met right when got in. When we joined the daughters, Hekla didn’t want him coming with us. But he insisted. We told him to go away, but he wouldn’t. He grabbed me by the arm, and Eva stabbed him with her trident. I thought he’d be okay. She’d just stabbed him in the back of the leg. But he died, and she got the skull. She got the coupon book, though she never told me about it. She only told Hekla.” 

“I’m sure Donut got rid of the other coupon,” I said. “Look, I’m glad you told me. But the last thing we need is to worry about each other. I’ll talk to her to make sure. I won’t tell her you found the one with my name on it.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice small. “Thank you, Carl.” 

I pulled the coupon back into my own inventory. My mind raced. I’d have to ask Donut about it. I didn’t have a choice. But first I needed to confirm some of this info with the only other person I knew with a player killer tag.  

Carl: Imani. I have a question for you. 

She had been forced to kill several of the Meadow Lark residents when they’d first arrived at the dungeon, to save them from an agonizing death. I knew it haunted her. 

Imani: Hello, Carl. We’re collecting carts so the team can ride the conveyor. It’s hard to get them off the track without breaking them. What can I do for you? 

Carl: When you received your skulls, did you get a PVP coupon? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. 

There was a long pause. I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer. 

Imani: I did. I received something called a Savage box, and all it contained was the coupon book. 

Carl: How many coupons were in it?

Imani: It had a coupon in it for every member of the party. I tried to burn them, but they didn’t catch on fire. I left them behind on the first floor. Brandon wanted me to keep them in case I had to, you know, do it again. But I could feel them sitting in my inventory, and I didn’t want them there. So I got rid of them. You should know Elle did not get them when she got her skull. I used to think people only got them on the first floor, but after Donut told me about the two she received, I now think only the first member of a party to get the player-killer skull gets the coupon book.

Carl: You talked to Donut about her coupons? 

Imani: We talked about them when she received the box. She wasn’t too happy about them, and she was having a really hard time coping with getting that skull. I told her to get rid of them. She’s like a child, Carl. She doesn’t process things the way a person does. Talk to her about it. I gotta go. We’ll message you later. 

I had no idea Donut and Imani had ever said two words to each other. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It made sense. Donut had done the same thing I just did, which was immediately turn to the person with the most experience in the matter. The coupons were designed to instill a wedge in a group, whether they were used or not, and Donut recognized that. It was a smart, mature decision. Still, it suddenly felt as if something had changed in the dynamic between us. 

Carl: Okay. Thanks. Be safe.   

“Hey,” I said to Katia. “So why didn’t Hekla want that guy in the party with you and your friend? Was it because he was a man?” 

“No,” Katia said. “He was a creep. I don’t think Hekla would care if a guy joined the group.” 

“So it’s just a coincidence the daughters are all women? What if Donut and I wanted to join up, do you think she’d let us? Do you really think she’d let me join?” 

Katia paused. I saw the tell-tale flash in her eyes. She’s talking to her right now. 

“Do you want to join up with the daughters?” 

“Maybe,” I lied.

“I think she’d want to talk to you first. Hekla thinks you’re a bit reckless. But she really likes Donut.” 

“Okay,” I said. “We better get back before…” I paused as I saw the red dot on the map. It was on one of the colored line landings. The Puce line. “Hang on. Stay here. Get ready to run.” 

“Carl,” she called after me as I rushed off. I wasn’t sure why. 

I jogged over to the stairwell that led down to the landing. Shit. More red dots appeared. I peered down the stairs. As I suspected, it was the festering ghouls from the trainyard. It was just a few for now, but there would be more soon. I saw additional dots on the adjacent platform. They’d traveled from the trainyard all the way up to station 24. Station 12, I knew, was already filled Jikininki janitor ghouls.

As I watched, however, it was clear they weren’t sticking around. Some of them clambered up onto the landing, but only for a few moments before jumping back onto the passageway. They continued on their way up the track.

I also noted that none of them appeared to be getting shocked by the third rail. From this angle, I couldn’t really see what was going on. Either they knew about the rail and were avoiding it, they were immune to electricity, or the power was off. There was no way to know which of those three scenarios it was.   

I tossed a pair of hob lobbers down the stairs just to kill a few, then I turned and fled for the trap door. We quickly descended the stairs and went on our way. 

~

Stations 36 and 48 were identical to station 24. It was too soon for the ghouls to have walked this far. We’d check on them again after we ditched Madison. Zev sent us a message that we needed to find a saferoom soon because we were supposed to go onto that show in a few hours. I told her we were too busy, and she said she’d have us teleported away no matter what we were doing. I told her to go fuck herself, and she laughed as if I was joking. 

I didn’t yet say anything to Donut about the coupons. I wanted to wait until we were up in the production trailer. I just knew that since Katia had voiced her suspicions out loud that they were going to make this a thing. I wanted to cut it off at the knees while nobody else was watching.  

There was more to the story, too. Katia was having a hard time. It wasn’t just the coupons. She was struggling with something. I suspected maybe it was because I didn’t quite treat her like a member of the team. Yes, I’d spent money and resources on getting her bulked up. But I’d done that for myself and Donut just as much as I’d done it for her, and she knew that. We all knew she was eventually going to go back to Hekla. It was clear that was what she wanted. 

The thing was, I liked Katia. I liked her a whole lot. She was painfully quiet. Even when she was bulked up, it was easy to forget she was there. But she was just so damn earnest. She was afraid and hesitant, but she never once ran. If she said she was going to do something, she did it. And she usually did it well. That was a rare quality. With just a bit more training and mastery of her race, she would be the ultimate tank. Still, with Odette’s warning about Hekla, I couldn’t stop from thinking maybe it would be better if we just cut her loose sooner rather than later. I didn’t want to do that, but maybe it was the safer bet in the long run. If we did go that route, I’d need to really up my own defenses first. Or we’d have to find another tank. Maybe we could hire Bomo and The Sledge from the Desperado Club. Mordecai had hinted that it might be possible to hire NPCs. 

I hated this. Why does everything need to be so complicated? Can’t people just be loyal? I’d said that not too long ago as Bea and I were fighting about her decision to get rid of Donut. We’d been in the car, on our way to a Christmas party, and she’d casually mentioned one of her mom’s Persians—Sugar Bun, who was Donut’s aunt or cousin or something—was pregnant and was due soon. Once weaned, Bea would be taking two of the kittens and Donut would be returned to her parents who would try to sell her as a show-quality breeder.   

You don’t even like her, Carl. Why do you care? 

She’s your cat. She’s a living thing, and you took responsibility for her. I don’t understand how you can just give her up. I don’t care if you get another cat, but why do you have to give Donut away? 

Do you know how much money she’s going to sell for, Carl? She’s a former international grand champion. She’s past her prime. I don’t understand what you’re not getting about this.  

Goddamn bullshit. All of this. 

In addition to the stops with the stairwells, we paused to examine stations 50, 58, and 59. With 50, I wanted to see if it was one of the Krakaren drug dens. It was not. The trap door lifted revealing a tiny room the size of a small house. A single ramp sectioned down, leading to nine different platforms. The small station had no mobs. It looked as it had never been visited by anything or anybody.  

Next, we stopped at the ladder outside of station 58, which should’ve been a regular stop with a random nest of regular mobs, and it was equally empty and small. The next station after that was number 59, a prime number, and therefore supposedly a real transfer station. This one was as it should be. The place was set up just like any other transfer station we’d visited at the higher stops. There was a restaurant, a general store, and small church leading to Club Vanquisher. The trap door popped up behind an alcove in the wall next to the general store. The only difference was it appeared there were 27 different platforms attached to this one station. 

After discussing it some with Madison, we learned stop number 60 was supposed to be a sprawling station filled with dozens of dormitories and apartments, along with restaurants and stores for the employees and their families to shop and eat. All colored trains would stop there, along with the Homeward Bound, the employee-only train that was supposed to be on this track. There would be a portal at the station platform which would work like the backroom entrance to the Desperado Club. It didn’t matter what train one used to get to station 60 nor what substation they started at. Once they stepped through the portal, they’d end up in the same place. 

However, when we arrived at the employee-only platform for station 60, it was clear something was wrong. The platform—the only platform on this entire line—was old and decrepit, covered in cobwebs. We stopped to investigate. The stairwell led up into a tiny room just like with station 50. A single, additional stairwell led down to a confusing mess of stairs and platforms where one could catch multiple trains.  

“Nice,” I said after we saw there was no settlement here. 

“It’s a mistake,” Madison said, spinning around in circles, as if that’d make the buildings magically appear. “I don’t understand. This is where our employees live. This is where their families live.” 

“Now you know why they made you give everyone mandatory overtime,” I said. 

My suspicions had been correct. They never turned this into a real place. There were no families. No wives or children. No food boxes with a touch of fish. It was all made up. All false memories. That Homeword Bound train probably never even rode once. It would’ve been nice to have a large settlement here with saferooms and NPCs. Instead they were playing up the evil corporation angle, which I thought was pretty meta considering the source of all this bullshit. 

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see if there really is a turnabout for the train. If not, we’ll have to drive backwards. We’ll go to station 41 and hit the saferoom there.” That was the closest place with a Desperado Club. I wanted to go in there and add more people to my chat list. We’d have to risk leaving the train on the tracks. It appeared the ghouls were avoiding this tunnel because it didn’t lead to regular platforms other than this one. Hopefully it remained that way.

“No. I’m staying here,” Madison said. She sat down firmly on the rocky ground and crossed her arms. She looked up at us defiantly. “Someone will come investigate what’s going on. I don’t know what you did, but transit security will sort it out. People are scattered, and they will come here. Even if here isn’t a real place, this is where they’ll go.” 

“Is there really a transit security department?” I asked. “We’ve been up and down the line, and I haven’t seen any sign of them.” 

She huffed. The woman did have a point. The workers who escaped the ghouls probably would be coming here. But I didn’t give a shit if she lived or not. If she couldn’t help us anymore, there was no point in keeping the murderous NPC with us. Part of me knew it wasn’t really her fault. That her personality and memories were programmed into her. I still didn’t care. She wasn’t from earth. She wasn’t a crawler, nor a former crawler as far as I could tell.  

“If not security, then Rod will come,” she added out of nowhere. “Rod always comes.”

“Who the hell is Rod?”

“He’s her ex-husband, Carl. Haven’t you been paying attention? He’s also the CFO of the Iron Tangle and works at Station A.” Donut said. “Madison, are you sure?”

“Rod will come.” 

“Bye, Madison,” I said, turning away. “Go fuck yourself, okay?”

“Right back at you, boxer boy.” 

“I remember who she reminds me of!” Donut exclaimed as we returned to the Nightmare. “Miss Beatrice’s mom! She’s just like her. She was really mean. I never liked visiting. None of the cats there were very happy. I could tell she didn’t treat them as well as Miss Beatrice treated me.” 

“Come on,” I said. The comparison didn't seem so funny anymore. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

***

Holy shit, it's September! Thanks for sticking around! You guys totally rock. I was hoping to have Chap 92 today also, but it's not quite done yet. Some old friends and new friends will be getting some face time soon. Exciting stuff.

Also, in case you don't look on Royal Road, Soundbooth Theater did a DCC skit on their show. This Youtube Video is at https://youtu.be/iTvb_gszOrg

If you could give it a click, like, and comment I'd appreciate it. I'll be attempting to get Soundbooth to do an actual audiobook soon, and this will definitely help.