Chapter 85 #2
Imani: We have it. Barely. We’re running low. I don’t like this, though. Something feels wrong.
Prepotente: I have significantly more money than that. I am more than willing to lend you some at only 10% interest.
Donut: PREPOTENTE, WHAT DID I TELL YOU?
Prepotente: You said never give away something when you could sell it. And always start 20% higher than you’re willing to go. That’s why I’m willing to go down to 8% interest.
Donut: NO, NOT THAT. I MEAN, ALWAYS BE WILLING TO LEND A PAW TO THE TEAM.
Prepotente: I must say, Donut. Some of your advice can be a little contradictory.
Donut: MY GOODNESS, IT’S NOT THAT HARD. DON’T DO SOMETHING IF IT’S GOING TO UPSET ME.
CARL: I agree, Imani. I still don’t understand why the guys earlier didn’t see the spot. It’s been bothering me this whole time.
Louis: Maybe the stripper dudes told the boss guy that you were looking for the Nothing spot, and they added it afterward.
CARL: That does make sense, but why?
Donut: BECAUSE IT’S A TRAP.
Damnit. Of course this was a trap somehow.
But what sort of trap? This was too important.
What did we know? Louis’s suggestion seemed to make sense.
If they added the spots back to the wheel after in hopes that we’d come back, did that mean the portals didn’t really go to this holding area?
Would my Examine Portal skill work? Pontiff had purchased one, and he had gone in.
It was starting to dawn on me how this scam could possibly work. This was a trap. But to sweeten it, they would’ve had to send Pontiff to the correct place just in case we had a way to communicate post-transfer.
“Hang on,” I said to Mitch. “We gotta pool our money.”
The biggest issue with all this was that we didn’t know what this Hamed guy wanted.
He’d deliberately set us up to murder his wife, Astrid.
But when their children—Anaconda and Damascus Steel—had gone hunting for him, they’d seemed to change their mind and join his cause.
And now the other strippers had done the same.
I didn’t trust him, but I trusted them. But only if it really was them, and we hadn’t had a chance to talk.
I sent a rapid group of messages out.
Imani: No. No way, Carl.
Chris: Yes. We will do this.
“Okay, then,” I finally said. “We have a deal. But let’s just send one person at first.” I took a step back.
There was a spot you had to stand in if you were spinning the wheel, and we needed to make sure nobody was on it.
“We have a magical communication spell,” I lied.
“We’re going to send one of us in, and if it’s not what we think, we’ll have to come up with something else.
” I gave the guy a big smile. Or I tried.
Instead, I just wagged my tail. “For the inconvenience, my friend Prepotente here is going to give you an extra-big tip.”
“I am?” Prepotente asked.
“Sure, pal,” Mitch said. “But it’ll be five thousand gold for a test run.”
“Okay,” I said. “Pony, pay the man.”
Mitch looked down at me, an amused expression on his face. “Is the dog really the one in charge here? I guess that’s better than the cat.”
“Excuse me?” Donut demanded.
CARL: Be calm. This can go one of a few ways if this is a trap. Be ready.
Prepotente moved forward and made a show of digging money from his inventory.
Chris turned to Imani. He reached up and put his hand against her face. She tossed the starfish at Elle and grabbed Chris’s hands with both of hers and pressed them against her cheek.
We all fell into silence.
“It’s not as warm as usual,” Chris said.
“You’re wrong,” Imani said, eyes glistening.
She turned and kissed his hands. “This isn’t goodbye, Chris Andrews.
But I want you to promise me something. If you get the chance, I don’t want you to hesitate.
You take it. You see that exit out of the dungeon, and you’re still in this body, you run.
You run and you don’t look back. Don’t worry about anything else.
You get out, and you live. Promise me that.
Even if it’s just you, it will all be worth it. You hear me?”
“I might turn back to a rock,” he said. “Or I might turn into a dog.”
“I don’t care what you are,” Imani said. Her butterfly wings wrapped around them both, like a cocoon, removing them from our sight for just a moment, and when she opened her wings back up, she was pressed tightly against him with his arms wrapped around her.
“I love you,” Chris said. “I always have. No matter what happens next, I love you. That’s the most important part.”
“Ah, very sweet,” Mitch said. “But can we get this moving?”
This was risky, but I was gambling that this Mitch guy was going to do the same thing he had done for Pontiff.
He’d choose a “real” spot to show us he wasn’t lying.
We were doing it this way to make sure there was a real spot.
Alternatively, he was bluffing and we were about to get attacked.
Or there was a portal, and the guards would charge and try to push us in.
Clay-ton wasn’t there, having gone back to his band.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Mitch turned the wheel and manually moved it to the Nothing spot. This was the only two-space slice on the whole wheel, and he moved it to the first of the two wedges. Each wedge had four “clicks” in the space, and he moved to the very last click in the first wedge.
He held the wheel in place, and then he hit a button on the table. The whole wheel buzzed as it tried to turn. The area under the “stand here” spot opened up, and a black portal appeared, thrumming into place.
The moment it opened, I remembered the last time I’d been near the real Nothing, and there’d been this heavy mental pull. I would’ve known the portal was there even with my eyes closed. It was said the Nothing drove one insane after just a few short minutes.
I didn’t sense anything like that with this one. It was just as inert as a regular door, with only blackness within.
I quickly examined the portal using my neural implant:
Warning: Your neural implant is working in incompatibility mode due to recent changes to your wetware system. Please see your Valtay representative for repair. Only limited details available.
Unknown Manufacturer Enhancement Zone Subspace Portal.
Type: One-way portal. Open Access.
Can you pass this portal? Yes.
Environment on other side of portal: This portal leads to a stasis chamber.
Visual Analysis? Unavailable.
I wagged my tail. Despite my implant not working correctly, this was pretty much what I was hoping it would say. Hopefully the implant would go back to working correctly when I stopped being a damn dog.
“Portal only lasts about fifteen seconds,” Mitch said.
Florin: Lucia just said the magic on that one spot is different. I think you’re right, Carl. Chris, I think you’re good. She said there’s only magic flowing to that one spot, though. Very weird.
“Bye, Chris!” Donut called.
Chris stepped forward, turned, waved, and dropped away. But just as he dropped, Britney also jumped forward. She, too, disappeared without so much as a word.
It happened so fast, I barked with surprise. That had not been part of the plan. Goddamnit.
“Oi!” cried Mitch. “You cheat!”
I held up a paw. “Pony, give him another five thousand gold.”
Elle: Oh shit, did that just happen?
CARL: Anyone else going in there needs to keep an eye on Britney. Samantha says she needs to make it to the fifteenth or twelfth floor to activate that broken memorial crystal she has.
Prepotente: Interesting.
Louis: It just said she’s left the party! Wow, that was quick. Goddang. She just jumped right in.
Events were moving so rapidly. It hit me then.
Li Na, Zhang, Tran, Bautista, Chris, and Britney. All gone. They weren’t, hopefully, dead. But they were gone. The odds I’d ever see or talk to any of them ever again were astoundingly low.
I turned to regard Louis standing there with Samantha on his shoulder, sobbing.
He was next.
“We can just push Florin and that scary lady in,” she was crying, rubbing her face on Louis’s arm.
“We never even got to have our torrid affair! We were going to fall madly in love, and when it came time for me to go back to my king, you were going to be so upset, you were going to pluck your own eyes out because you just couldn’t stand the thought of ever looking at another girl again if you couldn’t have me.
It was going to be, like, superromantic.
But now you’re going to be all alone and without protection, and I don’t have anybody left to have an affair with except Carl, but he’s too broody for me.
And, you know, he’s a dog now.” She blew out a whole stream of snot onto his shoulder.
“Jurgen is no good because his Heidi sounds even meaner than Imani. Elle is too much woman for me to handle. Donut is too star-crossed with that orange kitty. Florin is a crocodile, and I’m racist against crocodiles ever since the cookie jar incident, and that Lucia is really a child.
You never even got to visit Sam Town. It’s not fair. ”
“Uh,” Louis said.
“What about me?” Prepotente asked.
“Ew,” said Samantha.
I just watched this go on, a heavy weight holding me down. Louis was next. Louis. The heart of our entire group. I thought of that moment at the Christmas party where he’d stood up to me for the first time, and it felt as if my chest was ripping open. That assassin had been correct to target him.
Louis and Imani were, indeed, the glue that kept the team together. No matter what happened next, we were losing something today.
Still, the more I thought about it, the more resolute I felt that this was the best choice. As bleak as all this was, Louis and everyone else’s odds of survival seemed so much higher than my own.
I turned to regard Donut standing beside me. I contemplated, just for a moment, doing exactly what Samantha was threatening to do. Tossing her in the portal the moment it popped up.
But no, I wasn’t going to do that. She would never forgive me. Plus, with Li Na gone, she was now the strongest crawler in the dungeon. By far.
Either way, we had to get through this next part.
“Well?” Mitch asked.
Donut: LUCIA IS RIGHT. IT’S VERY WEIRD. I TURNED ON MY MAGIC-FLOW-GLASSES THING AND THE ROULETTE TABLE HAS ALL SORTS OF MAGIC FLOWING TO IT, BUT THERE’S ONLY ONE LITTLE STRAND GOING TO THE WHEEL. THE WHOLE TABLE IS WEIRDLY EMPTY OF MAGIC OR ENCHANTMENT.
CARL: What other settings do you have on those glasses? Cycle through them all.
CARL: If those other spots don’t seem to work, then we’re going to get attacked. Everyone get ready. It’s going to go quick. Donut, you take out Mitch. You have Mongo, right? Unleash him. The rest of us will take out the guards. Watch the other dealers and the people at the other table, too.
I turned to Mitch. “It looks like it worked. We’ll send the rest now.”
“Pleasure doing business with you. But because you cheated, I’m going to need double the price for everybody else going from now on.” He paused. “Double from the five thousand. Paid in advance. How many are going?”
Donut scoffed.
Behind me, Imani was quietly crying while Elle rubbed her back. For this next one, it would be about twenty more crawlers, including Louis.
“Two hundred thousand gold?” I asked, growling. “We’re not paying that much. We’ll give you twenty K.”
Mitch crossed his arms. “A hundred thousand.”
Next to me, Donut suddenly gasped. She was turned all the way around, looking at the line of chairs against the wall. Her sunglasses flickered as she changed viewing modes.
Mitch sighed, staring down at Donut. “Fucking cats. I hate cats.” He raised a hand. “Boys.” He snapped a finger.
And that’s when the table tried to eat Donut.