Hal’s mech stomped down the street, steel feet pounding on the asphalt behind Carol as she hurried toward the police station west of Museumtown and south of the Voltsmith’s Laboratory. He hadn’t said much since she’d revealed the most likely location for the dungeon.

  Carol liked it that way.

  Tori had figured it out in only half an hour or so, without leaving Museumtown to do it. The Penitent Eye had to be either a prison or church-themed dungeon—and so far, the one thing the Consortium hadn’t screwed with beyond outright destruction was churches. She’d been eyeball-deep in Calvin’s Hello Kitty notebook, checking to be sure about her theory when Carol found her.

  That girl could be a bit of a dork, but—

  Carol caught herself grinning stupidly and pulled herself together. Tori Vanderbilt was a brilliant, clever girl. She was determined, stubborn, and loyal as hell to her friends. Carol was lucky to have caught that particular fish.

  But right now, the dungeon took priority. Tori had zeroed in on the most likely location for the Penitent Eye based on three conditions. First, it was a prison, a police, or a law-enforcement-themed dungeon. Second, it was as close to both Museumtown and the Voltsmith’s Lab as possible. And third, it was in a location that hadn’t hosted a dungeon before.

  The last two were guesses, but Tori had been pretty sure the Field Boss and dungeon were both intentional attacks, and that there were rules to Integration.

  And, as Carol slowed down and approached the brick building with the gray-fog windows and door, she nodded. “Tori’s one smart girl,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Hal said. The mech rumbled to a stop behind Carol. “This is probably a trap.”

  “Yeah, Tori warned me about that—or at least, that this was an attack on Museumtown, aimed right at you. Maybe you shouldn’t be here, Hal. I could grab Zane or Tori and get the job done just as easily.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you to do what you can to win, and to try to keep us alive while you do it—you’ve learned something from what you did to my brother. But I don’t trust you not to do something dumb if anything weird catches your eye. I remember the Stronghold.” Carol hefted her spear. “I’m ready. Let’s get this place cleared out.”

  Then she stepped through the gray fog door.

  Tier Five Dungeon: The Penitent Eye (Floor One)

  Choice Objective: Stop the Rioters (0/1) OR Join the Rioters (0/1)

  Objective: Breach the Perimeter (0/1)

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Fragile Walls: This dungeon is close to breaking. Its inhabitants will be freed if a threshold of Delver deaths inside is reached.

  Break Counter: 0/2

  Sealed Environment: You cannot leave this dungeon until it is completed.

  Lethal: Aspects of this floor’s environment will be instantly lethal to delvers and monsters alike.

  The Penitent Eye, as far as I could tell, was unique in one major way.

  It wasn’t the rows of cells with thick metal doors and tiny windows. Not the grated metal catwalks wrapping around every open space and dividing the hallways cleanly into two floors—one for guards, and a lower one for prisoners. And it wasn’t the flashing red lights or the alarms, or the stink of sweat, violence, and smoke.

  It was the view out the windows.

  The dungeon wasn’t on Earth. As I stomped down the prisoner’s hallways, the mech’s bulk filling the passageway almost completely, I thought about that. The Hand that Feeds hadn’t been on Earth, but it had been unfinished and, presumably, not built for this Integration. The Penitent Eye, however, was a finished dungeon, and it had been placed right where a jail-themed dungeon should have been.

  It just hadn’t been built for Earth, that was all. We could see Earth just fine, but it wasn’t on the planet.

  The stink of smoke and blood grew as we walked down the hall, flashing red lights illuminating the dungeon in bursts of color.

  “Thoughts?” Carol asked.

  I shrugged. The mech imitated the motion awkwardly. “We push forward, look for the rioters, and put them down.”

  “Or, better idea, we join them.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I glanced at Carol through the viewport. She shrugged and pointed with her spear. “The rioters are probably not good guys, but I doubt any authority the Consortium wants us to join is our friend, either. Which way do you think makes the next two floors easier, though? That’s the question.”

  She was right.

  “We’ll make a decision when we get there,” I said.

  “Whatever.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Carol, unlike Tori, was pretty damn close to my sister’s age, but she was a very different person from Beth. She was serious, determined, and violently loyal to her family. I could appreciate that last part. If I ever got the chance to leave Museumtown behind and head back to Cozad, I was taking it, hands down. I missed Beth and my parents.

  She’d come a long way from the broken-legged girl we’d found in the Twilight Menagerie dungeon at the beginning of Phase One. But it was obvious that she didn’t want to be here, with me.

  That was fine. I didn’t want to be here, either.

  The moment I stepped into the dungeon and saw the Sealed Environment and Fragile Walls affixed, it had confirmed what I’d suspected. This was a trap for me. That Break Counter was dangerously low, too. Clearly, the dungeon designers hadn’t wanted to take any chances. If I’d let someone else clear it, and they’d died, the dungeon’s monsters would break almost instantly, and Museumtown would be in the line of fire—and so would Cindy’s Garage.

  The final affix, Lethal, was just as much of a concern. I’d identified the actual hazard instantly: the thick glass windows and the void of space on the outside.

  But where were the monsters?

  There were plenty of signs that there’d been dungeon monsters in the Penitent Eye. Old-ish bloodstains on the walls. Battered metal doors and, in one room, a window with a terrifying-looking crack running down its center. Bullet holes in the cell walls. But there was no indication whatsoever as to where the prisoners had gone—or where their jailers were.

  That lasted until, after nearly ten minutes, we stepped through a door that buzzed loudly as it slid from open to half-open, then stopped. The mech barely fit through, and Carol made an impatient, annoyed sound as she waited.

  “I found the prisoners,” I said as I finished squeezing through. “And the guards.”

  The room looked less like a well-maintained…space…prison…and more like a scene from a textbook on the First World War. A single tower loomed at the wide, round room’s center, with no doors or ways in on our floor. Every floor above ours, though, included a sealed door leading onto a pair of catwalks, high above the stacked, circular floors of cells. There had to be dozens of floors, too—and the tower reached all the way to a metal ceiling high above.

  Outside of the tower, dozens of portal monsters hunkered down behind tables, slabs of metal, and chunks of concrete, piled up to form trenches facing the tower from every direction. A few of them had guns of some type, and they attacked the tower mercilessly.

  As they did, a single, tiny slit opened up, and a tube rolled out. I recognized it almost instantly—I’d been building similar weapons since Phase Zero. “Bomb!” I shouted.

  Carol ducked behind my mech, and the bomb detonated.

  Steel, tables, and bodies went flying as the rioting prisoners’ defense collapsed. A trio of armored figures materialized right where the bomb had gone off before the shockwave even hit us, riot shields up and batons crackling with electricity. They laid into the shocked rioters. Bones snapped, and bodies collapsed in heaps as the clubs did their jobs.

  “Time to pick a side, Hal,” Carol said.

  I chose…poorly.

  But really, there was no good choice. The prison guards wouldn’t let us clear the dungeon, because that had to mean pushing through their defenses. That left only one option.

  The mech stomped forward, rail gun engaging the riot squad.

  Objective Chosen: Join the Rioters (1/1)

  Watcher Shieldbearer: Level 87 Monster

  They reacted instantly. Even before the second shot hit, all three shields linked together, energy crackling between them to form a long, flexible barrier. My rail gun shots splattered against it; it was like shooting a block of stone with a BB gun.

  “I’ve got flank,” Carol said. She ducked to the left, spear glinting in the flashing red lights, waiting for an opportunity.

  I fired the rail gun once more. The drone in my mech’s shoulder clicked as it started to reload, and my grenade launcher opened fire. An explosion rippled against the shield’s barrier, but it held. The second grenade only filled the room with smoke—thick, choking smoke that rose toward the grated catwalks overhead.

  But that was enough of a window for Carol to make a move—if she was fast.

  She was.

  Fighting with Carol was a much different experience than fighting with Tori. I pulled my finger off the grenade launcher’s trigger as she dove through the smoke and slammed into the first Sheidlbearer’s armor, speartip first. It punched through, spinning violently; I’d have to ask her if she’d gotten that thing during this phase or not. If not, I wanted a shot at that dungeon.

  When she pulled it free, the Shieldbearer collapsed, and she danced into the smoke again.

  The barrier was down. I didn’t waste any time; my last grenade bounced across the room, landed at the feet of the second guard, and detonated.

  When the dust cleared, all three were back on their feet, but two looked pretty bad.

  Then those two shimmered and vanished, and a new pair joined the last of the original three. No experience orbs appeared; they were still alive. I groaned. “Okay, we’re doing this, then?”

  “Hal, you’ve got a plan?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I pushed the mech forward, feet pumping the pedals as its bulk rushed the three intact prison guards. My fists—the mech’s fists—slammed into the first one. They were built like hammers, and they hit like the Trip-Hammer had. Armor cracked. But it didn’t break, and the guard stayed up.

  Not only that, but its baton lashed out. It rapped across the mech’s surface. I expected damage, but not what happened.

  The grenade launcher drifted off-target. Its reloaded drone stopped working, and a moment later, it went completely offline.

  “What…?” I muttered as I forced the mech to back up. “What is this?”

  Carol’s spear cracked across the offending guard’s helmet. The tip followed a moment later, and the first of the Watcher Shieldbearers went down, shimmering and vanishing. This time, it left behind a green experience orb, which Carol collected.

  I brought the mech’s rail gun around and fired three shots into the second guardsman, and he went down, too. This time, when the last one shimmered and disappeared, there wasn’t a replacement wave.

  Instead, the tower opened up again, and another bomb rolled out. It detonated, throwing rubble everywhere. Carol’s head whipped backward as something hit it. She stumbled, then caught herself with the butt of her spear. “It’ll take more than that,” she growled.

  “Carol, we need to fall back,” I said. “Something’s wrong here.”

  “You’re right,” a voice said from a nearby hallway. “Something’s real damn wrong here. Get your asses behind some cover and we’ll talk more, metal man.”

  I did a double-take as the voice spoke. Then I nodded, trying to pull myself together, and piloted the mech away from the central tower room.

  The voice had sounded almost exactly like Calvin’s.

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