“We haven’t seen anything like that at Museumtown,” I said carefully. “When did it start?”

  Most of the safe zones relied on the coolers of sandwiches, drinks, and other food. I hadn’t put much thought into it—that had mostly been Jessica’s side of governing Museumtown, with some help from Calvin—but now that Theresa Mays had mentioned it, it felt like a major weak point for everyone.

  “Just after Phase Three started,” Theresa said. She looked down at the table. “Right now, we’re getting coolers just like before, but instead of three meals a day, it’s two. We’ve been keeping it quiet—don’t ask how, you won’t like the answer—but that’s not going to last for long. I sent out scouts. They’re working on a solution, but I don’t think they’ll find one. Not one that works and lets us stay here.”

  “What’s wrong with moving?” Tori asked.

  “The Rat’s Nest is the most defensible place in Chicago,” Theresa said. “We’re not leaving unless we have to.”

  “But if you don’t have food…” I started.

  “Then we have to,” she confirmed.

  “Alright.” I stared at my hands, resting on the table. This was a problem. Theresa was right; the longer she delayed, the more people would suffer here. But she was also right that the Rat’s Nest was a perfect defensive position. And, even better—from Museumtown’s perspective—it blocked the way north. The Garden was up there, and until we were allies, they were a potential threat.

  “Alright?” Tori asked. “That’s all we’ve got is ‘Alright?’ Seems a little callous.”

  I nodded. “It is. Theresa here needs an answer, and I don’t have one. Not yet. The only one I have is one she’s not going to accept.”

  “What is it?’ Theresa asked.

  “The Rat’s Nest isn’t viable by itself. If you’ve really got three thousand, you’re the second or third-largest safe zone in Chicago. But that doesn’t mean anything. Who’s your highest-level person?”

  “Quinn is Level Sixty-Eight.”

  “Right. You’re behind. The Rat’s Nest didn’t do anything to pass either of the last two phases, either. You sent a team to the Seared Wilds Tower, but they were too late and too out-gunned. It’s been Museumtown the whole time, and now your average level’s too low to compete on your own. You have to team up with another faction if you want to survive. I’d recommend us, but you already told us you didn’t want an alliance when you didn’t help against the Fireborn Crusade.”

  Theresa’s eyes flicked up from the table to glare at me. Tori stiffened behind me, and I held up a hand. “We’re not going to try to convince you. We are going to look around and see if we can find some other solution, though—one that helps you out without tying you to us. I’m not interested in coercing you into a relationship between our safe zones. That doesn’t help anyone.”

  "But?” Theresa asked. “There’s always a ‘but.’

  “But you’d be better off with us than on your own,” Tori said before I could stop her.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. At least she wasn’t telling Theresa all about my plans to end Integration. “Tori, please. She’s not wrong, though. You would be better off making an alliance with us. If we’re going to survive this phase, we need to start working together.”

  “Look, you get us through this, we’ll open up negotiations. And this time, I mean it,” Theresa said quietly.

  “That’s all we ask—that we talk it out. Now, Tori and I need unrestricted access to this whole place. If you can’t do that, we need to know that now. And we need you to not follow us, spy on us, or anything like that.”

  Ten minutes later, Tori and I descended the long, vertical pipe at the center of the Rat’s Nest. The faint stench of sewage grew as Tori’s Levitate spell slowly lowered us down into the darkness below.

  “Hal, why don’t we just take them over? We could do it,” Tori asked.

  I sighed. She wasn’t wrong. We had the firepower. It was just… “Two things. Look, Tori, I told you about the guy who kept running for the city council and mayor’s office back in Cozad, right? He kept getting voted down, and kept trying, but it never worked. Well, he didn’t give up. He kept right on, acquiring land and selling it—as farms, because the town wouldn’t let him re-zone it—to his friends. He had this long-term plan to take over the whole town.”

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

  “And it didn’t work? Why not?”

  “Because Integration put an end to that.”

  “Ah,” Tori said. "That’s inconvenient for us.”

  “Yep.” We touched down on the ground below—or more accurately, a few inches above it. Tori didn’t let her Levitate spell go, and I was thankful for it; the Rat’s Nest folks had, in fact, been disposing of their waste down the big hole. There was water flowing down here, but even so, it was…pretty gross.

  Tori navigated us, using Push and Levitate, to a spot well upstream, then dropped us into the calf-deep water. “We’ll take off from here, too,” she said.

  I nodded in agreement. “Good call. Anyway, this guy was never going to be successful. The city folks who bought his farmland didn’t know how to manage it, and after a year or two, the land was back on the market. No one helped them out during planting or harvest, and they bought it back at well below asking price. People don’t like being taken over, and I get the feeling Theresa Mays is just like the folks back home.”

  “A stubborn old farmer lady? Like your mom?”

  “Har har.” We walked up the massive metal pipe. It was big enough for the Voltsmith’s Mecha, but I held off on it for now. I wouldn’t have room to maneuver in a confined area like this, and I didn’t know what we were looking for. The narrow viewport wouldn’t be enough to really start understanding…whatever it was we were here to find. “You’re half wrong. She’s an Andersonville native, not a farmer. But she is stubborn, and she is independent—just like my mom, yeah. That’s half the problem.”

  “And the other half?” Tori asked. She pulled ahead of me, climbing up the pipe with one hand in the water and the other dropping Gravity Wells in front of us to slow the flow. The pipe was almost brand new-looking, with only a touch of rust to mar its dull metal. Clearly, it had been part of the terraforming.

  “The other problem is that they do not trust Museumtown. I have no idea why, but we’re not on good terms with the Rat’s Nest.”

  “I blame Bobby Richards,” Tori snapped.

  “You may be right. Bobby’s not playing the same game anyone else is,” I said. “But we can fix both of these problems without Bobby being involved. We fix their food issue, without making that fix dependent on them joining us, and they’ll see we have their best interests in mind, and that we don’t want to take them over.”

  “So that’s why we’re exploring an old sewer?”

  “Correct.”

  We pushed upward for a few minutes, focusing on our footing as the rusted-out sections of pipe grew larger. After a few minutes, a waterfall dropped into the pipe; when Tori blocked it and we clambered out, we found ourselves in a wide, open cavern.

  In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the Dozen-Path Descent—the crab-filled dungeon that Tori and I had cleared during Phase One. It had even taken on the dim, flat lighting most dungeons naturally seemed to have. But unlike those caverns, this one was both natural-looking and completely formed from concrete at the same time. Also unlike a dungeon, this wasn’t one.

  “Let’s take a look around, see what we can find,” I said quietly. It didn’t matter; my voice echoed in the open space, bouncing up a half-dozen circular entrances in the ceiling. Water dripped from above, and for the first time, I noticed that it didn’t stink of sewage in here—not at all. It smelled stale, and a little earthy, but not like waste.

  “On it.” Tori set off across the wide, echoing room, disappearing into the mist along the right side of the space. I went left, using the Voltsmith’s Grasp to light my way in the fog.

  Honestly, I didn’t expect to find anything below the Rat’s Nest that’d solve their problem. It’d be too easy, and the Consortium didn’t seem interested in making things easy this phase—or any of the previous ones, for that matter. This was less about figuring out the solution to their problem and more about doing the neighborly thing and taking a look. That’s what folks did. They tried, even if it was pretty hopeless.

  The orange glow of the Voltsmith’s Grasp tossed shadows into the ever-thickening mist as I pressed on. There seemed to be only one entrance to the gigantic concrete cavern, from what I could see—and it was where we’d come in. But as I examined the walls, patterns slowly became more and more visible.

  “Tori, you over there?” I called. My voice echoed off the round ceiling and up the pipes overhead.

  “Yep!” she called back. “Working my way around!”

  “Okay. There’s something on the walls over here. Carvings or something. You seeing that where you are?”

  “No!” Tori paused. “I’ve got some sort of growth here, though!”

  “Got it! I’m coming your way!”

  As soon as Hal stopped yelling, Tori went back to moving along the wall.

  It was kind of gross. Not as bad as…some of the stuff she’d had to deal with since the apocalypse started, but…yeah, pretty gross, in an alien kind of way. She’d thought they were roots at first, honestly. But roots didn’t pulsate, and they didn’t have little tendrils sticking out of every surface, either.

  And also, roots weren’t usually bright, neon pink.

  She held out a hand, keeping herself at least an arm’s length from the stuff-lined wall. Whatever Hal was up to, she hoped that the glowing pink stuff had nothing to do with it.

  “Tori, you still good?” Hal asked. “Right arm’s on the wall?”

  “Well, not on the wall. There’s stuff growing over here,” she called back. It was hard to tell from the echoes, but she was pretty sure they were getting closer to each other. She took another step forward, then another. The space was easily football field-sized, if not stadium-sized, and she’d been going for about a minute.

  Another step, then another. The bright pink sections of wall were getting thicker, and it was getting almost too bright. Like being at a party where the hosts had light show stuff. Not that she’d never done that—that her moms or dad knew about, at least.

  One more step, and Tori stopped.

  The light was gone. Behind her, the world glowed pink. But in front of her, there was nothing but a gray fog wall. “Uh, Hal, you’re gonna want to see this!”

  “I’m on my way! Stay where you are!”

  “No problem,” Tori yelled back.

  Then she took a step away from the wall, and from the dungeon entrance taking up most of it.