Tori wanted nothing to do with Bobby Richards. Her fists balled the moment she saw him, and she followed the woman—Deb—past him without even looking at his stupid white suit. Of course he was here, doing whatever it was he did—lying, cheating, being a slimeball.

  He and Hal would hit it off. They always did. And when they did, Tori would have to put up with him again, him and his ridiculous third-person stuff, and his perfect suit that was somehow, against all the odds, still pristine. What was he even doing up here? Tori couldn’t figure it out. He shouldn’t have been able to cover that kind of ground that quickly. No one else had Runners or technicals or Explorers, and delvers weren’t that fast. It was almost three hundred miles on the interstate. What was his game?

  Then Deb cleared her throat. “Charlie’s a gardener. He’s not a record-keeper. But we’ve got a book we’ve been asking people to put their names in as they come and go. If your mom’s been through here, she might’ve filled her name in.”

  Tori summoned every ounce of her willpower and pushed the ridiculous, stupid, manipulative scumbag out of her mind. Right now, only one thing mattered—finding her mom. Not Jessica. Jessica was great, and Tori loved her like a mom. But Kate Vanderbilt wasn’t someone she loved like a mom. She was Tori’s mom—and unlike Jessica, she’d understand everything Tori had done, everything she’d had to do, to survive. It had all been just like the novels she’d read to Tori growing up. Just like the games she’d listened to Tori talk about for hours.

  They’d played pretend: what if the world went fantasy? It hadn’t turned out like this at all, but Tori knew that Mom would understand.

  She followed Deb silently, then took the red college-ruled notebook from her and started flipping through it, looking for her mom’s name.

  But the longer she searched, the less confident she got, and by the time she got to the last page, it was abundantly clear that no one had Vanderbilt as a last name. Not here.

  Her eyes teared up. She wanted to sob. But Deb was watching; she couldn’t break down. Not here. The woman already thought she was just a kid—and she wasn’t. She was one of the strongest delvers in Chicago, and she’d put her life on the line for over a month now.

  So, instead, she wiped her eyes and tried to force herself to think. And when she did, she remembered something important.

  Vanderbilt was her last name, and it was her dad’s, too. But Kate had gotten divorced. That was the whole reason Discovery World sucked so much—other than that she’d been too old for it, really.

  Her mom’s real last name, from before she and Dad had been married, was Quincy, not Vanderbilt.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked Bobby as his hand stuck out to shake mine. It wasn’t possible. The ground we’d covered was just too far. “How?”

  “Trade secret, Hal, but I figured you’d be coming this way sooner or later. After the Waypoint shut down south of you, I decided it’d be sooner, and I also decided I’d better be here when you arrived. I told you I was playing the long game, right? This is part of that long game—and before you ask, Gerry knows what I’m about. This is all investment in the future.” Bobby didn’t pull his hand back. Instead, he coughed and then lowered his eyes pointedly at it.

  I took it, and he pulled me in for a big, shoulder-clapping hug. As he did, his head came in close to my ear, and he muttered, “Don’t fuck this up for me, Hal. I’ve got investments all across the west shore, but this one and Museumtown were the best two, and right now, they’re looking a lot better than you.”

  “I got you,” I said just as quietly.

  “Good man,” he said more loudly, then clapped my shoulder again. Now, as Gerry and I both see it, you need a beacon.”

  Calvin cleared his throat and butted in. “We do. But we ain’t gonna steal one from these folks. That’d leave ‘em high and dry.”

  “Right. Let’s sit down and have a chat, go over your options, see if we can find some solutions that work for everyone.” Bobby led the way to a round, white building with a little fire burning at its center, deep inside the botanical garden. A few chairs were scattered around, along with a cheap card table. He grabbed one, flipped it around backward, and waited while the rest of us circled around the table.

  Bobby spoke first. “Cards on the table here. You all know I’m here on business, and the gamble I’m counting on paying off is getting people through Integration. I didn’t lie to you in Rosehill, Hal. I’m not done with Chicago. But I’m expanding my operations up north, away from that fire bastard. He’s playing the same game I am, but he’s got a different rulebook.”

  “Figured when I saw you here. I want to know how you covered the ground, though,” I said.

  “Like I said, trade secret.”

  Calvin put his hands on the table, eyes narrowed. “So, what’s the point here, Bobby?”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “The point is that right now, I’m investing my time in both of you, and the payoff’s all on red.”

  I closed my eyes and listened as Bobby and Calvin argued over the table. Gerry was quiet; either he didn’t have anything to add, or he wasn’t foolish enough to get involved. And as for me? I was thinking.

  Bobby was interested in adapting to the different phases of Integration—and in doing it before the phases rolled around. He wanted his ‘investments’ to get through the end of the world as intact as possible, with as many people as possible ready for whatever came next.

  My goals were similar. I wanted to figure out why the Consortium needed Integration to proceed the way it did, or whether they even did. It could be that, like I’d thought after Phase One, they’d found a solution and rolled with it, even though it was a bad one. Or my suspicion after talking to the World Engine could be right, and the Universal Order could need something from Integration that they were getting from harvesting life force.

  Either way, our goals weren’t that different—but ironically, mine had changed from getting Museumtown through Integration to changing Integration itself.

  I made a decision.

  As Calvin and Bobby tore into each other over the cheap, beat-up card table, I cleared my throat. “Bobby, I want to make a deal.”

  I had to repeat myself a few times before they quieted down long enough to hear me, but when they did, Bobby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you do? Let’s talk business, then.”

  “My deal isn’t for you, actually. It’s for Gerry,” I said. Then I dove into it.

  “I think all four of us agree on a few points. Calvin, Tori, and I can’t take your Waypoint Beacon. Even setting aside that neighbors don’t throw other neighbors to the wolves like that, the two of us can’t fight you guys. You’ve got what? Ten or eleven people over Level Seventy? That’s not beatable.”

  “Right,” Gerry said. He hesitated. “And we also can’t let your people die just because we’ve got one and you don’t. That isn’t the neighborly thing to do, either.”

  “Where are you going with this, Hal?” Calvin asked.

  “Gerry, can I take a look at your Waypoint Beacon?” I asked.

  The sniper stiffened up. I didn’t make a single move, even though Ryan was suddenly in the room, filling up the door. Between the two of them, they could definitely beat me in a fight—and I had no idea what Bobby would do, but I couldn’t count on him if it came to blows. “I don’t want to take it or damage it. I’m a Voltsmith, and the last couple of times I’ve seen the material Beacons are made out of, there was Charge involved.”

  “Alright, I’m curious.” Gerry seemed to relax, but his hand was still on his crossbow’s grip. After a moment, he continued. “Why do you need to see it?”

  “Because Bobby and I are both playing the long game now, but in different ways. He’s trying to move people through Integration—as many as he can. That’s a good goal. We should be helping each other. But it’s not the only way, and it’s not even the widest view of Integration.”

  “Oh?” Bobby asked. His eyes lit up a little, and I knew I had him, even if I hadn’t caught Gerry’s attention quite yet. “What do you propose?”

  “For this phase? Nothing. I don’t know enough yet. But for the next phase, or the one after that? I think the rules that govern Integration are Voltsmithing rules. And if they are, I think I can change them.”

  Then I stared Gerry in the eye, ignoring both Bobby and Calvin. “But if I’m going to do that, I need you to trust me so I can learn how.”

  In the end, Gerry gave in. The five of us left the little hut and moved through the sweet-smelling, flower-covered garden to a steel gate that was obviously a Tier One dungeon entrance. The whole time, Bobby and Calvin carried on a different version of their argument, which centered on the reality that we had one Waypoint Beacon and at least five communities that needed it.

  “Can’t move that many people north,” Calvin said.

  “Why not? Can’t Hal build more of those cars with a different layout? Get eight or ten people in a car, six or seven cars, and you could empty Museumtown in what? Four or five days?”

  “We’ve got three,” Calvin said. “Be easier to move people south.”

  “Not happening,” Gerry interrupted.

  I cleared my throat. “Right now, I’ve got enough Charge for about six of these things, but it’d leave me completely dry. There’s not enough time to move people from the Garden and the other safe zones up here down to there, or to go the other direction. It’s just too many people, and I don’t have the power. Even if I built bare-bones, it’d take too long.”

  “Then we’re still fucked,” Calvin said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. There’s a solution to every problem. Right now, we’re working on identifying it, but we’ll get this one fixed soon enough.”

  He went quiet, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  The dungeon-introduction message came and went, announcing it as the Toxic Garden. “Beacon’s just past the entrance,” Gerry said.

  We hurried along, and I got my second look at a Waypoint Beacon.

  It was identical to the one in the Urban Sprawl, with one massive exception. Unlike that inactive Waypoint, this one was sucking in Charge from all around it; the dungeon felt almost drained, and as I got closer, the Charge resonance peaked in the air. I’d built a single Charge Converter and put it into my inventory—not for this, but because they were useful gadgets to have. Even twenty feet from it, though, I could tell that the sheer amount of Charge would overwhelm the converter instantly, and probably without harming the Beacon at all.

  But that was fine. My goal wasn’t to sabotage the Garden’s Waypoint Beacon. It was to understand it. To apply what I’d learned in the Whole New World dungeon to it. To try to find an answer to one of the many questions that the room below the Integration Engineering exhibit had raised.

  And after a minute, I thought I might have one.

  “Alright, I’ve seen what I needed to see,” I said.

  Gerry stared at me for a moment as I walked back toward the entrance. “That’s it?”

  I nodded. “I’ve always been good with machines.”

  Then I stepped back outside—right into Tori. Her face was covered in tears, and she was dragging a woman who looked a lot like her by one hand. “I saw you go inside, and I tried to get your attention, but you must not have heard me. Hal Riley, Calvin Rollins, this is my mom. Mom, this is Hal Ri—“

  She would have said more, but the system message that popped up for all seven of us shut her up instantly.

  Waypoint Detected

  An inactive Waypoint Beacon has been detected in a dungeon within one mile of your location.

  I stared at the words. They didn’t make sense. There couldn’t be an inactive Waypoint here. We hadn’t moved at all. A bomb appeared in Ryan’s hand, and Gerry’s crossbow came up to point at me.

  For a second, no one moved.

  Then Bobby broke the silence. “Hal Riley, what’d you do?”