The Chariot stomped down the unfinished dungeon passageway. Every step shook the floor, and every hammer swing sent scaffolding toppling to the ground. I didn’t care. For the first time in my career as a Voltsmith, I’d put all my efforts into a single weapon. All my Charge drove the Chariot forward, and all my anger.

  Taven Liu didn’t need this beacon. If he had, he’d have brought his whole army north, punched through Chicago, and ripped through the Garden on his way to it. Or he’d have tried to. I doubted he could beat the Green Bay people in an open fight, even with his army. But he hadn’t brought his army. He hadn’t brought anything but himself.

  There was only one logical explanation, and I’d been struggling with it as I built the Chariot. The Fireborn Crusader didn’t need this beacon. He was just here to keep it out of my hands.

  He’d been busy in the last few hours, too. Scorch marks covered the walls where his summoned snakes had fought monsters, and he’d gotten a new weapon, too. It was a spear, judging by the puncture marks and melted metal walls where he’d gotten involved in the fighting himself. It wasn’t like he was hard to track. He’d left the signs of his passing everywhere he’d gone.

  “He’s denying us,” Tori said. Before I could ask, she pointed at the burn marks. “He’s trying to clear the dungeon, get a full clear, and deny us any experience while he gets stronger himself. Then he’ll be back for us.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But he’s missing something about this dungeon. It’s not finished. Look.”

  I stared out of my window as I slowly pivoted the Chariot and raised the hammer to point. Up ahead, a single Dungeon Technician disappeared, and a brand-new monster showed up in its place. “Respawns,” Tori said.

  I nodded. Then I put a single rail gun shot into the Maze Watcher’s head, right through the ceramic armor and beak-shaped face. It died, and a glowing orb of green experience appeared where the monster’s body had vanished. “Tori, take that.”

  “On it,” she said. She sprinted ahead as the Chariot stompted along, and I made a mental count of my rail gun ammunition. Plenty left. I’d only fired a dozen shots so far.

  And there were plenty of respawns to kill, too. We were hunting Taven Liu, and until we found him, nothing else mattered. But while we were searching, we could definitely get stronger. Tori needed the levels. I couldn’t do much with more Charge at this point, but every level was one step closer to her being able to compete with the Fireborn Crusader.

  I stomped through a door and into a half-finished room that looked like a swamp. Flowers bloomed all across the surface of the murky water, and the smell of rotting wood filled my cockpit, seeping in through the cracks in the armor.

  A Hand stood on its four fingers and thumb, knuckle-deep in the water. Its ceramic plate and purple energy were muted in the misty room, and it paced slowly across the room. I aimed the rail gun. Then I stopped. I’d spent a dozen shots, and while I had plenty of ammunition, I didn’t have an unlimited supply. “Tori, lock it down.”

  The Gravity Well hit less than a second later, and Tori followed it up with a second cast as my Chariot broke into a slow, clomping sprint. I pushed every ounce of Charge I had into its legs, closing the gap and ignoring the water that squeezed into the machine’s joints. Then, all of a sudden, I was in range of the Level Seventy-Eight Biting Hand.

  I slammed the Voltsmith’s Grasp into a different set of finger-sized sockets, and energy drained from the machine’s legs instantly. It surged into the actuators and pistons that powered the two arms. The hammer snapped across, then down on the follow-up swing, even as the Hand’s fingertips opened in a half-dozen jaws, with the last one in the center of its palm.

  It leaped over the first blow, but the second caught it in the central maw. Ceramic teeth shattered. The monster flew across the room and crumpled against the wall. I redirected power again and pushed the Chariot forward.

  The hammer slapped across the recovering monster as my arm flicked in and out of sockets, redirecting fluid and electrical Charge through the Chariot. In combat like this, it felt less like being at the controls of a battle mech and more like a video of a woman directing telephone calls on an ancient switchboard. Teeth punched through the machine’s armor, and I spun the Chariot to throw the Hand off of it. It felt awkward; I’d need to keep practicing. But, as the hammer crashed down on the monster and turned its armor to paste, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  I was competing at both range and melee. I was ready for Taven Liu. Or at least, I would be when we found him.

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  After my fourth fight, I stopped the Chariot. We stood outside of a door—but unlike the other unfinished gateways and doors in the Hand That Feeds’s second floor, this one was blocked by a fog wall. “Boss fight,” Tori said quietly.

  I nodded as I opened the Chariot’s hatch. “I need to do some tune-up work. Armor’s a little weak on the sides, and I don’t have any side vision.”

  “Sure,” Tori said. She sat down and closed her eyes. “He’s not in there anyway.”

  “I know.” I started pulling stuff out of my inventory—extra steel plates, a few bike parts, and an entire SUV door. My inventory could carry a ton of weight—literally 1.23781 metric tons, in fact—but the Chariot had used almost my entire reserve of parts. I was honestly shocked that it ran as well as it did.

  “So why are we here, then?” Tori asked.

  I shrugged. “Two reasons. First, we know he hasn’t pushed to the third floor, and we know we’ll have a warning if he takes the Beacon.” That was true—we’d gotten system messages the moment Bobby Richards started taking control of it, and again when he finished.

  “And second, we want to force Taven Liu’s hand. If we take out the boss, there’s a good chance that we’ll get a floor-clear message here. Then we’ll double back and catch him between us and Bobby when he tries for the beacon.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Tori asked. Her eyes blazed, but there was something else under them. As I worked to install the Explorer’s mirror where I could see it on the Chariot, I pondered her.

  Then, after I’d finished with that but before I started up-armoring the cockpit’s defenses, I leaned back against the mecha’s body. “You going to kill him?”

  “Yes,” Tori said quietly. I didn’t say anything, and she kept going. “I’ve killed people before. I can do it.”

  “Sure.” A pause. Not much—a second or two. “What if he gives up?”

  It was Tori’s turn to hesitate. “I…don’t know.”

  “I do. You’ll kill him anyway. He has to die because—“

  “Because Zane’s under his control, and Carol won’t ever forgive you. She isn’t forgiving me right now, either. She says I should have kept Zane with me, and if I had, he’d still be fine. I don’t want to be a murderer, but I need Carol to like me, Hal. I need it.” Tori took a deep breath. “So, yeah, I’ll kill him. I won’t like it, but—“

  “I don’t think the Fireborn Crusader will surrender,” I said.

  “No?”

  “No. I’ve seen people like him. There was this guy who came to Cozad six years ago. He moved into a farm outside of town, stopped farming it, and started trying to subdivide all the land to build houses. Real estate development. When the town told him he couldn’t, he got into politics and ran for city council and mayor, one year after another. He lost both times. Then he lost three years ago, and last year. If he’s still alive, he’s probably trying to figure out how to sell his land while Mom and Dad drag his butt through Integration.” I stopped to weld a plate into place, then kept going. “Taven Liu thinks his way is the only way, and that the universe will bend to him. He’s not interested in other solutions. His way or the highway.”

  “So he won’t give up, then?”

  I attached the second piece of armor, right over the teeth marks the Hand had driven into my defenses. Then I shook my head. “No. Let’s go kill a boss.”

  Taven Liu had never been to Green Bay before.

  He never would have come here, except that in the aftermath of the Battle of Whiting, his uncle had seen a vision. In that vision, he’d seen two things.

  First, the Voltsmith had lived. The Crusade’s newest member hadn’t succeeded in letting the man die, and a fresh mind like Zane’s was too difficult to bend into killing his allies immediately. That kind of thing took time. So, the Voltsmith was still alive. Inconvenient. Not necessarily problematic, though—Museumtown had no beacon, and Uncle Chen had only seen a Waypoint Beacon in Whiting. There was no other unclaimed one to the north or west. Certainly not one that Museumtown could get a hold of.

  The Voltsmith being alive was only a problem because of the second vision Uncle Chen had told him about.

  There would be another Waypoint Beacon. It would be in Green Bay. And the Voltsmith would claim it.

  Taven Liu couldn’t accept that, so in the aftermath of the battle, he’d deployed his Crusade south and east to find any other beacons in that area. He himself had headed north. He’d moved quickly, reached Green Bay after a couple of days of travel, and waited.

  When the Waypoint Beacon activated, he entered the dungeon just after the Voltsmith. He’d followed the three delvers through the maze of half-finished rooms, ready to attack, kill Hal Riley, and end Museumtown’s chances of breaking the Crusade. After all, he had a role to play. The Fireborn Crusader wasn’t cruel for no reason. His people would survive. They’d hate him for what he’d done, but they’d come out on the other side of Integration, ready to take their place in the universe.

  And he would see them succeed.

  Then, the dungeon warped and shuddered under him, and a stairway appeared—along with a message. A message he’d never seen before, but one that bothered him and steeled his resolve at the same time.

  Dungeon Floor Compromised

  The first floor of The Hand That Feeds is compromised. Emergency stairwells activated. Evacuate immediately.

  Time Until Overload: 4:26

  4:25

  4:24

  What followed was a frantic climb to the second floor, an even more frantic fight against Hal and his allies, and a bitter realization.

  Hal was a threat. His continued existence past the end of this phase wouldn’t just empower Museumtown to keep resisting his Crusade. He’d broken a beacon, and now he was breaking dungeons. He had to be stopped here, in the name of the Crusade.

  Taven Liu couldn’t claim the beacon. Not while the three of them were alive. He’d have to kill not only the Voltsmith, but Bobby Richards as well. That would damn a half-dozen safe zones over the next few Phases, but it would have to be done.

  And he’d have to kill the girl, too.