Calvin would never admit it out loud, but as the System messages rolled in, he missed his hill over Whiting.

  He missed being able to see what was happening, and being able to react to it. On the hill, overseeing the battle, he’d been able to make choices. Every one of those choices had gotten people hurt and killed, but he’d been able to do something.

  Being a general was something Calvin never wanted to do again. But he’d grown a lot in the last month, and he couldn’t be a bystander. It was torture. He sat in a round hut inside the Garden, sipping tea from a porcelain cup as Gerry and a man covered in dirt and smelling like mud talked outside. As they did, he overheard just enough to know that the Garden was getting ready for war—and that, thank God, it’d be a defensive one. That meant Museumtown wouldn’t be the target.

  Then his focus snapped back as another System message popped up.

  Waypoint Contested

  An activated Waypoint Beacon within this dungeon has been contested.

  They were at it again, and all Calvin Rollins could do was sip his tea, watch the light-show over the Garden change from orange to purple and then back to orange, and hope Hal and Tori would pull through.

  He’d give anything to be able to watch. But he was stuck. And he hated it.

  Waypoint Contested

  An activated Waypoint Beacon within this dungeon has been contested.

  The message popped up when we were halfway through killing The Well.

  It was a strange boss. The basic concept was simple; it was a pit in the center of the room, lined with stone and almost bottomless. Things came out, and we killed them. The more stuff we killed, the fewer things came out, but the stronger they were.

  Tori couldn’t stop laughing the whole time as I alternated powering the hammer and the rail gun, and she wouldn’t tell me what was so funny about me, in my mech suit, standing in front of a pit with monsters swarming out of it and an ominous grinding sound echoing down below.

  All I knew was that, every time the rail gun stopped firing, Tori yelled “Reloaaaaad!” at the top of her lungs, then kept right on laughing.

  But when the message popped up, she got serious. Deadly serious. The spells started firing faster, and I laid off the rail gun altogether. I didn’t need it anymore; the tide of tentacle-like monsters with blazing red eyes that had been all but overrunning me stemmed quickly as Tori focused on stopping them in their tracks, and the fight against The Well changed from an almost surreal experience with a laughing fifteen-year-old to a merciless, brutal one, accompanied by a ruthless killing machine in a fifteen-year-old’s body.

  It occurred to me, briefly, that Tori hadn’t always been like this. Integration had changed her. It had changed me, too.

  Then I was too focused on keeping up with her to think about anything except operating the Chariot’s messy, jury-rigged controls.

  Boss Defeated: The Well

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  Area Message: The Hand That Feeds’s third floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first and second floors will reset.

  Level Up! 74 to 75

  When the last monster, a drill-shaped hunk of stone almost as big as the room, finally died, Tori didn’t even bother scooping up the loot. I grabbed it without looking, too. If the Waypoint Beacon was contested, it meant only one thing. Bobby and Taven Liu were fighting. We needed to get moving.

  Tori sprinted down the half-finished dungeon halls. The finished part around the Well’s room had been an underground city of some type, with glowing off-blue lights behind open steel doors. I didn’t understand the reference—it either wasn’t from Earth or, more likely, wasn’t something I’d seen before. But either way, the hallways were wide enough for the Chariot to navigate them with only a few hang-ups, and I followed the girl at a more sedate-feeling jog.

  Stone dust filled the air at first, but by the time we reached the sections of the second floor that were mostly scaffolding, it had cleared out. Our path back was pretty easy to follow; my mecha’s strides had destroyed most of the scaffolding, so we only had to stay on the ruined, broken paths.

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  We heard Bobby and Taven fighting before we saw them. The gong-like impacts of Bobby’s punches on the Fireborn Crusader’s armor echoed down the hallway, and Tori put on even more speed. I followed, directing Charge to the rail gun mounted on the mecha’s roof-like shoulders.

  This was it.

  I had to kill him. It was the only way to ensure that the Fireborn Crusade would stop being a threat to Museumtown. It’d also condemn most of the people he’d enthralled, but they had a few days to find a beacon of their own—or to join a safe zone that had one. I didn’t know if Museumtown would accept any refugees from Gary, Indiana, and in the moment, I didn’t care.

  What happened to them was secondary. We’d solve it later. Right now, the key to the whole puzzle was the Fireborn Crusader.

  We rounded the corner.

  Bobby punched Taven. The Fireborn Crusader went smoke form and vanished into the sky. He carried a long spear; Bobby’s white suit was covered in blood from a half-dozen grazing blows. As the Crusader reappeared, Bobby vanished down the hall, giving up the Waypoint Beacon room.

  But not for long.

  Tori dropped a Pull on the Crusader, then a second one to slam him into the ground. I fired the heavy-duty rail gun, and three massive holes ripped into the Crusader’s armor. He jerked back, then flinched as the wounds glowed a bright orange. The rail gun started reloading, and I rushed forward with the hammer. It only had two moves—the sweep and the slam—and I alternated between them. Taven’s spear flashed out. How he was still standing, I didn’t know; I’d ripped massive gouges in his armor, and my shots had to have obliterated the body behind it.

  Taven was still moving, though. It took me a second to realize why, but when I looked at his nameplate, it all made sense.

  Taven Liu: Level Ninety (Rank One)

  Class: Fireborn Crusader

  He was gigantically powerful compared to me. He outgunned Bobby, and he definitely outgunned Tori’s Level Seventy-Seven. The three of us together had a chance—but only if we got lucky.

  The other problem was less clear, but I figured it out after a moment. “He’s holding stat points!” I yelled.

  “Yeah, I figured that out after the third time I killed him,” Bobby said.

  That didn’t make any sense, unless…how many points was he holding? A handful made sense; I’d been walking around with four for a while. But if he’d already used at least four points in Body, the Fireborn Crusader had been limiting himself for a while. Why would he do that? I swung the hammer again, then backed up as the long spear punched into the Chariot’s armor. Tori covered me with a Crush that rippled across Taven’s armor, but didn’t seem to make a real impact.

  He turned and rushed Bobby. His spear whipped out almost faster than I could follow. Tori Pushed him, but the spear still sliced across Bobby’s face, leaving a fifth bleeding wound. “Fuck!” Tori cursed.

  I bit my tongue. Now wasn’t the time. Instead, I fired the rail gun again—this time just once. The impact slammed into Taven’s shoulder, and for a moment, his arm looked like it was hanging on by just a flap of skin. Then it, too, glowed orange. It wasn’t Charge. It was fire.

  Another shot, then another. If Taven Liu wanted to play the invincible tank, I’d gladly—

  The spear slammed into my cockpit. It punched through the steel subway-train armor and jammed into my arm—the metal arm, not the flesh one. I grabbed the shaft right where steel met wood and pulled as hard as I could. The metal bent. The spearhead twisted, and part of the Voltsmith’s Charge popped as I wrenched on the haft. I didn’t care. All I cared about was trapping the weapon.

  The massive hammer swept from one side to the other. It slammed into Taven’s chest. Armor buckled. The Fireborn Crusader’s skin glowed a molten orange through the ruined plate-mail.

  He laughed as his armor peeled off, straps burning around him, and I saw the Fireborn Crusader for the first time.

  We couldn’t kill him.

  Whatever Taven Liu was doing, the Fireborn Crusader class was way beyond just mind influence and fire snakes. Maybe a fully-powered Erika could have taken him out, but without an anti-mage, and with him feeding himself Body points every time we got close to killing him, the burning man in front of me was simply stronger than us. We had to beat him who knew how many times, and he only had to win once.

  “I see you,” Taven said. He stared at me through the armored bulk of the Chariot. “You think you understand. You don’t. I simply have more skills than you, and better ones. You can’t win.”

  That only confirmed what I already thought; he’d been doing something with his class—burning Body points, maybe? I didn’t understand how that worked.

  Then Bobby hit him from behind. His fists slammed into the flames rippling along Taven’s back, and I fired the rail gun again. Tori’s magic forced Taven into a ball when he tried to smoke form, and for a moment, we had him pinned down.

  Fire exploded outward. The Chariot wobbled from the detonation, and Bobby went flying, suit ablaze. Tori managed to dodge it by Levitating, but the spell let the Fireborn Crusader get free. Bobby rushed in. His suit was still burning. He punched once. Twice. Three times. Weak spots rippled across the burning Crusader’s stomach and chest, then vanished as the fire grew more and more intense.

  But I’d seen something.

  Something I wanted to kick myself for not seeing earlier.

  Bobby’s class. Resonator.

  And the result of his attacks’ impact on Taven Liu’s armor and body.

  I stepped back. The Chariot creaked as I did. It was nearing the limit of its hodge-podge build, but that was okay. One step back. Another. I needed space. Space was time, and time was time to think, and to reason my way through this. Through the resonance that had erupted out from the blows, not just physically and through sound, but as tiny bursts of Charge. “Tori,” I said.

  “What?” Tori looked annoyed. She hung ten feet in the air, staring down at me.

  “Can you two hold him off?”

  “Sure,” she said. She started casting, and Bobby made a move. His fist rocketed out toward Taven. The Crusader’s hand flashed into the way, grabbing Bobby and slamming him into the ground. The other hand reached out.

  “Tori!” I yelled. There wasn’t time to do anything else. I couldn’t aim and fire, couldn’t close the gap, couldn’t do anything. All I could do was hope the Telekineticist was fast enough to save Bobby Richards—because if she wasn’t, none of what I was working on would matter.

  It was up to her. I had to focus on Bobby—and on resonance, frequencies, and harmony. There was a solution to Taven Liu in there somewhere. I just had to find it.