My stomach dropped. I’d been hoping to clear the second floor tomorrow, just before I confronted The Captain. Now, I couldn’t count on that boost. Worse, he’d almost certainly been involved; so far, the Field Museum and The Void were the only two dungeons in Chicago that anyone had pushed to the second floor.

  He’d taken The Void because he had total control of the Field Museum, and if we didn’t get back to Museumtown and deal with him, he’d finish the second dungeon and gain even more power.

  Everything was happening faster than I’d planned.

  “I’ve gotta break my promise, Tori,” I said. My Voltsmith’s supplies were already packed up, and I was halfway out the door when she made an indignant sound.

  I held up my hand. “No, I’m not arguing. I’ve been putting this off, and that’s a mistake. The Captain’s been hiring bad dudes like Eddie to do his dirty work. If he’s willing to work with them, he supports what they do, and I can’t…” I trailed off

  “You can’t let what happened to Brian happen to other people?” Tori asked.

  “Yes. I thought maybe I’d dealt with it when I killed Eddie. An eye for an eye. But his friend told me everything he knew, and instead of going straight to the source, I went to Cindy’s.”

  Tori nodded slowly, eyes down and narrowed. She looked both furious and like she was trying to hide it. “Okay. Okay, fine. Break the promise, deal with this guy, and then let’s get back out there.” She fell in behind me, and we turned east toward Lake Michigan and Museumtown.

  The whole time, I was checking my gear. I’d loaded three taser shots into the Voltsmith’s Grasp, my armor was…serviceable, I supposed, and the new Heavy Trip-Hammer felt right in my grip. It also felt like it’d pull itself free the moment I triggered both hammers at once, but I could avoid that for now by being careful. I also had the Quick-Hoof Boots; nothing had replaced the gap-closer’s utility.

  In all, I was looking pretty solid. So was Tori; at Level 31, she’d set up her gear to be completely rare equipment, with new spells, buffs to her survivability, and Perfection’s Gaze to drive in more damage the longer an enemy stood against her. She wasn’t just a solid crowd-control mage. Her Telekineticist class could cast a lot of spells quickly, and the Perfection’s Gaze buff started to add up fast.

  In half an hour, we arrived at the gates of Museumtown and slipped inside. There was no guard; no one was there to stop us.

  No one was on the streets, either.

  There’d been a guard the last few times; they wanted us to register with The Captain’s people. And while Museumtown wasn’t a bustling metropolis like downtown Chicago had been, more and more people were finding it every day. I couldn’t hold back a shiver.

  Then again, it was four in the morning.

  Tori and I hurried down the dark paths. The fort on the Field Museum’s steps was lit up with torches; we gave it a wide berth and stayed in the shadows; no one saw us, or at least no one shouted or tried to stop us.

  When we got close to Jessica’s house, Tori stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “She always had candles burning at home, but never, ever when she was asleep. She was worried about starting a fire.” She pointed at the light pouring from the door to her clinic.

  “Think she might be up helping someone?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  I pulled the Trip-Hammer out and hoisted it over my shoulder, but didn’t start the engine yet. “Stay back,” I said.

  Then I pulled the door open.

  A man—no, a teenage boy—lay on the table. He was obviously dead, but the number of wounds with not-so-fresh scabs covering his body told me he’d been attacked by monsters recently—and survived them. The fact that he was here at all meant Jessica had been working on him.

  The gaping bullet wound in his chest was fresher, though. I touched his face. It was cold.

  Who still had a working gun?

  For once, Tori had listened. She didn’t follow me in, and when I shut the door, she was still a few yards back. “Don’t go in there. It’s no one we know, but it’s…it’s not good.”

  She paled. “Got it, Hal.”

  I climbed the ladder, expecting the worst. “Jessica, you here?” I called into the trailer. When no one responded, I slowly opened the door, feeding power into the Trip-Hammer’s engine. It hummed to life, ready to go.

  Voltsmith’s Grasp: 12/15 Charge

  Then I stepped inside.

  A tornado had hit the next town over when I was fifteen, and Mom, Dad, Beth, and I had piled into Dad’s truck to help with the recovery. We’d worked all day, for three days, before we finally had the roads open and people could get back to their trailers. I spent two days sorting through family pictures, ripped teddy bears, and kids’ clothes after that. When Dad said we were done, I’d never felt more relieved—and I’d feared the day a tornado would rip through Cozad for years after.

  The destruction in Jessica’s place wasn’t that bad—not even close—but someone had been through her stuff, and they hadn’t been worried about putting it back when they were done. I ignored the clothes and shredded sleeping bag. They didn’t matter. What did matter was that Jessica was gone, and I had a pretty good idea of where she’d gone.

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  I climbed back down. “She’s not here.”

  Tori only got more pale, but her fist clenched, and the Dark Orrery flew around her hand faster. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “Calvin’s not here, either, or I’d ask him. He’s got the experience,” I said. I paused. Breathed in and out a couple of times and forced my grip on the Trip-Hammer to loosen. Continued. “If this isn’t The Captain’s work, I’d be shocked.”

  “For sure,” Tori said. “What do we do about it?”

  My mouth tasted like bile. I swallowed it down. Something had to be done. The Captain had the right idea about coming together here, but the way he was going about it was wrong. This wouldn’t fly back home. Back home, we helped people. We didn’t hire thugs to kill them. He was a problem, and I’d already solved Eddie. I could solve him, too.

  What I didn’t want to do was get Tori involved in it. She was just a kid.

  But she was also the strongest mage I knew, and one of only a couple people over Level Thirty in Museumtown.

  I crouched on the grass and motioned for her to join me. When she did, I lowered my voice. “This guy doesn’t deserve to be part of humanity. We’re going to write him out of it.”

  Tori’s eyes narrowed, and a predatory grin filled her face. “Hell yeah.”

  “And you’re going to listen to everything I say while we do it.”

  “Dammit!”

  The plan was simple. Jessica was in one of two places. Either she was inside the fortress or the Field Museum. Either way, she’d be with The Captain. I had a pretty good guess as to which one.

  And we’d know in just a minute.

  Tori and I crept closer to the concrete and sheet metal castle on the Field Museum’s marble steps. Twenty feet away, I signaled for her to stop and pulled up next to her. “Remember, the goal is the dungeon door. The fight itself doesn’t matter, but we don’t want to be followed, either.”

  “Uh-huh. Alright, let’s do this,” Tori said. I nodded, and she started casting Crush.

  I ran straight toward the sheet metal wall, pouring energy into the Trip-Hammer to start its engine. Just before I got there, Tori’s spell cast, and she followed it up with Push. The metal imploded, then flew into the room with a crash; torches and two-by-fours flew everywhere.

  Someone yelled. I revved the Trip-Hammer and slammed it into the first guard to turn toward me. He raised a spear, tattooed face monstrous in the guttering torchlight. He almost stopped my hammer, but the ratchet wheels caught, the engine screamed, and his spear’s haft shattered. A moment later, so did his shoulder with a crunch I could feel in my hands. His scream drowned out my engine’s.

  Tori was right behind me. She used Gravity Well and trapped a pair of guards, then Pushed them away as I sprinted for the stairs. I hit a door shoulder-first and crashed right through it, Trip-Hammer already up for the next fight.

  A gunshot went off.

  I was so shocked that I almost didn’t feel the impact mid-chest. Almost. Someone had a gun—not only that, but it was working. I’d thought guns didn’t work anymore. The second shot hit me a few inches from the first. I felt that one. A bone broke in my chest.

  “Hands up!” the man yelled. I caught his class—Beat Patrolman—as I rushed him. He stood at the top of the wide marble stairs, between me and a throne that looked more like a La-Z Boy. Behind that, a wall of gray fog covered the entryway to the museum.

  The gun went off again, then six more times in rapid succession as I hurried up the stairs. Not one of the ten shots hit me, though; it took me a second to realize why. Tori had dropped a Gravity Well off to the side, and it was pulling the bullets slightly. Not much, but just enough. I bared my teeth in triumph. The Trip-Hammer’s engine screamed. Then, the twin hammers fired, one after the other.

  They hit the cop with a pair of dull, wet whumps. A second later, his red experience orb appeared, along with two green items and a blue one. I motioned for Tori to grab them as I whirled to fight any guards dumb enough to follow us.

  Not one of them had, and after a moment, I lowered the Trip-Hammer. The engine chugged to a halt. “No one else?” Tori asked. “That was easy.”

  “If it was easy, it’s because they went inside, and they dragged your mom in with them,” I said. I waited for the realization to sink in; Jessica in a Tier Two dungeon was the worst-case scenario.

  Tori paled. Then she grit her teeth. “We’re going in after her, right?”

  “Right,” I said, hoping we weren’t already too late.

  As The Captain pushed Jessica through the Field Museum, she tried not to glance toward the Native American exhibits. She’d worked far too hard on them to even hint that there might be something of value there—sat down with representatives from dozens of groups to listen to their stories, led the repatriation effort for the hundreds of artifacts the museum had acquired, and then built the new exhibits with only what they’d been given.

  Those exhibits had been her attempt to document Native cultures, but more importantly, to do it in their ancestors’ own words. It was a passion project that her superiors hadn’t been keen on, but Jessica’s brother-in-law was Chippewa, and she’d forced it through. She’d also forced a Native curator through. He took over the project when it was halfway done, leaving Jessica second in command.

  Now they’d changed—just like everything in this dungeon had changed. It wasn’t the Field Museum she knew and loved. But she’d be damned if these bastards looted what was left of her favorite part of it.

  A backhand across her face stung her, and she started walking again, hurrying to avoid The Captain’s next blow. “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie—I can call you that, right?” The man didn’t wait for her to respond. “Jessie, you’re necessary here, and…optional. Yeah, optional. You’re optional out there.”

  Jessica couldn’t meet his eyes. Though she didn’t bear a single mark aside from a red cheek, they’d gotten her to talk—and she’d told them what she had to. Tori, Hal, and even the bum, Calvin. Who they were, their classes and levels, what they were planning—everything they asked for. They hadn’t even had to push hard. Jessica had never been the toughest cookie, and this time, she’d crumbled under the slightest pressure. Or at least that’s what she’d pretended.

  The Captain—Saul—said he’d leave Tori alive. Jessica knew he was lying. She also knew what she had to do to survive—and to give Tori the best chance she could.

  “You’re going to tell us everything you know about Sue, right?” Saul asked.

  “Sue? Oh shit, Sue’s the boss, isn’t she?” Tommy asked. He shivered. “Are we totally fucked?”

  “No, we’re not totally fucked. We can leave anytime we want to—the dungeon’s rules said so. So here’s what we’re going to do. You and the bitch are going to post up at the top of the stairs. The three of us are gonna fight that T-Rex. And if we get hurt, we’ll rotate through. She keeps us fighting, we kill Sue, then we kill Hal,” Saul said. “If she tries to leave, kill her. If you try to leave, I’ll kill you both.”

  Tommy nodded as Saul and the others headed up to the Reliquary of Bones’ second floor. He pulled a knife, glanced at Jessica, and swallowed. She met his eyes, and he might have nodded just slightly. She wasn’t sure.

  Jessica caught the tacky, red-brown blood splattered across Tommy. Her patient’s blood. Her stomach churned; She shivered and followed them up, Tommy holding a knife at the ready behind her. A deafening roar filled the dungeon, and she screamed.

  After sixty-five million years, Sue roamed the Earth again.

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