We returned to the sewers, and man did it stink. When we’d first entered and were running for our lives, I noticed the smell, but, unpleasant as it was, I hadn’t had much time to care. But now the fetid, rotting stench rising up from those dark waters dominated my senses. It felt like I’d been dropped into a very used Porta-Potty tank.

  KIARA: Guys, I don’t think I can handle this smell.

  TRIX: Mind over fecal matter, guys. We’ve got to figure out what’s going on down here.

  KIARA: I think I’d rather die.

  We all forgot about the stench in the next second as a crocodile crawled out of the water and blocked the passage ahead of us. It looked like a garden-variety crocodile, with regular reptilian eyes that didn’t shoot laserbeams and no ability to stand on its hind legs.

  WILL: Kinda small isn’t it?

  As if incensed by my disregard for its predatorial instincts, the crocodile surged toward us, teeth first.

  Trix reacted fast with Bind, and Kiara hit the beast with a Magic Smack to its snout. The crocodile shook its head back and forth and then snapped its great jaws closed.

  Trix followed Kiara’s attack with flame, and the croc’s health dropped to below half.

  I pulled out Keel’s knife.

  TRIX: Don’t draw that insane knife. We need to space out how often you use it.

  I put the blade away, but thought I saw Keel grinning at me.

  Trix’s Bind spell broke and the croc bounded to us, quickly picking up speed.

  Kiara Magic Smacked it two more times and it lolled to a stop. It was carrying two credits and a bobblehead doll of itself. I was about to toss the doll into the water when Kiara stopped me.

  KIARA: Hey, I’m saving those. They’re cute.

  I shrugged and passed it over.

  KIARA: The battle pretty well tanked our psy points.

  WILL: Did you guys notice that during a battle, natural regen rates slow to a crawl?

  TRIX: Of course we noticed. We’re casters.

  I pulled up the map we’d scored off of the croc boss and shared it with the team. We scanned the maps together, counted four empty rooms, and headed to the nearest one as the most obvious destination.

  Crocs popped up every couple of minutes, which worked out almost exactly with Trix and Kiara’s regen rates. I was able to keep Keel on ice, though even inventoried I could hear his whispered calls for blood, but he didn’t give me any fighting instruction when he was tucked away. I rubbed my sore shoulder. Well, no fighting instructions from Keel might be for the best. I reminded myself that it was the hunting knife talking to me and not my own mind, I was fine, mostly. In real life, I couldn’t have confided this stuff to a shrink without facing institutionalization, especially as a street bum.

  The croc battles had lost their fear factor and became predictable. I began attacking the crocs with two switchblades drawn. I still got the multiplier effect from Stab with them, even though the blades were dinky. Coupled with whatever boost Charge added, I could sometimes knock down a croc’s health by half in one shot. Our fifteenth croc dispatched, I figured Kiara wouldn’t want one more croc bobblehead and tossed it in the sewage stream.

  KIARA: Hey! I wanted that!

  WILL: Seriously? Don’t you have enough?

  KIARA: This is the one thing I like about this game, Will. Everything in here stinks and is trying to kill me. Except these.

  Kiara pulled out two bobbleheads from her inventory, a croc and a rat, one in each hand.

  KIARA: And these are cute and fun to collect. SO STOP THROWING THEM IN THE SEWAGE.

  WILL: Okay, okay! I’m sorry. The bobbleheads are yours from now on.

  KIARA: All the bobbleheads?

  WILL: Yes, Ki.

  KIARA: Good.

  In our next fight, Kiara randomly shot a croc inside its mouth, shouting “Gargle death, you brute!” And that was an instakill. She did that five times and scored a level, moving up to a level four Pinball Wizard. Her class received four stats per level, and she dropped all four into her intelligence to boost her attack damage and increase her psy points.

  We turned a final corner and saw the entrance to the room of interest that I’d spotted on the map. I took the point position as we approached the threshold to the door leading to the dead end.

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  WILL: If there’s a boss in here, I’ll snoop it and you guys throw magic at it, that’ll be our best play.

  Trix stopped a few feet from the door.

  TRIX: Are you mansplaining the most obvious possible battle strategy to us?

  WILL: Uh, mansplaining?

  TRIX: I’m kidding, mostly. Your tough and street smart, but you’ve got two smart women behind you. Don’t underestimate our intelligence.

  WILL: Yeah, hey. I’m. Well, we’ve already seen people die in this place, and I don’t want any of us getting killed.

  Trix smiled.

  TRIX: You do make a pretty good sidekick.

  KIARA: Hey, I’m all for not getting killed. But what’s Snoop?

  WILL: I guess we should have practiced this on a croc so you can see how it works, but once I use it, you’ll have the option of seeing all of the Snooped enemy’s stats, skills, the works. We use it to get an advantage.

  KIARA: Sounds like cheating. Is that how you killed my former team so fast?

  I met eyes with Trix, searching for an answer.

  TRIX: Yeah, and I’m sorry.

  Kiara sighed.

  KIARA: It’s alright. If you Snooped Brinkley and Diego, you probably know even more about them than I did. They were into hard music and even harder drugs, and it all really freaked me out. They wanted me to use, and kept on pushing it on me. I was in another situation like that recently, and I’m honestly glad to get out of that scene.

  I wondered if they’d been using Z. Maybe that’s why Diego had made so many mistakes in our fight. He hadn’t used any of his abilities, after all.

  TRIX: Will, you ready?

  WILL: Yup. Going in.

  I pulled out my hunting knife, ran into the room with a rebel yell, expecting to see some deformed sewer boss. Instead, there was nothing in there but smooth, slate-gray walls. Trix and Kiara followed me in.

  KIARA: What were you yelling for, Will?

  WILL: I thought something would be in here. Why would there be a boss room if there’s not a boss?

  I walked around the room, wondering if the boss would suddenly appear if I stood in the right place.

  Trix and Kiara followed suit, running their hands along the walls, looking for a hidden seam but finding nothing.

  TRIX: Well, there’s a few more rooms like these. And one is nearby. Maybe only one of the room’s got something in it.

  WILL: Alright, let’s check it out.

  I’d like to say that the sewage smell got lighter or even that we just got used to it with time. We did not. The smell was starting to really get to me when we found a door to a break room that wasn’t marked on the map. We walked through a stained glass door with an image of a couch and a TV set to find a room with a couch and a TV set. The room was well ventilated, and after the door was shut and the air began circulating, the sewer smell all but disappeared. I took a deep, grateful breath and dropped onto the couch.

  TRIX: This place is swank! If we didn’t have an existential crisis on our hands, I think we’d call it a night.

  KIARA: But we are going to sit and watch TV for at least a few minutes, right?

  TRIX: Yeah. We are.

  Kiara and Trix joined me on the couch. It was brown leather, and it made the back seat of the broke-down station wagon I’d grown up in feel like a sleeping bag filled with rocks in comparison.

  The TV screen hanging on the wall opposite the couch covered most of the wall and was honestly a little too big. The only channel available was the Sports Bet Network, so we watched it.

  With the backdrop of the BioZone City skyline behind them, a news anchor named Fay Merrimore sat in a chair next to a disinterested looking Javier, who I remembered from a previous clip. Without his gauntlet but still in his New York Knicks team gear, he looked like your average passerby.

  “Javier, you’ve turned into one of the star players of Quadrant 1. You’re in the top 5, you’ve dazzled viewers with your brilliant battle tactics, and you’ve probably been more than a little lucky, but you, how do I say this, don’t exude a lot of joy in what you do. It’s almost like you don’t enjoy your time in BioZone City at all, even though you’re doing well. Can you tell us, what’s motivating you?”

  “A BioZone brute killed my Elena. I couldn’t see the killer’s face because of his mask, so to exact my vengeance, I will kill them all.”

  “Wow! Not what I was expect to hear at all! But we can work the revenge angle.”

  Javier no longer looked disinterested in the conversation. He looked annoyed, bordering on enraged.

  “What? You want me to say I enjoy killing people? I don’t. You want me to say it’s fun to never sleep and instead face mortal challenge after challenge? It’s not. You want me to move on from the death of my wife? I will never.”

  “That is just so romantic! Elena is so lucky. Oops, I mean was lucky.”

  Javier glared at Fay.

  “Javier, we’re going to switch gears here. I’ve got a surprise for you—a gift!”

  “A gift? Why?”

  “You’re the one that chose the revenge theme! Now, look here and consider showing a touch more gratitude.” Fay pointed to a screen behind them. Javier turned to see the image of a man with dead eyes that looked like he spent most of his waking life in a boxing gym. “Meet Rocky Topp. After serving a four-year prison sentence for aggravated assault, BioZone hired Rocky as an Associate Security Supervisor. And boy has he done BioZone proud. He’s made 57 arrests, performed 32 chokeholds, and has 14 confirmed on-duty kills.”

  Javier flashed an angry look at Fay. “Why are you showing me this awful man?”

  “We thought you’d like to meet the masked man that took your wife’s life.”

  Javier was silent as he looked at Rocky Topp’s image. “How do you know this was the man?”

  “BioZone’s ability to track biometrics is unrivaled. There’s no question that he’s your guy.”

  “Okay. Now what? I’m in here. He’s out there.”

  “Aha! And that’s the beauty of this game, Javier. As you’ve no doubt figured out, advancing to the next Quadrant means solving the Quadrant Stronghold puzzle. If you succeed in solving that puzzle, Javier, Elena’s killer awaits.”

  Javier turned again to the screen, quite clearly committing Topp’s face to memory. Then he looked back at Fay. “I will destroy this man. I will turn his bones to dust.”

  Fay broke into a huge beaming smile and clutched her hands together. “Hooray! That’s what we want to hear! Now, all of you at home, lock in your bets for the big fight! To give Rocky an unfair advantage, he’ll enter the game with a +15% level advantage over Javier and gets to select one piece of legendary equipment for the fight. If you somehow win, Javier, that legendary piece is yours!”

  Javier spat. “I hate this game.”

  WILL: You think Javier can beat Rocky Topp?

  KIARA: He’s certainly motivated for the fight.

  WILL: But they’re not making it fair.

  TRIX: No, but if he wins, he’ll get something that’s Best in Slot. So, the stakes make sense.

  KIARA: You think if we watch long enough they’ll reveal more hints about getting out of the quadrant?

  TRIX: I doubt it. Television has a way of only barely telling you more than what you already know. Even so, as much as I’d like to sit here and binge watch this stuff, we’ve got to move.

  Trix got up from the couch and opened the door, and the stinking smell of sewage was upon us. I wondered if everyone that got out of the first quadrant would have to face a surprise boss dredged up from their past or if that was just reserved for the top players. I also wondered about the game giving top loot to already dominant players. What would that mean for the rest of us?