The crowd went wild.

  Bobby started laughing. “This is the most Bears thing ever. Fourth down, at the fifty-yard line, and they go for it? Unbelievable.”

  I readied the Trip-Hammer and tried to clear my head a little more as Da Bears got themselves back into a formation at their forty-five. Now that they were Elite and Level Thirty-Nine, the fight had changed; I didn’t care about extracting little bits of information from the announcers. I just wanted to survive and win.

  “It’s looking desperate for Da Bears! Can they pull off an upset here, or will the delvers win this contest?” the play-by-play announcer shouted. “They’re lining up in a tight formation. Could this be a blitz?”

  Only the announcer’s words saved me. As one, the Bear Knights charged forward; they’d been slow up until this point. Now, with their clocks winding down, they put on huge bursts of extra speed. I barely got the Trip-Hammer up in time to block the first swing, though I fired the hammers and snapped the longsword in half a moment later.

  Bobby broke ranks with me almost immediately, punching and marking the weak points in half the knights’ armor. I tried to follow up, but the whirlwind of blades, hammers, and shouting cut me off from them. My arms and legs bled from a dozen wounds.

  I slammed the hammers down on a fallen knight. This time, as gore exploded from the impact wounds, the knight shimmered and faded away, leaving behind one of the orbs Tori thought were from a video game.

  I grabbed it. It wasn’t enough to level, but I figured Bobby could get his own—and this boss wasn’t behaving like any other boss I’d seen. We needed to handle the experience ourselves, not get it as a reward at the end. Maybe it was because it was a squad? I couldn’t tell.

  All I could do was keep fighting. Knights fell one after another as the Trip-Hammer blew past glowing orange steel. Bobby punched a knight unconscious, then stomped on its helmet until it died; his suit was stained brown, green, and red from the blood and mud and grass.

  We’d churned the whole field into a soup by the time the last Bear Knight fell.

  Boss Defeated: Da Bears

  Area Message: The Field of Warriors’ second floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first floor will reset.

  Free Exit active.

  Safe Passage Active.

  Bobby scooped up the loot—a pair of blue pillars—and headed for center field, where I met him. I raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head. “They’re both alright. I’ll show you after we’re done here,” he said.

  “And there go Da Bears!” the play-by-play announcer shouted. “The Consortium has to be happy with this performance. Maybe it’ll keep the other System organizations off their backs for a while.”

  “Oh yes, they’re under some pressure. It’s tough to be the top dog in a project as important to the galaxy as System integration. Everyone’s gunning for you all the time—a feeling I’m sure Bobby Richards and Hal Riley are going to grow all too familiar with soon!” the color commentator said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bobby asked.

  I shrugged. We’d learned a lot about the Consortium—that while this wasn’t their fault, they were profiting from it, and that they were in competition with other organizations doing the same thing with the System across the galaxy. But I didn’t know enough about the situation to make any conclusions yet. Hopefully, when Jessica finished attuning to the key, we could learn more—and fill in some of the gaps in what we already knew.

  “Let’s just focus on getting through this,” I said, pointing to the door we’d come in through. It was open. “Unless you want to leave?”

  “And miss out on the second floor? Bobby Richards ain’t a coward, Hal.”

  I sighed. I could take or leave the next fight; neither of us had leveled, and both Bobby and I had several wounds. None of them were serious individually, but if the second-floor boss was anything like the Queen Tyrant, we’d be in trouble. “You’re sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Okay. Hopefully, it’s not as bad as the one we saw in the Field Museum. Big skeletal T-Rex, an absolute monster. I couldn’t even scratch the thing.”

  “Don’t stress. It’s probably the Bears mascot or something,” Bobby said, smiling widely. His white teeth clashed with the filth covering his suit, and I couldn’t help but shake my head as the door slid shut.

  Tier Two Dungeon: The Field of Warriors (Floor Two)

  Objective: Defeat Ursa Prime (0/1)

  Neither of us moved from mid-field even as the earth shook and cracked below our feet. As a kid, I’d seen a Batman movie where Bane blew up the football field. It felt a lot like I imagined that would have, but it wasn’t a series of explosions; instead, the whole field around us rippled and shifted, then fell away.

  Terraforming complete.

  Free Exit is no longer in effect.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  We stood in the center of the Chicago Bears ‘C’ as new ground rose up around us; we hadn’t gone up or down to the next floor; it had come to us. This one came with fresh arena walls; where the sidelines and end zones had been, huge plates of steel rose twenty feet into the air before turning to clear, thick plastic. We were trapped in a gigantic dome with no way in or out.

  "The Consortium rated Earth a Death World for a reason! Today, we’re going to find out just what that reason was—and how Homo Sapiens got as far as they did! Our challengers will face off against the strongest land apex predator on the planet. Will they triumph, or will they fall? Only one way to find out!” the color commentator shouted.

  The crowd absolutely lost their minds, drowning out even the announcer as a crack appeared in the far wall, right where Da Bears had come out. It ran up almost to the clear plastic, a single, perfectly vertical split that grew and grew. I made sure the Trip-Hammer was idling, fired it once to double-check the hammers’ positions, and pulled up the Voltsmith’s Grasp’s Charge level.

  Stored Charge 10/15

  One shot. Two if the fight dragged on. It’d have to be enough.

  A massive white paw shot from the split, shoving it further open; the steel creaked as a second armored paw shoved the other way faster than the motors could keep up. Steel started parting with a horrific shriek, and the only thing louder than that was the announcer.

  “It’s Ursa Priiiiiiiiime!”

  Ursa Prime was a bear. A white polar bear. I knew polar bears were big—we didn’t have any bears in Cozad—but I knew they didn’t get this big. The damn thing was a good fifteen feet long—maybe closer to eighteen. It dwarfed Bobby. It dwarfed me.

  It was probably bigger than any of the cars I’d repaired at Cindy’s. And it was covered from claw to snout in thick, silvery steel armor—not automotive body steel, but the industrial kind.

  Ursa Prime: Level Forty-Eight Dungeon Boss

  Current Difficulty: Extreme

  Ursus americanus. Helarctos malayanus. Ursus maritimus. The hell-world Earth has many apex predators, but the most mighty is Ursa Prime.

  Armored - This boss takes reduced damage from weapons designed to cut.

  Insatiable - This boss will feed on any viable food sources within its range.

  Juggernaut - This boss will continue fighting after receiving lethal damage.

  I stared down the hulking polar bear. My first thought was that we were screwed; it didn’t need weapons; its whole body was one, and one bad move on our part would mean our deaths. It was probably faster than me, and definitely tougher than Bobby.

  My second thought was that Ursa Prime was the perfect Tier Two boss to test ourselves on—similar to the Queen Tyrant, but more beatable.

  There wasn’t time for a third.

  Ursa Prime roared. A shiver rippled down my spine, and I couldn’t move for a moment. The bear closed the gap like lightning, paw swinging out, and I backpedaled as soon as possible. The rail gun fired the thick bolt I’d loaded. It punched into the boss’s head, piercing the steel armor only to bounce away, scraping skin and fur from its skull.

  The bone held firm.

  Stored Charge 4/15

  I didn’t. As the massive polar bear surged toward me, I ran right at it, then dove to the side. Its left paw passed through the air over my head, and I fired the Trip-Hammer. It caught its front leg. A loud cracking sound echoed off the stands, followed by a roar from the audience.

  “Hal lands the first blow! But Ursa Prime’s armor took the hit like an absolute champion. And here goes Bobby!” the announcer yelled.

  I rolled as a paw slammed into the ground, tearing foot-deep gashes in the turf. The bear roared and spun. I pushed myself to my feet as a half-dozen orange circles appeared across its heavy flank armor—right where Bobby had unleashed a series of punches. The armor rang like a church bell. He danced away from Ursa Prime’s retaliatory swipe.

  The bear followed him, roaring and growling. As it went, I saw how the fight would go. Ursa Prime was massive, powerful, fast, and strong. It didn’t have any obvious weaknesses, but I thought I saw one that was a little more hidden. Just to be sure, I swung the Trip-Hammer right at the weakspot-marked armor.

  If I thought Bobby’s fists had rang it like a bell, this hit was more like Notre Dame’s whole belltower going off at once. The sound drowned out the shouting, screaming fans and the announcer for a second. When it stopped, the arena was perfectly silent.

  A single crack ran down the length of the bear’s armor—not big enough to exploit. I winced, but I’d been expecting it.

  Stored Charge 5/15

  I also expected what happened next.

  The bear whirled, roaring and lashing out with its gigantic, slobber-coated maw. The steel plates covering its mouth opened like a mechanical bear’s as the flesh-and-blood monster inside them chomped down on the Trip-Hammer I held out like a pike against a charging knight.

  I was right. In fact, I was more than right.

  I triggered the hammers, and the bear’s jaw seemed to explode in slow motion as the sledges ripped through the space between its mandible and upper teeth. It roared again, this time in pure agony. Its eyes locked on me. It raised itself up on its hind legs, a towering mass of bear and metal.

  “Bobby, hit it!” I yelled.

  He hit it as the bear’s weight crashed down over me. I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.

  It never came.

  Instead, the bear’s paws punched through the ground close enough that a claw ripped through my bicep. It whirled, back paws tossing me aside and opening five new cuts across my side and back, and barreled after Bobby.

  With a second’s reprieve, I breathed in, held it, and breathed out. Then I pushed myself to my feet, revved the Trip-Hammer, and pushed my aching body into a run as I raced to rejoin the fight.

  Calvin wasn’t the only one hunting for Zane and Carol.

  Tommy still hadn’t gotten over his confrontation with the Voltsmith. The man scared him more than The Captain ever had—and it wasn’t just that he’d killed Eddie. The president—well, former president—of the Raging Bulls had been outmatched fair and square. It wasn’t the first time Tommy had experienced a violent change in leadership.

  It was Hal’s eyes. The intensity that melted away into shifting, back-and-forth jerks of the eye as he took in everything Tommy could tell him. And more than that, it was the unthreatening way he’d given instructions after he knew the situation. He knew exactly which levers to pull, which buttons to push, to get The Captain isolated. Like the whole organization the dirty cop had built was just a machine to be manipulated.

  It scared him. Especially the part where Hal just assumed Tommy would roll with his plan.

  Because Tommy had, and everything was working out well for him. Now, all he had to do was find two kids in the third biggest city in the United States, convince them to come with him, or bring Hal, Tori, or Calvin to them. How hard could that possibly be?

  Pretty fucking hard, it turned out.

  He was closing in on someone, though. A campfire, and two spots in the dust and dirt that had covered Chicago where two people had slept. Two smaller people. They’d picked a tower with a partially collapsed side, giving them access to the third floor up; if he hadn’t seen their footprints in the mud, he wouldn’t have gotten this close.

  Tommy groaned, turned, and icicled a bat-like monster to death. Then he kept searching until he found where the twins had left their temporary campsite this morning. They were heading for the United Center—he’d seen the Bulls play there once, and there was no way it wasn’t at least a Tier Two Dungeon.

  Hal was going to owe him for this shit.

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