A few days prior to the last chapter...

  While Milo was researching how to build a Better Bear, Bork was making plans to make a better habitat. He was growing into his new, self-appointed role as head of habitat security. Everyone else both expected him to do it and was happy to let him. Bork's productivity was tied to his anxieties, and unless he knew his family was as secure as he could make them, he was nervous. Presented with unknowns, he became paranoid. Bork had always been the best person in the Alphabet at planning their escape routes and maintaining their early warning systems. Now, he wanted to do the same for the entire habitat. The chance to be in a place where they never wanted to leave, with a built-in way to escape even the worst scenario, was making him rethink everything. Downtown was too perfect to ever consider giving up.

  He didn't see the additional task of testing Wally's security and harassing hackers as work; he lived for it. It was while talking about the second part with the rest of the alphabet that he found two surprising allies. He'd just detailed a possible solution to suggest to Wally that would close a minor security flaw when someone else chimed in.

  "Naw, you don't want to fix the flaws, you want to booby trap them." Brad had made the statement, and then Butch added.

  "And then create more things that look like flaws, with different traps. If you eliminate all the flaws you know about, they'll keep looking for other ways in. Make it painful when they fail, and they might back off."

  "My partner in crime is correct. Make it hurt. You're playing defense around Wally, switch to offense. I know you guys follow some of them back to home base and do some counter hacking. That's great for getting at the corporations, but you have to stay sneaky. They know Wally can't do that. But there are ways to lay traps and use misdirection to drive people crazy."

  The Alphabet all turned to look at them, and Bork was trying to analyze what they were saying. "Can you give me an example?"

  "Sure, we were joking about this the other day. Say someone gets through a level of security, the first thing they do is look around and see if there's anything to grab. Like hitting another level of a dungeon, or going through the secret door in the mushroom cavern in Zelda, Princess of Power, that takes you straight to the Turtle Combat Arena."

  Nina's eyes got huge. "What secret door! Tell me?!! Please. I need one last Chromatic Beetle to complete my collection, and the hints about the Strawberry Delight Beetle all lead to the TCA, but I can't find it!"

  "Oh, sure. Go across the drawbridge to the castle. Hop off the bridge to the left and grab the little stone outcrop twenty feet down and ten feet over as you fall. Then swing under the bridge and onto one of the supports. You'll just barely see the outline of a door in the shadows. Knock seven times, slowly, and say, 'I am here to conquer.' It will open, and you can go inside."

  Butch rolled his eyes. "Brad was sure there was something there. I told him he was crazy. But he insisted that if there was a handhold to grab, there had to be a reason. We fell into the lava moat a combined total of thirty-seven times before we figured it out. Make sure your Rock Climbing skill is over 200, by the way."

  Nina immediately pulled out her gamepad, and Zander suggested she put her game on the big screen, so they could all watch. This proved to be entertaining for everyone except Nina, as she missed the handhold nineteen times in a row and fell to her death in the Lava Moat. Everyone helped by offering contradictory advice. She respawned, but her score was going down with each death. Determined, she raced back to the castle, killed both guards, leaped for the handhold on the side of the wall, got a grip, and swung back and forth, gaining momentum until she could fling herself under the bridge. Everyone clapped as she succeeded and found the hidden door.

  Seven knocks later, she entered the secret opening and appeared in the center of the Turtle Battle Arena. The bloodstained sands were hot under her feet, and the crowd of turtles was yelling for her death. Around her, the dozen pairs of gladiators paused their bloody battles and looked up to the fancy viewing stand where Noble Turtles gathered to watch. Emperor Trinexus the Unremarkable looked down at her from his throne and gave a thumbs down. "We have an uninvited and unshelled guest. Kill it, and make it painful. But save the parts for lunch." Despite a valiant try to escape, Nina was quickly surrounded, tied up, and placed in a soup pot. The cut scene of her death showed Trinexus ladling out soup to his hungry warriors. Her score at the top of the screen spun down by a hundred points.

  Brad and Butch did a high five as Nina glared at them. "That was not a nice thing to do."

  Butch leaned back in his chair, grinning. "Nope, sure wasn't. But it was an excellent example of showing someone what they want to see, and letting them walk into a trap. By the way, the clues are meant to do exactly that, but could also refer to the Great Salt Desert. The last beetle is wandering aimlessly somewhere in there. No bullshit this time. We could tell you, but then you wouldn't have the fun of sneaking around the Army of Dessication and dying to the Poison Cactus Dogs."

  Bork was nodding his head. "I think I understand."

  "Well, if you need help coming up with sneaky plans, I know two people who can't code for beans, but are great at setting traps in video games." Bork considered the offer. He was used to working alone, but collaboration on strategy was something he was used to. Brad held out his palm, and Bork cautiously gave him a high five.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Butch said, "You know, it would be really fun to see if we could trick people into entering the portal to the Dark Coffee Web. Sydney explained to us on our first day on the job to never do anything on her computer. They don't treat uninvited visitors nicely."

  Algernon looked curious and started typing. Zander slapped his hand. "Trust me, you don't want to go there."

  The evening turned into a large group discussion about the habitat. The Alphabet had all adapted to living in Downtown, and Belinda had no desire to live upstairs and away from the people who supported her. The habitat was the ideal place for them, and they wanted to improve it. Milo had laid the groundwork. He had mapped every conduit, electrical line, and passageway. All of the plans and schematics that had been used to build the habitat were in his files. His original security setup, the clog eaters and duct drones, gave Bork the base to build the security system of his dreams. With the engineering firm that Rhebus had built from the ground up, he had a core of experts to do the heavy lifting. With Milo taking control of the habitat, he could use all of the tools corporations had at their disposal to do the work without city inspectors getting involved until he wanted them here. He had to constantly control his urge to do everything all at once. This project would take time, and they had to make sure that they kept everything under their control.

  Belinda was adamant about keeping out any criminal organizations. She knew very well what they were capable of. The Seimovich name still meant something, and her Uncle Victor had only been gone for a short time. She used her family's reputation and her Uncle's old contacts to spread the word that the Habitat was off limits. It turned out that she had to make very little in the way of threats to be taken seriously. Footage of Milo's fight with a full squad of armed mercenaries and his fight with the cyborg, Roger, had been passed throughout the world of organized crime and the corporations they dealt with. Professional courtesy kept some of the old families from challenging her in the family's new headquarters, and the newer and more aggressive groups saw no profit in challenging someone who already had the edge in cyborg assassins. An attitude of 'wait and see' was keeping the habitat peaceful for now. She was slowly expanding her teams of security guards who were doubling as public service agents. She needed several hundred more, and Manpower was spending a lot of money to aggressively search for candidates, vet them thoroughly, and then train them. Belinda didn't care; she had money to burn.

  Manpower was rapidly expanding to care for Contract Workers in the game, but Belinda and Eric had other plans as well. They were going to need hundreds of specialized contractors to work in the Habitat. Eric was creating a hiring service to achieve that. There was little reason to duplicate efforts in this area, and Manpower could do hiring for Rhebus and Clawmaster as well as the Habitat. Ever since Rhebus had moved in, much of the habitat had been under construction, first in their area, then expanding all over as the Alphabet started thinking about the Habitat as one large interconnected biome. Electrical problems in D could affect H or G. Clogs could affect everyone.

  As they fixed the basics and supplied abandoned areas with water, power, air, and sewage, they began to focus on making things better for the people living there. The promises made decades ago were starting to be fulfilled. There was no reason larger families couldn't be given larger living areas. Milo could ignore all the guidelines the government had for 'optimal housing practices.' Those were set up when they believed that the Habitats would be desirable places to live and work. They never had been, and gotten worse over time. The vast, empty areas were slowly being opened up, with space set aside to improve the quality of life.

  Kenji and Old James had long ago brought order to the hydroponics and mushroom farms in Downtown. James had found huge storage areas full of enough hydroponic units to feed a thousand people. Their original plan had been to build a new farm in Downtown and take the produce uptop. Nina and Algernon convinced everyone of a different idea and

  brought Kenji and James their plans for building the farm in an unused part of Section G that was supposed to be a large sports facility in the original plan. It took up four acres of space on three floors. The four of them worked on the new idea for two days, then presented it for everyone else to see.

  Mama and Big Butch liked the idea immediately, but added their own input. "If you just build it, plant it, and toss pumpkins at people when they're ripe, you've just replaced the Food Chutes. Better stuff, yes, but it could be a lot more. Get more people involved. Have them haul mulch, plant seedlings, and set up the farms. Teach them how to do things. Then you can move on to the next one. I'd have loved to be able to garden and work on something like this while I was raising these rugrats." Plans were adjusted again; less work would be done by contractors, and more by the residents.

  Milo showed up, hours later, looking better than he had in a month. He'd grabbed food from the kitchen and sat down in a comfortable spot, munching and listening to their plans.

  When there was a pause in the conversation, Belinda nudged him, "You have any thoughts in that big brain of yours?"

  "As a matter of fact, I've been thinking about mushroom farming a lot lately." Kenji and Old James were immediately interested. By morning, they had things planned out to convert four unused floors in one of the sections to Fungiculture. Milo ate his fill, helped with the plans, and then snuck back to his pod. He had a bear to take care of.