> The stripes became popular with Clothes-Lovers in the area near Fluffy’s client at the end of the third duodenary, but were still vanishingly rare worldwide. The fourth Challenge introduced them to several other areas of the world, most notably the island nation to the east of the largest landmass. They spread quickly across the island through the next week, and over 1/144 Clothes-Lovers were wearing the stripes by the start of the fifth Challenge. Numbers continued to increase during the most recent duodenary, although more gradually.

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

Only my children were willing to come within arm’s length of me. The passage wasn’t broad enough for us to easily walk three abreast, so Gavin was lounging atop Cassie’s cloudcar and stretching his tail forward to grab me, probably so he could monitor my physical state. Micah walked on my left side, holding my intact hand. This let me keep my shield ready and kept me from going for my sword or gun. I could still attack with my Telekinetic objects, but at Pointy’s insistence, I’d put everything with a blade away, limiting myself to nets and iron plates.

Realizing I had been drugged into some kind of rage didn’t seem to have helped me control it.

On one hand, I could totally understand why people who didn’t know me weren’t willing to walk within arm’s length of the crazy yelling lady.

On the other hand, I’d been very cooperative and I hadn’t hurt anyone yet. I’d done nothing but help those dumb-ass motherfuckers. They shouldn’t be looking at me like that. I could see their judgmental gazes on the back of my head, and-

Gavin squeezed my wrist with his tail. The anger ebbed away just long enough for me to feel embarrassed for a few seconds before I started to feel angry at my own embarrassment.

Whatever this shit was, it didn’t seem to be dissipating quickly. Pointy thought that whatever toxin I’d breathed in was making my body overproduce anger-related chemicals and hormones. Maybe norepinephrine, maybe dopamine… maybe some other shit I didn’t remember. Gavin could reset my body’s chemistry, but he couldn’t remove whatever toxin was causing the imbalances, so any fix he made was temporary.

I felt overstretched, a flimsy rubberband bundling up a whole cupboard’s worth of craft supplies, ready to snap at any moment.

It was almost a shame that we’d figured out all the hazards of these halls. My kids and I were in the middle of the group, just behind the blissed-out walldrugger victims. Cassie’s Summoned Seekers were still handling our scouting, but anything they found was being dealt with efficiently by other people. We were moving more quickly now, and we’d picked up a double handful of others, including the adult son of the older blonde medical professional. He actually did have a metal-manipulation ability, and he could disarm the spike traps easily and quickly.

It was good.

In some ways.

People in our group seemed more confident.

No one had complained about coming into the building in over ten minutes.

We could keep this up for hours.

We were getting closer to Vince about twice as quickly.

But damn, I was just itching to spend a few minutes smashing a sledgehammer into something.

“Cassie. Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

My daughter bit her lip thoughtfully, then pointed.

“What? But then, we’ve passed him! We should have gotten to him already. What the hell, Pointy? Did you make a wrong turn?”

Pointy sighed. “Consider the angle of your daughter’s arm closely, Meghan.”

“That’s definitely behind us. There’ve been a lot of turn-offs we could have made in that direction. Why are you leading us away from Vince? Do you mistrust him that badly?”

“The vertical angle, Meghan.”

For a moment, Pointy’s words confused me. Then I did a quick mental review. “Wait… Vince is beneath us?!”

“I believe so.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. He’s easily fast enough to catch the edge of the floor, even if he was caught in the middle of a pit trap. And… even if he somehow fell, he could climb back out easily.”

“I concur,” said Pointy. “Thus, I can only conclude that your husband went into one of the pits on purpose.”

I wanted to argue, to say that he wouldn’t have done that, but the evidence was incontrovertible.

I slammed my shield against the wall with an echoing clang. “Damn it, Vince!”

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The loud clang made Micah flinch, which only made me angrier... at myself, this time. Hadn’t my brave boy suffered enough? How dare I make it worse?

“So now you’ll say we can’t reach Vince,” I muttered. I’d been really counting on finding him. I trusted Pointy, but I knew she could only bend her programming so far. Her first priority was Cassie, always. That wasn’t usually a problem, but here and now, the boys were in just as much danger and I couldn’t completely trust my own ability to look out for them.

“That’s not what I was going to say, Meghan.”

I stopped cold at that, letting the cloudcar run into my ankles. “You’re not? You’re kidding me. If he’s not just at the bottom of a pit-”

“He’s not. He’s moved horizontally at least somewhat.”

“Then that’s got to be one of the ‘hidden areas’ of ‘increased danger.’ Why would we go into one of those on purpose? I mean, I’m all for it, but I’m pretty sure that if Gavin clears out my system… ah, yes, thanks Gavin. Pointy, that’s a terrible idea. Are you joking?”

“I’m not.”

“Then why? You don’t even like Vince very much.”

“While I admit I am unsurprised to find your husband deep in a completely optional, completely avoidable area of elevated danger, there are rational reasons to consider following him.”

“Like the increased rewards?” called Pierced Eyebrows. Her excitement was clear.

“Just so,” Pointy said. “Look, consider the design of this Challenge. Everyone started on their own. No teams. Most of the opponents and hazards, with the exception of Big Mama and her children, haven’t been too aggressive. You can sense living things. Micah can detect changes in temperature. The people we’ve teamed up with have given us access to many other interesting senses. Nikolai can detect and manipulate metal and Arwa is not only sensitive to changes in air and airflow, she can direct dangerous air away from us. Jamal can see in sharper detail than most hawks, and Giovanna found us after she heard us coming from a long way away. If we can find a way to descend through the pit traps safely, the odds that we can handle the additional hazards are pretty high, and it might give us a tool we need to handle future Threats. We understand the treezillas well enough to keep them under control, but we can’t be sure if future Threats will grow in the same ways.”

I blinked, struggling to recall the thoughts I’d had about the hidden areas earlier, before I’d been drugged. “But… the Arsenal. The military. They’ll have teams going after the good rewards too.”

“And some of them will probably succeed,” Pointy agreed. “To be honest, I wouldn’t judge it worth the risk to descend if it weren’t for two things.”

“Vince? You care about him after all!”

“Well, Cassie does,” Pointy said. “And he clearly cares about Cassie enough to put himself between her and danger. His survival is the second and lesser of the two factors I’m considering.”

I scowled. “Then what’s the first?”

“Do you recall the message you received when we arrived here? You must have noticed the irregularity.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was like the message changed from what was originally planned.”

Pointy nodded. “I suspect that our friend made a last-minute adjustment there, but the rest of this Challenge was clearly fabricated far in advance. The rewards and the danger had been set, but we were not supposed to be warned.”

“And you think that the warning will make enough of a difference that the risk will be worth it.”

“I do.”

God, it was hard sitting still. I was going crazy here. If there had been a pit within eyesight, I would have already been shoving people aside and jumping down it, just so I could do something. A big part of me was elated that Pointy was pushing us all toward some excitement, but I didn’t like that she was basing her decision so heavily on her trust in a machine intelligence that had already killed millions of humans. I’d given her command, and I meant that, but for something this serious I wanted another opinion.

I tugged on Micah’s hand, and he looked up at me, confused. “What?”

“What do you think about all this, buddy?”

“Why are you asking me? Pointy’s in charge.” Micah squeaked.

“She is, but you… had a hard day. I’m not comfortable dragging you into more danger. Everything she’s saying sounds persuasive to me, but I’ve wanted to do at least twenty stupid things in the past hour. You…” I took a deep breath. “You’re smart and cautious. If you think we should go… If you’re comfortable going… we’ll go.”

Micah looked frightened by the responsibility. He glanced back at Gavin, who gave him an uncertain shrug. Then he looked over the crowd we’d gathered. “If… if we went, how many of you guys would come with?”

“I’m in!” shouted Pierced Eyebrows. Three or four other voices rang out right behind.

No surprises there: that handful of people had been pushing for us to explore the bottom of the pits since we’d found the first one. The rest of our group… well, we’d found about half of them within this maze, but the other half had very reluctantly followed us from outside. They hadn’t wanted to come in the castle, let alone into any area of heightened danger, so for a minute, I thought Pierced Eyebrows’ small group of volunteers would be the end of it.

Then the blonde lady - the one who worked at a hospital - raised a hand. “My son and I will come. We should keep the group together. I was frightened to come with, but the turtle is right - we haven’t had a single casualty since we came in here. We are stronger together.”

“If you’re going, I’ll go,” a man called. “If all of you leave, we’ll lose most of our trapfinders. Staying above without you sounds more dangerous than going below in your company.”

That argument sent a ripple through the crowd.

“Can we get down safely?” A woman asked. “If we can, I’ll come too.”

I squeezed Micah’s hand. “It sounds like they’d all come with us.”

He looked up at me and steeled himself. “Let’s find a way down.”