Colin POV

We held a council of war as soon as we got back. Everything had changed. We just weren't sure yet just how.

"Sam will tell Shad, and then Shad will figure out something," Sage said. She was practically bouncing up and down with excitement. "This is wonderful. I've been wishing we could get the word out somehow, and now we have."

"Maybe," I allowed. "If Sam tells Shad what he saw.”

“Why wouldn't he?"

"He might not believe his own eyes," I said, "or it's possible that I told him not to tell anyone what's going on, and he'll take that a little too seriously."

"Even if word does get to your brother and my father, we cannot merely sit back and wait for them to rescue us," Rok'gar declared.

Sage snorted. "Who said anything about waiting? I just meant it's going to be easier now that we have help coming."

Rok'gar and I exchanged a look. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Did we have help coming?

Gambler broke our silence. "I've been fending off probing attacks all day. They're looking for us."

"Who?" I asked.

"Someone from up above. They're trying to find us and smoke us out."

"Let 'em," Sage said dismissively. "If they come, we'll show 'em what a mistake they've made."

"I'm not strong enough yet to ascend to the top layer and fight for my own place," Gambler warned. "I need help from you."

"How many more raids would we need?" I asked.

"I am not certain. Another seven or eight, at the least."

"Too dangerous, at least for now.”

“I think we should redouble our efforts," Sage said.

"Our main advantage was that nobody was looking for us. With that gone, I'm worried what the Dominator factions will do if they catch us."

"We won't let them catch us," Sage declared.

Rok'gar was nodding in agreement. "At the very least, we need to shore up our defenses here. What do we have if they come down?"

From them, we were interrupted by an alarm.

"Too late," Coyote said. "They've found us."

I sprang to my feet. "What's happening?"

"It's an invasion from higher up. They're attempting to pierce through my shields." Even as I watched, Gambler's willpower began to drop. 99, 98. “Once they're through, they'll be able to project their forces down below. On the other hand, if I drop my attempts to block them and let them come in, they'll have to face us here, and we may be able to force them back, or at least make it too expensive to continue the fight."

"We'll do that," I said. "How strong are they going to be?"

"The amount of strength the upper layer can project down here is limited. I assume they will be able to bring in multiple individuals of similar power levels to you."

"Other miners," I set my jaw. "Well, if they're Galactics, I think I can do something about it. If they're humans, we might be in trouble."

Sage was on her feet. "What are you thinking?"

"Lots of disposable minions. Explosive ones would be great. We need to make it costly for them to be here. Can we keep them from respawning down here?"

"Yes," Gambler said. "Our alliance owns the respawn points, and unless they're able to take one, they won't be able to submit their soul coins here. They'll have to go back up and project down again. That'll take time and ethereum."

"Then that's what we're going to do. We'll hold out, we'll make it too costly for them to keep the attempt," and I did not add, we will pray for a miracle. I suddenly was on Sage's side, hoping desperately that Shad would show up and save the day.

We rushed about looking to our defenses. I asked all of our allies to come to the central location and pulled in our defensive structures. We'd make a stand here, but I kept the outer defensive lines where they were. We'd make them bleed for every inch of ground they took.

Gambler's willpower was down to 43% when I had my preparations complete. "All right, drop it," I told him.

A moment later, a brand new line appeared in my HUD. [Enemy forces present: 185. Deaths so far: zero.]

"If they're not directly attacking me, my willpower will regenerate," Coyote Gambler said. "I will be able to withstand them and hold some of them out at some point."

"Let's get out on the map and get some kills," I ordered.

The team and I sprang into action. I was getting input from all over as the enemy attacked our defenses. They came in dressed like Power Rangers, Space Marines, and more literal demons. They tore through the towers and walls I had so painstakingly constructed. Each of the enemy heroes was as strong as me or my friends, equal to many of our minion units. We threw our units at them with no regard for the cost. We got a kill, and another, and another. The counter started racking up. It took a few minutes for them to respawn, but still they came.

I was manning the southern defense line when I noticed something weird. A troop in power armor approached, five of them. They came close, holding their weapons but firing in the air, then fell back, then approached again. I had the feeling they were trying to signal me, send me a message.

"Gambler, are you receiving anything from the enemy?"

"Just calls for me to surrender myself and prepare to be dismantled. I've been ignoring them."

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"Sage, can you join me here?”

“I’m barely holding the line.”

“I think it's important."

"I'll be right there." A moment later, she popped out of a nearby tower. I pointed at the oddly behaving group.

"I need you to Tame one of them."

She eyed the distance, then threw her lasso, and landed around one, a pink-clad Space Marine with a laser rifle. When the loops of Sage's lariat tightened around her shoulder, her image shifted and changed. There stood Rose, wearing her paladin armor in bubblegum pink, carrying her big warhammer. She grinned at me.

"I'm so glad Sam wasn't crazy!”

"Rose, I could kiss you!" I shouted, gleefully.

Sage shot me a glance, and Rose pouted. "Don't say things like that when you don't mean it, Colin. I'm glad to see you're alive, too. We're here on a mission. We want to defect. Can you help us?"

"Keep that Tame up," I told Sage grimly. "Won't your bosses know about it?"

"Someone told us that you ought to be able to figure it out, so that the Dominators can't listen in," Rose declared.

"Ideas, Gambler?"

"Right now, she is a Tamed minion. We could put her in one of my minion slots."

“You only have two of those right now,” Sage pointed out.

"She'll be fully emulated at that point?"

"Yes."

I looked at Rose, considering. "If we do this, you're stuck with us till we escape.”

"Which is fine, because we're here to bust you out," she said cheerfully. "Do whatever it is you're going to do."

I pulled up the minions tab. Looking it over, I was going to need five free active slots for this. I jettisoned Gandhi, Archimedes, and Mother Teresa, putting their minds back into storage. Archimedes was always going on about death lasers that he couldn't make work. Gandhi and Mother Teresa were terrible fighters.

Then, the allied mind count ticked up again, and Sage's Tame faded.

“Grab the rest of them," I said. Sage tossed her lasso on all four, and there was the rest of my team. I stood there, shaking my head and beaming as Sage began slotting them into our minions.

“Colin, we've got a breach down on the west side," Gambler told me.

"Oh, right. I'll talk to you on comms," I shouted, and teleported over to the breach.

In a minute, they were all back in a party chat. It felt like old times, my group grousing and shouting ideas back and forth.

"What's your strategy, boss?"

"We need to push the enemy back and get some breathing time. Anybody else here planning to defect?"

"No."

"Is my brother here?" Sage asked.

"He's not. He said to tell you he wanted to come, but he's got to be putting on a good front for the Dominators. He said they're working upstairs on a plan, and then, well, he sent us."

"That's enough, then.” Sage stepped out of a tower again, over by me, as I gave orders to my team to shore up the line on their side. Sage helped me repair the broken defenses. I felt better than I had in, well, a very long time.

"I'm glad they came," she said, but I could see there was a little bit of uneasiness in her smile. “I wish Shad had come too, though.”

"Your brother sent them," I told her. "They're to help you as much as they are to help me. He’d be here if he could.” I finished up and had to teleport away to fit another front while Sage headed north where Gambler said there was an opportunity to push out with some of our units.

My team had leapt back across our walls and was out on the battlefield now, causing havoc and chaos among their old allies. The death count rose. There were now 117 alive, with over 200 deaths so far. A few dozen had managed to get back into the fight, only to be killed again.

I just kept fighting. It wore on and on. It was a badly mismatched fight. The enemy were all individually much stronger than my units, and even my static defenses didn't hold them for long. But we could throw everything at the enemy, while they had to start all over again from scratch every time they died. I still didn't know if we would be able to hold them or not.

"It's working," Gambler told me some interminable time later. "Some of the most recent ones haven't respawned."

"Are they just trying to mass up and hit us in a big group?"

"They might be, but I've got a plan. Can you wipe the map?"

"I'll give it a try," I said and relayed my orders. We pushed out. I overloaded a couple of towers. Sage brought in every unit she could, taking Mr. Smokey and her crab out of their pet storage and throwing them into battle. Rok’gar had hurried back to our forges and foundries and started building additional armor and supplies for my team. He sent them bags full of grenades as well as amplifying helmets that boosted their damage.

We started making a real difference. Finally, we were down to only four enemies on the map.

"Good enough," Gambler said. "We'll hunt down the others. I'm putting the shield back up." His willpower was at 100%.

"Aren't they just going to punch through it again?"

"I have the personal signatures of every single one of their soul coins. I'm locking them out specifically. They're going to have to defeat my encryption algorithm and that'll take a little effort. We've got some time."

"Everybody back to the Victory Garden," I ordered, adding for my friends an explanation of where it was. I set a few more towers building as I went.

When I got back, there they were, waiting for me. They let out a cheer as we all entered the garden. Sage collapsed to the ground, looking exhausted. I looked from face to familiar face and couldn't help grinning. I shook hands with them all.

"Pete, Sam, I knew you'd get that message out. Rose, good to see you. Alpha, you've been holding the group together? Thank you. Amber, glad to have you back on our side."

"What is this you've been up to, Colin?" Amber asked, looking around. "Quite a place you've got here."

"Yeah, well," I cleared my throat, "we built it from scratch. You should have seen the previous one." There was an awkward silence, and then I asked the question that had been pressing on my mind for a while now. "How long has it been?"

They looked at each other. I knew I wasn't going to like the answer.

"Colin," Alpha said quietly, and I knew it was going to be bad because she was the one who'd tell you straight to your face if you had terminal cancer. "Colin, it's been over a year."

I couldn't help looking at Sage. Her face crumpled. She drew her knees up to her chest. I wanted to go over and wrap my arm around her shoulder, but the presence of my friends inhibited me.

A year. We'd spent a year here? It hadn't felt like that. I mean, we'd been busy, fighting for our very existence, trying to scratch out a toehold, but a year? Really?

"I'm sorry."

"How are my family?" Sage asked, not looking up. "Shad and Grandpa. And Juana and the baby."

"They're all doing well," Amber answered. "I think. We don't really see them much, but General Twofeather is still in charge of the whole expedition, and your niece is at Mama Grace's restaurant all the time. I always say hi when we're in there. She's getting to be quite a big girl now. I think they are starting up a school for some of the kids here in a couple of months."

"A school. She'll be almost four by now," Sage said, counting on her fingers.

"And we all just spoke with your brother a few hours ago before coming down here," Pete told her. "He's doing well.”

“Has he gotten himself killed lately?"

The team exchanged a look, shook their heads, and laughed. "I don't think so. He even led a few of our expeditions over the last few months and avoided killing himself or anyone else, though I think he really wanted to throttle Kvaltash when he found out the Patriarch was responsible for this whole business of the engine waking up early."

"Wait, how's that?" I asked.

They explained to me what they knew, and I took it in, nodding to myself. "Makes sense. It would have had to be someone like him."

"So, he's not doing it out of some notion of helping keep the reality engine free?" Sage sounded disappointed. “I thought he liked Kronos.”

"Sounds like it's the exact opposite. He wants a more efficient way of enslaving them," Sam said.

"We might have to do something about that. But right now, we're focused on survival.”

Pete scratched his head. “Can we negotiate a way out of here? Like, you offer to stop robbing them if they let us out?"

"It's not just us," Sage said. "We have allies. Gambler and the other fragments and minds. If we surrender, the Dominators will consume them all. We need to get them out of here."

Pete nodded. "Your brother said to tell you that he's working on a way to extract refugee fragments from here and take them back to Kronos, but he's not very far along yet."

"Then we'll have to wait until he figures it out," Sage declared. "Gambler saved our lives. I'm not abandoning him."

I got up and started pacing. "Tell me everything you know about the situation topside. No matter how trivial. Who are the players? What are they after? How many zones have you been in? What are they like?"

"That's a lot," Sam protested. "We've been here for over a year. I think we've visited 140 different zones.”

"Then start at the beginning and let me hear what you've got to say."

"You got a plan?" Pete asked.

"Not yet, but I will."

"Well, if we're not being attacked, I guess we don't have anything better to do." Pete unfolded his legs and started to talk.