I blinked at the empty air where he’d stood a moment before, ignoring the rush of objective updates. I knew we’d gotten the cloak. I didn’t need Kharon’s note keeping to tell me that.

What I needed was to know where the hell Garrett had gone – and how.

“Better close your mouth,” a disembodied voice said. Garrett’s disembodied voice. “Unless you’re trying to trap flies.”

I spun around, searching for him.

A light, low laugh sounded, and something thumped me on the shoulder. It was everything I could do to stop from screaming.

“For Salvidora’s sake, it’s me,” Garrett’s voice said, sounding very close. And yet, he wasn’t there. No one was there.

“What? Where are you?”

“Here.” The thump repeated. “I’m still here. I’m just invisible.”

“But…how?” was the best I could do.

“The cloak. Why do you think I wanted it?”

“Oh.” I supposed a cloak of invisibility would help us get across the border. Still, a head’s up would have been nice. “You could have warned me.”

He laughed softly. “Where’s the fun in that? Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

I followed him – at least, I assumed I followed him, based on the faint footsteps – toward the exit. But I hadn’t forgotten my promise to myself.

I was nothing if not a man of my word.

So I slipped baubles into my bag as we passed them. Here a necklace, there a bracelet. Now a circlet, then a ring. I grabbed a cowl, too. Not because it looked particularly valuable at face value, but the bronze plaque underneath intrigued me.

COWL OF THE UNDYING

Being unkillable could have its advantages. Especially, I thought, remembering how I’d gotten here, around friends like mine.

I’d just lifted a particularly luscious crown when a scream echoed through the room. A loud, mournful, faraway howl, like a spirit from some other plane trying to break into this one.

I clamped down on a screech of my own, dropping the crown and hitting the deck stat.

What exactly I expected, I’m still not sure. Spears to shoot out of a hidden recess? Flames to jump out at me? Killer robots with their death blades?

Whatever I’d been thinking, none of it happened.

The crown hit the floor a second after I did, with the loud clatter of metal on marble. Then, with a noise like thunder, it rolled for several feet before finally coming to a stop.

Garrett hissed out something inarticulate, which was probably just as well. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

And – nothing else.

No one broke through the door. No bars slid into place over the windows. No traps opened up to consume us.

Finally, Garrett demanded, “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. It sounded like – like some kind of haunted spirit.”

“Haunted spirit?” I still couldn’t see him, but I could hear the contempt in his voice. “That was as much a person of flesh and blood as you or me.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“We’re souls,” I reminded him.

He ignored this. “Why is there a crown on the floor?”

“It must have fallen.”

“Did you take it?”

“If I took it, would it be on the floor?”

“Did you bump into it?”

I realized that this wouldn’t look much better for me. Clumsy wasn’t any more laudable than avaricious. So I scrambled to my feet and mustered as much righteous indignation as I could. “Let’s get out of here, before –”

The scream sounded again. And this time, without the fear of getting caught pilfering to play tricks on my imagination, I heard what Garrett had heard.

A man’s voice, as human as anything. Desperate and pleading. I couldn’t make out any words, if he’d bothered with words. But I got the gist.

And it sent a violent shiver up my body. “Bone saws,” I whispered.

“Bone saws,” Garrett repeated, every bit as contemptuously as before. “What is it with you and bone saws? He’s not being tortured.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because I’ve been tortured. You scream, believe me. But it’s a different type of scream.”

I didn’t know that I found that any more comforting, but I nodded anyway. “Well, we’d better hurry up.”

The door opened a crack, seemingly on its own. Though I couldn’t see Garrett, I assumed he must be peeking out.

I stooped to grab the crown, stuffed it in my bag – no sense letting treasure go to waste – and hurried off after him.

At least, I tried to go after him. Turns out, he hadn’t actually left the room yet, but was hovering in the doorway.

Which I discovered by careening straight into him.

We both went down hard and heavily, both muttering curses and reproaches. I demanded to know what in hell he’d been doing standing in the doorway. He wanted to know if I was trying to get us caught.

Fortunately, neither the tumble nor the bickering drew unfriendly eyes our way. In fact, I might have doubted that there were unfriendly eyes to draw at all, if not for the screams.

I didn’t know if the stories we’d heard were true, if the place really was crawling with paladins and robots, or if that was just something the AI, or even someone a level above him, made up to keep trespassers out.

But I did know that someone was in a lot of distress somewhere in this building.

And I didn’t mean to join them. So I sprang to my feet and headed for the stairs, whispering a terse, “Come on.”

Garrett followed, his footsteps almost imperceptibly quiet behind me. We let ourselves into the stairwell, and I headed for the lower level. But an invisible hand caught my elbow.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Shh.”

For a moment, we listened in absolute silence. I felt keenly the vulnerability of my position, in the open stairwell visible to anyone above or below. It was all well and good for Garrett. He had a cloak of invisibility. I did not.

I was about to remark something of the kind when another scream sounded, a long, wailing cry. “Helllllpppppp me. Someone.”

“It’s coming from up there,” Garrett said. “Thirteenth floor, maybe fourteenth.”

“Hmph,” I grunted. “Good thing we’re going down.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Garrett said. “We can’t go down.”

I stared at the void, where I figured he was standing. “What are you talking about? That’s the way out.”

“We can’t just leave whoever that is.”

I blinked. “Of course we can.”

“What the hell happened to you, Kaej?”

“A lot,” I said. “I can give you the rundown if you want, but the highlights are: near death, near death, near death, death. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to stay that way.”

“We can’t just leave someone in trouble. What if it was me or you?”

“Then that would suck for us. Which is exactly why I don’t want to go butting in.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Kaej,” he said. As if the second use of my name in a few seconds wasn’t giveaway enough. That, and the icy, almost sepulchral tones.

“That’s your prerogative,” I said. “Be disappointed, and alive. Let’s go.”

“You can go if that’s what you choose. I am going to help whoever needs our help.”

And, to my absolute fury, I heard his footsteps heading away from me. Not the quiet, careful ones of earlier. These were louder and more emphatic. The son-of-a-bitch wanted me to hear them.

“Garrett,” I hissed, chasing after him. “You can’t go running off on your own.”

“Then come with me.”

I clutched through the air in the general direction of his voice, trying to grab hold of him. I found only empty air. “We have a mission. All of humanity, the entire world, rests on this stupid quest.”

“What’s the point of saving humanity, if we have to sacrifice human lives to do so?” he asked.

“What kind of stupid question is that?” I demanded. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

“I do not know what an omelet is,” he shot back. “Nor do I have time for your strange, folksy sayings. Are you going to flee like a coward, or are you coming with me?”

I hesitated. I was very much in the flee like a coward camp, but I needed the cloak to cross the border. And something told me Garrett wouldn’t hand it over. So either I had to risk him not making it out of here alive – and not finding me afterwards, if he did – or I had to go with.

“I won’t be offended either way,” he added. “It’s not like this would be the first time trusting you led to disappointment.”

“Damn you,” I swore, wincing at the shock that passed through me. “It was one time. One time!”

“That’s usually all it takes to die.”

“Fine. I’ll come. But so help me, if you get us killed –”

“That would just make us even, wouldn’t it?”