Having talked through our battle plan in a dark garage lit mostly by the lights on the far end, we started on stage one of the plan.

By moving to the far end of the room and letting Izzy passively construct a picture of what was ahead, we learned that we had one level between us and the main event. That level, so far as we could tell was empty—which was an interesting choice.

To my mind, that meant that it was empty to make it more obvious when someone attacked or maybe because they had an area of effect weapon they planned to activate on intruders. Tara thought I had a good point. So, we waited.

Why? Because if we were going to get Paladin in there, it would be better to have him with us. Dramatically speaking, it would be more exciting to have their group show up at a surprising moment during the battle, but expecting that to happen would be dumb.

Fortunately, Paladin’s group wasn’t far behind us. They appeared within a few minutes. As expected from Jenny’s Flame Legion codename, there was a group of identical women in red costumes accented with yellow and white markings.

Along with them came Alex as Paladin in a brown “leather” duster over shiny plate armor for a kind of cowboy/knight look. In the middle of the group with him were Katuk and Kals, both in silver Xiniti armor. Tiger trailed just behind them, a giant dog in Heroes’ League armor.

Once in sight of Jaclyn though, he bolted out of the group and didn’t stop until he’d reached her, putting both paws on her shoulders in a move that would have broken a normal person’s bones.

Unable to lick her through his helmet, he jumped up and down on her a few times, wagging his tail throughout.

When he was done, she turned toward Paladin and his escort, asking, “Why did you bring him into this?”

Alex held up his hands in a shrug, “I didn’t bring him into this.”

Kals faced her, “He wanted to go. He put his armor on and stood next to the rest of us.”

Stepping forward to stand closer to Jaclyn, Katuk said, “I was told that on Earth dogs are loyal helpers to humans. His kind is good at fighting. It will be useful to have him along.”

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Shaking her head as she rested her hand on the dog’s side, she said, “Yes, but I didn’t want him in danger. I wanted him to be safe.”

She looked down the room toward where it turned into the next level and back to everyone, “Well, there’s nothing we can do now.”

She looked up at Tiger, “Follow directions. Remember what we taught you in training, and stay alive, okay?”

He grunted.

I didn’t know how smart he was, but it was smarter than your average dog. Smart enough that I could give him a version of the team’s self-repairing suits and he could use it. Given his limited vocabulary, I couldn’t know it for sure, but it seemed like he understood how to use the HUD.

Jaclyn patted his armored side and turned to us, “For the record, I don’t like this. Let’s not bring him in again.”

The dog huffed and Jaclyn patted him. What he meant by that, we didn’t have time to figure out. I hoped Jaclyn wouldn’t be distracted by his presence in the fight. Could I honestly say that she’d be more distracted by the dog than Haley or I would be distracted by each other, though?

As Jaclyn had said, there was nothing we could do about it now.

“So,” I said, “I guess it’s time to try the empty room. Anyone tough want to volunteer to spring whatever trap is in there if there is one?”

Prime eyed the lower end of the room, “I’ll do it.”

“That works,” I looked over the group. “Let’s go.”

As I started to walk, Jaclyn matched my stride, “I’ll go with him.”

“No,” from just ahead of me Izzy turned around, “if it’s fire or lasers, you’ll be as hurt as he will. I’ll do it.”

Jaclyn opened her mouth, possibly to argue, but said, “You’re right.”

When we reached the bottom of the room and looked around the corner, we saw the empty level. Devoid of cars or anything but bare concrete walls, I wondered what Hunter’s rogue fungus had come up with.

The only sign I could see of the fungus’ presence was the far end. There, where the room turned one more time, the multi-colored light of the glowing fungus that I’d seen through Haley’s teams’ cameras illuminated the floor, creating a multi-colored glow.

It was beautiful but wasn’t (as I worried for a second that it might be) capable of hypnotizing the whole team. It did hint that the fungus started just out of our sight.

Prime nodded as he looked over the scene, “All the way down or do you think maybe three-quarters of the way? If they don’t have some kind of trap here, I’m thinking that the fight starts at the entrance to the room.”

“All the way,” Jaclyn said, “even the slowest of us can get down there faster than you’d think.”

At that moment, the quality of the light at the end of the room changed, disappearing into a cloud of white.

My first thought was spores, but it wasn’t. It was finer. If anything, it reminded me of flour or smoke, billowing upward, filling the room, and moving toward us.