Neb felt disconnected from the world, as if his brain had decided it was just too awful to process. They had only moments left. The fire was all over the floor of the cage and burned everywhere outside. The wall of grasping, snarling lowcrawlers was taller than he was. Their blade-tipped feelers waved like branches in a storm.
The fucking goblins, he thought. They wouldn’t be trapped here if it hadn’t been for the goblins working together. It was a huge advantage to have three civs united. And how the fuck did they have so many healing orbs?
But that thought raised another for Neb: What else am I not seeing here? He looked around the cage. The mouths of the lowcrawlers hammered and snapped against the bars as they tried to force their way in. Buzz held the grenade in his hand, waiting until the last possible moment. The smoke and heat from the fire were unbearable.
Neb sighed. He was never going to learn more about the Main. What had this place been like in its original incarnation, he wondered distantly, before it had become part of the Game? Was it really a zoo, or did it have some deeper cultural significance, like fire did? Were the lowcrawlers the descendants of the creatures who had once been trapped in these cages, or the same creatures? He pictured the lowcrawlers feeding on the huge slow creatures they had seen earlier, their only purpose to be slaughtered by --
He caught his breath, seeing the scene clearly in his mind as it once was: The huge creatures outside, the lowcrawlers trapped in these cages, other creatures held in even bigger cages who were maybe even more terrifying and dangerous than the lowcrawlers were…
He dropped to his hands and knees, clawing frantically amongst the thick carpet of leaves and grass and branches and moss, flinging aside the blade-tipped antennae that had been severed from the lowcrawler hordes. ‘DON’T USE THAT FUCKING GRENADE!’ he screamed.
‘What in the name of fuck, son,’ he heard Buzz say.
Neb crawled around with jerky, over-fast movements, getting as close to the fire as he dared, burning his hands but paying no heed, flinging handfuls of grass and moss out of his way, ignoring the scores of mouths banging on every side of the cage just centimeters away.
And then he found it. A hatch.
He jumped to his feet and hauled on it with all his strength, but didn’t budge. He tried again, but still could not move it a millimeter. ‘OH FUCKING COME ON!’ he screamed. They had only seconds left. Then Neb saw the hatch was designed to slide, not to lift. He tried to slide it but it was stiff from lack of use.
‘MEATHEAD!’ he yelled. ‘MALLORY! HELP ME!’
The two men were beside him in a second. The flames were burning and choking but Mallory grabbed one handle, Meathead and Neb the other. The noise of the fire and the lowcrawlers was terrible. ‘SLIDE IT!’ Neb yelled. ‘SLIDE IT!’ They heaved together, and with a reluctant screech the hatch slid open. A set of steps lead down.
Buzz grabbed Gray and practically threw her down the steps. Meathead leaped for the hatch and fell through. Mallory jumped after him. Neb fell down the steps in a tangle with Anna, and Mallory caught them both at the bottom. Buzz was last, and then he and Mallory slammed the hatch shut, closing out the fire and fury above and plunging them into incongruously cool and instantaneously silent darkness.
They stood there in the cool darkness not speaking, breathing hard, not quite able to believe that they had somehow escaped. Then Buzz turned on a light, and they looked at each other for a few long moments.
‘Fuck me,’ Meathead said.
Buzz played the light over their surroundings. They were standing at the end of a short corridor that led to a larger passageway beyond. The air smelled clear and fresh.
‘Doc,’ Buzz said. His blue eyes bored into Neb. ‘How the fuck did you know this was down here?’
Neb found he was hardly able to speak. His lungs ached from the smoke, and he was coughing continually. Even though Meathead had healed him, the self-inflicted wound he had used to attract the lowcrawlers still ached psychosomatically.
‘There were so many huge animals here,’ Neb answered. ‘There had to be a way to feed them. I bet we’re on an elevator right now, designed to bring food up into the cages… Look. Here. The keepers put the food here where we’re standing, then the hatch above opened automatically. It would be the best way to feed such dangerous creatures.’
‘They could have just thrown it through the bars,’ Gray said, doubtfully. She was half way between admiration and skepticism.
‘Maybe,’ Neb said. ‘But some of these creatures were huge. They’d need a lot of food.’
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‘But they could have --’
‘We’ll get into the animal husbandry later,’ Buzz interrupted. ‘Right now we need to fucking move out.’
‘Sir, before we go,’ Neb said. ‘This is a game, and it’s about time we started playing it like one.’ He turned to Mallory. ‘How long can we set the timer for on those grenades?’
‘One hundred and twenty seconds max,’ Mallory said. ‘Why?’
‘Set it,’ Neb said. ‘With maximum detonation energy. Then we open the hatch, throw it up there, and double time it down the tunnel.’
‘Why bother?’ Mallory asked doubtfully. ‘Grenades are precious.’
Neb saw that Buzz was not completely clear why, either. But the commander just said: ‘Do what the Doc says.’
Mallory sighed but did as he was ordered. ‘Fucking waste of a grenade,’ Neb heard him mutter under his breath. Meathead got into position under the hatch. ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One… Two… Three.’ He slid open the hatch and a wave of smoke and heat and noise rushed down on them. Mallory tossed up the grenade, and Meathead slammed the hatch shut again. ‘Fire in the hole,’ Mallory said, looking at Neb.
‘Clear out!’ Buzz ordered. ‘Move!’
They ran to the main tunnel, weapons drawn, and in the jumpy light of their flashlights they saw it stretched away in both directions. It was not marked on their maps, which showed only their location relative to the world above. They turned right, which they hoped would bring them south towards the military base, and then ran, their footsteps loud and overlapping.
‘How big is the detonation going to be?’ Neb panted to Mallory.
‘Don’t worry, Doc,’ Mallory answered. ‘You won’t miss it.’
They kept running, and then a few moments later they heard a roar from behind. The ground shook. Neb pictured the explosion ripping out through the lowcrawlers, tossing and tearing even their nearly unbreakable bodies, and was not completely sure how he felt about it.
They kept moving through the seemingly endless tunnel at a more sustainable pace. It ran dead straight and level. The walls and floor were bare -- the tunnel was a utilitarian construction, not part of whatever had been the core experience of the zoo above.
Then Anna hissed: ‘Something up ahead!’
They stopped dead. Ahead was an illuminated area, extra-bright in the underground darkness. There was something sticking out from the wall, and Neb strained his eyes to see it. It looked familiar, but it still took him a moment to place it.
‘It’s a saferoom,’ he said, after a moment. ‘The symbol is in the information section of the interface.’
‘Seems a fucking weird place for a saferoom,’ Gray whispered back. ‘More likely a trap.’
But it made sense, too, Neb thought. The Game knew that parties who came this way would have just been through a tough battle with the denizens of the zoo.
‘Meathead, Anna -- move up and check it out,’ Buzz ordered quietly. They dashed forward without any lights, weapons drawn, not much more than ghosts in the darkness. They were back in only a few moments.
‘Nothing moving,’ Anna reported. ‘The door is black with the symbol on it in gold, same as on the light above.’
Buzz looked at Neb. ‘What do you think?’
It was the first time Buzz had ever asked his opinion on anything, as far as Neb could recall. ‘The Game seems fair in its fucked-up way,’ Neb answered, ‘which is consistent with our understanding of the Main. I say we go for it.’
‘You heard the Doc,’ Buzz said, and Neb could not be quite sure if he meant it mockingly or not. ‘Move it!’
They covered the distance to the door rapidly, then Buzz opened it with an old-fashioned brass handle. They found themselves staring into the lobby of a beautiful hotel. Evening sun streamed in from high windows, even though that was clearly not possible. A staff member pushed a luggage cart. A handsome human receptionist smiled at them from behind the counter. And waiting for them in the center of reception, looking relaxed and at home, was Ver.
‘Good evening,’ he said.
The team walked in cautiously, still not completely sure this was real and not some elaborate trap. There were no other customers. Staff moved around with the intentional but semi-invisible way of expensive establishments, as if each person was assigned an important mission. Neb glanced at his companions. Their faces and clothes were stained and filthy with a mixture of dirt, blood, bug entrails, feeler pus and unspecified gore. Each of them carried cuts, scrapes, bruises and burns.
Ver looked from one to the other. ‘Rough day?’ he asked.
‘I fucking hate this guy,’ Mallory said.
Neb was just starting to think it was strange that all the staff was human when another staff member came through pushing a luggage cart. This creature was like a scorpion that had partially morphed into a wasp, but it was close to three meters tall. It was disturbing to look at, made all the more so by the way it quietly paid attention to its humdrum work and ignored everything else. Mandibles clicked and moved restlessly on its wasp-like face. The overstretched hotel uniform did not properly cover the bulging sections of its body. Neb tried to examine the creature in his overlay, but all it said was: Hotel staff. They all stared at it openly until it disappeared through a side door.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Meathead asked.
‘I can assist you over here,’ the receptionist called from the desk. ‘My name is Milletson, and on behalf of the Plaza Hotel we are honored to have you here.’
They gathered at the desk. ‘Are there other players here?’ Buzz demanded.
‘Yes, commander,’ Milletson answered. ‘But violence is impossible at the hotel. Your guns are disabled. Physical contact is impossible between teams, unless of course both parties agree.’ He smiled his bland, handsome smile.
‘Well then…’ Buzz said, and for once he was not quite sure how to proceed. ‘What’s next?’
‘I’ll be delighted to show you to your suite,’ Milletson said, and he gave a little bow.