Tori gasped as she used Shockwave to throw the monster off of her. Her head spun, and her chest and stomach felt like a giant had squeezed her in its fist. She tried to crawl away, but her lungs screamed and burned as air poured into them.

Everything had happened so fast.

The last station she’d checked—North and Clybourn—had only had a couple of Rat Men that she’d been able to take care of with no trouble before waiting for the subway snake to pass. She’d only had to use a single Inertia Ball on them, and she figured she could clear this one without magic at all.

She hadn’t even thought about the shag carpet she was stepping on—or how out of place it was in the subway cave—until it was too late.

The monster coiled up around her like a flat, square snake made of ratty, filth-covered carpeting. Her arms and legs churned on the floor as she tried to crab-walk away and summon up an Inertia Ball at the same time.

Floor Mimic: Level 12 Monster

How was it so much stronger than her? She was Level Seven! It wasn’t fair!

She rolled, trying to dodge as the Floor Mimic engulfed her again. Then, the squeezing started.

This time, it started around her arms; something in her shoulder popped, and she screamed. It tightened around her before she could shut her mouth, forcing all the air out of her lungs. She tried to cast another Shockwave, but the magic wouldn’t come. Every wriggle—every struggle—just made the Floor Mimic’s stranglehold tighter.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breathe!

Her heart pounded in her ears, and her vision went gray. Everything was so hot. This was it; she’d sob if she had the air for it.

She screamed—she didn’t have any air left, but she screamed anyway.

A roar cut through the pulsing in her ears. It sounded like a ceiling fan on steroids, and a burning electric smell forced its way into her nose. Something ripped into her calf, and she tried to scream again. Her lungs burned.

The Floor Mimic shrieked. Then it parted, and Tori sucked in a grateful breath and vomited from the pain. She rolled onto her side and looked up. Chunks of carpet rained down around her.

The mechanic from the train finished shredding the monster.

----------------------------------------

The weed whacker hit the ground—hard—as the Floor Mimic’s body disintegrated around Tori.

Blood rushed from her leg. I dropped to my knees next to her. The orb hit me a second later, and I leveled up again.

Level Up! Fifteen to Sixteen.

“Damn it,” I said under my breath. That wasn’t supposed to have gone to me. It was supposed to be a catch-up orb for Tori. But…”Jesus Christ.”

Tori’s leg looked awful. I grabbed my leatherman, cutting away her shredded pants at the knee. A half-dozen deep, jagged cuts ran up the back of her calf—I hadn’t had time to be precise with the Weed Whacker’s spinning knives. “Deep breaths, Tori. I’ve got you. I’m Hal.”

She nodded, white-faced and wide-eyed. She was breathing, but they were shallow, pain-filled breaths. I looked at the Lock-Grip Gloves, then pulled some torn cloth strips out of my inventory instead. Calvin had said they’d be useful as bandages. “This is gonna hurt,” I said.

“I know,” she managed to say between gritted teeth. I could see the strain in her neck from how tight she was clenching them.

“Scream if you have to.” I grabbed the first cloth, bunched it up, and shoved it as far into her wounds as I could.

She screamed. I didn’t stop shoving. As my filthy fingers grew wet with her blood, I kept pushing until the flow slowed, then stopped. Even then, I kept the pressure on with one hand. “Alright, Tori, I need you to listen to me and follow my directions. All you have to do is get a bunch of cloth strips ready for me and lift your leg when I tell you to. Can you do that?”

She nodded again.

Over the next minute, I jammed even more cloth up against her sliced leg, then wrapped the cloth strips around it and tied it all in place. Then she handed me the next strip, breathing fast and hard the whole time. It wasn’t pretty. But by the time I was done, I felt pretty sure that I’d gotten Tori’s bleeding under control.

I finally looked her in the face.

Now that her make-up was worn off and her hair wasn’t so much styled as tangled and matted, Tori didn’t just remind me of Beth; she could almost have been my sister. Her cheeks were a little thinner, and her eyes weren’t the right color, but without all the emo style, I could see exactly why she’d looked familiar.

“Hal,” she said, still trying to catch her breath and blink away tears. “That…that really fucking sucked.”

I stared at her for a second. This girl was nothing like my sister. Beth was a troublemaker, but she’d never sworn at me. Then, a second later, I burst out laughing.

Tori’s eyebrow raised. Then, a shadow of a grin passed over her face. A minute later, she was laughing, too—and wincing as every laugh shook her leg a little.

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“They’re Floor Mimics,” Tori said after I propped her up against the cave wall. “I stepped on it, and it wrapped me up. I didn’t think…I didn’t think about why a rug would be in the middle of Clark and Division.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I held back a shiver; I’d almost stepped on that mud rug one station back. “Did you see any other monsters here?”

“No. I pulled some Huntsman Bats back at Fullerton and some of the others, and I didn’t even think about clearing the water squid things, but this station seemed empty. I figured that maybe you or Calvin had farmed it already.”

“Calvin secured one store cave and called it good, and I started at Chicago. Most of the dungeon’s cleared, though. Just have to take out the Redline Wyrm.”

“I saw.” Tori winced and looked at the wall. “Thanks. Those levels gave me a new spell and let me break out of the bathroom at Roosevelt. Any ideas about the last boss?”

“I’m working on something, but it’s still in the planning stage,” I said. It was less a plan than an inkling of one, though—a rough idea that the whole fight had to do with the Wyrm’s speed and how to turn that into an advantage. That was as far as I’d gotten, though.

The biggest problem was Tori’s leg. She definitely couldn’t walk on it, and we didn’t have time to wait for it to heal. I had a solution; I’d been ready to use the gloves if I had to, and the extra point in Body would help get her moving. But before I tried that, I had an idea. “I’m going to check out the bathrooms. Watch my back, okay? I’m counting on you.”

She looked at me, then nodded slowly.

Luckily, all I needed her to do was stay awake and yell if something showed up. That was about all I could expect in her current state.

The men’s room looked about like I expected it to. Sinks, stalls, urinals. Nothing out of the ordinary. I double-checked the floor, poking it with the Weed Whacker’s blades. Nothing shrieked. Nothing jumped up to attack me. So, the Floor Mimics all looked like rugs or carpets, then. “Tori, do you know why these things aren’t called carpet mimics?”

“No.”

When I glanced into the women’s room, I couldn’t help but smile. A pair of Rat Man spears sat near a round rug in the middle of the cave; it had formed around the stalls so closely it looked like it was under them, but I wasn’t fooled—not even by the lack of level and name over its head.

I pulled back and rejoined Tori. “There’s a second Floor Mimic in there. I’m going to kill it. Keep an eye out. Everything else should be safe, but I don’t know for sure, so keep focused.”

Then I pulled the Weed Whacker and returned to the women’s room.

I fed a Power Surge into the Imbuing Rod, then into the Weed Whacker, and the blades started whirring and tearing at the air. I swung it toward the Floor Mimic; the second I made contact, the whole thing pulled back into a bunch far away from me, then coiled like a spring.

Floor Mimic: Level Fifteen Monster

This one was a lot stronger than the one I’d torn off of Tori; it was almost as strong as me, and I was pretty sure I’d soaked up more than my share of experience from the dungeon. On the other hand, I knew what to expect since Tori had told me all about her fight with it. As it sprang toward me and unfurled, I braced the Weed Whacker against my hip and poured another shot of Power Surge in.

The blade whirred.

The Floor Mimic wrapped around me and tightened. My shoulders strained as I held the Weed Whacker away from me, and as the pressure built, the blades started breaking off. A knife ricocheted across the bathroom, sparking as it hit one wall. I watched it rebound and stick into the Floor Mimic’s ‘back.’ Then another blade gave, clattering off into a corner.

The air rushed out of my lungs, and the Floor Mimic tightened.

As it did, the Weed Whacker found a grip and ripped itself out of my hands. It tore across the Floor Mimic, punching jagged holes across its center. The tightening did the rest; it ripped itself apart like a notebook paper torn from a binder.

I barely had the breath to roll away from the experience orb, but I managed to get far enough away. Then, as I recovered, I pushed myself to my feet and left the bathroom.

“Tori, I’ve got an orb in there with your name on it, but you have to…have to promise me that you’re going to use it how I tell you to. I’m pretty sure it’ll level you at least once. Put both points into Body.”

She narrowed her eyes and squared up. I’d seen that before with Beth, but I couldn’t understand why she wanted to fight me on this. Then I got a better look at her. I’d been completely focused on her leg and hadn’t seen the other injuries. “You haven’t put a single point into Body, have you?”

“No. Mana’s the right choice, obviously. I’ve got incredible powers,” she said.

“Do you really think that?” I asked. “Look, I’ve been putting most of my points into Awareness, but if you put some into Body, it’ll help patch you up after fights. Right now, you need some healing if we’re going to walk back to Lake Station, so put both points in Body.”

“Oh,” she said. She went silent. The gears were turning; I could practically see them. Then, it clicked.

“It’s a stat synergy game, not an individual stat one. I’ve been playing it like I could stack Mana, ignore everything else, and be a ‘concentrated power of the sun’ glass cannon, but that’s not how it works. Everything works together, and if I don’t balance things out…” Tori pushed herself to her feet and half-hopped to me, then threw an arm around my shoulder. She was a lot shorter than me, but it worked well enough. “Two points in Body, then?”

“That’s right.”

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A few minutes later, Tori and I sat on the station’s edge and waited for the Redline Wyrm. The orb had gotten her two levels. She’d put two into Body, one into Awareness, and one into Mana, and her leg had healed up enough to walk on. She’d have scars, but those had been a guarantee the moment my Weed Whacker hit her.

I’d shoved what was left of the Weed Whacker into my inventory, but it was pretty much done. I’d need a new weapon, and a design was already pretty much formed in my head. It’d be something stronger, more capable of punching through armor. Something with weight and torque.

It was a concept right now, but once we got back to Lake Station and I could start building it, it’d make the Weed Whacker look like a kid’s toy.

But first, we had to wait for the Redline Wyrm to come by again. So, instead of moving or grinding, Tori and I were wasting time and twiddling our thumbs.

“We could fight it here,” Tori said halfheartedly. She was Level Nine or Ten now—stronger, but not strong enough.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think we will. Something’s fishy about that train.”

“You mean snakey?”

I stared at her for a minute. Over the last three days, she’d lost some of her prickly, emo-girl facade. In a way, it mirrored the fading makeup and the rats-nest that had once been hair carefully combed over one eye. Then, I let myself laugh. “Sure. Something’s snakey about that train. Why isn’t it ripping up the ground, too, for example? I want to get a good look at it, and then I want another shot at the hardware store back at Lake. We need to group up with Calvin anyway. ”

“Alright. We’ll wait.” She seemed relieved, even though she tried to hide it, and I wondered what she’d been through in the last couple of days. Her eyes had lost most of that wide, shell-shocked look. Now, they just looked exhausted.

I shrugged. We’d have time to talk about it later.

We didn’t have to wait long. As the Redline Wyrm rumbled toward us, filling the tunnel and then some, I held out a hand to keep Tori back. She shot me a look, the kind teenagers always give when they think they’re adults. Beth and I had both shot the same one at Mom and Dad a couple of times—her more than me—so I recognized it for what it was.

Then, neither of us could look at anything but the steel-covered snake as it whipped by, shaving off a full foot from the concrete. A brief flash of orange flashed by, mostly covered by the train car armor, as it roared through Clark and Division. An almost feral grin split my face.

I knew how to beat it. And between my inventory and the Lake Station shop, we had everything we needed.