Miss Silvers, Mr. Rollins, and Mr. Riley,

  I accept the terms of our agreement as stated, and my grandfather has seen that you accepted them. The Fireborn Crusade is withdrawing its forces from Whiting. We expect you to do the same within the next hour.

  Taven Liu, Fireborn Crusader

  The message wouldn’t have been that impressive, except for one thing: Taven had melted it into the asphalt outside of Whiting’s City Hall building. It was still red-hot when we started reading it, but by the time we’d finished, it had cooled into ridges of tar that covered the road from one side to the other.

  “That’s one way to make a contract,” Carol said. She’d been quiet throughout the meeting and our discussion after it.

  Honestly, I wasn’t surprised. The longer Taven talked with us, the more likely he’d be to make a mistake, and none of us trusted him. He’d know it, too; his grandfather had obviously been spying on us. His fire sat next to the message.

  They’d left it there on purpose.

  “Well,” I said, forcing every bit of Midwestern farmer into my voice that I could, “there’s a neighborly agreement taken care of. Let’s head back to Chicago. I’ve got work to do.”

  We left Whiting quickly, but the whole time, we were on the lookout for any Crusaders who might’ve had motives that weren’t the same as Taven said. There was nothing. According to everything I could see, Taven had followed the letter of his agreement and left quickly—and he’d taken his troops with him.

  We followed Highway 20 northwest for about a mile. At that point, I figured that even if Chen Liu was watching, he wouldn’t be able to see everything we were doing, and I pointed at the waterfront. Some of it was choked with the ubiquitous brambles that had appeared everywhere, but a tan-and-brown building with a parking garage that could have outstripped all but Chicago’s best loomed over them.

  I pointed toward it. “We’ve got time for a Tier Two on the way home. Let’s go,” I said. And when Calvin and Jessica both started protesting, I only raised an eyebrow at them, shaking my head as little as I could. I marched into the fog gate that filled the entire entryway below the sign: Horseshoe Hammond Casino. They’d either follow or they wouldn’t.

  Tier Two Dungeon: The Wheels of Fate (Floor One)

  Objective: Defeat the Dealer

  Objective: Ride the Wheel

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Paid Exit: Dungeon Delvers may leave this dungeon, but only by sacrificing a level.

  Safe Passages: There are no traps or surprises in this dungeon.

  Magical Flux: Spells’ effectiveness will be unpredictable based on location.

  I had just enough time to finish reading the dungeon’s description before Jessica and Calvin stepped through the fog gate, followed by the twins and Tori. Calvin glared at me. “What are you playing at, Hal?”

  The inside of the dungeon was exactly as fake-rich and over-the-top as you’d expect a casino-turned dungeon to be. Slot machines seemed to line every surface—except the ones where card tables made of ‘solid’ gold sat, or where long bars crammed with bottles of booze interrupted the gambling.

  “Tori, do you think we’re instanced in here?” I asked.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Alright. Then I bet they can’t Scry us, right?”

  Tori paused. “No, probably not. But we can’t leave without clearing the place unless we want to lose levels.”

  “And that’s not a problem. We have four Rank Ones. This place will fold right over when we’re ready to clear it, but we need to talk seriously, and we need to do it in a place where they can’t listen in. It’s worth the time spent here, even if we don’t get home until tomorrow morning.”

  “So, what are we talking about?” Jessica asked.

  “I lied to you back at City Hall. The Fireborn Crusade probably already knows where a Waypoint is. That’s my guess, at least. If he didn’t, he’d want Chicago.”

  “You think so?” Calvin asked.

  “I do. Chicago is one of a dozen or so places in the United States where I’d guess a Waypoint’s going to be. Major cities, the center of famous landmarks, or resource centers. That’s what the Consortium has been focused on so far. But Liu’s not interested in getting inside Chicago anymore. He knows something we don’t—I bet he’s been using his key to pull information, or he asked better questions after clearing his Tier Three Dungeon—something like that.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “He doesn’t want to go to war right away. We need to use that time to get Chicago under control. If he’s right, he’ll have a Waypoint, and it’ll be the only one near us. And if he’s wrong, it’ll show up somewhere in the city, and he’ll be coming for us. Either way…”

  Calvin picked up where I left off. “Either way, we’ll have to go to war with the Crusade at the end of the week, or shortly after.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So why delay it? Why tell me I was wrong?” Jessica asked.

  “Because there’s no way we’re winning that war as things stand,” Calvin said. “I don’t know how we win it in a week, either, but at least we can buy some time for a plan.”

  “There’s a solution to everything. There’s always one. Just because I don’t see it now doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” I said. “By taking the deal, we buy time to solve it.”

  “That’s it?” Jessica asked.

  “No. There’s more. The Crusade isn’t as strong as it looks. I think Liu is doing something similar to what Saul did back in Museumtown, but his class doesn’t get experience when his followers clear dungeons or level up, so he’s got to take the experience himself. He’s probably the strongest person in the Midwest—or maybe the United States—but I bet the rest of the Crusade’s relatively weak,” I said.

  “How do you figure?” Calvin asked.

  “Simple. He’s not a community-builder.”

  No one said anything, and I realized they needed an explanation. “Look, in Cozad, there’s two types of farmers. The first one’s in it for himself and his people. The ‘me and mine’ farmers. They buy all their own machines, work their own land, only hire their own people, and never talk to anyone. And they do alright. Some of them do better than alright.

  “But the rest of us? We meet at the co-ops. We run tractors on each other’s fields when a crop needs harvesting early. We loan each other equipment, and when Brightly Farms down the road had to cull their pigs after plague broke out, we gave them a dozen sows and a pair of trophy-winning boars. They were on their feet in a year or two, and they paid us back. They didn’t have to, though. We knew they’d have our backs when we hit a rough patch.”

  “So you’re saying that Liu’s building his own farm and not worrying about his neighbors’?” Carol asked.

  “Correct. The other thing about that first kind of farmer is, he’ll ask for help as soon as he needs it, but he won’t offer any. I think Liu’s like that. He’s on the back foot. He expected to win at Museumtown, but instead, he lost more than he expected to. Now he’s pressed, and he can handle it, but he needs some breathing room. So he’s asking for help. Not for a mutually beneficial thing. For help.”

  “So why did we give it to him?” Jessica asked.

  “Because it benefits us as much as it does him. We have a week to reach out to the other survivors in the Chicago area and be good neighbors. I guarantee he’s not doing the same thing around Gary. And when a plague hits him, he’s going to have a hard time surviving on his own. Now, let’s split up and get this first floor figured out. Calvin, you’re with the twins. Tori, Jessica, you’re with me. One boss each.”

  “Plus, all the trash mobs you can kill. Time for a full clear,” Tori said.

  I sighed, but truthfully, I needed the parts from a Rank Two box to get the Explorer running. “A full-clear is fine. Kill everything you see.”

  I was hoping we’d find The Dealer first. That sounded like a pretty standard boss experience, and riding The Wheel didn’t. This whole place reeked of bad choices, loose women, and even looser pockets, and I wanted out as soon as I could. I’d have taken the negative level in a heartbeat if it had just been me.

  But this was an opportunity to force Jessica into leveling up, and I wasn’t about to throw that away, either.

  So, as we killed our way through White Tigers, monkeys in red vests who slung cards at us like a video game character Tori recognized but I didn’t, and whirling elementals made of poker chips, I intentionally left as many experience orbs lying on the plush maroon carpet as I could. With Jessica in the party, there was no chance of danger—I wouldn’t need to get a level-up to heal my wounds—so they could all be hers.

  And level up she did. She hit twenty-five, then thirty—an appropriate level to be in the first floor of a Tier Two Dungeon. I could only hope the twins were forcing Calvin into taking the experience they were making, too.

  The whole time we fought through the gambling floor, I had my combat rovers out, but not fighting. We were looking for one of the two bosses, and if they found a fog gate, they were supposed to head straight back to me.

  I crushed one of the Level Twenty-Eight Poker Monkeys with the Trip-Hammer and stopped to take a breath as the first rover returned. “I think we’ve got something.”

  The rover—the rail gun one this time—turned in place and zipped back into the depths of the casino dungeon, and we followed. Charge was fascinating; not only was the rover following my instructions, but it seemed to be doing some basic thinking on its own. Its directional choices seemed independent of my instructions, as if it was on autopilot.

  I wondered if I could do something similar with other weapons. Pre-coded responses—much like Tori’s Contingent Cast spell she rarely used—could be powerful. And Remove Voltsmithing could allow for it. I’d built a spellcode scroll for that spell, but I hadn’t really experimented with it. If I could do the same thing with Charge-based attacks, that opened up all sorts of potential in the Voltsmith class. Was that the big thing I was supposed to be doing at Rank One?

  The rover pushed through the wall of fog, and I followed, readying the Trip-Hammer. This wasn’t the time to find out.

  The Wheel: Level Forty-Eight Dungeon Boss

  Current Difficulty: Trivial

  It’s time to take your chances on the Wheel. Do you pick red or black? One through twenty? Where will the ball land, and what will happen to you? Let’s leave it all up to fate, shall we?

  Invulnerable - This boss has no weak points and cannot be damaged.

  Myriad - This boss’s Elite state consists of innumerable members of a swarm, and will continue swarming until conditions change.

  Champion - This boss must be defeated, but not slain, in order to clear this dungeon.

  I stared at the gigantic, red and black pinwheel that covered the floor, and the gigantic chute aimed down at it. My dad had never been a gambling man—but he had been a noir film buff, and those had casinos. If this was roulette, we were in for a wild ride.

  ?▼?