My father shrugged. “If we have to run, we’ve already failed.”
That was the damn truth. There was no backup waiting for us tonight. Nik was busy, and the arena was the Gameskeeper’s domain, which meant there’d be no DFZ rising to our rescue this time. If we got caught, we’d be on our own, and while my dad was looking a lot better, I didn’t like our odds against the Gameskeeper or his hordes of hired guns.
“Guess we’d better make sure we don’t get caught, then,” I said, double-checking to make sure I had everything. When I was satisfied, I slid my shoulder bag on under my poncho and reached up to pull my goggles down over my eyes. “Sibyl?”
“I’m ready,” my AI said in my earpiece.
I am, too, the DFZ whispered in my mind. I’ll be with you the whole way. You are not alone.
I was never alone these days, but I took the words as the comfort she meant.
“The DFZ doesn’t publish maps for Rentfree since it changes so much,” Sibyl continued, oblivious to the other conversations going on in my brain. “But I’ve had a script scraping the city’s contractor forums for updated utility maps, and I think our best starting location is here.” She threw up a sewer map with a big red arrow blinking at a center junction. “That should get you closest to where your dad said White Snake’s cell is located.”
I wasn’t the one to ask about that, so I pulled out my phone to show the map to my father.
“Looks good,” he said, nodding. “The place they’re holding her is very deep, so the farther down we can start, the better.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, stepping out into the living room with him so I could use my bedroom door. “Ready?”
The moment he nodded, I grabbed the knob and turned it hard, staring at the map Sibyl had projected in my AR until the lines were burned into my eyeballs. This was the most I’d ever asked of my city-traveling abilities. As always, though, the magic worked just fine, and a second later, we were stepping out of my apartment into a reeking pitch-black tunnel with a six-inch layer of lumpy, sludgy water flowing at the bottom.
“Ugh,” I said, lifting my boots high to keep them out of muck. “Did you have to pick a sewer?”
“It was the only place big enough for you to stand up,” Sibyl said apologetically. “Would you have preferred a two-foot-square electrical shaft?”
I shuddered and flipped on the LED light attached to my goggles. Not that light made things better since it meant I could see the thousands of insects scurrying along the sewer pipe’s greasy walls instead of just hearing them, but I figured if I was going to step in something regrettable, I’d rather know ahead of time.
“Lovely,” my father said, hopping nimbly over the disgusting water to land with his feet braced against both sides of the curved tunnel only to immediately start slipping as his fancy shoes lost their grip in the slime.
“I warned you not to wear those,” I said as he started to scramble, turning my attention back to my map. “Where are we going?”
“Dead ahead,” Sibyl replied, placing a blinking target icon on top of the green-tinged cement wall directly in front of us. “Not sure how you’re getting through, but that’s where the DFZ ends and the arena’s underground complex begins.”
Unbelievable, the DFZ whispered. He kicks me out, but he’s still using my sewers! The nerve.
There were indeed several pipes coming out of the wall ahead of us, each one dumping a prodigious amount of waste into the channel we were wading through. “You should plug them up,” I suggested. “Add to the chaos.”
An evil laugh filled my head. You have the best ideas, the DFZ said as the pipes in front of us started wriggling like snakes. A moment later, they’d bent back on themselves, sending the flow of sewage back up the pipe from whence it’d came.
“Nice,” I said, grinning. “Backflowing toilets aren’t an emergency you can ignore. That should keep someone distracted, at least. And speaking of distractions, did you do the thing?”
A few days ago, when we’d planned tonight’s timing in detail, one of the roadblocks I hadn’t known how to get around was the Gameskeeper’s ability to feel when the DFZ—or specifically, someone carrying the DFZ inside them—stepped into his territory. Kind of hard to sneak into a place when the owner can feel your presence. The DFZ had said she’d handle it, but I’d been too busy to follow up. A choice I was regretting right now.
Relax, I’ve got it covered, my city assured me. I’ve called in priests from all over the city to help out. They’re entering the arena with the rest of the crowds as we speak.
I blinked. “The Gameskeeper’s letting them in?”
Of course, she said. They’re paying customers.
My shock must have come through loud and clear, because she hurried to explain. I’m not the only one who’s subject to her domain. The Gameskeeper is the god of the arena. It goes against his nature to deny anyone a seat, especially on a night like tonight. I paid top dollar for those tickets, and my money is as good as anyone’s. He knows they’re spies, but he can’t deny me any more than I could deny him. Meanwhile, his arena is filled with false positives. I’m going to be in their heads even more than yours to keep things nice and confused, so unless you do something really obvious, he shouldn’t be able to track you specifically.
That was great news! “Does this also mean we’ll have backup if things go bad?”
Uh…no, the DFZ said. My other priests aren’t what you’d call “Good in a fight.”
The only other priests of hers
