They’re normal for me, the city grumbled. I’m not a war god! The sort of people who dedicate themselves to a living city don’t tend to be commando types. Or “go outside” types. But they’re putting it out for me tonight, so let’s respect their efforts.
Hey, if they were willing to risk the Gameskeeper to help us pull this off, they were all amazing in my book.
They are amazing! the DFZ agreed excitedly. I’ve got a literal financial wizard of an accountant, a rat-whisperer who champions my rodent population, a doctor who treats people in the back alleys with the flip of a coin, and…well, that’s it actually.
My eyes went wide. “You only brought three other people?”
Cut me some slack, I’m a young god! My priesthood is a work in process, but three should be more than enough to keep the Gameskeeper from zeroing in on you. Trust me, my people are very distracting.
It would have to do. I had my own problems, starting with how we were going to get inside. Aside from the pipes sticking out the bottom, the wall in front of us appeared to be made of solid cement. Not exactly an easy in.
“Can you open a door for us?”
Negative, the DFZ said. The pipes were just over the line, but the wall itself is his domain. I can’t move it.
“I can,” my father said when I explained the situation to him. “Stand aside.”
There wasn’t much room to stand anywhere in the narrow tunnel, but I scooted back as far as I could, pulling the hood of my poncho tight to cover as much of my face as possible.
“Clear!”
The moment the word was out of my mouth, my father hit the wall in four places. Each strike went faster than my eyes could follow, but when he was done, there was a neat rectangular crack in the cement. One more kick was all it took to bust open a perfectly Yong-sized hole.
“Nice,” I said appreciatively, grinning at the broken, startlingly thick cement. “You must be feeling better!”
“Not that much better,” he said, shaking his right hand, which had bruises all along the knuckles. “That should have been easier.”
Rolling my eyes at ridiculous dragon standards, I stepped through the hole he’d made into what appeared to be a storage room full of dusty stage crates and huge stacks of plastic stadium seating. Nothing looked particularly dangerous, and—better still—there were no cameras on the walls. It was also dark as pitch, but that was fine with me. Dark rooms were rooms no one was looking in, and I had a solution built in.
“Okay,” I said, flicking off my headlamp as I activated my goggles’ night vision. “Where next?”
My father scowled in the dark, turning his head this way and that.
“Do you need me to turn the light back on?”
“No,” he said irritably. “My night vision is as good as it ever was. I’m just trying to get my bearings. When I was scouting this place earlier, I came in through the door, not a wall.”
Fair enough. While he looked around, I took the opportunity to check my news feeds. I wasn’t stupid enough to get on the arena’s WiFi, so I had to use regular DFZ municipal, which—surprise, surprise—was slow as balls down here. I had to turn off images before it would load, but eventually I read that the arena was already filling with people. Reports listed the crowd as massive, not that it could have been anything less after all that media coverage.
It’s gigantic, the DFZ confirmed. All of Rentfree is packed. Mostly out-of-towners, but there’s plenty of locals in the mix too. I felt her frown in my mind. I have no idea how they’re all going to fit.
“Not our problem,” I said as my images finally loaded, filling my vision with ads for T-shirts, posters, and other commemorative paraphernalia with Nik’s face plastered all over them.
The sight made me wince. Poor Nik. He was never going to live this down. If we survived tonight, I was going to take him on a vacation. Somewhere nice and tropical and very far away.
“Opal.”
I looked up to see my father standing across the room with his head sticking out the door. “Are you nuts?” I hissed, banishing my news feed as I ran over. “Don’t open the door!”
“I checked for guards first,” he said, insulted. “We have to go out sooner or later, and the hallway’s empty at the moment. See?”
He opened the door wider so I could see the wide cement hall outside was, indeed, empty. Judging by the dust on the floor, it had been that way for a long time.
“About time we had some luck,” I said, poking at the thick layer of grit with the armored toe of my boot. “Have you figured out where we’re going?”
Instead of answering, my father stepped into the hall, leaving me to scurry after him.
The lower levels of the arena were very different from what I’d imagined. I’d expected a typical backstage full of bustle and chaos with supplies and props packed to the ceiling. This actually reminded me more of a military installation. As Nik had warned me over the phone, it went very deep. We’d come in through the Rentfree sewers, the lowest point in the whole DFZ, but according to my dad, we weren’t even halfway down. I was wondering how the Gameskeeper had dug all of this out without anyone noticing when the DFZ popped into my head with the answer.
It was already here, she said, directing my eyes toward the faded paint on the dusty walls. This used to be part of the old Detroit Salt Mine. I closed off the entrances ages ago, but I couldn’t move
