Tori and I were supposed to meet at the fish-hugger fountain.

  But not for a while. Tori was many things—a great warrior, powerful telekineticist, and stubborn jackass—but she was also a fifteen-year-old teenager. I’d been one, and I knew how it was—any opportunity to sleep in.

  I was counting on it as I fired up the Voltsmith’s Laboratory. I had a lot to do.

  First, the rovers. They were useful, but not useful enough. I couldn’t justify ten and eleven Charge on them if I wanted my big project up and running—and I wanted that damn Explorer running as soon as possible.

  So, after some careful Charge-draining, I was left with three rail gun rovers, none of which ran. I also had an extra twenty-one Charge to play with, which increased when I drained a few of the commons we’d gotten from the Wheels of Fate’s first two bosses. I pulled up my stats.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 65, Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 38 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 37/94 (+15) (57 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Fabrication Engine (Epic): 1 Taser Rover, 1 Rail Gun Rover

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade One (19/30 Charge) - Rail Gun Module, Taser Launcher

  ?The Trip-Hammer, Tower’s Bane (25 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Bio-Electric Scanner) (7 Charge)

  Thirty-seven Charge. That…wasn’t as much as I’d hoped for, but I couldn’t justify stripping down the Bio-Electric scanner—or the Spellcode Scroll-Reader. I’d have to be as economical as possible. That meant sacrificing some power.

  When I’d first gotten the Trip-Hammer up and running after its initial round of beatings and batterings, it had been slow to activate. That wasn’t acceptable in a weapon; when I revved the engine, I needed immediate power, not power in three seconds. I’d had to work around that with the Voltsmith’s Grasp.

  But I didn’t care if it took the Explorer fifteen seconds to get up to ten miles per hour. We weren’t going to go too fast anyway—the roads were choked with broken, overgrown trucks and cars. Once we were out of Chicago, that’d be different, but the city was an obstacle course. And even then, acceleration wasn’t as important as efficiency. With the Explorer running, we’d be able to hit dungeons well outside of Chicago—and learn more about the world around us and the new rules that governed it. It couldn’t all be brambles and sandstone cliffs, could it?

  Could it?

  I didn’t want to think about that. I couldn’t think about that.

  Instead, I focused up. The whole transmission—that damn transmission I’d struggled with for so long—had to come out first. Then there was the engine itself; I could use most of it, but the entire internal combustion engine aspect wasn’t necessary.

  As far as I could tell, there were two methods for Charge-based engines in this new world. First, I could do what I’d done with the Trip-Hammer. It was a motorcycle engine, with the Charge operating the cylinders through emitters and wiring. It worked, and it was pretty efficient. It was also slow, power-wise.

  The other method was what I’d used for the rovers. I treated its axle like a turbine with the Charge, and it worked well enough at that scale. The power gain was near instant; if the rover needed it, it’d just take off. However, I had serious concerns about how well it’d scale up on its own.

  In an ideal universe, I’d be able to combine the two power sources. Then again, in an ideal universe, I wouldn’t be fighting monsters or gaining levels, either. I’d still be working on the Explorer, but the Voltsmithing was pretty cool, though, I had to admit.

  After some consideration, I decided to start with the Charge-based piston engine. It was scalable, and I already had a V-6 Ford engine. First came the teardown. I clambered under the Explorer—which was up on the lift again—and ripped out everything I could find. Four-wheel drive? Gone. Gas tank? Unnecessary. If it wasn’t brakes, acceleration, or steering, I didn’t need it for the test-drive. The body got the same treatment after I lowered it to the floor.

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  When it was done, I had what looked like a Mad Max car. We’d watched the most recent two in the break room at Cindy’s, and it looked like it’d have been right at home with the War Boys.

  I’d pulled the hubcaps, the back door was off, and I’d ripped every piece of automotive steel off the frame. Every window was gone except for the front windshield. So were the insides of the doors. Without windows, I didn’t need window rollers—automatic or rolled. The goal was to reduce weight; to that end, I stripped the cargo hold down to metal. The spare tire went into the junk pile for now, but at the very edge of it.

  I’d be adding that in soon.

  The Explorer went back up the lift, and I attached the necessary emitters, batteries, and wire to the engine.

  Installation was pretty typical; it took a good, solid hour. And then I fired up the engine. It chugged and died, just like I’d expected it to. That was okay. I had plenty of power as long as I didn’t leave the Voltsmith’s Laboratory. I added more.

  Then a little more—up past twenty, to twenty-five, then thirty. At thirty-two Charge, it finally started rolling when I stomped the gas to the floor. I added a little more. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Then I stepped on the brakes as it scooched toward the garage door.

  It was hideous. A rusted mess of welded frame, scraps of metal where I’d had to cut the automotive steel body free, and wiring that I hadn’t pulled. There was no radio—much to my despair, it’d take too much Charge to be worth running. And I’d pulled the back seats out, too. With the limited Charge I had, I’d needed to be smart about its weight, and the spare tire had more value than being able to move four people.

  The Explorer was no Road Warrior. Max would have rolled in his grave if anyone could have killed him.

  But it ran, and that was all that mattered.

  Principle of Voltsmithing Learned: Scale

  Charge behaves differently at scale. The principles you’ve learned still apply, but as a Voltsmith adds more and more energy to a creation, interesting things begin to happen. The Principle of Scale states that the more energy you add, the stranger things get—and at large enough scales, things can get very strange indeed. Prepare yourself for a new understanding of Voltsmithing.

  I filed that away for later. It was my first Principle since hitting Rank One, and it was acting very differently from the others I’d learned. But at the end of the day, it was just another tool in the toolbox, and I wanted to get on the road.

  I’d wanted to pull up outside of Museumtown with my horn honking.

  But in my quest to lighten the Explorer as much as I could, I’d ripped the horn’s electronics out—then the whole center of the steering wheel. So instead, I had to settle with a near-silent—other than the whine of the engine—ride across downtown Chicago. The brambles were the worst of it; I’d have to build a plow for the SUV at some point.

  I added it to my list as I finally arrived at Museumtown’s gates.

  To my surprise, Tori and Jessica were waiting for me.

  I opened the door, shut the Charge engine down, and climbed out. “I got her running!”

  “You sure did,” Tori said. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in her voice, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t her triumph. This was proof—for myself, not for her—that I could fix anything. The Explorer shouldn’t have been able to run. But it did. If I could fix it, then with enough time, effort, and learning, I could fix the System and how it handled Integration. That was the real, final goal. But I didn’t know enough to get started on it. Not yet.

  I was getting closer, though. The Principle I’d learned was proof of that.

  “Yep. This baby can fit so many…uh…experience orbs in her,” I said, slapping the frame that had once been a hood. Then I waved. “Want to climb inside?”

  “Nah. I’ve been in cars before, Hal.”

  “But not anything like this one, I promise. It’s a totally different ride.”

  “No.” Tori crossed her arms. “What I want is to go check out Calvin’s book.”

  The book, it turned out, was a Hello Kitty kids’ diary.

  Calvin shrugged when he handed the pink and white, cat-shaped journal over. “Surprised you never asked about the book before. Been keeping track since I got the Delvers organized. It’s got everything you need.”

  I opened it up to the first page. It was a list. Nothing but a list. I recognized a few of the names, but not all of them. There were probably two dozen entries under ‘Tier One,’ with a note next to the heading that said the Tier Ones were all shut down now. I flipped the page to the Tier Two Dungeons.

  The Reliquary of Bones (explored and recorded)

  The Watery Grave (explored and recorded)

  The L (partially explored and recorded)

  The Void (explored, partially recorded)

  The Field of Warriors (explored and recorded)

  And on and on. There were an even twelve Tier Two Dungeons in the Chicago area—that we knew of, at least.

  I flipped the page again, this time to Tier Three.

  The Seared Wilds Tower (partially explored and recorded)

  That made a lot of sense. Tori and I had cleared it, and we’d reported what we’d fought. Calvin and I both thought that the first floor would be the same, and so would the second. But I doubted that Voril would still be the third floor’s boss. She’d be too busy with whatever it was the Consortium was getting ready for.

  I didn’t bother checking for Tier Four Dungeons. We only knew about one, but there’d be others. They’d pop up, and when they did, the book would expand. Instead, I flipped to the page with the Reliquary of Bones’s entry.

  The Reliquary of Bones

  Explored and recorded by Tori Vanderbilt, Zane and Carol Parker, and Hal Riley on separate delves, Phase One.

  Monsters: Dinosaur skeletons, mummified animals, animated statues

  Bosses:

  1. The Embalmed Emperor (Sword of Forgotten Pharaohs, Embalmer’s Gloves, Tome of Dessication)

  2. The Queen Tyrant (The Queen’s Blessing, Tome of Insatiability, Battle Helm of the Tyrant (set))

  Dungeon Rules:

  Floor One: Paid Exit, Activation Code

  Floor Two: Paid Exit, Open Floor, Activation Code

  Below Calvin’s scrawl, Tori’s cleaner, school-perfect handwriting had written out a series of notes for how to beat both bosses, a description of where they were and how to trigger each boss’s Activation Codes, and quick descriptions of the known magical item drops. The notes covered most of a page. I’d added a couple of notes, but Tori’s were comprehensive enough.

  She was reading over my shoulder. “Let’s check The L’s entry. Neither of us has been there, right?”

  I sighed. The last thing I needed was to get stuck in another subway dungeon. “How about…” I scrolled through the book, landing on a different dungeon we hadn’t explored. When I finally found one, I regretted my choice immediately. “…Andersonville?”