I’d dealt with some bad people before.

  Saul Williams, the crooked cop who’d ruled Museumtown for about a week, and who’d killed and ordered people to be killed to secure his position.

  Eddie Petrovich, the biker who’d killed Brian and tried to kill me multiple times.

  And Taven Liu. He was still out there, and I couldn’t beat him right now, but I’d have to deal with him and his Fireborn Crusade sooner or later.

  Erika Samson didn’t strike me as a bad woman. The quick notes Cindy had kept on her made her seem like the kind of person who’d fit right in with Cozad’s people if she hadn’t lived in Chicago. She didn’t want to kill me. She didn’t want power. She just wanted to get to Laramie, Wyoming, so that she could see her kids.

  And I didn’t want to kill her, either. I wanted to take care of my people. Our goals weren’t incompatible. They were opposed, but if the two of us could sit down and talk it through, we could work something out. That’s how we solved problems in Cozad—at least, when they were between reasonable folks. In setting my trap, I had to hope that Erika was, or could be, a reasonable person.

  I also wanted to talk to Erika because her presence had clued me in on something. There was Charge on Earth. It did resonate. I just couldn’t detect it under normal conditions; it was too normal for me to feel it. But the moment she’d pushed her antimagic aura and shut down all the magic—but not Charge—around me, it had hit me like a wall. The absence of noise had turned an inaudible whisper into a pounding drum. I needed to hear that again, and not with Erika trying to kill me.

  In the meantime, I had a town to return to and a trap to finish setting.

  I hurried back through the bramble-overrun Chicago streets. Everywhere I looked, Solumnus-Six and Earth were in conflict—and in most of those places, the alien world was winning. Eyes followed me from deep in the bramble. Orcs, and lots of them. They were harvesting the thickest, strongest bramble and bringing it back to the United Center, and whatever they were building, it was going to be a problem.

  But it was a problem for another day. Tomorrow, or the next one. When we were ready for it. Maybe when Bobby showed up. And after that, we’d have to focus on the Phase Two beacon and Taven Liu.

  Calvin was watching the unranked delvers as they sparred against each other, and Jessica had her nose in a ledger, staring at the numbers with an expression of despair on her face. The two of them joined me in my tower room above the Reliquary of Bones’s entrance.

  “I need your help,” I said quickly. “Two things, both advice. First, how do I beat someone who’s equally matched with me, without relying on magic, allies, or lethal blows? And second, how do societies bring someone back into them after they’ve disconnected themselves from that society?”

  Jessica looked at Calvin. They stared for a moment, and then the old veteran bowed his head. “I’ll let you take the second question. Give me a little time to work through my thoughts.”

  “So, in the case of someone on the outside looking in, the first question you have to answer is whether they want to rejoin society. If they don’t, no amount of work on everyone else’s part can fix it. But if they do…” Jessica trailed off. “If they do, then you’re looking at weeks or months of time to slowly rehabilitate someone. It depends on who the person is, why they isolated themselves, and how long it’s been, but either way, it’s not going to be an easy process. Why?”

  “Because in the next day—maybe less—a woman’s going to attack me. She’s got antimagic powers, but I can beat her one-on-one. What I can’t do is make sure she survives, and I need her alive and on our side.”

  “Then you’ve got your work cut out for you, Hal,” Jessica said quietly. “I know what society-building is supposed to look like, but I have no idea what Integration’s doing to it. I have even less idea how reintegrating people into Museumtown is going to go.”

  “You catch her level?” Calvin asked. “People care a lot more about levels than they did anywhere that’s not the military before.”

  I paused. Then I shook my head. “No nameplate.”

  “That’s different, then,” Calvin said. “Not normal.”

  “How about this, Hal?” Jessica asked. “You focus on surviving this fight with her and on whatever Calvin can come up with to take her out without killing her, and once we have her, we get to work on her mental and emotional state. That’ll buy us time to figure out the best way to bring her back into society.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Right,” Calvin said. “So, you’re going to want to tell me exactly what this woman’s powers are. What does she do?”

  “She’s got a sword and a dagger, and she hits me with them.” I rolled up my sleeve and showed my arm.

  “Jesus, Hal, start with that,” Jessica said. “Let’s get that fixed, then get back to the conversation.”

  “No. I’m trying to trick Erika into making a mistake. If I’m hurt, she’ll get cocky. If I heal every time we fight, she’ll only focus harder and be more difficult to trick. As for her class, it’s got an aura that shuts down magic around her. I’m pretty sure Tori or Zane—or maybe even Carol—would just lose to her. But there’s a fundamental difference between magic and what I build with Charge. She can’t rely on that power to beat me.”

  Calvin nodded. Jessica stared at my injury, face stern and concerned. But Calvin took over. “Alright. And what does she want, again?”

  “I didn’t say, but she wants the Explorer. I read up a little bio that Cindy, my shop’s owner, made for her repeat customers. She’s trying to get to Wyoming.” I took a breath. “I think…”

  Jessica put a hand on my shoulder. “You think she’s broken.”

  “Yeah. She’s trying to do what’s best for her people, but something went wrong for her. I’m not sure what, but I have a suspicion. Her class seems ridiculously powerful—a whole level up from anything else I’ve seen, except for possibly Fireborn Crusader. But it’s simple. There’s no puzzle to it. She earned it in her Hardcore Tutorial. I’m not sure how, though.”

  Calvin interrupted. “Doesn’t matter. She’s got a weaponized, lethal class. She’s proven she’s a threat. You want her off the table, or as an ally. Here’s how you do the first part so that Jessica can help with the second.”

  Calvin came with me when I returned to Cindy’s Garage. So did Jessica, and a handful of other delvers—all of them magic-users of various types. We’d picked the crew to be both intimidating to Erika and easy for her to ignore in practice. The goal wasn’t to stop her from making a move, just to delay it for a while.

  I opened the front door and stepped in, then gestured to the rest of…everyone…to come in. “We’ve got an hour or two to get this place set up exactly like Calvin wants it to look. Let’s get to it.”

  For the next hour and a half, we fiddled with everything. I spent my time on the bomb-making drones, modifying them slightly, tweaking how they worked, and so on. The rest of the crew worked under Calvin’s direction—mostly on the garage doors, but also by the lift and the pit below it.

  They finished just in time.

  My stored, common items shut down first. I waved a hand in the air as they did, and Jessica tried to use her healing magic on my arm. It failed—which I’d known it would. A couple of the other mages we’d brought tried casting, too. Not all of them. Just enough to sell the confusion.

  Erika walked in a minute later. She didn’t try to sneak through the lobby this time. She didn’t need to; the garage doors were open, and the Explorer sat in the middle of a tarp, parts strewn under it.

  “Hal Riley,” she said, using my full name. I hadn’t gotten a good look at her last time—she hadn’t given me much time to talk—but this time, she’d slowed down enough that I caught dark hair and black rings around her eyes. She looked exhausted. “I’m going to give you a chance. All you have to do is take it. Give me my truck.”

  I revved the Trip-Hammer. “You’re welcome to try taking it.”

  She nodded. Then she sheathed her sword and walked over to the Mad Max’ed husk of her SUV. I watched her, waiting. Was it really going to be this easy? She touched the frame and looked inside, at the driver’s seat and gutted cabin. “You do thorough work here. Will it start?”

  “Give it a try.”

  I tossed the keys her way. She didn’t reach out to catch them. Instead, they clattered to a stop at her feet, inches from the edge of the tarp. Erika stared at them. Then her eyes narrowed. “What’s the trick?”

  I glanced at Calvin. Then I turned back to Erika. “High Awareness?”

  “Very. This whole thing looked like a trap, but I don’t have to beat everyone, just you.” Erika’s eyes only looked more tired as she said it. “I’ll do it, too.”

  I took a breath. Calvin shook his head slightly. I saw it in the corner of my eye, but I ignored him. Erika had seen through it all. The odds of getting her inside the truck, where the drones were waiting, were extremely low. Probably nonexistent. But I could try something else.

  “Ms. Samson, this was a trap for you, but there’s a good reason. You and me, we’ve got a problem. You want the Explorer—and it’s yours. I’d be happy to give it to you, no problem. I’ve gotten what I needed from it, and I can probably build something like it from scratch. But it’s running on my power, not its own. If I let it go, it’ll take a lot of my strength with it.”

  “And I care why?” Erika’s eyes stayed narrowed, and they locked on me.

  I sighed. “You probably don’t. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I think I know why you’re trying to get to Laramie.”

  “How do you know…?”

  “Cindy used to keep records of repeat customers—a little quirk of hers. I looked you up by make and model. You’ve got two kids there, and you need to know if they’re okay. You’ve got your people, and I have mine. These people are my responsibility. So, I have an offer for you. Give me three days to figure out a solution. If I don’t have one, we’ll let you take the Explorer.”

  Erika looked at the crowd, then at me. “And what if I just take it?”

  “You can’t. I depowered it. It’s not going anywhere unless I re-Charge it. And I won’t do that unless you agree to my terms.”

  Erika seemed to deflate. All the energy and purpose disappeared; one moment, she looked at me like a cougar stalking a deer. The next, she was more like a beaten dog. I had her. All I had to do was not jump the gun here.

  So I waited. And, miraculously, the problem solved itself. “Fine. I’ll be watching.”

  She started to walk toward the door. I cleared my throat. “Actually, I need you to stick around. You’re going to help me out. You…and your weird aura.”