I expected Lambeau Field.

  It was the obvious place to set up a community—around the most iconic building in Green Bay. I’d never been to the city, but the football stadium was our first stop. We drove through the street, pushing to get to the building before night fully settled in. But as we got closer and the Runner’s orange glow washed over the road leading to it, Calvin pulled to a stop. “Take a look here, Hal. Tell me what you think.”

  I joined him—Tori was still asleep in the back—and stared at the road in front of us—and at the message burned into the asphalt.

  Botanical Garden Safe Zone

  Northwest

  Two Miles

  “You think it’s a trap?” I asked. I looked up at the glass and brick walls of Lambeau Field, shining in the twilight. It wasn’t as mighty-looking as Soldier Field had been, but…I’d expected to see the light of fires around it if people were living here.

  “No. I know it. That…is one hundred percent a trap.” Calvin stared at the words on the street. “The question is whether it’s a trap that’s dangerous if we walk into it knowingly—or if it’s a trap for people they don’t want. If it’s either of those, we should check somewhere else. Otherwise…”

  He trailed off, leaving the end unsaid. I nodded, then slipped back into the Runner. “Let’s go. I think they’ll be friendly—or at the very least, they won’t be in it to kill us.”

  “Your call, Hal,” Calvin said. The Runner started back up, and we made our way northwest, following a tangled mess of roads. Calvin didn’t seem to get lost at all, and I watched him turn the Runner with the confidence of a local as we squeezed through alleys and under overpasses.

  “You were here for a while, weren’t you?” I asked after a few minutes.

  “What makes you say that?” He stroked his beard with one hand for a moment, then snorted. “I told you, worst winter of my life. I lived between Lambeau and the Botanical Garden—they had food there. Learned the streets pretty well, and since they’re normal-ass streets, they still make sense to me. Mostly. Missed at least one shortcut back there, but it’ll be alright.”

  He pulled onto Larsen Road, then onto the side of the road. “Tori, wake up. Almost there, and we need to talk.”

  She woke up slowly, eyes blinking in the darkness. “Whatsup?” she asked, the words blurring into one half-asleep utterance.

  “We’re a few hundred yards from the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. That’s where the city’s survivors are, so that’s where we’re going. But we need you to be awake and aware. It might be a trap. If it is, you and Hal are our best chance of getting out of it. Got it?”

  “Uh-huh. Won’t be a trap, though. Mom’s gonna be in there,” Tori mumbled.

  “Sure,” Calvin said. “Just don’t get us killed hoping.”

  Then the Runner pulled back onto the road. A minute later, it turned right and stopped in the middle of a wide, completely empty parking lot. We’d arrived.

  There were fires in the garden.

  Their light flickered off the trees south of us, even though they were far in the distance. Round gazebos and huts glowed orange—not the familiar, steady glow of Charge, but the same color Museumtown looked at night. I readied the Siege Hammer as we walked through the entrance.

  To my surprise, Calvin raised a hand and touched the weapon. “Put it away, Hal. It ain’t gonna help us here,” he said quietly.

  Tori took off, walking quickly, her head swiveling back and forth as she hurried through the flowers and trees. She made a beeline southwest, following a curving sidewalk that reminded me of Museumtown’s paths. I put on a little speed to follow her, but Calvin stopped me from doing that, too. “I was wrong, Hal. Trap’s not for us at all.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because we already sprang it. We’d be dead if they wanted us dead.”

  I looked over my shoulder as a trio of figures emerged from the hedge. They were all dressed in rags, and in the near-darkness, they’d blended into the plants almost perfectly.

  Gerry Pataki: Level 73

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Class: Sniper

  Ryan Emerald: Level 77

  Class: Demolition Man

  Deb Wollard: Level 71

  Class: Skirmisher

  “Howdy,” I said as I pulled the Siege Hammer into my inventory and stuck my hand out toward Ryan. "Hal Riley, out of Cozad, Nebraska, and, more recently, Chicago.”

  To my surprise, though, Gerry took it. He was a small man, with a crossbow almost as large as he was, and his clothes were covered in branches. He shook quickly. “Long way from home, huh, boy? I’m outta Grand Island, myself.” The accent was familiar and comforting; he was a Nebraska guy.

  “What were you doing here?” I asked. Then I shook my head. “No, more important questions. How did you stop the Graft, and do you have a beacon? We’ve got a few thousand survivors by the Field Museum in Chicago, and a couple other groups scattered through the city, and our closest one got destroyed.”

  Gerry stared at me. Then he shook his head slowly. “Figured as much. The answer to one’s the solution to the other. We got lucky, though. Beacon showed up out in the lake. We had a few sailboats, so we dragged it back to shore. It’s been slowly pushing on the Grafted areas. Well, that and Charlie figured out a way to contain them, so they didn’t get too out of control.”

  I blinked. Gerry…hadn’t lied to me? Calvin tensed. “Trap’s sprung. Told you.”

  Gerry laughed. “You wouldn’t be thinking about taking ours, would you?” Behind him, Ryan pulled something out of his inventory, and Deb casually slid an axe off her shoulder. But before I could reassure them that I didn’t want their beacon, I just wanted to know where to look for one for Chicago, Tori blinked away the last of her sleep and realized we’d stopped.

  She turned, half-running, and slid to a stop on the grass next to the path. “Hey, do you have a list of people who live here? I’m looking for my mom. Last name is probably Vanderbilt, and her first name’s going to be Kate or Katey. Please.”

  The weapons froze. Ryan flipped whatever he’d pulled back into his inventory, and they all stared at Tori. She stared back, frantic energy pouring off of her even as she tried to keep herself calm and collected. Then Deb whistled. “You’re Level 74? What are you, fourteen?”

  “Fifteen,” Tori said. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Relax,” the woman said. She pulled her rags off, and I got a good look at her. Dark skin, curled hair, big eyes. She was thin past the point of wiry. “I don’t think we have a Vanderbilt in the records, but I’ll bring you to take a look.”

  “I…thanks,” Tori said. She relaxed a little—and so did Gerry and Ryan. Then Tori looked at me, and her intensity returned. “I’m going with her. I have to know if she’s here.”

  I tried not to groan out loud. The last thing we needed was to split up. But on the other hand, Gerry had been honest about what they had. We weren’t a threat to them. I had no idea who Charlie was or how he’d gotten them through Integration in such good shape, but they had more firepower than I expected—and it wasn’t close.

  I made a gut decision; I could trust them—or at least Gerry. He was a farm boy like me. “Alright. We’ll stay here and talk for a while. Maybe we can learn the lay of the land and figure out an option for Museumtown.”

  “Well, as long as you’re not after our Waypoint, you’re okay to be here,” Gerry said. He pulled his camouflage rags off and slipped a pair of glasses on. The look suited him more than it should have. “So, this is the Garden. We’ve got about three thousand here, mostly camped in the kids’ garden south of here. Of that, twenty-eight hundred are Green Bay survivors, and two hundred came up from Milwaukee. Ryan’s one of those.”

  “Yep. When it blue-beamed at the end of Phase One, we weren’t in town,” Ryan said. He fell silent, leaving ‘blue beam’ undefined.

  I didn’t press him, and Gerry took over. “Most places got red and green. Red cities failed Phase One. Dunno what happened to them. Green ones—like here and, I guess, Chicago too—got patchworked. Blue was different. They Grafted. The whole place. Instantly. We don’t know what happened to the survivors inside.”

  “It wasn’t instant,” I said softly.

  “What?” Ryan asked. He was big, and he hadn’t taken off his camo suit, but his voice shook just a little.

  “There was a dungeon that was still under attack when we drove through. We cleared it out,” I said. I left most of the rest unsaid; the less they knew about A Whole New World, the better. “Do you have a Voltsmith here? I need to do some work on my gear.”

  “Nope,” Gerry said. “Got a few crafting classes, but nothing like yours. How’d you get that rig running, anyway?”

  “Elbow grease and hard work.”

  “Ain’t that the truth of it?”

  I liked Gerry. He knew how things were—and how they had to be to get anything done. “Are you in charge here?” I asked, even though I knew he wasn’t.

  “Charlie is—the Gardener. We’ll take you to see him if you want, but he’s busy. He was a gardener here before Integration, if you can believe that. He knows the grounds. Well, most of ‘em. The forest garden’s Grafted, and he hasn’t cleared out the Toxic Gardens, either. But the rest of it? He’s your guy.”

  “No, I think we’re good,” Calvin said. He hadn’t said anything in a while. “We need to make sure Tori’s alright, and then we need to get moving. If these folks have a Waypoint Beacon, we won’t find another here, and we’re running out of time.”

  He was right. We didn’t have time to get to know the Green Bay people. Museumtown needed us, and this was a dead end. But at the same time, we did need them. If we did get a Waypoint, the Fireborn Crusade would know about it, and we’d need friends. The people living in the Garden were strong enough that three Level Seventy-Plus delvers were running security. These were good friends to have.

  Then Gerry leaned in. “You know, we knew you’d be up this way. That’s why we were waiting for you.”

  “How’d you know that?” Calvin asked. I stiffened. Something was off.

  “Well, Hal Riley. I’ll be damned! I’d say I didn’t expect you to make it this far north, but I’d be lying, and Momma didn’t raise no liars.”

  I blinked. Then I turned. It wasn’t possible. There was no way he could have gotten all the way up here; he’d just been in Andersonville, and the Patrol Runner was the only functional car in the Midwest. The Explorer existed, sure, but it was either in Wyoming or almost there right now.

  And yet, there he was. Hair perfect. Suit perfect. The same cheeky, simultaneously trustable and utterly untrustworthy grin. It was him—and he’d gotten strong.

  Bobby Richards: Level 81

  Class: Resonator