I didn’t say anything as Bobby stared at me and more Garden people ran toward us with weapons drawn.

  Part of it was that there was nothing I could say that’d convince Gerry or Ryan. The only thing that would was proof that their Waypoint Beacon was fine. I hadn’t tampered with it at all. The Charge Converter was still in my inventory, and I hadn’t gotten close enough to touch it. All I’d done was take a look at the actual device in operation.

  But the other part was the light—or lack of it—all around us. The last time I’d been close to an inactive Waypoint Beacon, it had shot a beam of Charge into the sky. There wasn’t a beam here.

  And, after a moment, Gerry’s crossbow lowered as he realized it. “Where’s the beam? There’s supposed to be a beam if there’s a fresh one,” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Now that he wasn’t ready to attack, I relaxed enough to look around. It wasn’t anywhere to the south, west, or east, and the north was obscured by massive trees and even more massive brambles—the only brambles we’d seen on the skyline. “Has to be that way, right?”

  Tori glanced over her shoulder at it, then back at her mom. Her brow furrowed, and she looked like she was about ready to lose it completely. The tears that’d been covering her face were still there, but she wiped them away with the back of her sleeve. “Are you checking it out, then?”

  I nodded slowly. “You coming with me?”

  She stood there, looking between the two of us—her mom and me. Tension rippled across her, like she was being torn in two. Then she shook her head. “I…I can’t.”

  “Like hell you can’t,” her mom said. She pointed at the gigantic, towering brambles. “You’ve got people you’re trying to save, right? Go save them.”

  “You’re sure?” Tori asked. “I just got here, and—“

  “Tori Vanderbilt, you’ve been looking for a quest your whole life. I remember reading The Hobbit with you, and you going out to play with sticks with the boys. This has been in you since you were little. Now go.” The woman turned to me. She looked exactly like Tori, but older—or maybe more like my sister than Tori did. More like Beth. A hand shot out to shake mine. “Kate Quincy. Thanks for taking care of her. I assume I can count on you to get her through this, right?”

  “Right. I promised the same thing to her stepmom,” I said.

  Kate’s face darkened for a moment. Not more than a second, but it happened. Then she was right back to being herself. “Glad Jessica lived. And her husband?”

  “Dad was in New York,” Tori mumbled.

  “Sorry to hear that, sweety.”

  Bobby coughed, then, when I looked his way, waved at the bramble field. “Not sure how you dropped a new Waypoint on us, but I want in.”

  I nodded. “Good to have you on board, Bobby.” As I said it, I couldn’t help but notice Tori shake her head.

  “Good luck,” Gerry said. “If you get it, we won’t interfere. Already got what we need, and you’d have to be a maniac to attack the Garden.”

  Calvin stuck out his hand, and I shook it. “Good luck, Hal. This one’s beyond my weight class. Stay on mission, don’t get distracted, and get that beacon.”

  I waved, and we walked north, toward the forest garden—and toward the bramble field where the Waypoint’s dungeon had to be.

  The three of us had just pushed into the brambles when another message appeared.

  It was the worst possible one.

  Waypoint Contested

  An inactive Waypoint Beacon within a nearby dungeon is currently in proximity to another delver faction. Enter the dungeon and secure it from hostile forces to gain control over the Beacon.

  “I thought Gerry said they wouldn’t interfere!” Tori glared over her shoulder as we jogged into the bramble. Each individual vine was thicker than my waist, and they loomed overhead, blotting out the stars, but there was a clearly-cut path following the concrete walkway that led into the heart of the Grafted area.

  Bobby shook his head. “The Garden’s pretty solid. If Gerry said they wouldn’t interfere, this is either a scout closing in, or it’s just close enough that someone stepped inside the radius. Or, you know, someone’s making a move without knowing what’s going on. That’s what Bobby Richards would do.” He grinned ruefully.

  “It’s a smart move,” I agreed. We turned a corner, and a welcome sight filled the sky; a dark orange beam cut into the sky before hitting the lattice of brambles overhead. “Redundancy would make sure the Garden survived this phase.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “So you agree with them taking a second?” Tori asked, eyes narrowed and hands on her hips.

  “I didn’t say that, and if anyone tries to stop us, we’re going to have to fight them. You okay with that, Bobby?”

  “Yep. Time to spread the chips around.” He nodded as we stopped in front of the weirdest dungeon entrance I’d ever seen.

  It looked like a gripping set of claws made from brambles twisted around each other, knotted and bent into a massive hand that loomed over the dark dungeon entrance below. The path forward was little more than a narrow set of steps leading down below it, and its three-fingered grip felt like jaws getting ready to close over us. “Bobby, was this here earlier?”

  “Nope. The Gardener’s been keeping this whole section of the Graft as part of the botanical gardens. He’d have known about it, and the Garden would’ve cleared a dungeon this close to them. They only leave the Toxic Garden up so they can train their people in it.”

  “So, what are we waiting for?” Tori asked. “Let’s go. Full clear, get the Waypoint, move on.”

  I shook my head—sometimes, Tori could be pretty hyperfocused on that full clear—and stepped onto the steps and into the dungeon.

  Tier Four Dungeon: The Hand That Feeds

  Objective: Discover a Way Through (0/1)

  Objective: Defeat the Custodian (0/1)

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Unfinished: This dungeon has no defined structure, with no clear floors or theme.

  Labyrinthine: This dungeon cannot be mapped and is constantly shifting.

  Grafted: This dungeon is not from its host planet and is fully alien.

  Fragile Walls: This dungeon is close to breaking. Its inhabitants will be freed if a threshold of Delver deaths is reached within.

  Break Counter: 0/5

  New Objective: Secure the Beacon (0/1)

  The Waypoint Beacon is Currently Contested. Claim it to exit the dungeon early.

  I’d been in a lot of dungeons, but I’d never seen any with the first three affixes.

  And I’d only seen something like this once.

  It was dark. Not pitch-black like Rosehill Mausoleum, but dim. The only lights came from Charge wires that glowed a faint orange as they ran along the metal walls, and the concrete-like floor under my feet felt disturbingly unfinished, too. The Hand That Feeds was, true to its first affix, unfinished—it reminded me of the hidden passage in the Whole New World dungeon. But it wasn’t just that. The whole feel of the place was wrong.

  A stink hung in the air. It took me a minute to recognize it: electrical fire. It was the stench of a burned-out drill trying to run—the smell of bad wiring.

  Tori smelled it too. “What the hell is that?”

  “The first affix. It’s unfinished and untested, but someone deployed it anyway.”

  There was only one way forward—down the faintly glowing, orange-lit hallway in front of us. I readied the Siege Hammer and started moving. The electric stink didn’t let up, but my nose got used to it as I pushed down the hall, with Bobby and Tori following me.

  The first monster appeared in front of us for all of a second.

  Dungeon Technician: Level 75 (Rank One)

  They were vaguely human in the same uncanny way Voril had been. Purple and yellow jumpsuit. The afterimage-looking effect that Voril’s motions had left behind. Slightly longer and more stretched out than any person I’d seen before. Their eyes went wide, and their hand moved to their wrist—I didn’t even get a chance to open my mouth before they shimmered, disappeared, and something else appeared in their place.

  Maze Watcher: Level 75 Monster

  Orange glow. Ceramic armor with hints of purple. Black rubber underneath at the joints. Four arms—like the Workers from the Urban Sprawl—but at the end of each of them was a mechanical-looking eye. Four more eyes stared from its beak-shaped face as a jaw clicked open and shut at us.

  I rushed the monster. The Siege Hammer’s Charge engine clicked, and the sledge part whipped forward. But before it could make contact, the four eyes in the monster’s hands separated, and a beam of energy swept across my weapon as the Maze Watcher Pushed it away. Another eye stared at me, and my swing slowed down until, when it hit the floor, it didn’t even dent the concrete.

  “The eyes are mages!” I yelled. “Bobby, you got this?”

  “Yep,” Bobby said. He moved almost lazily, but as he did, he wove between a fireball and a burst of icy wind, finding the seams between the spells. The eyes swarmed around him, firing their magic as quickly as they could, but his sheer level advantage made him almost inevitable.

  And, even better, it left the Maze Watcher vulnerable—especially when Tori dropped a Gravity Well on it. The hammer swung back, and the four-armed monster’s eyes glowed red for a moment. Then it made contact, the mechanism fired, and ceramic armor cracked. Black goo leaked from the split in the Maze Watcher’s chest as it staggered backward.

  “Finish it off!” Tori shouted.

  I spun the hammer around for another blow.

  The Maze Watcher jerked backward. The Siege Hammer fired. An arm flew across the room, then another, as the weapon’s pulverizing impact fired into the joints one after the other.

  A green experience orb appeared as the Maze Watcher faded into nothing. It floated toward me, and I touched it.

  Level Up! 72 to 73

  I stared down the hall, past a round door that looked like something from a science fiction movie—an umbilical for a space station or something. “Through there?” I asked.

  “Might as well,” Tori said. “We’ve got to clear everything anyway.”

  I stepped through, with Tori and Bobby right behind me. And the moment we were all through, the umbilical door sealed.

  Then it vanished.

  We stood in, of all things, a brick-lined room. The redstone room reminded me of the older parts of Andersonville, where new, modern construction hadn’t overtaken the turn-of-the-century architecture from a hundred twenty years ago. Mrs. Faren’s house had looked like this; I’d lived in the attic, with a round window overlooking the oak-lined, one-way street below.

  But there were no windows here. Instead, there were pillars. Brick pillars, each a few feet square, that reached upward into the darkness overhead.

  And there was resonance here. So much it was almost overwhelming. And it was wrong.

  “How is this ‘Grafted?’” Tori asked. She glared at the walls around us. “This looks like something out of England or somewhere.”

  “Right,” Bobby said. “This ain’t Solemnus.”

  I stared at the blank walls for a while. Then I nodded slowly. “I think I get it.”

  “What?’ Tori asked.

  “It’s still Grafted. It’s just not Solemnus we’re Grafted to. This dungeon’s not part of either world. This one’s something different—and I think I understand what—or at least why.”