World Graft Completed: [Earth] and [Solemnus Six] have been hybridized.

  Resource extraction commences in one week. Solemnus Six will continue natural expansion until the end of Phase Two.

  All Tier Four Dungeons that have not been cleared are now permanent fixtures on [Earth]. All Tier Four Dungeons that were cleared in the last week will revert to their pre-Integration status.

  Beacons Deployed

  Objective: Secure a Waypoint (564 Remaining) (0/1)

  Time Limit: One Week

  All unclaimed Waypoints will go dormant at the end of Phase Two.

  The World Graft was over.

  We lived in a Chicago that had been irrevocably changed. Towers of steel and glass had melded with canyons of stone and bramble. The Chicago River ran through rapids and bridges, its nature changing with the patchwork of Earth and Solemnus’s surfaces almost every city block. Outside of the safe zones, nothing had remained fully intact.

  The truce was over.

  Soon, the Fireborn Crusade would come for us. We’d gathered allies and done what we could to shore up our builds. Tori, Carol, Zane, and I were almost certainly stronger than anything outside of the Fireborn Crusader himself. The crew and I had finished building and empowering all six of the technicals. They’d give us a fighting chance, but whether that’d be enough, I didn’t know.

  Somewhere out there, the Waypoint Beacons had activated.

  We needed one. If we could find and hold onto one, we could keep all of Museumtown safe until the next Phase of Integration. We could probably keep all of Chicago safe. All we had to do was find one in the changed, Grafted world outside our walls.

  I looked up. Calvin and Jessica sat on the grass outside the Field Museum with me. “We’ve gotten lucky so far, but it was going to run out eventually. I’m not seeing anything that even looks like a Waypoint out there. No tower of light, no obvious target like the Sears Tower. Nothing. I think we might be in trouble for this Phase.”

  Calvin snorted. “We’ve been in trouble since day one, Hal.”

  “I agree,” Jessica said quietly. “Here’s what I think we do. We deploy half of your technicals with full teams of delvers—we’ve got a lot of folks in the Level Fifty to Fifty-Five range—and let them scout the city. Maybe they’ll see something. Everyone else gets ready for the Crusade.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Recon, then move. I like it,” Calvin said.

  I shook my head. It didn’t sound good to me. We needed something more than this. Phase Two’s second week was a problem, and there had to be a solution that wasn’t ‘look around and try to get lucky.’ I unfurled a map of the Lake Michigan area, all the way from the northern border of Illinois to the Mackinac Bridge. Someone had salvaged it in their Tutorial, and Calvin had been using it to strategize war plans.

  To the south was Gary, Indiana. To the north of us sat Milwaukee and Green Bay. I discarded all of those cities. If there wasn’t an obvious beacon in Chicago, the Consortium wouldn’t put one in any of the other big cities, either. That was a gamble, but it felt correct. “What does the Consortium want from this Phase? They said it’s about stabilizing Solemnus Six and grafting it to Earth, but what is it really about?” I asked.

  Calvin just stared at me. Jessica did too, for a minute. Then she snatched the map out of my hand, grabbed a pencil, and circled a spot on the map. “It’s here.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because the point of this whole exercise is to put pressure on us. There are exactly five hundred and sixty-four Waypoint Beacons. There were exactly five hundred and sixty-four cleared Tier Three Dungeons. They could have given each group that cleared their dungeon a beacon. They chose not to. That means they want conflict between the groups. And that means…”

  She waited for me to finish her sentence. I stared at the dot on the map, positioned right in between Gary, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois.

  Then I nodded. “Whiting.”

  The technicals headed south to Lake Calumet, with the strongest twelve delvers we could spare driving and a bunch more riding the benches. Five with Scorpion crossbows, one with a wood-framed bed that took up the entire truck, leaving just a driver’s seat.

  As everyone else slowly assembled near Museumtown’s gates, Calvin, Jessica, and I stood near the wall and watched. A couple hundred of the West Side people, disorganized, chaotic, and…not wild, but not used to having anyone tell them what to do. The best Museumtown had to offer who hadn’t already mounted up on the six technicals. And…

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  No one from the Rat’s Nest.

  I wasn’t sure if Theresa Mays had dropped the ball or if Bobby Richards had—or if something else had gone wrong. And we didn’t have time to find out. There was a Waypoint in Whiting. It was probably the only one in the Midwest—maybe as far as Nebraska. I tried not to think about that. Mom and Dad were…they were tough. If anyone could find one, it’d be Mom.

  Right now, though, we had a battle to fight.

  “It’s eighteen miles to Whiting,” Calvin said.

  “I know.”

  “Your technicals are exposed at the lake until we’re in position, and that’s a couple of hours even at full speed for high-level delvers.”

  “I know.”

  “This plan’s a big risk.”

  “I know, Calvin,” I said. “It was your plan. You having second thoughts?”

  Calvin nodded seriously. I looked at his eyes. They were scared. “I’m always having second thoughts. Never wanted to be a general, Hal. Never wanted that, ever. I wanted to be a heart surgeon. Pediatrics. Save kids’ lives. That ain’t how the world worked out, though, so now I have to send them to battle. I know what it’s gonna be like, Hal, and it ain’t gonna be pretty—especially if it works out for us.”

  I resisted the urge to say that I knew. I didn’t. Calvin did. We’d all been there for the aftermath of the Battle of Museumtown, and I’d killed my share of people. But Calvin’s plan called for something a lot more merciless, and a lot more merciful at the same time. Both together was going to be nasty, and there was no way around it.

  So, instead of focusing on the battle, I pulled up my status.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 70, Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 40 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 4/102 (+15) (68 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

  ?Siege Hammer (Charge 0)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Autoplate Pauldron (8 Charge))

  My job was going to be simple.

  All I had to do was be present, be high-level, and keep Taven’s attention on me. If I could do that, it’d be enough. Tori and Zane had harder jobs. They were already gone, sitting in the back of a technical parked on the eastern shore of Lake Calumet. That was why Jessica hadn’t said anything. She was too busy glaring at Calvin.

  I’d agreed that Zane didn’t need to be there. But Tori did. And so did someone else—the only Level Thirty in Museumtown who’d be on the battlefield.

  Calvin had found him. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the fighting, and he’d stopped leveling completely. But he was a solo Hardcore Tutorial survivor, like Erika Samson. And unlike Erika, he hadn’t been given a class that worked well solo. To function, he needed a teammate. His name was Pedro Guttierez. His class was Telescopist. And together with Tori, they were going to shape the upcoming battle. She’d have the worst of it. He was only here to help.

  Calvin wasn’t just getting glares from Jessica, either. Carol’s eyes were even narrower. Her knuckles were white on her spear, and every ounce of her anger was directed at the former long-term rider.

  I felt for her. No matter who—Erika, Carol, Jessica, me, or even Calvin—we all had people out there. And they were all in danger from this Phase of the apocalypse. All we could do was our best to get as many through as we could, but when this was over, I needed to start digging into the System, and into resonance. And into how they were related.

  But first, the war.

  It was eighteen miles to Whiting, Indiana. The sooner we got there, the sooner we’d have a Waypoint Beacon, and the closer we’d be to getting through Phase Two. Calvin gave the order, and our ragtag ‘army’ headed southeast.

  Taven Liu had won the war six days ago.

  He’d done exactly what his uncle said. The Flameseeking Scryer irritated him. Drove him crazy with his cryptic words. He’d never been one for mysticism or pageantry before Integration—with one exception.

  No, before Integration, he’d worked a dead-end job in the chemical factories that bordered Lake Michigan. He’d put in his forty-plus a week, collected his checks, then returned home to the Gary suburbs, where he’d have his friends over for game night. That was the only time his theatrical side came out—when he and his five closest friends sat around a table, popped beer can tabs, and played role-playing games.

  If Taven hadn’t been the type to let that side of himself out, he wouldn’t have been the forever game master at the table. And if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have led them into the Hardcore Tutorial—then through it.

  He wouldn’t be the Fireborn Crusader now, with the army to conquer the western coast of Lake Michigan and secure a Waypoint Beacon for his people’s future.

  Taven understood how it looked. He even sympathized with his enemies; after all, he’d been given an evil class, and he was performing the role. But it was necessary. He had to be hard and brutal to lead as many people as he could through the Consortium’s phases. Every survivor had received gifts from the Consortium. Taven’s were what they were. But there was a time for morality. For good and evil, law and chaos. That time was after Taven Liu, the Fireborn Crusader, had united the world under his open handprint and led them through.

  After he took the helmet off, Taven wouldn’t play this character again.

  But to get there, he had to lead his zealots to victory against Museumtown. They’d win. He was sure of it. After all, they didn’t have to conquer the Voltsmith, the Telekineticist, or even the Resonator—although he was the most interesting of Chicago’s defenders. He just had to secure Whiting and either move the Waypoint to Gary or figure out how to make his city fall in its sphere of influence.

  That was all. One step. One more step on the road to evil overlord, all in the name of survival.

  And it would be Whiting. Uncle Chen had seen it.

  As the timer expired and the second week of Phase Two began, the Fireborn Crusader gave the order, and his Flamecallers and crusade began marching north, across the border and into the town of Whiting. It wasn’t neutral ground anymore. It was about to be a battlefield.

  Fifteen miles. And hopefully, a head start.

  By the time Museumtown reacted, it would be too late. The Fireborn Crusade would be dug in, and Whiting would be his.