“Everyone, okay?” I asked, pushing myself into a sitting position.

  “I’ve had better days,” Ed grunted with a wince.

  That was probably the understatement of the century.

  It looked like he’d been used to demonstrate all the various blade sizes in an As-Seen-on-TV cutlery set. A multitude of lacerations and circular lesions covered his arms and legs—courtesy of the Eldritch blood tentacle—and he also had a deep gash running diagonally across his face that stopped a sneeze shy of his right eye.

  “Dan, I really can’t thank you enough for including me,” Ed said, not bothering to mask his sarcasm. “Just the other day, I was telling Woodstock how boring it was not having sadistic murderers trying to gut me like a lake trout.”

  “Burn it with fire,” Woodstock agreed, bobbing her head.

  “Hey, what are friends for?” I winced from the pain in my gut. “Wouldn’t want retirement making you too soft.”

  Ed chuckled darkly and pulled a hand-rolled joint from his pocket, lighting it up with a small burst of flame from one palm.

  “I’m glad you still care,” he wheezed in between puffs.

  He held out the joint for me, but I waved it away.

  “Your loss,” he said, taking another drag.

  “What about you, Harper?” I asked. “Still breathing?”

  “Barely,” she muttered. “I think one of them nicked an artery.” She was pressing a blood-drenched rag against her leg, and it didn’t look good. “I’ve lost a lot of blood, but I should be okay once I get a healing elixir or three.”

  “Here,” Temp said, offering her an open bottle of Zima.

  Temp seemed to be the least injured out of all of us, which was ironic considering five minutes ago she’d been snorkeling through a kiddie pool of Hemogoblins. She was still drenched in gore, sure, but there were no visible wounds, which was a good sign. If she hadn’t already earned the Bloodbath Title, I was sure this latest battle would push her over the edge.

  I’d earned a new one for my battle with Theo, though it wasn’t anything to be proud of—something my System Administrator made abundantly clear.

  Research Achievement Unlocked!

  Barely Breathing

  Would you look at that? You survived an encounter with a Greater Vampire Noble of the Black Harbor Syndicate. Not defeated. Not outplayed. You didn’t even meaningfully inconvenience them. You simply failed to die in a timely manner, which—statistically speaking—is an accomplishment of sorts.

  Let’s be clear, the vampire made mistakes. You capitalized on exactly none of them.

  Through a potent cocktail of luck, panic, and the vampire being momentarily distracted by literally anything else, you managed to stagger away with most of your organs still inside your body. That counts. Technically. Still, this isn’t in any way a victory. It’s the equivalent of falling down a flight of stairs and not snapping your neck in the process.

  Reward: Consider this a learning experience, which is its own reward.

  “Well, fuck you too,” I mumbled under my breath before waving away the notice in irritation. Sure, that hadn’t exactly gone the way I’d imagined, but it could’ve been worse. Not much worse, maybe, but worse. “No one died, so that counts as a big fucking win in my book,” I said, arguing with a System that was indifferent to my bitching.

  I pulled a Zima from Spatial Storage and chugged the entire thing. It was refreshingly cold, lightly carbonated, and felt like heaven going down my parched throat. Relief washed through me, stealing away the pain in my gut; my whole body tingled and itched as the skin and muscle began to mend.

  “You’ve got an awfully low bar for victory,” Ed said grimly as I stowed the empty bottle. “I’d say we just got our asses well and truly kicked.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, “we’ll call it a draw, then. But it wasn’t a complete loss,” I added. “We know the hostages are still alive, which is something. And we also have a better idea about what we’re up against.”

  “Plus, we can now confirm that vampires sparkle,” Croc added, “which is a pretty big deal, if you think about it. I mean, I always knew Stepheine Meyer was on to something with Twilight, but this confirms it. She really is a genius.”

  Harper snorted.

  “That? That was your takeaway?” Temp asked in disapproval, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That vampires sparkle?”

  “Well, they did sparkle,” Croc replied with a shrug. “I think that’s pretty relevant going forward.”

  “What I think is relevant, is that they kicked our asses,” Ed said through a cloud of smoke.

  “Hey, those cockwombles didn’t completely kick our asses,” I protested. “Temp carved up one of those GoGo gals like a Thanksgiving turkey.” I paused and frowned. “Honestly, we were doing okay until they turned off the lights. Next time we’ll be ready for that bullshit. I can buy NVGs from the Network or, barring that, I’m sure we can get a few Relics or Artifacts that’ll let us see in the dark.”

  “There are a couple of Transmogs that have something akin to Darkvision,” Ed replied thoughtfully. “Cendrals, Kobocks, Helionites, and Celestari, for sure, though there might be a few others. If Jakob can get those splicers up and working, that might be an answer to a few of our problems.”

  I hadn’t seen much of Jakob over the last few weeks, and I regretted that he hadn’t been with us in the food court. He was one of the most powerful Delvers in the store and he was hell on wheels when it came to general ass-kickery. Things might’ve played out very differently with Theo if the Cendral had been there. But Jakob was elbow-deep in his latest obsession: getting the Helix Splicers we’d looted from the VRD labs on the 75th Floor up and running. The system hadn’t let me annex the whole lab, so I’d done the next best thing…

  Stolen the splicer pods themselves and anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor.

  We’d salvaged six pods in total. Massive, futuristic genome editors built to carve and rewrite DNA like it was modeling clay. It was the kind of tech that could turn a normal, run-of-the-mill human into an otherworldly threat—so long as they were willing to give up their humanity in the process. Along with those, we’d snagged a mountain of DNA samples and the lab’s operations terminal, which was supposed to be our access point to the VRD Parallax Mainframe.

  Problem was, ripping all that gear out of the walls didn’t exactly make for a plug-and-play setup. Jakob had been busting his ass for weeks trying to coax the things back to life, and while he was making headway, we were still a long way from a functional Transmog creation station.

  “Aside from the glitter,” Croc said, “I’ve got to say, those vampires weren’t at all what I was expecting. They were a bit of a letdown to be honest.”

  I felt bad for the mimic, though I’d known this conversation was coming the second I found out about the nature of the Black Harbor Syndicate.

  “They’re undead monsters, Croc,” I said softly. “I know you were hoping they’d be like the Cullens, but you gotta remember that even in Twilight most of the Vampires were bad. They’re designed to kill and eat people, it’s in their nature.” I shrugged. “When you combine that with lifespans that last for centuries instead of decades, it’s easy to see how they might start viewing people as snacks.”

  The mimic fell silent and glanced away for a second, shifting uncomfortable from paw to paw.

  “But what about me, Dan?” The mimic finally asked, its googly eyes filled with genuine concern. “Mimics can live a really long time, and we’re designed to kill and eat people, too. Do you think if I live long enough, I’ll end up like them? Mean and bad?”

  I frowned, turning the question over in my head.

  I should’ve known this wasn’t just about the vampires. Croc had told me more than once that reading Twilight had inspired it to help people instead of eating them. After all, if Edward Cullen could resist his natural, bloodthirsty impulses, why couldn’t Croc? But if Vampires would all uniformly evil dickbags, then what did that say about mimics?

  “I think that’s only part of the story,” I replied after a second. “What we are doesn’t determine what we’ll do. Do you have the potential to turn into something monstrous? Sure. But so do I. Especially in a place like this, where everything is pushing you toward violence. It finds a way to bring out the worst in people. But we’ve got each other, bud. Believe you me, if you start turning into a bloodthirsty asshole, I’ll be the first to tell you, and I expect you to do the same for me. I’ve got your back, and so long as we all have each other, this place isn’t gonna make monsters out of us.”

  “If that’s true,” Croc said hesitantly, “and what you are doesn’t determine what you’ll do, then does that mean there might be some good vampires, Dan?” The mimic’s ears perked up in hopeful optimism.

  I pursed my lips into a thin line. The truth was, I doubted it.

  The members of the Syndicate had given up their humanity a long time ago, but that wasn’t what Croc needed to hear right now. The mimic needed reassurances that everything would turn out alright in the end. Besides, I didn’t know for a fact that all vampires were evil, so telling Croc otherwise wasn’t really a lie.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Maybe?” I replied. “I’ve seen enough weird shit around here to never say never.”

  “Well, I know one thing,” Harper said already looking substantially better than she had only a few moments before. The bleeding had stopped, and though she was too pale, a little of the color had returned to her face. She reached over and patted Croc on the head. “You’re the best boy. And even if every vampire in the Backrooms turns out to be exactly like Theo, that doesn’t mean you’ll turn out bad.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment,” Temperance growled, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m glad we all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but none of that changes the fact that we have a criminal empire camping on our doorstep. A criminal organization that just sent us running with our tails tucked between our legs. Instead of sitting around singing kumbaya and talking about our feelings, maybe we could come up with a plan to stop them?”

  That was the million-dollar question, and I didn’t have an answer for her. The Syndicate was bigger than me—bigger than all of us—and they’d been around for ages, operating in the shadows, turning their organization into a fine-tuned money-making machine powered by blood and human suffering.

  “Not sure,” I replied truthfully, “but I’m all ears if anyone has any suggestions? Preferably ones that don’t end with us as involuntary blood doners or mindless meat thralls.”

  Ed coughed once, then cleared his throat. “Well, this is your circus, Dan, so I don’t want to step on your toes, but in my experience, the first step to any good guerilla war campaign is to gather better intel. Know thy enemy and all that happy horseshit. Sure, we have a better understanding about their physical capabilities—they’re strong as goddamned grizzly bears, heal fast, and have a lot of magic I’ve never seen before—but that ain’t enough if we want to hit these bastards where it really hurts.”

  “Like I said, I’m open to suggestions,” I replied.

  Ed hesitated for a beat, before finally speaking.

  “Thing is, I’ve been working with Wraith and the rest of the Howlers to set up a surveillance network to help me run down leads on BEACON,” he said, “but we could just as easily use that to track their movements between floors. So far as we know, the Syndicate doesn’t have access to spatial magic outside of the Network itself, which means they probably have distribution hubs and logistical choke points we can exploit. There’s an old Army saying—soldiers win battles, but logistics win wars.” He shrugged. “If we can lock down their supply lines, we might be able to starve the sons of bitches.”

  Temperance nodded in agreement. “There is wisdom in that, but we will also need more soldiers. As powerful as the five of us are, we can’t be everywhere at once. If you intend to wage a siege against an empire, we’ll need an army of our own. I’m sure the Howlers would be willing to help, but they aren’t strong enough to deal with even the weakest members of the Syndicate.”

  “I could always call in a favor from Wulfgar and the 49ners,” I suggested.

  “That might help,” Temp replied. “The 49ners have no love for the Monarch or the Syndicate, and they certainly owe us for killing Nikoli, but we need more muscle. The Syndicate is vast. You heard Theo, they have dozens of Syndicate-aligned Safe Harbors to draw from. One Safe Harbor isn’t going to be enough for an operation like this.” She paused, lips pursed into a thin line. “I’ve heard rumors about a Roomkeeper outpost down on the 33rd floor—Penitence Hall. It might be worth looking into,” she said, though she didn’t sound overly enthusiastic about it.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  Her faith had been severely shaken ever since our visit to the 75th floor. Once upon a time, Temp had believed this place was a proving ground. A divine test, meant to purify the chosen few. But now she knew the truth, straight from the mouth of the Researcher himself.

  The Roomkeepers were delusional, and their faith was a lie.

  This wasn’t some cosmic crucible and there was no Valhalla waiting for the faithful. The Backrooms was a research vessel. A living, interdimensional laboratory designed to abduct alien species and study them in their “natural habitat,” all while looking for ways to monetize and weaponize the discoveries they found scattered across the multiverse.

  We weren’t chosen. We weren’t special. We were lab rats.

  She wasn’t handling the revelation well, and she’d been shying away from the other Roomkeepers over the past few weeks. Connecting with a new outpost would be tremendously valuable, but I wasn’t sure she was in the right headspace for it.

  “You sure you’re up for that?” I asked, studying her face. Although she wasn’t injured, she looked like hell. There were deep bags loitering beneath her eyes and it seemed like she’d aged ten years overnight.

  Although Temp wasn’t shy by any stretch of the imagination—and she certainly never struggled to make her opinions known—she was a closed book when it came to the deeper waters of her soul. Unlike Croc or Harper, she didn’t see the point of talking about feelings, and I was pretty sure she’d rather swan-dive into a vat of acid than sit across from a therapist. Not that she couldn’t use one. She carried a lot of baggage and a metric shitload of trauma, but her coping strategy was simple and straightforward: She bottled up her emotions, shoved ’em down deep, then pretended they didn’t exist.

  Still, I knew her better than most. I knew her fucked-up story. Knew what had happened to her, what had brought her here—even if that revelation had been mostly by accident. I also knew that beneath the gruff, jaded, give-no-fucks exterior was a woman with deep moral and spiritual convictions. That was why she’d gravitated toward the Roomkeepers in the first place. She needed purpose. Needed meaning, even if that meaning was strange, brutal, and soaked in violence.

  She wanted something bigger than herself to believe in.

  And now that was gone.

  She was here by accident. Full stop. Just like the rest of us. All just a bunch of poor bastards in the wrong place at the wrong time. That kind of truth had a way of hollowing people out, whether they admitted it or not. And even if Temp refused to talk about it, I knew it had to be eating her alive.

  She sniffed dismissively, keeping her feelings to herself. “For this, I can set my personal issues aside,” she said, a tone of finality in her words. “I’ll assemble a few of the Roomkeepers and put together an expedition.” She faltered for a moment. “But it could take a few days to make it down there, even with the Network. Are you sure you won’t need me?”

  “Is… is that genuine concern I hear in your voice?” I asked, trying to ease some of the tension I felt radiating off her.

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Just trying to keep our glorious leader from killing himself with a series of poor life choices.” She fixed me with a hard, level state. “Promise you won’t do anything too reckless or idiotic while I’m gone?”

  “Can’t possible imagine what you mean,” I said, idly scratching my chin.

  Temp started ticking items off on her fingers. “For starters,” she said, “please refrain from inciting a territorial war with another Sovereign. Pissing contests with ancient deities are also out. If you can help it, try not to blow up anything critical. No adopting eldritch horrors beyond human understanding.” She shot a pointed look at Croc. “You should also avoid dueling vampires for obvious reasons and try not to insult anything older than the concept of time. In general, if your instincts are telling you to do something, just do the opposite of that thing.”

  “That’s a very specific list,” I replied with a mischievous grin.

  “Just promise me,” she growled.

  “I would,” I replied, “but it’s like Croc always says, friends don’t lie to friends. No promises. But… I’ll try,” I added. “Besides, I’ll probably still be here when you get back. There’s a shitload of stuff to do around the store, and I’ve got a few ideas about other ways to handle the Syndicate that don’t involve direct conflict.” I stole a sidelong glance at her. “I can be diplomatic when I want too.”

  “When have you ever been diplomatic?” she asked, eyes narrowing in doubt.

  “Hey, I brokered an alliance with the Howlers—”

  “By killing a literal shit demon,” she said matter of factly.

  “Or that time I made peace with the 49ners—”

  “By overthrowing a local warlord and drowning him in his own mech suit,” she replied. “To my knowledge you haven’t solved a single problem without killing something or blowing something up. Usually both at the same time.”

  “It’ll be different this time,” I insisted. “If there’s one thing the Syndicate cares about, it’s their bottom line. If I can use the Kiosk Network to hit ’em there, it’ll hurt way more than killing a handful of randos. And I won’t even need to leave the store for that.”

  “What’ve you got in mind?” Ed asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

  “Well,” I said, “I might not be able to cut off all the Syndicate Franchisees, but I’m pretty sure there’s a way to create selective routing blockades through the Network Interface. Might not stop ’em completely, but it’ll be a gigantic pain in the ass. And if I can use the Network delivery logs to figure out what their most profitable kiosks are, I can probably put those out of commission. At least for a little while.”

  “You know, something else you could do is undercut their product lines,” Ed suggested. “Most of their business is in elixirs, not Relics. Don’t get me wrong, they offer a little bit of everything, but the potions trade is their bread and butter—and for good reason. Their potions are primo-grade, good shit.”

  “Better than the stuff we have at the store?” I asked.

  I’d never bothered to buy any of the Syndicate elixirs, because one, I didn’t want to support those ass goblins and two, I just assumed all potions and elixirs were pretty much the same. Especially of the healing variety. I mean how could a potion possibly be better than a Greater Healing Zima?

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Ed replied. “They are way better. And their shit isn’t Progenerated. They’ve got some sort of secret formula for what they make and a bunch of shady alchemists turning it out by the bucket load. The healing elixirs they peddled not only patch you up, they boost Health Regen for hours. Sometimes for days.

  “Same thing with their Stamina and Mana elixirs. They’ve also got specialty brews that’ll temporarily bump your stats, make you immune to elemental damage, or turn your dick into a flagpole…” he cleared his throat, “not, uh, that I’ve ever had any problems in that department. If they weren’t such colossal assholes, I’d be pretty impressed.”

  “Any way we can replicate those?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Ed said with a shake of his head. “People have tried, but no one’s ever gotten close. And the ones who do, either wind up dead or working for the bastards. Still,” he added, “sometimes convenience outweighs quality. Their elixirs are good, but expensive. Maybe we can’t make anything half as good, but we can provide a much cheaper alternative. We could flood the market if we had half a mind too. It won’t break the Syndicate quickly, but it’ll bleed them dry over time. Death by a thousand cuts.”

  “I like where your head’s at,” I said, “but the store barely replenishes enough elixirs to meet our current demand.”

  “Yeah, that might be a problem,” Ed replied with a nod. “If only you had some sort of magical forge with an advanced alchemy lab where you could manufacture a bunch more.”

  “Ass,” I muttered, though he wasn’t wrong.

  I did have an enormous alchemy lab stocked with everything we needed to churn out health, stamina, and mana elixirs.

  “Fine,” I grumbled, “I’ll make a pit stop at the forge and float the idea by Sven. I was going there anyway. If we’re gonna square off against a horde of bloodsucking Disco freaks, we’re going to need some specialized gear. And we’re going to need enough of it to equip an army of Van Helsings.”

  “Who’s Van Helsing?” Croc asked curiously.

  “Only the single greatest vampire hunter of all time,” I said with a gleam in my eye. “And not the Van Helsing from Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” I added. “I’m talking about the criminally underappreciated, cinematic masterpiece from 2004, featuring Hugh Jackman and goth Kate Beckinsale in a corset.”

  Croc looked even more confused. “Goth Kate Beckinsale in a corset? Should that mean something to me?”

  “It would if you were a teenager in the early 2000s,” I said seriously. “What Edward Cullen was to teenage girls in 2008, goth Kate Beckinsale was to teenage boys in 2004.”

  “Really,” Harper said, openly glaring at me. “Why don’t you tell us more about goth Kate Beckinsale in a corset?”

  “That’s not important,” I replied, refusing to meet Harper’s accusatory stare. “The important thing is that Van Helsing had a metric assload of badass vampire slaying weapons. Gattling guns. Collapsible silver stakes. Automatic crossbows. Saw blade knuckle dusters. Sunlight grenades. Sven is already working on a few things for me, but I’ve got a couple other ideas. We’ll be able to buy some of that stuff from the auction house, but a lot of it we’ll have to fabricate from scratch.” I paused. “It’d be helpful if we had an actual vampire to experiment on, though.”

  Croc brighten.

  “I might be able to help with that, Dan!” The mimic’s formed burbled and grew, a giant teeth-studded maw opening along its belly. Croc vomited out the partially digested corpse of one of the fledgling vampires, wearing a golden lamé suit covered in holes and gashes. “This one’s already dead—or double dead I guess—but do you think it’ll help?”

  “It’s better than nothing.” I snagged the disco stiff by the ankle, glitter flaking off like dandruff from hell, and dumped the corpse into Spatial Storage with a wet schloop.