My eyes glazed over as Reed explained the rules of his game. For something that was supposed to be pretty scary, it felt more just annoying. He kept talking about mechanics and betrayal systems or whatever.

"It should go without saying that nobody's killing anyone here, right?" I said.

"I would hope that's obvious," Zeta said. We didn't mean to make it look so judgy, but we did glance over at Myles and Raytris.

"It's very obvious!" Myles said. "Even if Raytris and I had problems back home, I'm not gonna kill her. I don't even know how you'd kill a slime girl. And I don't want to know!"

Raytris flinched at the last few words there, retreating back to us to sit on Zeta's palms instead.

"And even though we're on different teams or whatever, I wouldn't hurt you two either," Myles said. "If it was Zeta alone with Ana I might worry, though."

Zeta frowned.

"I wouldn't let that happen," I said. If Anastasia ever tried to really fight Zeta, I'd make sure she regretted it before she ever even hurt a hair on my boo.

"Sorry. I keep bringing up touchy family stuff on accident, my bad," Myles said.

"No, it's fine," Zeta sighed. "Do you know why she hates me so much? I mean, I guess she told me, but..."

Myles crossed her arms, leaning on the nearest wall. "To be honest, I don't think she even really knows. The way she talks about it, it's like something she's just gotten so used to thinking that she doesn't question it."

"Yeah..." Zeta said. "I guess I can't do anything about it here."

"Right..." I said, wishing I could do more to help Zeta with her new sister, but we had something pressing to deal with. At least, that was the idea, right? But nothing was happening.

"We're supposed to get a combat room, right?" Zeta said.

"Yeah..." I tapped the screen that showed everything (still not sure why this hallway had a bunch of giant monitors or whatever but still) and it went to a screen showing all eight teams.

"What the...?" Zeta said as she looked closer. "There's a view count...are they really streaming this?"

"And how come our freaking viewpoint has zero viewers?" I said.

"Well, look how big they made the boxes for the boys' screens," Zeta said. The slime girl in her hands looked like she was glowing a brighter blue when Zeta got close to the bright screen.

It was hard to ignore when Zeta pointed at the rooms that were all or mostly boys versus the ones that had any different dynamic than that. The one for Seth Kerres and Lucian in particular was huge. On theirs Lucian and Seth were in a reading challenge, but kept looking at each other.

"Whatever this is, he did it! He's the culprit." I said, flicking the image of Lucian on the screen.

"Totally did it," Zeta said. "He's probably Reed. I bet if we took Reed's mask off it'd be him. Still, zero viewers? at all?"

"So dumb!" I said. "Wait, no, that's actually good in this case! We can use that to our advantage!"

"How?" Zeta said.

Raytris hopped off Zeta's hands and zipped around again.

"Wh—hey!" Myles said as Raytris almost tripped her. She stumbled back, but kept her footing. "What the hell?"

Raytris wiggled on the ground, then rose to her full humanoid form. She gave a thumbs up, then pointed upwards. A big open vent was directly above her.

"That looks like a safety hazard," Zeta said.

"I think the monster's supposed to come out from there," Raytris said. "But I can feel it, something's stuck up there."

"So, we should keep it there, right?" I said. "And plot what to do?"

"Maybe we can get whatever's blocked out of there and escape that way," Myles said.

"Uhhhh," Zeta's eyes darted around. "I don't wanna climb around in the dark, that's freaky."

"We probably won't have to, but it might be good to at least see what's up there," I said.

Raytris stretched upward, looking like a snake as she went into the vent.

"If you try to escape and abandon us, I'm gonna be pretty pissed," Myles said.

"I won't!" Raytris called down. I can't see up here, but I can feel what's stuck, it's blocking the vent! I'll try to get it down."

Just as I began to think of what my initial attack would be if a monster fell out of the vent, my phone rang. I expected to get no service in this, or a frantic call from Berin saying he was on the way, but instead it was...Iris?

"Hello…?" I asked.

I heard the sound of crunching potato chips and loudly drinking from a straw.

"Hey, can you put Zeta on?" Iris asked.

"Uh, sure?" I said.

I put the phone on speaker as she answered.

"Heyyy, Zeta, it's Iris, what's going on?"

"Iris? Are you at Falling Shards?" Zeta asked.

"Huh? No?" Iris laughed. "Why would I ever go there?"

"Because the school's moving," Zeta explained. "But we went there to get furniture and books and also maybe crack eggs, but now we're all locked in here because this stick figure guy named Reed is teaming up with Penteldtam, and now we're doing these reading challenges but he keeps talking about killing game stuff?"

"Hmmm," Iris said, taking another sip from her drink. "See, I knew that would be some stupid thing. Me and Maia are just chilling."

"Then why are you calling?" I asked.

"I had a Tower of Hate and Love question and it would take too long to type," Iris said.

Zeta gasped, leaning down to look at my phone like it was now a baby bunny. "You do?!"

"Zeta, maybe wait til we're out of this before we do the Tower stuff," I said. "Iris, can you call for help? Or see if anyone's helping? Someone useful like Caya, please."

"OK, can you answer my question first though?" Iris said.

This was the kind of thing that really annoyed me about Iris. "We just said we're not doing that so we can focus on getting out of here."

"Yeah, but it'll just take a second," Iris said. "Maybe it'll make you think and like have a brain thing and figure out the puzzle."

"I feel like I should just hang up," I said.

"I mean! If it's a quick question I can answer it!" Zeta said. "I'm confident in my Tower knowledge."

"OK, but quickly," I said.

"Kay, so in the new episode," Iris said.

"Ah, wait wait!" Zeta said. "Myles, are you caught up? Raytris? I don't wanna spoil anything!"

"I really don't care," Myles said.

"I'm caught up!" Raytris said.

"Wow, seriously?" Zeta said. "You only just got here! That...is a marathon of dreams watching all of Tower in short order now."

"Yeah, anyways, so in the new episode, why'd they all like, die?" Iris said.

"It wasn't death, it was a parallel realm, a spirit one not a science dimension, or S.D. as the Tower team calls them, heh, but you see this place is a..." Zeta went on and on about her Tower of Hate and Love junk, and was cute about it that I forgot about my Iris annoyance long enough. "...so yeah, they all lived!"

"Hm," Iris said. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Thanks!"

"Before you go, why'd you call me instead of Zeta?" I asked.

"It took too long to type! I said this!" Iris said.

"OK, whatever, so we did this, can you go get help?" I asked.

"Help with what?" Iris asked. I hung up immediately.

Before I could even start to grumble about that, Raytris yelped as she plopped to the ground, moving out of the way just in time as a shadowy figure fell, landing hard on the ground. I was ready to strike immediately, but as we approached we realized it was Syval.