Chapter 74

Carl's team races through apartment 712 on the tenth floor as part of a seven-gate gauntlet. They discover the apartments contain eerie what-if scenarios of crawlers' lives, filled with disturbing imagery. Mid-race, the dungeon AI interrupts with a philosophical monologue explaining the apartments are predictive models and thought experiments, not real versions of people, before revealing it modified the floor in response to the Minus assassination plot.

The team launches from the duct through a blown-open grate into apartment 712, a giant living room filled with hazy smoke. They float down slowly past Dwight the AI-controlled unicorn and Team Free Love's van. The apartment belongs to what appears to be an Asian family: an elderly woman (Hoa, Human Shell) stirring a pot by the stove and an older man (An, Human Shell) sleeping on the couch, both with their eyes sewn shut and marked with X's. Among family photos, they spot a younger Tran without the disturbing X-markings, suggesting a personal connection. As they pass through the first gate, the inhabitants awaken and begin attacking the passing vehicles and creatures. The team escapes via Donut's Hole spell into apartment 614, a bedroom with a Menudo poster featuring crossed-out eyes. Donut uses her sunglasses' magical-flow setting to locate the second gate in a bathroom, but a large sheepdog forces them to move quickly. They clear the second gate and prepare to drop into another floor. Florin reports finding his father's house with Lucia present, triggering a system-wide message from the dungeon AI. The AI explains the apartments are what-if predictive models based on its analysis of crawler decisions and probabilities—each representing alternate outcomes had certain events never occurred. It reveals it hastily modified this floor in response to the assassination attempt on Louis and Imani C, discussing its struggle to understand crawler motivations while recognizing their capacity for deliberate change. The AI grants a participation trophy for completing the sixth heat, leaving the team unsettled.