Page 160 of Mud

“So, no plan.”

“Uh…nope.”

I don’t know why I lied.

Maybe because I was scared of what he’d do if I told him the truth?

But if it happened, if Refiq managed to do what I paid him to do, it would be good for everyone—all the other players. None of the residents had to die, right?

Iris, my head was killing me. So many options. So much of the unknown was ahead.

I stood up. “Thanks for the wine, Ben. But I need to go now,” I said because turns out I’d rather be out there than in here talking to people who thought I should be dead just because I was Mud.

Fuck you, assholes,I thought, but I kept the thought inside.

“Hey, mind if I show you something first?” Ben said, putting down the glass as he stood up, too.

“Something like what?” I asked, suspicious already.

“It’s just upstairs, in this building. Come on, I think you’re gonna like it.” And he moved back, pushed his chair to the side to make way for me to go deeper into the bar.

I looked at the Blackfire and Greenfire mages as they drank, lost in another conversion already, clueless that the veryMudthey spoke so passionately about had been sittingat the table with them. Then I looked outside, hoping maybe a dark cloud had taken over the sky in the distance.

Nothing there.

“Sure,” I ended up saying. “Why not?”

Because whether I liked it or not, Ben seemed to have more answers than I did about his challenge. And the more I knew, the better off I’d be if my initial plan failed. I just hoped Taland stuck to his word about helping me with the necromancy spell.

After all, he could have been messing with me just for kicks. It would explain why he disappeared so suddenly like that.

And why the hell wouldn’t he?

Ben Kovak took me up to the fifth floor, to an empty room with nothing but mice squeaking in the corners, the hardwood floors cracked and ruined and eaten, the dust in the air sticking to my nostrils.

At first, I thought he wanted to take me upstairs to the rooftop hoping a dragon would kill me—maybe because he didn’t know that that didn’t count? A dragon was a living being killing another—not natural. He probably didn’t see the man on fire falling from the rooftop that first day I came here.

Or maybe the better word would be,the first loop.

I wasn’t worried, to be honest. I had my gun and my daggers, and we were close enough that I could shoot or stab him before he could finish chanting a spell. I was ready to move the moment I heard even the slightest whisper—but turns out killing me wasn’t Ben’s plan at all.

“You can see the edges of the playground just barely—look, up there,” he said, taking me to a half-broken window with a scorched frame on the side, like someone had spit fire on it.

And he was right—you could make out the edge of the tall wall that surrounded the playground of the Iris Roe from here, but only the silhouette.

“It looks far,” I said in wonder.

“Who knows how far it really is.” Ben shrugged. “But look—that building that looks like a triangle.” He pointed his finger ahead again, coming even closer until we were almost cheek to cheek, showing me where he meant—a building two streets ahead, on the other side of the one I’d been in since the beginning.

A massive triangle-shaped building, taller than all others to its sides.

“I don’t—”see anything,I wanted to say, but the words got stuck in my throat when something moved close to it—abigsomething that was holding onto the tip of the building with claws, spinning around it as it looked outward.

“Dragon.” It was a dragon half the size of that entire building, holding onto the rooftop and spinning all around, searching for anyone stupid enough to climb the rooftops of Night City. Its wings were spread halfway, big and clawed and membranous, almost as black as the night. It was too far away to see any details, but I could make out the long, pointy tail as it moved slowly, and the two horns on its head that grew bigger or smaller depending on which side the dragon moved.

“There’s three of them,” said Ben, and I turned to him like I’d completely forgotten he was even here.

He was—and he was really close to me, looking at mewith half a smile, the kind of smile that made me want to back the hell away from him immediately.

---