“Melvin,” Holly explained. “Somebody told the troll back at base, so he showed some initiative, broke into the casino’s systems, and lifted the video. Piece of cake for him. We’ve got the buffet from three angles. Don’t worry. I told Melvin that if he stuck this on YouTube I’d kill him. He’s still scared of me.” She saw the very embarrassed Trip standing behind me. “Hey there, Slugger. At one minute and ten seconds in, you totally wreck some dude. Epic face-plant. I didn’t know you had it in you. On the other hand, we’ve got Cooper there getting his ass handed to him by that square-jawed good-looking one…”

Cooper was trying to get to an angle where he could see the TV in the crowded room. “Hey, he was really strong, okay? I thought I did pretty good.”

“Video don’t lie, Coop. I was waiting for him to start hitting you with your own arm and repeating why do you keep hitting yourself?” Holly looked up. “Oh, hey, Albert! You guys need to see this. On camera two you can totally see Lee trying to drown some poor bastard in chocolate. The chocolate smackdown is amazing. We should totally sell this online.”

“Having an IT troll is great,” Lee said. “I’d buy a copy. This is better than pay-per-view.”

“Sell enough, we might recoup the ridiculous cost of that ice swan,” Julie suggested.

“Speaking of ice, I could use some for my back…So really, everybody get out.”

The audience booed. “Come on, Z. Can we watch it one more time?” Holly begged.

“Fine.”

There was a chorus of yay from the Hunters. I sighed. My people were completely incorrigible.

The dream began in the desert.

The wind was dry and cold. The sun was weak and bitter. Around me was a sea of sagebrush and there were brown rocky mountains not too far away. I was standing in a flat, open area, in the middle of a lifeless circle of hard dirt about a hundred feet across. The sagebrush grew right up to the edge and then stopped. There were buzzards circling overhead, but none of them would fly over the dead circle.

In the middle of the dead circle was a depression in the dirt. The frozen ground burned under my bare soles as I approached. It was as if the dirt had collapsed, revealing a sinkhole, but as I got closer, I could tell that this was no natural occurrence. Something had dug this place up. Rotten wooden braces shored up the edges of the hole, and a metal ladder, now mostly turned to rust, led down into the darkness.

Then I was at the bottom of the hole. A single shaft of sunlight, swimming with dust, followed me down. The shaft terminated where it was black and deep, and now there was metal beneath my feet. There was a hatch.