When he came back to the others, James saw it on him at once.

Team Zero had a shared room at the Bureau-approved residence now, and all five of them were in it — James checking a strap on his gear, Maeve with her circlet in her lap, Ronan and Cillian on the far couch with a floor map open between them. Finn came in with his face shut like a door.

James clocked it and did not ask.

Maeve looked up, read the same thing in two seconds, and went back to her circlet without a word.

Finn dropped into a chair and sat forward with his elbows on his knees.

"We’re clearing Floor 17," he said. "Soon."

James understood the whole of it from those four words. They had two weeks. The country was busy deciding out loud that Team Zero did not belong in the Floor 20 raid. The simplest answer to that was to make the argument harder to say out loud.

"Soon," James agreed.

He didn’t ask what had happened. He didn’t have to. Finn had come back from exactly one place tonight, and the shut door of his face said how it had gone.

"Your father," Maeve said. Not a question, and not pushing — just naming it so Finn knew she’d seen and wasn’t going to make him carry it alone in silence.

"He came to tell me I’m not going." Finn’s jaw flexed once. "So I’m going."

Nobody argued with that. It was his to spend, and he was spending it the way he wanted.

---

Cillian shifted on the couch. "All of us clearing Floor 17. Three of us clearing Floor 20."

"Cillian," Ronan said.

"I’m only saying it." Cillian wasn’t shouting. He was just sharper than usual, the hurt sitting right under it. "We’re Team Zero right up until the floor actually matters. Then it’s a roster."

James set the strap down.

He didn’t reach for anything comforting, because Cillian would have heard the lie in it.

"It’s not about who’s owed a spot," he said. "It’s about who fits a floor that already killed everyone who walked in. Twenty seats. The Bureau wants the three of us in those three because of the Angel and because of how Maeve reads a room. That’s the only reason. It isn’t respect, and it isn’t a verdict on you."

"He’s right that it’s not a prize," Maeve said quietly. "Whoever takes those seats is getting a chance to die somewhere that wiped a full team and didn’t leave a body that could explain why. That’s what we accepted. Don’t envy it."

Cillian sat with that for a second, then let out a breath. "Yeah. Fine."

"You’re still on the climb," James said. "All five of us. Floor 20 is three seats. The Tower isn’t."

Ronan nodded, because that part he could take. "Then we earn ground while we’ve got it. Seventeen, then push at eighteen and nineteen before the conference."

"That’s the plan," James said.

It wasn’t a speech and nobody treated it like one. Finn was colder than usual but locked in. Maeve was already half into the floor in her head. They checked gear and cooldowns and said little, five people getting ready to walk into something, the way they always did.

---

Outside, the country had not stopped arguing about them.

*"—the question a lot of veteran Challengers are asking tonight: why three seats for a team that’s been climbing barely two years, when Floor 19-cleared names are sitting available—"*

*"—supporters point to Team Zero’s record on abnormal floors, but a fast clear rate is not raid experience, and Floor 20 is not a side floor—"*

The comment feeds were worse, and less fair.

**@towerclips:** speed isn’t raid readiness. ask the emerald spire advance team. oh wait

**@CrownAndCountry:** a supervised necromancer on a national raid roster. Ireland has genuinely lost it

**@redbrick_ronan:** finn hale only got that seat because of who his da is. nepo raider

**@just_here_lurking:** the funny part is marcus reportedly tried to keep finn OFF it. but go off

**@dub_dee:** maeve’s the only sensible pick on that team tbh. the other two are a liability

James read a little of it, then put the phone face down. None of it changed the floor in front of them.

"Let it talk," he said. "We give it notice and we go up."

---

They gave the Bureau notice, and they went up.

The Floor 17 waiting room was colder than the ones before it, the grey light flat and the air biting at the back of the throat. The System did not hand them a puzzle. It gave them a single line, and the floor built itself around them as they read it.

`[Floor 17 — The Twin Quarry]`

`[Objective: Defeat both Cyclops]`

Cracked stone spread out under a low ceiling of mist that clung to the ground and hid their feet. Two massive shapes stood apart across the field, still as statues, far enough that one fight could never stay one fight.

`[Enemy Detected: Cyclops (Crusher) — Level 58]`

`[HP: 210,000/210,000]`

`[Enemy Detected: Cyclops (Stalker) — Level 58]`

`[HP: 185,000/185,000]`

They had killed one of these before. Now there were two, and the team saw the problem in the same breath.

The one on the left was bigger and heavier than the Floor 16 boss had been, a stone club the size of a door dragging from one fist, each step landing slow and sure.

The one on the right carried nothing at all. It was lighter on its feet, lower to the ground, already shifting its weight side to side like it had somewhere to be and was only waiting for permission.

Two of them, and a field of mist between, and five Challengers standing in the middle of it.

"Right," Finn said, rolling the new axe in his grip. "Twice the eye, twice the loot."

"Twice the chance one of them takes your head off while you climb the other," Maeve said.

"Two of them," Ronan said. "We fight one, the other one comes in on our flank."

"And if we split to cover both, somebody ends up alone with one of them," Maeve said. "That’s how this floor kills people."

"Then we don’t fight them one at a time, and we don’t split badly."

James was already reading the gap between the two giants, the mist, the broken stone, the room he had to work with. "Finn holds the heavy one’s attention. Ronan walls the gap so the fast one can’t get into our backs. Cillian and I keep the fast one turning. Maeve calls both."

"Legs again?" Cillian asked. "Like 16?"

"On the heavy one, yes. Slow the Crusher so Finn can stand in front of it."

James’s eyes went to the lighter giant. "The fast one we don’t trade with. We bait it, we turn it, we don’t let it set its feet. Cillian, you keep your charge for when Maeve calls an opening, not before. I’m not scraping you off a wall again."

"One time," Cillian muttered, but he checked the conductor on his arm.

"The fast one won’t wait for us to be ready," Maeve said.

She was right.

The Stalker stopped shifting its weight.

Both single eyes opened at once, one on each side of the field, and fixed on the five small shapes in the mist between them.

The first Cyclops raised its club.

The second one smiled.

Then both of them charged.