This dungeon is based on some video game that came out when Talion's grandparents were kids. They think it might be a repeat, not that they've managed to identify what it's repeating; it would explain the danger level, and the fact that it managed to grab four more victims since Talion left yesterday evening. There's a little tunnel to the main area, and then it's keeping the victims on midair platforms, with the ground beneath each platform defended by pits of acid. It's also got giant spinning acid-wheels that burn everything they touch, and monsters with really stupid-looking heads that one of the old guys on the dungeon response team won't stop making jokes about, and quite a lot of things that would probably be an issue if she couldn't fly.

Flying's a pretty great power. It's not that useful in every dungeon, there are plenty where she's barely an improvement on an unpowered responder with a gun, but there are also plenty of dungeons that are nearly impossible to clear without flight and trivial with it. Works out great with her backlash, too, she can do it when her legs are seizing up too badly for her to walk. It's sort of bizarre that she of all people ended up an esper, but — it's random. It doesn't make her a bad person.

When she was here yesterday the response team thought they might need to get Passwall on the scene to get someone past the nigh-unbreakable walls that they thought were blocking the way to the core — they'd have done it sooner, only he spent half of yesterday dealing with a nasty one all the way over in Winnipeg, and he was still recovering when they realized they weren't going to be able to break through the walls. Apparently they figured something out overnight, though, some sort of complicated condition involving the weird glowing lights on the ceiling that was sufficient to just get the wall blocking the core to outright move itself, and now they think that once she's cleared out the victims she'll just be able to fly Ampere all the way up to a little nook by the ceiling and let her take care of it. (Just her, not Talion — the regular monsters in the dungeon are the kind of thing Talion can easily handle, but the response team sent a little dungeon-grade drone up and it turns out the boss can spit acid at range.)

She flies back in to pick up the fourth victim. Her right rib feels like she's being stabbed and her legs are seizing up but it's fine, it's fine, her arms are still working and she's got the harness anyway, she's not in any danger of not being able to strap the victim in, and this fucking dungeon is not allowed to take them. She gets the victim strapped in (this one's a middle-aged woman who spends the whole time complaining that she's going to miss her flight back to the States, and would it have killed them to get here a little faster?), flies back over the acid pits, shoots some stupid-looking monsters, drops the victim off. 

Emma, the team lead, asks if she needs a break before she shuttles up Ampere, and it's not that it doesn't sound nice but she's not anywhere close to needing one and she doesn't feel like letting the fucking dungeon get another chance to snag someone. She gets Ampere strapped in (the contact doesn't feel great, but it's really not that bad compared to her legs), ducks around some acid wheels, gets Ampere up to the nook, lands on the nearest platform. 

Found the boss, says Ampere over the radio. Looks like a stupid turtle, just like you said.

Are you prepared to engage? asks Emma.

Yeah, I got it.

Talion scans the room, watching for anyone else who looks likely to appear. People do die, sometimes, because they were taken by a dungeon just before it was destroyed and no one noticed. It's not really very likely that Talion will make a difference by looking around the room, but it's not like she has anything better to do.

Fuck, says Ampere on the other end of the radio.

That is pretty much the most useless possible way to describe the problem, whatever it is, but Talion lifts off anyway, looking around. The dungeon is shaking. The acid wheel has sped up to ten times its speed and started shooting off little globules. The cartoony red indestructible bricks are rearranging themselves.

Status? asks Emma.

It's got some kind of second form — ow—

There's a shooting pain in Talion's chest, but frankly Talion is pretty sure that's less important than what this fucking dungeon is doing. She can fly even when all four limbs are hurting too badly for her to make them go where she wants, and that won't help at all if the dungeon suddenly decides the monsters are going to have heat-seeking acid guns.

We're aborting this run, says Emma. Ampere, you still there?

Ampere's end of the line is silent.

Talion, bail out, says Emma.

In the movies, the thing the hero is supposed to do here is refuse to give up on Ampere, fly back to save her no matter the risk, no matter the fact that she's probably already dead. 

In real life, if you try to do that, you just die.

Talion hates letting the dungeon just get away with killing Ampere, hates the idea that it's getting rewarded for deciding to be even worse, but sticking around would be suicidal. She turns towards the entrance and flies at a sprint, dodging globules as she goes. She's made it out of the big room, over to the tunnel, where at least there won't be any more of the fucking acid wheels, but the bricks are still moving, making some sort of pattern she can't see yet—

Talion, it's boxing you in. Get back to the portal, stat.

"I'm trying."

There's still a gap in the wall ahead, just wide enough that she could make it through. It would be feeding her straight to the dungeon monsters, if she were on the ground, but she isn't. She turns to one side, makes sure she's at the right angle to fit through the gap—

It bricks up that gap too. Fills in a layer above her, for good measure. She's in a little room, about the size of a large closet apart from the height, surrounded by those obnoxious red bricks that no one's been able to break. The floor is acid. The back wall is acid, with red brick behind it just in case flying like acid started to seem like a good idea. It wasn't doing that before. The stupid monster things have apparently grown spider legs and are starting to climb up the walls. She shoots them. This fucking dungeon has no right to try and steal her but she doesn't, actually, have any bright ideas for how to stop it.

"It's got me trapped," she reports into the radio. "I could try and shoot the walls but I don't really think it would work."

There's an audible pause on the other end of the radio, which is pretty much never a good sign. Hold tight. We're getting in contact with Passwall.

Okay. Sure. She can hold tight. She can't land, not when the floor is an acid pit, but one way or the other she won't be here long enough to matter. It feels hard to breathe but her doctor said that that's psycho-something, she doesn't remember the word, some fancy word for when you can breathe just fine but it feels like you can't. Her legs are seizing up from the pain but she doesn't actually need them to fly. Either Passwall will get here in time and she'll be fine, or he won't and she'll be dead, and either way she can't do anything about it short of just giving up on staying airborne. They update her over the radio — not Emma, Emma is busy trying to fix this, but one of the other guys on the team. Liam, she thinks his name is Liam, she got it this morning and she should know it, he knows what to call her, but everything hurts so for all she knows she's mixing up his voice with one of the others. 

They've made contact with Passwall's agent, they tell her. If they can get through to Passwall he's twenty minutes out by car. They're getting permission for — they've gotten permission to do an emergency teleport, Passwall to the outside of the dungeon, if only they can reach him. They're looking into other teleporters. They're seeing if they can get permission to just drag an entire teleport battery into the dungeon. The people in charge of the battery don't want to risk it but Emma is trying to win them over. They should have an answer in ten minutes. They should have an answer in five. It feels like it's been longer than five minutes since they said it would be ten but maybe that's just because she'll die if they're not fast enough, or because a muscle somewhere in her left arm is burning hard enough she can barely focus on anything else. There's something in Liam's voice, something she can't quite place, but she's pretty sure it wasn't there five minutes ago and she's pretty sure it's bad.

She hates this dungeon. Scientists don't know whether dungeons can feel things, but she hopes this one can so that it can die in agony like it deserves. 

Talion, do you copy? 

The guy on the other end sounds frantic, which is probably a bad sign, but mostly everything hurts too much to think about whether it's a good or a bad sign.

"Yeah," she says, because her voice still works.

Team lead says the dungeon's trying to close up. (Some part of her is distantly sure there's something he's not saying, but it's not like she'll be able to figure out what it is in this state.) Can you shoot the walls, we don't think it's going to work but it's not like it can hurt at this point—

That sounds dangerous, but unlike being trapped in a collapsing dungeon it at least sounds survivable. Her hands are burning, and it takes a couple false starts trying to make her fingers work well enough to pull the trigger, but she empties her gun into the wall in front of her, which does absolutely nothing except send some of the bullets ricocheting backwards. 

She sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. "I'm all out — anything else—"

Fuck. Fuck, I'm so sorry. Okay. We'll do our best. If you've got last words, or something, we can try to pass them along—

Some part of her is sort of absurdly tempted to confess to murder. But Passwall could, technically, still show up in time, and then she'd feel really fucking stupid about bragging about murder, wouldn't she. And it's not like she has time to properly explain why the guy she killed had it coming, it's not like anyone here knew him, and the people who did know him were perfectly happy to make excuses for their darling little laser cutter—

Probably there's something she'd rather not leave unsaid but if there is she's not thinking of it, not when it's taking all her focus just to stay in the air.

The dungeon shakes. We're crossing the portal now. We'll — he could still make it—

The radio cuts out. She flings herself bodily into the wall, because it's not as if it can make anything worse, and she has time to see that this did nothing at all, and then the dungeon dissolves into dust.