His dead wife had spoken on the phone.

"You are number eight of nine, Beck ... if you want to live, be interesting."

He wasn't sure what could be more interesting than putting a bullet through the head of a gigantic seagull. He'd had to put down a few feral animals in his time as a conservationist, but none that had been able to multiply their own blood cells. As it stood, the bird had forced the three members of Team Rage to tread water as a tsunami of blood rose and rose, their heads pressed up against the ceiling like they were trapped in a capsized boat. But Beck and Haralda had managed, with a joint barrage of tranq darts and bullets, to send the gull back to whatever hell it came from.

The blood drained out of a plughole in the floor, and slowly the three of them were able to stand. Haralda shook her soggy clipboard out and tried to tick off a box on it, but her pencil pierced through about fifty sheets of soaked paper.

She said, "Good. I expect you to wait here while I retrieve my backup personal planner."

She squelched up the stairs to her room before Beck could spit enough blood out of his mouth to give her lip.

He turned to Kari. The kid had been in a bad state when he'd first found them in a prison cell, but now on top of their matted mane of hair and bruises and burn marks, the entirety of their skin had turned a muddy crimson, making those wide white irises pop out even more.

He'd seen eyes like that before when the nature reserve rescued a bear that had spent its whole life in a storage container. When they let it out into the open air, it just laid down under a boulder until it died (what a waste of grant money). But to see those same eyes on a kid that couldn't be older than ten...

"You okay, kid?" he asked while wringing out his socks.

Kari looked down, blankly, then beat their sack to get the blood out. The only thing Beck could get out of them was their name.

"You did good back there, you know," said Beck. "Especially when it came for me and you stabbed it away with that... shivvy doodad."

Kari clutched their pocket (where the shiv was) and backed away until they hit the wall.

"What, you think I give a shit about your little toy?" He held up his rifle, the metal of which was already starting to rust. "This right here is a grownup's weapon. You wanna have a go sometime? I've got some cans in my lodge we could stack into a pyramid. Looks real cool when they all fall down."

The little shit didn't even hesitate in shaking their head.

"Well fuck you too," he said. "Don't know why I even offered. See, kid, you're gonna see in a little bit that the best way to use a gun is to never have to fire it. Oh, look, the productivity freak's back."

Kari snorted. Could have been a laugh, could have been nasal blockage.

Haralda stormed down the stairs, every part of her dripping with bird gore save her hands and the clipboard in them.

She said, "Did I just hear you loosing profanity around a child, Beck? I would prefer you to behave in a more appropriate manner. For all you know, there could be parents in our audience."

"I'm humoring you already with the clipboard shit. Just tell me what's next on the agenda, because you seem to think I’m a dumbass who needs some husbandless spinster to order me around."

Haralda narrated as she scratched onto the paper, "Create a swear box to fine Beck for his outrageous behaviour and unpleasant mannerisms..."

"Okay, you do that. I'm going with Kari to see where the gigantic set of stairs leads to."

Kari reluctantly followed him about ten paces behind, and Haralda followed even more reluctantly behind Kari while telling the kid to "disregard the impure speech of that horrid man."

They came to a chamber with a strange symbol etched into the floor. Nine numbered podiums circled it, with embedded screens that buzzed with static. The podium named Beck was currently illuminated. On the far side of the room stood a door marked 70,000 in big blue letters, and on the other end of the room sat an elevator.

"We really are up to our elbows in weird fucking shit today," said Beck, walking up to the lift. "You wanna press the button, kid?"

Haralda said, "£2. What do you think you're doing? We agreed specifically to free the other six before exploring more of the tower."

"Well, that's an awfully kind thought, but we don't really need freeing, do we?" came the voice of an older gentleman, followed by footsteps down the stairs.

Beck smelt them before he saw them. The stench attacked his nose with a mix of formaldehyde and... rotten flesh. Behind him, Kari called the lift and stepped inside. There were only two buttons, P and G, so the kid pressed G. A message flashed up on all of the screens:

NO TERRESTRIAL LAYER EXISTS

Three people staggered into the room, and boy, Beck's nose would have found it more pleasant if he'd stuck his head in a compost bin. He archetyped them quickly: old miser, punk instagrammer, scruffy metalhead. The miser had an axe. Beck gripped his gun tighter.

The scruffy one, who had a bandage wrapped over his eye, said, "...Jesus christ, a kid. It looks like this lot took a bath in an abattoir."

"Read it and weep, stinky," said Beck. "What does your team use for cologne, fucking corpse sweat?"

"£3," said Haralda, pinching her nose.

The punk instagrammer charged up to Beck and tried grabbing his hand, seemingly unconcerned about his gun.

She said, "Sorry, man, it was the only way to repel a fucking exploding ostrich? Now stop squirming and let me see the number!"

Haralda sighed into her elbow and said, "£1 for the lady. I can see I've got my work cut out for me."

"Oh no," said the punk. "This is just great. Just fabulous. We've got less than 2000 words left and no sign of the others."

"Get off me, you rancid bitch!" said Beck, before vomiting into the corner of the elevator. Kari soon followed suit.

"Oh, we're here," said a saintly voice from the stairs, the richest Beck had ever heard, even if it was gagging. "We'd just rather you clean up before we come down."