Motif · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Crawler on crawler
What the eighth floor is designed to make happen: keys for one squad in four, doorways as hostages, Flee as theft, a floor 'to turn us against one another'. Ren denies them a fight; Imani will not take a key; Louis takes the skull so the others need not; and thirty-three thousand reach the ninth 'not scattered, not broken, and not afraid'.
Segment appearances
Progression
The AI says keyless squads may transfer to the same location, so the potential for crawler-on-crawler violence is quite high (ch. 27). 'I don't want to fight other people' (ch. 27); 'the man I knew I’d find up there' (ch. 40); 'I should’ve wired the whole capitol building' (ch. 52); Ren refuses (ch. 59); 'stop fucking fighting' (ch. 62); 33,804 remaining when it ends (ch. 72).