Chris

Chris Andrews 2, Brandon's older brother, put in a special school because he would not speak; 'If he says something, you better listen' (ch. 22). He speaks four times in the book: to say 'I liked that show' of The A-Team or MacGyver, never saying which (ch. 26), to notice that Agatha was edited out of the recap (ch. 31), to say Jack really did have a weird-looking dick (ch. 39), and to tell his brother not to be that guy (ch. 40). He casts a five-minute magic spear, pulls the residents' train in a tuskling harness, and is found kneeling with his head down after the slaughter of the tusklings (ch. 27) and again after the collapse (ch. 31).

Named once, in Brandon's message from the third floor: the residents with cognitive issues had to pick really weird races to stay viable, and while Brandon stayed human, Chris and Imani did not — nothing more this floor (ch. 8).

An igneous — lava rock, full of holes — and changed by it: he wanted to hunt, wanted to find Carl, fought with his brother and left with men who all died (ch. 8). Would not take Brandon's messages (blocked, Brandon thought); will not answer Imani; alive, and looking for Carl. He walks into the Desperado Club, kills Frank Q at the bar, and walks out banned (ch. 20). Odette starts to say something about him and is muted (epilogue).

Maggie's armour

The crawler who took the bridge of the Akula — invisible to its sentinel gun, alone with the head in the jar, lying about the escape tubes (ch. 9, ch. 25) — walks up to Carl in Hump Town (ch. 13) as a seven-foot Igneous Zulu Warrior with coal eyes and three player-killer skulls, and is not Chris. The chat costs him health; family makes you weak; the speaker has two daughters, the older dead in the collapse, and a guide who said the collapse dead are in storage, though Chris has no children Carl knows of and his guide is a woman (ch. 14). It is Maggie My, an Infiltrator in his brain since the end of the third floor, and Chris has been awake inside, watching, for all of it: Frank's death, the flight from Meadow Lark, everything.

'Please. Kill me.'

Petrified by Katia's bolt, he messages through Imani and Elle: 'It's okay. I give you permission.' Carl tells him to go fuck himself and delivers Brandon's message to the stone (ch. 14). Donut drops him and Maggie into a sealed chamber of the tomb rather than let Carl kill him. They dig out, kill Tyler on the way, and Chris gets one warning into the quest chat — 'Maggie is cheating. She has outside help. A cap…' — before he is muted and his log erased (ch. 29). At the end Carl, phased through lava rock, pulls the worm out through his skull. 'That hurt.' 'Ditto.' 'Brandon,' he says, and goes down the stairs in Carl's party, in his brother's honour (ch. 34).

His lava-rock foot crushes the weasel an inch from Carl's nose and he carries Carl, burning, into the pub (ch. 2). He goes with Katia (ch. 4), grunts at a cretin (ch. 3), burrows now and travels with Li Jun and Li Na (ch. 36). On the raids he is buried under a Dreadnought's boots and 'lava's' the rifleman (ch. 60, ch. 61); he grows up out of the dirt afterwards (ch. 62). He signs the planning notes with one word and cries at the end (ch. 64, ch. 77).

'I'm solid' (ch. 22); finds the token vending machine (ch. 40); feels bad about bringing down a pretty church, and does it (ch. 64); paints a neon X (ch. 72). In the epilogue, the man who called Agatha's name into the cold (epilogue).

Blended into the ground under Carl's feet (ch. 15); hugged by Imani with her wings and reaching for her face, stopping short (ch. 65); 'as bad as being controlled by Maggie' (ch. 77). Carl learns from Imani's mind that she loves his simplicity (ch. 69). Into the stairwell with Britney (ch. 86).