The Toast and the Impostor

Carl toasts the escapees, the deal-takers and the parade hopefuls alike, then hands the floor to Elle. She eulogizes her husband Barry over his favorite song and turns the eulogy into a trap: the real Linus, a fan who died before the floor began, left an essay on a private server, and his friends have now posted it to the Princess Posse board. The Snow Cones spotted the replacement the day he arrived, down to a wrong tattoo, and the poisoned tea was never a threat because the party's healers had already made everyone immune. The impostor confirms his targets were Imani C and Louis Santiago 2, chosen because the pair's ordinary decency is what holds the crawlers together, and that Carl was deliberately left alive as the crawler most likely to get everybody killed. Carl tells him his side lost the moment it made them into this, then lets him go: he will be expelled to a defenseless ship in orbit over Earth where friends of theirs are waiting.

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