The Final Heat Grouping
All of the deal-making arithmetic undone by one screen. Of the 989 crawlers left on Floor 11, 715 walked into the Outreach Guild and did not come back, leaving 274 crawlers on 103 teams; Imani C's chart put the final race at sixty-five to seventy heats and showed that thirteen more full teams had to leave or the empty slots would create fresh crawler-on-crawler matchups. Nobody else left. Then the Bleak Congregation left the realm and was replaced, and when the starting blocks resolved Carl could see the other heats for the first time: one holding three NPC-only teams, including Team Yokai's yellow AMC Pacer, a polar bear jockeyed by two orcs and a giraffe carrying a single slime; then the Tracksuit Troika's floating Cadillac, Imani and Elle's APV and Chris Andrews 2's red semitruck in one square; and in the next, Louis and Britney's gecko, an NPC sedan, and the moped carrying Florin and Lucia Mar. Two further oddities came with it — the heat ran a four-hour timer, and the racers could still see back down their own streets to their garages, which no earlier heat had allowed. Carl worked out only afterwards that the AI had left both doors open deliberately.
Book 8 appearances
- Chapter 79 — Imani's chart of possible matchups put the final race at sixty-five to seventy heats and showed that thirteen more full teams had to take deals to stop the empty slots creating crawler-on-crawler matchups; everyone knew it was not going to happen.
- Chapter 80 — The grouping resolved into a heat of three NPC-only teams, then the Tracksuit Troika's floating Cadillac with Imani and Elle's APV and Chris's red semitruck, then Louis and Britney's gecko with an NPC sedan and Florin and Lucia's moped.
- Chapter 82 — Carl finally read the design behind it: the four-hour timer and the open route back to the garages were the AI's deliberate out, offered while the transformations were still landing.
Related entries
- Imani C (Character)
- Elle McGibbons (Character)
- Chris Andrews 2 (Character)
- Louis Santiago 2 (Character)
- Britney (Character)
- Florin (Character)
- Lucia Mar (Character)
- The Tracksuit Troika (Character)
- Team Yokai (Character)
- The Bleak Congregation (Character)
- The System AI (Character)
- A Parade of Horribles (Floor 11) (Place)
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