They were all silent. Taffyta heard the clicking again.

"What do you mean, 'let's go?'" Ralph said. "You expect us to crawl in there? Newflash, Your Candyness, but I'm not exactly the smallest guy around. There's no way I'm fitting in there."

King Candy rocked back on his heels, looking up thoughtfully at Ralph. "No, I guess you're not," he said. His eyes flicked to Taffyta and Vanellope. "Well," he said, "you should be able to hold off anything that, er, happensth along this way."

"What?!" Vanellope shouted, as Ralph asked, "Excuse me?"

Taffyta had to resist the urge to shush them. She leaned in and said to King Candy, "We can't leave Ralph."

"I never said we leaving him," he replied. "The three of us can go in this way—now, I might add, we can go in now, that part's very important—and Ralph can come in through a way that's…" He paused. "More conducive to his bone structure."

"Gee, thanks," Ralph muttered.

Vanellope jammed her hands on her hips. "If you think I'm leaving Ralph—"

"Ugh, please, spare me the last stand dramaticsth," King Candy interrupted. "Ralph can take care of himself, can't you, Ralph? A lot better than he can take care of himself and you."

Looking uncomfortable, Ralph said, "He's got a point, kid." Glaring at King Candy, he added, "I'm just not a big fan of the whole not mentioning that there's something down here that I need to worry about taking care of myself around."

"Need to know basis, Ralph," King Candy said, waving a hand. "And until very recently, I was the only one who needed to—"

He stopped and cocked his head, listening to something. Taffyta heard it too—that weird combination of tapping footsteps and slithering. Her heart shifted up a few gears.

With a movement so fast that she barely even saw it, King Candy grabbed her wrist. There was a glitchy flicker in his eyes. "Taff. Seriously. We need to go. Can you convince our obdurate friendof that fact?" Glancing at Vanellope, he sighed and said, "How about this, glitch. You two go, I stay with Mr. Big-Boned."

"No!" Taffyta exclaimed.

But Vanellope said unwillingly, "I guess I can live with that."

"Good." King Candy stood up and pulled out the scepter that doubled as his kart's gearstick. With a short, hard flick of his wrist, he extended it, the baton telescoping out into a lethal looking weapon. Taffyta stared for a second. Was that new? Or had it always been a truncheon?

Vanellope looked again at Ralph, chewing on her lip, but he motioned at her to go. Sighing, she swung into the exposed duct. When Taffyta just looked at King Candy, her mouth open to say…something, she didn't know what, exactly, he gave her a smile tinged with ruthlessness. "Ten yearsth down here, remember, Taffyta? Not to mention everything else I've survived." He swung the baton lazily. "Talk to Vanellope about it, I'm sure she'd be happy to remind you of all the times I should've seen that big 'Game Over' in the sky."

The noise ticked through the corridor again and he gripped her shoulder. "We'll catch up. Follow the duct to the end. Don't turn around." For a second, his grip tightened. "Seriously, do not turn around."

Now was the time. She should tell him how she felt about him. That she wasn't going to leave him out here. Except now totally wasn't the time. Something bad was coming for them, Ralph and Vanellope were staring, and he was holding a weapon that he definitely knew how to use. Exactly zero of these things had featured in her fantasies of telling him about her feelings.

Taffyta took a deep breath…and chickened out. She climbed into the duct, then stopped and turned around. "Be careful," she said, holding his gaze. Like what, she was going to be able to tell him everything she wanted to just by staring at him? He hadn't figured it out in the last year and a half. It wasn't going to happen now.

He flashed that smile at her one more time and then notched the panel back into place. The sound of it locking into the wall sent a bolt through her heart. Trying to ignore the insistent hitch in her throat doing its best to turn into a sob, she fumbled with the flashlight. She stubbed her thumb on the switch before it flickered on, revealing Vanellope just in front of her, and beyond the other woman, a long, narrow tunnel that kept going long past what the feeble light could reach.

She shuffled forward on her hands and knees, feeling the accumulated dirt and filth of forty-one years through her tights. "C'mon," Vanellope hissed, looking pretty miserable herself. "Just pretend Calhoun's back there barking orders, that's enough to make you get a move on, right?"

Bumping her head on the ceiling, Taffyta said, "If Calhoun was back there barking orders, I'd feel a lot better. At least she'd be able to help take out that monster thing." Which was about to possibly rip apart her friends.

"Quit cryin', Taff," Vanellope said in a low voice as they crawled. She shot a smile back over her shoulder though, and Taffyta took a deep breath and forced down the lump of iron and fear in her throat. Vanellope was being brave. She could be, too. Right?

The duct was somehow a million times creepier than the rest of this place had been. A million times dirtier, too. Taffyta sneezed and a cloud of thick dust flew from every surrounding surface. It seemed much too loud in the dark, enclosed space, and she froze, worried that whatever was out there would hear and come for them. It probably knew a way in that would avoid King Candy and Ralph altogether. After all, it lived down here.

For a second, she couldn't do anything except fight down the tight fear clawing its way through her chest. Either the…the thing was going to find her and Vanellope, or it was going to find King Candy and Ralph. Neither was a great option.

"Hey," Vanellope hissed. "I'm kinda losing my light here, move your molasses!"

Her throat hitching, Taffyta crawled forward until she caught up with Vanellope. Taking several deep breaths, she said, "King Candy told us to follow this duct. There must be something at the other end."

With a snort, Vanellope said, "Yeah, probably something really hungry and with sharp teeth."

"Stop it," Taffyta said quietly.

"Huh?"

Taffyta squeezed past her, shining the flashlight down the duct. She couldn't see anything that looked like it might be a destination. "Don't say stuff like that," she said without looking back. "He just stayed behind so we could get away. He's risking his life for us."

"Oh come on!" There was a hurried thumping as Vanellope followed her. "You act like he's being Mr. Noble Saint or something."

"Yeah, well, what do you want to call it?" Taffyta asked, her tone rough. The further they got from the entrance, the tighter the claws around her heart squeezed. She knew she was being ridiculous. King Candy was about as far from a saint as you could get. As far from noble, too, if you didn't count the title, and she was pretty sure you couldn't, since he'd bestowed it on himself.

"I…" Vanellope began, but then trailed off. Taffyta didn't really care. She didn't know whether she wanted to talk about King Candy or not. And luckily, Vanellope didn't say anything else. Ha, well, that showed her. Taffyta didn't win wars of words too often. She was smart, but not that kind of clever. Not like Vanellope or King Candy. Wait—no. She'd decided. She wasn't going to think about him. Even if it was only for two minutes, she wasn't going to think about him.

The two of them crawled through the duct in silence for several minutes, the only thing cutting through the quiet their breathing and the muffled thumping of their knees and hands on the dusty ground. Then, startling Taffyta, Vanellope spoke. "He would've done just about anything to get you out of there. Doi."

"Just like Ralph wanted you out of there," Taffyta said. "Big deal. I would've done the same, but it's not like I'm going to fight off any monsters any time soon."

"Maybe we should do some kind of monster fighting bootcamp. Then we don't have to rely on a couple big, dumb guys to look out for us."

Despite herself, Taffyta laughed. When was the last time she'd really, genuinely laughed at anything Vanellope had said? Of course, King Candy was the opposite of big and dumb, and—shit, she was thinking about him again, there went that resolution. The reality of the situation hit her all over again and she had to suck in a breath to keep her laugh from turning into a sob. What was she going to do if—deep breath, Taffyta—if he wasn't okay? If he didn't come climbing out of this duct in twenty or thirty minutes, that easy, charming smile on his face that made her heart pound? If everything he'd survived came to an end in this horrible place?

Just as she thought this, the flashlight, followed by her head, clanged against the end of the duct. "Ouch! Dammit!" she swore.

"Hey, look at that, little miss pretty princess does have a potty mouth, after all," Vanellope said with a laugh. "What's up?"

Taffyta raised a fist and knocked hesitantly against the wall. "This is it. We can't go any farther."

"Huh? Isn't there a turn or something?" Vanellope squeezed alongside her, though there really wasn't enough space.

"No," Taffyta said, frustration fighting with despair in her voice. Was this her fault? Had she missed the turn? Misunderstood King Candy's directions?

There was a noise from somewhere behind them and both women froze. Taffyta swallowed hard. Barely daring to breathe, she twisted and shined the flashlight back the way they'd come.

Nothing. Just dull, gray walls and the beam of light growing more diffuse until blackness swallowed it. "Do you think that thing's in here with us?" she asked, her voice coming out as a squeak.

Vanellope's head was cocked. "That might've been Ralph chucking it against the wall," she said slowly. "But…it might not've been."

Licking her lips, Taffyta knocked on the wall again. It sounded hollow on the other side, but that made sense—they were in a duct, after all. Anything could be on the other side of this wall, including a hundred foot plummet into more of whatever was following them.

Experimentally, she pushed at it. It gave. No duh. She'd been feeling the metal bow out under her knees the entire time they'd been crawling. But—was it just her imagination, or did she also feel it shift down?

It was almost imperceptible. Holding her breath, she gave it another push. Yes! There! She'd definitely felt it move. It wasn't just a wall—it was a panel.

Her heart beating faster, she scrabbled at the bottom of it. There had to be something, a groove or an edge, that she could catch with her fingers. "Vanellope, help me for a second, we should be able to pop this panel out—" Just then, her fingers slipped into a gap between the panel and the wall. She wedged them in and yanked, and with a creak of protest, the panel came away in her hands.

"Looks like you've got it under control," Vanellope said dryly.

Dim, gray light flooded the duct. Taffyta's eyes watered, unused to anything brighter than the flashlight's beam, and she threw a hand up in front of her face. But even when she was able to put her hand down, she hesitated at the threshold of the door she'd opened. Something could be out there—something as bad as what they'd left behind.

But King Candy and Ralph were risking their lives so that she and Vanellope could escape, and this had to be where he'd wanted them to go. With a deep breath, she ducked through the opening.

For a second, she couldn't decide whether to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible or to be brave. She wasn't brave, so the latter wasn't going to come naturally. Vanellope and Ralph and King Candy, they were brave. Taffyta was a coward and always had been. Hadn't she proved it when Malcolm had appeared in Turbo's old home? When she'd been too indecisive to say something in the maze about how they were lost? Just now, when she'd let King Candy and Ralph risk their lives so that she could get away? The gun felt heavy in her jacket. It hadn't even occurred to her to give it to either of them. She wasn't just a coward, she was also an idiot.

But she'd never felt her cowardice so acutely as in this moment, facing the unknown crouched against a cold metal wall with her eyes screwed shut.

Drawing another deep breath, she forced her eyes open, just as Vanellope clambered through the opening and said, "Whoa."

Taffyta looked up. Her mouth dropped open. "That's for sure," she finally echoed.

They were standing in a massive hall that looked like a twin of Game Central Station. Or maybe more like some kind of through-the-looking-glass version of it. Everything was gray and dim in the monochrome light. Instead of GCS's huge windows, there were long strips of floor-to-ceiling slatted black vents. Did those vents open up to the real Game Central Station? Were they directly under it right now? Then again, King Candy had said those kinds of directions didn't mean anything in this place. Huh, no kidding. She was completely lost down here.

Vanellope strolled away from the panel, evading Taffyta's attempt to grab her arm and pull her back. "We don't know what's in here!" Taffyta hissed. The space swallowed up her voice, pushing the sound back at her.

"Sure we do," Vanellope said over her shoulder. "Nothing. I don't see anything, do you?"

"That doesn't mean there's nothing here," Taffyta muttered, thinking of the thing that had been following them. None of them had seen that, either.

"Feels like we should have a campfire or something, doesn't it?" Vanellope said cheerfully. "You should see Ralph's face when I tell ghost stories. He's a total chicken, it's great. Man, I've learned some great ones in Slaughter Race, too."

"Uh huh," Taffyta said, still studying their surroundings. Slaughter Race. What, had it been a whole thirty minutes since that place had come up? Her stomach growled and she absently pulled a lollipop from her pocket, then stuck it in her mouth. She couldn't even taste it. Her stomach felt too tightly twisted to accept the food.

"Hey. Earth to Taffyta. This is Ground Control, you on this planet, Major Tom?"

Taffyta jumped as Vanellope's hand waved in front of her face. "What?" she snapped.

"You were zoning out. C'mon, let's check this place out! I mean, how often do you find a weird, creepy replica of your hometown?"

"I don't want to check it out," Taffyta said. "I want King Candy and Ralph to be alive. I don't—" She drew in a deep breath. "I can't focus on anything until I know they're okay."

The look on Vanellope's face crashed from cheerful to scared in a split second. "You think I'm not worried, too?" Actually, Taffyta was positive that Vanellope wasn't worried about King Candy, but she kept her mouth shut. "It's not like we're gonna help anything by standing here freaking out, right? We should make sure this place is safe. Circle the wagons and whatever. We could spend a few hours here, get some sleep. I know I could use a nap. So let's get comfortable."

Taffyta realized her heart was racing the same way it did while she sat at the starting line revving her kart's engine, but without any of the excitement and anticipation and absolutely all of the gut-churning anxiety. It was hard to believe they hadn't even been down here for twenty-four hours. Had they even been here twelve? It felt like it had been days.

"Yeah," she said shakily, a little ashamed at her outburst. Even if she still didn't think Vanellope cared one way or the other if King Candy came back. "So should we like, look around?"

"Recon!" Vanellope crowed. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space, breaking through the tomb-like stillness, and she looked chagrined. In a more subdued tone, she added, "Maybe we can build a camp or something. There's plenty of old junk laying around."

This was as true of the looking glass GCS as it had been of the corridors they'd just been in. It made Taffyta wonder how it had gotten there and what it all even was. Some of it looked like spare parts. Had this junk been part of Malcolm's black market operation? Could she have come here and found the part she needed to fix King Candy's code when Sugar Rush had been upgraded? Avoided dealing with Malcolm at all? Avoided all of this?

But King Candy hadn't told her about it. She knew he hadn't wanted to say anything about any of this until forced to. Despite the way he acted, she knew this place was full of nothing but bad memories for him. Bad memories, heartbreak, and loneliness.

Even though she knew he couldn't come through the duct with Ralph, she still looked over her shoulder at it. Nothing. Just a dark, gaping eye staring emptily back at her. Don't think about it.

Forcing herself to turn away, she caught up with Vanellope, who was far enough across the hall that Taffyta had to run to catch up. "Looks like there's some stuff over there we can pile up," Vanellope said, pointing. "Not exactly a five star hotel but it's something, right?"

"It's not going to do much if we actually need protection," Taffyta said.

Vanellope ignored her and glitched the rest of the way across the hall. Sighing, Taffyta trudged after her. It was hard to remember why they'd come down here—and harder to remind herself that it had been at her insistence. They hadn't even made it a day without encountering something lethal. Finding Malcolm hadn't entered her mind for hours. This had been a huge mistake.

But then she remembered those unplugged games, all those homeless characters wandering forlornly through Game Central Station, and felt sick all over again at the idea of the same thing happening to Sugar Rush. She already knew what it was liketo be gameless, even if it had only been for a short time. Then again, was dread making her sick, or was it some latent filament of virus answering a call and waking up in her? She clenched her fists. Even if this whole thing had been doomed from the start, she still couldn't give up.

By the time she reached Vanellope's side, the other woman was already heaving junk into a pile. Taffyta rushed to grab a corner of something that looked like a crate before Vanellope fell back under its weight. Together, the two of them shuffled it into place.

"Oof, thanks," Vanellope said, rubbing her arm.

"No problem," Taffyta said, shooting her a smile. She bent over and and picked up a piece of metal that looked like a door. There was something written on it and she rubbed the coat of dust away so she could read it. "Sluggo," she said out loud. Looking up at Vanellope, she asked, "Does that mean anything to you?"

Vanellope just grunted as she lifted another crate into place. Taffyta stacked the curved panel on the growing pile. The two of them worked mostly in silence, Taffyta trying not to notice the passage of time. Had it been an hour now? Too long. Ralph and King Candy should have been there by now.

She picked up another piece of metal and glanced at it before she added it to their makeshift wall—then almost dropped it. She'd know that curvature anywhere. It was the hood of a go-kart. The paint was still mostly intact, though age and abuse had chipped a lot of it away.

Taffyta ran a hand over the red and white striped hood and said past the lump in her throat, "This stuff is all from games. Unplugged games." She flipped the hood around and saw, engraved along the bottom in tiny letters, TurboTime, 1980.

There was a sound behind her and a blue flash as Vanellope glitched over. "Oh," she said as she read over Taffyta's shoulder. "Some carnage from Turbutt? At least it's his own kart."

Taffyta clenched her fingers around the panel. "Why do you have to keep doing that?"

For a second, Vanellope stared at her, holding a pitted rock in one hand. Asteroids. She didn't answer Taffyta's question. Not that Taffyta had expected her to. Tossing the rock from one hand to the other, Vanellope said, "Can I ask you something?"

This took Taffyta by surprise. When had Vanellope ever not just asked? Cautiously, she nodded.

Vanellope tossed the rock again. "Do you have, like, a thing for King Candy?"

Taffyta froze. Her mouth felt dry. Was this possibly more terrifying than getting eaten by a too-many-legged monster? "I…um, w-why? Why do you ask?"

Shrugging, Vanellope said, "Sometimes you seem like you like him way more than a friend. I'm just making sure you don't, because, y'know, that would sort of be like, a major betrayal, considering everything…"

But she trailed off, and Taffyta knew everything was written plain as day across her face. Anyone with half a brain would know. She was just barely capable of hiding it from King Candy, and that was only because he didn't see her that way. It didn't even occur to him she could feel that way about him.

The rock fell out of Vanellope's hand. She swallowed. "Sweet mother of monkey milk. You do. You actually like him." For a second, all she did was stand there, staring in transfixed horror at Taffyta, who was seized by a wild impulse to make a stupid crack about there maybe being a giant monster behind her, like maybe it had evaded King Candy and Ralph and found them. It seemed pretty unlikely Vanellope would laugh. Well, it would have been a pretty feeble joke anyway.

Vanellope was still staring at her, so finally, Taffyta tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and asked, "What's the big deal?"

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew it was the wrong move. "The big deal?" Vanellope repeated, her voice rising. "Are you serious? After everything he did, you're actually…actually into him! And you really don't see anything weird about that?" She paused, her mouth gaping open for a second. "That doesn't strike you as the tiniest bit insane? This is Turbo we're talking about! Not some guy you met out in Game Central Station that took you to Tapper's! Turbo. Did you get like, amnesia and forget everything he did?!"

"Vanellope, it was nine years ago that all of that came out—"

"I don't care if it was nine hundred years ago!" Vanellope exploded. "He took over our game! He tried to kill me! It's never gonna be long enough ago! Don't you get it, Taffyta? He's not just a jerk, he's a monster! How can you love someone like that?"

Something twisted hard in Taffyta. She'd never said she loved King Candy out loud, and she definitely hadn't said it to Vanellope. She'd just gotten used to saying it to herself in her own head. But it was true and had been for a long time, and there was no point in denying it. "I know what he is," she said miserably. This wasn't the way she'd imagined talking about this with someone for the first time. She'd thought…well, maybe her and Candlehead would giggle about it, or Rancis would have teased her even more than he already did. Vanellope hadn't entered into her plans. They were barely even friends anymore, and she was pretty much the last person on the planet who'd understand Taffyta's feelings. She took a breath. "I—I love the parts you don't see."

"That I don't want to see, gross."

A shard of frustration pierced Taffyta's meticulously managed calm. "Yeah, and that's why you're never going to get it. You don't want to. You don't want to see him as anything other than a game-jumping creep, and you're never going to. But that doesn't mean that's all he is."

"Please do not tell me he's great in the sack or something," Vanellope said.

Taffyta turned red. "I don't—we haven't—he doesn't even know how I feel. We definitely haven't done—um—anything. There, that is."

With a snort, Vanellope said, "You sure he doesn't know?" Then, she turned away in disgust. Taffyta told herself not to be hurt. It didn't work.

She threw the kart hood to the floor. The clatter of the impact ricocheted around the huge space. "Stop it! Just stop it! You don't get to hold him hostage for the rest of his life, Vanellope!" she yelled. "You don't get to hold either of us hostage! Sugar Rush isn't even your game anymore, you left!"

Vanellope turned around, a glitch running up her. She looked like she'd been slapped. "Yeah, I left! I knew I belonged in Slaughter Race the second I set foot in there, and if you think I was going to pretend like I didn't so I could go back to the same life that I always had—"

"Oh, right," Taffyta sneered. "Sugar Rush is too boring, you're just like the gamers who stopped playing because they just want to play their dumb phone games."

"Hey! Watch what you're calling a dumb phone game!"

Ooh, that had hit a nerve. Good. "You got Sugar Rush unplugged, Vanellope, and then you ditched all of us and never even said sorry, or explained why you left, and Ralph had to twist himself in knots trying to tell us why you weren't here without saying the real reason, and it was a horrible thing to do to him and it was a horrible thing to do to us! And now you think you can come back here, to our—our rinky-dink, boring little arcade, and tell us how to live our lives, tell me who I'm allowed to—to—to care about, and in another twenty-four hours you're going to disappear again for five or six months and expect that we're all going to be exactly the way you left us, like you're the only one who gets to change. But you know what, Vanellope? People are allowed to change, and you can keep being mad if you want but you can't make everyone else go along with it!"

"Uh, this doesn't have anything to do with anyone else. It's you and the fact that you're—you're fraternizing with him," Vanellope shot back, her face red. "But way to play the victim, Taffyta!" In a high-pitched, whiny voice, she said, "Boo-hoo, I'm Taffyta Muttonfudge, and Vanellope's so mean to me because she left the game!" She sneered and glitched. "You wanted me gone anyway. You hated losing to me every day!"

"Yeah, I hated losing to a cheater!" Taffyta snarled, her fists clenched at her sides.

With a violent glitch, Vanellope said, "Oh man, are you serious right now? My glitch isn't cheating! And anyway, you can thank your boo for the fact that I can do it at all!" Her eyes were narrowed in rage. "The only reason I have it is because he messed my code up when he, oh wait, let me see—oh yeah, when he tried to kill me. But you don't care about that, right Taffyta? Because you're like, in love with him, or whatever, so who cares about all the bad stuff he's done!"

Taffyta's head felt hot and she couldn't see anything except a narrow tunnel of anger in front of her, telescoping into a tight pinprick of rage. "You have no idea how I feel and you don't know him."

"Oh my god," Vanellope said, rolling her eyes into the back of her head. "What a load of bull. You know when you really get to know someone? It's when they're swinging a club at your head as you're careening down a race track!" Taffyta's face froze, and Vanellope's lip curled. "What, you don't like remembering his greatest hits? That was a good one, oh, and how about the time when he locked up your memory so you wouldn't know who he really was? That's a good one too. He's a liar and a manipulator and a horrible person, and you fell for it all over again."

Something in Taffyta snapped. "At least he's spent the last nine years trying to be a better person!" she yelled. "All you did was get more and more selfish and entitled until you ruined everything and left the rest of us to pick up the pieces! Maybe you hate him so much because you're a lot like him, you ever think about that, Vanellope? Maybe you can't stand him because you went Turbo!"

There was a long, horrible silence. She'd said it. She'd said what every single racer in Sugar Rush had thought, but never said out loud, for the past three years. What she had only said to King Candy when she knew no one was listening.

Vanellope was glitching, clearly struggling to keep it under control. Waves of blue binary were rippling over her body. "What?" she said in a low, dangerous voice.

But Taffyta was past caring about what was okay to say and what wasn't. "You. Went. Turbo," she said, a level of vitriol in her voice that she hadn't mustered since before Sugar Rush had reset. "But you think you're like, exempt, because Turbo took over our game, so you can do whatever the hell you want. Poor Vanellope, she's a victim." Throwing someone's words back in their face had never felt so good. "You came this close to killing hundreds of people. You almost ruined all of our lives! Ralph is the only reason we still have a game—yeah, you think we don't know that? You think we're all stupid? Wait, what am I saying, of course you think we're stupid. After all, it never occurred to any of us to go Turbo and live in the internet because our game isn't good enough."

In disgust, she turned away from Vanellope, picking up the hood of Turbo's kart again.

"You know what, Taffyta?" Vanellope said, her voice tight with anger.

"Oh," Taffyta laughed meanly. "This should be really good."

"I could have kicked him out!" Vanellope exploded. "I could have kicked your horrible, dirtbag boyfriend out! The whole arcade wanted him dead, and I could have thrown him out and let them kill him! And I still could! I'm still president, and what I say goes!"

This threat, the fear that had kept all of Taffyta's boiling frustration at a simmer for so many years, now seemed laughably empty. "So what, I'm supposed to thank you again? You want me to grovel this time? You never would have done that in a million years, and you're still not going to! Just because you did him a good turn nine years ago doesn't mean bothof us owe you for the rest of forever!"

"He didn't deserve it!" Vanellope yelled. Her eyes were bright and her face was turning red. "Neither of you deserved it after the way you treated me. And if—"

But just then, there was a hollow boom! from the other side of the hall. Vanellope fell silent and both women whirled to face the sound.

There was another boom! and then another. Then, with a shudder and a crash, a door on the other side of the dim hall flew open and fell to the ground, a cloud of dust exploding into the air like a bomb had just gone off. All of Taffyta's anger solidified into icy panic, rooting her to the spot. Her heart was in her throat.

This was it. It had found them.