Bucket Boy blurts out that he saw Corcunda in the neighboring fifth-place garage, apparently drugged and traveling with the "weird ladies," while Pontiff is on another team. Dong immediately tries to force the garage open, determined to reach his friend, and Carl realizes this discovery will create exactly the kind of dangerous complication he had hoped to avoid. Samantha, Donut, Splash Zone, and others spill outside after Dong, while generated gremlins swarm the truck and heckle Carl.

As the others crowd the driveway, Carl stumbles repeatedly in the kangaroo costume and then stays on the floor, overwhelmed by how close his team came to dying after finishing last. The near miss makes Carl feel that he has lost the fragile sense of control he once had, and he worries about future heats that may pit Li Na, Zhang, and Tran against his team again. In the middle of this spiral, Zev privately messages Carl and Donut to say every surviving team must do a media appearance before the next race, and Carl's miserable pause ends with Rend vomiting frozen chicken on him.

After Carl cleans himself up, the standoff outside continues, and one of the generated gremlins unexpectedly hands Carl a note. Before Carl can read it, Zev delivers a dungeon-wide announcement while awkwardly reading the AI's script. The speech explains that "special guest creatures" can be voted onto the 11th floor, reveals that the 11th floor is called A Parade of Horribles, and says surviving crawlers will have to work together there. The announcement also shows the AI's volatility: it boasts about redirecting a Valtay bomb and then forces a mutilated Cascadia to speak before cutting her off.

When the announcement ends, Donut checks on Zev, and Carl finally examines the gremlin's note. What first looks like a crude joke turns into a hidden message when Carl's Escape Plan skill activates. The note, signed by Akuma, orders Carl not to tell anyone, says he needs to kill two teams in the next heat, and instructs him to visit C&W&U after the race by asking for top-shelf upgrades. Akuma claims they want the same thing, offers a possible alliance and a way to smuggle friends to the Pineapple Cabaret, and tells Carl to come alone.