Carl and Agatha have a wary, increasingly adversarial relationship shaped by concealment rather than companionship. Carl first treats Agatha as an eccentric and vulnerable Earth crawler attached to the Meadow Lark survivors. Their brief cooperation during the Ball of Swine fight exposes evidence that she is carrying illegal off-world technology, after which Agatha warns him away from her affairs. Carl spends the middle floors avoiding her while trying to understand why the Syndicate monitors her. By the Ninth Floor, Agatha is actively looking for him, the Syndicate has ordered him not to speak with her, and her actions as a warlord place Carl and his allies in immediate danger.
The two are never partners and do not form a personal bond. Their connection instead develops through a series of incomplete revelations. Carl sees evidence of Agatha's hidden power long before he learns that she is a Residual, while Agatha appears to know when he has discovered her equipment and deliberately limits what he can learn. Even after Carl acquires a name for her species, he does not know her true allegiance or objective. That information gap makes Agatha unusual among his enemies: most of their conflict occurs before either one openly attacks the other.
First meeting at Meadow Lark
Carl meets Agatha near the end of the Second Floor while looking for the people who have been leaving directional signs in the dungeon. She is part of the group from the Meadow Lark elder-care facility, although she is not a resident or employee. Brandon explains that Agatha had been living beside the facility and started a barrel fire shortly before the Collapse. The fire forced residents, staff, police officers, firefighters, and paramedics outdoors. When a dungeon entrance opened among them, Agatha pushed her shopping cart onto the stairs and caused them to change into a ramp. She was the first person to enter voluntarily.
Nothing Carl initially sees identifies her as more than an unhoused older woman who has survived under improbable circumstances. The crawler interface calls her human, places her at level two, and shows that she has not chosen a class. Her muttering, possessiveness over scavenged objects, and habit of decorating walls with spray paint reinforce the impression that she is disconnected from the danger around her. Carl's attention remains on the Meadow Lark residents and the four workers trying to protect them. He includes Agatha in his assessment of the group, but he does not yet regard her as a separate strategic problem.
Agatha complicates Carl's plan by entering the Ball of Swine borough-boss chamber uninvited. Carl, Princess Donut, and the Meadow Lark team have constructed a compact shelter intended for six people. Agatha follows them as an independent crawler group, reducing the available space and preventing installation of the shelter's final central support. Carl nevertheless adapts rather than abandoning her. He orders her to sit in the middle of the structure and places her shopping cart in his inventory so it will not obstruct the defense. Agatha immediately calls him a thief, establishing the complaint she repeats in their next encounter.
The improvised shelter partially collapses under the boss, and a loose bolt strikes Agatha in the head. She survives, stands when the walls fall away, and gains levels after the group kills the remaining tusklings. Carl's behavior toward her in the chamber is protective but impersonal. He directs her as he directs every noncombatant caught inside his plan, while Agatha neither explains why she joined the fight nor reveals any of the equipment hidden among her belongings. Their temporary cooperation exists only because both are trapped in the same boss encounter.
The shopping cart discovery
Agatha disappears after the battle. When the recap show airs, the Meadow Lark survivors notice that the program has not merely omitted her portrait; footage has been altered so that she is absent from the shelter where she had visibly fought beside them. Carl initially assumes she died because he cannot imagine her surviving alone. The edit gives him his first firm reason to doubt that assumption. It also separates Agatha from ordinary low-level crawlers, whose deaths and injuries are normally part of the broadcast spectacle rather than something the production conceals.
Carl later receives access to his inventory history and finds three high-value objects that are no longer in his possession: a Valtay inter-tunnel communications relay, a technological personal shield, and a Valtay pulse pistol. He realizes that the items entered his inventory when he took Agatha's entire cart during the boss fight and left when he returned it. The relay is explicitly classed as an illegal, non-sanctioned communications device that should not operate inside the dungeon. This discovery retroactively changes the meaning of the shopping cart. What Carl handled as an inconvenient pile of bags was also cover for equipment no ordinary Earth crawler should possess.
Agatha approaches the stairwell almost immediately after Carl makes the connection. Carl asks where she has been and starts to question her about the cart, but she rebuffs him as a cart thief. He considers taking the cart again, then rejects the idea because her motivations and the powers behind the equipment are unknown. When he warns that the squeaking wheel lets monsters hear her, she tells him that the creatures already know she is present and do not know how to respond. A sharp look from her also persuades him to retreat from his question about the cart.
The production feed briefly fails during this encounter. Carl cannot prove that Agatha caused the outage, but the timing compounds his suspicions: she arrives as soon as he identifies the Valtay devices, gives him a warning, and descends while outside observers cannot reliably see them. He wonders whether she is working with the System AI. Agatha does not answer that question or ask Carl to help her. Her message is narrower and more threatening: he should attend to his own survival and leave her secrets alone.
Carl's policy of avoidance
Carl responds to the warning by withholding what he knows. On the Third Floor he considers telling Brandon about Agatha but decides not to put the information in writing. His caution protects no established alliance with her; it reflects his belief that transmitting the discovery could attract dangerous attention. It also prevents the Meadow Lark survivors from learning that the apparently helpless woman who entered with them was carrying off-world weapons and communications technology.
At the end of the Iron Tangle, Agatha appears at Carl's stairwell as a level-eight crawler who is still listed as human and classless. Imani recognizes her and moves to intercept her. Carl physically signals Imani to stop and promises an explanation later, allowing Agatha to descend without questioning. By this point his avoidance has become an informal safety rule that he applies to his allies. He does not trust Agatha, but he believes contact with her is more dangerous than letting her pass.
That rule continues on the Fifth Floor. Li Jun reports that a level-twelve woman with a shopping cart appeared unexpectedly, ignored his group, and went down the stairs early. Carl identifies her and tells Li Jun that they simply ignore Agatha. His response shows how thoroughly he has normalized her impossible progress. Her low level, lack of a class, and unexplained movement remain conspicuous, yet Carl no longer tries to stop her or incorporate her into crawler operations.
The Syndicate's own treatment of Agatha confirms that Carl's caution is justified. During Orren's interrogation of Carl after Loita's death, the liaison considers whether Agatha or her helpers could be supplying Carl with prohibited information. Orren rules out that explanation because none of them are inside Carl's communication bubble, not because Agatha is harmless or incapable of covert contact. Carl recognizes the importance of the reference and remembers her warning from the Second Floor. For the first time, an official statement establishes that Agatha has associates and is known to the authorities as a potential source of hidden intelligence.
Carl and Donut glimpse what may be Agatha and her cart near the unusual portals leading out of the Sixth Floor, but they cannot confirm the sighting. The moment reinforces the pattern of their middle-floor relationship: Agatha remains near Carl's route without joining him, and Carl accumulates signs of her survival without securing a direct explanation.
Learning that Agatha is a Residual
Carl obtains a partial classification on the Eighth Floor after encountering a different Residual at a Florida homeless shelter. When questioning Orren, Carl explicitly connects the stranger to Agatha. Orren confirms that both are Residuals but says they are different kinds. He describes Residuals as a hyperspatial collective species that repeatedly infiltrates crawls, then dismisses their interventions as agitation. When the System AI withdraws its protections from Residuals, Carl asks whether that means Agatha will also be eliminated. Orren refuses to make that prediction.
The exchange gives Carl a category, but not an adequate account of Agatha. He learns that her human appearance is a form of infiltration and that the Syndicate has encountered similar beings in other seasons. He does not learn why her faction opposes the Residual he met in Florida, why she carries equipment associated with the Valtay, or what she wants from the System AI. Orren's evasiveness therefore increases rather than resolves Carl's concern.
Agatha's own perspective reveals a larger imbalance in their knowledge. She is Agent 22, an ancient infiltrator who had spent almost a decade in Wenatchee before entering the dungeon. She deliberately started the Meadow Lark fire to create an outdoor crowd and improve her chance of receiving an entrance. She had also killed an agent of the Apothecary and taken that agent's body and equipment. Her faction seeks to recruit the Earth crawl's System AI to free the Eulogist, and Agatha believes biological life should be eradicated to prevent further exploitation of her kind. Carl knows none of this when he chooses to avoid her. What he interprets as an unexplained conspiracy is in fact a mission whose ultimate aim threatens him, every other crawler, and life far beyond Earth.
The Ninth Floor confrontation
The relationship changes on the Ninth Floor when Agatha seeks Carl instead of merely crossing his path. Li Jun tells Carl that she asked for him by name, tried unsuccessfully to enter Larracos, and then went to the bar occupied by Lucia Mar. Before Carl can decide how to respond, Zev relays a direct order from Syndicate prime minister Glory: Carl must not interact with Agatha. Zev admits that she does not know the reason for the sudden urgency. She also notes that the System AI appears to have retained a preference for Agatha after removing protection from most other Residuals.
Carl agrees to try to obey, but the warning leaves him divided. His old policy already favors avoidance, while his need to understand threats pushes him toward finding Agatha. He worries that Imani or Chris may speak with her because of their shared Wenatchee connection. More importantly, he recognizes that the Syndicate's senior leadership now considers the contact dangerous enough to intervene personally. Carl concludes that his ignorance of Agatha's true goal is itself a strategic vulnerability, especially because she has begun looking for him.
Agatha then becomes a co-warlord of the War Mage Rebellion during the Peeling Phase. Through emergency action items, she obtains full warlord resources for the rebellion, expands its Conscription spell, and restores a lethal rule under which every affiliated soldier and warlord remaining on the battlefield dies when their team is defeated. Carl is horrified by the last change because it threatens the Princess Posse and Team Retribution alike and destroys the possibility of ending Faction Wars with multiple surviving teams. Her intervention converts his unresolved suspicion into an immediate military conflict.
Carl never receives the direct conversation that Agatha appeared to seek. Instead, he learns about her through system announcements and Baroness Victory. He discovers that the War Mages did not expect Agatha to be imposed as their co-warlord and that Akuma dislikes her. Carl questions why the System AI selected the same person he had been forbidden to approach. The combination of preferential treatment, warlord access, and a mass-death proposal confirms that Agatha is neither a harmless wanderer nor a conventional ally of the War Mages.
Agatha abandons her warlord post before the battle ends and disappears again. Akuma subsequently asks Carl and Donut to kill her, saying she was forced upon the War Mages and acted independently except for the Conscription proposal. He claims that she can enter the Waiting Room and reappear near an open stairwell, which would account for some of the sudden arrivals Carl has witnessed. Akuma also warns that her actions endanger everyone and everything. Carl does not accept Akuma as a trustworthy ally, but Agatha's attempt to impose automatic death on defeated factions gives the warning credible context.
Status of the relationship
By the end of the Ninth Floor, Carl and Agatha remain separated, and neither has directly attacked the other. Their relationship has nevertheless moved through three clear stages: accidental cooperation at the Ball of Swine, deliberate avoidance through the middle floors, and strategic opposition during Faction Wars. Carl's first act toward Agatha is to shelter her from a boss. His later acts are to keep allies away, investigate her species, and confront the consequences of her warlord decisions.
Agatha's interest in Carl is unresolved. She asks for him shortly before the Syndicate blocks contact, but the novels through the Ninth Floor do not establish what she intended to say or request. Carl likewise has not accepted Akuma's demand as a formal mission, located Agatha, or learned the complete nature of the Eulogist. The danger between them comes from what is already established rather than from a completed personal confrontation: Agatha has tried to place Carl's entire faction under an automatic death condition, while Carl has been warned that she seeks the destruction of everyone and everything around them.