And Juliet Seven punched the thug in the face so hard that even Rick flinched at the bone-crunching sound the big fist made when it landed.
The thug’s body went so loose it looked as if he had turned to string. He fluttered to the floor and lay still.
The lights came on. Rick looked around wildly, in a panic. The masked gunman lay unconscious on the floor. Juliet Seven loomed enormous and rectangular in the doorway.
But where was Raider?
“Raider!” Rick shouted. “Raider, you okay? Are you hurt? Are you shot?”
“He’s all right,” said Miss Ferris coolly. She stepped around the massive wall that was Juliet Seven. She had Raider lifted in her arms—in spite of the fact that she wasn’t much bigger than he was. The boy’s face was white. His eyes looked to be the size of dinner plates. He was pressing his lips together hard as he tried not to cry. “I’ve got him,” Miss Ferris announced in her flat, robotic voice. “He’s unharmed.”
Rick nodded. With a sigh of relief, he dropped the gun. He let his head fall back to the floor. He lay there on his back and tried to massage some of the pain out of his screaming legs. Blood from his busted lip ran down over his chin.
The next moment, Rick’s mom rushed into the room, pulling a bathrobe closed around her. Raider had slid down out of Miss Ferris’s grip. He rushed to his mother and wrapped his arms around her. She held his head against her robe. If Raider’s face was white, his mother’s face was practically transparent with shock.
Her voice came out a hoarse croak. “What is going on? Rick, are you all right?”
Still rubbing his legs, still flinching with the pain, drinking the blood that dribbled out of his broken lip, Rick nodded. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine, Ma. I’ll be fine.”
“Who are these people?” she said. “What’s going on?”
Rick had no idea how to answer that.
But Miss Ferris calmly drew a billfold out of her jacket pocket. She flipped it open. There was a badge inside. It flashed in the light as she showed it to Rick’s mom.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Dial,” Miss Ferris said in her steady monotone. “We’re the police. We received a 911 call that there’d been a break-in here. But don’t worry. Everything’s all right now.”
18. SECRET FILES
IT WAS RICK’S turn to be furious.
“You’re going to tell me what’s going on,” he shouted. He jabbed his finger in Miss Ferris’s direction. “You’re going to tell me now, lady! Or you can take your stupid MindWar and eat it!”
They were in the conference room again. Rick was back in his chair at the long glass table and Miss Ferris was standing in front of the blank TV screens. Juliet Seven was at his station in the corner, where his enormous arms were once again crossed on his enormous chest as he watched them both, smiling with his eyes.
“We told you this would be dangerous,” Miss Ferris said calmly.
“For me!” Rick shouted. It hurt to talk through his swollen lips, but he didn’t care. “You said it would be dangerous for me! You never said people would break into my house and come after my family!”
Rick saw Miss Ferris swallow, maybe even a bit harder than usual. Just very slightly, he thought she averted her gaze, as if she were embarrassed. “We were guarding your house all the time,” she said flatly.
“Oh, well, good job!” said Rick. “Except for the guy with the gun breaking in and nearly shooting me. Other than that, you did great.”
“We were nearby the whole time. Your family wasn’t in any danger.”
Rick silently cursed the crippled legs that forced him to sit where he was. That flat, unemotional tone of hers was making him crazy. He wished he could jump up, tower over her, grab her by the front of her suit jacket, and shake some feeling into her. It was probably just as well he couldn’t. He was so mad at her right then, he might have lost control and strangled her.
“That guy was going to kill me,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice steady. “Then he was going to kill my mom and my brother. Don’t tell me we weren’t in danger.”
Once again, she swallowed hard, as if something were caught in her throat. But if she had any real sense of shame or guilt, she didn’t let on. She only gave a brisk nod. She said, “You have to understand: this operation is different than any we’ve undertaken before—different than any operation anyone has undertaken. Normally, we would put you and your family under high-tech security. But that’s just the problem. Our high technology may be completely vulnerable to Kurodar’s infiltration. In fact, it may just make him stronger. We don’t know. For now, we feel you’re safer in your own home with a guard posted.”
“Oh yeah! Real safe!”
“Look, one of them got by us, that’s all. We’re not perfect. We came to help you as soon as we could, just as we did when you were attacked before, just as . . .” She stopped suddenly.
Rick stared at her. “Just as what?”
Miss Ferris, gave a quick shake of her head. “Never mind. I misspoke.”
“No, no, no. Just as you did when what? When did you ever come to help me before? When have I ever been attacked before? This is the first time anyone’s ever . . .”
The words died on Rick’s split and purple lip. He gaped at Miss Ferris, and Miss Ferris looked back at him with a grim poker face.
“The accident,” Rick whispered. The thought astonished him. “You’re talking about the accident, aren’t you? Are you talking about the truck that hit me, that destroyed my legs? I don’t remember how I got to the hospital. Or what happened to the driver. Are you saying you took care of all that? Are you telling me that the accident . . . that it wasn’t an accident? Are you telling me that truck hit me on purpose?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Miss Ferris said coolly. “I can’t tell you anything.”
Rick went on gaping at her as ideas he could barely believe raced and tumbled through his mind. “You have to,” he said finally. “You have to tell me. That thug was asking me about my father. What’s he got to do with this? What’s the accident got to do with it? You’re telling me that everything that’s happened to me over these past months—it’s all connected. That’s right, isn’t it? It’s all connected to the MindWar.”
Miss Ferris could not have looked at him with any less emotion if she had been a department store mannequin. “I don’t know,” she said.
The anger exploded in him again. “What do you mean you don’t know? I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I’ve told you everything I can.”
“You’ve lied to me, you mean! You’ve lied to me all this time. And now my family is in danger!”
Miss Ferris didn’t answer. She only gazed at him. Standing there in her stupid black suit. Or maybe this was a new stupid black suit, who could tell? Rick glared back, his swollen lip curling with rage. Their eyes remained locked together.
“My brother’s terrified,” Rick told her, his voice coming from somewhere deep in his throat. “My mother’s scared out of her wits.”
“I thought I took care of that. I explained to your mother that there was a break-in, that we were the police, and that we’d taken the intruder into custody.”
“Right,” Rick sneered sarcastically. “And that worked great, because my mom’s an idiot! Because she would never think to call the police and ask for more information and find out they never heard of any break-in at our house at all. Oh wait, that’s exactly what she did!”
Well, that really disturbed Miss Ferris. It must have, because she actually took a deep breath! She said, “All right. I’ll fix that.”
“Oh, you’ll fix that.”
“I’ll have one of the local detectives follow up with her.”
“Good,” said Rick. “Because there’s just nothing I like better than being tangled in a web of lies, especially with my mom.”
“You signed on for this,” Miss Ferris snapped back, almost r
aising her voice. Almost. “Commander Mars told you that you would have to keep the mission a secret.”
“Commander Mars!” Rick said, disgusted. “The guy’s a hologram! He’s not even a real person. I’m not sure you’re even a real person.”
“I’m a real person, Rick,” Miss Ferris answered quietly.
“Then why don’t you act like one?” he shouted. “Why don’t you . . . lose your temper or . . . or change your tone of voice or . . . or something? Do something. Feel something. Why don’t you feel anything?”
“Because it doesn’t help,” she said flatly.
And again Rick thought he saw in her the slightest indication of—something—confusion—distress. Her mouth turned down in the briefest frown and her eyes broke away as if she could no longer meet his furious stare. To his annoyance, Rick found this little sign of weakness touched him somehow. In spite of himself, his anger at her started to ebb.
Who is this woman? he wondered. What was going on in her mind? He’d never met anyone like her. He’d never met anyone so absent emotion—certainly not a girl, anyway. And she was actually kind of a pretty girl, too, when you took the time to look at her. She had this perfect pink-and-white complexion and crystal-blue eyes that he might have called soft had they belonged to anyone else. Her hair was cut boyishly short, and her outfit was boyish, too, but it was all boyish in a cute girlish way that Rick liked. In fact, he sensed there was something in Miss Ferris that he would have liked altogether—if only she weren’t working so hard to keep it from coming out.
“You’re hiding something from me,” he said, his tone a little less ferocious than before.
Slowly, she raised her eyes to meet his again. “I’m hiding all kinds of things from you, Rick,” she told him. “It’s a top secret operation, remember?”
“All right. I get that. Sure. But if you know something about my father, that’s different. You have to tell me that.”
“Really?” Miss Ferris asked him—and any sign of distress he might have seen in her had vanished. She had gone all robot on him again. “Why? So the next time someone puts a gun to your head and asks you where he is, you’ll be able to tell them? We don’t tell you things, so that you can’t tell anyone else. That way, everyone’s a little safer.”
Rick swallowed. He had to admit he could see her point. But he couldn’t stop himself from going on. “You don’t know what it’s been like in my house these last months. So just tell me one thing, all right? Just tell me: Did my dad walk out on us or not?”
In the long pause that followed, Rick began to hope she would break down and answer him. But all she said was, “I’m sorry.” Then she glanced briskly at her watch. “It’s been more than twelve hours. We need to get you back into the Realm.”
19. PORTAL TWO
THE METALLIC LINING of the portal tightened around him again. Rick lay in the coffin-like glass box, staring up into Miss Ferris’s impassive face above him. His mind was swirling with so many thoughts and questions, he could barely pay attention to her instructions.
“Get as close to the fortress as you can and find out as much about it as you can,” she said down at him. “But don’t push it. Don’t put yourself in any danger. The cost of failure is too great. Greater than you can imagine.”
Rick could barely nod in response, the metallic lining was already wrapped around his head so tightly.
“You’ll notice we gave you an extra fifteen minutes to stay this time,” Miss Ferris went on. “According to our brain scans, the fact that you played video games so much has made your mind well-adapted to being in the Realm.”
Rick didn’t know whether to be proud of this or ashamed.
“But again,” said Miss Ferris, “don’t push it. Before you go too far in any direction, make sure you know where the nearest portal point is, and make sure you can get back to it in time if there’s any trouble. Under no circumstances are you to stay past the time we’ve allotted to you. Under no circumstances; do you understand me?”
Rick could only answer with a grimace as the lining seemed to creep over the top of his head like a living thing. Again, he felt as if invisible needles were injecting themselves into his scalp.
“We recorded the location of the new portal point you discovered in the Blue Woods. You should come out this time, at exactly the place from which you left.”
One corner of Rick’s mouth turned up. Like a save point in a video game, he thought.
“Good luck, Rick,” Miss Ferris said.
She spoke, as always, without emotion. But, strangely, he found himself smiling a more or less warm farewell at her. With all their angry exchanges back and forth, he hadn’t noticed it until now—but the fact was, crazy as it seemed, he was beginning to like this oddly robotic woman. He was even beginning to trust her, weird and secretive as she was.
She closed the lid of the box and stepped away.
After that, it was all as it had been before. His heart sped up as the glass coffin lid lowered over him. A claustrophobic sweat broke out on his temples, the droplets streaming back into his hair. The prickling in his scalp grew more painful as the lining of the coffin tightened around him even more. Then came that buzzing sound again, and the vibrations. And something in him began to release, as if he were falling asleep.
Then, just as before, he seemed to lose his grip on himself. He seemed to slip down inside his own mind, until he was surrounded by black nothingness. And again, in the center of that black nothingness, there emerged a cylinder of light.
As before, he focused his will. And with a conscious effort, he sent his spirit through that cylinder like liquid through a straw.
Once again, he entered the Realm.
LEVEL FOUR:
THE CREATURES OF THE AIR
20. DARK DESCENT
HE WAS BACK in the Blue Woods. It had happened just as Miss Ferris said it would: he had returned to the portal point in the forest clearing, near the spot where he and Favian had destroyed the spider-snake.
But even though it was his second time in, he was not prepared for the shock of the transition. In the brief time he had been back in the real world, the Realm had become like a dream to him. Now that he had returned, it was so staggeringly real. The crazy colors—the yellow of the sky through the startling aquamarine of the leaves, the silver of Mariel’s lake just visible between the green-brown tree trunks—their vivid presence overwhelmed his senses. And his legs! The amazing pleasure of having his body suddenly whole and strong beneath him again—the joy of it flowed up and through him like water—like golden wine—filling a glass.
He turned this way and that, openmouthed and awestruck, trying to take it all in, get used to it again.
And, as he turned, his eyes fell on his sword.
It stood upright to one side of the floating purple diamond that was the portal point. Its rusty blade pierced the fallen blue leaves and stabbed the red earth beneath, as if someone had stuck it there for him so it would be easy for him to find when he returned.
Rick grabbed the sword by its greenish-copper hilt and held it up before his eyes. He could see now that the face of the woman molded into the hilt looked very much like Mariel. And as his fingers closed around the image, he thought he could almost feel her, feel some power from her, flowing into his arm.
Your spirit has power here—power over material things, once you learn to use it. Strike with your spirit and the sword will be strong enough.
The thought of her—the sound of her voice in his mind—the idea that he might see her again—made his pulse quicken with excitement.
He slipped the sword through the belt of his black jeans and headed out of the clearing, down the path to the silver lake.
He reached the lakeshore. Again, he was struck by how real it all was: how much it had become like a dream to him while he was gone, and how real it was now that he had returned to it. The shining silver of the water catching the yellow of the sky. The blue of the surrounding leaves. The colors shimm
ering and changing on the lake surface. It was all so vivid and bright now that he could look at it again with his own eyes.
“Mariel,” he called—hoarsely, softly. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time. “Mariel.”
He waited, taking shallow breaths, hoping—hardly daring to hope—that at any minute the metallic water would rise as it had risen before and form itself into the shape of her.
Second after second passed. His anticipation grew. But the lake lay still. He glanced down at the time-light on his palm.
1:12:46 . . . 45 . . . 44 . . .
The seconds were ticking away. If he was going to reach the fortress and get back here to the portal point, he would have to start moving. He couldn’t wait any longer.
With a sigh of disappointment, he turned around—and cried out, “Whoa!” in his surprise.
Favian had crept up behind him.
The shifting, twinkling presence wavered directly in front of him: the gangly body, the almost shaved head, and the gentle anxious expression on his youthful face—all fashioned out of particles of light.
“She can’t always appear,” Favian said. “She can’t afford to use up her energy. She has to choose her moments.”
Rick felt himself blush. He thought Favian must have somehow seen his yearning and his disappointment. “No problem,” he muttered. “You know—whatever’s good.” Then, to change the subject, he said: “I asked the people back home about getting you out of here. They said they’d work on it.”
Favian nodded—without much hope, Rick thought. All he answered was, “We can’t just stand around here talking. Time’s short. We better get moving if we want to get to the fortress.”
“Right,” said Rick.
Favian’s twinkling head bowed in a short nod. “Follow me.”
And he darted off through the trees, a streak of blue light.
Rick jogged after him into the depths of the forest. Despite his thoughts of Mariel—and despite his worries about what was waiting for him at the fortress—he couldn’t help but experience again the boundless pleasure of having his legs feel quarterback-strong underneath him. It was a joy just to run. Favian kept well ahead of him. Rick would catch glimpses of the sprite’s sparkling presence through the blue leaves. He would jog toward him and—flash—the strange creature would dart off again and Rick would have to hurry after. As he ran, he noticed there were fallen trees and jagged tree trunks on every side of him. They must’ve been heading back the way he’d come, the way the spider-snake had chased him. This was the wreckage the beast had caused as he’d crashed through the forest.