In the Realm, in the Sky Room, Reza waited for the moment. His demonic figure hovered a few inches off the stone floor, his bat-like wings waving intermittently to keep him aloft. His great claws curled and uncurled nervously. His oversized eyes watched his master floating in the air above him.
This is Kurodar’s hour, Reza thought, excited. The second Real Life test of the Realm was under way. It would be a relatively small operation—though still much bigger than the Canadian train crash. And far more important. Assuming it was successful, it would guarantee their funding from the Axis Assembly and secure the technology that would put the Realm beyond the reach of the Americans forever.
In the last moments of suspense, Kurodar’s misty presence drifted silently beneath the starry dome. Reza could see a blinking beacon of white light moving slowly above him, crossing the night-like blackness. This represented the Traveler’s transport plane. It was coming in for a landing, ready to bring the Traveler on board.
Reza held his breath as the beacon moved. Even the beetle-like bots swarming the dome’s edges seemed to pause in anticipation.
Then came the signal. It appeared on the dome as a flash of blue lightning: there and gone in an instant. This was the radio wave that was sent from the plane to the computer in the landing field in order to automatically switch on the runway lights.
Now! Reza thought eagerly.
And even as he thought the word, Kurodar moved. The master’s misty presence darted forward like a striking snake. It seemed to seize the blue signal. And as the signal flashed back into the plane, a tendril of Kurodar’s misty pink went with it.
Reza let out his breath in relief. Kurodar had done it. Of course he had.
His mind had entered the controls of the Traveler’s aircraft.
At that same moment, Rick slipped out of the portal point and entered the Realm.
But what was going on? He couldn’t see! Everything was dark. For a moment, he stood where he was, completely disoriented.
Then he understood. It was night in the Realm now. The once yellow sky had gone black. There were enormous stars burning in it—red, purple, blue, green bursts of light the size of saucers. On the horizon, there was a sliver of a golden crescent moon.
None of which makes any sense, Rick thought. There wasn’t even a sun in the Realm. Why should there be night? Kurodar could have just created a world that was in daylight always. But maybe things here don’t have to make sense. The Realm emanated from Kurodar’s mind, after all. It was a product of his twisted imagination. He remembered how Mariel had told him that Kurodar thought he was God. Well, maybe he made a world with day and night—a world like the real one—just so he could go on pretending.
Rick peered around him as his eyes adjusted. He saw he had come out right where he had left, right beside the purple diamond that floated between the moat and the looming fortress wall.
And then he saw the guards.
That is, he saw the twin red beams shooting from their eyes first. The beams were moving all along the verge of the moat, sweeping the area. A second or two later, he made out the shapes of the alligator guards themselves. There must have been at least a dozen of them, walking here and there, looking left and right, searching the area.
Searching, Rick realized with a jolt of fear, for him!
Of course. They were keeping an eye on the portal point and the moat and the spider-snake’s tunnel.
And one of the guards was coming right toward him.
The two red beams that shone out of the alligator’s eyes swept back and forth across the dark grass, coming closer and closer to Rick as the big two-legged lizard patrolled the strip of land between fortress and moat, moving his way. Another few seconds and the beams would touch Rick’s leg. The alligator would send up the alarm, and the others would converge on him, their huge swords drawn and ready.
Rick dropped onto his belly, fast. He crawled quickly through the grass toward the edge of the moat, trying to get out of the guard’s path. The alligator kept coming, the beams cutting through the air just above Rick’s body.
The alligator guard stopped, his massive clawed hand curling around the hilt of his sword. He had spotted something. In the grass, right by the portal point: Rick’s footprints.
His voice—a cross between an animal’s growl and an electronic hum—uttered one guttural word:
“Intruder!”
All around the strip of grass, the red beams turned his way. The alligators began tromping over the grass toward the portal point. They scanned the area where Rick had been crawling on his stomach.
But Rick was gone. He had dropped over the edge of the moat and sunk himself in the water.
The shock of the plunge nearly knocked the breath out of him. The water was not like the water of the real world. It was thick and viscous like melted metal. And cold! If real-world water had been that cold, it would have been solid ice. The freezing liquid seemed to bite into Rick’s flesh with a million tiny teeth. He wanted to let his breath out in a shout of pain. But when he glanced up toward the surface, he could just see, through the metallic waves, the red beams of the patrolling alligators, searching for him. He forced himself to push downward off the moat wall, until he was fully submerged. Then he turned his body and swam for the bottom.
He swam hard, frogging with his arms and legs. The metal resisted him and the effort tired him quickly. Maybe—he thought hopefully—maybe he wouldn’t have to hold his breath here. It was like that in some video games he’d played: the character could stay submerged underwater as long as he needed to. The Realm, unfortunately, was more realistic. A few more strokes, and he could feel the pressure on his chest as his lungs called for fresh air.
But there was no going back to the surface, not with the alligator guards swarming up there. He went on swimming, down and down. It was hard to see through the water’s metallic thickness. Only a few feet ahead of him were visible, and even those were unfocused and shifting. Miss Ferris had said the moat might drain into the fortress—but how in the world was he supposed to find his way to the drain before he drowned? Maybe he’d better try to sneak up to the surface for a breath so he could . . .
But before he could finish the thought, something swam past above him. Something huge.
Oh no! Rick thought.
He twisted his body around and looked up. There was a creature circling in the water up there. He could only guess what sort of enormous, vicious, sharp-toothed beast Kurodar had created to patrol the moat. He didn’t want to get any closer and find out. He just wanted to get out of there.
He turned and headed down again. If there was a drain or a culvert of some sort, it would be at the bottom. But though he kicked and stroked even harder than before, he seemed to make no progress. The moat seemed bottomless. His lungs were starting to pump desperately in his chest. He was out of breath. He had no choice. He had to get to the surface, now.
He reversed himself. Pointed himself upward. He gave a great kick with his legs. He rose through the freezing mercury-like fluid. His lungs screaming in his chest, he peered upward eagerly, hoping to see the surface. But it was still too far away, out of his limited field of vision. He kept rising.
What happened next happened so quickly, he could hardly take it in.
He felt the water quake. He felt a wave of pressure push against his body. A second before he saw it, he understood with a feeling of despair that something was coming for him out of the deep.
Then, suddenly, the black mouth of the monster was speeding toward him out of the water. Its jaws were spread wide. Its teeth were gleaming. It was about to swallow him, devour him whole.
But before it could, a rushing tide seemed to sweep Rick away and carry him down out of the creature’s path.
Everything was confusion. The cold of the water was gone and he was bathed in warmth. The monster—whatever it was—was passing overhead without following him, as if Rick had simply vanished from its sight. Rick, meanwhile, was being dragged down
ward relentlessly by the tide—and yet his urgent need to reach the surface was gone. Somehow—amazingly—he could breathe again! He was breathing underwater! What was happening? How was it possible?
As he began to gather his wits about him, he realized: Mariel.
She had him in her arms. She had somehow surrounded him with her presence. The warmth was her warmth. The air was her breath. He could even feel the softness of her imprinted on the liquid around him. If he squinted and peered, he could almost make out her face just above him. Once again, she had come to his rescue, fashioning a shape for her spirit out of the metal liquid and using it to protect him.
He looked below him—and now he saw the drain he had been searching for. She was carrying him right to it. It was a round opening in the base of the moat with a large valve built into the wall beside it. The cold washed up over his feet again—then over his knees. He understood: Mariel was releasing him so he could open the drain.
He drew a last deep breath from her and held it. As Mariel let him go, as the bone-chilling cold surrounded him, he swam down the last few feet until he could get his hands on the valve. He had to brace his feet against the wall for leverage. He had to strain his muscles—so hard that the metal water bubbled around his mouth as breath squeezed out through his teeth. But now the valve began to turn. Hand over hand, he moved it a half circle. It went slowly. Rick looked toward the drain. It was still closed. He turned the valve another half circle, then another.
The drain sprang open and Rick was swept away. As the moat water was sucked down into the opening, it sucked him with it. His hands were torn from the valve. He was carried toward the drain in a swirling flood of liquid metal. His heel scraped against the drain’s edge, and then his feet went into the hole and he was dragged through in an instant. In an instant, he was falling helplessly through a narrow pipe, banging painfully into the sides with the freezing water splashing all around him.
He expected to slam into the bottom of the pipe or smack into the wall, but in the next moment, the water was warm again, and he landed softly, somehow held still while the freezing metal went on rushing past him and pouring over him.
Now, from where he stood, he saw another valve in the wall. He grabbed it as the flow of water hammered harmlessly past him. Gritting his teeth, he turned the valve once . . . twice . . . then the drain snapped shut above him and the flood of water ceased.
Breathless and shivering, he looked around. A glow that came to him from the far reaches of the pipe gave him just enough light to see by. He saw that he was standing at the elbow of the pipe, right at the spot where the drop ended and the pipe turned off to travel underground toward the fortress. The water had stopped pouring in, and what was there had spread out so that it only covered his feet to his ankles. It was like standing in a freezing puddle.
He tried to catch his breath, gather his thoughts. And as his mind cleared, he understood that she was there with him.
Mariel had flowed out of the moat with the water. It was she who had caught him and softened his fall and kept him from being swept past the bend in the pipe.
He spoke her name softly: “Mariel.”
On the instant, she rose up before him out of the water around his feet. Silver and lush and beautiful, she was standing very close to him in the narrow space of the pipe. He could feel the warmth of her even as he shivered with his feet submerged in the freezing water. Her face—or the mercurial impression of her face—was inches below his, turned up toward him. Before this, she had always loomed above him like some sort of goddess. He was surprised to see how small she was up close. She was just a girl—no older than he was: he could see that now with her gentle eyes so near to his and her lips too close even to think about.
“Are you hurt?” she asked him softly.
“No,” he said. “No. Are you?”
She didn’t answer. She only smiled. But it was a weary smile and her eyes looked weary, too. He could see that the effort to help him had drained her.
Which reminded him. He looked at his left hand. He could see a red light pulsing in his palm.
“They gave me something—for you,” he told her. “It’s supposed to help. They said you’d know how to use it.”
Mariel glanced at the pulsing light. “I do,” she said. “But there isn’t time now.”
“But . . . you have to,” said Rick. “You have to restore yourself . . . You’ve come to my rescue three times. You’ve used up so much energy helping me . . .”
“That’s what my energy is for,” she said. “And that’s why you have to listen to what I tell you now. It’s important.”
“But . . .” Instinctively, Rick reached out to touch her—but, like water, she was barely there. Her substance surrounded and warmed his hand, but there was no presence to it, no flesh. “Who are you?” he said. The words broke out of him. “What are you? Where did you come from?”
She shook her head. “There’s no time for that either, Rick. Listen to me. Please! I’ll be with you as much as I can, but there are things you have to know . . .”
“I might not make it back,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t be able to help you.”
“You have to make it back. You will make it back. If you listen.”
He began to speak again, but forced himself to stop. “All right,” he said. “What. Tell me.”
“I’m going to give you your armor again . . .”
“No! It takes too much energy out of you. You’ll kill yourself . . .”
She held up a glistening finger. “Listen!” Her echoing voice was soft but forceful.
Rick clamped his mouth shut, swallowing his protests.
“Remember what I told you before. Your spirit has power here. A lot of power. If you focus it, use it, it can transform the substance of the Realm itself. You need to learn how to do this.”
“But I—”
“Shh. Listen. I will give you armor, but they have armor, too. I’ll give you a sword, but they have swords as well. Your spirit is the only weapon you have that can make you more powerful than they are. You can’t let it go weak, no matter what your emotions are. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Rick began to say yes, but then only shook his head: in fact, he wasn’t sure what she was telling him at all.
“There are so many of them in there,” Mariel told him. “And their leader is like a demon.”
“Reza, yes, I saw him,” said Rick.
“You’re going to be afraid, but if you surrender to your fear, you’re lost. You might despair, but if you give in to your despair, they’ll destroy you. Remember, your emotions are only emotions. Live in your spirit, Rick, however you feel. Live in your spirit and you can defeat them.” She lifted her hand—a small hand, he could see now—a girl’s hand. She held it so close to him he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. “Now, take this.”
He reached his hand up to hers, trying to stop her. “No, don’t waste any more of your strength on me, don’t . . .”
But before he could finish, she made a sweeping gesture toward him. Once more, her silver substance spilled over him, covering him head to foot.
“Mariel!” he said.
But she was gone.
Rick looked down. He was clothed in armor again—fuller, stronger armor than before and yet as flexible and free-moving as the mercurial liquid out of which it had been formed. The sword that was suddenly gripped in his hand was a mighty weapon, nothing like the rude blade of pitted iron Mariel had given him at first—stronger even than the one she had coated over with steel. This was some rare and gleaming metal clear through, a dangerous battle-tool, long, thin, light as air. The blade flared at the bottom to form a solid defensive bar, then tapered to a vanishing point that looked sharp enough to pierce stone. The handguard was fashioned into the shape of wings, and the hilt—like the hilt of the other swords—was braided to fit perfectly into his hand and topped off by the image of a woman’s face, now shaped so expertly and in such detail that R
ick could see clearly it was Mariel.
The sight of the armor and the blade made him ache. He knew he was going to need them—but he wished Mariel had not expended her dwindling life force to give them to him. But here they were and she was gone, and if he did not use the weapons well, it would be a waste of her sacrifice. With a sigh, he slipped the sword into the scabbard built into the side of his armor.
He looked down at his right hand. The timer in the palm there was just ticking down to the seventy-five-minute mark. He could almost hear Miss Ferris speaking in his ear:
We’ve given you ninety minutes this time . . . We’re pushing it . . . Stay on the safe side, Rick. Come back as soon as you can.
The safe side! The safe side was back in his stupid room!
He bowed his head and ducked into the pipe that led toward the fortress.
“Now!” said Victor One.
Gun drawn, eyes moving, he led the others across the dark airfield. Leila Kent and the Traveler were just behind him. The leathery hard man, Bravo Niner, was bringing up the rear. They moved quickly over the grass to the runway.
There the plane sat like a throbbing shadow, its lights off, its propeller beating the night air. The plane was a U-28A, Victor One saw, a single-engine turboprop the military often used. This one had been repainted in civilian colors, the fuselage white and gold; the nose, wings, and tail deep blue. It had landed on the dirt strip gently and expertly. It had slowed quickly and turned around at the end. Now it was just waiting for its passengers before leaping into the sky again.
As the four people came near, a door opened up in the plane just behind the cockpit. A short stairway unfolded from the fuselage to the ground. A man leaned out and beckoned to them. Victor One recognized his old pal Echo Eight, a large black man with a voice like a roll of thunder. Ex-Army, like Victor One. Good soldier; good man. Victor One was glad he’d be on board.
Victor One stepped up his pace, and the others hurried along behind him.
At the base of the stairs, Victor One stepped aside. Leila went up the steps, helped into the plain by Echo Eight. The Traveler followed her, then Bravo Niner. Victor One went up last, checking the shadows over his shoulder before he ducked through the door.