Only when she reached the door, only when she had pulled it open, did she say to him over her shoulder, “Of course we’re going to send you back in. You have to get to that fortress.”
16. FIGHTING FIT
RICK SAT IN his room, on his sofa, staring into the night darkness. Tired as he was, he was too restless to sleep. Memories of the Realm kept flashing through his mind. He remembered running in joy across the hilltop near the portal point, when he first realized his legs were whole. He remembered Favian beckoning to him from the woods. The horror of his first glimpse of the spider-snake. His panic and fear as it chased him through the woods. Mariel . . .
He’s a hero. You only have to look at him to see it. He’s the hero we’ve been waiting for.
He looked down at himself, his crippled legs splayed out in front of him, all but useless. Mariel was wrong. Maybe he had been a hero once. Maybe he could pretend to be a hero in the Realm. But he wasn’t a real hero, not anymore.
He picked up his Xbox controller. He turned on the TV. Turned on Starlight Warriors. He stared at the screen as his battlecraft streaked through the stars toward the Orgon mothership. His fingers fiddled with the controller in his hand. But he wasn’t paying attention.
He was thinking. He was wondering about that look he had seen on Miss Ferris’s face just before she turned away from him. Did she know more about Mariel and Favian than she was telling? Did she feel more than she was showing? Or was he really just imagining the whole thing?
As he wondered about it, the Orgon ships on the television set swarmed around his battlecraft, firing at will. His craft burst apart. The debris went floating off into the vast emptiness of space. A message appeared on the screen: You are dead.
Rick sighed. He set the controller back down on the sofa. Snapped off the TV. Sat staring into the shadows. He didn’t care about the game anyway. It was nothing compared to the Realm.
Now his feeling of restlessness overwhelmed him. He had to get up, had to move. By holding on to the sofa arm, he managed to hobble his way across the room to his computer without using crutches. He sat in front of the machine, hit the keyboard, and checked his e-mail. Nothing there but spam. His old friends, frustrated by the fact he never answered their messages, had all but stopped trying to reach him. Even Fred Hayes, the running back who had been his best buddy, had given up on him. Only Molly kept on trying to get a response.
Rick went into the Deleted file and found her latest e-mail, the one he hadn’t bothered to read. He opened it.
Hey, Rick. How you doing? I tried to call you again last night but your mom says you won’t come to the phone. I know you told me you’re not ready to talk to anyone about what happened, but that’s okay with me, it really is. We don’t have to talk about it. I just want to see you. I just miss you, that’s all. You matter to me, Rick, and I thought I mattered to you . . .
He stopped reading. The words made him feel too bad. He knew he ought to get in touch with her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was not that she was far away. She had gone to Shadbrook, the local U, where her dad headed the Physics Department in which Rick’s father worked . . . or, that is, used to work. She was there on a volleyball scholarship, as he had been headed to Syracuse on a football scholarship. They’d been a good match in that way: he the football hero; she the power behind the volleyball team. The two of them liked to work out together, hike together, run, swim . . .
And that was the problem. What use could she possibly have for him now? Rick liked her. He missed seeing her. But what was she going to feel when she saw him like this? Pity, that’s what. He couldn’t bear that. He couldn’t even bear to contact her.
He closed the e-mail, sending it back into the Deleted file.
Rick was about to return to the sofa, when there was a soft knock at the door.
“Yeah?” he said.
The door opened, just a crack. There was Raider in his plaid pajama pants and baseball shirt, ready to head upstairs to bed. Raider saw Rick and his face broke into an enormous grin. Why was the kid always so incredibly happy to see him? It made Rick feel guilty about hiding in his room all this time.
“Hey, Rick! I’m going to bed!” Raider announced. He said this in such an insanely upbeat tone it sounded as if he were starting off on the most exciting journey in the history of mankind.
“Good for you,” Rick muttered. Then, feeling guilty, he looked at the boy—really looked at the eager face beaming up at him. Thoughts of Mariel flashed through his mind.
He’s the hero we’ve been waiting for.
He wasn’t acting very much like a hero, was he?
“Hey,” Rick said to his brother. “Listen. Before you go to bed, you think you could do me a favor?”
“A favor? Yeah! Sure!” The eight-year-old’s face was wreathed in smiles at the very idea that he might be able to do something for his big brother.
“Up in my old room,” said Rick. “Where my weights are. There are these two plastic pouches with . . .”
“I know them!” Raider cried. “I’ll bring them down for you! Wait here!” And he shot up the stairs like a missile.
“One at a time!” Rick called after him. “They’re heavy.” Weird little kid, he thought.
He looked down the hall then and saw his mom standing in the kitchen doorway, watching him. It was strange. She hadn’t mentioned the bruises he’d picked up in the Realm. She hadn’t mentioned the way he’d left the house and disappeared for hours again. And yet, the way she was looking at him . . . It was as if she already knew all about it.
A moment later, Raider’s footsteps came thundering back down the stairs. Without a word, Rick’s mother retreated back into the kitchen.
Grunting proudly with his effort, Raider carried the weight pack down the hall to Rick’s room. He slung it off his shoulder into Rick’s hand.
“Now for the other one!” he announced heroically. And he took off again.
By the time he returned with the second pack, Rick was sitting on the sofa, strapping the first weight pack around his ankle and sealing the Velcro.
“Thanks,” Rick said as he took the second weight pack off the kid’s shoulder.
“You gonna work out?” said Raider, gaping at him eagerly. His awestruck tone made it sound as if Rick were planning to flap his arms and fly to Saturn and back. “You gonna exercise your legs?”
“Go to bed,” Rick told him, annoyed.
But as he bowed his head to Velcro the second weight around his other ankle, he sensed the kid hadn’t moved. He looked up and saw the eight-year-old staring at Rick’s legs with a look of such ferocious determination, you would have thought it was Raider who was going to do the lifting here. Both the kid’s fists were raised in front of him and clenched so tight the fingers were turning white. When Rick lifted his eyes to him, Raider gave him a taut fist pump for encouragement. Go, Rick.
Rick couldn’t keep a smile from touching the corner of his mouth.
“Okay, okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll do my best. Now get out of here.”
And like a shot, the kid was gone.
Rick sat back on the sofa, the weight packs strapped tightly to his ankles. Weird little kid, he thought again.
Then he began to try to lift his right foot.
He could not believe the weakness of his muscles. And the pain was beyond description. It was as if someone had taken a sword made of lightning and driven it into the sole of his foot, up through his knee, and into his hamstring. Rick gasped at the agony.
He got his foot about three inches off the floor. Then his strength gave out and the leg dropped down again.
That’s it, Rick thought. That’s unbearable. No more. I’m done.
Then he tried again.
The right leg went up a few inches, then fell. The left leg: up, down. The effort was so hard, the pain so great, that tears fell from his eyes and began to stream down his cheeks. He did it again. Right, then left. I can’t do any more, he thought. Then he d
id another set. Right. Then left. He thought: I used to be able to run faster than anyone else in the school. Now I can barely lift my heels off the stupid floor. No matter how hard I work out, at best, I might one day be able to walk with a limp. Maybe. This is stupid. What’s the point? What’s the use?
Then he tried again—right, left—his tears streaming.
For the next twenty excruciating minutes, Rick worked his legs like that, grunting, driving himself through the pain. In the course of those minutes, he must have given up half a dozen times—and half a dozen times, he began again. His tears fell so hard he wondered if it was only the effort that brought them to his eyes. Maybe it was more than that. Maybe he was crying for his football career: lost. His father: gone. They would never come back. What was the point of this? What good did it do? Right. Left. Right. Left.
Enough, he told himself. There’s no point. Enough.
Shut up, he answered himself. Just shut up and lift your stupid foot.
When he finally allowed himself to stop, he sat on the sofa, gasping for breath. Sniffling, he wiped his cheeks dry with the palm of his hand.
Well, he thought, at least now I might be tired enough to get some sleep.
He bent down and peeled the weight packs off his ankles. He set them on the floor by the sofa. He lifted his crutches off the floor and leaned them against the sofa arm where he’d be able to reach them easily when he woke up. He found his blanket bunched up in one corner of the room. Stretching, he reached it and pulled it toward him, shook it out.
He lay down on the sofa and pulled the blanket over him. But sleep still didn’t come. He stared up into the darkness. He began to feel angry.
What am I supposed to do? he thought. Pray?
In the old days, he had always prayed when he went to bed. It had calmed his mind and helped him to fall asleep. But that was the old days. In the old days, he had actually believed that someone was hearing his prayers. Maybe someone was, but there was no way he was going to pray to him after all the stinking stuff God had done to him. The accident. His father leaving. No way.
But he was so tired. So tired. And somehow, he knew he would not be able to sleep until he had said something up at the darkness. Anything.
So angrily, defiantly, he said, Hey! Guess what? I’m still here!
And Hey, the darkness said quietly back to him. Guess what? I already knew that.
A moment later, Rick fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He remained asleep until a man snuck into his room and pressed the barrel of a gun into his forehead.
17. HITMAN
AT THE TOUCH of the cold steel against his flesh, Rick’s eyes flashed open.
“What?” he murmured sleepily.
“Shh,” hissed the man standing in the darkness above him. “Make one move and you’re dead.”
Confused and frightened, Rick lay still, his heart hammering in his chest as if he had awakened from a nightmare. But this was no nightmare. This was real. He stared up into the shadows, trying to see the face of the gunman staring back down at him. Bizarrely, the gunman didn’t have a face. There was just more darkness up there.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” said the faceless man. “If you lie, even once, I’m going to blow your brains out. Then I’m going upstairs to have the same conversation with your mama and your kid brother, and if I don’t get what I want, I’m going to do the same to them. Do you understand me?”
Rick gave only the slightest, quickest nod. He didn’t want the gunman to think he was going to try anything. “I understand,” he whispered.
“You don’t want me to go upstairs to talk to your mama, do you?”
“No,” said Rick. His eyes were wide open now, his mind fully awake. He had figured out why the man didn’t have a face. He was wearing a mask. He was dressed all in black and wearing a black ski mask. “I’ll tell you whatever you want, whatever I know. Just don’t hurt my family.”
“Smart boy,” said the gunman—and to emphasize the words, he jabbed the pistol point hard into Rick’s brow. Rick grunted at the pain and his heart beat even harder. “Okay,” said the gunman. “Here’s question number one: Where is he?”
“What?”
The man jabbed him in the head again. “I got a short fuse and a hair trigger, son. Mess with me not, you hear me?”
Rick’s hands came up from his sides in a gesture of helpless pleading. “I’m not messing with you, man, I swear it. I don’t know what you mean. Where’s who?”
“Your old man. Your father. Where’d he go?”
“My father? I don’t know that.”
This time the man pulled the barrel of the pistol away and quickly rapped it across the side of Rick’s face. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it hurt plenty all the same. “Wrong answer, kid,” he said. “Tell me now, or say, ‘Bye-bye, Mama.’ ”
“No, no, no, listen to me. I don’t know where my father is. I really don’t. And my mother doesn’t know either. He just left us. He left a note. He said he was going away with an old girlfriend of his from college.”
“But you don’t know where.”
“No. He didn’t say.”
“And he hasn’t been in touch. All this time.”
“It’s true, so help me.”
“I’m having a hard time believing that, Ricky boy. I’m starting to think maybe you’re lying to me. Or maybe I’m talking to the wrong Dial. Maybe your mama knows something you don’t . . .”
Rick felt the gun barrel steady itself against his brow. He was pretty sure the man was about one second away from pulling the trigger. And after he’d turned Rick into a corpse, he’d head upstairs for Mom and Raider . . .
Rick had to do something, say something.
“All right,” he said. “All right. I lied. I do know something.”
The gun barrel relaxed a little. “I kind of thought you might,” said the man. “I didn’t think Mars would just leave you in the dark.”
Startled, Rick hesitated. Mars? Did the guy just mention Commander Mars? The leader of the MindWar Project? What did that have to do with his father?
The gunman jabbed him with the gun barrel again. “I can’t hear you, son,” he said. “Speak up.”
“Right,” said Rick. “Right. I’m the only one who knows. My mom and Raider don’t know anything.”
“Stop babbling. Where is he? Tell me or I’ll drag you upstairs and kill your family in front of your eyes. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” said Rick. He did, too.
“Then start talking.”
Rick was about to do just that. He was about to say anything, tell any crazy story he could think of to keep this guy from going nuts with that pistol. But before he could get out a word, he saw something out of the corner of his eye—something that made his stomach turn to acid.
A line of light had appeared at the bottom of his closed bedroom door. Someone had come into the hall out there. A moment later, a floorboard squeaked.
Then a little voice called to him softly: “Rick?”
Raider.
Rick stared up into the darkness. The man in the mask lifted his free hand and pressed a finger to where his mouth should have been: Shh.
If Raider comes through that door, this nut’s going to kill him, Rick thought. He’ll kill us both.
Another floorboard squeaked in the hall.
Raider called again, from closer this time, “Rick? Is everything okay? I thought I heard something.”
The doorknob began to turn.
“Raider! Go back to bed! Everything’s fine!” Rick shouted.
But the kid wouldn’t listen to him. The door swung in. Raider stood in the light from the hallway.
“Rick? What’s going on?”
Without warning, in one swift motion, the gunman swung the pistol from Rick’s head, and pointed it at Raider.
But Rick didn’t need a warning. He knew what the thug was going to do before he did it. Even as the gunman was bringing the weapon aro
und toward his brother, Rick was rolling off the sofa, hurling his big body at the creep’s knees. In football, it would have been cut blocking—totally against the rules. But this wasn’t football. And there were no rules.
Rick hit the guy’s knees full force. The gunman toppled over, his arms flying upward. That’s when the gun went off. The shot was deafening. The flame cut through the shadows. But where did the bullet go? Into the wall? The door? Into his little brother’s body? Rick didn’t know.
His legs were on fire with pain as he continued his tackle. He tumbled off the sofa, bringing the gunman to the floor beneath him. The killer tried to shove Rick off, tried to bring the pistol around to get a shot at him. But Rick had the man’s arm gripped in his two hands now, had his wrist, was struggling to tear the weapon from his fingers.
Fighting to keep the gun, the thug kicked a sharp heel into Rick’s shin. Rick cried out in agony. The thug shot his elbow back into Rick’s mouth. Rick felt his lip split painfully, but he wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t release his grip on the gunman’s wrist. He twisted it. The gun came loose. Rick ripped the weapon from the man’s grasp.
But at the same moment, the gunman used all his strength to hurl Rick off him. Rick flew backward, crashing into the sofa. He roared again as the fiery agony flashed through his legs.
Rick caught a confused glimpse of the room. The shadows were lanced by the yellow light from the open door. Where was Raider? Was he wounded? Was he dead? Rick couldn’t see him. And where was the gunman? Rick had lost him in the confusion of the fight.
But there he was. Rick saw him now. The thug had jumped to his feet. He was running toward the light from the open door.
And then, suddenly, the light went out. An enormous rectangular shadow loomed in the doorway, blocking the thug’s path. In the craziness of the moment, it was another second before Rick recognized Juliet Seven.
The thug tried to stop himself from running into the great block of a bodyguard, but he was moving too quickly. He stumbled forward—within Juliet Seven’s massive reach.