Courtney felt her cat, Winston, rub against her legs. Courtney looked down . . . and screamed. It was a cat all right, but it wasn’t Winston. Winston was a short-haired tortoiseshell. This cat was black, with yellow eyes and a little tuft of white on its chest. Courtney dove onto the couch. Instantly the image of her mother appeared again, as if Courtney’s scream had triggered it.
“Dinner’s ready for defrosting, sweetheart. Throw it in the microwave for me?”
Courtney looked at the strange cat who was sitting on the floor staring at her.
“How did you get in here?” she yelled at the animal.
The cat purred and said in a strangely metallic voice, “I live here!”
Courtney screamed.
“Dinner’s ready for defrosting, sweetheart. Throw it in the microwave for me?”
Courtney jumped up and ran out of the room, headed for the stairs and the safety of her bedroom. She’d only made it up halfway when the ring on her finger came to life.
“No!” she shouted, as if it would make a difference.
She yanked the ring off and threw it on the floor near the front door. She plunked down on the stairs, hugging herself, watching the ring grow, the lights flash, and the music play. Compared to everything else that had happened that day, this magical event was run of the mill. Courtney closed her eyes for the final, bright moment. When the lights were gone, she looked to see that Bobby’s next journal had arrived. This one looked like the last few. It was a brown envelope that she knew would contain the small gray pages with Bobby’s handwriting.
Courtney dragged herself down the stairs and approached the journal slowly. She wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to read it. She didn’t think she could take any more. But she had to. It was her job. She was an acolyte. She took a breath, bent down, picked up the envelope, and . . .
The doorbell rang.
Courtney jumped and yelped. She had no idea if somebody could get a heart attack from being surprised too often, but if it was possible, she figured she was due. She quickly picked up her ring and hid the envelope in her backpack with Bobby’s previous journal. The doorbell rang again. She looked out the window next to the door to see who it was and saw a young guy she didn’t recognize. He looked about her age, with longish, unkempt brown hair and a yellow sweatshirt that looked too small for him. It wasn’t because he was fat, either. If anything, he looked pretty built. She wondered why he would wear a sweatshirt that was so ugly and way too small. She went to the door and called, “Can I help you?”
“Is Courtney home?” the guy asked.
“Who wants to know?” Courtney asked.
“She’s expecting me,” the guy answered.
“I am?” Courtney said, and opened the door.
The first thing that hit her was how handsome the guy was, in a rugged kind of way. The next thing that hit her was that the ugly yellow sweatshirt had the words COOL DUDE printed on the front in red seventies-looking cheesy lettering. She knew that sweatshirt! It was the shirt Mark always kept at the flume in case a Traveler came to Second Earth. That meant this handsome guy was a Traveler, but who could it—
She looked more closely at the guy. She hadn’t seen him in over a year. He had changed. He had grown up. He wasn’t a little kid anymore.
“What’s with the stunned face?” the guy said. “I told you I was coming home.”
“Bobby!” Courtney shouted and threw herself into his arms.
The two stood there, holding on to each other. Courtney cried. They were tears of joy and pain and loss and love and pure emotional release. Bobby was home. Things would be better.
“Don’t want the neighbors talking,” Bobby said as he maneuvered Courtney back into the house. “I hope your parents are at work.”
“They are,” Courtney said, tearing herself away from him and wiping her eyes. “You’ve changed,” she said.
“In a good way or a bad way?” he asked.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Mostly. But you look tired.”
“Yeah, that’s one word for it,” Bobby said.
“What happened on Quillan?” Courtney asked. “With the Grand X?”
Bobby frowned. “Didn’t you guys read my last journal?”
Courtney grabbed her backpack and pulled out the envelope. “I just got it like five seconds ago!” she said.
Bobby shook his head in wonder. “Amazing. I sent it ages ago.”
“I don’t get the whole relative time thing between territories,” Courtney said.
“Join the club,” Bobby said.
“So what happened?”
The expression on Bobby’s face turned dark. “It’s all coming apart, Courtney. Everything. I want you to read the pages, then we’ll talk.”
“I will,” she said. “Come in, sit down.”
She pulled Bobby into the living room. The two sat on the couch, facing each other. Bobby looked around the room and smiled. “This house is exactly like I remember it. It’s good to know some things don’t change.” He pointed to the big computer screen and said, “Other than that bad boy. That’s a little high-tech for your dad, isn’t it?”
Courtney didn’t know how to answer. She was as clueless as Bobby.
Bobby spotted something else and said, “Hey! Who’s that? What happened to Winston?”
Sitting in the doorway was the cute black cat, staring at them. It stood up and said, “My name is Doogie.” With a flick of its tail, it turned and strutted off.
Bobby and Courtney sat staring at the animal for a good thirty seconds before Bobby said, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Something’s happened, Bobby,” Courtney said nervously. “Something odd. I don’t even know how to explain it. That’s not our cat.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “And it talked. That’s like . . . not right.”
“That’s not the half of it,” Courtney said. “There’s so much to tell you I don’t know where to begin!”
“Where’s Mark?” Bobby asked. “Doesn’t he usually have the ring?”
Courtney wanted to cry, but didn’t want to show weakness in front of Bobby. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to get a grip.
“I guess that would be the other half of it,” she answered. “I don’t know where he is.”
Bobby looked at Courtney for a good long time. He finally said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you’ve been through some stuff.”
Courtney chuckled at the understatement.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” she said calmly. “About Mark. About me. But first I want to know what happened on Quillan.”
Bobby nodded and said, “Read the pages. I don’t have the energy to explain it all. After that, we’ll talk.”
Courtney reached for the backpack and pulled out the envelope that had just arrived.
Bobby stood up and said, “Can I raid your fridge? Right now I’m dying for anything Second Earth.”
“Go for it,” Courtney said.
Bobby headed for the kitchen. Courtney watched him go. She was amazed at how powerful he looked. He wasn’t a huge guy or anything. He might have stood just under six feet, but all the training he had done had put a layer of muscle on him that couldn’t be missed.
“Bobby?” she called.
Bobby stopped and turned back to her.
“It’s a good thing you’re here,” she said.
Bobby nodded and continued on to the kitchen. Courtney curled her feet up under her on the couch, and read.
JOURNAL #27
QUILLAN
It’s over. I’m alive.
Mark, Courtney, there’s no need to worry about me, at least as far as the Grand X goes. I survived, but I guess that’s obvious. The question now becomes, will Quillan? I’m going to get right to it and describe the events that happened to me from the time I decided to compete in the Grand X until now. When I’m done with this journal, I’m going to come home. I need to see familiar faces. Let me say t
hat another way. I need to see the familiar faces of friends. There’s so much we need to talk about, not just about what’s happened here on Quillan, but about what the future might hold. For me, for you guys, for Second Earth, and for Halla.
When I told Nevva that I would enter the Grand X, I thought she would be all sorts of excited. She wasn’t. At least not at first. We stood on that street corner after having heard the taunts thrown at me by Challenger Green, and I gave her the news that I’d compete. Instead of being all happy and relieved, she gave me this odd look.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you want??”
“It is,” she said, but it sure didn’t sound like she meant it.
“Look, you made your case,” I said. “I know what you’re going for. On Second Earth a big game or race or fight can capture people’s imaginations. It’s like the whole world stops to watch and cheer. We have Super Bowls, World Series, prize fights, Kentucky Derbies, Olympics, NASCAR races, and tons more. People root like crazy, even though there really isn’t anything at stake for them. Some people make bets, sure, but mostly they just want their favorite to win because it’s fun to root. But here, people do have something at stake. Seeing Mr. Pop made that clear. If you guys can get the people behind me the way I’ve seen fans at home believe in their favorite team, then I think it can launch something big. It all comes down to the revivers taking advantage of the emotion that comes from my winning.”
Nevva still didn’t say anything. She looked troubled.
“This is weird,” I said. “I feel like I’m convincing you. This was your idea, remember?”
“Yes,” she said, shaking off whatever was bothering her. “You’re absolutely right. You’ve made the right choice. We have a lot of work to do. Let’s tell the others.”
She was back in hyperefficient mode, but I was left with an odd feeling. I knew I had made the right decision, but for that brief moment Nevva looked like she had second thoughts.
“Wait,” I said. “Something’s bugging you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that, I still have this image of Remudi falling from the Tato platform.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ve been through a lot worse than anything Green boy can throw at me.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. Whatever doubts she had were gone. “This is the way it was meant to be.”
She walked down the street, headed for the underground. This time Nevva didn’t ask me to wear the hood over my head. I guess I had passed whatever test needed to be passed in order to be accepted by the revivers. She led me into a building, down an elevator, through some subterranean corridors, and generally on a twisting, confusing route that I don’t think I’d be able to tell anybody about even if I wanted to. We eventually found ourselves at a cement wall that looked as if a hole had been blasted through it.
“This is one of the entry points to the underground that the revivers opened up,” she explained.
I felt like I was entering an ancient tomb that had been unsealed by archeologists. Beyond the hole were more corridors that eventually led us through a steel door and into one of the underground malls. Waiting there for us was another electric-powered cart. Or maybe it was a tarz-powered cart. With Nevva at the wheel we drove another several minutes through the deserted malls until we found ourselves back at the department store that was the base of the revivers.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“We prepare you” was Nevva’s answer.
It seemed like she had been planning this for a long time. There was no question she’d thought the whole thing through. That was Nevva. Her mind was like a computer, calculating every possibility and planning for every contingency. I guess you had to be organized like that in order to juggle three different lives.
The first phase of her plan was to prepare me for the Grand X. That meant a lot of things. For one, the revivers trained me. They worked me over pretty good, too. It wasn’t like the grueling training at Mooraj that Loor put me through, but it was tough. We worked on strength with weights, and agility. We did tons of cardio to build up my breathing and stamina. I ran for miles through the deserted malls beneath the city of Rune. I also did sprints. Many, many sprints. I was already in pretty good shape, but after the time I spent in the underground, I had to admit, I was rocking.
Nevva wasn’t there very much. She had to deal with her job as assistant to the trustees. Every few days she’d come to the underground with news about what was happening with them. The hunt for me was still on. They wanted me for the Grand X. Or maybe I should say, Saint Dane wanted me for the Grand X. He wouldn’t let them give up on me. I think he must have known all along that I would compete. I hated that he was right.
Tylee Magna reported back to me on how the word had gone out to revivers all over Quillan about the upcoming event. I was being talked about as a champion of the people. The buzz was building. Only time would tell if it would get big enough to have the effect the revivers wanted. It was a weird feeling to know that I was being promoted like this. Up until this point, everything I had done as a Traveler was pretty anonymous. That was about to change. Here on Quillan my face would be known to every person on the territory. You’d think I’d be intimidated by the whole thing. I wasn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was so confident.
My training with the revivers had a lot to do with that. Nevva had gathered a boatload of information about Challenger Green. She studied the replays of his matches and put together a report on his strengths and weaknesses. His biggest strength by far was his attitude. He was ruthless. I won’t go so far as to say he enjoyed killing off his opponents, but he definitely didn’t mind it. He was smart, too. He adapted to situations quickly. I saw that in the replay of the Tato match where he smashed open the dome, then held on to the opening as he threw the platform off balance, killing Remudi. That was a snap decision and a smart one. I couldn’t count on him making mistakes. He was also strong. He was bigger than me, and I was sure if it came down to a show of pure strength, I’d be in trouble.
But the guy had weaknesses. He wasn’t agile. He could easily be thrown off balance. And he was slow. Running both distance and sprints. There’s a big difference between being fast in the forty-yard dash and being fast in a two-yard dash. From what I’d seen, I was better than Green in both. It made me feel confident that even if things went sour and I got in trouble, I could get away from him. As an added bonus, Nevva told me that the vision in Challenger Green’s left eye was weak as the result of a childhood accident. That was a great thing to know.
But what gave me the most confidence was the fact that I was a trained fighter. Me. Bobby Pendragon. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I never even got in a dumb wrestling match back at home, let alone a fistfight. But that was a lifetime ago. I had recently been hardened by the tough physical regime that Loor and Alder put me through, and by fighting for my life more times than I like to think about. Challenger Green had no such training. The fighting skills I had would help me in so many phases of the Grand X, there was no way Challenger Green could compete with me. I was sure of that.
Nevva walked me through many of the possible events. There were hundreds to choose from—far too many for her to cover all of them, but I got a pretty good overview. The Grand X wasn’t just one game, or battle, or race. It was a series of five contests. Nobody knew what the actual games would be until the day of the event. They were chosen by Veego and LaBerge. Nevva explained that sometimes the Grand X was a huge spectacle, with each event a team sport that pitted several challengers against one another. But usually there were two challengers who battled head-to-head. It was important to win each event, because the loser would be given a handicap for the next stage, or the winner an advantage.
Here was the kicker; the Grand X ended if either of the challengers was killed, or injured so badly that he or she couldn’t go on. Nevva told me that many Grand X’s never got past the first event. That was a grim tho
ught. I had no doubt that Challenger Green would not only try to beat me, but once he realized how good I was, he’d try to hurt or kill me. So the Grand X was not only about winning, it was about staying in one piece.
“So how do you win?” I asked Nevva.
“The champion is the challenger who wins the most events. Which means the Grand X might only last for three events if one challenger wins them all.”
“So it’s possible to lose the Grand X and still survive?” I asked.
Nevva hesitated.
“Tell me the truth,” I said.
“Yes, of course it’s possible, but only if you lose the Grand X within the first four events.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because if it goes to the fifth event, the tiebreaker, it’s usually a game where, to win, you must kill your opponent.”
Oh. That gave new meaning to the phrase “sudden death overtime.”
I won’t go into the details of the possible events, because I’ll describe the actual events to you when I write about the competition, but I will say this much: After spending roughly three weeks training in the catacombs of Rune, I was ready. Mentally and physically. As we got closer to the Grand X, I felt that my biggest problem would be overconfidence.
There is something else I need to mention. An odd thing happened during my time with the revivers. I slept in a small room that wasn’t much better than a cell. But it was comfortable, so I didn’t complain. One night while I was sleeping, I had a visitor. At first I thought it was a dream, but then I recognized her as the old woman I had met on my trip to see Mr. Pop. The one who showed me the children’s portrait gallery for inspiration. Remember her? She knelt down by my bed and woke me up by stroking my hair. You’d think I would have jumped in surprise, but I didn’t. There was nothing frightening about her. Just the opposite. She had this calm air that made me feel as relaxed as if I were still sleeping.