Through the huge gap he’d torn, Tom glimpsed deep water, a long stone causeway stretching back to the Rox.
But only for an instant.
Then the gatehouse fell in on itself, and a whole section of Bloat’s Wall came crashing down.
“Jesus Christ,” Danny said softly from atop the shell. Tom lifted the shell higher. It was raining stone and bodies. An immense chunk of masonry hit the bay and sent up a sheet of water twenty feet high.
Tom felt sick at heart. It was an effort to push the shell forward. Now the hard part… he had to punch through the second Wall, the invisible Wall, before the fear got hold of him and made him turn back. Maybe if he built up enough speed…
“Turtle,” Danny screaming in warning. Tom could hear the sudden fear in her voice. “Demons!”
He scanned his screens quickly, saw nothing. “Where? I don’t —”
Danny shook her head violently, jerked a thumb upward. “Not here. It’s Radha. She’s in trouble.”
Tom hesitated only a second, then pushed hard with his mind. The Turtle shot upward.
Ray frowned. “We still have to deal with the geezer without letting Bloat know we’re here.”
“Of course,” Battle said. He turned to Cameo. “Here’s where you start earning your pay.” Cameo nodded. She took her pack off and set it at her feet. She rummaged in it for a moment, then removed a small package that she unwrapped to retrieve Blockhead’s ring. She slipped it on the middle finger of her right hand. It was as simple as that.
She changed instantly. She drew up, backing away from the others. Her eyes grew large and tinged with fear. Her mouth clamped shut and she carried on a whispered, one-sided conversation with herself.
“What am I doing here? I don’t want — no. No, I said!” Her voice rose as she continued to speak aloud. It was her voice, yet it wasn’t. It had the same pitch, but the patterns and inflections were those of a dead man: Brian Boyd, a.k.a. Blockhead. It took a while, but Cameo finally managed to convince him to cooperate. “Okay, if you say so.”
“Blockhead?” Battle asked.
Cameo’s face stiffened into a frown. “I detest that name,” the ace said. “My name is Brian Boyd. You may call me Brian, or you may call me Boyd. But do not use that awful sobriquet again.”
“Fine,” Battle said. “How do you feel, Boyd?”
“How do I feel? Why, imagine”
“I can’t,” Battle said. “I mean, are your powers functioning?”
Boyd looked outraged, then calmed down as if he were listening to some soothing inner monologue. “All right,” he said to himself. “All right. Yes. Certainly.” He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. After a moment he nodded. “Yes. The mind shield is up.”
“Excellent. Ray, take the joker.”
Ray looked at Battle. “That’s not much of a plan. I could be in trouble if the geezer’s some kind of ace.”
“You’re paid to face danger,” Battle reminded him. “And Bloat doesn’t have many aces in his entourage. Not yet, anyway.” Battle fixed Cameo with his hard stare. “Make sure you maintain the mind shield over Ray and that joker.”
Cameo — or Boyd — nodded. Ray moved off into the shadow, and then simply stood and walked out onto the middle of the path leading to the bridge. The geezer had fallen asleep while leaning on his staff. He was snoring gently to himself. Ray, irritated, woke him up.
“Hey, Gramps, which way to Bloat?”
The guardian of the bridge snorted, started, then regarded Ray with a bright, old man’s stare. “To cross the bridge and enter Bloat’s domain,” he intoned in a low, cackling voice, “you must be prepared to answer the question perilous.”
Ray frowned. “All right,” he said in an uncertain voice.
The old man leaned forward and pointed with his staff. His voice was deep with authority and expectation as he intoned, “What’s your favorite color?”
Ray was struck not only by a sense of total bewilderment, but also of déjà vu. This all seemed somehow familiar to him.
“Uh, white,” he said.
“Wrong!” the old man cackled, showing his snaggled teeth in a wide, triumphant smile. Ray just stared back at him in bewilderment and the old man pulled himself up with a gruff frown. “Well, what do you want then?” he asked grumpily.
Ray shook his head, as if to clear it. “I told you. I, um, have to see Bloat.”
The old man sighed. “Half a mo’, then. Let me check in with the guvnor.” He fell silent, frowning in concentration. His frown deepened. “Something’s wrong. I can’t seem to contact him.” He reached down to his side and came up with a walkie-talkie that was hanging from a strap around his neck. “I’ll try with this.”
Ray lunged, grabbing it from the old man and pulling it away before he could make contact. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ray said.
He turned and waved an arm vigorously over his head and the others arose from the shadows and joined them at the threshold of the bridge.
“It’s an invasion,” the old man yelped.
“Did he get through to Bloat?” Battle asked.
Ray shook his head. “The shield held. He was going to call someone on this” — he held up the walkie-talkie — “but I got it away from him in time.”
“Good work,” Battle said. He turned to the old man. “Which way to the tunnels leading to Ellis Island?” The old man drew himself up defiantly. “I’m not telling. And there’s no way you can make me.”
“You’re probably right,” Battle said. He looked at Puckett.
The ace lumbered forward, grabbed a fistful of the old man’s I SAW THE BIG BLOAT MOAT T-shirt, and yanked him up off his feet. He tossed him over the edge of the chasm, down screaming into the lava river below.
“Hey!” Danny said.
Battle turned his narrow gaze on her. “This is war, Corporal. Or do I have to remind you? We couldn’t leave him behind and let him alert Bloat and we couldn’t take him with us.”
“We could have knocked him out —”
“And taken the chance that he’d wake up at any time and betray us?” Battle shook his head. “I think not.”
“But —”
“Let’s go, Corporal Shepherd,” Battle said coldly.
“But —”
Ray stepped between them, facing Danny. He shook his head and she subsided when she saw the closed, set look on his face. “Not now,” he said quietly. He turned back to Battle. “I suppose you want me on point again?”
“Right you are, Agent Ray,” Battle said, cheerful again, a false twinkle in his cold, cold eyes.
“My ass,” Ray muttered to himself as he made his way carefully onto the naked rock span. He looked over the edge in the glowing, sputtering lava, and was glad that he wasn’t afraid of heights.
The Outcast materialized in Wyungare’s cell. First, a roaring, spitting fireball flared like an exploding sun on the back wall of the room, then the Outcast stepped through the aching white glare like a movie wizard.
“Great special effects, huh?” He grinned, and snapped his fingers. The nova shrunk to nothing and popped out of existence with a sound like a light bulb exploding. The Outcast brushed flecks of clinging radiance motes from his cloak to expire on the stone-flagged floor. “I always did love a good entrance.”
The Aborigine stared at him with wide, veined, coffee-brown eyes. The gaze was appraising, but whatever Wyungare was thinking was shut away behind the ebony shield of his mind. Wyungare said nothing. He just stared. The steady, critical gaze made the Outcast uncomfortable and the head-silence was perturbing. Suddenly it was very difficult to pretend nonchalance. Suddenly it was difficult to joke. His false humor fell from him like a cloak.
“You have to help me,” the Outcast admitted at last. His body sagged, the shoulders slumped and defeated.
“Mate, you look horrible.”
“I’m losing people out there.” A basso rumble shook dust from the ceilings and shivered the floor. A second concuss
ion followed the first. “My head hurts. I’m being pulled apart.”
“I’m sorry.” Wyungare glanced up at the Outcast from the corner of his cell. His nut-brown skin was difficult to see in the gloom. All Teddy could see were the moist highlights of the eyes.
“You’re sorry? That’s it?”
“What do you want me to do? I don’t have your powers. That’s not how I can help you.”
Another explosion rumbled through the ground, vibrating underfoot. The Outcast heard a chorus of screams in his head, and he wanted to scream with them. Instead, he sobbed. The crying hit him hard — great, gulping gasps of it. He could no longer feel the staff in his hand, and through the tears he could no longer see the Outcast’s trim, muscular body. He was simply Teddy. Just Teddy. Just an overweight adolescent. “I’m wiped. I hurt and I’m tired and I can’t be tired. Not now. They’re screaming and dying and in pain and I can’t get rid of the voices.”
Wyungare had risen silently to his feet. Teddy felt the man’s hand on his shoulder, and then he was hugging Wyungare fiercely, clinging to him like a child to his father — no, for he’d never embraced his father in that way. Never.
Sniffing, Teddy pulled away. He wrapped the Outcast’s body back around him like a cloak as the noisy clamor of the Rox came back into his head. Kafka was calling him; the jumpers were in chaos; at the gates, the jokers were overmatched. “If you won’t help me, I have to go. I can’t stay.”
“You won’t let me help you.” "When have you tried?”
“I’ve told you. You haven’t listened. You are the one with the power, why do you stay here and let them hurt you?”
“You and the penguin … Where am I supposed to go? Hawaii?”
“To the dreamtime. To the place that feeds you,” Wyungare answered.
Irritation flooded through Ted with that. “Yeah, great. Even if I could do that, then what have I accomplished? Damn it, this is our world too. Why should the nats be able to run us off just because we were unlucky enough to be infected by that damn virus? Why should we have to run away with our tails between our legs.” The image made him laugh sarcastically. “And some of us even have the tails to do that, don’t we? Listen, you can keep your damn advice, okay? I can beat these assholes. I don’t care if I have to pull every last fucking erg of energy from your precious dreamtime or break all the barriers between that world and this. I don’t care what leaks out or what happens. I’ll do it.”
“Always the hero,” Wyungare said softly.
“You’re damned right.” The Outcast took a deep breath. With it he pulled in power, feeling the energy course from the shadow world to Bloat’s body to him. With the power came the cacophony of the Rox — the pleading, the terror, the anger.
The sons of bitches — I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them all!
That fucking Snotman just tore the gates down…
Where the hell’s the governor? Where’s the demons? I need help…
“I have to leave,” the Outcast said. “Thanks for nothing.”
“You don’t have to be Bloat forever, you know. The way! see it, you have three choices.” Softly again. Quietly. The Outcast stared at him. “With the help of the others like me, you could sever the link. All of us together could do it. You could stay as you are right now — in that form, but without the power. You’d be a nat. Normal.”
The Outcast blinked. “Or… ?”
“Or we could move you fully into the dreamtime — the entire Rox. It would take all of us, each of us calling on the powers of our own portion of the dreamtime, but we could take the Rox and move it away from this shadow plane and take you to the source of your power.”
“Where you can deal with me on your terms? Where I can be handled? Where I wouldn’t be stealing power from your precious dreamtime — in either scenario: me as nat or me in the dreamtime?”
“All of that’s true,” Wyungare admitted. “And there’s another sacrifice to that. It’s going to take you, as well. You won’t be the Outcast in the dreamtime, or even Bloat.”
“What will I be?”
“You will be. That’s all.”
Teddy could read nothing in those mahogany eyes, nothing at all. He strained to hear Wyungare’s thoughts in the maelstrom of the Rox: silence.
“What’s the third alternative?”
“Don’t do anything. Stay here and let them bomb you to hell.”
Teddy snorted laughter. “I’ve already met one of your shamans; he tried to kill me. Why would Viracocha and the rest of your friends turn around and help me? The Rox and me seemed to be a threat to you just like I am to the nat world — why should I think you’re going to deal with me any differently?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t come with guarantees, mate.”
“Then why the hell did you come?”
“I told you. Because the dreamtime brought me here.” Wyungare sighed and squatted down again in the corner of the cell. “We can give you the body you want at the cost of your power, or we can take you to safety in the dreamtime, or you can stay here and let them kill you — at which point you won’t hurt the dreamtime anymore. Make your choice.”
“Why are you telling me all this? Why now?”
“Every hero has to have a temptation.”
The Outcast laughed. “Fuck you. Fuck all of you shadow-walkers.” Another explosion rocked the caverns; the Outcast broke his gaze away from Wyungare. “I can’t waste any more time with you,” he said. “I have to go.”
The Outcast left in a gout of purple flame.
“The Jersey Gate is down,” the Outcast said. His face showed the strain of trying to comprehend the fight everywhere at once. “And the Turtle’s just smashed the North Gate. Molly” This to Mistral. “I need you there right now.”
Mistral/Molly nodded. Winds filled her cloak and she rose into the darkening mist.
There was a burning m the misty air. Pulse materialized, his face pale. He fell to one knee.
“We’re fucked,” he said.
“All my Bosch creatures have been killed,” the Outcast said. “I don’t know what’s happening out there. I can’t read the man who’s killing them.”
Pulse gasped in air. “I’ve been trying to burn the guy, but nothing works. He’s killing everyone. Blew up our tanks, wiped out the troops.” He waved an ineffective fist. “It’s just one man!”
The Outcast turned to Modular Man. “Get to the Jersey Gate. Try to retrieve the situation.”
The android turned to Pulse. “Who is it?”
He was afraid he already knew.
“I dunno, man,” Pulse gasped. “He’s young — brown hair, not even carrying a gun. We’ve been throwing everything at him and”
“Snotman,” Modular Man said. Despair roiled through him.
“And a big robot.”
“Detroit Steel.”
“The Army’s moving into Liberty Park,” the Outcast said. “I can feel the minds of their tank drivers. They’re going over the rubble of the gate. And a lot of men are following. The Wall’s not turning enough of them back.”
Modular Man turned to Bloat. “Surrender,” he said. “Now. While you can still cut a deal, possibly get an amnesty for some of your people.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this shit,” Pulse said. “I should burn your fucking tin head off.” The android turned to him.
“You’re our most powerful ace,” he said. “You couldn’t stop him. Every time you hit him, you just made him more powerful. Snotman absorbs energy! Then he fires it back. I barely escaped him in the past.”
“But you defeated him,” the Outcast said.
“It wasn’t me. It was a joker named Gravemold who was able to suck the energy out of him. And Gravemold isn’t here, is he?”
A wry smile twitched at the Outcast’s lips. “No. He was here, but he wasn’t on our side. And his name wasn’t Gravemold, he was —”
There was an explosion from the direction of the Jersey Gate. The Outcast’s
head swiveled up. “We’ve got to stop him.”
“Surrender.”
“There’s got to be a way. Think.”
Modular Man did so. It was, after all, an order.
“Order your people to stop firing,” he said. “All you’re doing is feeding him energy.”
The Outcast gave the order. Kafka relayed it to the troops.
“I’m in Detroit Steel’s head,” the Outcast said. “I’m right behind Snotman. They’re jogging up the bridge. Maybe a third of the way across. They have a young woman with them, lagging behind. Her name is Danny, but I can’t read her. All the Dannys are too strong for me.”
Modular Man decided to ignore this enigmatic remark. “Have you still got enough energy to control matter inside the Wall?”
“Some. Yes.”
“Dematerialize part of the causeway ahead of them. That may slow them down.”
The Outcast closed his eyes, raised his staff, bit his lip with the effort. The amethyst glowed feebly.
He opened his eyes. “Done,” he said. “What now?”
“That was it,” Modular Man said. “That was my idea.”
The Outcast shrugged. “Well. At least you bought us some time till we think of something else.”
“I should consult my creator. Perhaps he’ll know what to do.”
Perhaps, the android thought, he’d know it was time to leave.
There was always a hope.
The corridor ended in another arched doorway. This one had Bloat’s head carved in the center of its lintel. Ray regarded the door suspiciously, but couldn’t detect any trapdoors in the ceiling or floor. No obvious ones, anyway. He stepped toward the doorway and stopped when the carved Bloat-head spoke.
“You’ve been warned,” it said in a voice too high-pitched to be stern. “Please. If you go back now you won’t be hurt.”
“Tell it to Black Shadow,” Ray snarled, but he had to admit that they’d been let off pretty light so far. This crazy underground maze could be a killing field. Instead, it seemed to be stocked with weirdos playing games. He took a deep breath and entered the chamber beyond the doorway, looked around, and stopped.