Even as she spoke, her voice became an echo. Her figure grew transparent, then dim. She started to fade away.
Just before she vanished, Rick heard her say, “But beware Bagiennik! He is trapped here, too, like me.”
“Bagi-who?” said Rick.
But it was too late. She was gone.
“Oh, great,” said Favian. “We don’t even know what we’re supposed to beware of.”
But Rick softly echoed Baba Yaga’s word: “Enough.” And he turned away from the glowing table and strode to the door. He pulled it open. Before he could step outside, there was a blue flash and Favian was there in the hall in front of him. Startling the way he kept doing that. By his faint shimmering blue light, Rick saw the spiral staircase winding down and down. He paused on the landing and listened for noises from above.
“The banging’s stopped, at least,” he said.
It was true. When he’d left, the dead guardians of the Golden City had been pounding at the door above, trying to break through and come after them. But now the staircase was quiet and Rick realized . . .
Of course. Kurodar had redirected the monsters to invade the compound in RL. He could create more, but that took time and he was distracted with charging the Battle Station for his next attack. Maybe, Rick thought, maybe he and Favian wouldn’t have to fight their way over every street in the Golden City. Maybe they could get to the core fast.
He could hope, anyway.
“Let’s go,” he said.
And with a flash, Favian started down the stairs. Rick followed after.
In RL, meanwhile, the Traveler was hard at work. Seated in the underground chamber in an old office swivel chair, he pounded at his keyboard. He glanced at Professor Jameson seated at the station beside him. “I’ve started a scan of Fabian Child’s avatar. If I can figure out the code change that’s got him locked inside, I can make a new portal for him.”
The large, hulking Professor Jameson nodded as he tapped away at his own keyboard. “I’m going to scan Mariel’s connectome,” he said. “If there’s similar damage in each code, we should be able to compare it and isolate the equations.”
The Traveler nodded and both went on typing silently.
Molly, meanwhile, remained where she was, holding Rick’s hand as his body lay sleeping. She lifted her gaze and passed it over the monitors around the room. She saw images of the Battle Station, its power bar filling slowly. She saw waves and graphs wiggling and jumping. She saw white numbers pouring over black screens. She was an athlete, not a tech. She didn’t understand a lot of what she was looking at. But she had that nonscientist’s trust that science-types could do all sorts of magical things, so she hoped everything was under control.
Now her eyes moved to another computer. A thin Asian guy with enormous glasses on his small head was sitting at the keyboard. On the monitor, there were images that reminded Molly of old-fashioned video games she had seen on YouTube. Like Space Invaders or the first Super Mario or something like that. When the tech moved his head, Molly caught glimpses of the images reflected on his large lenses.
The Asian guy sensed her looking at him and glanced at her. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Chuck.” He was very young, not much older than Molly. He had a kindly smile.
“Molly,” said Molly, with a small smile back at him. She gestured at the monitor. “Is that the Realm?” she asked him. “Is that where Rick is?”
“That’s him right there,” said Chuck, pointing to a pixilated white figure of a man. It didn’t look like Rick particularly, but Molly immediately felt her heart squeeze in her chest at the sight of him, just as if it were Rick she was looking at.
“It’s pretty primitive imaging, I know, only eight-bit,” Chuck said. “But it’s tough to read things directly out of someone’s brain. We should be able to see what he’s doing, anyway. Right now, he’s in some sort of stairwell. And he’s on the move.” The tech worked his keyboard. The scenery on the screen shifted to follow the figure who was Rick—and another blue figure nearby him. “That’s Fabian Child,” said Chuck. “He’s cut off from his living memory so he calls himself Favian in the Realm.”
Molly peered hard at the screen. She watched the two primitive eight-bit figures descending a cartoon of a winding stairway down into darkness.
“It really does look like an old video game,” she said.
“Well, I guess it is kind of like a video game,” said Chuck. “Except, you know . . .”
“Except just the opposite,” said Molly. “In a video game, you can die a hundred times, but you only have to get it right once. In the Realm you can get it right a hundred times, but if you die once, it’s game over.”
“Right,” said Chuck. “Kind of like real life.”
28. KILLER PLANTS FROM OUTER SPACE
IT WAS A long way down the stairs, but with the glowing Favian leading the way, they reached the bottom quickly. Now a dark corridor stretched out before them. Rick could see only a few feet ahead. Favian raised his hand and made a light emanate from his palm. At the end of the hall, a door came into view. Favian glanced at Rick. He looked worried. Well, what else was new?
“I don’t know where we are anymore,” Favian said. “Anything could be on the other side of that door . . . Maybe we should turn back and . . .”
“No,” said Rick. “This was where the witch told us to go. And Mariel’s close. I can feel her.”
His hand was on the hilt of Mariel’s sword again, the twined metal rising to her image. And it was true: he could feel her presence more strongly than before. This was the right way. This was where they were supposed to be. Whatever was on the other side of that door . . .
He nodded once at Favian and then went ahead. Favian, worried, hung back, floating just above the floor, holding out his palm to light Rick’s way through the darkness.
Rick reached the door. He pressed his hand against it. He drew a breath. So far, everywhere he had been in this world, there had been dead, half-rotten security bots—discarded creatures of Kurodar’s deteriorating imagination. Everywhere he had gone, he’d had to fight for his life.
He pushed the door open, ready for the onslaught.
But there was nothing. Quiet. An empty room.
They stepped—or, that is, Rick stepped and Favian flashed—into a long dining hall. Rick could see at once that that’s what it was. Small windows very high on the walls, just beneath the towering ceilings, let in thin, gray, sickly beams of light from the world above. Rough wooden tables were everywhere and heavy chairs, some upright, some overturned, some broken into pieces as if someone had smashed them into the ground. On the tables—and on the floor—there were pottery plates and drinking vessels, whole, chipped, and shattered.
There’s water in the dining hall, Baba Yaga had said.
Yes. Against the wall were large basins, filthy, with grimy plates in them and water spigots hanging over them. If only those spigots were still working . . .
For another moment, Rick and Favian stood shoulder to glimmering shoulder, looking around. It made no sense, of course, that there should be a dining hall in the Realm. Why should code-created security bots have to eat and drink? But by now, Rick understood: sense didn’t matter here. The imagination had rules of its own. You can’t imagine something you’ve never seen and, in fact, everything you imagine is assembled from things you have seen and experienced in Real Life. Only God makes stuff out of nothing, the rest of us cobble together variations on the work God’s already done. So Kurodar’s Golden City was cobbled together from cities he had seen and fairy-tale places he’d read about. There was night and day though there was no sun. There were beasts and witches from storybooks and games. And now there was a dining hall for creatures who didn’t need to eat. That’s just how it was.
Favian gasped. “Look . . .” His whisper was tense with anxiety—but, then, he was pretty much always tense with anxiety. “Over there, by the wall.?
??
Rick had to step deeper into the room to see what Favian was pointing at, but then he did—and he grew tense with anxiety himself.
Against one wall lay the body of a dead . . . something or other. It was like nothing Rick had ever seen before. All he could tell by looking at it was that it was fearsome and disgusting. It was green and brown and had a huge sort of human figure, but long-bodied and with a sort of reptilian face. It seemed to be made out of old vines and leaves and plants, its long torso thin and twined and twisted, its arms and legs the same. To Rick, it looked like a half-creature half-plant that had grown organically out of the mold and filth that was collecting on the floor.
“Do you think that’s Bagin . . . whatever she said? The thing we’re supposed to beware of?” asked Favian.
“Maybe,” said Rick.
“Maybe it’s dead,” Favian whispered with faint hope.
“Maybe,” said Rick. “But I’m not sure that matters much. If Kurodar realizes we’re here, he can bring it back to life quickly enough.”
Seeing the beast, his hand had gone instinctively to the hilt of his sword again. And as his fingers touched Mariel’s image, he felt such a surge of spirit and power go through him that he looked around the room again, startled, expecting to see her standing there in front of him.
He panned his gaze over the basins against the walls. There were two against the long wall to the right—the monster was lying between them. There were three more basins against the long wall opposite. All the basins were long, as large as bathtubs and as filthy as if they had not been cleaned in decades. Broken and unwashed dishes and drinking vessels cluttered them. And there . . .
Rick held his breath so he wouldn’t make a noise. Whatever that thing was growing out of the floor, he didn’t want to risk waking it up. Instead of talking, he glanced at the anxious face of Favian and lifted his chin toward the basin in the corner. Favian turned to look—and now he saw it too.
One of the spigots over the basins was leaking. Dripping.
“Water!” Favian whispered.
“Shh,” said Rick.
Glancing at the green vine monster to make sure it was still lying motionless and dead, Rick began to shuffle slowly toward the basin with the dripping spigot. Every few steps he took, Favian would flash and catch up to him—and then let him go ahead again.
Rick reached the edge of the basin. It was so dirty that it was stained brown-red and even black in places. For a moment nothing happened. Then . . . drip . . . a drop of the Realm’s silver water, stained brown and ugly, fell from the spigot into the basin’s drain. Drip, drip. Two more drops.
Rick stared at the spigot. Slowly, slowly, another drop of water began to form on the lip of it.
Rick leaned toward the droplet. As softly as he could, he whispered, “Mariel? Are you there?”
And suddenly, there was a gargling roar behind him! Favian let out a shout. Rick spun round, clutching his sword.
The green beast was rising, coiling vine-like up off the floor, its globular eyes open, staring balefully, its long, twisted arms uncoiling out in front of it like a plant growing in fast motion. It let out another gurgling roar.
With a sting of metal, Rick drew his sword. Too late. On the instant, the beast reached for him. One viny arm wrapped itself around the silver blade and yanked the weapon out of Rick’s hand.
“Rick!” Favian shouted.
The blue sprite tried to send a blast at the advancing beast, but he was low on energy and only a pale light pulsed out of his palm. With casual brutality, the creature swiped at Favian with one unraveling arm. The viny appendage went right through the shimmering blue light of the sprite, but all the same, Favian was swept off his feet and thrown across the room.
Now the plant creature came straight at Rick. He was unarmed and tried to dodge out of its path, to get away. But the beast was too quick. Its arms stretched out on either side and branches swiftly crackled out of the main limbs, spreading like a thorny curtain that blocked Rick’s way.
The green beast came at him with a strangely organic wavering motion. As the screen of branches folded around him, there was nothing Rick could do but back up—and soon, he couldn’t even do that. His back hit the basin behind him and he was pinned in place between the basin and the advancing vine beast.
The long snout of the creature extended toward Rick’s head and—woof!—what a stench it had, like something that had been rotting at the bottom of a swamp for a hundred years. Rick recoiled as the thing’s neck undulated out toward him, as the sinister yellow eyes in the lizardly face widened in hunger, and as the long snout of the creature opened, showing yellow-white teeth that dripped with mire.
“I am Bagiennik!” the creature said in a deep, watery voice. The stink washed over Rick with its breath. “And I devour you.”
And with that, it reared up, ready to snap down and bite Rick’s head off.
Which is exactly what it would have done, except that now there was noise of a fluid eruption at Rick’s back, like a geyser blast or the roar of a waterfall. Plates and pottery flew out of the basin, spun across the room, and dropped to the floor, shattering. Desperate, Rick looked straight up and saw her—Mariel—flowing into the air out of the basin’s spigot.
She was towering. She was silver and majestic. Her beautiful and regal face was set in the stern expression of a queenly warrior.
As Bagiennik’s open snout lunged at Rick’s face, Mariel’s mercurial hand snapped out and caught the monster by the throat. Rick drew back against the basin as far as he could, staring at the creature as it writhed horribly in Mariel’s grasp, as it choked and gagged, its plant-like tongue extending out beyond its murky fangs.
Bagiennik struggled. It tried to writhe free. It tried to snap out at the silver shape of the woman who held it fast. But she, without flinching, reached her other hand right into the range of the twisting, biting head and wrapped her powerful fingers around its striving snout. She held its mouth shut. And as Rick stood pinned against the basin, Mariel, reaching over his head and holding the monster’s head and neck in her two hands, suddenly pulled her hands apart in a mighty tearing motion.
Bagiennik gave a high, gurgling squeal, and the next thing Rick knew, the monster’s head was gone—utterly gone—and a rain of dead leaves and twigs was showering down over him. The room filled with the horrible swampy stench of the beast. The bulk of its body—its long, viny form—squirmed back down into the muck on the floor. There, it instantly turned brown and rotten, the green stuff fluttering off it.
Finally, all that was left of the beast lay still and dead.
In RL, Molly saw the whole thing played out by pixilated eight-bit figures on Chuck’s monitor. She saw the figure that was Rick pinned by the horrid yet cartoonish green monster that attacked him.
“What is that?” she said, her voice catching.
“Security bot,” said Chuck.
“It looks like some kind of plant monster.”
Lawrence Dial and Professor Jameson both looked up from their keyboards. “Bagiennik,” the Traveler said. “Another creature out of Russian fairy tales. A plant monster, as you say.”
Molly stared at the screen. She cried out, “It’s got him! It’s going to kill him!”
But the next moment, she saw the silver female figure rise gracefully up behind Rick. She knew at once who it was.
“Mariel!” she said.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to watch the screen as the battle played out to its conclusion. A few moments later, Bagiennik was dead.
Molly hadn’t realized she was holding her breath in suspense—and clutching Rick’s hand tightly—but now she let the breath out and loosened her grip.
“That’s good,” said Chuck on a long sigh. “They’re all together again. I always feel better when Rick finds Mariel and Favian. They make a good team.”
Molly nodded, w
atching the figures moving together on the monitor. She was glad Rick had been rescued—of course she was—but though she didn’t like to admit it to herself, she felt a twinge of something else as well. She knew it was beneath her—she felt it was wrong—but she couldn’t deny the pang of jealousy that went through her. Rick had not told her everything about what happened to him in the Realm, but she understood enough. She understood that Mariel had helped him and protected him and taught him things, and she knew that he had feelings for her—feelings so strong they had almost taken him away from her. The woman, it turned out, wasn’t real. But still . . .
Molly shoved the thought out of her mind, squelched the hot pang. Enough.
Just let her keep him safe, she prayed.
The three figures, white, silver, and blue, moved together across the screen.
Molly nodded to herself. She turned from the monitor to look down at Rick’s sleeping figure. He seemed almost peaceful.
Keep him safe, she thought again.
With a sigh, she lifted her eyes.
That was the first time she noticed that Miss Ferris had left the room.
29. ARMORED CORE
RICK STAGGERED BACK and looked up at where Mariel hung in the air above him. Her silver form gave off no light, but the pale beams that came through the window were reflected on her, played over her, and made her gleam. Her face was still set in warrior mode, bold and serious. And Rick felt—what he always felt when he saw her—a surge of emotion he couldn’t name. There was something about her—some combination of kindness and strength and majesty that moved him to his core.
But that feeling, the admiration he felt for her, was complicated now, wasn’t it? Complicated by the fact that she wasn’t what she seemed. She wasn’t even a person at all, just a web of numbers downloaded from a human mind or some random combination of human minds . . . a computerized image destined to die when the Realm died.
But as long as he was here with her, it didn’t matter. She was real.