“Yah!” I slapped the horse’s flank, and we charged out onto the dam. It was only about ten feet wide, with water on one side and a very long drop on the other. I hugged the water side.
Crack! Crack!
More gunshots, followed by splinters of stone kicking up around me. The desperados weren’t gunning for Loor, they were shooting at me through the trees. I ducked down on the horse and begged it to run faster.
Ping! Crack!
A piece of flying stone stung my arm. They were getting better, but there was no way I would be stopped. Not when I was so close. We had played Saint Dane’s evil game and nearly won. I made it to the stone hut and jumped off my horse. I tied it on the far side of the hut, making sure to use the building for protection against the shooting desperados.
A million thoughts flew through my head. What was my next move? I would get Dr. Zetlin out, get us both on the horse, and then go … where? If we went back the way we came, we’d land right in the laps of the desperados. But I couldn’t abandon Loor! The only choice was to keep going to the far side of the dam. But then once the dam blew up, Loor would be trapped with the desperados.
It was a familiar, horrible feeling. I was faced with a choice. Which was more important? The future of Veelox, or the safety of my friend? It was the Hindenburg all over again. Was this what Saint Dane wanted to do all along? Did he want to put me in the same, horrible position just to see me fail again?
These thoughts took all of three seconds to flash through my head. I truly didn’t know what to do. All I knew for sure was that I had to keep going. But when I threw the door of the hut open, I was rocked by a sight so incredible that it made all my other concerns seem trivial.
“Dr. Zetlin!” I shouted as I opened the door. “We’ve got to get off the dam or—”
When I saw the man inside the hut, I froze. It wasn’t Dr. Zetlin. This wasn’t playing out the way it was supposed to. But to be honest, Saint Dane hadn’t lied, either. He told us that the man I was worried about was in this hut. And he was.
It was Gunny.
“Shorty!” he yelled when he saw me. “What in heck is going on?”
Gunny was tied to a chair with a long length of rope. Seeing him was such a shock, I couldn’t function.
“Wha—how did you get here?” I stammered.
“Saint Dane sandbagged me! Get these ropes off!”
My brain clicked back into gear. I ran to Gunny and started working on the knots. I wasn’t sure if I was happy to see him or totally freaked out.
“You’re not gonna believe what’s been going on,” I said. “This isn’t real. None of this is.” I then stopped working and looked at him. “Wait, I don’t get how you can be here. Did Saint Dane bring you into a Lifelight pyramid?”
Gunny was about to answer, when I felt a sharp rumbling. It felt like a short, quick earthquake. But it wasn’t. Our ten minutes were up. More rumbling followed. The dynamite was exploding. There was no way we could get off in time. The dam was about to collapse, with Gunny and me still on it.
“What’s happening?” Gunny asked. His eyes were wide with fear.
“The dam is exploding,” I said. “Saint Dane loaded it with dynamite.”
I caught a glimpse of my horse charging away. He had pulled free and was galloping off in terror. Smart horse. He knew what was about to happen.
“Get yourself outta here,” Gunny ordered.
I wanted to argue. I wanted to be all sorts of brave and say: “We’re getting out, together!” or something equally heroic. But the truth was, there wasn’t time. The exploding dynamite was tearing the dam apart. The floor shook, the stone ceiling started to fall down around us. In a few seconds there would be no more dam and no more us.
“Run, Pendragon,” Gunny implored.
It was too late. I knew there was only one possible way to get off this crumbling dam. I lifted my arm and pulled up my sleeve to reveal my silver control bracelet with the three square buttons. The button on the far right was supposed to end the jump. The last time it failed, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I pushed it, and prayed.
The stone hut shuddered. We were going down.
“Good-bye, shorty,” Gunny said.
Everything went black.
I sat up fast and slammed my head.
“Ow!”
I was totally disoriented. My head hurt too. What had happened? A second later, the answer came. With a slight hum, the silver disk that enclosed the jump tube slid back and filled my little tunnel with light. I was back in the Lifelight pyramid! The table slid out, depositing me back in the jump cubicle off the Alpha Core. My bracelet had worked. I had ended the jump. I looked quickly to my left to see a welcome sight. Loor was sliding out of the other tube, safe.
“Pendragon! What happened?” she asked. “I was shooting the noisemaker at Saint Dane and suddenly the world went black.”
She was breathing hard and her eyes were wild. I can honestly say it was the first time I saw Loor rattled. But who could blame her?
“I ended the jump,” I said. “We’re back. Are you all right?”
“I am confused, but not injured,” she answered. “Did you find Zetlin?”
I looked to the tube between us to see it was still closed. Zetlin was still inside.
“No,” I answered. “Something is whacked.” I jumped off the table and ran out of the cubicle. “Aja?” I called. “What went wrong?”
But Aja wasn’t there. Her control chair was empty. The large monitor was still showing images of our jump though. On screen, I saw a horrific sight. It was a view of the collapsing dam. The explosions had weakened the stone structure and tons of water from the lake came crashing through. The dam crumbled like wet sand. I saw the small stone hut on top fall into the chaos of crashing stone and water.
“Gunny,” I said to myself.
The screen went blank. The jump was over.
“What went wrong?” Loor asked. She was standing behind me, watching the disaster. “Where is Aja?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
I led Loor out of the Alpha Core in search of Aja. Where was she? Why had she left the controls in the middle of the jump? Of course, my mind rushed to all the worst possible answers. I feared she had somehow gone into the jump and gotten hurt. Stranger still, how had Gunny ended up in Zetlin’s jump? Worse, if he was in the jump, did he go down with the crumbling dam? There were a ton of questions that needed answering. But first we had to find Aja.
We ran quickly through the core to see all was exactly as we had left it. The monitors were still showing green and there were no phaders or vedders around. There was no Aja, either. We left the glass corridor and hurried back to the counter where we had been fitted with our control bracelets. The Goth vedder was still there, looking as bored as ever.
“Have you seen Aja?” I demanded.
“She left a while ago,” he answered. “She was in a big hurry, too. She said to tell you she had to get home.”
“Home?” I shouted. “But the grid is still suspended!”
“Hey, don’t ask me,” the guy said. “I’m just a vedder.”
This made no sense. What was so important at home that she would leave us alone in the jump? I looked to Loor, hoping she might have an answer, and saw she was staring at the oil portrait of the young Dr. Zetlin.
“We must find him,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. But we can’t do it without Aja. C’mon.”
We started to leave when the vedder called to us. “Hey!”
We looked back at him and he pointed to his wrist. Right. We still had our jump bracelets on. Loor and I quickly unclasped the bracelets and put them on the counter.
“Thank you,” the vedder said. “This is the way it was meant to be.”
I shot the guy a surprised look. “Why did you say that?”
The Goth guy shrugged. “Just something to say,” he answered, and smiled.
That was weird.
; “Let’s go,” I said to Loor, and headed out.
I was confused and angry and frightened all at once. How could Aja abandon us? Loor and I jumped onto one of the three-wheel pedal vehicles and quickly made our way back toward the mansion that Aja made home.
“I am having trouble understanding what is happening, Pendragon,” Loor said.
“Yeah, me too,” I answered truthfully. “Nothing is making sense, but I guarantee that if Aja went home, it was for a good reason. Let’s not sweat about it until we find her.”
We pedaled the rest of the way in silence. The empty streets of Rubic City seemed even more chillingly quiet than before. This was a ghost town in the middle of a ghost territory, and we weren’t doing much to change it.
We arrived at the mansion and ran up the marble stairs. I wanted to burst through the door, screaming for Aja, but that would have been rude. This was still Evangeline’s house too. So I grabbed the door knocker and pounded it a few times. A few agonizing seconds later, the door opened and Evangeline was there. When she saw me, her face lit up with a bright smile.
“Pendragon! What a surprise!” she exclaimed. “And who is this?”
“This is my friend Loor,” I answered. “She’s a Traveler. Where is Aja?”
“Another Traveler?” Evangeline said. “How wonderful! You two are just in time for dinner.”
She stepped back to let Loor and me inside.
“We need to find Aja, Evangeline,” I said urgently.
“But surely you have time for some gloid,” she said sweetly. “We’re having your favorite. Blue. You like blue the best, don’t you?”
Yeah, right.
“Where is Aja?” Loor demanded. She didn’t care if she sounded rude.
“She’s not here,” Evangeline answered. “Please, come into the kitchen and eat.”
She turned and walked down the hallway, headed for the kitchen.
“If she is not here,” Loor said, “where else could she be?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
We followed Evangeline through the house, toward the kitchen. No way I was going to get near any of that blue gloid, but we had to find Aja. I stepped up to the kitchen door, swung it open, and saw something that froze both Loor and me in our places. It was impossible, yet as real as can be.
Evangeline was scooping big ladles of blue gloid into white bowls. But that wasn’t what shocked us.
“Sit down, you two,” she said with warm hospitality. “Plenty of room.”
Loor and I didn’t move. That was because there were already two dinner guests seated at the table. As impossible as it was, sitting there, chowing down on huge spoonfuls of blue gloid, were the two cowpokes from the mountain ravine in Zetlin’s fantasy.
“Howdy there, you two!” one of them said. “You come by to return our horses?”
“That’s right nice of you to go out of your way!” the other one said. He then looked at Evangeline and said, “Ma’am, this chow sure is tasty.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Evangeline said, blushing.
What was going on?
Loor asked me, “Do you smell that?”
At first I thought she meant the gloid, but I took a whiff and realized it was something else. Something was burning.
“Evangeline, are you cooking something?” I asked.
Before she could answer, a door opened from the far side of the kitchen and another guest arrived.
“Gunny!” I shouted.
Yup. In walked Gunny Van Dyke, dressed in his bell captain uniform from the Manhattan Tower Hotel.
“Hey there, shorty!” he said. “I see you made it off that dam. You going to introduce me to your friend?”
I was numb. My brain wasn’t computing any of this.
“This is … this is … Loor,” I said numbly.
“Osa’s daughter?” Gunny exclaimed. “I am very pleased to meet you.”
Gunny reached across the table, holding out his hand to shake Loor’s. Loor reached out, looking as dazed as I was.
And there was a gunshot.
The smile froze on Gunny’s face. He pitched forward and fell face first onto the table. Gunny had been shot. Both cowpokes dove away from the table and hit the floor. Evangeline screamed and huddled behind a counter. I looked across the room to where the shot had come from.
Standing in the doorway was Saint Dane. He was still dressed in his black cowboy outfit and had a smoking sixshooter in his hand.
“You cheated, Pendragon,” Saint Dane exclaimed. “There’s no fun in a challenge if you cheat. Now you two will just have to pay the price.”
From behind him, the desperados entered with guns drawn.
I was absolutely, totally frozen in shock. Things were happening so fast and seemed so impossible, I couldn’t even begin to figure out what to do.
Luckily, Loor could.
She quickly grabbed the end of the kitchen table and flipped it up on end. Cutlery and gloid flew everywhere as the desperados opened fire. Bullets slammed into the table, shredding it. But Loor’s quick thinking had protected us. At least for the time being.
“Outta here!” I shouted, and we ran for the door to the hallway.
More gunshots were fired as bullets ripped through the kitchen, barely missing us and instead slamming into the kitchen walls. The instant we ran out the door, we discovered where the bad smell had come from.
The mansion was on fire.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the entire downstairs hallway was full of horses. I’m serious. It was like being in the frenzy of wild horses back in the blacksmith barn, times about a hundred because the animals were terrified by the fire that shot flames and smoke out of the rooms on either side of the hallway. Loor took the lead, pulling me behind her, pushing her way through the terrified mass of horses. She actually shoved some of the big animals out of our way. Good thing she was here. I probably would have been trampled.
We made our way back to the front door, but it was engulfed in flames. No way we were getting out that way.
“Upstairs!” I shouted.
We ran up the wide, carpeted stairway to the second floor. I figured that with any luck, we could make our way to the back of the house and get out of a window before being burned or shot or trampled.
“How could this happen?” Loor shouted as we ran up the stairs.
“You’re asking me like I know?” I shouted back. “I’m just as freaked as you are!”
We got to the top of the stairs and ran down the hallway, headed for a window on the far end. We were just about to throw it open, when the window shattered. Loor and I both fell to the ground as bits of glass rained down on us. Saint Dane’s desperados were outside, waiting for us.
We were trapped.
Another gunshot was heard that smashed a picture hanging right next to my head. We both spun toward the stairs to see a ghastly sight. Saint Dane was standing on the top stair, backed by the burning flames from down below. He was like a demonic shadow standing there, with two six-guns drawn.
“Time is running out, children,” he chuckled. “What’s your next move?”
I pushed Loor into a bedroom off the hallway and slammed the door shut. This wouldn’t get us out, but at least it would buy us a few more seconds to think.
“How can this be?” Loor demanded to know.
My shock was wearing off now, and my brain was beginning to function. An idea was forming. It started when we first saw those cowpokes seated around Evangeline’s table. With each new disaster, my theory became more real.
“There can only be one explanation for all this,” I said. I then lifted my arm, and pulled back the sleeve of my jumpsuit to see … I was right.
I was still wearing a silver control bracelet. Loor lifted her arm to see she was still wearing one as well.
“But we removed these,” she said, totally confused.
“We thought we did,” I answered. “But that’s because we didn’t know the truth.”
&nb
sp; “And what is the truth?”
“We’re still in the jump,” I said. “This is still part of the fantasy.”
Crack!
A bullet tore through the door. Saint Dane had come a-knocking. I pulled Loor across the room and we huddled down behind the bed.
“Why did we not see these before?” she asked.
“Because we thought we were out of the jump,” I answered. “That’s how it works, if you give yourself over to the fantasy, you won’t see the bracelets. But as soon as I realized we were still in the jump, they appeared.”
Crack! Crack!
Two more bullets splintered the wood of the door.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” came Saint Dane’s singsong voice from the hallway.
“So then none of this is real?” Loor asked.
“Real enough,” I said. “But it’s time to get out.”
I lifted my arm to look at the control bracelet and the three buttons. The one to the far right was supposed to end the jump, but obviously that didn’t work. The one in the middle was supposed to change the jump, but the last time I tried using that, we almost got eaten by quigs. The button to the far left was my only choice, so I hit it.
The button glowed white for a moment, and then …
“It’s about time!”
Loor and I looked up to see Aja standing there.
“I thought you’d never figure it out!”
“Aja, what happened?” I asked.
“You never went into Zetlin’s jump,” she answered. “It must have been the Reality Bug. I realized it the second I inserted you, but couldn’t do anything about it until you realized it for yourself and called for me.”
“Are you really here?” I asked.
“No,” was the answer. “It’s just my image. I’m still in the Alpha Core.”
Suddenly a closet door blew open and flames licked out. The fire had reached the second floor. We were about to cook.
“Getting warm in there?” Saint Dane taunted from the hallway.
“Get us out of here!” I shouted to Aja.
“It’s too risky,” Aja answered.
“Risky?” I shouted back. “How can it get any riskier than this?”
“If I pull you out now, I may not be able to get you back in,” she answered. “The Reality Bug is fighting to take over Zetlin’s jump. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it back, and we’ve still got to find Zetlin!”