The Reality Bug (14 page)

That's when I got a brilliant idea.

“Get to the far side, hurry!” I shouted at Aja.

If my idea was going to work, we had to get out from under here as soon as possible. I kept pushing Aja from behind, forcing her to snake through the metal rails. Finally we made it to the far side and out from under.

“Which way?” she shouted.

“Stay right there!” I commanded.

Aja looked at me like I was crazy. But I didn't have time to explain. Aja may have known computers, but I was a gym rat. Before I became a Traveler, I had spent every moment I could in gyms. I knew how they worked. I ran to a small silver box on the wall, flipped up the safety cover, and pressed the red control button inside.

Instantly the bleachers began to retract, with the quig trapped underneath.

“Brilliant!” Aja exclaimed.

It was the first nice thing she said to me. The two of us stood there, both hoping the quig would get crunched in the tangle of steel that was closing around it. All we needed was a minute to get the controller.

We didn't get it.

With a horrifying roar, the quig crashed out from under the retracting bleachers, pulling pieces of steel frame along with it. Turned out my brilliant idea, wasn't so brilliant. There was nothing we could do but run for our lives. We sprinted across the gym, maddeningly close to Alex's controller. But there wasn't time to get it. We ran out of the gym and down the corridor that led to the rest of the school.

I always felt like there was something spooky about an empty school building. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I was used to schools being busy and loud. A quiet school seemed wrong. Well, this school was definitely wrong. The fact that it was empty was the least of the reasons. Aja and I ran down the long, glass-walled corridor from the athletic wing into the student center that was the main hub of the school. It was a huge, airplane hangar-size room from which all the rest of the school wings could be accessed. Aja and I ran to the center of the big room so we would be able to get a complete 360 view around. If anything was going to enter the place looking for us, we'd see it in plenty of time to run the other way.

“There's gotta be another way to end the jump,” I said, gulping for air.

Aja once again hit a series of buttons on her wrist controller, then grunted in frustration. “This can't be happening!” she shouted. “I have no control!”

There was no way around it. We had to figure a way to get past that quig, or at least distract it long enough to get Alex's controller.

“You know this place,” Aja said. “Are there any weapons?”

“In a school? Yeah, right.”

“Think, Pendragon! Is there anything we can use as a weapon?”

My first reaction was to say no, but that wasn't helpful. I had to give it some thought and be creative. Was there anything in this school we could use as a weapon to beat a quig? Uncle Press had killed some quigs with spears, but there was nothing like that here at Davis Gregory High. We had also blown up a quig using the explosive tak, but there was none of that stuff around. What else could we use?

That's when an idea started to form.

“These quigs,” I asked. “Lifelight created them, but are they real? I mean, are they just like real quigs?”

“They're as real as you remember them,” Aja explained. “Lifelight took them from your mind. It doesn't matter what real quigs are like, only what you remember about them. If you believe they can sing a song, they'll be able to sing.”

“Then we need a dog whistle,” I announced.

“A what?”

“Quigs are incredibly sensitive to high-pitched sound. They go nuts when they hear it. If we can find some kind of whistle, we can keep that quig back long enough to get to Alex's controller.

“Perfect!” Aja exclaimed. “Where can we find a whistle?”

“I don't know,” I admitted.

“Ugh!” Aja exclaimed in frustration. “Think! Is there anything we can use to make that kind of sound?”

We heard something that sounded like the rumble of thunder. I took a quick look around and saw movement outside the windows. I wanted to scream. The quigs outside had found us! They were peering in through the windows, staring at us, probably deciding the best way to attack. Suddenly I wished that I could find a
hundred
whistles.

A hundred whistles.

An idea was sneaking around the edges of my brain.

“Pendragon,” Aja whispered. “We don't have much longer.”

I had it. A hundred whistles. Plan B was starting to take shape.

“This way!” I shouted, grabbed Aja's hand and ran off. I led her through the student center to the wing housing the school offices. It's where the principal hung out and where the secretaries worked. If I was right, we'd find something there that would help us stop the quigs.

The office was dark and deserted. I made my way toward the long reception desk when suddenly …
crash!
A window blew out. Aja and I jumped in surprise and looked to see that a quig had smashed it and was now crawling in.
Crash! Crash!
Two more windows blew, followed by more squirming quigs. They knew exactly where we were. Either my idea was going to work, or Plan B was going to put us on the quig menu.

“What are we doing in here?” Aja asked. I could hear the growing terror in her voice.

“A hundred whistles,” I answered while continuing on toward the reception desk. “We may not have a single whistle, but I might be able to come up with a hundred.”

I was looking for the public address system. Every school had one for announcements and whatnot. I really hoped that Davis Gregory High was one of them. It was our last, best hope.

Crash! Crash!
Two more windows shattered and glass rained down. The quigs were coming from all over. It was now or never. I found the PA system under the long reception desk. Now the trick was to figure out how to use it.

There was a power switch that I immediately threw. The lights on the machine blinked to life. There was a long row of buttons that I guessed operated the speakers throughout the school. I was about to turn every one on, when I saw a toggle switch marked “All speakers.” Duh. I flipped it on.

The first quig had gotten inside and was now standing up. It would charge in seconds.

I cranked the volume knob to fifteen. If it had gone to twenty, I would have cranked it to twenty. I then grabbed the microphone. It was on a stand, with a trigger to turn it on. With a quick look at Aja, I hit the button and turned the microphone toward the amplifier.

They call it feedback. We've all heard it before, a thousand times. I'm not exactly sure what causes it, but it always seems to happen when the volume is turned up too high on something that is amplified. I think it has to do with an overload that the system can't handle and … to tell you the truth, I didn't care how it happened. I only cared that it happened now.

It did. The piercing sound screeched out from the speakers. It was horrible … and beautiful. The quigs began to bellow, just as they had on Denduron when I blew the dog whistle. It was perfect. They couldn't function. I quickly took some Scotch tape and wrapped it around the microphone to keep the button depressed, then leaned it against the amplifier. Unless it blew a fuse, we had our hundred whistles.

Aja grimaced in pain from the horrible sound, but still managed to smile.

“Can we go now?” she shouted.

The two of us ran out of the office, headed back toward the gym. The horrifying sound was piercing the entire school. As we ran, I looked outside and saw quigs fleeing in terror. Compared to a little old dog whistle, this feedback was monstrous.

Aja and I ran through the student center and down the long corridor back to the athletic wing. I had no doubt that the quig in the gym was in just as much agony as the rest of them. Now all we had to worry about was whether poor Alex's wrist controller would work.

We made it back to the gym and peered inside. Sure enough, our friend the quig was on its back, writhing in pain. With a quick look of relief to each other, Aja and I started into the gym.

And the screeching stopped.

Just like that. Maybe the amplifier blew. Maybe the power went out. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All that mattered was that our hundred whistles had fallen silent.

And the quig was back on its feet, ready to roll.

A
ja and I froze. The quig didn't. It was back in control and madder than ever. It saw us and started to charge. All we could do was run.

That's when I saw it. I didn't know why I hadn't thought of this before, and didn't care. I saw it now, and we had nothing to lose by giving it a shot. So before we ran from the gym, I reached out next to the door and pulled the fire alarm.

Instantly the grating horn sound filled the gym, louder than the feedback from the PA system. Question was, would it be enough to bother the quig? Aja and I both turned to see …

The quig had fallen back down, clutching its head. We were back in business. Without stopping to think, Aja took off toward Alex. I was right after her. We dodged the squirming quig and made it to the body of the poor phader. I couldn't bring myself to look too closely at him. His body was still. Blood pooled on the gym floor. That's all I needed to know.

Aja quickly reached for his arm and pulled it toward her so she could have access to his elaborate wrist controller.

“Does it work?” I asked.

“We'll know in a second.”

She expertly hit a few keys, and the strangest thing happened. I felt dizzy. It was like the whole gym started to spin. I wondered if all the sound of the feedback and the blaring fire alarm had finally gotten to my inner ear.

The next thing I knew it was pitch black. Was I back in the Lifelight pyramid? The odd thing was, I still heard the fire alarm blaring. But that didn't make sense. Either I was back or I wasn't. A second later I was bathed in light. The next thing I saw was my black boots. I was lying inside the Lifelight tube. I was back!

But why was I still hearing the alarm? The table slid out of the tube and I looked quickly to my left to see Aja was already jumping off her table.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Come on!” she shouted.

We ran outside the cubicle into the center of the pyramid. One look around told me the problem. There were hundreds of lights flashing red outside the cubicles. Phaders and vedders were running around like crazy. The alarm sounding here had nothing to do with the fire alarm I had pulled in my fantasy. This was a full-out emergency … for real.

“We gotta get to the core!” Aja exclaimed, and ran for the elevator tube. We sprinted over a bridge, jumped in the tube, and flew down.

In the glass corridor of the core, things were frantic. There were alarms blaring and red warning lights flashing everywhere.

A phader grabbed Aja and yelled, “We've got hundreds of jumps going bad!”

“Contact the directors!” Aja shouted at the phader, and ran past him down the corridor. I kept up with her. As we ran by the control stations I saw that several of the screens showing jumps were flashing off and on. Phaders were in their control chairs, desperately hitting buttons on their arm controllers, but it didn't seem to be doing any good. A few seconds later I saw where Aja was heading. She threw open the door to Alex's control station.

“Alex! What happened?” she yelled.

Alex couldn't answer. He was sitting in his chair with blank eyes still staring at the screens.

Alex was dead. On his neck were bite marks. There was no mistake. The quig in my fantasy jump had somehow killed Alex out here in reality. Whatever the Reality Bug had done, it had turned Lifelight inside out. Right now, in cubicles all over the pyramid, all over Veelox, people were in mortal danger as they faced their worst nightmares in their own fantasies … for real.

“Shut it down,” I said.

Aja continued to stare at Alex, unbelieving. She couldn't move.

“Aja, shut it down!” I shouted. “You gotta save those people!”

“This can't be happening,” she said, stunned. “They're just
fantasies
!”

I grabbed Aja and forced her to look at me. “Not anymore they're not!” I shouted.

“But it's illusion!” Aja argued. “It's not real!”

“Is that real enough for you?” I asked, pointing at poor, dead Alex.

“There must be some other explanation,” she argued.

“Yeah?” I shot back. “Then how do you explain this?” I let her go and turned my back to her, shoving out my arm. What I wanted her to see was proof positive that what was happening inside Lifelight was no fantasy. I showed her my arm. It was the arm that got sliced by the claw of the quig when we escaped under the bleachers. My jumpsuit was cut, with dried blood around the edges.

“That blood is real,” I said. “It hurts, and so does my nose. My injuries didn't go away when we got back.”

Aja stared at my arm as if her brain wouldn't let her accept what her eyes were seeing.

“Aja,” I said softly. “It's not a fantasy anymore.”

She looked at me with confusion. Her orderly world had just been blown apart. Then the door to the cubicle flew open and a phader ran in.

“Aja!” he shouted with terror. “It's happening all over Veelox. Lifelight has been totally corrupted.”

Aja forced herself to think. She blinked once, then her eyes focused. “Did you contact the directors?” she asked.

“They're all jumping!” the phader answered. “Every one. We can't get to them!”

Aja looked to Alex's control board.

“Shut it down, Aja,” I said again.

“I can't,” she finally answered. “There's no such thing. People would die.”

“But we have to do something!” I demanded.

Aja was thinking fast. I saw a spark in her eye. An idea. She turned back to the phader and said, “We've got to suspend the grid.”