The Reality Bug (24 page)

“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.”

“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!”

“Aja,” Loor said calmly. “If we do not get out of here, we will not live long enough to find anybody.”

“I know,” Aja said. “Pendragon, push the middle button.”

“What?” I shouted. “The last time—”

“I know what happened the last time,” Aja interrupted. “But while you were playing cowboy, I programmed a link.”

“A link?” I asked.

Suddenly, with a crash, the door to the bedroom flew open and Saint Dane strode in.

“Time for the last roundup, buckaroos!” Saint Dane said. He raised his six-guns, ready to fire.

“Push the button, Pendragon!” Aja screamed.

I did.

Saint Dane let loose with both guns, blasting us. I heard the sharp cracks, I saw the fire come from the muzzles, but I didn't feel a thing, because a nanosecond later, everything went black.

I
thought I was standing inside a giant colander. You know, one of those big silver bowls with all the holes in it for draining spaghetti. Everywhere I looked, I saw tiny, round dots. For a second I feared I was in some giant, fantasy kitchen, and a pile of boiling linguini was about to get dumped on me.

But that didn't make sense. Still, there were far too many of these holes to have been made by Saint Dane's six-shooter. So where was I?

I looked closer to see the dots weren't holes after all. They were little globes of water about the size of peas. There were millions, no, billions of them all frozen in space, everywhere. I lifted my hand and moved it slowly in front of my face. As I passed through the suspended drops of water, my hand got wet. Stranger still, my hand cleared a path through the drops. It was like what happens when you wipe a steamy window. Wherever I moved my hand, I cleared a trail.

“Where are we, Pendragon?” Loor was standing next to me, doing the exact same thing. She took a step forward, clearing a body-size path through the dots of water. As she moved, her green jumpsuit got wetter and wetter.

Yes, we were both still wearing our jumpsuits.

“I don't know” was my answer. I was tired of giving that answer. I looked around to get my bearings, but couldn't see much. It was like we were in a misty white cloud. The ground we stood on was pavement, but I couldn't see much more than a few feet in any direction.

“What is that?” Loor said, pointing at something.

I looked to see a faint, dark form not too far from us. It wasn't moving, and didn't seem to be a threat, so I cautiously walked toward it. It was strange feeling the water cling to my jumpsuit as I walked, making it wet. As I got closer to the dark form, it began to take shape. After one more step, the mist cleared enough for me to see what it was, and I caught my breath.

It was a man wearing a green jumpsuit, just like ours. He was a normal-looking guy about my father's age. There was nothing odd about him at all, except for the fact that he was frozen in place. Seriously, the guy didn't move at all. It looked like he was in the middle of taking a step while looking backward and beckoning with his hand when somebody hit the “pause” button on his life.

I looked to where he was gesturing, and saw two more people a few feet behind him. It was a woman holding the hand of a little girl. They seemed to be hurrying to catch up with the man, except that they were frozen too. It was like looking at a display in a wax museum. How seriously creepy can you get?

“What is wrong with them?” Loor asked.

An idea started to tickle at the back of my brain. I looked around at the billions of dots of suspended water all around us. Was it possible?

“I think it's rain,” I declared. “All these drops of water. It's a rainstorm.”

“How can that be?” Loor responded.

“I don't know,” I said while passing my hand through the dots again. “But I think this Lifelight fantasy is somehow frozen in time.”

I took a closer look at the stiff family. There was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Their eyes were clear, their skin was normal. Close-up they didn't look like waxworks; they seemed totally real. I even took a chance and touched the guy's hand.