by Chanda Hahn
Wendy struggled to her feet, and stepped around the still body of Lily. That could have been her, if Wendy had stayed and not escaped, but she didn’t have time to mourn, she needed to get away. Wendy half walked, half stumbled down the road, stopping when the mountain lion came back. The great golden cat sauntered slowly, dropping its head as it neared Wendy. The cat looked injured, but Wendy couldn’t see any physical injuries. A low whine came from the mountain cat’s throat, and then its fur shimmered and shifted into a young woman who lifted up her visor and promptly collapsed on the ground.
“Brittney!” Wendy cried, running and gathering her friend in her arms.
“Hey, you,” Brittney sniffed, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhh, it will be okay. I promise.”
Brittney shook her head, “No, I’m sorry. We used to be so close. But lately I haven’t been that great of a friend to you. I know that.” She trembled in Wendy’s arms, though her skin wasn’t cold but burning hot like a glowing coal. “But I think I made up for it.” She smiled weakly. “In the end.”
She let out a sigh, her head dropping back as she went limp in Wendy’s arms.
“No, no, no, no!” Wendy cried. Gathering Brittney closer, she rocked her friend and mourned.
A dark shadow stood over her as Wendy wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her uniform, her heart breaking in two again when she recognized his shadow.
Peter.
“No, Peter. Not you too?” A loud moan escaped her followed by a howl of grief at the fear that he may not return. That she hadn’t been there for him.
She was sick of it. Death. Senseless death. Her parents, the lost boys, Peter, and now her oldest friend. She was done. No more.
Wendy kissed Brittney’s forehead and laid her in the soft grass. Then she picked a flower from a flower pot and placed it between her hands.
She would embrace the gift she was given, the one she had tried to put off because of fear of what the word meant when she looked it up.
Necromancer.
But Wendy pushed down that fear, and raised her hands and called them. It was time for Neverland to pay for all the death they’d dealt, and she was here to collect. Dark shadowy tattoos appeared on her skin and wafted around her fingertips. For Wendy was the queen of the shadows and it was time for her to reign.
Chapter 40
John had been a silent watcher and player, trying not to freak out his sister and let her know he was the one helping her by sending commands and directions. If his sister knew he was in the Hollow Dome, it would distract her and she’d become reckless trying to save him.
Keeping one ear open to the rest of the room, he heard the shouts of victory and the cries of loss as the gamers’ avatars either thrived or died. One investor named Merrill declared he was investing in generating morphlings and sending them to rain down on Killz’s team as revenge.
As long as their plans weren’t an immediate threat to Wendy and his friends, he didn’t care what they did. It was all he could do not to rage at what was happening to Wendy. He was helpless when Jeremy and the tiger lady attacked Wendy, and he’d thought that was it for his sister, until the unthinkable happened. Brittney appeared, transformed into a mountain lion and saved his sister. A tear slid down his face and he tried to wipe it away as he watched Brittney’s death. He hadn’t believed it when he read shifter in Brittney’s profile, but now he did.
Clearing his throat, he knew it was time to stop playing and figure out a way to bring down Neverland from the inside. He picked up his tablet and moved to the door that Hook had exited.
“Where are you going?” Helix asked suspiciously.
“I need a restroom.” John waved the tablet around, and said, “I don’t dare leave this behind.”
This must have been the correct thing to say because Helix clapped enthusiastically. “I knew it. I knew that once you had a taste, you wouldn’t be able to stop. Here, let me show you where it’s at.” He opened a different door and pointed down the hall. “On the left.”
“Thank you.” John saluted with two fingers, and headed into the restroom. He waited to make sure that no one was following him, then glanced down at the screen to check on his sister and was startled by what he saw—her hair moving, blown by an unseen force, her face glowing, her eyes dark with vengeance.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered, then ran out of the restroom and began to search all of the rooms on the floor, looking for a control room, looking for an exit besides the coded and locked elevator. He needed to help the others, but all of the windows were reinforced, the doors locked with digital codes and fingerprints sensors.
He was trapped inside the building. But if he could get the lost boys to his location in the Wonderland Games building, and get Helix’s tablet to Michael. They could bring the whole system down. But they would have to not get caught or seen.
One step at a time. John took a deep breath and headed back to the game room.
A trail of ash followed Jax’s wake as he destroyed every obstacle in his way. He blasted through the front doors, raced up the stairwell, and met Hook, who was on the way down. A look of surprise flashed across his face.
“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son,” Hook sneered, grasping the rifle in front of him. “Are you here to teach me a lesson?”
“No, I’m here to kill you,” Jax said solemnly.
“Can you? I don’t think you can. I’ve trained you, taught you everything, even let you run back to the boys, but you always came back, and you know why? Because of the anger that resides deep inside of you. The hate that was unmatched, searching for another until you met me. We are the same.”
“We are nothing alike,” Jax grunted out, his hand resting lightly on the railing, sending a smoldering heat into the metal and burning an outline of his hand.
Hook tried to smile and moved away from the railing. “I’m the only one who knows the real you. Even though you try to be loyal to Peter, you’re jealous of him. I understand the resentment you harbor toward him, and the nagging guilt. It’s why you left and came to me. I know the truth about why you stayed with us, why you came back. It’s because of her.”
Jax tried to hide his shock; he thought he’d been discreet, that no one other than Candace knew about his secret obsession with Alice.
“Would you like to know more about her? Would you like to see her again?”
Jax couldn’t suppress his intake of breath, and Hook grinned.
“Yes, I see you do.” With a smug certainty, Hook shouldered the rifle and stepped past Jax, then headed down the stairs, pausing to look up at him. “C’mon, boy, you won’t get this offer again.”
Knowing that it could very well end up being a trick, Jax followed, back out onto the street and through the melted door, across three city blocks. They arrived at the building with the Wonderland Games marquee. Hook disarmed the door and ushered Jax inside and into an elevator.
Once inside, Hook punched in a code and the elevator headed down a few levels.
Looking straight ahead, but aware of every move and glance Hook made, Jax asked, “Why did you shoot Peter?”
Hook chuckled. “Because he was getting on my nerves. Keeps coming back to life, and I give him an opportunity to try and follow me, and at every turn he betrays me.” Hook gave him the side-eye. “Kind of like you. Except Peter, I can vent my anger on, because he always shows up. But I think his time has run out. He’s not coming back this time.”
“Why do you say that?” Jax asked, his heart thudding in his chest in fear.
“Just intuition, you know. He’s always been more reckless than the others because of his ability. What’s he at, seven pans now? You know what they say about a cat having nine lives. Curly told me a lot about him, and I’ve figured it out. Peter has spent his lives. He takes longer to regenerate each time, and the longer his body goes between pans, it dies a little more. I had his body preserved in a pod, kept my medical team with him for his last two pans, and i
t was going on twenty-four hours before he came back. I saved him. Who is going to preserve his body now and keep it from rotting on the ground in the dome while it waits for his return? No one, I tell you.”
“His soul—”
“Is having problems reentering his body,” Hook interrupted. “That’s why it’s taking longer between each of his resurrections.”
Jax’s stomach rolled, his mouth going dry, and he instinctively touched his own chest as he remembered Peter sharing his body. That’s why the others became lost shadows. They couldn’t reenter their bodies because they were well and truly dead, unlike Peter, who could slowly heal and regenerate himself, but even his body was slowing down.
His eyes burned with unshed tears and Jax blinked them away, keeping his feelings at bay. He had to, if he was going to stop Hook and Neverland, but now he wasn’t sure if he could.
The doors opened and Hook waited for Jax to enter the room first. It was empty other than her pod that was clipped into a stand suspended three feet in the air. Above her were larger empty glass pods, similar to the ones they used to transport the morphlings on missions. The glass egg was the only thing that could contain them, the only surface they couldn’t slip through.
A single technician monitored her stats at a compact rolling computer desk. He didn’t see Candace and her wheelchair anywhere.
“Who is she?” Jax asked, unable to peel his eyes away from her. She looked at peace floating in a one-piece suit, her hair a crown of gold. She was beautiful.
“I don’t know. I found her.”
“I don’t believe you,” Jax snapped. “You took her, like you took all the rest of us.”
“No, I’m telling you the truth.” Hook walked around the pod, slowly explaining as he went. “We found her washed up on our shore seven years ago. She’s been in this perpetual dreaming state ever since. This machine”—he patted the pod—“is the only thing keeping her alive. At first, we didn’t understand what was happening when these monsters started appearing, but it didn’t take us long to make the connection and learn to harness them. Of course, what do you do when you have an unlimited supply of monsters? Use them as video game fodder. As you can see, our soft launch has been an instant success. We’ve made millions in the last few hours alone. Just wait until we go wide. There will be no stopping us.” Hook walked around the pod.
A lump formed in his throat. “How do you not know who she is?”
“It was unlikely she was one of you,” Hook said with a shrug. “She didn’t have a number tattooed on her neck like the rest of you experiments. Normally we might have tried to match her up to one of the numbered experiments in our records, but of course”—he turned, looking at Jax point-blank, his features darkening with his recollection— “our records were destroyed that night.”
Hook moved to stand behind Jax. He leaned over and whispered, “Do you want to see how it’s done?”
“How what’s done?” Jax asked.
“Why, the morphlings of course,” he said, sounding giddy.
“Sir,” the technician interrupted. “We have another order for a morphling.”
“Perfect timing! Any particular target?” Hook asked.
“Yes, someone is sending it after Pilot.”
Hook chuckled, shooing away the technician and then took his place. Leaning into a small mic, he whispered an inaudible command and the girl inside the pod stirred. An image appeared on the screen, flickering black-and-white snow, and every few seconds the image appeared and disappeared.
“Watch.” Hook pointed as the stats changed and a dark mass appeared in the glass pod on the ceiling, starting out as purple shadowy mass that began to solidify into something more corporeal.
“It’s a morphling,” Jax breathed out. He’d suspected this is how they were made, but to see it in person was a different matter.
Hook stepped back and let Jax observe Alice in the pod. Jax touched the glass. The girl stirred, but her eyes never opened. She knew he was near her.
“My dreamer,” he whispered. “What I wouldn’t give to know your real name.”
She stirred again as if trying to wake up to answer. Her finger on her right hand spasmed, and he watched in awe as it twitched again, voluntarily.
“She’s waking up!” Jax said excitedly.
“We can’t have that, now can we?” Hook growled, and Jax heard the audible click of the slide on a semiautomatic pistol.
He turned and looked into the barrel. Hook motioned for him to move away from the pod.
With the gun aimed at Jax, Hook spoke quietly into the mic, but Jax only made out a couple words.
All dead.
She stirred and an influx of morphlings began to materialize in the glass orbs above. As soon as one was formed and its pod filled, a conveyer belt took it away to release it into the streets above. He could only assume the target was the boys. One after another, like an assembly line, they were created and sent out into the dome.
His heart lurched his mouth went dry as he imagined young Tootles, Michael, and the others trying to fight off the army without him or Peter to lead them.
“No!” Jax snapped. “Don’t do this. You just said that they were making you money.”
“Relax, that’s why I have my Dusters. We got what we needed from your group of boys. Besides, my Dusters are loyal they follow directions. Unlike you.”
Jax had tried to move closer to the pod, his hand reaching for a switch, hoping to turn it off.
The gun rose toward his head and he froze, swallowing nervously.
“She needs to stay asleep,” Hook warned. “I’m not stupid—I know you’ve tried this with her before. I saw the irregularities in her stats that kept popping up late at night. I watched the video footage of you sneaking in the lab. I put two and two together, figured out that Candace was lying to me. Well, she always had a soft spot for you and Peter, but she’s paid for her treason. And so will you.”
Alice’s eyes opened in the pod, and her hand hit the glass with a thud, startling Hook.
Hook’s eyes widened as he watched Alice coming to life in the Pod.
Jax took advantage of the distraction and lunged for the gun, trying to wrestle it from Hook’s hands. Jax knocked Hook into the pod, and pulled the gun down.
They fought, in desperation, both clawing at the trigger and it went off with a bang.
Hook stumbled back, his hands clenching his stomach as blood gushed between his fingers.
“Well played.” Hook grinned, blood coating his teeth. “Well played.” He fell to the ground and his breath escaped his lips as he died.
Jax dropped the gun and fell to his knees, shock running through him. The technician ran out of the room as soon as the gun went off, and now he was on his own.
He looked at Hook’s still form, and waited for the feelings of grief or guilt to follow. It never came. “It’s over,” Jax said calmly. “You will never hurt another person again.”
He looked up at Alice, who had dropped off to sleep again, her eyes closed as she floated listlessly.
Had he imagined her intervention? He swore she helped him, but she continued to float in the fluid, her nightmares materializing and sent out to hunt his friends.
Jax moved to the technicians seat and grabbed the mic. “Stop,” Jax said and waited for the dreams to stop appearing on the screen.
“No more morphlings,” he commanded, but he didn’t receive any response from her. Another glass pod filled with smoke and shadow and formed into a long slithering snake with wings. He moved over to stand in front of Alice’s pod, eyeing the morphling forming in horror. It wasn’t working. The snake monster was lifted up into the floor above, and another empty glass orb replaced it.
Snakes? Why snakes? Tootles hated snakes. Jax slammed his fist against the glass and yelled, trying to wake her up. “Stop, please stop,” Jax cried out, pressing his forehead to the glass. “Please, I need to save them.”
Tears fell down his cheeks as he came to t
erms with what he would have to do. To save his friends, he would have to kill Alice. Kill his true love.
Chapter 41
Tootles screamed in terror and ran as a snake morphling lunged for him. The separated groups of lost boys and girls and fought their way back to the main group. The girls were doing their best with makeshift weapons to help protect the injured. Those that couldn’t fight sought shelter in a circle of the stronger fighters. Both Dittos, already in battle, tried to fight their way to Tootles’ aid, but their hands were full. Tootles tried to teleport but kept flickering in and out. He had not yet regained enough strength.
“Tootles!” the Dittos cried out, realizing they were too far away, both of them locked in combat with morphlings. With a mighty howl of desperation and pain, Ditto forced his body to replicate a second time.
Two more Dittos appeared next to the other two.
“I’m coming, Tootles,” four mouths spoke at once as the third Ditto doppelganger ran to snatch up Tootles and the fourth picked up a gun and shot the morphling in the mouth, drawing it away, but the bullets didn’t do anything more than bounce off and annoy the snake. It turned and lunged.
“Ditto!” Tootles cried out when the snake struck, catching the fourth Ditto around his middle.
All Dittos froze up, their four shapes flickering in and out before being pulled back into one very limp and still body, collapsing as one unit to the ground.
“DITTO!” Tootles screamed.
“They’re just not stopping,” Leroy yelled, catching a stray morphling by the jaws, and with a quick snap, he broke the jaw of the monster and it died, turning to ash.
Wu Zan pulled down his visor and looked at all of the purple dots that were racing toward them. “This isn’t good.”
The team gathered in a circle facing outwards, preparing for the onslaught.
The morphlings rushed in all at once. Wu Zan became a blur of motion as he raced into the oncoming mob of morphlings. Knife in hand, he slashed and stabbed and destroyed a morphling in seconds, but his burst of speed was short-lived, and he doubled over, winded.
