by Dustin Brady
Uh-oh.
This shark wasn’t a block blob anymore. It had real skin, real eyes, and super-real teeth. It also didn’t look like the type of creature that could get killed by a few bubbles in the face.
“Swim faster!” Charlie screamed.
Eric did an underwater flip over the shark. But the shark wasn’t worried about Eric. It had its eyes on Charlie and me.
“Stick together,” Charlie whispered as we swam closer. “Stick together, stick together, stick together … ” He held me underneath his body until we were just a foot from the shark. The shark lunged. “SPLIT!” Charlie pushed me underneath the shark, while he swam over it.
“GO, GO, GO!”
We caught up to Eric, and Charlie led us to another crack in the rock wall. Eric squeezed in, then Charlie followed. By now, my lungs were burning. This was the longest I’d ever held my breath. I swam for the crack and sneaked a peek behind me just in time to see the shark lunge. I used the last of my energy (and the last of my oxygen) to make a final kick for the crack. The shark took one of my flippers, but I slipped through before he could get me.
As the current sucked me through the tubes, I tried to think of anything besides the fire in my lungs. Fire … Fire … Fire … Marshmallows! I could think about marshmallows! You make marshmallows over a fire. I’m a really good marshmallow chef. Eric always turns his into a flaming torch, but mine come out golden-brown every time. I should charge money for my marshmallows. Maybe open a grilled-marshmallow restaurant. Call it Marshy Mallow’s. There could be a big marshmallow mascot named Marshy walking around performing magic and giving marshmallow-shaped balloons to kids. That would be nice.
The more I thought about my award-winning restaurant, the groggier and loopier I got. The world started turning black. Suddenly, everything snapped into focus again when I saw a fork in the tunnel coming up. I could choose to go up or down. Up or down, up or down? I decided on up. Up is where dry land is.
But just as I started angling my body upward to take the top tube, I noticed something coming toward me from the bottom tube. Marshmallows. Hmm. Weird that I’d just been thinking about marshmallows, and here they were. Maybe I could eat one.
Wait! Those weren’t marshmallows at all! They were air bubbles. Probably air bubbles from my two friends with unlimited oxygen. I needed to change course. Fast. With half my body already in the top tube, I swung my legs into the bottom tube. For a second, I stayed like that—the current pinning me against the divide. Then, after the longest second of my life, I slipped down into the bottom tube.
I relaxed again. As I slid along the tube, the burning in my lungs went away. My chest just felt heavy. Everything faded again. I was vaguely aware of my body shooting out of the tube into another underwater chamber. I think something grabbed my ankle. Finally, everything went black for good.
Chapter 13
The Safe
When I finally reopened my eyes, I saw that I was now lying on the ground. The world had gone from blue to orange. I tried breathing. Success! Wait, had I actually made it back to the real world? I quickly raised my hands to my face, then sighed. Oven mitts.
“He’s not dead! He’s not dead!” Eric and Charlie high-fived oven mitts over my body.
“What happened?” I asked as I sat up.
“It was all Charlie!” Eric exclaimed. “You were pretty much toast, but he put his snorkel into your mouth and gave you air until we finished the level!”
“But how did you … ” I looked back down at my oven mitts. “Why am I a video game character again?”
Eric shrugged. “As soon as we got to this level, you changed back.”
Charlie explained further. “I think the bad guys probably found the water-level computer and started messing with the code.”
I looked around to see that we were inside another cave, but this one had fire everywhere. “So are we just going to keep running from level to level until they kill us for good?”
“No,” Charlie said. “For one thing, there aren’t many levels left. This is the second-to-last one. But more importantly, I just realized my dad told us where we can finally be safe.”
“Yeah, it was that level where Jesse almost drowned,” Eric asked.
“No. The safe.”
“He never said anything about a safe,” Eric said.
“He did. Remember when he told us to walk through the door? He said we could get to ‘a safe’? The way he said it made it sound like he’d gotten interrupted, but I just realized that he was telling us to go inside the safe at the end of this level.”
“Can you tell us a little more about this safe?” I asked.
“The first time we played this level, my dad showed me a secret passage he’d found. It’s so secret that he’d never seen another person talk about it. He didn’t even think the game developers knew about it. Anyways, if you jump at just the right spot and then quickly crouch-walk, you can pass through a spot in the wall and then fall into a huge pit of prizes. The only problem is you can’t get back out. That’s why we called it, ‘the safe.’”
“That sounds bad,” Eric said.
“It is if you’re trying to beat the game. But not if you’re trying to stay safe.”
“We’re not doing that,” I said.
“What?” Charlie spun around.
I stood up. “Our goal is to get out of the game. We’re not getting trapped in some room when the end of the game is right there.”
“We’re not trapped if my dad has a plan. If he thinks that’s the best place for us, then that’s where we need to be.”
“Charlie, listen. Your dad is a super nice guy. But so far, everything he’s done to keep us safe has backfired big time. Maybe he just keeps putting us in video games because it’s all he knows. Maybe there’s a better way.”
Charlie got in my face. His voice was a little shaky. “My dad knows more than all three of us combined will ever know. Don’t talk about him like that. Ever. You don’t understand what he’s going through right now.”
I tried to use my calming voice. “And you don’t understand what we’ve been through. This is my fourth video game. I’ve nearly been drowned, crushed, and sliced to death, all thanks to your dad. I’m just tired of it. Maybe it’s time … ”
BUM-BUM.
Charlie interrupted my speech by pushing me. The shove caught me by surprise, and I stumbled backward onto a red square. As soon as I touched the square, a fireball shot from the ground and killed me.
When I reappeared, I started marching toward Charlie with my finger pointed at him. “You want to play like that?!” Charlie looked scared. Good.
“Hey, hey. Calm down.” Eric started jogging toward me.
“ERIC, STOP!” Charlie yelled.
BUM-BUM.
Too late. Eric got vaporized by a dive-bombing, fire-breathing bat. He reappeared next to me.
“STOP!” Charlie shouted in panic. “DON’T MOVE!” He looked distraught. “You only get three lives in this game. You both have used two now.”
“Uh, what happens when you use all three lives?” Eric asked.
“You—you go back to the beginning of the game.”
“Which doesn’t exist anymore,” I finished.
All three of us stood in silence for a few seconds. Charlie looked like he was going to cry. “I’m so sorry for doing that,” he finally said. “It’s just—I know my dad is doing everything he can to help us right now, ya know?”
“I know.”
“He trusted me, and then I let him down by not rescuing my family.”
“You didn’t let him down, Charlie.”
“And I need him to know that he can count on me, and I’ll be there for him, and—and I love him.”
Charlie’s words were coming out in a stream now, and tiny block tears fell down h
is face. “You know when the snake said, ‘Love you lots, kiddo’? I hadn’t heard my dad say that for a long time. He’d always say it after I told him I loved him, and the snake saying it made me realize how long it’d been since I said ‘I love you’ to my dad. I just want to tell him that again.”
“Charlie. Look at me.”
Charlie looked up.
“Your dad knows you love him, OK? He knows he can count on you, too. Not only that, but we know we can count on you. You’re gonna keep us safe through this level, and we’re gonna see your dad soon.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve played this level.”
“You can do it. We trust you.”
Charlie finally nodded. “OK. Follow me.”
It took us nearly an hour to get through the level. Not only were there fire-breathing bats and lava floor tiles to deal with, but we also had to dodge raining fireballs, disappearing flame ghosts, and, at one point, a tidal wave of boiling magma. Sometimes, Charlie would stand in place with his eyes closed for minutes on end, trying to remember the next part. Eric and I always waited patiently and followed his instructions exactly.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the end. Then Eric remembered something. “Wait, what are we going to do about the safe?”
Chapter 14
Spiky Dungeon
Charlie lost the vote two to one. Eric sided with me—not so much because he wanted to get out of the game, but mostly because he wanted to see the last boss. Charlie shook his head. “I don’t feel good about this, but I can’t make you guys do something you don’t want to do.”
“Thanks for going along with this,” I said. “And don’t worry, it’s gonna be OK.”
I walked through the portal into the next level and instantly started to worry. This might not be OK. We were in a spiky-dungeon-themed level that played scary music. The level featured whirring saw blades, spike-covered wrecking balls, and an army of sword-wielding skeletons—and that was just what I could see in front of me. But even scarier than those things were the glitches. The spinning blade, for example, was moving up and down. At the bottom of its path, it looked like a blocky, video game circle. But about halfway up, it wobbled and glitched until it turned into a real whirring blade with hundreds of super-sharp teeth. I also noticed that blocks from the ground kept disappearing, reappearing and rearranging themselves into different patterns.
Charlie gulped. “Same thing as last time, guys. Follow me.”
We timed our run past the saw blades, then rolled under the wrecking ball. When we got to the skeleton army, Eric pointed toward the ceiling. “How do we get that?” I looked up. It was an invincibility orb.
“Watch,” Charlie said. He jumped onto the head of the first skeleton, then launched himself onto the second skeleton, which gave him the boost he needed to make it to the third skeleton. By the third skeleton, he’d built up so much speed and power that he was able to reach the invincibility orb. He grabbed it, ran back to us, and presented it to Eric.
“Awesome!” Eric said as he prepared to push it into his chest. “You guys climb on my back, and I’ll use this to run through the level!”
“No way,” I said. “Bad things happen when we get in a hurry. Just hold onto it for now, and we’ll use it in an emergency. Got it?”
“Hmf.”
Unfortunately, the whole level was an emergency. Two different times, a chunk of spikes fell from the ceiling without warning. Another time, ten spinning blades appeared overhead and crashed to the ground all at once. We were always able to squeak through without using the invincibility, but our nerves were starting to fray.
And then there was the glitching. Every once in a while, we’d start feeling confident about our chances of making it through the dungeon alive. Then the ground would shake, the music would get all wobbly, and something weird would happen. One time, the level glitched while I was jumping over a pit of spikes, and the right side of my body turned real for a second. The pit wasn’t long at all, but since my real body couldn’t jump nearly as far as my video game body, I almost didn’t make it. I had to grab the edge and pull myself up.
“How much farther?” I asked Charlie after the pit glitch.
“You’re almost there,” another voice said.
We all looked up at once to see Mr. Gregory waving to us from a platform near the ceiling. He had a real body and seemed to be glowing. From our perspective on the ground, he almost looked like an angel.
“Dad?!” Charlie yelled.
“Come up here quick, and I’ll get you out of the game,” Mr. Gregory said.
“Dad, I need to know if it’s really you,” Charlie said.
“Hurry, there’s not much time,” Mr. Gregory replied.
Charlie took a step toward the platform, and I grabbed his arm. “What if it’s the RMG?”
“Then you’d better save my butt.” With that, Charlie shook free and ran to the platform. “Dad, I’m sorry for messing up before, and I love you, and … ”
“Wait, all three of you need to come up here!” Mr. Gregory said.
“I’m just making sure … ” Charlie made it three steps away from the platform before getting knocked off his feet by another earthquake. The level glitched again, and suddenly the platform underneath Mr. Gregory disappeared. As Mr. Gregory fell to the ground, his real body turned into its video game form. We gasped when he finally hit the ground.
Lying in front of us was a metal skeleton with glowing red eyes.
Chapter 15
Glitchquake
Eric and I immediately got to work saving Charlie’s butt. “The invincibility!” I yelled to Eric. “Now!”
Eric threw the glowing yellow ball to Charlie. Or rather, he tried to throw it to Charlie. His missing elbow turned the toss into more of a catapult—a catapult that flung the ball onto the ground two feet in front of him.
“You had no problem throwing Charlie’s entire body earlier!” I yelled.
“This is harder because it’s smaller!”
I huffed, picked up the invincibility orb, and tried throwing it with the same result.
While Eric and I struggled with the simple task of throwing a ball, Charlie had already scrambled onto a platform out of reach of the RMG. “Guys! Up here!”
By now, the RMG had started running toward Eric and me. Without panicking, Eric backed up, got a running start, and used my head as a springboard to jump up to the platform like he’d seen Charlie do. “Use the invincibility!” he yelled down to me.
I picked it up and was about to do just that when the RMG made an unexpected move. As soon as he got underneath Eric and Charlie’s platform, he shot his arm into the air, grabbed the platform, and grappled up. “He’s coming!” I shouted.
The RMG swung himself onto the platform just as Eric and Charlie jumped off. I joined them, and we ran through the level. It took all my concentration to follow Charlie’s lead as he slid under a spike that shinged out of the wall, dodged a surprise guillotine that sliced the ground in front of us, and jumped over a swordfish that leaped from a pit. (Why was there a swordfish inside a cave with no water? That is an excellent question that I did not get a chance to ask because I was too busy trying not to die.)
Just as we started putting distance between us and the RMG, the ground shook, and the level glitched again. We stopped to wait out the glitchquake like we had before, but this one was worse. It just kept going and going. The ground in front of us began to crumble. I tried scrambling backward, but the shaking toppled me on top of Charlie. We both struggled to stand while the ground quaked and cracked, but we couldn’t get our footing—it felt like trying to stand up on a trampoline when someone else is bouncing next to you. I dropped the invincibility orb and started crawling. The crumbling caught up to us, and just as the ground underneath my legs caved in, a hand yanked me away from the ed
ge. I looked up to see that Eric had saved us.
“Thank you,” I said when the shaking stopped.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Eric said, pointing to the enormous new pit in front of us.
“No, you can thank him,” another voice said. We all turned to see the RMG walking casually toward us. The glitchquake had caused his face to turn back to Mr. Gregory’s, while his body remained a gray video game robot skeleton. It was super-duper terrifying. “I appreciate him keeping you safe so I can finish the job myself.” The RMG’s arm shot out, and his claw hand grabbed me.
Just then, one of the surprise guillotines from before fell from the ceiling and chopped the RMG’s arm in half. The claw loosened its grip on me.
“Ha!” Eric laughed as he stepped forward. “Foiled again! Just when you think you got us … ”
Eric couldn’t finish his sentence because the RMG had shot out his other hand and grabbed Eric’s throat. “Stop. Talking.”
This was bad. This was very, very bad. I desperately searched for some way to rescue Eric, and that’s when I noticed it. The invincibility orb lying on the ground, just out of reach.
The RMG picked Eric off the ground just like he’d done in Charlie’s basement. “You have a big mouth. I can’t wait to shut it for good.”
I inched toward the yellow ball, slipped my oven mitt hand over it, and started pulling it back to my body. I’d almost reeled it all the way in when the RMG noticed.
“HEY!” Still holding Eric, he shot his arm out even farther and used it to scoop me in and pin me against his body.
“Please,” Charlie pleaded, walking toward the RMG. “Let them go.”
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” the RMG shook his head. “We had such a good thing going.”
