by Jason Segel
The door of the car is still open as we crash back out through the front of the building, skid across some grass and race down the driveway and onto Dandelion Drive. Busara runs every red light on the way out of Brockenhurst. I manage to get the door closed, but no one says a word until we’re on I-95. I don’t even know if we’re heading north or south.
“So?” Busara finally asks.
I could spend the next three hours going through everything, but it would all boil down to two sentences. “Milo’s dead,” I tell her. “But your dad isn’t.”
Busara gasps and the car swerves across the highway. “What?”
“We saw him in Otherworld. He’s trapped in the ice inside Magna’s cave,” Kat says.
“And his body?”
“It must be at the facility,” I say.
“The one we just left?” Busara wails.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I promise we’ll go back for him. And Gorog. And all the rest of them too.”
“They won’t be there when we do,” Busara says. “The Company will have that place emptied out before sunrise.”
“And they’ll be looking for us everywhere,” Kat adds.
“We don’t have any money and we can’t use credit cards,” Busara points out. “And none of us can go home.”
But I know what to do.
“I think it’s time to pay a visit to my friend Elvis,” I tell them.
There’s only so far you can run before you have no choice but to stop.
We made it to Texas, but I don’t even know the name of the town we’re in—or if there’s even a town around us. The wasteland we drove through could have been part of Otherworld. The sign that drew us here was the first we’d seen in a hundred miles. COLTON COURT, it said, and there was a picture of a gun next to the name.
Technically this is the first night I’ve ever shared a bed with Kat. There’s little chance of anything happening with Busara asleep in the bed on the other side of the motel room. I’m sure we’ll all wake up covered with bedbug bites, but we can’t afford anything better, and I don’t think any of us cares.
I’m so tired I’m delirious, but I still can’t seem to sleep. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, flipping through television channels. Most are just static, but every so often I come across one with a signal. Right now I’m watching the grainy image of a slick-looking salesman type who’s speaking directly to the camera. The volume is down low enough so that I don’t bother the others, but I wonder what he’s selling. I have to lean forward and strain to make out his words.
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every thing that creeps on the earth.’ ”
I flip to the next channel. Nothing. The next. Nothing. The next. Nothing. I just keep going like some kind of lab rat that’s been trained to push a button. And then finally the reward—the nightly news presented by some Podunk Texas station. Right above the anchor’s shoulder is a photo of Milo Yolkin. My heart picks up speed. The word is out. I bump up the volume. “…has announced he will be taking a sabbatical from the Company for health-related reasons. The Company issued a press release earlier this evening, and while it did not disclose the nature of Yolkin’s medical problems, it did indicate that the twenty-nine-year-old CEO’s leave of absence could stall the eagerly anticipated wide release of the Company’s popular Otherworld game. In other news…”
“What the hell?” It’s Kat.
“You’re up?”
I come around to her side of the bed. She looks so beautiful that I have to lean over to kiss her. She kisses me back for a moment, but then her eyes seem focused behind me. She pulls back. “Look,” she whispers.
We both glance over at Busara’s bed. She has the covers pulled up over her head. The human-shaped lump beneath the blanket seems oddly still. I watch for signs of breathing but see none. I suddenly fear the worst—that her damaged heart may finally have failed her. I’m about to get up and check for a pulse when I see a faint flash from Busara’s bed. It’s almost imperceptible. I blink hard, trying to focus. There’s the slightest movement of her covers. Busara is breathing.
JASON SEGEL is an actor, a writer, and an author. Segel wrote and starred in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and cowrote Disney’s The Muppets, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Segel’s other film credits include The End of the Tour; I Love You, Man; Jeff, Who Lives at Home; Knocked Up; and The Five-Year Engagement. On television, Segel starred in How I Met Your Mother as well as Freaks and Geeks. He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Nightmares! series—Nightmares!; Nightmares! The Sleepwalker Tonic; Nightmares! The Lost Lullaby; and Everything You Need to Know About Nightmares! and How to Defeat Them. Otherworld is his first novel for young adults.
KIRSTEN MILLER lives and writes in New York City. She is the author of the acclaimed Kiki Strike books, the New York Times bestseller The Eternal Ones, and How to Lead a Life of Crime. Kirsten is the coauthor of the Nightmares! series with Jason Segel. Otherworld is the fifth novel she and Segel have written together. You can visit her at kirstenmillerbooks.com or follow @bankstirregular on Twitter.
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