"Better much better than one!" wailed Reacher, and the band rocked hard and loud and wild enough that they were perfectly poised on the brink between divinity and completely falling apart.
The audience went crazy. Every last person in the monstrous concert hall leaped up at once, screaming and dancing and waving.
And Reacher himself felt a rush of triumph and joy unlike any he'd ever known before. Like Impulse Devilcare in Singularity City, he'd finally defeated the forces that had held him back for so long. He'd silenced the voices of Daddy Naysayer and everyone else who'd called him a failure; he'd crushed the fear underneath a mountain of fresh confidence built on the love and faith of his mother, his true father, and the audience at Dusty's Wigwam in the 1940s.
Scrier/Eurydice had run him through the Gauntlet of Realities, and he'd come out the other side a better person, no longer so afraid of failure that he'd continue to spend his life hiding from the world.
Pumping his arms in the air, he grinned at the crowd, basking in their adulation, letting it permeate every cell in his body, every beat of his heart, soaking in so deep that he would never be without it.
Then, out of nowhere, someone punched him in the face.
As he plunged back and down, he saw that the concert hall and band and stage were gone. Above him, the sky between the red tentacles of the trees was orange again.
Luckily, he was also back in his shape-shifting Johnny Without body. Instead of hitting the ground hard and hurting something, he passed through it, leaving only his face sticking up from the surface.
Wicked's evil twin, General Deathcrave, towered over him, eyes bulging with murderous rage from the sockets of his skull-shaped helmet. "No more running. It's the end of the road for you!"
With that, he bent down and rammed a fist into the ground below Reacher's face. Reacher felt fingers like iron ingots close around his throat, and then he was being hauled up out of the dirt.
"Look, worm!" Deathcrave hoisted him into the air and shook him by the throat. "You have a visitor!"
The Secret King walked toward them with arms outstretched. The hood of his rough brown cloak was down, giving Reacher full view of his uncanny likeness to Youforia's manager, Sty.
"Do not look at him!" Deathcrave shook Reacher violently. "No mortal is fit to gaze upon his magnificence!"
"That's all right," the Secret King said with a friendly chuckle. "Let him look. He'll be dead soon enough."
It was then that Reacher remembered what he'd heard the Secret King say earlier, on the road where he'd spied on him: Find Without and bring him to me. I know a way to destroy him.
A chill raced through his entire body, making him shiver uncontrollably from head to toe.
"And here comes someone who'll be glad to see him go." The King clapped his hands.
Three figures emerged from the woods—two crimson knights and a man with a flaming head.
"Lord Fireskull!" shouted the King. "You're just in time!" He pulled a gold-plated cylinder from a loop on his belt and twirled it in his hand. "I'm about to kill your greatest enemy."
THE Secret King looked just like Idea's greatness coach, Scholar, so it was strange watching him kill Johnny Without. As Idea gaped, the King twisted one end of the gold cylinder like the tip of a kaleidoscope. There was a sound like a rushing wind, and Johnny's head distended, stretching out to a point that was sucked toward the mouth of the device.
"Hey, Fireskull. Come on over and see what a little black magic can do!" The King gestured for Idea to join him. "Or should I say, a little black hole magic."
At first, all Idea wanted to do was get away from the brown-robed maniac who was sucking Johnny Without into the gold-plated cylinder. He had a hunch that if he stuck around, he might be the instrument's next target.
Just as he made up his mind to try to run for it, however, someone changed that decision.
A flutter of motion in the sky above the clearing caught his eye, and he looked up. Scrier/Eunice floated over Deathcrave, Johnny, and the Secret King, hanging upside down and pointing an index finger at them. She turned slowly on the vertical axis of her body, rotating on the point of her fingertip.
Her mouth moved, and at first, Idea didn't hear anything. Then a sound of whispering wind hissed past his ear, carrying her words. "Johnny is Reacher. Now is the time."
Idea thought he was the only one who'd heard her words, because no one else reacted. He also thought he understood the full meaning of what she'd said.
Just as his mind inhabited the body of Fireskull, Reacher must be inhabiting Johnny Without. This must be the time that Eurydice had foretold, the time when Idea and Reacher would have to work together to change their lives.
Or just plain save them. With each passing second, Johnny's head was stretching out to a finer point and being sucked closer to the mouth of the black-hole gun.
The Secret King chuckled. "Don't be shy, Fireskull. Come and give me a hand over here."
Idea moved to stand at the King's side.
"Reach up here, will you?" The King poked his chin toward the cylinder that he gripped with both hands.
Heart pounding, Idea reached for the weapon. Once he took hold of it, he could release Johnny from its power and turn it against the Secret King and Deathcrave. But the King switched gears on him. "On second thought"—he moved the gun out of reach—"do you know what I really need you to do?"
"What?"
The Secret King pushed his face to within a few inches of Idea's. "Take that sword of yours and hack Johnny up into smaller pieces that'll fit better through the black hole."
EVEN though Reacher's eyes were hyperextended with the rest of his head, making everything look like stretched-out reflections in a fun-house mirror, he could still see Fireskull draw the sword from his scabbard.
Over the roaring sound that had filled his ears since the Secret King had first turned the black-hole gun on him, he'd heard the King tell Fireskull to chop him up. Any other time, Reacher would have been certain that Johnny Without's body could survive such a hack job by instinctively changing shape.
This time, though, he wasn't so sure. The gun seemed to diminish his powers, making him vulnerable.
Fireskull raised the sword and took a step toward him. Reacher wondered if his mind would die when the body he inhabited in the novel was killed.
In desperation, he made an effort to get control of his shape-shifting abilities. He could hardly concentrate, what with the roaring wind and his head being pulled like taffy.
Just as he gave up, he felt a diamond-hard spike erupt from the center of his left palm. Immediately, he closed his fingers around the spike to hide it from his captors.
Fireskull stepped closer, and Reacher tensed. As soon as he was close enough, but before he could swing the blade, Reacher would pump the spike into the middle of his chest. There was no time for mercy; he knew in his heart that he had to kill or be killed.
Fireskull took another step closer. Reacher pulled back his arm.
Then, suddenly, he heard a woman's voice through the roaring wind in his ears. "Fireskull is Idea. Now is the time."
A flicker of movement in the sky above the sword caught Reacher's attention. Scrier/Eurydice hovered there, spinning slowly, feet pointing at the ground.
"Work with him," said her voice in his ear. "He will not harm you."
Scrier/Eurydice had not yet steered him wrong, but it wasn't easy to believe her with Fireskull standing before him, about to swing a sword in his direction. Reacher's survival instinct urged him to drive the spike into Fireskull before another second could pass.
If only he could somehow prove what she had just told him. If only he could know for a fact that Fireskull was really Idea Deity in disguise.
Suddenly, it came to him. He thought of a sure-fire way to prove who was in charge of that flame-shrouded body.
Just as Fireskull looked ready to swing the sword, Reacher opened his mouth.
And he sang.
I
DEA was about to attack the Secret King with the sword when Johnny Without started to sing. In that moment, any doubt he still had that Reacher was inside Johnny exploded into a billion pieces.
Idea knew the song by heart. After all, he was the one who'd written it and posted the lyrics online.
It was "Mr. In-Betweener."
"Where do I go when you turn the page?" sang Reacher, his constantly changing Johnny Without voice distorted by the effects of the black-hole gun. "Am I alive when I'm not on the stage?"
The Secret King laughed. "Singing at death's door, eh? Better make it quick!"
"When the puppeteer lets go of my strings, will I simply collapse in the wings?" Reacher continued. "And will anyone care what I feel like—"
"When I'm in-between!" Idea brought the sword down hard on the black-hole gun.
The Secret King let go of the gun as the sword crashed through it. The two halves of the golden cylinder tumbled to the ground, spilling silvery glitter and shards of glass. A dark swirl the size of an apple also spit out and leaped upward ... the very black hole that had powered the weapon.
As the gun let go of him, Reacher's head snapped back to normal, flinging him forward into Idea. The spike in the palm of his hand came within inches of Idea's heart as he was knocked down, missing him by pure luck and stabbing the ground instead.
Expecting an immediate attack, Idea shoved Reacher aside as soon as the two of them hit the dirt. It quickly became obvious, however, that the attack wasn't coming ... at least, not in the way he'd expected.
As Idea gazed up, he saw that both Deathcrave's and the Secret King's backs were turned and they were looking at the sky. Above them, blond-haired Scrier/Eunice and black-haired Scrier/Eurydice tumbled willy-nilly around the dark swirl that had emerged from the ruined black-hole gun.
"ADMIT it," the Secret King said to the Scriers as they orbited the misty black swirl in the sky. "I surprised the heck out of you just now, didn't I?"
Scrier/Eunice and Scrier/Eurydice silently wheeled around the swirl, their gowns hopelessly twisted and tangled about their spinning bodies.
"I wanted the black-hole gun to break. I wanted the black hole to be released." He snapped his fingers, and the Scriers spun faster. "It was all about capturing you."
Idea and Reacher—still in the bodies of Fireskull and Johnny—cast confused looks at each other, then got up off the ground. Reacher was still a little shaky from having his head stretched, and Idea steadied him with a hand on his arm.
"How long has it been, my dear?" said the Secret King.
The Scriers glared at him as they tumbled past. "Layermaster Telltale Halcyon," Scrier/Eunice said evenly.
"It has not been long enough," Scrier/Eurydice added.
Idea frowned up at the Scriers. "You know him?"
"Yes," said Scrier/Eunice. "We are of the same noble order."
"The Way of the Chain." Scrier/Eurydice smiled. "Pass-ers between all the worlds of the slipstream. Travelers of the infinitely expanding Chain of Realities—times, dreams, nightmares, and stories. Protectors and guides of those caught in the leaks and collisions between them."
"Like you and Reacher," explained Scrier/Eunice. "One boy snapped in two by a break in the Chain, reaching out through your band, Youforia, to find the other half you'd lost."
"Because of him." Scrier/Eurydice pointed a finger at the King. "The greatest among us, the Layermaster himself. He turned his back on the precepts of the Way, broke apart a billion billion realities and used the pieces to build his own Moment."
"The greatest Moment there ever was or ever could be!" The King pumped his fists in the air triumphantly. "A never-ending Moment of perfect paradise mingling the greatest wonders of every reality, era, dream, and story that ever existed!"
"You should not have built it," hissed Scrier/Eunice. "It was not worth the cost of shattering so many worlds."
"What's done is done." The King shrugged. "But you couldn't leave well enough alone. You had to find a way to ruin it. So you split yourself in two and latched on to these broken boys who could reach between worlds." He shot a glare at Idea and Reacher. "You drove them into a book with the power to undo my greatest achievement."
"Is that true?" asked Reacher, looking up at the two women swirling above them. "Is that why we're here?"
"It is." Scrier/Eurydice nodded. "Fireskull's Revenant was designed as a fail-safe measure to ensure the survival of the Chain in the event of a catastrophe. It was written by a member of our order under the pen name Milt Ifthen."
"Fireskull's Revenant is an omniversal text," continued Scrier/Eunice. "A book existing in exactly the same form in every reality. Its unique resonance across all worlds allowed it to survive the Shattering of Realities unchanged—and to become the seed of their restoration. It carries an echo of the imprint of the original Chain."
"This echo will be of use to the two of you," said Scrier/Eurydice. "Now that you are ready to handle it."
Suddenly, General Deathcrave let loose a roar. "How much longer must we listen to these two? Can't we kill them any faster?"
The Secret King laughed and patted Deathcrave's shoulder. "The end will come soon enough, General. Let's savor their last pathetic bleatings. I believe we should stop and smell the roses whenever possible."
Idea ignored the King and General and stayed focused on the Scriers turning above them. "But why us?" he said. "What about your fellow members of the Way of the Chain?"
"All dead." Scrier/Eunice looked grim. "Killed in the Shattering. Except my sister and me, and Milt Ifthen." She glanced at Layermaster Halcyon, who smirked back at her, and sighed. "I needed to find others who could cross between worlds. The two of you, through your link, had the beginnings of such power. For that, you were unique in all the Chain."
"You were already reaching into each other's worlds without knowing it," continued Scrier/Eurydice. "Idea, you sensed Reacher's existence and glimpsed Youforia's career. You unconsciously pushed your online posts into Reacher's world, making the band's secrets public."
Scrier/Eunice pointed at Reacher. "You, on the other hand, accessed details of Idea's life and incorporated them into Singularity City. The character Impulse Devilcare was based on Idea."
Scrier/Eurydice brought her hands together, interlacing the fingers. "We hoped to awaken the power you both possessed to its fullest potential by uniting you, and helping resolve your conflicts."
"Our first attempt to push you together failed, though." Scrier/Eunice shook her head. "You traded places instead. Idea, you ended up in Reacher's world, facing his stepfather, brother, and cousin. Reacher, you traveled to Idea's world and encountered his parents."
"But we straightened things out at Seconds," explained Scrier/Eurydice. "We shifted you both into Fireskull's Revenant, then sent you through the Gauntlet of Realities to prepare you for the work ahead."
Idea shook his head, trying to process the information. "So the jumps between times and places weren't literary devices? I'm not living in a book—other than Fireskull's Revenant, I mean?"
"That is correct," said Scrier/Eunice.
Idea frowned. "But what about the author whose office I visited? He wrote things about me, and then they happened."
"That was Milt Ifthen." Scrier/Eunice nodded. "Guiding you with his gift for weaving fiction that shapes reality."
"But I thought he was malevolent," said Idea. "Evil. Trying to control me."
"He was only ever benevolent," said Scrier/Eunice. "He guided your life for the greater good of the Chain."
Before anyone could say another word, Layermaster Halcyon spun and knocked Idea to the ground. Reacher reacted fast and jumped Halcyon, only to be thrown down on top of Idea like a sack of potatoes.
Halcyon laughed and kicked them both for good measure. "Enough questions!" He gave each of them one more solid kick, then turned away. "Keep these two out of my way, will you, Deathcrave? Break what you like, but leave the killing to me."
"Yes, Majesty."<
br />
"Now, where were we—" Halcyon fell silent as soon as he looked up at the Scriers.
Deathcrave looked skyward, too, giving Idea and Reacher a chance to untangle themselves. As they helped each other up from the ground, they also looked up and saw that the scene in the sky had changed.
Scrier/Eunice and Scrier/Eurydice no longer tumbled chaotically around the swirling black hole. They spun around it with hands joined and bodies flattened, turning rhythmically like the blades of a propeller.
The longer Idea watched them, however, the more clearly he saw that they weren't holding hands at all. Their hands had actually merged, becoming undifferentiated knobs of flesh and bone.
Scrier/Eunice and Scrier/Eurydice were melting together.
"NOT again!" Halcyon's voice filled with rage as he gaped up at the joined Scriers.
"What are they doing?" Deathcrave sounded mystified.
"Uniting," said Scrier/Eunice.
"Reuniting," Scrier/Eurydice corrected. "We are the halves of a whole."
"As are you, Idea and Reacher." Scrier/Eunice smiled down as she spun past them.
"You were never meant to stand alone," said Scrier/ Eurydice.
As Reacher gazed up at the turning women, he saw that their arms were now fused together at the elbows. In a matter of moments, if the combining didn't slow down, their heads would be touching.
"Together, we will not be defeated," Scrier/Eurydice proclaimed.
"Neither will you, Idea and Reacher," said Scrier/ Eunice. "United, you will possess the power to undo the Shattering, erase the Moment, and restore the Chain of Realities. Layermaster Halcyon cannot stand against you."
"Enough is enough!" Halcyon drew a glowing sword from a scabbard that hung at his hip. "Deathcrave, I'll separate the Siamese twins up there while you butcher their idiot pets."
"Yes, Majesty." Deathcrave drew his own enormous broadsword and moved toward Idea and Reacher.
"Idea and Reacher," said Scrier/Eunice. Her head and Scrier/Eurydice's were already fused together up to the eyes. "You must unite!"
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