“—and Daddy Borrick is probably in the same boat. So now they’re racing—and pausing to detour and return us to Earth isn’t exactly viable, when Tyran needs this next key.”
“What is it your dad is after?” Heidi asked Borrick.
He hesitated. “I believe it may be—”
There was a groan from beside us. I whipped my head around, thinking that maybe Bub, who’d been silent for all this time, had stalked away to feast on the nasty pitfly larvae remaining beside Wembley’s evacuated bed.
But it was not.
It was Manny.
He was moving.
16
I rushed to Manny’s bedside, everything else forgotten.
He wasn’t shifting far—just a little stir—but it reminded me so strongly of a person rousing from sleep, in that middle stage where their dreams left but before true wakefulness came.
He opened his mouth, moaned again.
I gripped his wrist. “Manny?” I whispered.
His eyelids fluttered.
My heart skipped.
He could hear me. I was sure of it.
I gently shook his arm—the smallest little shake, in case the gravity that had thrown me sideways when I fell through had affected him too, and now riddled his body with bruises I couldn’t see.
He shifted again. Another soft moan, more of a breath really, escaped his lips.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “It’s me, Manny. It’s Meer.”
His eyelids flickered again. His eyebrows twitched downward, just a fraction, as if the light had brightened above me just marginally, and he were squinting against it.
“Is he awake?” Carson breathed.
We all huddled around the bed, me and Carson and Heidi. Borrick stood a little way back, as did Bub—I assume to give us ‘privacy’, in Bub’s case. Borrick likely felt awkward—and probably just a little worried about how Manny would react to seeing him here, when he woke.
If he woke.
No—he’d wake. He was halfway to it, I was sure. This movement—he was shaking off the sleep he’d been in. He was coming out of it, guided by my voice.
He was coming back to us.
“Manny,” I whispered, squeezing his arm again. I reached over, for his other hand, and took it in mine. He was cool still, but warmer than he’d been when we rescued him from the broken world, the wetness dried. Fiennes had removed his shirt, and the top of his chest was visible, plastic suckers stuck to it and monitoring his vitals.
His eyelids flickered again … he frowned, squinting against a bright light none of us could see …
And they opened.
My heart swelled. My eyes filled with tears, hot and burning, turning my vision into a blur.
“Meer?” Manny croaked.
Oh, how I loved hearing that voice. I choked back a sob at it—I’d never thought I’d hear it again.
“I’m here,” I said softly, fighting to keep back the happy sobs from my throat. “I’m here, Manny. You okay?”
Manny looked around blearily. He was weak; his movements were slow, incremental shifts. Gently, his head moved from side to side, taking in the room.
I held his arm, held his hand.
“Where am I?” he whispered.
His voice was hoarse.
“The Velocity,” I said, smearing the wetness out of my eyes, “Tyran Burnton’s ship. In the medical bay.”
He looked around slowly. His eyelids were heavy, weighing him down; it seemed to take almost all the energy he possessed to keep them up, and the rest of it to gradually take in the room.
How well was he seeing? I wondered if his vision were like my own just now, a blurred mess, although for different reasons. I wondered a lot of things, actually, distant thoughts that all burbled up at the same time as I held my brother, the brother I had believed I’d lost. Now that he was back, now that the fear of his never waking had been banished, a new set of worries came to the forefront. What if the fall through the portal had broken his spine? What if he’d smashed his head on the way down, and ended up with some form of incurable brain injury? He seemed coherent enough now—but he’d said all of four words, and however much I savored them all, this auditory manna, I could make no conclusions.
I needed Fiennes in here.
“Get the doctor,” I said, to someone behind me, no one in particular.
“I’ll do it,” Borrick murmured.
His footsteps clicked across the floor quickly, then down the corridor.
Manny’s survey of the room, or rather its ceiling—he wasn’t propped up, so his eyes simply roved where they could without him moving his head—he slowly inclined his head, in soft jerky motions.
He frowned dimly at the IV plugged into his arm.
“Medical bay?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “with a doctor. He’s going to make sure you’re right as rain again before long. I promise.”
I hadn’t meant to say that last thing—how could Fiennes, when there might be so much wrong with Manny? Broken worlds were made obscure via connection detectors like my compass for a reason. There was no telling the damage they caused, if not physically then mentally. Manny’s psyche might be broken. Fifty-one days in the ‘void’ might have left him a husk of his former self … and no matter how we tried, we might never recover him.
Stop it, Mira. Stop thinking like that. Let’s just see.
But now I’d found him, and now Manny was awake once more, I couldn’t just wait and see. For thirty-seven of these past fifty-one days, I had existed in a fog, where time crawled by and I was dragged along with it, to nowhere and nothing. The past fourteen had gone quicker—but always this time had been overshadowed by the loss of my brother, slowing it.
With Manny awake, time had practically stopped.
I needed to know, right now, what sort of state he was in—how he had fared—what he had been through, what lay before him, if he would recover, if he could recover, if—
I closed my eyes on it, before the unknowns overflowed me like a wave—like the river pouring from the broken dam, in the last world, threatening to drown everything in its path. There was a positive here—Manny was back. I needed to focus on that above all else. Those other questions were important, yes—but that my brother had returned, that he was quite simply alive … that was what I needed to focus on.
Borrick’s footsteps sounded behind me, his and another pair with them.
I didn’t turn back; I didn’t want to tug my eyes from my brother, not for one moment. Not now.
“How long has he been conscious?” asked Fiennes, stepping around the bed at a quick clip.
“Maybe a minute or two,” said Heidi. “Not long.”
“Is he,” began Carson nervously. “Will he be …?”
“Excuse me, please,” said Fiennes.
I inched back, as far as I could without letting Manny go.
Fiennes removed his spindly, wiry Harsterran stethoscope from his scrubs and pressed the end to Manny’s chest.
Manny’s eyes drifted up to him, like a drunk whose slumber had been cut short. His eyebrows twitched—the best frown he could muster.
“This is Doctor Fiennes,” I said. “He’s going to take care of you.”
Manny’s lips moved. I thought I heard a “Fff” sound; trying to echo the name? But that was all that came from him.
Fiennes listened, moving the scope across Manny’s chest.
“Is he okay?”
“I must conduct a few tests,” said Fiennes. “I will need to bring some things closer to the bed.” Without glancing at us, at me, he replaced the stethoscope on his scrubs. Prodding at the nearest machine, he began to cycle through new displays. “You ought to go.”
“I’m staying,” I protested.
“It will be quicker if you leave,” said the doctor. “Captain Burnton says we approach our cut-through anyway; you will be required on deck in the next five or so minutes.”
“You think I’m going to go fight for another key ri
ght now?” I asked, internal temperature rising. “I'm staying here with my brother.”
A hand was placed upon my shoulder.
I turned to see Heidi.
“We should go help Burnton,” she said softly. “Manny is in the best hands he can be in for now—but there’s nothing you can do here. And fighting for this next key will distract you, at least for as long as it takes for Doctor Fiennes to do his tests.”
“It beats waiting in the hall,” Bub rumbled, “like on those hospital soaps your world is so enamored by.”
My mouth opened, closed. I would wait here, damn it; didn’t they know that I needed to see this through? Couldn’t they understand that, after fifty-one days, seven weeks in which I’d thought Manny was dead and gone forever—after all that time, I needed to be here? I couldn’t let him out of my sight again, damn it.
But—that was a crazy thought. Not let my brother out of my sight? What was he going to do, cut open a gateway to a void right here and banish himself all over again? He could barely move.
And Heidi was right. My standing here, being a helicopter sister, how was that ever going to help Fiennes? I couldn’t contribute, couldn’t give any more input than what I’d already told him when we brought Manny in.
I should go. The distraction would be good. Hard, yes—but good.
“Okay,” I said shakily. I squeezed Manny’s hand. “I’ll be back soon, okay? I promise—really soon.” My eyes were tearing again. I did my best to blink back their heat. “I love you, Manny.”
A little part of me hoped that, somehow, with those words, he’d come back a little closer. And maybe he did, inside. But outwardly, there was only the gradual shift of his eyes, taking in the world or possibly not taking it in at all as they slowly crawled about the ceiling and me and Doctor Fiennes and everything else he was seeing or not seeing.
I squeezed one last time—gentle—and then I rose. Slowly, I moved toward the door, Heidi’s hand on my arm to guide me. I didn’t look where I was going—couldn’t take my eyes off my brother, until we were around the corner and I couldn’t see him any longer—at least until I gained the ability to see through metal.
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“He’ll be okay,” said Heidi.
“I know,” I said, although I didn’t. I had to hold onto that thought.
And again—if he wasn’t … well, he was alive. And that was the most important thing of all.
I smeared my face again, drying the wetness off. My friends were watching me. I did my best to avoid their gazes until I was once more composed.
Drawing up a box in my mind, I opened the lid, and placed every thought I had for Manny, everything, even my thankfulness at his being back with me, inside of it. No more worrying, no more fixating on my fears. I had a job to do again, a key to beat Preston Borrick toward. And just now, that goal was something I could actually get behind. A pointless goal, yes, but beating the elder Borrick? I could fight for that.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m ready.”
Heidi said, “You sure? You’re okay?”
I nodded. “Let’s go do this quest then, shall we?”
17
Arena number two, en route to the Spoon of Abundance.
Daddy Borrick had arrived before us. I didn’t think he was especially far ahead—unless he’d shifted into a weird, time-compressy dimension between arenas, he couldn’t have got much of a headstart—but nevertheless he was a fraction in front of us when we arrived, scouting out the arena.
Size appeared to be out of whack again. Rather than in a world scaled down, we instead had come out to a world scaled up.
The ten of us—our core six, plus four of Tyran’s men, Adelaide, Wisconsin, Timpson and Chet—were arrayed on what appeared to be the edge of a massive toy foosball table—you know, the ones with handles sticking out of the sides, and all the players are arranged in rows on those rods, so you twist or shift the handles to try to boot a small plastic ball into the opposing goal.
There were no opposing goals, however. And the men within the arena itself were not arranged upon rods. There were men though, human-sized blocky figures that were arranged across the arena seemingly at random, their bodies squarely compacted, elbows in tight to their midsections, knees bent. A bland grey color, they were entirely featureless, faceless. They looked out in different directions, as though scattered by a hand, with weighted bottoms so that they all landed right-side-up.
The arena itself was surrounded by darkness.
For all I knew, we might be on a giant foosball table, illuminated by a single spotlight in a vast, pitch-dark warehouse.
I trekked about the edge, looking down into the arena below. It was at least a fifteen-foot drop—high enough that I didn’t want to throw myself down there unless I absolutely needed to. Ideally not at all; knowing the Antecessors, my foot would touch the floor and those things would come alive. What a fun challenge that would be, battling off stone figures by the horde.
Preston Borrick was making his way about the opposite side.
Burnton gritted his teeth. “Rapscallion,” he bellowed.
The noise echoed—another suggestion that we were indeed in a gigantic warehouse, empty save for the challenge arena.
Preston Borrick glanced across, his expression long-suffering, but he said nothing; just continued to stalk about the arena’s edge, looking down into the bottom of it.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” murmured Heidi.
“Neither do we,” said Borrick.
I glanced the full length of the arena’s overlooking edge. It was wide, but mostly featureless. Stone squares rose out of it at random—the entire thing appeared to be carved from it, all the same bland, industrial grey—but otherwise there was nothing to see, nothing obvious to do.
“Perhaps we are supposed to make our way down there,” said Bub, pointing to the lower level.
“Mm,” said Heidi, “and then they’ll all come alive, like mannequins in a horror film. No thanks.”
“Adelaide,” Tyran barked. “Drop down there, will you?”
Having now spent at least a little bit of time in the company of Tyran’s men, I was beginning to be able to tell them apart. They certainly did appear, still, to have come off a production line, as Heidi said—they were all so close in height to each other, all so similar in appearance, the same build and muscle and somehow even the same bone structure—I wondered if perhaps Harsterra was famous for cloning on top of foul-smelling atmosphere and oodles of storms.
Nevertheless, I was beginning now to see the differences between them. Adelaide was the shortest of the four Tyran had brought with him, by about an inch. He had a very slightly wider chin than the others—I’m talking probably half a centimeter, if that—and his eyebrows tapered to a thinner line than the others’.
It made for an extremely difficult game of Spot the Difference. But I was beginning to see them.
Adelaide snapped off a salute. “Yes, sir.” And without balking, he strode to the edge of the arena, lowered himself down to sitting, and then heaved himself off.
He landed, the echo reverberating.
Preston watched intently.
We all watched intently.
But nothing happened whatsoever—no movement from the stationary figures arrayed below, no sound, not even a flicker of the light.
“Move around down there,” Tyran ordered.
Adelaide obliged, moving between the stone figures. All the time, he kept one had on the scabbard at his hip.
It was unnecessary though—nothing at all changed, and after a full minute of Adelaide’s weaving, his peering close into the blank ‘faces’ of the figures, prodding them, pushing at them, and following whatever other order popped into Tyran’s mind—after watching all of this fail to elicit any kind of change in the arena, Preston ceased watching and continued to move along the arena’s opposite edge.
“Oh, get up here, Adelaide,” Tyran said ir
ately.
“Yes, sir.”
Adelaide vaulted onto one of the stone figures—still no movement whatsoever—and took a great springing leap upward, to the lip of the arena’s edge. He caught it under his hands, and hoisted himself back up. The whole process took only a few seconds, and was so unbelievably smooth that I could’ve sworn I was watching a special effect in a movie—no human could leap three meters high like that.
He fell back into line with Tyran’s crew. Hands clasped behind his back, he awaited further instructions.
“You have no idea what’s going on here then?” I asked.
Tyran scowled. “I found the location well enough, didn’t I?”
“Don’t be too downhearted, Mr. Burnton,” said Bub kindly. “Mr. Borrick doesn’t appear to know what he is doing either.”
Judging by the deepening of Tyran’s glower, Bub had not placated him.
Carson had split off from the lot of us. Eyeing one of the stone monoliths alongside the arena’s edge, he wandered around its outer rim, running a hand along it. Still damp from our foray in the ant people’s world, his skin left a faint trail of moisture behind.
“You know,” said Heidi, “I take back my sarcasm earlier. This return to our old pace is quite refreshing.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” asked Tyran.
“We are woefully uninformed as to what we’re doing here. It’s almost nice, in a way.”
Tyran’s nostrils flared. He opened his mouth to bark something—
One of the figures in the arena below suddenly shifted. A series of blue lights illuminated it, as though they were a part of the stone structure itself, the topmost like a square headband enveloping its head. It rose and flexed.
“What the—?”
“No way!”
The figure looked at its limbs—at least, its featureless block of a head turned in the direction of each of its arms and legs as they moved.
The voice had come from Carson. He’d disappeared somewhere around the edge of the stone monolith.
I jogged toward him, around its side—
There was a cavity there. Within it, glowing like coals, was a workstation covered in lights, all of it looking like it was made of the same stone as the rest of the arena. Carson sat on a seat in the middle—and on his head was a headset, covering his eyes, like a VR kit.
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