by Brandon Mull
“That’s right,” Mira confirmed.
“The Wayminder felt bad,” Joe said. “She tried to make it right.”
“She was a girl?” Jace asked.
Joe nodded. “Sallanah. When I came through the way she opened, I broke her concentration and the way closed. She couldn’t open a new one right there, so we moved. She sent me back as soon as she could—within four hours of me crossing over. She got me close to where I had departed from. I ran to my car, drove to Gwen’s place. She answered the door . . . and looked at me like a total stranger.”
Cole’s insides twisted. He imagined getting a look like that from his mom. Or his dad. Or his sister. Is that what the future held? He glanced at Dalton. Based on his friend’s expression, the same worries were attacking him.
“Sallanah had warned me what to expect,” Joe said. “Since I’d only been in the Outskirts a short time, I kind of hoped the side effects wouldn’t take hold. I said Gwen’s name, and she asked if she knew me. I told her my name but got a blank stare. It was right out of a nightmare. The more I tried to talk, the more I hinted at details I knew about her, the more uncomfortable she became. Before things got out of hand, I walked away.”
“Did you get sucked back here?” Dalton asked.
“In less than two hours,” Joe said. “After Gwen, I went to visit a good friend who also had no memory of me. I called in to work. Nobody knew me. I found a place to park my car and just sat there, trying to think. I felt like I was losing my mind. For a good while I couldn’t stop laughing. Not healthy laughter. Before too long, the air over the passenger seat started to ripple. A way opened up and I was back in Zeropolis.”
“That’s the worst,” Cole said.
“Not yet,” Joe said. “The worst is coming. Sit tight. Sallanah came and found me not long after I returned to Zeropolis. She apologized again, and explained that I was stuck in the Outskirts. She helped me get a freemark, an identity card, and a place to stay. She gave me some money. I was in a daze at the time. I couldn’t appreciate how lucky I was to have someone to orient me.”
“Are you still friends?” Dalton asked.
“Not really,” Joe said. “In theory, I guess. I wasn’t overly nice to her. In spite of her help, she had kind of ruined my life. Looking back now, I can at least appreciate how she tried to make up for it. I don’t think she’s in Zeropolis anymore. My understanding is she returned to Creon.”
“You got stuck here,” Jace said. “Then what?”
“I found a hospital,” Joe said. “Since I’m a paramedic, they became very interested when they learned I was from Outside. They hired me, and we taught each other some techniques. The medical care in Zeropolis is pretty good. Some of their technology surpasses what we have back home, though our medicines are more advanced.”
“How’d you get involved with the Unseen?” Cole wondered.
“Gradually,” Joe said. “I began to notice how controlling the government is here. I could never shake the hope of finding a way back to Monterey. You meet a lot of people as a paramedic. I kept my eyes and ears open. I started to hear about thruports that could connect to our Internet back home. When I met the right people, I started asking questions. Within a couple of years, I connected with some members of the Unseen who helped me get online.”
“That’s so weird they can get our Internet,” Dalton said. “Are we even in the same universe?”
“It takes help from a Wayminder,” Joe said. “Under normal conditions, a Wayminder can only hold a way open for a limited time. But some can open tiny ways for a really long time. The Wayminder opens tiny ways near a wireless router in our world, a tinker makes gear to pick up the signal, and before you know it, they’re online. Some tinkers even own routers in our world and pay the access fees and everything.”
“Did you try to contact Gwen?” Mira asked.
“What do you think?” Joe replied. “Nonstop. She never opened a single e-mail from me. None of my friends or family did either. I went through some of my obscure contacts and tried them. Sometimes I’d hear back. We’d make idle chitchat. I never tried to tell anyone where I was. I knew how it would sound.”
“That must have been so frustrating,” Cole said as his hopes of e-mailing his family crumbled. This story was creating a dark, anxious pit in his stomach.
“Still gets worse,” Joe said. “See, I know the password for Gwen’s e-mail. She had mine, too. She never changed it. So even though I couldn’t contact her, I could peek at her life. I could see the e-mails I sent, sitting there unopened. She opened everything. Even half of the spam. But nothing from me.”
“Man,” Dalton said.
“Bummer, right?” Joe said. “I’d check up on her from time to time. Meanwhile, the more I learned about the Unseen, the more I believed in their cause, and the more involved I became. I began to understand how completely Abram Trench wants to control life in Zeropolis. And I came to realize the tyranny of the High King. If I was stuck here, I wanted to help this world become the best it can be. I mean, slavery? Are you kidding me? As a fringe benefit, the Unseen gave me access to thruports so I could keep peeking at my world.”
“Because thruports are illegal,” Dalton said.
“The Grand Shaper does all he can to shut them down,” Joe said. “But the Unseen are well organized here. I had good access.”
“How’d it get worse?” Jace asked.
Joe sighed. “About six months ago, I started to notice some of Gwen’s e-mails taking a turn for the worse. I can read her pretty well. I know how she gets when she’s frustrated. She’s type A—works hard, plays hard, and takes things hard. She internalizes every little failure. I helped balance her out there. I helped her have fun. I helped her shake stuff off. We’d listen to music, or I’d play my guitar, or we’d get Italian, or we’d ride bikes along the coast. She was going into a downward spiral like I’d never seen. It wasn’t clear in most of her e-mails—mainly the ones to her sister, and hints in the messages to her mom.”
“Did you feel bad spying on her?” Jace asked.
Joe rubbed his face. “Well, yeah. But it was my only form of contact. I couldn’t resist. As time went on, I realized that she felt alone. Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but I thought maybe even though she couldn’t remember me, a part of her was grieving my absence.”
Suddenly Cole was fighting back tears. Were his parents like that? Could they feel something was wrong, even though they had forgotten him? Were they depressed without knowing why? Even if it caused them pain, Cole couldn’t help hoping that some part of them deep down remembered him. He had to believe there was some hidden refuge of memory that might be wakened somehow.
“That must have been difficult,” Mira said tenderly.
Staring at the floor, Joe folded and unfolded his arms. “It wasn’t a picnic. The longer I watched, the clearer her sadness became. I couldn’t take seeing Gwen like that, unable to help her. It led to a crazy, stupid plan.”
“What?” Cole asked, fascinated.
“I decided to bring her here,” Joe said.
“Did you do it?” Dalton asked. “Did it make her remember you?”
“I’m getting there,” Joe said. “I checked with a Wayminder. Not Sallanah. She was long gone. He told me that bringing Gwen here wouldn’t make her remember me. But Gwen fell in love with me once, right? I’d woo her again. I’d fix the emptiness I saw in her. And maybe fill the void inside of me.”
“But she’d be stuck here too,” Cole said.
Joe nodded, rubbing his hands together. “I thought that through. If you’re not a slave, and you live quietly, keep your head down, it isn’t so bad here. We could live fulfilling lives, especially if we had each other. What I had with Gwen was epic. Whether or not she could remember me, I knew we’d figure it out. I convinced myself that if given a choice, Gwen would want to be with me. So I hired the Waymind
er. My plan was to kidnap my fiancée and bring her here.”
“How’d that work out?” Dalton asked.
Joe winced. “Could have gone better.”
“Tell us,” Cole urged, completely hooked.
Gazing down at the floor, Joe wiped a hand over his face. “I knew it was a risk. That she might see me as a villain. But I thought we could overcome that. She was still Gwen, right? And I’m still me.” He fell silent.
“It went badly?” Mira guessed.
“Imagine this. We open a way to the street in front of my fiancée’s apartment. Ex-fiancée? Anyhow, I knew she was bad at locking the back door, and sure enough, I hop the fence into her little yard and find it open. I creep across her kitchen in the dark and up the stairs. It’s all way too familiar. Almost like I never left. I’m going quietly. I know that to her I’ll seem like a burglar. By the light coming through her window from the street I can see her sleeping. She’s so pretty. Without the worst luck ever, she would have already been my wife. We would have been married for years.”
Joe folded his arms. “There I am, in her room. I just have to get her down the stairs and out front to the way. She’s no weakling, but neither am I. I was sure I could get her there.”
“But,” Cole inserted.
Joe grimaced. “But there she was, snug and safe in a city without slaves, a place where she was free to live however she chose. How could I take that from her? Take away her home. Her family. Her job. Her life. Without permission.”
“What a nightmare,” Mira said.
“I couldn’t do it,” Joe said. “I wasn’t just worried about her thinking I was a villain. I knew in that moment that if I took her, I would be a villain. However much I loved her, however much she once loved me, I had no right to drag her here. So I left. I came back through the way empty-handed.”
“She’s still there?” Cole asked.
“And I’m still here,” Joe said. He smirked. “The next time I tried to check up on her using a thruport, I got caught. City Patrol raided the place. The guys running the thruport got taken away. It was my first offence. I got probation. It’s what wrecked my true ID. The City Patrol is aware of me now. It makes me less safe to travel with.”
“You used your fake ID today without trouble?” Jace asked.
“Yeah, it went well,” Joe said. “We should be all right to take the monorail tomorrow. How backward is a place where it would have been legal for me to kidnap Gwen and bring her here, but I’m not allowed to browse the Internet? I could have made Gwen my slave without any legal trouble.”
“This is why you wanted to leave Zeropolis?” Mira asked.
Joe nodded. “I got depressed. Really low. I knew I’d never see Gwen again. I was on probation. I was done with Zeropolis. I needed to get away. I went to the Unseen and told them I wanted a mission as far from the city as possible. I’d done some good work for them. The right people trusted me. That was when they let me know about you, Mira, and sent me on a mission to warn you about the legionnaires coming for you.”
“You went straight from that to this?” Mira said with concern.
Joe flashed a tight smile. “This was exactly what I needed. Something to lose myself in. I threw myself at the danger. Part of me didn’t mind the idea of dying. But I keep surviving. And now fate has brought me back here.”
“What are you going to do?” Cole asked.
Joe gave a grim chuckle. “I’ve been pondering that long and hard ever since I learned we’d be coming here to find Constance. I think I just keep helping you kids. Focus on the work. Do I still miss Gwen? Take a wild guess. I’ll miss her until the day I die. I know Cole hangs on to hope that there might be a way to get home. I’m open to that, but I don’t dare to hope for it yet. I don’t think my heart could take another disappointment. But I won’t tell you to give up. If you find a way, please take me with you.”
Cole’s throat felt thick with emotion. It was hard to feel hopeful after hearing Joe’s experience. “Trillian told me that there might be ways to change how things work here. It kind of makes sense. Pretty much everything else can be shaped. I’m not giving up until we try every option. We’ll bug the Grand Shaper of Creon. We’ll find out more about shapecraft. We’ll go back to Trillian if we have to. We’ll figure something out.”
“Man, you guys really hate it here,” Jace said.
“It’s not our home,” Dalton said.
“No, but it’s my home,” Jace replied. “And I’ve lived most my life as a slave. So I get not loving it.”
“I admire your optimism, Cole,” Joe said. “I know you really mean to tackle the impossible. I’ll help however I can.”
“First thing I’m going to try is getting some sleep,” Jace said. “Those days as a wolf are catching up with me.”
“We’re all tired,” Joe agreed. “Sorry for the long story.”
“Don’t apologize,” Mira said. “It was brave and generous of you to share it. We’ll do our best to help you.”
“Sorry about Gwen,” Cole said. “That’s really rough.”
“No worse than what you boys are going through,” Joe said. “You were ripped away from your families. I can only imagine what that feels like at your age.”
Cole didn’t trust his voice. Dalton wiped at his eyes. Cole tried to ignore the pitying looks from Mira and even Jace.
“Thanks for telling us what we’re up against,” Cole managed.
“It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of our chances to return to our normal lives,” Joe said. “But you deserve to know.”
“We always knew it would be hard,” Cole said. “I sometimes suspected they were bluffing about people forgetting us. I wondered whether we’d really get pulled back here if we made it home. I wanted it to be propaganda. A trick to keep us here. That hope made your story kind of disappointing, but it’s good to know the truth. We just have to find a way to change how it all works. Somehow we’ll do it.”
“We start by surviving tomorrow,” Joe said. “Let’s get some sleep while we can.”
CHAPTER
6
MONORAIL
The monorail station was a spacious, modern structure of steel and crystal. After walking through the front doors, Cole almost felt like he was back in Arizona at some public building—tile floors, powered lights, service counters, people waiting in line. It could have been the lobby of an airport.
“IDs first,” Joe said, leading the way.
Cole was now dressed in jeans and a brown shirt. The others all wore new clothes too. Joe wanted them to look like true Zeropolites.
They got in a fairly short line at a counter marked IDENTIFICATION. Joe had explained that the city government used the monorail stations to provide services for the outposts. More than just transportation and shipping, the stations provided banking, processed identifications, registered vehicles and property, recorded complaints, and housed a modest garrison of patrolmen.
When their turn came, Joe and the kids approached the counter together. Joe handed his ID card to the older woman on duty. She looked at it, held it under a bluish light, then scanned it into a machine. Staring down at her screen, she looked perplexed for a moment, glancing quickly at Joe.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
Cole’s gut clenched, but he tried to look calm.
The woman gave a small smile. “Your mustache in the photo threw me off.”
“I miss it sometimes,” Joe said, rubbing his upper lip.
“You look better without it,” she whispered loudly. “How can I help you today, Mr. Boone?”
“I’m traveling with my two nephews, my niece, and their slave. They’re all first-timers in Zeropolis, so they’ll need IDs.”
“Okay,” she said, fingers rattling on a keyboard. “Do they have any identifying paperwork from Elloweer?”
Joe sho
ok his head. “I’m sure you know how badly organized they are in Elloweer when it comes to records.”
“All too well,” she said. “I deal with the sloppy results every day. Do you have papers for the slave?”
“He’s marked, of course,” Joe said. “But we don’t have papers.”
The woman behind the counter looked at Dalton. “Are these your owners?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Very well,” the woman said. “There’s a two-hundred-credit processing fee for minors, and a six-hundred-credit fee for slaves.”
“Use my card,” Joe said.
“The fees double without papers,” she said.
“I understand,” Joe replied.
The woman held his card under a scanner. “Okay.” She smiled at the kids, her gaze taking them in. “Have you ever been to the city?”
“No,” Mira said.
“Are you sure you want to go there?” she asked playfully.
“Yes,” Cole said.
“Very well,” the woman said. “I need to take individual pictures, then I’ll need your names along with the correct spellings.”
She gestured for Cole to come around the counter, so he did. He stood on a mark, stared at a lens, and smiled. It didn’t feel too different from school photos.
“Name?” she asked.
“Bubba Boone,” Cole said. “B-U-B-B-A.”
As Cole watched, Mira went on record as Shannon Boone, Jace became Hampton Boone, and Dalton became Kevin son of Mark. Cole was the first kid to receive a dark green ID card. He hefted it, stroking the metallic surface with his thumb. “Why isn’t it blue like yours?” Cole asked Joe.
“You’re under sixteen,” Joe said.
Jace and Mira accepted their cards. Dalton got his last. It was bloodred.
“Slave color?” he asked, holding it up to the lady behind the counter.
She gave a curt nod, then looked beyond him. “Next.”
Joe herded Cole and the others over to a nearby wall. “Wait here while I buy tickets,” he instructed.
