Game Over (19 page)

He lifted his eyes in the direction of his fall. Somewhere up there beyond the black and white, a splash of color appeared. It was a dark color, brown streaked with shadows, almost indistinguishable from the grays of the hideous scene. But Rick's heart rose when he saw it. He knew it was a way out of this terrible Soviet tableau.

The scene rushed past him. The brown gateway grew closer. Soon he heard the soft echoing sound of witchy laughter—in the distance at first, but growing louder, nearer. He began to make out shapes . . . A gleaming white light . . .

Then, the next thing he knew, he found his own shape becoming insubstantial—a sparkling thing like Favian. The high, witchy laughter echoed louder and surrounded him. The gateway spread around him like the open mouth of a monster ready to swallow him. There was a sort of
swoosh
, and suddenly, he was through the gate. He was back again in the last place he had been, back in Baba Yaga's chamber, back beside the crystal table, standing in its eerie white glow, while the witch reeled back from the tabletop and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Rick fought to catch his breath.

I made it
, he thought.

He had come through the portal in his brain. He was back inside the Realm.

Baba Yaga went on laughing at him, rocking back and forth in her chair. The warts on her face grew whiter as her greenish cheeks grew red. Her malevolent eyes sparkled.

Dazed, Rick's hand went instinctively to his side. He felt the handle of Mariel's sword in its sheath there. His fingers closed around it, and Mariel's presence and power seemed to flow through him, clearing his mind.

He turned to his side. Favian was standing there—just standing, absolutely still—standing and staring into the light of Baba Yaga's table as if hypnotized. His blue and shimmering light-form was exactly as it had been the moment Rick fell into the witch's visionary table. Even the look of worry was still there on the sprite's face.

“Favian? Are you all right?” Rick said.

“He's fine! Fine, fine, fine,” the old crone cackled. “I put him in a sleep, that's all, so he would be here when you came back.”

He's been asleep all this time?
Rick thought—but even as he thought it, Baba Yaga suddenly stopped laughing and lifted her wrinkled hands and waved her crooked fingers in the air. At that, Favian blinked and straightened and came to, looking around him, dazed.

“Rick!” he said, his voice cracking with delight as he spotted his friend. “You're back!” Judging by the look of relief and wonder in his eyes, he hadn't expected to see Rick ever again.

Rick grinned. “Don't sound so surprised, man.”

“Well, I thought . . . It was like you turned to light and just
swooshed
right into the table and I thought . . .”

“Not even a problem,” said Rick, with way more cool than he was feeling. “Show a little faith, you know?”

“Yeah. Faith. I was never very good at that. Anxiety is more my thing. I'm great at anxiety.”

“Enough,” said Baba Yaga in her creaky voice. She rubbed her hands together. “There's no time for chitchat and camaraderie. A great calamity is coming, greater than anything that has come before.”

Rick nodded at her. “I know. It's coming to RL too. I came back here to try and stop it.”

“I've given you what I can. You have the knowledge now. If you use it in time, you can end this place forever.”

Favian's eyes went wide at that. He shimmered where he stood like a blue summer dusk. “But . . . But if the Realm dies . . . I die . . . I have nowhere else to go.”

Baba Yaga shrugged as if it didn't matter to her whether Favian lived or died.

But Rick assured him, “Not gonna happen, buddy. You and I are getting out of here together. My dad is building a portal for you right now.”

He spoke the words as confidently as he could, and he was glad to see a small flare of hope appear deep in Favian's eyes.

“Really?” the blue man said.

“Hey, my dad could program a computer to tap-dance and whistle ‘Dixie.' He wrote the programs that got us all in here in the first place, so believe me, if anyone can get us out again, he can.”

“That's great,” said Favian. “Mariel always said you'd free us from this place.”

Rick pressed his lips together. Without thinking, his fingers closed around the sword hilt at his side again. What could he say to that? Mariel had been the only friend and companion Favian had had here. There was no point telling him that she was just a bunch of code: a brain dub—or what had his father called it?—a “connectome” of one or more of the volunteers the Traveler and Professor Jameson had used. Here, in the Realm, Mariel was every bit as real as they were. Back in RL, she was just a black box spitting out numbers. How could he tell Favian that the wonderful
water woman would cease to exist the moment the Realm did? How could he even begin to explain that?

Rick reached out and put a reassuring hand on Favian's shoulder—or what would have been a reassuring hand on what would have been Favian's shoulder if Favian had been a person of flesh and blood. As it was, he was more a sort of living light show, and all Rick felt when he touched him was an electric tingle against his palm.

“Enough!” screaked Baba Yaga again. “You must go. You must find the center of the city!”

Rick looked at her. He didn't know whether to trust her or not. Why would she want to destroy this place in which Kurodar's childhood memories kept her alive? And yet, for some reason, he believed she wanted to be free of the Realm as much as Favian. He sensed the yearning in her—her wish to get out of Kurodar's imagination even if it meant the end of her existence.

“What do we do?” he asked her.

Baba Yaga leaned over her glowing table and made a few more eerie passes with her gnarled fingers. She peered into the light as if she could see the future there . . . though Rick had seen only Kurodar's memories of horror and bloodshed.

“Find the silver one,” she murmured, her voice like a creaking door. “She will take you where you need to go.”

“Mariel,” said Favian.

“Where can we find her?” Rick asked.

“There's water in the dining hall.” She lifted a long, bent, warty finger, pointed at the door. “Below.”

Even as she spoke, her voice became an echo. Her figure grew transparent, then dim. She started to fade away.

Just before she vanished, Rick heard her say, “But beware Bagiennik! He is trapped here, too, like me.”

“Bagi-who?” said Rick.

But it was too late. She was gone.

“Oh, great,” said Favian. “We don't even know what we're supposed to beware of.”

But Rick softly echoed Baba Yaga's word: “Enough.” And he turned away from the glowing table and strode to the door. He pulled it open. Before he could step outside, there was a blue flash and Favian was there in the hall in front of him. Startling the way he kept doing that. By his faint shimmering blue light, Rick saw the spiral staircase winding down and down. He paused on the landing and listened for noises from above.

“The banging's stopped, at least,” he said.

It was true. When he'd left, the dead guardians of the Golden City had been pounding at the door above, trying to break through and come after them. But now the staircase was quiet and Rick realized . . .

Of course. Kurodar had redirected the monsters to invade the compound in RL. He could create more, but that took time and he was distracted with charging the Battle Station for his next attack. Maybe, Rick thought,
maybe he and Favian wouldn't have to fight their way over every street in the Golden City. Maybe they could get to the core fast.

He could hope, anyway.

“Let's go,” he said.

And with a flash, Favian started down the stairs. Rick followed after.

In RL, meanwhile, the Traveler was hard at work. Seated in the underground chamber in an old office swivel chair, he pounded at his keyboard. He glanced at Professor Jameson seated at the station beside him. “I've started a scan of Fabian Child's avatar. If I can figure out the code change that's got him locked inside, I can make a new portal for him.”

The large, hulking Professor Jameson nodded as he tapped away at his own keyboard. “I'm going to scan Mariel's connectome,” he said. “If there's similar damage in each code, we should be able to compare it and isolate the equations.”

The Traveler nodded and both went on typing silently.

Molly, meanwhile, remained where she was, holding Rick's hand as his body lay sleeping. She lifted her gaze and passed it over the monitors around the room. She saw images of the Battle Station, its power bar filling slowly. She saw waves and graphs wiggling and jumping. She saw
white numbers pouring over black screens. She was an athlete, not a tech. She didn't understand a lot of what she was looking at. But she had that nonscientist's trust that science-types could do all sorts of magical things, so she hoped everything was under control.

Now her eyes moved to another computer. A thin Asian guy with enormous glasses on his small head was sitting at the keyboard. On the monitor, there were images that reminded Molly of old-fashioned video games she had seen on YouTube. Like
Space Invaders
or the first
Super Mario
or something like that. When the tech moved his head, Molly caught glimpses of the images reflected on his large lenses.

The Asian guy sensed her looking at him and glanced at her. “Hey,” he said. “I'm Chuck.” He was very young, not much older than Molly. He had a kindly smile.

“Molly,” said Molly, with a small smile back at him. She gestured at the monitor. “Is that the Realm?” she asked him. “Is that where Rick is?”

“That's him right there,” said Chuck, pointing to a pixilated white figure of a man. It didn't look like Rick particularly, but Molly immediately felt her heart squeeze in her chest at the sight of him, just as if it were Rick she was looking at.

“It's pretty primitive imaging, I know, only eight-bit,” Chuck said. “But it's tough to read things directly out of someone's brain. We should be able to see what he's doing, anyway. Right now, he's in some sort of stairwell. And
he's on the move.” The tech worked his keyboard. The scenery on the screen shifted to follow the figure who was Rick—and another blue figure nearby him. “That's Fabian Child,” said Chuck. “He's cut off from his living memory so he calls himself Favian in the Realm.”

Molly peered hard at the screen. She watched the two primitive eight-bit figures descending a cartoon of a winding stairway down into darkness.

“It really does look like an old video game,” she said.

“Well, I guess it is kind of like a video game,” said Chuck. “Except, you know . . .”

“Except just the opposite,” said Molly. “In a video game, you can die a hundred times, but you only have to get it right once. In the Realm you can get it right a hundred times, but if you die once, it's game over.”

“Right,” said Chuck. “Kind of like real life.”

28. KILLER PLANTS FROM OUTER SPACE

IT WAS A
long way down the stairs, but with the glowing Favian leading the way, they reached the bottom quickly. Now a dark corridor stretched out before them. Rick could see only a few feet ahead. Favian raised his hand and made a light emanate from his palm. At the end of the hall, a door came into view. Favian glanced at Rick. He looked worried. Well, what else was new?

“I don't know where we are anymore,” Favian said. “Anything could be on the other side of that door . . . Maybe we should turn back and . . .”

“No,” said Rick. “This was where the witch told us to go. And Mariel's close. I can feel her.”

His hand was on the hilt of Mariel's sword again, the twined metal rising to her image. And it was true: he could feel her presence more strongly than before. This was the right way. This was where they were supposed to be. Whatever was on the other side of that door . . .

He nodded once at Favian and then went ahead. Favian, worried, hung back, floating just above the floor, holding out his palm to light Rick's way through the darkness.

Rick reached the door. He pressed his hand against it. He drew a breath. So far, everywhere he had been in this world, there had been dead, half-rotten security bots—discarded creatures of Kurodar's deteriorating imagination. Everywhere he had gone, he'd had to fight for his life.

He pushed the door open, ready for the onslaught.

But there was nothing. Quiet. An empty room.

They stepped—or, that is, Rick stepped and Favian flashed—into a long dining hall. Rick could see at once that that's what it was. Small windows very high on the walls, just beneath the towering ceilings, let in thin, gray, sickly beams of light from the world above. Rough wooden tables were everywhere and heavy chairs, some upright, some overturned, some broken into pieces as if someone had smashed them into the ground. On the tables—and on the floor—there were pottery plates and drinking vessels, whole, chipped, and shattered.