Eternity's Wheel (3 page)

“I have to go,” I said, but Mr. Dimas was shaking his head.

“Not with your injuries,” he said firmly, putting a hand on my fractured shoulder when I tried to stand up. I winced,
and he gave me a look that said
see?
“You can barely walk, and what little medical attention I've given you won't help much unless you
sleep and heal
.”

“You might be in danger,” I tried.

“You
are
in danger, and you're not going to get out of it without dying unless you rest, not to mention eat.” He fixed me with a stern look over the top of his glasses, the look I remembered from sitting in his classroom.

My stomach gave a loud growl just then, as if to punctuate his sentence. I glanced down, betrayed, and felt heat rise to my face. “Okay,” I said quietly, making the decision to leave as soon as I'd eaten. I wasn't going to put him in more danger than I already had, and besides, I had things to do. My army wasn't going to gather itself.

“Good,” he said, straightening up. “Now. Important question: What do you want to eat?”

“I—” I stopped, it suddenly occurring to me that I could have anything I wanted. InterWorld kept us fed, of course; protein bars and enhanced vitamin water, very nutritious and not at all delicious. But I was
home
now, back on my world, and I could have anything. “Pizza,” I said. I know it's cliché, but cut me some slack—I'm a teenage boy. What would
you
have asked for? Broccoli?

“I'm not surprised. What do you want on it?”

“Pepperoni and broccoli,” I said. Shut up, it actually sounded good.

Mr. Dimas left to get the pizza (“I'll go pick it up,” he'd said, “and you'd better be here when I get back, Joseph. I mean it.”) and I relaxed back on the couch again, seriously considering passing out. Instead I forced my mind into some semblance of meditation. It was the best I could do right then; I was still exhausted and hurting and worried, and every passing car or creak of the house settling made me jump.

Even with all my injuries and fears and concerns, I couldn't stop thinking about Acacia. I hadn't gotten to that part of the story in my retelling to Mr. Dimas, of how we'd been standing together watching the HEX ship stalk its InterWorld prey, and Lord Dogknife had attacked from out of nowhere. . . . She hadn't even seen him coming. I didn't know what he'd done to her, except that the second time he'd knocked her down, his claws were slick with blood and she hadn't gotten back up.

I remembered her expression just before we'd been attacked. Most of my memories of her were like that, actually, moments of action frozen in time. I remembered her grinning at me a second before the sound of laser fire filled the air when J/O had found us; I remembered the way her face had been tilted toward mine before Lord Dogknife had attacked. I leaned back against the couch, remembering how she and I had sat back-to-back in a moment of respite, both of us injured, talking strategy and keeping each other going. I wondered if our friendship (relationship?) would be any
different if we hadn't formed the majority of it while running for our lives.

Most of all, I wondered where she was now. I didn't know if she'd vanished of her own volition or if Lord Dogknife had sent her away or if she'd been rescued. I didn't know what the chances of seeing her again were, and I wondered if I ever would at all.

The rest of the night went by in a daze. I ate five slices of pizza and downed three bottles of water, as well as two more painkillers. Mr. Dimas had tended my injuries, fed me, and let me use his shower. He gave me his guest room (after making sure I wasn't going to bleed on anything) and made me promise not to leave without telling him. I finally collapsed into bed around nine, still dizzy from the whirlwind of events.

I remember that the food tasted good, and I remember enjoying it, but I was hard-pressed to remember what it had actually tasted
like
. My body was working overtime trying to heal, and in order to do that, it had to make me sleep.

I was afraid to. I'm not gonna lie, I've seen things that would give the devil himself nightmares (if he even existed anywhere; that kind of theology was something we'd never really gotten into in basic studies), and I'd come through the other side just fine. Now, though . . . not only was I afraid of the dreams I might have, I was afraid of something coming to find me. I was afraid of being so exhausted that I'd sleep
right through something breaking in and hurting Mr. Dimas before it ever even got to me.

That, ultimately, was why I was here instead of with my family. Because I couldn't risk danger coming right to their door, to Mom and Dad and my little siblings. But my social studies teacher? Apparently I was willing to risk him.

Utterly disgusted with myself, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

I
MUST HAVE SLEPT
deeply for at least a few hours, because the first time I startled awake at a noise was around three
A.M.

It had been a quiet noise, the kind you can't really identify once you're awake even though you know it's what woke you up. It might have been a thump or a creak. . . . Had I shut the door when I went to sleep, or left it ajar? It was open now.

The bed jiggled as something jumped up onto it, and I bolted upright, simultaneously aggravating my injuries and startling the hell out of a cat.

“Right, cat . . . Mr. Dimas has a cat,” I mumbled, staring at the creature hunched down near my feet. It was an orange tabby whose name I didn't remember, but I recalled him using the cat's habit of bringing in dead mice and birds as a parallel lesson for something or other in his class.

I took a deep breath and looked out the window. No sign
of sunlight anywhere. I pushed myself out of bed, testing my balance and the general functionality of all my limbs. I was incredibly sore, but I could move. I'd had a plan before I even got to Mr. Dimas's, and now that I was in slightly better shape, I could get started. It was time to go collect my first recruit.

I know I'd promised, but I really didn't have a choice. Mr. Dimas would try to convince me to stay, and it was better for everyone if I didn't.

Still, there was something I had to do before I left.

Since I was staying in a teacher's house, it wasn't hard to find paper and a pencil. The cat followed me around as I put my socks and shoes back on, and he purred and nuzzled against my hand as I tried to gather my things. I couldn't help but smile. I'd always liked animals, and the cat reminded me of Hue. Sometimes when the mudluff wanted attention, he'd just get in the way of whatever I was doing.

I had two letters to write. The most important one was also the hardest, so I put it off until last. Instead, leaning against a desk with the cat winding itself around my ankles, I wrote:

Mr. Dimas (Jack),

Sorry to run out like this, but you had to have expected I would. I know I promised, but it's safer for you and my family if I'm not on this world anymore.
Speaking of my family, the other letter here is for them. Please make sure they get it.

Thank you for everything you've done for me, first and foremost not assuming I was crazy when I brought you this whole harebrained tale. The supplies will help immensely, and I'm sure I won't be the only one who'll be grateful for them.

Not much else to say. I know it sounds (again) crazy, but if the world is ever destroyed, you'll know I've failed in my mission. I'll do the best I can to make sure I don't.

Thanks again.

I debated signing my name for a few moments—it could be seen as incriminating, but Mr. Dimas was smart enough to burn the letter after he'd read it. Still, I decided not to chance it. He'd know who it was from.

I made my way silently out to the living room, grabbing the rust-red backpack he'd filled with granola bars, bottled water, and medical supplies for me. Another thing I was grateful for, particularly the aspirin. I stopped long enough to take two of those, then slipped soundlessly out through one of the windows so I wouldn't leave his front door unlocked. It seemed the least I could do.

The cat sat on the windowsill, watching as I made my way alone down the dark street.

The park was the best place to Walk from. It had a lot of wide-open space but enough trees that I could easily slip into a ring of them and not get caught disappearing—or reappearing, as the case may be. Many of my InterWorld lessons had explained that I had an instinctive navigational system for Walking, sort of like when you close your eyes and can still tell you're about to run into a wall. The chance of trying to Walk between dimensions and ending up occupying the same space as a car or trash can—or another person—was slim to none, but Walking in a wide-open space made it far
less
likely.

There was no moon tonight, though there were a few scattered streetlights. It was light enough to see, but dark enough that someone would have to get fairly close to recognize me. Unfortunately, since Greenville is a small town, any local police officers passing by might decide to stop and ask what I was doing out here at this time of night. I avoided the few cars on the road just in case. Finally, I stood in the park, breathing deeply. I wanted to smell what my old life had been like one last time.

Greenville is close to a huge river, and there was always mist in the early morning, even during the summer. It always smelled like wet grass and damp asphalt at night. There was the faintest hint of gasoline from the station down the street and the warm, sweet smell of the doughnut shop in
the opposite direction. The shop opened at five
A.M.
, so the owner, Mr. Lee, started baking at around three. The doughnuts were almost always gone by seven thirty, but if you stopped by on the way to school and he had one left, he'd give it to you for free.

I breathed carefully in and carefully out, committing everything to memory once again. Then I Walked, whispering a quiet good-bye to that sleepy little town.

Walking between dimensions, once you get used to it, is like walking normally—except easier, if that makes sense. Better. It feels
right
, like a good, satisfying stretch. It feels like doing what you were born to do.

I felt cold mist on my skin and heard a few tinkling notes, like from a music box. Random sensations are common when Walking, since you have to pass through the In-Between in order to get anywhere, and the In-Between is . . . well, it's pretty much everything. At once. It's the place we pass through when we Walk, sort of like its own pocket dimension. Or, more accurately, the dimension between all dimensions.

The park was spread out before me, looking almost the same as it had a moment ago. There was a tree about a hundred yards in front of me that hadn't been there before, but that was the only notable difference, at least at first. I started moving through the park, glancing around with fascination as the tiny changes became more noticeable.

I didn't smell the doughnut shop anymore; instead, the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted over me from a twenty-four-hour diner across the street. I had to admit I was jealous.
My
Greenville didn't have a twenty-four-hour anything.

I walked to the corner, crossing the street at the protected crosswalk. The little light-up man was blue, not white as I was used to. I'd missed that the last time I'd been here. I passed by a McDonald's with arches that were green instead of yellow. I had to smile; that was the first thing I'd noticed when I first wound up in this version of my town.

I hurried as I went down my street. My injuries weren't bothering me as much as they had been (aspirin for the win!), and I needed to get this done as quickly as possible. The first time I'd come here, I'd run into the first other version of me I'd ever met. A girl. Josephine.

I remembered her name like I remembered my own, because in a way, it sort of was. I'd gone into my house, lost and confused, and there she'd been. She'd lived in my house with my mom, who'd looked at me like she'd never seen me before and called her daughter Josephine. Her daughter, not her son. A female version of me, living a life parallel to mine.

She would be my first recruit.

I was about halfway to my house when I stopped to cast out for her. We can sense each other, sort of, like when you're alone in a room but you can tell when someone walks in without turning around. I paused for a second and closed my
eyes, expanding my senses, and that's probably what saved my life.

They'd been waiting for me.

I threw myself to the side as a netlike thing hurtled over where I'd been standing. They started to come up out of the shadows, or maybe they were the shadows themselves. It was hard to tell. All I knew for sure was that they were agents of HEX, and they had found me.

There were maybe four or five of them. I was trained in thirteen different styles of martial arts and immediately recognized six nearby objects that could be used as improvised weapons.

I also had no defensive gadgets on me whatsoever, and I was injured in five different places. Not to mention these were HEX agents, not Binary. The Binary at least were predictable; they had their plasma guns, their sheer numbers and one-shot shields, their grav disks. Basic stuff. HEX agents? Those were unpredictable. I'd taken three different Magic Study courses on InterWorld Prime, and I probably knew about a quarter of what they could do.

I was more than a little outgunned.

They were slowly surrounding me, moving like liquid, fanning out in a semicircle. The moonless night and scattered streetlamps made some of them all but invisible in the dark. I did the sensible thing: I ran.

Well, I Walked.

I heard the music box again and a sound like bowling pins toppling over. I smelled something salty and saw a splash of bright pink as I slipped through the In-Between and into yet another version of Greenville.

The street was empty again, but I kept moving anyway, back the way I had come. There was no point in going to Josephine's house, not in that dimension and not in this one. I couldn't sense another version of me here; I didn't know if that was because that version had died, or been captured by Binary or HEX, or if this was the home world of one of my fellow students back on Base. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it.

When I'd expanded my senses to look for Josephine, right before I'd felt HEX's attack, I'd felt her—and she hadn't been home.

What was a version of me, not even seventeen years old, doing away from home at three
A.M.
? It wasn't like Greenville had an active nightlife (although I suppose this one had a twenty-four-hour diner, at least . . .) and I had never been the most popular of kids. I certainly hadn't been cool enough to hang out with anyone who'd stay out all night. Maybe this version of me was different, but I doubted it.

I kept moving, occasionally hopping into a different dimension to throw off any pursuers. When I'd first started Walking, I'd done it instinctively—and, apparently, badly. One of my teachers had explained that I'd basically punched
a hole in the wall instead of finding the door. I'd gotten better at it since then, and it was easier to slip between the worlds without causing as many ripples. I could Walk as many times as there was a portal around; HEX and Binary were operating on borrowed power, so my hope was that being a moving target would discourage them from chasing me too far.

I eventually made my way back to Josephine's Greenville, a few blocks over from where I'd started. The HEX agents didn't seem to be following me anymore; I couldn't sense them when I tried.

I
could
sense her. She was a couple of streets away from where I was now, out of the residential area. I could see the brighter lights of the business district off in the distance, which was definitely where the familiar tug was leading me.

I sighed. Nothing was ever easy. . . .

With my senses on high alert and my ribs aching again from all the movement, I started down the street.

It didn't take me long to track her down, though I was still at a loss as to why she was apparently in an abandoned office building. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. The last time I'd been in a place like this, I had found Joaquim, the Walker who'd turned out to not be a Walker at all, who'd betrayed my team and caused Jerzy's death. He'd been pretending to be a captive of Binary so we'd “rescue” him. . . . Had Josephine been taken captive, too?

It was seeming more and more likely. The HEX scouts outside her house . . . maybe they hadn't been waiting for me, after all. Maybe they had found her.

This was bad. I was still running on borrowed time, dealing with several injuries, and had no weapons. I had no one I could call for backup. Josephine was supposed to
become
my backup.

The smart thing to do would be to cut my losses and go—head to another version of Greenville and find another me. Like I said, as long as there were portals, I never had to stop Walking. I could go anywhere I wanted, as long as I got there before FrostNight destroyed everything. . . .

I was berating myself for not ever being able to do the smart thing as I picked the lock on the abandoned building.

See, when HEX and Binary capture a Walker, they don't just kill them. They
use
them. I'd explained that to Mr. Dimas, but I hadn't explained how. HEX boils us down, literally puts us in a giant cauldron, still alive and screaming, and boils us like lobsters. Down past the skin and bones, to our very essence. Then they put that essence in a jar and cast some kind of spell on it and use it whenever they need to Walk. And that's not the worst part, no way.

The worst part is, in some small way, we're still alive. Still
aware
. And we know what's been done to us and what we're being used for.