Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (34 page)

“Theodore! Move!”

If we were separated, I could spend the rest of the match looking for him. Theodore leaped toward me just as a new wall formed behind him. He was lying on the ground when the wall to his left disappeared.

Behind the wall stood Banar’s bait. He lunged toward Theodore and stepped on his leg with a large four-taloned foot. Theodore never had a chance. His leg buckled under the weight of the alien. Even over my friend’s screams, I could hear the bone in his thigh snap. Theodore cried out, and the alien smiled, raising his arm to strike.

Instinctually, I ran at the attacker. Leading with my good arm, I dove and thrust myself into his soft, exposed underbelly. With the wind knocked out of him, the alien reeled backward, tripping over Theodore’s other leg. He crashed onto his backside, his plated armor clanking on the metal floor. Then the final part of the maze shifted and a new wall formed between the alien and us.

“JT, my leg! Look at my leg!”

I lifted myself off the ground and turned to see Theodore. My stomach wrenched as I saw Theodore’s left leg lying useless, twisted at a grotesque angle.

“What are we going to do?” he cried. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”

“You’re not going to die,” I told him, and grabbed him by his underarms.

“Agh!” he screamed.

“I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

I dragged Theodore toward the exit and past the escape button.

“Where are you going?” he protested.

“To the exit!”

“JT, I can’t! It’s killing me. Please.”

He didn’t ask me to push the escape button. I don’t know if he would actually say the words. Theodore knew how I felt.

“You can’t drag me for ten more levels. Banar will finish both of us off,” he breathed.

“I have to!”

“No, you don’t,” Vairocina whispered. “Replace Theodore with your sister. Do it quickly.”

“I can’t,” I hissed. My brain refused to turn my need into action.

“Now, JT,” Vairocina urged. “Please.”

Breaking my trance, I punched the crystal button and the wall disappeared. Ketheria was sitting there waiting, her helmet already on. She jumped out and helped me put Theodore into the chair. Then she gently placed her hands on Theodore’s leg as he cringed.

“It’s okay now,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Then she tapped the escape button. The wall swallowed him up.

“Stay close,” I told my sister. “This is it.”

The game felt different now. I felt different. I wasn’t concentrating on the labyrinth anymore. Instead I was constantly watching Ketheria. Was she too far behind? Too close to that opening? To that channel?

“What’s wrong with you?” she yelled out.

“Nothing,” I cried.

“Concentrate! Grab that immobility cube. I can use that. Let me take the lead, too.”

With Ketheria in front of me, I actually felt a little better. I could see her and I could see the path ahead of us. This calmed me somewhat. We had cleared three more levels and were almost halfway home. On our return, we found the Neewalkers again, still frozen near the level’s exit. They were no longer sleeping, though. Someone had killed them. By the position of their bodies, it looked as if someone had killed them in their sleep.

Ketheria saw them first and stopped, peering over the lifeless corpses.

“Did Banar do that?” she croaked softly.

“Don’t look at that,” I told her. “C’mon, we’re almost there.”

I pushed Ketheria toward the only exit. The shift in the labyrinth had placed it on the other side of the room now. I paused and took one last look at the dead Neewalkers.
Could I do that?
I asked.

The room pulsed.

“Ketheria!” I screamed at my sister, but she slipped through the exit just as the labyrinth shifted. The wall swallowed her up. I leaped to the wall and pounded on the metal. “Ketheria!”

A thunderbolt of pure anxiety struck my mind and body. I spun on my heels looking for the new exit, but there was none.

“Shift!”

A hole opened in the floor and I dove in.
This could lead to anywhere,
I thought, but I didn’t care. I had to keep moving. I had to find Ketheria. Blindly, I leaped over each obstacle, looking only for the next opening. I didn’t know if I was going forward or backward, but at least I was moving.

“Ketheria!”

“You’ll find her, JT,” Vairocina assured me, her words just a whisper.

“Ketheria!”

I slid down a steep chute and into a smoky passageway. About four meters above my head was a thick ledge that lined each side of the corridor. I don’t know why, but something told me I had to get up there. I sprinted down the length of the hallway and spotted a ladder. Then I saw him.

I couldn’t tell if it was Banar or his bait, since they both carried the bulbous, black armor on their backs.

“Hey!” I yelled at him, but he did not turn. “Hey, split-screen!”

I scrambled up the chrome bars embedded in the opposite wall and onto a broad, square landing. I could see both of them. Banar
and
his bait. Ketheria was there, too. They had her cornered on the landing.

“Ketheria!”

But she couldn’t hear me, either. I hadn’t been able to see it from below, but a glass wall sealed up their side.

“I’m gonna jump!”

“You don’t know how thick that wall is! You don’t even know if it will break,” Vairocina protested.

I didn’t know if I could jump across the corridor, either, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I took a good run at it, put my good arm forward, and jumped.

The glass exploded on impact, bursting into a million pieces. I landed on the floor, rolling.

“JT!”

I scrambled to my feet. Banar’s frozen expression told me that Ketheria had used her immobility cube on him, but the bait was moving fast. His battering ram of an arm was pulled back and poised to strike. I reached the alien just as he swung at my sister. She crumpled under the impact, her body flailing against the wall, blood already escaping her mouth.

My mind went blank. It was as if a switch flipped and erased every bit of fear from my body. Neither sight nor sound registered with my senses. My mind was more focused than I had ever experienced in my life.

Banar’s bait spun toward me. The blackened metal plates on his back whirled and then locked in front of him, protecting his vulnerable underbelly.

By some means that I could not explain, I knew that with his armor now locked in front, the alien’s back was exposed. I just needed to get around him. To do this, I simply visualized the location within the room and in a blink,
I was there.
A faint smell of dirty socks lingered in the air.

As if by reflex, I thrust my hand forward and into the warm flesh of his back. My fingers clamped around his spine and with a quick snap, I rotated my hand counterclockwise. The alien did not scream or cry out in pain; he simply slumped to his knees and fell forward. A chunk of his spine was still clutched in my fist when his face hit the floor.

“No!” I heard someone scream. It was Banar. The immobility cube had worn off while he helplessly watched his partner die. I wasn’t afraid of Banar anymore. He was simply another obstacle I needed to dispose of. I turned and prepared to deal with him, but before either of us moved, the light in the room shifted — bent, if you will — and four hulking Space Jumpers stepped into our dimension. They brushed past Banar and gathered around me. Two of them scoped the room, while the other two took hold of my arms. I wrenched my body, looking for my sister.

“Ketheria!”

Then nothing.

“Ketheria!”

I was still calling her name when I woke. In my dream I had cradled Ketheria’s broken body in my arms, screaming at her to open her eyes.
Did that happen? Where am I? Is Ketheria with me?
One part of my mind told me I had just been sleeping, but another part told me I had been fighting in the match less than a nanosecond ago. I was confused. I had no clue where I was, but I definitely wasn’t in the labyrinth anymore.

I lifted myself up, but my right arm refused to participate. It clung to my side, held in place by thin, transparent wires.
Who did that?
I fell back onto the misty blue sleeper. It reminded me of the conveyor belts on Weegin’s World.

“Hello?” I called out, and waited for a response. There was none. I was alone, locked in a room that looked like someone had scooped it out of a rock, then placed some sort of weird sleeper in it and sealed the whole thing up with a crude-looking force field.

“Vairocina,” I whispered. “Vairocina?”

She was gone, too. I tried to access the controls in my arm through my softwire, but those, too, were unavailable. It felt as if someone had turned off my arm and taken Vairocina with them.
Who? Who did this?

I stood up.
How long have I been here?
I peered through the force field, but I couldn’t see anything. I paced the perimeter of the small room, searching for clues to where I was.

All the while, a question that I didn’t want to ask — that I couldn’t ask — was hovering at the edge of my consciousness. I turned on my heels and searched the room again as if it were my only distraction.
Don’t ask it,
I told myself.
Don’t!
But I couldn’t stop myself.

Is Ketheria
dead
?

“Ketheria!” I cried out loud, falling to my knees.

I know what I had seen. Ketheria was crushed by Banar’s bait. She was unconscious before she even hit the wall. I saw blood, too,
her
blood. But the last thing I saw before the Space Jumpers took me, the thing that frightened me the most was Banar’s hulking form lunging toward my sister.

My head throbbed.
Oh, what have I done? Please, let her be all right!
Who was I talking to? Who would answer me? No one. I felt empty and alone. I had failed my sister.

Then something stirred beyond the door.

“Who’s there?”

I stood up and slunk toward the transparent force field, approaching it from the side. I peered into the darkness. Something darted past again, and I jumped back. Whatever was out there was big and fast.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” someone blurted from the darkness. My heart thumped in my chest. It sounded like a kid.

“Hey, kid, can you help me? Can you help me get out of here? I need to get out of here!”

Suddenly I realized I was shouting. I didn’t know who could hear me, but I shouldn’t be attracting any attention.

“Please,” I whispered. “Can you help me?”

“Can’t,” the kid replied, mimicking my whisper.

“Why not?”

“You bad.”

“Bad? I’m not bad. I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I have to find my sister. Bad things are going to happen to her if I don’t get out of here.” Maybe they had already happened, but I couldn’t stand waiting here and doing nothing.

I put my face as close as I could to the force field.

“Hey! Are you still there?”

“You bad.”

“I’m not bad!”

Whatever was out there shot past me again.
That’s an awfully big kid,
I thought. I didn’t even try to call after him. I knew I had scared him away.
What a split-screen I am.

I had been sitting on my sleeper for what seemed like an eternity when the force field opened. I immediately sprang to my feet. Before I could make it to the door, though, a small cream-colored ball floated into the room. I kept my distance. I was well aware of the surprises things like this could hold. As the orb moved toward me, it flattened out and began to elongate. Something pushed at my mind, forcing me to turn around, as if I’d been ordered to, yet no one had spoken to me. The bands holding my arm at my side slipped off. Instantly I felt the energy fill my arm and Vairocina’s voice flood my head.

“What happened?” she cried. “Where are we? Oh, that was horrible! It was as if I was locked in a box, unable to move, unable to see. I was going crazy. Johnny, what happened?”

But I couldn’t answer her. Something else was controlling me now. I think it was that weird orb.

“JT?”

I was raising my arms as the thing snuggled up against my back. The transparent wires that held my arm in place returned. This time, though, they wrapped around my legs, my forehead, my arms, and even my waist. I think I heard Vairocina scream before my body became completely paralyzed. I felt the orb lift me off the ground and then tilt me forward. Now I was facedown about half a meter off the ground, my arms stretched out to my sides and my feet together. Finally, something reached over the top of my head and blocked my sight.

I felt the device gliding in the direction of my door.
No! I need to find Ketheria!
But I could tell we had slipped outside my room, as the air was much warmer on my skin. I began to hear things moving around me, or moving out of the way; I couldn’t tell which.

“You bad,” I heard the kid whisper in my ear. Was I being paraded around in front of my captors like some prized possession? Where were they taking me?

Hey!
I tried to scream, but even my mouth was paralyzed.

The sounds of people shuffling around me dropped off, and the air grew very cold. The device stopped, and my ears became plugged as if the air pressure had suddenly changed. Then the thing I was strapped to released me. Instinctually I thrust my arms forward to cushion my fall. As I hit the stone floor, Vairocina’s voice came rushing back into my head.