Max sat near the edge of the food court, munching down more of that too-tantalizing food that the places here seemed to specialize at, occasionally tossing one of those salty golden things they called “fries” to Bandit, who snapped them out of mid air.

He and his companion had wandered for hours, had even tried to talk to a few more people. His results ranged from wary sidestepping to questions about whether or not wild animals were allowed in here, including one person telling his friend Just smile and try not to make eye contact. Still no answers to how he got here, how he could get back to the Centralict Library, or what was going on.

And worst of all, feeling farther and farther from the action back in Tranz-D, no clue if Justin was even still alive.

He had been waylaid for a time by this place’s charms, and still harbored a fascination for the exotic scene he now found himself exploring. Yet he was also becoming increasingly frustrated with his situation. The librarian warned him, of course, but he still couldn’t believe how easily he had been sidetracked from his quest. He was no longer even sure what dimension he was in.

That, and his supply of those papers he had found in Tranz-D, which just as he had been told, Outlanders called cash, were dwindling, so he was beginning to suspect that food would soon be a lot harder to—

“Damn! You keep feeding that poor kitty junk food, he’s gonna have a heart attack or somethin’!”

“Huh?” Max paused, French fry dangling from his fingertips, and even Bandit perked up, his attention swayed from his treat. His contemplations disrupted as this newcomer strode up to him. After a moment, he realized he had seen this one before. The young man still looked very much as he had when Max saw him moshing at Bankshot earlier. Only now, in addition to the heavy-looking jacket and reflective wraparound glasses, he had also donned light but rugged-looking black gloves that somehow all together gave him the impression of armor.

Girded from head to foot in a manner that made Max picture this guy fighting for some reason.

“Of course,” the stranger went on conversationally, “I’m not so sure those things are so good for people either, but hell, you only live once. Mind if I score a couple?”

“I guess…” Unsure what to make of this turn of events, Max decided to do the friendly thing and offer the young man some fries.

“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do…” he said as he grabbed a couple. All that fun during Mosh Hour had definitely worked up an appetite. And, in light of the friendly gesture, since Master Al had always told him, If you wish to know some else’s name, you should give your own first, he said, “Mind if I take a seat? All my friends call me Shades. And you are?”

“I’m Max.” Shared food, shared names, this guy was more friendly than anyone else he had met here so far. Not wanting to pass up a potential friend— and explanation— in this strange place, he was about to ask this Shades fellow if he knew anything about this dimension.

But before he could, Shades asked, “Max who?”

“It’s just Max. I have no other names.”

“Cool.” This made him the first person Shades had ever met with just one name. Simplicity.

“I saw you before,” Max told him, trying to remember the name, “at…”

“Bankshot?” Shades filled in the blank. “Yeah, I saw you, too.” Hard to miss with such strange garb and that big cat in tow. He knew he was pressing this conversation at a fast clip, but as much as it cramped his style, he hoped to plan first, get acquainted later. There was a distinct possibility here, and he could only conclude that it was sheer desperation that drove him to keep up this balancing act of talking out of character while his tone remained so natural.

He tried not to look at his watch, as he had done while talking to Amy in another mall. What felt entirely too long ago. Understanding instinctively this Max’s companion would be the deal-breaker, he then turned and asked, “Who’s your friend? Is it okay if I pet him?”

“His name is Bandit,” Max told him. So far, Bandit hadn’t hurt anyone, still he deferred, “Is it okay with you, Bandit?”

“Hey Bandit!” Shades chirped, reaching out casually, but not too quickly, and patting him on the head. The mere fact that this Bandit allowed him to touch him meant he had earned both their trust. Which was good for both of them in this place of perils he was fast concluding these newcomers were entirely unaware of. “Yeah… ’sa a good kitty…”

“He seems to like you.”

“I have kind a thing for cats,” Shades explained. And he was fast starting to believe he had found a new friend in Max, if not his kitty. “And they usually like me. Bandit, huh. Even on both sides…”

“Huh?” Max had no idea what he meant by that.

“Oh.” Then Shades realized that he was thinking of aloud. “That’s just something my mom used to say about a kitten we took care of years ago. His name was also Bandit.” …Coincidence? This creature looked a lot like the cat who so unexpectedly took ill and died years ago, reincarnated with more attitude. “Anyhoo, Max—”

And that was when he saw it. Earlier, he was going to ask Max about the strange sigil on his headband, as well as where he had picked up his weird clothes and exotic feline friend. Then he saw the symbol on the shoulder bag, and everything else he was about to say came to a crashing halt on the tip of his tongue.

“What?” Even with those dark lenses over his eyes, Max could see the rest of Shades’ face change visibly at something he couldn’t see.

“No way…” Shades had seen some weird shit here in the Sixth Dimension, but… “You’re not a… Nazi… are you?”

“A not… what?” Max had finally figured out what Shades was gaping at. When he first laid eyes on that mysterious insignia on the uniform and pack that washed up with him in Paradise years ago, he had had a bad feeling about it, and now that unease he felt back then returned full force. Back then, he had hidden what he could, for fear of being associated with unknown allies or enemies, and he realized now that in all the confusion of recent events, he had completely forgotten to flip his headband, even.

“Um…” On one hand, Shades felt an inward sense of relief. His friend Arthur had always been an impeccable judge of character, (sometimes he swore) almost a mind-reader. He might not possess Arthur’s ability in that department, but he found Max’s reaction so transparent even he could read him like a book. Yet on the other hand, he also felt a mix of awkwardness and shame for such an insinuation. After a moment, he said, “I’m sorry, dude. Here, let me fix that…”

While Max stood puzzling over what a Nazi was, and why it would upset his new companion so much, Shades reached into one of his many pockets, fishing out a permanent marker he kept for just such occasions and went to work. Perhaps the only marker to ever leave its mark on two different planes of existence, including the very restroom where he dried his clothes once upon a time. When he was finished, the swastika on Max’s pack was marked over with a circle and bar similar to the Bad Religion “cross-buster” logo on his own backpack.

“There. Much better.” Shades stepped back and admired his latest handiwork. Much to his relief he saw that Max was also relieved. “You go around with that thing, and even in this world, somebody’s gonna kick your ass sooner or later.”

“You know what that symbol is?” Max was sure of it, from Shades’ reaction to it. “I found it years ago, and I’ve always wondered…”

“Where I come from, that symbol is practically synonymous with evil.” Then he remembered the reason he wanted to talk to Max in the first place, that the clock was ticking. “I’ll tell you more about it later. Right now we have more important things to discuss than fascism. Tell me, Max. How long have you been here?”

“Here?...” Max paused. That was a good question. Since leaving the sun behind, in a place he still thought of as being somehow “up” from here, his usually reliable sense of direction had deserted him. “Where’s here? I keep asking, but no one will tell me.”

“I’m way ahead of you, Max.” Shades had guessed right; something about this guy’s bearing suggested his new friend no more belonged in this place than he himself did. For finding someone who might listen, this was going better than he could have hoped. “But before I tell you anything else, it’s really important that I know what you’ve been up to. How long have you been here? I know this probably seems weird, but please go with me on this.”

“Well…” Max could sense an urgency about this one that he found hard to ignore. Still, after all he had been through in the last day or so, he had no sense of time left to speak of. “A few hours, I guess… I’ve just been looking around.”

“I see.” Shades tried to conceal his anxiety, telling himself that if Max had no way of telling time, it wasn’t his fault and was beyond both of their control. “I wish you knew, but it can’t be helped. You’ve already eaten the food…” He leaned closer, not wanting to be overheard. “But our time is running out, if it hasn’t already. If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll both be trapped here forever.”

“What do you mean?” Max found that last unexpected, as no one here seemed to be worried about anything of the sort. Yet there was also an urgency to Shades’ words, and his manner, that alarmed him.

“Please, just take my word for now. I would rather explain it outside if we get free. I’ve been trapped here for almost three weeks, and if you aren’t careful, so will you.”

“How?...”

“Come on. One way or the other, I’ll explain later.” Shades grabbed one last bunch of fries, for the road. “I’ll even treat you to dinner, but we’ve gotta get going now. We may still have a fighting chance if we hurry.”

Max wasn’t sure exactly what got him on his feet. There appeared to be no present danger, yet this Shades knew more about his place than he did. More than anything, though, this guy seemed to be afraid of something, and though he wanted some answers, he had decided that it might be better to act now and compare notes later.

“But if you’ve been trapped…” Max began, trying to puzzle this out as they strode down the hall.

“I don’t know,” Shades replied, picking up the pace, “but if you can still find an exit, maybe we can both get out of here. But we can’t waste a second.” Somehow he knew, instinctively, “The longer we wait, the harder it will be to find it!”

Shades just kept accelerating, from a hustle to a brisk stride to a fast jog, dragging Max behind him. After a short way, Max got swept up in the moment, and Shades had to break into an all-out dash to keep up with him. By now they just charged down the halls, customers simply staring at them as they breezed by, so psyched they hardly noticed.

Ordinarily, Shades wouldn’t dare risk drawing so much attention to himself in this place, but the chance at escape was easily worth the risk, as far as he was concerned.

Together, they raced down one hall after another. Shades had expected Bandit to take the lead, of course, but he also found he was impressed with Max’s speed, as he could barely keep up with his new friend. Still, he was glad this stranger took him seriously, for he wanted to see Max and Bandit trapped here about as much as he enjoyed being trapped here himself.

It was a fate he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

“There it is!” Shades proclaimed as they came around the next corner. Ahead was a big block of exit doors, beyond which he could see daylight. Of course, he had seen a few skylights in some sectors, but all of them were placed completely out of reach. “You did it!”

In his rush of adrenaline— and hope— he even started to pull out ahead of Max, who genuinely seemed surprised Shades could keep up with him.

“Alright!” Max still wasn’t entirely sure what he was cheering for, but he was now certain an explanation awaited outside. He just hoped Justin could hang on until he could figure out how to get back to the library.

They were within about twenty yards of their goal when it happened.

Shades was going all-out, as he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen if they didn’t take this window of opportunity right now… Tunnel vision focused only on the exit door, so he didn’t even see it coming when someone burst out of a little-used side door with a huge hanging rack of clothes. All he heard was Max’s warning to look out, followed by the mover’s cry of alarm as he crashed into it, knocking he whole thing over and sprawling headlong across the floor tiles.

And Max, being unable to dodge in time, tripped over the rack, as well, crashing to the floor next to Shades.

Justin Black crawled on his hands and knees through the dark labyrinth of vent shafts for as long as he could endure before emerging back into what he was beginning to think of as aboveground.

After cutting the vent grill with his laser staff, he had quickly snatched it before it could hit the floor. The metal floor. Terrified it would reverberate for miles around. Anymore, he was terrified to make even a single sound; he still had no idea exactly what the hell an NK-525 was, or what its hearing range might be, but he didn’t care to find out the hard way.

Just that brief glimpse of his hunter was more than enough for him, thank you.

He was shocked to discover that, after over two months of not having people and things trying to kill him in Paradise, he actually had to get used to running for his life again. Those shafts had become his Works, his Ruins, all of these endless hallways had become the rest of Benton Island. Though the vents, unlike the Ruins, also granted him “underground” passage around Tranz-D, aside from dead air, they provided him with none of the bare necessities. In this new game of cat and mouse, the streetrat still had to come up for food and water.

Thinking about it only made him wish he had chosen to stay with Max. Perhaps the two of them together would have been able to watch each other’s backs in this twisted maze. All these years, he had come to trust only himself, yet he found that he wanted to trust Max.

And, much to his surprise, found he even believed he could.

And thinking about Max brought to mind the only other person he had ever thought he could trust. What felt like a lifetime ago, when his life of drudgery in the Triangle State was still fairly new to him. During his stay in Pullman Mine Camp, his thoughts had briefly touched on him at times, otherwise it had been years since the name Jesse Fletcher crossed his mind…

…At the bottom of crude stone steps of rubble left over from the TSA’s long-ago assault on the Works lay the entrance to the Ruins.

“Damn, Justin! You’re out of your fuckin’ mind!”

Though he had said it with a laugh, Justin’s new companion also held a measure of seriousness in his voice. Of course, Justin mostly felt a rush of pride at the other’s trepidation, an echo of his first pursuers’ thinly veiled anxiety. After all, that was the very reason he had chosen this place.

“And that’s why no one will find us here.”

Jesse had no answer to that.

Only hours before, Justin had met Jesse James Fletcher, the newest inmate of this ocean-locked prison. Another orphan, just like himself, but while Justin had no knowledge of his origins, Jesse at least knew he was from New Cali, though he had yet to tell him how he ended up in this far-flung hellhole. Jesse was perhaps a little taller, with reddish hair and blue-green eyes that always seemed to be looking far ahead of where he was.

They first met when this newcomer, whom he had seen around off and on lately, had dared him to venture into the Bone Yard, and after escalating to Triple Dog Daring each other, both of them ended up going. The Bone Yard was where the Authority scrapped all of its old mining equipment and military hardware, a walled junkyard guarded by a malicious crew known as the Junkyard Dogs. It was a stupid thing to do, and both of them were lucky to get out with only scrapes and bruises.

“Come on man,” Jesse said, “let me check it out…”

Along with being only person ever shown Justin’s secret hideout, there was also the matter of Justin’s new toy. Having escaped with it from one of the mercenaries, who, in typical TSA fashion, was one of their leaders. An interesting weapon, the like of which was seldom seen in this realm.

“Wait.” Justin paused now that they were underground, walking among the tunnels that were once hallways. There would be plenty of time to mess around with his new laser staff later, but for now there was something important to discuss. “Before we go any further… I need you to promise me that you’ll never tell anyone else about this place.”

“Come on, Justin, who’m I gonna tell?”

“Jesse. Swear you’ll never tell anyone where this place is.”

“Fine.” One thing Justin would learn about Jesse Fletcher was that he was quick with his wits, and with his mouth— he would later come to associate that face with con artists. “I swear I’ll never tell anyone about this place.”

“Okay.” Still, there was just something about that gleam in his eye that he wasn’t entirely sure he could trust, yet he had decided to take the risk. It would never occur to him until years later that he might merely have been lonely, but for now all he knew was that he was tired of having no one to trust, and somehow he saw himself in this newcomer. “Come on. I know it looks like it’s gonna fall apart if ya look it at wrong, but it’s safe enough.”

“Now let’s see that staff…”

“Don’t worry. Let’s go to the lower levels, then we’ll check it out…”

…When Justin heard the approaching whir of the cleaning drones for the first time, he freaked out, realizing that he had totally dropped his guard in his reverie.

Something was about to come around the next corner, and it completely had the drop on him. Even as he raised his power pistol, the first of the little metal boxes rolled into view, scrubbing the floor in their mindless automaton fashion. And Justin, of course, blasted it to bits with a couple clean shots.

“Shit!” he hissed, already bracing for another blast of alarms. Knowing he should run, yet his feet were bolted to the floor.

No alarms came, still he could feel cold sweat dripping down every square inch of his body, imagining half-seen visions of the Enforcer coming for him. Even as he attempted to make his feet move, he watched the little machines at work as more of them came around the corner, maneuvering around their fallen comrade with their customary chirps and beeps. Justin tried not to laugh out loud, for fear of other machines hearing.

Still he feared his shot may yet have triggered some as-yet unknown security system, and he started walking down a different branch, ready to turn that stride into a sprint if anything else came by.

As he made his hasty way, Justin wondered why he had thought of Jesse after all this time. Though the two of them managed to get on for a little while, they ultimately had a bit of a falling out later. Jesse storming out, claiming he was going to stow away on another ship, consequences be damned, and that was the last Justin ever saw of him. That was years ago, and Justin had long since written him off.

Still, Justin had to grant him one thing: whatever happened to him, Jesse Fletcher never did tell anyone in the Triangle State about his hideout in the Ruins.

“Max!” Shades shouted, scrambling to drag Max back to his feet in a mad frenzy to get away before the commotion started to attract the wrong kind of attention. Even as he spoke, he turned to help Max to his feet, hoping his new friend wouldn’t think him too rude, as he decided to escape now, apologize later.

Much to Shades’ surprise, Max was already bounding back to his feet, having rolled past the rest of the fallen clothes, and thus saw first what his companion had yet to notice.

“Where’d it go?…”

So focused were they on regaining their feet, they failed to notice that they had already attracted the wrong kind of attention as a pair of security guards came around the side of the atrium they just ran past only moments ago.

“Whoa! Hold on there!” shouted one of the guards as they stepped in the way.

Shades would curse his old-world reflexes for a long time to come, as he skidded to a halt before he even realized what he was doing. Unsure of what was happening, Max also halted. As soon as he did so, he found he now shared Shades’ unease.

“Where’s the fire?” the other guard asked. “Don’t you know there’s no running in the halls?”

“I’m sorry,” Shades said, alarmed at how automatically the words flowed from his mouth. He already knew his mistake, and it was all he could do not to kick himself at how easily he had fallen for it. Even as he tried to focus on talking his way out of this predicament, he remembered a bit of trivia Vince once ran by him, a little tidbit from one of his Drama classes. A uniform is just a kind of costume, his friend had said, and being a cop has a lot to do with acting. Something about police in some places doing local community theater acting, or some such. Now he felt the strain of trying to break away from the script of this charade after so many years of adhering to it. “We’re in a bit of a hurry. We have to get going, or we’re gonna be late.”

“Hey, Shades! It’s gone!” Max cried, pointing off ahead. Where there was once a bank of exit doors, there was now the entrance to some trendy clothing store. Still trying to figure out exactly what just happened, he demanded, “How’d that happen!?”

“I guess there is a time limit…” Shades muttered as he looked over and confirmed it for himself. Trying not to sound as bitter as he felt, he added, “That’s how.”

“But…” Max stammered.

“I don’t know either,” Shades told him, trying to console himself as much as his new friend. There were things he did know, but he would save those for another conversation. “It’s hard to explain,” (like some twisted curfew, he realized even as he said it) “and now is not the time or the place. Anyway, um, Max, let’s get going…”

He was liking this situation less by the minute.

“What’s the hurry?” asked the second guard. “We just want to talk.”

Yet even as he tried to move on, the guards moved in closer, barring their way.

“Just a minute,” said the first guard. “I could be mistaken,” though there seemed to be no uncertainty in his tone, “but you look a lot like a description of a young man wanted for questioning in the death of a repairman about three weeks ago. I think we should take you over to the main office to see if the others can ID you…”

And Shades knew they would.

“What’re you talking about?” Shades asked, deciding for feign ignorance. “What’s going on here?”

Shades spoke casually enough, but Max could still sense he did not like them, and was increasingly certain that the feeling was mutual. He had no idea who they were, but he could tell they were bad news. Their manner brought to mind Justin’s descriptions of TSA soldiers, and, even worse, his own memories of Cyexian pirates.

Even as they instinctively turned to start away from them again, one of the guards turned his attention to Bandit, demanding, “Hey, headband! You got a permit for this?”

Bandit fielded that one himself with a low growl, slightly baring his fangs. Apparently, he thought these guys were trouble, too.

“He’s with me,” Max told them. Though in such menacing company, he feared his feline companion might strike the first blow, something Dad had always cautioned him not to do.

Little did he know that Douglas MacLean and Master Al had taught his new friend much the same thing. Never be the one to start a fight, but if you must fight, then be the one to finish it. Or the Master Al version: We never throw the first punch. We just throw the second, third and fourth. That Shades was also bracing for the worst.

“What happened to the exit?” Max asked, trying to change the subject and defuse the situation, little knowing he was about to make it worse.

“What exit?” the first guard demanded.

“The one that was just there a moment ago…”

“There was never an exit there,” he told Max. “I don’t know what the hell you’re tryin’ to pull, but I’m not in the mood…”

“Then why don’t you escort us to the nearest exit?” Shades demanded. “After all, that’s what you security types seem to do best.”

Then remembered DJ’s ominous rumors about disappearances, along with how many times he had been told to watch what he wished for, knowing all too well that he couldn’t take back what he said.

“That does it!” thundered the second guard. “You wanna play games with me, smartass? Your ass is mine, punk!”

In spite of this escalation, Shades was still unprepared for the guard’s abrupt outburst, caught off-guard as he was shoved against the railing of the atrium behind him. But before the guard could continue his tirade, Shades righted himself, jumping in from several feet out of reach and kicking him. The guard fell on his ass, completely taken aback by this unexpected level of resistance.

“See?” Shades shouted, trying not to think about how dangerously close he had just come to sharing the aforementioned repairman’s fate, “I can push too, asshole!”

In the heat of battle, Max’s moves were pure instinct. Even while the other guard moved to restrain him, then tried to decide if he should move against Shades instead, Max simply acted. “You son of a bit—” was all the guard had time to blurt before Max struck him with a hard right.

And a sharp “Leave him alone!”

“Don’t you be gettin’ any funny ideas, boy…” the guard told Max as he whipped out his nightstick. Clearly intending to make an example out of this punk who dared to challenge his authority. “’Cause I won’t take any crap from you!”

Max clearly didn’t know the whole story behind this, but he seriously doubted it really had anything to do with Bandit. These two, like the bullies they were, liked to throw their rather ample weight around. So it was no surprise that they didn’t like Shades, since he chose to stand up to them.

“I warned you, punk!”

With that, the guard rushed Max, swinging his stick. Having been expecting a fight, what with all the trouble he’d had with guards lately, Max sidestepped him. The guard’s second blow connected, though, sending Max staggering.

Emboldened by his initial success, the guard advanced again. Max, though, was lost in combat mode, already shrugging off the blow. He stepped in past the guard’s reach, grabbing his arm in mid swing, twisting his opponent’s body around with it. His arm gave a loud, wet snap as Max threw him down.

After that, the guard just sat there, moaning in agony, his right arm hanging limply at his side.

“You bastard! You broke his arm!”

The other guard, meanwhile, had decided that Max was an even greater threat than Shades, turned to attack him while his back was turned. But Shades had other plans. Turning his back on him proved to be a mistake, as Shades flanked him with a low, sweeping kick, tripping him up.

Max, his opponent’s surprise attack revealed, turned and grabbed him and swung him around, slamming him against the railing. Sliding across the floor, he hit hard enough to send a spiderweb of cracks through the glass paneling, knocking him out. Meanwhile, the guard with the broken arm tried to reach out for his nightstick with his one good hand, but Bandit snarled at him, and he simply forgot about it.

Max and Bandit looked briefly at each other, then glanced around to make sure there were no more enemies. Then stood proudly, triumphantly, side by side. And Shades wasn’t sure quite what to make of it.

Apparently, neither was the crowd, for there was a long, awkward moment as they stared at this young man and his feline friend with a mixture of awe, horror and perplexity.

“Who do you think you are? Extreme Jake?” Shades finally managed. He had never seen anything like that in real life, not even in Master Al’s dojo had he ever seen someone fight without holding back like that. And he couldn’t help but wonder if this was more what his sensei would be like in a real battle.

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“What’s wrong?” Max asked, seeing the troubled look on Shades’ face. “We won, didn’t we?”

“Um, you’ve heard the one about winning the battle but losing the war, haven’t you?” Shades gestured for Max to follow him, quietly fleeing the scene. “There’s more where that came from. As long as they can’t prove anything, we should be fine.”

“I don’t think so.” Now that Max thought about it, and he felt that Shades knew it, too. “They won’t forget us. They’ll be back.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Shades admitted. So much for reassuring him. And after the way our new friend busted ’em up like that, things’ll never be quite the same with those guys… As much as it cramped his style, they would have to lay even lower. “Fortunately, I know just the place.”

Max found himself recalling Justin’s descriptions of the Ruins, and wondering where Shades was planning to hide out.

“And keep your guard up,” Shades cautioned. Now that their shot at escape had failed, Max, my man, you’re about to get a crash-course in survival around here. “Those Security guys are sneaky bastards.”

“And they’re all over the place, aren’t they?” Max hoped his new friend knew what he was doing. “I don’t think we could beat all of them.”

“You got it. They’ve got us seriously outnumbered, but if we can keep it down to two-on-two, we can take ’em! For a little while, anyway. Still, it’s okay to be a little nervous— it keeps you from becoming overconfident.” And his own nerves reminded him just how new he was to this adventuring business himself as he wondered when exactly he started running his mouth so much. “Of course, you’ve got some kick-ass moves there, Max…”

“Where are we going, Shades?”

“The one place that’ll hide me anymore. You’ll see…” Shades smiled elusively. This just won’t do… he thought to himself, switching gears. He could change up his own style easily enough, but Max’s costume would need a complete overhaul. “Say, Max, you ever think about getting a haircut?”

“A haircut?” Max echoed.

“Yeah, and we’ll have to do something about those clothes. You look like you just survived a ‘B’ sci-fi flick, man.” Just looking at Max reminded him of his first day here, and he laughed in spite of himself. “There’s nothing we can do about Bandit, but we can at least clean you up a bit, maybe lose the headband…”

“Um…”

“Yeah, you look like a Hippie.” And for a moment, he could just hear Mom: Now don’t you be puttin’ down us Hippies… and for a moment couldn’t decide if he was sad or amused. So he switched gears again, saying, “And I can see that you have a gun hidden in your jacket. That’s a big no-no around here if you don’t want people to notice you. But the most important thing is a good disguise.”

“Uh, Shades…”

“Tell ya what. Let’s go talk to da Boss DJ first, then we’ll talk disguises.”

“Okay…”

Justin peered around the next corner. His heart was racing, his lungs burned, his side ached. At times like this, he seriously envied Max’s athletic abilities. I’m gonna end up becoming a hell of a runner myself simply by surviving this!

But for now he could take a break, as the hall was empty as far as the eye could see.

In the long run, he found very little comfort in that. If it was a trick, it wouldn’t be this place’s first. Since his encounter with the cleaning robots, he carried one double-barrel power pistol in hand, but kept his other hand free to operate controls, though always ready to draw from one of the holsters he had taken from the stiffs in the closet.

The emptiness only served to underscore the same questions he had been asking since he first set foot in this place. Where the hell are all the people? Why are their machines trying to kill me? This just doesn’t make any sense…

For a while, he had tried to look everywhere at once, but he quickly gave up on that idea. If he had somehow managed to lose this NK-525, then all he had to do was avoid sounding any more alarms. This whole experience had left his ears, and his nerves, ringing.

He had scarcely slept in the past forty-eight hours, and he felt utterly paranoid.

Somewhere along the way, he had heard stories about what happened to people who went too long without sleep. Stories of people seeing things, hearing things, losing touch with reality. It would start, as he was discovering for himself, with the slow breakdown of his ability to concentrate, making serious thought harder and harder. The Cyexian ringleader Slash was said to be like this, and he had seen it for himself on that fateful smuggling run. An insomniac, she was called, and if things kept up this way, he feared he may yet learn what that exotic- (and rather sinister-) sounding word meant.

The scenery here was creepy enough without hallucinations.

Exhaustion dragged at him as it hadn’t since his time at Pullman Mine Camp. His feet were sore, his knees and elbows were bruised and battered from hours of crawling through shafts, and in spite of the swig of water he had taken from the bottle only a minute ago, his mouth was still dry. On top of that, the feeling that he had somehow walked farther in one day than he had in his entire life. The place itself was neither hot nor cold, and what little ventilation there was felt forced. Everything about this place chilled him to the bone, yet he also felt hot and dazed.

He was starting to feel like he was going to—

Justin snapped out of it as he heard the by now all-too-familiar sound of tracks on metal plating. And by the sound of them, only a few intersections away and closing. Its incessant patrols were moving closer and closer to his position, and once it caught his trail, the nightmare would start all over again.

“Damn… it…”

Justin started forward, meaning to run. But the weight of fatigue and despair— of walls slowly closing in on him, of total futility— smothered his burst of adrenaline even as it started. He settled for stumbling several steps.

Pulling himself together, he scrambled over to the nearest closet. And when he tried to open it, it demanded a password. Same with the next one, and the one after that. When the third closet barred him, he just about screamed, picturing NK somehow locking all of the doors by remote or something.

And when the fourth door slid open without resistance, he ducked in.

One last, desperate idea… he thought as he huddled in the corner. He trained one of his guns on the control panel, meaning to disable it if the Enforcer stopped at this door. One last, desperate idea for the last desperate man in this automated hellhole…

Huddled like this, he made a smaller target.

Facing the door. It dawned on him with a dull sense of horror that he was now sitting in the exact same position as those two bodies in the other closet. That thought made him feel all the more desperate as he awaited an end more violent than any he had pictured in the Triangle State.

In his current jangled state of mind, it was all he could do to steady his aim with both hands, playing it as it comes, as he always had.

After a few moments, each longer than the last, those ominous tracks finally rolled back into earshot. For Justin it was maddening, the way they seemed to slow down as they drew nearer. He was increasingly certain they would stop any second.

Justin held his breath as the Enforcer rolled past, and then, after a few short ages, away from the closet. Somehow the hi-tech hunter had passed over its primitive prey. Later, he would come up with a few theories about that, but for now it was all he could do to exhale an impossibly long sigh of relief as the dreadful sound moved away from him.

In moments like this, he still wondered whether the thing— or something like it— had already done away with Max, or if his friend had somehow managed to survive.

Yet before he knew it, here in the mysterious sanctuary of the utility closet, he finally fell asleep into the troubled dreams of an exhausted mind.

Fortunately, Bankshot was in a different sector than the one where Max and Shades confronted the guards not too long ago, but even so, Shades didn’t feel very secure as they were. Fortunately also, after a little while, Shades’ nerves seemed to settle, and stopped rambling and allowed Max more than two words in edgewise. Shades had stuffed his own jacket in his previously concealed backpack, and stopped at a store and bought Max a different one, as well as a cap so he could take off his headband and conceal his hair to some degree. Hoping that would change their appearance enough to buy some time, they continued on their way.

They walked in silence for a little while as Shades began to calm down, and Max said to him, “I’m sorry about the guards. It’s just that they reminded me of the ones… I seemed to have ruined our chance to escape.”

“It’s not your fault.” Shades could just about kick himself, but he refused to take it out on Max. “I was hoping to explain the Three Taboos and stuff after we escaped. Now there’ll be plenty of time to tell you about it later.”

Max shrugged, then broke the question that had been forming in his mind since the fight ended: “Shades, what is this place?”

“What do you mean?” Shades asked, then decided that he did know what Max meant, even if he didn’t know the answer to his question.

“Well, it’s a long story,” Max told him, deciding not to go all the way back to the beginning. That would be too much, too soon. “It all started when I wandered into this weird place called Tranz-D.”

“Tranz-D?” Since his arrival, Shades had heard of names he had never heard before, and Max had just added one more to the list.

“Yeah,” Max said, trying to recall what the librarian had told him. “It’s this other dimension that’s been sealed away for… ten thousand years. The walls were made of metal, and there were computers everywhere, and all these hallways, and there are doors to other dimensions. But there were also androbots” (not quite able to remember the librarian’s word for them) “that tried to capture me, but I escaped from them!”

“Go on…” Shades tried not to laugh at the term androbot, not wanting to be distracted. This is the most interesting thing I’ve heard all week! From the moment he first laid eyes on him, he suspected that Max wasn’t from anyplace these other people had been, but even he had underestimated how far Max had come from.

“After I got away, I found a map, and went to a door— a warpgate— that led me to a library,” Max continued, heartened by his new friend’s apparent interest. “I was hoping to find answers to things the computers wouldn’t tell me.”

Which led back to his original purpose.

“Shades, I have to find a way back. I have a friend who was with me, and I think he’s still trapped in there.”

“And what is your friend’s name?” Shades asked.

Little did Max know that his new companion was fast becoming an expert on losing friends under unusual circumstances.

“His name is Justin Black.”

“How come you’ve only got one name, and he gets two?”

“I don’t know.” Having more than one name was a common Outlander tradition— Wymore, his mother’s original “last” name, immediately came to mind, something he hadn’t thought about in years— so the concept of two names, nicknames aside, was still very new to him.

“Ah, well we can talk about it in a little bit,” Shades told him as they up on the entrance to Bankshot. They were so busy talking, he almost walked right past it. “Here we are. Let’s go talk to DJ.”

After one last glance to make sure there were no guards lurking about, they ducked inside.

The place was a lot quieter than it was during Mosh Hour, though some hip-hop tune Shades had never heard before was playing on low volume. Only a fraction of the previous crowd to be found here now, scattered to the four corners of the lounge. With as few visitors as he had had this past hour or so, DJ noticed them almost as soon as they came in.

“Hey mon!” he called out as he turned away from the back counter to greet them.

“Yo Deej!” Shades called back as he and Max strode over to the bar, Bandit strolling along behind them.

Shades loved just about everything about his place, from the real variety of music, to DJ’s penchant for playing uncensored versions most of the time, but there was one thing he found of greatest strategic significance. Even from his first escape onward, this was the only place that would hide him; somehow, in spite of all the time he spent here, it was his only haunt that Security was not aware of. To the contrary, totally oblivious. He knew DJ ran what was probably the Mall’s most discreet establishment, yet he still felt there was more to it than that.

Sometimes, he almost swore it was the music.

“Are dey with you?” DJ asked as Max sad down next to Shades, Bandit plunking himself down between them.

“Yeah. This is Max,” Shades told him, then lowered his voice a couple notches, “the curse’s latest victim. And the first person I’ve ever met who has no last name.” He then turned to Max, gesturing to DJ, saying, “My friend, DJ Rachid, owner and proprietor of this fine establishment.” Then back to DJ, patting the big cat on the head: “And last, but not least, Max’s kitty, Bandit.”

“Hi, Max!” DJ reached out to shake hands, and Max took a moment to figure out what he wanted, then took his hand. Then he leaned over the bar, extending his hand to Max’s companion, saying, “Hi Bandit!”

The gesture clearly meant in jest, yet all three humans ended up staring at each other for a moment after the panther actually put his paw in DJ’s.

“I never knew he could do that!” Max remarked after a moment, as confounded by this turn of events as his new friends.

“You didn’t?” Earlier, Shades had listened as Max told him about washing up on an island, and how his new friend was already there waiting for him. He wondered what other tricks Bandit had learned before he ever met Max.

“A lot of Outlanders often said that animals are dumb,” Max theorized, “but Bandit always seemed pretty smart. He even knows two different languages.”

“He does?” Shades asked.

“Yeah. Like this.”

Max then said something to Bandit in ancient Layoshan.

In response, the big jumped up and tackled Shades to the floor.

Even as Shades fell those two or three words resonated in his mind. To him, perhaps the first Outlander in at least a generation to hear the hidden language of the Ancestors, it felt as ancient as one of Earth’s forgotten tongues, with an aboriginal flow and beauty that made him wish everyone could speak it. He was hardly aware of the cat sitting upon him, filled with an inexplicable longing to see what kind of wondrous place such a language could originate from.

“We made up that one after I met Justin!”

“Cool!” To Shades, that made Bandit smarter than most people he had met. It wasn’t that he could follow orders— and dog could do that— it was more that he seemed to understand what they were talking about, even more so than any other creature he had met. Still, there was something else he wanted to know.

But DJ beat him to the punch, as he stepped around the bar, asking, “Wow! Where did you learn to speak two different languages?”

“Well… um…” Max, torn between his desire to tell them all about the Islands, and his painful memories of how that life was taken from him, settled for, “We all talked like that…”

The crowd had thinned out still more in the last few minutes, and the three of them realized that they could have the most remote corner of the lounge to themselves.

“I’d really love it if you taught me how to speak like that,” Shades told him as they took their seats. “Does your friend, uh… Justin, speak it too?”

“No.” Turning back to his friend’s predicament, Max was again stricken with frustration at how he kept drifting farther and farther from his goal, no matter how hard he fought against the current. “But I have to find him. Even he doesn’t know a lot about his past, but he told me he was from the Triangle State. Do you know where that is?”

Shades’ expression looked especially blank with sunglasses, and DJ also arched an eyebrow.

“You’ve never heard of it?”

“Should I have?” Wherever this guy’s from, it’s gotta be a lot more far-flung than most of these folks… Remembering what his new friend had said earlier about being shipwrecked on an uncharted island, he asked, “Where did you come from, I mean before you wound up in Tranz-D?”

“A long time ago,” Max told them, “I was stranded on an island. I called it Paradise.”

“Sounds like a pretty nice place,” Shades commented, judging from Max’s choice of names, and DJ nodded in understanding.

“Actually, I’m glad I left.” Now that he had a moment to think about it, it dawned on him that he had finally fulfilled the first part of his childhood vow, getting off the island. Still he wished Justin was with him now. “It’s tough being alone.”

“Alone?” Shades asked carefully. Then he realized that this Justin Black must have come along later on.

“After a storm, I found myself lying on the beach there about five years ago,” Max explained. Glossing over his harrowing battle with Slash, he told them, “Bandit was already there. I lived on that island for years before Justin was marooned there.”

“Oh.” Shades could tell there was a story here.

“Say Shades,” Max asked, changing the subject, “where do you come from?”

“A land called America, on a world called Earth,” Shades replied. “It’s in a whole other dimension. To be honest, I haven’t been in the Sixth Dimension very long either.”

“So… we’re still in the Sixth Dimension?”

All eyes on DJ.

“I… think so…”

“I guess even da Boss DJ doesn’t know, either,” Shades conceded. Then he asked, “Hey Deej, would you score us some Seltzers?”

“Sure thing!”

Shades could tell Max had been through a lot lately, and he knew they were both about to face even more trouble, so he had decided to start teaching Max the tricks of the trade for dealing with this world right from this moment.

“What’s a Seltzer?” Max asked.

“You’ll see…”

Max blinked at Shades’ sly smile.

A moment later, when DJ returned with all of their drinks, Shades handed a bottle to Max. At some point in his search among the vendors, DJ actually found an outfit that sold the stuff, an old childhood favorite of Shades’. Whoever made it had gone the way of the dinosaur, at least back on Earth. But not in the Sixth Dimension. Even in his short time here, he had heard it said that not even the dinosaurs had quite gone the way of the dinosaur in this world. Though his experiences in recent weeks had stretched the limits of what he thought he believed, still he knew better than to believe everything he was told. Still… He pondered these things for a long moment as he grinned at Max and said, “Thanks, man. Here, try one!”

“Okay…” Max hesitated at first, just staring at the bubbles trickling up through the bottle. This drink is fizzing at me! When he took a sip, he was struck by the lemon-lime flavor, which he had never tasted before, and carbonated bubbles, which his parents had told of, but he had never experienced before. “Wow!”

“Good stuff, ain’t it?” Shades laughed. Just wait ’til the sugar kicks in! As they laughed, he caught a glint of light on something dangling from Max’s neck. “Max, can I ask you something?”

“What?” Max sensed that his friend had seen something, perhaps as significant as the crossed-out swastika on his bag, but he wasn’t sure what.
“What is that?”

He pointed at the triangular medallion Max wore.

“This?” Max looked down self-consciously at his keepsake. Just when he thought the subject would turn to something less personal, it revolved back around to his past. “What about it?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“My father gave it to me when I was a boy.”

“I see. Do you know where he got it?”

“I’m not really sure. Why do you ask?”

“Because…” Shades reached under his shirt and fished out his own medallion, wondering if he might finally get some answers after all these years. “I’ve got one too.”

At first, Max just stared at him, then took off his own even as Shades removed his. Time to compare notes. DJ had had a couple tasks to attend to, and had returned to their table just in time for Shades’ revelation, and now he watched them as they set both medals on the table.

Max couldn’t recall Robert ever telling him where he got it from, so any information he could glean about this relic from so long ago would be welcome…

…Max stood in front of his mother and father on Layosha’s largest beach one majestic afternoon. Alida stood near her son, and Lance, Cleo, Carlton and Ron were there as well. As was fitting, this being Max’s birthday and all. His family and friends had thrown him the Islanders’ equivalent of a barbecue in his honor. They swam at the beach, played games while the grownups had their grownup conversations, and now all of his close friends and family gathered around to see the gifts Max would be given.

Especially to see what exotic artifact Robert had for his son this time.

After all of his extensive travels in the outside world, Max’s father had brought back many things. Some of these things he, and Alida and Uncle Angus, had given to friends, some things they had given to the Islands as a whole, and a small collection of items each of them had kept for themselves. Whatever all he had brought home with him, it had all fit on two ships, for that was all they had returned home with. Still it was more than he had left with; the largest, fastest, most heavily-armed ship the Islanders had possessed in generations, their new flagship, the Darkhorse, along with Angus’ Edge, made for an impressive homecoming. It was this bounty, combined with their extensive experience with Outlanders, that earned them their privileged status with the Elders.

Many of the gifts Max’s parents had given him came from this mysterious collection of intriguing junk. They had also given some of their friends interesting gifts from their little treasure-trove on occasion. And they would often spend a long time marveling at these glimpses of the outside world.

“And now it’s time for my gift, Max,” Robert told his son. Everyone watched expectantly, for no one had seen what he had brought. Robert reached up and took off the triangular silver medallion he had worn ever since his return to the Islands. He then presented it to Max, saying, “This medallion was given to me a long time ago by an old Outlander friend who helped me on my way. On your ninth birthday, I now give it to you, my son, to keep and pass on to your own child some day.”

He then handed it to Max, who for a long moment held it up in awe. Dad’s medallion…

“Wow…”

A sentiment echoed by all of his friends.

Alida beamed at her son with unabashed pride. Though Max had once overheard her confess that sometimes she feared without reason for her son’s future. But now was not one of those times; today was a day of celebration. She and her husband watched as their son and his friends shared Max’s new gift.

After Max had a moment to examine his new treasure, Cleo, Lance and Carlton crowded in around him, wanting to take a look at it. Max, deciding that he had the rest of his life to cherish it, handed it to Cleo, who turned to let Lance have a look while also studying it. Carlton cut in between to have his own look as Max simply watched them.

It was his day. His medallion. His friends.

And he was enjoying every minute of it…

…Along with memories of one of the best days of his life, Max also remembered bits and pieces of his parents’ conversations on the subject, both from during that gathering, and on other occasions. Once heard his mother lament to someone: He never fully explained what that crazy old man… Abu-Something-Or-Other— who we met several times on the way— what he told him, only to keep it safe. Once overheard his father when he confessed: I still get the impression that whatever it is, it’s part of something big, and perhaps it’s for the best that we don’t know… Lest the destiny connected to it catch up with the bearer, and Max wasn’t sure where he got that idea, yet it seemed somehow right to him. That Mom could sense the “powerful aura” of the man, and Dad reassuring her, The old man wouldn’t have given us anything dangerous… or something along those lines. And Mom saying (and he remembered how quietly she had spoken), Or at least more dangerous than you can handle. And for some reason, he pictured Dad placing his hand on her face, combing her hair between his fingers, when he said, Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s harmless here…

All so cryptic, shedding no light, nor even being worthy of mention.

While Max stared off into space, Shades was holding each medallion in one hand, looking back and forth between them. Though the symbols on each corner of the each triangle were different, he was certain they were of the same system. In all his life, he had never seen anything like it— he had even dug around in a few archaeology books and stuff. Somehow, though, he had never gotten around to making any serious inquiries about it. His imagination postulated all sorts of interesting possibilities— some big discovery, prehistoric civilization, proof of alien visitation— but his rational mind always won out, afraid of being laughed at (Chris Nimrod immediately came to mind), after being told that it had definitely come from a cereal box or some such.

Two medallions, both identical in size and shape, and of similar workmanship, but marked with different sets of alien characters.

As the humans stood around pondering, Bandit’s curiosity waned, and he finally just curled up and took a cat-nap.

“Dude! Simultaneous!” Shades remarked, a moment later regretting his choice of words, one of John’s old inside jokes. And for a moment he wondered if he and Max’s meeting wasn’t purely by chance. He had to admit that these two exotic artifacts seemed too closely connected to be mere coincidence. “This is weird!”

“Tell me about it!” DJ, who had previously stood by silently, watching them compare notes, added as he finally spoke.

“Yeah…” And now Shades wondered if the guy who ran that tourist trap in West Glacier all those years ago had any idea where he got this particular piece of junk from. Too many years, too many light-years, back to worry about now. “But what the hell are they?”

“I don’t know,” Max said. Whatever they were, they came from way beyond the Islands. And that seriously narrowed down anything he might know about them. “I don’t think my dad knew where it came from, either. This is very mysterious.”

“You can say that again.”

“This is very mysterious.”

“I don’t think he meant dat literally, Max,” DJ told him, trying to suppress a laugh.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t really mean for you to say it again.”

“Then why did you say…”

“It’s just an expression, a figure of speech.” But Shades could see his friend was visibly confused. “It means you… well… summed up the situation.”

“Oh.”

They spent a few more minutes talking about the medals, but when they started talking in circles, the conversation quickly changed direction.

“By the way, Deej,” Shades brought up, figuring that, while giving him a crash-course in Survival 101, he may as well let Max in on some of the Management’s dirty secrets, “we sort of had an altercation with the guards a while ago. We almost escaped— at least I think we did— but then they got in the way.”

“Dat’s bad, really bad,” DJ told them, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “I’ve told you before, don’t let dem get you, or nobody will ever hear from you again.”

“But we have to get out of here,” Max protested. Now that the novelty of seeing that Dad’s keepsake had an equally mysterious counterpart had worn off, he was growing frustrated, bordering on frantic, at how he seemed to be getting pulled farther and farther away from Justin with every passing moment. “Justin is still trapped in Tranz-D, and I’ve gotta help him!”

“Tranz-D?” DJ intoned.

“Come to think of it,” Shades said before Max could answer, “we still haven’t heard about how you ended up here. Maybe we should start there.”

“Fine,” Max agreed. Given that neither of them seemed to have any idea how to get back to the library or Tranz-D, he decided to tell his story.

And so the three of them killed a couple hours listening to Max’s tale, while Bandit slept at their feet.

The sound of tracks had returned, and with it, all peace of mind fled in their wake.

Justin was immediately jolted awake by the ominously recognizable sound. He sprang bolt upright in his corner of the closet, fumbling for his fallen guns, which he had dropped from his hands in his sleep. Even as he tried to ready himself, his own mind kept trying to reassure him about his position.

If those damn robots can’t figure it out, why would that fucking rust-bucket be able to? It can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t…

His guns feeling strangely awkward as he picked them up, he knew something was wrong. Horribly wrong. Guns had always felt right at home in his hands.

And before he could aim either of them at the door controls, NK-525 burst in, guns blazing.

“DIE, INTRUDER! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!”

It would be the last terrifying thing he would ever see—

Justin snapped awake, this time for real.

To find that he was still slumped against the wall in the very same closet he had fallen asleep in. Though for a moment, that didn’t seem very reassuring. The only thing that brought him any relief, yet also a measure of chagrin, was the realization that he hadn’t dropped his guns, but had been clutching them in a white-knuckle grip.

“I’m still alive!” His voice so hoarse it was practically a whisper. He unclutched one of his guns and tried not to drink all of what was left of his water. A part of his mind still certain that he had died, died and gone to hell, as the TSA guards so often recommended him.

Then again, if there was such a place, he would not be too surprised if Hell bore at least a passing resemblance to Tranz-D.

Though for now, he was still alive. Soaked in cold sweat, but still very much alive. He shivered for a moment, bitterly pondering the fact that in this sterile environment, the only thing he could smell was his own sweat and fear.

And he was becoming increasingly certain that the Enforcer could smell the latter, if not the former. Sleep had done him good, but he still kept hearing the sound of those tracks anytime his mind got too quiet. Paranoid ears hear all too well. That dream had shaken him up even worse than he thought, and now he felt less and less safe, even in this place.

Jangled by his own dark visions, his mind was flooded with insane doubts. NK had passed by him once in here, but reassurance was in short supply, fast becoming a dream beyond a dream in this waking nightmare. The mere thought of this relentless foe he could not destroy paralyzed him with an unknown terror, both in mind and in body.

Gotta do something… Gotta get outta here… GOTTA GO!

With that, he finally found his mobility again, deciding with what decisiveness he could muster, to get the hell out of here. Yet even as he carved open the vent grill with his laser staff, ruefully wishing he had thought to do so before he fell asleep, he felt as if he was moving underwater. And issuing from the back of his mind, this soothing, hypnotically soothing, voice assuring him that it was all a dream, of course NK-525 couldn’t find him in here, after all it hadn’t found him last time…

Even as he waded through the motions, Justin recognized the voice for what it really was. In some other corner of the universe, that insidiously rational voice might have told him that the guy who’s followed him for the last block-and-a-half isn’t a mugger, just as it had sometimes back in the Triangle State that obeying the guards really was the Right Thing To Do. That the soldiers locking the whole neighborhood down really were acting in his best interests…

Just as he was removing the grill, he heard it.

At first he thought he was losing it again, but the sound didn’t go away. Instead, it was coming closer. Its seemingly random patrols were back in the neighborhood again, and he feared his nightmare from moments ago was about to come true.

Hearing that NK-525 was nearly upon him, Justin freaked out, blasting the control panel and diving into the shaft.

And nearly got stuck.

“Oh shit!” Justin muttered as he struggled to get in. As small as he was, the vent opening was also small and narrow. His efforts becoming more and more frantic as the mechanical monster drew near.

Nearer.

Finally, Justin realized that he was hung up on the water bottle he was carrying. With no time left to feel sheepish, he worked his way the rest of the way in. He had no way of knowing whether or not the Enforcer was going to check this particular closet, but it was too late now. There was only one way left to go.

Forward.

By the time he was around the corner, he could hear NK’s harsh, electronic voice blaring its usual drill about how there was no escape. Punctuated by repeated laser blasts. He just kept crawling, and nearly screamed when the closet door finally crashed in.

All the while, he couldn’t help but wonder if that jarring nightmare he’d just had hadn’t somehow saved his life.

And so Justin crawled back into the darkness of the ventilation grid, trying to put his mind back together. Between almost thinking he was dead, and NK’s seemingly impossible appearance, he had very nearly lost it all. When he felt a side passage to his right, he actually rolled over, unzipping his mine camp coveralls and taking a much needed piss.

He had once again come within inches of losing his life, wondering what would have happened if he had obeyed that eerie voice and stuck around. As his mind calmed down, he wondered if he had somehow alerted the damn thing by shooting the controls or something. But all he knew for sure was that there was only one truly safe place, and he was in it.

Though part of him wondered if there really was such a thing, if even this place truly offered any real shelter.

He shook his head, trying to keep the voice of total paranoia at bay. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he was going to be spending a lot more time down here than he wanted to believe. For now he would also be sleeping in here, as well.

With grim resolve, he crawled forward, contemplating the new strategic implications of his situation. On his way, he crawled right past an ancient monitoring device, originally designed to detect obstructions in the ventilation system, now adapted by the System to detect Intruders in its paranoid efforts to exterminate them. Justin didn’t even notice the unobstructive sensors as he passed.

“…And that was when I woke up in a room that, if I’m not mistaken, was just down the hall from here,” Shades said, concluding a tale he had come to wryly nickname the Flathead Experiment.

On the way to Shades’ hotel room, he had explained about the Card, the one from the First Municipal Bank of New Cali, that he had found that one eerie day. Any place that did credit, he could buy whatever he wanted, or draw hard cash to buy it elsewhere. Told him about hiding under beds, scrounging for change, and transforming into a vagrant before his very eyes before he discovered it.

Though they talked about all sorts of things on the way, there had also been moments of silence, as Shades had to take them “the long way around” the sector where they had fought the guards, and occasionally had to go even farther out of their way to avoid a few more. Often saying casual things like Don’t forget, we need to pick up that stuff we ordered, then detouring them in another direction.

Shades told his story while they situated themselves in the new room, this time a double. While they talked, Bandit caught some z’s on Max’s bed. It had been a trick getting the big cat through unnoticed, but Shades had managed to keep the desk clerk occupied with room accommodations while Max and Bandit slipped past. He still hadn’t figured out how they would continue to hide his new friend’s pet, but he was sure they would think of something.

“Whoa…” There were parts of Shades’ account that Max would have a few questions about later, but mostly he was lost in his description of a world he could hardly imagine. His parents had spoken of such places, but the concept of a continent was still hard to wrap his head around, a reversal of everything he knew. This Flathead Lake may well be bigger than the entire Isle of Paradise, yet completely enclosed by dry land.

An ocean of land, dotted with islands of water.

Now that they had spent an hour or so settling in, Shades was fairly confident that the guards were unaware of their presence here, and the time had come for show-and-tell. Max had spoken of, and was even wearing, a few souvenirs from Tranz-D, and he had accumulated more than a few items here that he was sure Max would find of interest. The first thing he wanted to know about though was, “Say Max. Earlier, when we were fighting those guards, I saw you had a gun hidden in your jacket.” When they were out earlier, he had been curious, but didn’t dare risk letting anyone out there see them with a weapon. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

“My power pistol?” Max had seen Shades in action against the guards earlier, could tell that Shades knew how to fight, and wondered what weapons his new friend possessed. “Sure. I guess.”

Shades reached into his backpack, coming up with Max’s Tranz-D jacket, which he had stuffed in there earlier.

“So, this is a laser gun…” Shades commented as he removed it from Max’s jacket. It looked like a cross between a firearm in his own world, and some movie studio’s vision of the future. His finger hovered near the trigger, but he decided that it wouldn’t be the brightest idea to actually pull it. It sort of reminded him of when Master Al showed him the pride of his sword collection.

“Wanna see my laser sword?”

Shades instantly perked up at that phrase, his imagination running on overdrive as Max removed the weapon from its concealment and handed it to him. Hesitantly, he switched it on, jumping in spite of himself when the radiant green energy blade shone forth. Years ago, Master Al had handed him the most prized blade from his sword collection, a katana that had once belonged to a prominent samurai from the Tokugawa Period. Hardly needed sensei to tell him the history of it. A real samurai blade, not a replica from some catalog. He could feel it. Had been at least half a century since the last time it was drawn in battle. Tokugawa, Meiji, Taishô, then a long dormant Shôwa and beyond, gathering dust in some retired World War II vet’s Hawai’ian home before Al bought it at an estate auction… no wonder it had grown so restless; unlike those cookie-cutter catalog blades, this one had tasted blood. A real sword that belonged to real warriors. Sounded cheesy, but it had felt like he was holding a lightning bolt in his hand. Back then, it was all he could do not to slice Al’s table in half, and this time he could not restrain himself.

He set down Max’s power pistol and tossed a complimentary bar of soap into the air, slicing it cleanly in two.

“Dude! That thing’s real!” Shades could see the shimmering blade. Could feel the pulsing power in his hands. And the two soap pieces on the carpet gave silent witness to the fact that these were no mere special effects.

“It’s got two different modes,” Max informed him. “That narrow blade is the cutting blade. Be careful. As you can see, that blade can cut through just about anything. If you flip that other switch, you get the stun blade.”

“Stun blade?” When Shades switched it, the blade shifted, becoming thicker and more radiant, due to the expansion of its energy field.

“There are two power settings,” Max continued, remembering everything his father had taught him about energy weapons years ago. “One will knock you out with just a touch, the other will sting, and make it feel like whatever part of you got hit went to sleep.”

Shades simply stared at the beam of energy, mesmerized in near-disbelief at what he held.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Max assured him. “I’ve hit myself with a few times while training. Justin has a laser staff, and we used to train together.”

Haltingly at first, Shades reached out and lightly touched the blade. The closer he got to the center, the more the blade seemed to repel his hand, a tingling sensation that intensified the deeper his fingers reached into that shimmering green light.

“Just give it a moment, and you’ll be able to feel your hand again,” said Max.

“I see…” Shades said, shaking his hand as he gave the incredible weapon back to him. “I wish I had one.” Having seen this, he now felt that his own contribution to this exchange would be less than spectacular. Still, he reached into his own jacket pocket, fetching out his Cam-Jam. “This thing can hold five thousand songs on it…” He again reached into his pockets and came up with fold-up headphones. “And thanks to the Card, and DJ’s tracks, I’ve got over a thousand so far… and I got ’em for a song!”

He handed the device to Max. It was indeed pocket-size, light-years ahead of anything he had ever seen in his own world. And, in this case, waterproof to a depth of 50 meters, having paid extra (sort of, given the Card’s seemingly bottomless line of credit) for the “sports” model. After showing Max how to operate the controls, he let his friend flip through, sampling songs.

And was surprised to discover that Max was at least as thrilled with this musical wonder as he had been at seeing a weapon he thought only existed in sci-fi films, the way his eyes lit up and he appeared half his age.

Listening to it, Max realized that he had never asked Justin the customary question of if he knew any good songs.

After listening for a couple minutes, Max showed Shades the cards he had used to unlock the doors back in Tranz-D, and Shades compared them to the keycards to their hotel room. After showing Max the Card, explaining about how he used it, Shades shuffled through Max’s wad of bills, telling him, “Throw that Canadian crap out. It’s worthless in here.” Whoever this money had belonged to had been very well traveled, even before ending up in another dimension, for there were also pesos, yen, and something mysterious called “euros” in the mix.

Though Max was tired after such a long and harrowing adventure, his mind was still racing, and it was quite a while before he could sleep. For the rest of the night, Shades and Max spoke of many things. Of the mall and how each of them got there. Of Paradise and Tranz-D. Of Earth. Of the Centralict Library. John. Justin.

And that strange music Shades was dancing to earlier.

Some hours later, Shades woke up from more of the disconcerting dreams which still haunted him ever since the night of the experiment.

Another terrible dream… he thought, as images swam vaguely through his head. But also intriguing, as most of the ones before it. Especially the way, for their short duration, they seemed to tie both his friends and events together in some way that eluded his waking mind. He could always feel the pieces falling away from him as he drifted upward toward consciousness again. And it always frustrated him, almost as much as being trapped and powerless in this limbo in the first place.

Since Max was still asleep, he crawled out of bed and turned on some animé on low volume.

Though Max still slept like a log, he accidentally woke Bandit, who curled up next to him as he watched. Shades found himself thinking about his first morning here, wishing for feline company. Max’s companion filled a Bandit-shaped hole in his life he had nearly forgotten after all these years.

Even as he settled in, an odd thought popped into his head. Before, he had had his hands full with the events of the past day, but now that he thought about it, he found himself wondering why he hadn’t been killed for warning Max about the curse, like the repairman had that fateful night. After thinking it over for a while, all he could come up with was that the curse, that the Management, had not yet fully claimed him. He still remembered DJ’s chilling admonition (Don’t sign anything!), that perhaps there was something more to it, that though trapped here he was still his own, unlike so many before who had been made into this place’s bitch.

With no definitive answers to any of his questions, Shades grew tired of turning them over in his head. For what had to be the millionth time in the last three weeks, he wished his friends could be here. With him, that was, rather than in this particular place. He wanted to have fun, was sick of brooding about things that were beyond his control, but something held him back.

It was then that the voice of Douglas MacLean spoke up. Life isn’t always fair. Shades couldn’t even remember how many times Dad had told him that. Just enjoy the good times while they last, Dex.

His father’s words made up his mind. As selfish as they sounded, even to himself, for the time being he would throw it all and just have some fun.

His mind started making parallels to all the trips he had been on when he was younger. How often most of the details were beyond his control, yet he just rode it out with a carefree childish stoicism he now realized he had lost somewhere along the way. Of motels and people’s houses, tents and sleeping bags, friends and annoyances, of having no say in most of it, but still treating it as an adventure.

Of waking up in the top bunk of a family friend’s camper van in the morning, after spending all day— and most of the night— at the State Fair when he was in the first grade, setting off a chain of favorite childhood memories, all leading back to how happy he had been back in the day…

…The sun shone that spring morning with a crystal clarity Shades would notice, years from now, had somehow faded from things as time moved on.

Unlike when Dad was stationed in bigger towns, neither of his parents seemed to worry as much about him wandering around Lakeside. Back in those days, this place was scarcely even known to the outside world, no trespassing and beware of dog signs the exception rather than the rule, and fences were just fun obstacles in his exploration and adventures. Even when he was older, he would never tire of walking the roads and hidden paths of this once quiet mountain town.

The sun caught glints and flashes off the lenses of the cool fold-up sunglasses he had talked Dad into buying him. Back before he was “Shades”— a name that would someday occur to him after seeing his reflection in a car’s side window, one he wouldn’t start demanding of the world until after his father disappeared— before he won the right to wear his namesake style in class, he was just Dexter MacLean. Dex to his friends. Once he hung his jacket in the locker room, he would take off his cool new specs, fold them up and stick them in their case, instead donning the dorky-looking glasses he would wear until he was almost in middle school, and go back to being just plain Dexter.

But for now, his mind would never deign to dwell on such things. Not with such a glorious morning to walk to school through. With so many paths to choose from, boredom was hardly a possibility once he went beyond his front door.

While others were standing around waiting for the bus— the crowded, noisy bus that would drag them all the way out to Somers and back before dropping off most of his classmates— he would walk a combination of main roads and secret trails to get to school. A major upside he would notice when he was older was that these walks never failed to put him in a good mood, even before school. Next year, though, he would have no choice but to ride the bus to Somers, but for now he was enjoying his final days in the third grade to the fullest.

This morning, he had taken a particularly winding road, cutting through a couple empty yards— not that anyone minded in those days— in a mostly downhill direction. Though variety was the spice of life with so many possible paths to take, he often preferred to use the hidden ways, the more woods the better. Once he got down to the highway, he cut behind the buildings that lined the highway, crossing a plank for a bridge over a deep ditch of spring runoff, entering the school grounds from the back of the playground.

He looked at his watch. Oh-eight-hundred hours exact. Still on time.

If he could find him in time, he would even talk to Darek for a few minutes before the bell. While everyone else went along with the script, these two played their own games, by their own rules. Before there was John or the band, before Tom, even before Arthur, there was Darek.

He first met Darek Chambers last year, when his family first moved to Lakeside. Their second grade teacher chose Darek to show him around on his first day, and they had become fast friends ever since. Little did he know his friend would move to Kalispell over the summer, then disappear altogether, but for now they were friends forever, as all childhood friends truly are.

Spotting his friend over near the outbuilding next to the gym, Dex took off his backpack. Digging past yesterday’s homework, he fetched out some Easter candy. Though food was frowned upon outside of the cafeteria without the teachers’ permission, he and Darek and some others had started conducting an underground candy trade during recess. It had all started last fall, with Halloween candy, and had experienced a revival of sorts after Valentine’s Day. One thing he had discovered this year, and would later cite as an inspiration for his and his friends’ Black Ops when he was older, was the thrill of flying below radar.

“Hey Dex!” Darek greeted him, backpack in hand. Though he often scoffed at the whole contraband candy thing and how silly it was, it somehow never stopped him from doing it.

“What’s up, Darek?”

“Whoa! Cool shades! Where’d you get those?...”

…At some point in Shades’ remembrances, Max woke up and joined him watching the toob. He had seen the screen when they first settled in, but had been too lost in all of the confusion of the past day to ask Shades about it. What he now saw totally floored him. Like some of the other devices his friend had shown him, the TV looked like it came straight out of Tranz-D.

Or straight outta hell, if you asked Justin.

The stories themselves varied, most of which was unfamiliar to him, which made sense, as Shades had explained that their origins lie in another world. The Islanders, collectively, had accumulated many tales from many lands, only a fraction of which he had heard in his eleven years there, most of them adapted from Outlander accounts. Still, he was moved by it all in a way that his friend found at once amusing and intriguing, shocked, fascinated, full of questions (only some of which Shades had answers to), once he even laughed so hard he almost rolled off the bed, to Bandit’s perplexity.

As Max and Shades watched this endless menagerie of images with his new friend, he felt a growing desire to leave it all behind. For a time, something inside of Max had simply snapped, and like his friend, Max shrugged his load. Consciously made the decision to let the burden slide from his shoulders, the stress of problems he could do anything about, the past, the future; for now just living from moment to moment.

So, for a few hours, the two of them experienced Away From Home Syndrome to the fullest, and Bandit enjoyed the first peace and quiet he had seen in almost two days.

Later, though, while Shades continued to chill with Bandit, Max found his thoughts turning back to Justin’s unknown plight.

Soon it was almost driving him to distraction. He kept reminding himself, as Shades assured him, that the guards were only programmed to capture and hold, but still he worried. Though he had never met the Junkyard Dogs, or the Enforcer, the primal, and by now rather unnerved, part of his mind suspected that that place still had claws and fangs that had not yet presented themselves to him.

Justin stuffed several water bottles and ration bars into his clothes as quickly as he could. He had found some rags in an old storage closet; whatever they were made of, they were brittle but still intact, so he was able to wrap some around his knees and elbows. With the added bonus of shoring up the loose points in his coveralls where he was losing items.

What he had seen of this level, with its more brightly-lit corridors, was a little less creepy than the levels above. Still, this place kept its overall creepiness no matter where he went. That something as ominous as NK-525 roamed these halls was a fact he could not take his mind off of. During his time here, he had discovered whole new levels of Survival Mode; even the slightest noise set him off.

And it was taking its toll.

The customary rings under his eyes, which he had picked up over the course of his long years in the Triangle State— and which had actually begun to fade during his stress-free days in Paradise— had deepened a couple shades. Strung out, sore and stiff from head to foot, feeling more and more of this place’s weight on his shoulders, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. No matter how far he ran, he could never completely lose the Enforcer Unit. It was tough enough telling directions aboveground; down in the shafts it was all but impossible, and he feared he was going in circles. During his long crawls, he had heard patrols of robo-guards marching by.

They were few and far between, but they were still there.

It was all he could stand to be out in the open like this. Only grim necessity drew him out. He tried not to press his luck when he poked his head out, taking only as long was necessary to get what he needed, and no longer. To linger was to invite death; his only hope of escape was to survive long enough to find a way out.

He strained his ears every step of the way, from the moment he dropped into the room, to the very second he climbed back into the vent. All the way down the shaft, and well around the corner, where none of this place’s mechanized monsters could get at him. Only then did he slump down on the cold metal surface.

Anymore, he found that he almost longed for the days when all he had to deal with was the good ol’ Triangle State Authority.

No sooner than he thought this than he faintly heard the sound of tracks beyond the room, and he sat there in silence until that unnerving sound moved on, listening until it became silent again.

Or at least as silent as it got here.

When there was nothing going on, when his ears stopped ringing, there was still, always, a low bass humming that reverberated through the place itself. And it was starting to get to him, minute by minute, hour by hour. Perhaps it would have been unnoticeable when drowned out by the sounds of day to day life, but as it was, it was pure hell.

There was something about this place that was, he thought, what being in a tomb must be like. Only worse. If Justin had ever set foot in a hospital, he might have been able to put his finger on what it was. This place was like the Bone Yard, but with one disturbing difference.

This place was still alive.

Auxiliary power still flowed through conduits like an I-V drip. Some machines still beeped to a slow pulse. Dim though they were in most places, lights still hummed. Controls still responded, but often took a moment to “wake up” before doing so, and as the lights gradually came on, he got this hair-raising sense of something slowly opening its eyes. After his adventures with the robo-guards, he kept expecting alarms to go off for no reason.

For the whole place to just up and awaken from its deathlike slumber.

Long had it hibernated, slept right through the rise and fall of entire civilizations, and only a fool needlessly disturbed the sleep of eternity. Even Justin knew it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. This whole place, in its mind-bogglingly vast entirety, pulsed with some terrible power source.

The sheer amounts of energy this place consumed, even while “asleep”— even on life support it burned more power, he reflected bitterly, than the TSA would ever know what to do with— was nothing short of staggering, flowing through endless miles of cables, permeating everything in sight.

Even as he stretched out as much as his cramped hiding place would allow, his fingers just happened to brush against something different. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like the smooth yet gritty metal of the shafts, but almost glossy. When he ran his hand across it again, he confirmed it for himself.

After a moment, he wriggled out his flashlight and shone it on that area. Built into the shaft itself was a black, glassy strip, much like ones he had seen in the hallways and a few other places. He shut off his flashlight and smashed the strip with the blunt end. It took several swings to break it, but when he turned the light back on, he saw that the space behind it was filled with an assortment of electronic gizmos. His heart dropped several floors as he figured it out.

A scanner.

There were weapon-sensing scanners in all of the Secure Areas of the Triangle State, and that was exactly what this reminded him of. The more he thought about it, he had found it strange that, no matter how far he traveled down here, that bastard NK was always waiting for him above. Always knew what level he was on, even what general area to be roaming… Heavier than this knowledge was the weight of understanding that there were more of the damn things in these seemingly infinite depths than he had pistol charges for. The weight of despair.

“Shit…” Justin knew it was time for some serious tactical changes.

Every time he encountered some new obstacle, it made him wonder if Max was at all prepared to battle an army of machines down here.

While his two human companions were out and about, Bandit lay curled up on Max’s bed.

Before they left, Max and the one called Shades had set up a bunch of newspapers in the corner of the bathroom. When he looked around earlier for a place, he was led over there and encouraged to use it. It seemed very important to them. As a last resort, they hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, resigning themselves to doing at least some of the cleaning themselves.

It had taken some reassurance to get him to stay there without Max. For all the hours Max and his new friend watched TV, he had been able to sleep peacefully, basking in the warmth of their presence. Since they left, however, sleep had become all but impossible.

All his life, Max had always been around somewhere; though he sometimes wandered all over the island at will, his friend was never far away. The last two days had changed all that. Having passed through a series of strange places, the only constant left had been Max. After the dead, disturbing atmosphere of Tranz-D, to the equally strange place where they met the man with the cookies, to this place, with its host of exotic, tantalizing smells, that for some reason reminded him of that devilfish Max killed years ago.

It was the undersmell of the place. The smell of wrongness, even compared to the place the humans called Tranz-D. Underneath everything, and it nearly raised his hackles.

In spite of both humans’ reassurances, without his old friend, Bandit couldn’t help feeling abandoned; not since he was a cub, before he ever met Max, had he felt anything like this.

Part of it was that it was no fun being cooped up when there was a whole new jungle out there to explore. And then there were people, an entirely new feature of his existence, and most of them came bearing food and attention. There was a general sense of missing out on something.

And that only made this end of the bargain seem even worse.

Exploring it with his strange human friends was actually fun, but when he was all alone, this place started to show its true nature. And he was discovering that this place could become rather frightening when you’re all alone in it. The very walls seemed to lean close and listen for your heartbeat, a constant unhealthy presence in the absence of distraction.

After turning back and forth, prowling the confined floorspace of the room, Bandit curled up like an overgrown kitten, trying to somehow get back to sleep.

Yet the minutes dragged on…

“So, what do you think?” Shades asked from outside the changing booth at one of the mall’s seemingly endless list of clothing stores.

Shades himself had never been that into shopping. For toys, of course, when he was a kid, but the whole thing had somehow lost its charm over the years. Especially clothes. Often, he already had a good idea of what he wanted, and most of his browsing consisted of finding an acceptable price. In the last three weeks, he had had to dabble in degrees of fashion that he ordinarily reserved as girls’ turf in order to stay one or two steps ahead of the guards. In this twisted game, shopping somehow became a bizarre means of survival.

“They’re fine, I guess,” Max replied. To him, this place, though the styles were otherwise unfamiliar, looked like the entire wardrobe of the Islands all in one giant room. Many times, he pondered how worn and damaged his clothes had become, and of course there was nothing he could do about it, but over the years he had simply grown accustomed to wearing them. It wasn’t until he tried on new ones here that he realized just how poorly his old ones fit, as well, for neither the Cyexian nor the original owner were hardly one of his stature.

As they talked, Shades was strategically analyzing just how different he looked compared to when he walked in. The Interloper’s New Clothes, all over again. Much like how he had come to feel with each successive disguise change, like he was shedding his Earth skin, and donning subtle new armor for the Sixth Dimension. For Max, simply going native.

“Just make sure they’re not too tight,” Shades advised him, “most of this stuff shrinks in the wash.” In retrospect, he was now glad Mom had made him start doing his own laundry when he was younger; it had saved him a lot of potentially fatal mistakes at the hotel’s coin-op laundry. “In here, you can never have too much freedom of movement.”

When Max stepped out, he looked nothing like transdimensional fugitive that beat security guards black-and-blue as if he had trained to fight much stronger foes. Which Shades decided was a good thing, as Max had become the Outlander here, and was having a hard time keeping a low profile in this alien environment. This guy’s even more socially inept than I am… As the first real friend he had found here, he decided to take Max under his wing. And hopefully not abandon him, as he felt he had somehow done to John; though everything sort of just happened, he felt, in retrospect, that he had been too reckless that night.

Generations of military heritage seemed to frown on him at moments like this.

“Hey Shades!” While his friend was lost in thought, Max had ducked behind one of the sales racks. When he jumped back out, he was wearing a long grey coat vaguely matching the descriptions from Shades’ story. “Does this make me look like one of those hitchhikers?”

“Um… Yeah.” To him, Max looked a lot like a hitchhiker. Too much like one, in fact. The way it played right up to his last line of thought spooked him a little. Then, he regained his composure, saying, “That’s really creepy, Max.”

Max shrugged out of the coat, putting it back on the rack. Shades had told him about his harrowing ride home from work, and apparently he had underestimated how much the experience disturbed his friend. Hadn’t expected his attempt to make light of it to backfire like that, but it only took a moment to figure out why.

“Tell me more about John.”

“Sure…” Shades trailed off. There was a nameless fear that prowled this rambling building, and he suspected that Max was beginning to notice it, too. Its true nature still eluded him, but something, perhaps the place itself, seemed to feed off the very life-force of those who lived and worked, and died, here. Something malevolent, and almost alive. After a moment, he focused and continued, conjuring up the brighter days to lift the dark fog that was always trying to settle in around him anymore.

“Well, I first met John after Christmas Break when I was in the seventh grade,” Shades told him. “I came back to school and he just showed up in gym class.” Which was good, because before, that was the year none of his other friends were in that class with him. “We just sat and talked before class, and everything just sort of clicked.” Carlos extending the scope of his grudge to include Shades’ newest friend had only served to fortify their connection by the end of the week. “When I told him where I lived, I found out he didn’t live very far away. My old friend Arthur practically lived in Kalispell, and even Tom’s house was pretty far, so I didn’t get to see him very often outside of school. John actually lived within walking distance of my house, and we used to walk all over town, and go hiking out in the woods and stuff…”

Even as Shades spoke, Max pictured some of his old stomping grounds in the Islands, what he remembered of them, tried to imagine what it would be like if any of his closest friends had lived on another island, but mostly remembered all the fun he and Cleo and Lance used to have.

“Later,” he continued, “when we were in high school, John met this dude named Sandy who was trying to start a band. Later, another friend of ours, Vince, got in on the act, but it wasn’t until they hooked up with Becky that it really took off. We mostly used to just goof around, they’d piss off the neighbors trying to learn favorite songs and I’d mess with the minds of those who called to complain, but in about the last year or so, they got a lot more serious. They’ve even made a few original songs in the last few months.”

“What else did you guys do?”

“All kinds of stuff,” Shades replied. “I’ve thought about it over and over since I came here… How this whole place seems like something out of the Twilight Zone.”

“What’s the Twilight Zone?” Max wasn’t too sure he even liked the sound of the name.

“I’ll tell you more about it later.” Shades figured he would have to explain a lot of strange and unpleasant things about this place, and he didn’t know if he could even find the words to describe his impressions. “It’s too much like those crazy stories I used to tell Tom on the bus when we were in middle school. I’d just make up a series of bizarre events, and see if we could piece it together. Just making shit up as you go along… kinda like how I’ve been living these days.”

“You used to make up stories?”

“Used to? I never stopped!” Shades laughed. “Then again, most of my stories were based on stuff I’d read about paranormal events and stuff, but of course, when you get older, one day it just becomes uncool. You just don’t get as much of an audience anymore, and sometimes I think I’ve gotten a little rusty. But back in those days, Max, I thought they’d never end. We used to walk and ride the bus together every morning… Back then, it seemed like it would always be that way…”

“You had good friends.” After all, Max knew from experience. “Real friends.”

“I know.” He had never really thought about it before, and in recent days he had come to realize just how much he had taken each of them for granted. Still had trouble picturing resuming the journey of life without them. “Just that week, I was making plans with Arthur… putting the finishing touches on a road trip this summer that we had been planning since we were in middle school. I guess things got pretty fucked up.”

“Road trip?”

“Oh yeah. I forgot. You guys don’t have highways.” Don’t need highways. “Way out west, there were miles and miles of roads, probably more than you could explore in a lifetime… When we were in middle school, we promised each other that, after we graduated, we were gonna drive to Alaska and back. Just for the hell of it.”

Just for the halibut… as Arthur used to say. Just one last adventure.

“Alaska…” Max said, seeming to savor every syllable, as he often did when picking up the names of places he had never heard of. Though, Shades could tell, still hoped to see for himself one day. “Where’s that?”

“Well, it’s kinda hard to explain. I’ll see if I can find any maps from my world—”

That was when it happened.

Neither of them could explain. The only thing Max could compare it to was the expression that crossed Bandit’s face when he sensed something bad. To Shades, he simply felt something “shift” in the back of his mind, that must be how a mouse felt right before the cat pounces.

Anymore, he could smell a pig from a mile away.

Shades just happened to catch a glimpse of a security guard, flanked by several more, talking to a store clerk. “Max!” Shades hissed, pulling his friend down behind the rack, just a moment before the clerk pointed in their general direction. In the first of several mini-manhunts to come, it was clear to both of them that they were planning to rush the place, already storming in onto the sales floor. Peering over the side of the next rack, he saw that they had left a man at the door.

There would be no quiet way to leave.

“Shit!” Shades hissed, his mind scrambling for some kind of plan.

“What now?” Max whispered, already sizing up the numbers and possible strength of his foes.

Then the inspiration struck as Shades realized just how childishly simple the solution could be.

“This way…” he said, popping a mint and offering one to Max for good luck. “Just do what I do.”

A few moments later, a couple guards came through, combing through the aisles and wandering among the racks. They prowled around for several minutes, barging in on the dressing booths, much to the indignation of several occupants. Heading the party was a guard with his arm in a sling, and another who wore a band of gauze around his head, plus Fat and Fatter had also joined the party.

After searching for several minutes, they regrouped near the entrance.

“Dammit!” the guard in the sling muttered. A guard had sighted two people matching the descriptions of the two who had attacked them the day before, but it had taken time to bring together a suitable party to capture them. “We missed them!”

“We even looked in the restrooms,” said a guard who just walked up to them.

“Bastards must’ve left just before we came in,” the one with the headwrap commented, pounding his fist against a display counter. “Come on, let’s get the hell outta here.”

With that, they turned and stomped out.

Once the guards were gone, two coat racks started moving, almost simultaneously. Shades emerged from one, yanking a trenchcoat off himself; Max shrugged off a couple pairs of pants he had draped over himself.

“Damn!” Shades muttered. Quite frankly, he was surprised that such a cheap trick actually worked. He had spent every second holding perfectly still, ready to knock the whole rack over on anyone who ratted him out. Lying in wait more than he was hiding. A little camo, plus that old ninja trick of taking advantage of the simple fact that the human eye needs motion to track things— hell, now that he thought about it, he had fooled Tom and John with similar tricks playing war games out in the woods on a few occasions. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“That was close!” Max agreed.

“You can say that again.”

“That was close!”

Then Max saw the comically exasperated look on his friend’s face.

“Oh.”

“I think we need to find another hiding spot,” Shades observed as the moved to the farthest checkout stand from where the guards had made their search as possible.

“I think you’re right.”

He knew he would have to talk to Max about the deathwatch. After all, one would have to be insane to just keep listening to it. This place shows some scary pictures, and he was grateful that he no longer had to face its mind games alone.

All the same, he suspected that Max was worried about Bandit, and he didn’t blame his friend one bit; even as they prepared to make their getaway, he wondered what this nightmare must be like for that poor cat.

The scene just kept repeating itself in his head, first one, then the other, crumbling to dust at the mere touch of his hand. Somehow those empty eye sockets still expressed the same terror and despair they had once conveyed in life; Justin often saw them staring at him whenever he closed his eyes. Those crumbling corpses just kept replaying in his mind in a repeat-loop that was maddening. They just would not go away. That day he had seen fear in a handful of dust, had held it in his hand.

Let it slip through his fingers.

The day those dead hands crumbled as he plucked their fallen guns, he irrevocably took up the torch for his fallen unknown fellows in some way he couldn’t quite describe. Had started to wonder if he had been cursed ever since. Taking up those guns, meeting those two lost souls, even before his first encounter with NK-525, had somehow been the prelude to horrors yet to come.

Even at Pullman Mine Camp, they dragged you back aboveground at sunset. There were no days or nights here; the days had all run together into one long nightmare that seemed to have no end. His knees and elbows bruised and blistered from endless hours of crawling around in these shafts, listening to the humming of the machines above, below— all around him. Time had indeed become relative in this maze of perpetual light (and underlying darkness), stretching out so that he could no longer tell minutes from hours, hours from days.

And that pair of long-dead Intruders had come to haunt his every waking moment, and much of his fitful downtime. To him, that closet represented all of this place’s dirty secrets. It reminded him of all that creepy old mining equipment on Benton Island.

And not just because of the barrels of blood he knew all too well had greased those wheels. Just like all of those discarded machines, as impressive as they were in all their die-cast glory, this place was hollow. Empty. Abandoned for so long, they no longer served any purpose. Much like the Junkyard Dogs— both here and there— having nothing better to do than terrorize the living, as if for its own sake. Yet clearly built on technology beyond his comprehension.

Tranz-D was built to last.

Judging from the apparent age of the corpses alone, this place had obviously been constructed in time out of mind. And had been deserted by human beings long before he was born. He had no idea what had become of all of the people that he was certain used to live here, but he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know.

The ghosts of this place called out to him.

Buried in the depths of these seemingly bottomless shafts and corridors, he increasingly felt that there was hidden something ominous, something big. Something monolithic and malevolent resided in these walls, possessed of a mechanical mind of its own. Everything here was possessed by digital demons, the machines now owned this place. Justin wasn’t sure how he knew some of this; the ideas just seemed to seep out of the walls and into his mind, almost as if that eternal hum were whispering its dark, lunatic secrets in his ear. Long-lost, forgotten, this place had lingered, biding its time. That it might someday reveal its existence to the outside world once again.

A force so powerful even the mighty hand that created it might not be able to stop it…

Justin shook his head. Damn place and its creepy thoughts… He refocused his attention as he sat on a box in yet another closet, waiting.

It was becoming increasingly difficult, dangerously difficult, to focus. The vent grill had already been removed, an instant escape hatch. Still he sat across from the door, laser staff handy to destroy the controls in case a certain Enforcer Unit should happen by. Every time he tried to do anything, there was that damn NK-525 on his ass.

Only the Enforcer stood in his way to freedom.

And, as if his very meditations on the mechanical monster had somehow summoned it, that tell-tale rattle of tracks came into earshot. Even as that sound drew near, as it inevitably did, he sat, prepared to retreat should that bastard decide to pay this particular closet a visit. Though not without leaving it some kind of clue. This time he was in luck, and NK passed by without even slowing down a bit.

Justin continued to listen to the source of that ominous sound as it passed on. Waited until it had quieted down a bit, so he relaxed slightly. Then tensed up again at the thought of what he was about to do, for he had an idea.

A really nasty idea.

Justin Black had been on the defensive for far too long, as far as he was concerned. He now stepped out of the closet, one of the fallen misadventurers’ guns in each hand. Moving as silently as he could, for he was still not entirely certain of any of the machines’ auditory ranges, and didn’t care to find out the hard way. Time seemed to slow down with every step as he prepared to make his move.

As he peered around the corner, he spotted his adversary a couple lengths down the hall. And seemingly oblivious to the fact that its quarry had somehow managed to sneak up on it. He was behind NK for a change.

Justin got the feeling that this didn’t happen to the Enforcer very often. He smiled for a moment at how he had turned the tables on his tormentor, savoring this moment. This was his first good look at his enemy, and what he beheld was a nightmare sculpture of steel.

For a second, he almost lost his nerve, then—

“Hey! NK-fucking-525!” Justin cried as he stepped all the way around the corner. And from there, he let his guns do the talking. He had no idea how much ammo was left in those ancient power clips, but with both barrels on each one fire-linked, spitting laser beams in a back-and-forth stream from alternating barrels, he vented his rage in raw energy. “You tin-plated son of a bitch! Your mama was a power-shovel!”

A rather useless tactic, he figured, insulting a machine, but he did have a lot of pent-up fury to unleash while he was busy living dangerously.

His shots splashed harmlessly off the Enforcer’s industrial-strength armor. Of course, he hadn’t really expected to do a lot of damage, even from behind, and, as always, he hated being right. It was only after the left-hand power pistol ran out of juice that he regained something resembling common sense, and decided to beat a hasty retreat. And just in time, as NK-525 wheeled around to face his sneak-attack.

“HALT!” NK-525 blared at him as it began its counter-attack. “SURRENDER! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!”

“Fuck you!” Justin screamed over his shoulder as he ran for his life.

Even as he snapped off several more shots with his remaining gun, he remembered his words when Max first spoke of training. Running? What the hell kind of fun is that? Now he was finding out for himself.

Earlier, when he still had the element of surprise, he had gone about gouging the walls and floors with his laser staff, marking the way back to the closet from four different directions. And being sure to trip a couple hall scanners while he was at it. Now he kicked a small box out of the doorway, suspecting that NK wouldn’t give him enough time to operate the controls this time, shutting the door behind him as several glancing hits ricocheted off it. Being a pulse weapon, and not subject to the ammo limits of his guns, he used his staff to demolish the control panel.

That, and he wanted as few sparks as possible, given what was inside this particular closet. It was when he first discovered it that his vicious plan had begun to form. That accomplished, he scrambled past sealed tanks marked with bright red warning labels as he dove into the vent shaft. He could already hear the Enforcer at his door, spouting its usual threats and commands, blasting away at the door as he scrambled madly, not wanting to be anywhere near this closet when that bastard finally broke through the door.

After many increasingly long seconds, he managed to get around the corner a way when at last it happened.

“…THERE IS NO—”

And NK-525 fired its super-laser one more time.

Which was where all those compressed tanks of hydrogen came in. Years ago, back in the Triangle State, he had seen a shipment of such tanks unloaded off the docks while he was out and about, overheard someone saying that a stray shot from one of their sidearms could blow the shit out of the entire ship. But it wasn’t until Justin stumbled upon such compressed tanks again years later that he would realize its long-bottled-up potential.

The noise was deafening, even louder than the explosive death of Trevor Fitzgerald, almost as loud in Justin’s ears as the end of Pullman Mine, as the Enforcer was blasted violently back across the hall. And Justin crawled for his life, trying to shield his face as best he could against the blast of heat and dust. He was desperate to be alive— even if it was only for a few seconds longer than his tireless hunter.

That motherfucker’s goin’ down if it’s the last thing I do!…

After a few moments, the heatwave of the explosion subsided as it washed over him, and Justin opened his eyes to discover that he was still alive. Of course, there was a distinctly suicidal feel to this plan, he knew that from the beginning, and he was glad that his kamikaze vision of going down with his foe hadn’t come to pass after all. As he inched along, he found he was finally able to banish the ghosts of those two dead men from his head. He had scored a blow of vengeance for them. For himself.

For all the Intruders out there, whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For the first time in days, in ages, he felt he might have a fighting chance of finding his way out of this twisted maze.

Though he resented the fact that he couldn’t go back to see his handiwork. To confirm the kill. Alarms were blaring after that last attack, just like on his first day here. He had no interest in battling the robo-guards so soon after surviving NK-525, despite how much he wanted to finish the job and piss on its broken remains.

Little did he know just how vulnerable the mighty Enforcer Unit was now.

Silence. Or at least as close to silence as it got here. Interrupted by—

A low, distorted voice:

“ALL SYSTEMS ACTIVATING… ACTIVATING… ACT—”

“—SYSTEM FAILURE!”

Then slowed down some more.

“REACTIVATION… CIRCUITS… OFF… LINE…”

Then rapid, high-pitched:

“ACTIVATING-BACKUP-SYSTEMS…”

NK-525 lay sprawled on its side across the hall from what was left of the utility closet in a heap. Limbs crisscrossed, sparks occasionally erupting from various sections of its body. Smoke drifted both ways down the hall.

(POWER LEVEL: 45.4%… SYSTEM RUNNING 23.7%…)

The flames from the closet were already guttering out, guards were spreading out into standard search formations all over the level.

(POWER LEVEL: 47.3% AND RISING…)

Cleaning drones were already arriving on the scene.

“ACCESSING BACK-UP DATA TRACKS…”

“ACTIVATING DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEMS…”

Time for a damage assessment.

(DAMAGE: CRITICAL…)

(ESTIMATE: 30% FUNCTIONAL…)

(WEAPONS: OFF-LINE…)

Not good.

“INITIATING REPAIR SEQUENCE…”

Then back to basics. Intruders…

(OPTICS: OFF-LINE… OVERRIDE…)

Nothing, but snow, and only static on audio sensors, then the hall came partway into focus, followed by heads-up display readouts.

“ACTIVATING BACK-UP MEMORY TRACKS…”

And it all started coming back. The so far unprecedented ambush, the chase, the closet the Intruder had booby-trapped. Then all systems went off-line.

(3 OF 4 BLASTERS BACK ONLINE… SUPER-LASER: OFF-LINE… SENSORS: 42.6% FUNCTIONAL…)

Still not enough.

(POWER LEVEL: 64.8% AND RISING…)

Repair robots finally arrived on the scene and started to work on the hall. Yet, given that rebuilding the closet was going to be a really long-term project on emergency power rations, some of them could be diverted to accelerate the Enforcer’s self-repair rate. Security took priority over all else.

Directive 86: Destroy All Intruders.

(SYSTEM RUNNING: 42.6%…)

Max had gone swimming in his share of places. In the Ocean, on the beaches of the Islands and Paradise. Underground, of late. But he had never seen a swimming pool before.

“Remember,” Shades told him as they stood in the shallow end, “flow like water. This is the same method Master Al taught me, and it works really well once you get the hang of it. Now let’s run through it again.”

Last night, after stocking up on new disguises, Shades had asked for a demonstration of his new friend’s martial arts skills. Say Max, where’d you learn to fight like that? he had asked. And Max told him that everyone studied it where he came from. You seem to remember most of the moves just fine. To which Max told him simply, I kept practicing them. Shades had thought it best to take it easy the first full day, but he had seen Max in action, and was naturally curious about what he knew. So they spent about an hour or so showing each other their fighting techniques. No shouting or slamming, though. This is a hotel, after all, he had said, and more importantly, this is our sanctuary. We cannot do anything to draw attention to ourselves here.

So they had practiced very quietly. Now, though, they were at the Mall’s massive pool, surrounded by at least a hundred people in total anonymity, and they could be as loud as they wanted.

Max went another round, repeating the kata Shades had shown him last night. Master Al always said a word multiple times before he ever wrote it down anywhere. If they don’t know how to spell a word, he was fond of saying, then they won’t know how to mispronounce it, and he now made use of that same principle with his own impromptu student. As he repeated the sequence of moves Shades taught him, he was surprised at how similar the style was to his father’s, and Layoshan fighting techniques in general. Similar, but with some very clear differences. As he practiced, he tried to move as quickly as he could, without being held back by the water.

If you can learn to move that fast through the water, Shades had told him, you’ll move that much faster through air. Max now realized that this was what Robert meant all those years ago, when they went swimming, and he told all three of them to learn not to make any wasteful movements. Looking back, he wondered if Cleo or Lance ever figured it out.

Then he focused his attention back on his form. Over the years, he had become a very formidable swimmer by doing just that, unconsciously increasing the efficiency of his movements. Because of that, he was already starting to get the hang of what his new friend was talking about.

Shades himself was in his element in the water, gliding with every move in a way that on dry land made him look almost awkward by comparison. Though Max had demonstrated greater raw speed, he was still impressed with his friend’s agility underwater. Underneath his seemingly permanent denim armor, Shades was lean and athletically built, but not as skinny or wiry as Justin, and when he really got going, his moves seemed to slice through the water with almost no drag at all.

“I think you’re getting it,” Shades told him as he finished. Decked out in black trunks, and deeply tinted goggles, his hair was dripping wet as he stood and watched in the shallow water.

Max had noticed that his friend wore those dark glasses even in his sleep— or at least Max assumed he was asleep, it was hard to tell because he couldn’t see his eyes. Still, along with the swim trunks he had picked up earlier, he was grateful for his own goggles. Before they came, Shades warned him about the chlorine in the water, and though it didn’t bother him as much as he had feared, it still stung more than he was comfortable with. His unbound hair hung in his face as he finished and bowed (and Shades noted that Max even bowed without prompting, making him wonder if the practice was more universal than he would originally have thought), noting that what Shades had said about not taking his eyes off his imaginary opponent was basically the same was Uncle Angus’ warning about maintaining eye contact at all times while sparring.

He then glanced up wistfully at the skylights hanging tantalizingly overhead. It was very much as Shades told him; everywhere they went, whatever windows they could find hovered on high, completely out of reach. Tormenting him with a sky he felt he no longer walked under anymore. These occasional glimpses of day or night also underscored the awkwardness of being forever indoors. Just like during his excursion in Tranz-D, this place was difficult to tell time in, even with a clock.

Being cooped-up— even in a place as colossal as this— aside, there was something about this place that Max liked less and less the longer he was here. Something more than just the curse, this place came across as rather creepy in spite of its mundane, harmless appearance. Perhaps because of it, now that he thought about it; the fact that everyone moved about as if there was nothing wrong at all.

And he suspected that it was driving Bandit nuts, all alone back in their hotel room. He doubted he would ever get used to it, and even Shades seemed concerned about how the big cat would react to being alone in this place. To being alone in general; back in Paradise, the two of them, and later Justin, were never very far apart from each other.

In spite of this, Max found the waters of the pool had a very calming effect he knew all too well from his dips in the pond all those years. He remembered once hearing Mom saying that water was good for the soul. Making a mental note to talk to Shades about it more later, he turned back to their training session. The two of them carried on for another twenty minutes or so, even sparring a little in the shallow end, finally just goofing around showing off each other’s moves.

After a little while, the two of them got bored and wandered out into the deep end. Seeing that it currently wasn’t in use, Shades suggested the diving board. Max had seen it earlier; it had been years since he and his friends played on the board at the Shipwreck Bay docks.

“I’ll go first!” Shades called as he scrambled out of the water and climbed the steps. From the light in his eyes and the ecstatic grin on his face, he guessed Max had seen one before. “Allow me to demonstrate!” he said anyway, bracing his arms against the siderails, which always psyched him up for some reason, “Just watch me!”

As he watched his friend run out and bounce off the board as far as he could, Max figured Shades probably already knew how self-evident the concept was. He was starting to figure out Shades’ sense of humor, being a smartass, as he called it. As his friend kicked off the bottom, laughing as he rocketed out of the water halfway to his knees, Max climbed up onto the board, thinking only of how much cooler this would be than the branch back in Paradise.

Shades glided out of the landing area, to watch Max’s jump. He knew he was on mostly equal footing with Max, yet he also felt like a strange sort of shepherd. Though Max had fought alongside him the other day, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that he knew, after a fashion, how take care of himself, it was also clear that he was telling the truth about living years in seclusion. He’s clueless, at least about some things… And since I’ve gone to the trouble of enlightening him about so many things, I guess that would make him my responsibility…

What the hell, he always wanted a kid brother.

He watched as Max braced against the rails as he had. Max, of course, had jumped from higher places than this, but he had seen from Shades’ bounce what this board could do. In that spirit, he decided to show his new friend what he could do.

Max dashed down the board, springing off and flying as high and far as he could with a wild, exhilarated whoop.

“Damn!”

Little realizing how much he sounded like Justin with that remark, Shades watched Max soar through the air, for those couple seconds treating the law of gravity as mere suggestion. His head panned from right to left as Max skidded into the water with a far-reaching frontal splash. Landing some thirty or more feet from the board.

Surfacing with that silvery signature laugh of his.

“Whoa!” Max laughed, almost as amazed by how much bounce he had gotten out of the board. “That thing’s got bounce!”

You can say that again! Shades almost said aloud. He still just drifted there at the edge of the water, one hand gripping the ladder, as Max swam toward him. Where the hell did he learn to jump like that!? Unlike Justin, though, Shades understood that Max’s true power, like everyone else’s, came from within. Still, he could tell that Max clearly didn’t know his own strength— combined with that brawl with the guards from before, Max’s surprise at his own feat was proof enough of that— and even he had underestimated what his friend was capable of.

Now that he was rested, Max seemed to possess almost unlimited energy.

“You’re tellin’ me!” Shades finally said.

“I am,” Max replied, and they both started laughing.

Though Shades had to admit that he had never seen anyone who could jump quite that far, after thinking about it for a moment, he began to realize that Max’s leap wasn’t really as superhuman as he had first thought it to be. Yet there was also the execution, with its fluid, almost feline grace, that just took more… something than he had. He wondered if Max hadn’t been something of a daredevil back wherever he came from, for it seemed as if it was the sheer rush of the experience that powered him. And for all he knew, Max’s abilities might be only average where he came from.

“Okay…” Shades said as he climbed back up on the board, “Just for fun, let’s see if you can do this!”

This time, Shades did one of his best tricks. Going for height more than distance, he spun off the board, doing not just one, but two three-sixties before he hit the water. More than anything, Shades loved just grabbing as much air as he could, to feel the free-fall and look over everything from on high. And, for just one moment, to fly.

As he swam out of the way, Max got up on the board again. He remembered all the times he and Cleo and Lance had dared each other to do difficult tricks, and almost started laughing out loud. Then he sprang off the board, doing his own two-seventy.

And then some.

“Cool…” Shades was beginning to see that Max’s gifts also included great agility. Though hardly the most graceful landing, Shades realized that Max’s other landing had also been done spur-of-the-moment like that, too. Even when doing something he had never done before, Max had uncanny instincts for moving on the fly. He exhibited a kind of feline poise he had never really seen before. For some reason, he thought for a moment of his second-grade teacher, whom he swore was certain that all of the world’s ills could be remedied by good posture. She and his fifth-grade teacher, Mr Self Esteem, probably would have hit it right off. Of course, he also knew Max benefited from years of hard training.

“How was that, Shades?”

“You got the trick, and I loved the landing!”

Realizing that he couldn’t compete with Max in raw jumping ability, Shades decided to shift gears. Instead of doing any fancy stunts, he just leaped high and far, shouting, “So-Max-can-you-do-this!?” And managing to finish every syllable before he hit the water.

When she surfaced, he laughed, saying, “I hope I didn’t scare you,” remembering how embarrassed Arthur had been when he did that at a pool a few years ago. “This time, try shouting something before you hit the water!”

“Like what?”

“Surprise me.”

Max made another of his spectacular leaps, shouting a line from one of the street-fighting video games Shades had shown him at Club Positronic, “Extreeeme Jaake!”

“I’ve created a monster…”

And as they continued their game, daring each other to do the weirdest tricks they could come up with. Max often took the more athletically challenging tricks, but Shades turned the tables and leveled the playing field with some of his choices from past games. His ingenuity left them evenly matched in spite of Max’s edge, for his stamina did seem as boundless as his enthusiasm.

Over time, other swimmers wandered in and out of the game, but after a while, most of them fell by the wayside, becoming spectators as they watched their more daring peers go up against Max and Shades. Of course, Max’s jumping stole the show, especially when he jumped off the high board and actually touched one of the ceiling supports with his bare hands. Though they were no match for him, it really didn’t matter too much, fun was still the order of the day. Even after all these years, Shades was still amazed at how easily people made friends at swimming pools; sometimes he swore it must be something in the water, it just seemed to bring out the best in everyone everywhere.

While a couple other people were waiting to make their jump, Shades felt those strange alarms go off in the back of his mind. He vaguely remembered Dad referring to it as Red-Light/Green-Light, and it was fast becoming a part of his daily life here anymore. Since he first stepped up to the threshold of the Sixth Dimension, on the night of the Flathead Experiment, that inner voice had cranked up the volume, or his perception of it had somehow intensified, as if all of his senses had picked up on the broader spectrum of existence. As his eyes wandered along the other side of the pool, he happened to see two familiar faces stroll out of the locker room.

The two guards he met on his first night here, whom he had come to think of as Fat and Fatter, the latter trying not to look too self-conscious in trunks, sauntered over to the far side of the pool. Though they were almost certainly off-duty, he doubted they were out of their jurisdiction, not around here, not by any stretch of the imagination. As the two were busy trying to strike up a conversation with a rather attractive lifeguard, who appeared to be trying to ditch the unsavory pair, it dawned on him that perhaps he and Max had succeeded a little too thoroughly at trying to relax while hiding out.

“Hey, Max,” Shades muttered as he drifted over to his friend. Having decided that the guy currently jumping and the nubile young lifeguard would be the best distractions for their escape. He pointed out these new visitors, saying, “Don’t look now, but we’ve got trouble. You see those two over there?” When Max nodded, he continued, “Don’t look too long, or you might get their attention.”

“I know,” Max replied.

“We need to get out of here.” Shades pointed again, this time at the clock hanging on the far wall. It was doubtful that those bastards would recognize them as they were, but he had come to regard them as predators, ones that would be deadly to grow complacent around. “We can’t both leave at the same time. That would be suspicious. I’m going to make like I have to take a whiz, and go prepare everything. You wait here until the big hand on that clock moves two or three minutes, then follow. Got it?”

“Yeah.” There were a few timepieces like that in the Islands, and Mom had taught him how to read them.

“Okay, let’s go,” Shades said even as he went to climb out of the pool.

Once out of the pool, he made his way to the locker room as casually as he could. Though he had trained in bare feet studying Karate, he was still unaccustomed to moving without shoes in such a potentially dangerous situation, and wearing nothing but trunks only made him feel more vulnerable. Once in the locker room, he made right for his locker, then Max’s, glad that they knew the combination for each other’s locks.

It was as he was removing both of their backpacks, fishing out his towel and preparing to hastily dress, that he heard the commotion from the locker room.

After crawling as far away from the explosion as his battered, exhausted limbs would allow, Justin simply collapsed into a long, deep sleep. He would later remember little beyond the darkness, and ever-present hum of monolithic amounts of power. Curled up in the chill of the vents that reminded him so much of the cold concrete of the Ruins.

Much like his fun stay at Pullman Mine Camp, during his nightmare days here, sometimes he remembered things from his hazy days aboard the Skerry. That strange time of his life whose exact length was lost to him, when time almost seemed to have no meaning. Alone so much of the time, on such a large ship; wherever the passengers were, they seldom showed themselves to him. And aside from a few long-term crew members he only vaguely remembered, only a couple people stood out to him in his miserable remembrances at times like these, and on most of those occasions, her name always escaped him.

Eleanor.

When he was half awake, he grasped at long-lost names like straws. He knew he didn’t see her very often, though she seemed to have been around from before he ever came aboard. Eleanor never really spoke much, and he found he could not even remember the sound of her voice. The only other thing he could remember was that when she was about, she was often accompanied by a fluffy black kitten that he was fairly sure she called Poe. Everytime she came to mind, he found himself wondering where she was now, what she was doing.

Otherwise, the only other person who stood out in his memory was another whose name he had reclaimed only in his most desperate gropings in the darkness. Mr Morgan. The name itself was almost as hard to recall as Eleanor’s, and he still wasn’t sure just what the man’s exact purpose on the Skerry’s crew served. Just mental snapshots of a middle age man with a short, bushy beard, bespectacled, with eyes that seemed older than his years. Were he much older, he would have been more like a kindly grandfather, while what few encounters he sort of remembered having with the rest of the crew made him feel somehow underfoot. Morgan, as he recalled, was a guardian of sorts, for Justin was increasingly certain that he was wasn’t supposed to be onboard, and he was fairly sure he remembered the man teaching him how to read as well as sticking up for him.

These moments almost messed with his mind, tantalizing him with scenes that always faded into the mists of the past as he drifted toward consciousness. Though, unlike his stint in the mines, perhaps as a result of his growing desperation in this place that he strongly believed was never meant for humans to live, he was retaining more of it after he woke up. When he thought about it, it at first made him wonder why he was thinking about all this crap, before he finally realized it.

Because there was nothing here, and he was left alone with himself, alone with just his thoughts to keep him company…

After a while he was more awake, just resting his eyes and gathering his strength for what he knew was the next step. Free from the Enforcer, he could finally slow down and begin to formulate a strategy for getting the hell out of this place. He had managed to get in, so as far as he was concerned, there also had to be a way out.

NK-525 had left him no time to explore, or even to figure out much of anything. In his exploration of the ventilation system, he had seen other rooms besides storage, some of which had what looked like computer terminals. The chief problem being that he couldn’t use the computers, and be close enough to the door to disable the controls in case a certain mechanical monster just happened to stop by. And of course, given how everything around here was computerized, he feared that damaging the controls prematurely would somehow set off the alarms.

For now, he would take it slow, allow both his body and mind to recover as much as this hi-tech hell would allow, then build up a stockpile of food down here in the vents. As he woke up more fully, his mind began to pick up speed, racing with new tactics and ideas for eluding the other security systems. Now if only I had these vents back in the Triangle State…

For the first time in what felt like way too long, Justin Black could see a small slat of hope shining in through these seemingly impenetrable depths, hope that he may yet again see the light of day. Perhaps even hope that Max might somehow get to see it with him.

“Hey! You!”

When Shades heard that from out in the pool area, he knew the game was up. He would find out later that Max had spent those two or three minutes making one last dive. Though he could only guess how the guards recognized him, his theory was that his friend’s moves somehow betrayed him.

Even as he snagged the extra backpack he had picked up for Max, his friend came dashing around the corner into the locker room. Tossing Max his pack, he simply grabbed his own and joined his flight. Realizing as he ran that he still held his towel in his other hand, thinking, What the hell… When exploring other worlds, it is important to know where your towel is.

Just more wisdom he would later have to pass on to Max.

A moment later, the two burly guards bolted into the room, accompanied by a male lifeguard. Their quarry tore out the other exit with a very reasonable disregard for the NO RUNNING sign on the wall. All the while, Max wished he hadn’t left Bandit back at the hotel.

“Dammit!” cried Fat, for Fatter was too out of breath to shout, even over this short distance, “Get back here, you two!”

But even now, their pursuit was running out of steam. Trying to chase them in bare feet was fast taking its toll on them. Even the lifeguard who had joined the chase, who was in considerably better physical condition than the guards, was also falling behind the two fugitives.

And Max’s lead was all the confirmation Shades needed. His friend was clearly accustomed to worse terrain than this in just his bare feet. Fortunately, his own martial arts training had involved hardening his feet against the elements. He now thanked Master Al for talking him into running laps around the block in the middle of February wearing nothing but his karate gi, or else he wouldn’t be able to keep up at all.

Understandably, people stared at the two barefoot young men being chased down the hall. As they ran swiftly past a trendy clothing store, the received cat-calls and whistles from some in the crowd. One of them, clearly having no idea what they were up to, but apparently thinking it was pretty cool, shouted, in an over-the-top bellow, “Fight the power!”

Just when it looked as if they might catch a break, another security guard, who just happened to be in the neighborhood, spotted them and got into the act.

“What now?” Max muttered.

“Gotta shake ’em somehow!” Shades wished he knew, and he was running out of time. Both of them were soaked from head to foot, and very conspicuously dressed. Or rather, almost the opposite. At least you’re not naked… Still, he knew that nothing he could do next would be terribly prudent, and he always tried to practice what he preached.

Though of late, he was beginning to see the limitations of prudence.

Finding a way to escape from one guard would have been a feat unto itself, but when another pair joined the party, things were looking next to impossible. Even as they moved to intercept Max and himself, he could feel the pull of his old reality, and for a moment, he actually considered surrender. It was seeing his adversaries rush him, the knowledge that those who were caught here were never seen again, that snapped him out of it.

Shades managed to regain his initiative in time to dodge his attacker’s swing, sidestepping and tripping him. Max had taken a more aggressive approach, nailing the other guard with a flying kick that Shades only saw out of the corner of his eye, bowling his opponent over before he could even make a move. The guard who was already chasing them stumbled over the one Shades had tripped up, buying them a moment’s head start as they continued their retreat.

Now they just needed something useful to do with it.

As they scrambled around the corner, Shades pointed to the crowd up ahead in the brief instant when the guards couldn’t see his gesture, and Max nodded. Earlier, when they were out and about, Shades had seen a boat show down this corridor, and now he had an idea. For his part, Max was just relieved that at least his friend had a plan.

The two of them ducked into the crowd just as the guards stumbled around the corner. Bobbing and weaving, they got lost in the crowd and vanished almost immediately. Even Max, who should have stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd.

“Shit!” muttered one of the guards as they stormed through the crowd, pushing people aside, “Where did they go?”

“How do you lose two guys running around in their goddam bathing suits?....”

Shades had to admit it would be an interesting conundrum to solve on the fly if he didn’t already know the answer himself. The real question was whether or not anyone would give the poor pigs any hints. Likely, just on impulse, Max tried to peer out from their hiding place, but Shades grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“Did anybody see where those bastards went?” demanded one of the guards.

“They were dressed in swim trunks!”

Shades and Max held their breath.

And, just as they feared, someone in the crowd must have pointed at the low-built, compact cabin cruiser display, because the guards got really quiet. Everyone else, too, for that matter. As soon as the first guard came up the steps and hopped on deck, they knew there was no point in hiding anymore, and rose to confront them.

Well shit, Shades thought, for he had been hoping they could duck below deck and put on some clothes after the guards went by.

“Here they are!” shouted the guard as he charged at Shades, who held his towel in en garde stance. He tried to snap the towel at him as a feint, but the guard wasn’t having any of it. He batted the towel aside, and that was when Shades saw that he was armed with a nightstick.

Max took the next guard to come up the steps, kicking him over just as he reached the top, sending him toppling back on top of the guard behind him.

Shades tried to block his attacker’s swing with his free hand, but it was just a hair too late, and the club still scored a glancing blow, forcing him back. The guard, meanwhile, hung on to Shades’ towel, picking up the slack as he rushed him, slamming him up against the cabin wall. Though Shades had managed to brace one arm between the stick and his neck, the guard was stronger, and without any leverage he would be unable to break free, and so would soon be overpowered.

“You’re not so tough now, are you, punk!” the guard snarled, pressing harder. Shades, in a last ditch attempt to break his hold, tried to knee him in the groin, but the guard blocked with his own knee. “I’ll beat your ass for that!”

Max, seeing his friend’s plight, turned and attacked the guard. The guard, seeing Max out of the corner of his eye, swung at him, but Max dodged the back-swing. Shades, no longer bound by the nightstick, took his opportunity, letting go of his towel and leaning against the cabin wall, bringing both feet up, power-kicking the guard. As Shades staggered to his feet, the guard went sprawling the length of the deck and up against the railing. Max whipped out his own towel, snapping it in his face, much as he had seen Shades demonstrate with his whip, just as he was regaining his balance. The guard yowled in pain, and there was hardly any need for Max to knock him over the edge with his high kick, but there was no point in taking any chances.

“Damn!” Shades had to admit that he was impressed at how quickly Max picked up on basic whip technique. That dude really knows where his towel is!

Unfortunately, while Max was busy bailing Shades out, another guard got up the steps, accompanied by a couple more who had just arrived on the scene. At the same time, one of the guards Max had kicked off ran over to the front of the boat trailer and started climbing in an attempt to catch them from behind. In his haste, though, his foot worked the front wheel lock— being shoddily secured to begin with— loose.

Max and Shades and their adversaries were really rocking the boat, foolishly placed at the beginning of a long series of inclined hall sections, and the whole rig started rolling downhill.

Which was probably for the best, as more guards were surely on the way, and the two of them would soon be in danger of being just a teeny bit outnumbered. Even so, after that chase, they were warmed-up, while the first guards were just starting to run out of steam, and the new ones were joining the fray fresh. All the while, people near the boat simply watched as it took off, not quite sure what to make of it.

Shades picked up his towel, and he and Max turned their attention to the new boarding party, both deciding at the same time that at least this situation had narrowed down the odds. The boat quickly picked up speed, traveling downhill on the cant of the floorplane, and the guards fell over trying to adjust to the acceleration. Shades steadied himself against the cabin, and Max, who grew up with the motion of seagoing vessels, jumped in to attack.

Ducking past the first two guards, and repeating his attack from moments ago, Max snapped his towel in the face of the last guard, who was still balancing precariously on the railing. This time, though, Max’s first attack was all it took to send him flailing overboard, falling out of reach. He turned to face the other guards as Shades rejoined the fight.

As the two pairs of adversaries went at it, the boat hit a dip on the next incline, gaining still more momentum, disrupting their fight. Shades kicked one guard in the face as he struggled to get back up. Max still grappled with the other for a moment, then bashed him with a vicious head-butt that made Shades wince at the sound of it.

All the while, the guard that had climbed up the front of the trailer had worked his way across the top of the cabin, and now attempted to tackle Shades. Max spotted the attack out of the corner of his eye, turning and cutting loose with a wild, backwards roundhouse kick Shades barely got out of the way of, taking the guard’s feet right out from under him. As he rolled and fell off the side, tumbling across the floor as he fell by the wayside, the guard Shades was fighting a moment ago rose to his feet and charged again, but Shades sidestepped and tripped him, sending him stumbling down the hatch below deck.

“Fugger…” muttered the remaining guard, blood from Max’s head-butt oozing down his face, “Choo broke by dose!”

Max, losing his balance after executing such a wild move on a moving vehicle, landed off-balance, stumbling against the railing. Shades slammed the cabin hatch shut before the other guard could get out. Refusing to let the remaining guard hurt Max while he was open, Shades stepped up to defend him. Though pissed off about his nose, the other guard was reeling on his feet as a result of that very attack, and Shades cut through his defenses with ease, landing several punches and kicks.

“Um, Shades…” Max had regained his feet and looked over the top of the cabin, seeing something he believed Shades should see.

“Yeah?”

“I think we might want to abandon ship.” Even as he said this, Max kicked the cabin hatch shut as it opened again, smacking the guard inside and sending him sprawling back below.

“Why?” But as he asked that question, he remembered they were still in a confined space, that they could only move so far before running out of hallway. “Oh, well why didn’t you say so?”

The guard with the broken nose tried to take advantage of Shades’ moment of distraction, but he blocked the attack, kicking him and knocking him back down.

As the boat cruised past a largish trampoline on display, Max and Shades bailed out, landing in the middle and bouncing off most of their impact before dropping to the floor on both feet. Shades, for a moment, trying to figure out why the image of John doing this in a storm immediately flashed to mind…

Both of them stood there for a moment as, seconds later, the boat crashed into a pyramid-shaped display of Cam’s Cola cans. The boat itself tipped on its side, rolling out of its trailer and spilling the remaining guard on deck tumbling across the floor. Having sailed uncommonly far for such a landlocked vessel. The whole wreck crashed through the display, sending ruptured cans cascading in a shallow, foaming tide of cola.

Max simply stared at this spectacular mess, lost in the moment.

“Now we’ve done it…” Shades tried to say seriously, thinking of how much trouble they would be in back on Earth. Tried not to laugh at what a ridiculous situation this really was, reminding himself that the trouble they were in here was greater still. To say nothing of what a wonderful role model he was being for his new friend. He grabbed Max’s arm and took off, saying, “Come on! Before they call for reinforcements!”

The two of them continued their flight, outrunning the bubbling flood of carbonation while a guard who just got there slipped and fell on his ass trying to give chase.

“Max, you’re gonna have to get a haircut.”

“Haircut?”

“But first we need to find a place where we can put our clothes back on and blend in a little more…”

Shades just hoped that the guards had been too busy chasing and fighting— and hopefully too thrown-off by the fact that he and Max were wearing only their swimming shorts— to have paid much attention to their faces.

It had taken a long time, with the usual stream of reports coming in about how the Intruder was nowhere to be found, but finally the most critical repairs were complete.

(AUDIO SENSORS: ONLINE…)

This was the first time the Intruder had openly taken the offensive. On top of that, Intruders trying anything but kamikaze charges were a rarity to begin with. Tactical analysis revealed the setup for a classic ambush.

(INFRARED SCANNERS: ONLINE…)

Of course, this was not the first time an Intruder had dared to attack the Enforcer. But unlike those before, who had been too poorly armed to do any real damage, and only ended up rushing to their deaths, this one actually found a way to fight back effectively.

(POWER LEVEL: 92.5%… 92.7%… 93.1%…)

Naturally, this would call for taking more precautions the next time.

(SYSTEM RUNNING: 98.6%… 98.8%… 98.9%…)

Seldom had an Intruder held out for this long. What few this sector had had, at any rate. Only the pair that disappeared over two hundred years ago held a longer record than this one.

(SUPER-LASER: ONLINE…)

Much better.

“ENFORCER UNIT NK-525-SLASH-XP-13 BACK ONLINE…”

Malevolent infrared optics lit up once again, and those hateful tracks started rolling once more as the Enforcer resumed its hunt.

It wasn’t until the door to their room was securely shut behind them that Max saw Shades’ previously hurried, impatient façade crumble into a look of unabashed relief.

There were times when neither of them thought they would make it. Even though the guards in that sector were preoccupied with both the boat mess, and their own injured comrades, it was still difficult trying to slip into a restroom unnoticed. Everybody noticed you when you were almost ass-naked. Just throwing on pants and shirt and shoes in the confines of a public bathroom stall felt like a race against time. Then they moved on to another restroom where people matching their former descriptions hadn’t been seen. Along the way, Shades stopped at a booth and bought both of themselves hats, and Max some sunglasses.

After hiding out at a café for a couple hours, they stopped at a beauty salon. In the catalog, Max got to see just how strange and exotic he could really be made to look, but settled for a major trim-job instead. All the way, he had tied his headband around his arm, concealing it under his sleeve. The whole way back to the hotel, they both watched each other’s backs constantly.

Yet as relieved as Shades was that the Management was still unaware of their hideout, his relief was no match for Max’s at seeing that Bandit was still there. And Bandit was tremendously happy just to be reunited with his companion after being all alone in that room all day. Still, Shades couldn’t believe they somehow managed to escape, fearing what might happen next time.

And he understood there would be a next time.

While he went first to shower and clean himself up more thoroughly, Max practiced his new kata in the middle of the room. Hard speed-punk blasted in his headphones, for neither of them dared to play it on speakers, lest a stray guest complaint draw unwanted attention. Like the stuff he had heard the day he first met Shades, this music had same basic (and bass) quality he had heard at Bankshot. Unconsciously, he had picked up the rhythm of the songs as he moved, which would provide Shades with more proof of Master Al’s assertion that if you can fight, you can dance, and if you can dance, you can learn to fight. Though so far, even after more than six years of training, his own dancing still left something to be desired.

Bandit sat on Max’s bed, watching his boy train with casual feline curiosity. For him, it was enough that Max was back, even though he returned smelling of the alien odor of chlorine. It was the time Max, and even Shades, spent here that allowed him to endure their absence.

Though focused on his forms, Max’s lingering edginess about their narrow escape was such that he jumped in spite of himself when he saw the bathroom door open out of the corner of his eye. Shades stepped out, dressed in a complimentary robe, a towel draped around his shoulders. He was pleased with both his friend’s rapidly evolving form and his enjoyment of the music he shared. That the release dates of many of these songs were no problem here in the Sixth Dimension, despite the fact that more than half of them were dated after his disappearance, and he suspected he would never quite get over the thrill of listening to the future.

“You might want to wait for the hot water to build back up a bit before you take your shower,” Shades told him. Even almost two weeks after the dirtiest week of his life, he still felt a newfound appreciation for washing up. He could see that his friend was very enthusiastic about learning new techniques, already assimilating both moves and vocabulary, and there was a finer point of Shorin-ryu that he wanted to demonstrate for Max while they waited. “I see you’ve been practicing your kata while I was in the shower.”

“What?” Max asked, removing his headphones. He was really looking forward to taking another shower. Though his parents, and a good number of Outlanders, had spoken of them, there was no such thing in the Islands. The closest thing was people standing in a stall and washing up sometimes when it rained, so to him it was amazing, not to mention refreshing.

“I said you might want to wait a bit before taking your shower. In the meantime, there’s something I want to show you.”

“What’s that?” Max could already tell that his friend’s teacher, this Master Al, was very knowledgeable about martial arts, just based on the things his student was teaching him. Although his first teacher had been Grampa Reno, Robert said that he had also learned from several other masters in the course of his wanderings. That same wisdom now encouraged him to expand his own knowledge and understanding.

“You’re getting that front stance down faster than anyone else I’ve seen,” and Shades had watched a few of his fellow students storm out of Master Al’s dojo in frustration over the subtle intricacies of stance and form, lacking the patience to cultivate and perfect it, remembered how long it took him to get the hang of it, “but there’s something important that I think will help you.” Max was a lot like himself, a lot like how Al described himself as a student, always needing to know the how and the why of a form or technique before it fully sunk in. Had always said that a great teacher learns as much from his students as they learn from him, and in Max, Shades saw an opportunity to take both of their training to the next level.

To that end, he was about to show Max a very important attribute of this stance. For in Max’s fighting earlier, he was inspired to show him something sensei had once taught him. He assumed his stance in front of Max, telling him, “This is something my teacher once showed me, and I think you’ll find it useful. Try to push me.”

“Okay.” Max stepped up and shoved Shades, who shifted slightly on his feet.

But never gave an inch.

“Now try one of those powerful roundhouse kicks you’re so good at,” Shades said. “Oh, and remember to come from the right. Just trust me on this one.”

Max stepped back, then jumped in with an arcing kick like the one he swept that guard off the boat with earlier. Shades’ arm block not only stopped Max in mid air, but moved right into shoving him flailing aside, where he crashed on the bed, startling Bandit. As far as Shades’ ability to defend was concerned, it would hardly have mattered which side Max attacked from; Max, on the other hand, had a choice of either landing on the bed, or being knocked into the room’s small desk.

“I didn’t know you were that strong…” Max muttered as he got back up.

“I’m not,” Shades told him. “And fortunately, I don’t have to be.” Seeing the confounded look on Max’s face, he laughed and continued. “You have little leverage when you’re up in the air like that, but I draw my power from the earth itself.”

“I see…” As Max ran back through that, he realized what Shades was talking about. During his time with Justin, he had been only slightly dismayed at the gaps he could see in his own training, and his scuffle with the guards had only reinforced his confidence. However, against a trained opponent like Shades, he began to see the limitations of having only a panther to grapple with. Apples and oranges, as Shades would have said. He had become stronger and faster over those five years, enough so to take down those guards— stronger and faster than them, yet not that much more skilled than them, he realized— but in this new sparring partner he had found new ways to challenge himself.

To truly resume his training. And for that he thanked his new friend. A challenge. And he found he liked it.

“I’ll show you another little trick he taught me,” Shades said as he stepped up to Max. He planted his foot on one of Max’s, then shoved him, sending him sprawling back onto the bed. “Pushing off the ground like that,” he explained as he helped him back up, “I can put my whole body behind my attacks. Try using a front stance.”

Max assumed his stance. Again, Shades tried to push him, even stepping on his foot like before, but this time Max found he could push back. He suspected that Dad would have taught him at least some of this had his training continued, but he was grateful for this little revelation Shades had given him, for he could now see holes in his jumping attacks which he was previously unaware of.

“Even though you’re bigger than me, I could still push you around because I was grounded,” Shades explained. “This stance gives you really strong balance and footing, so it works really well both defensively and off—”

Shades was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Shades said quietly, gesturing toward the pack where Max stashed his weapons. “Don’t make a sound, but be prepared. Let me do the talking.” He walked over to the door and checked the peephole.

Guards. Of course.

“Open up!” his muffled voice commanded.

“Just a minute!” Shades called out in a Deep South falsetto. “Ah ain’t decent!”

The only place Max had ever heard such a dialect was in the animé Shades had shown him, so all he could think of it as was an “Osaka” accent, but his friend’s cartoonish tone left him trying desperately not to laugh aloud.

“Ah cain’t ansah the do’ raht now,” Shades piped up. “Whadda ya’ll want?”

A picture popped up under the doorcrack.

“We’re with Security, ma’am,” one of the guards said. “This man was involved in an incident that injured five of our officers. Have you seen him?”

Shades examined the picture, a composite sketch of Max, fortunately before his haircut.

“Have you seen this man, or a man seen with him wearing wraparound sunglasses?” a second voice added. “Or a big black-and-white panther? It’s very important.”

Max had reached into the bag and armed himself to cover the door now that Shades had stepped away from it, but he wasn’t sure if he could aim, he was laughing so hard.

“No, mista, ah’m afraid ah haven’t,” Shades told them, “but you fahn young men keep at it!” He wondered for a moment if women really did find disgusting slobs like that attractive. Though he found it more than a little disconcerting that he was being identified by his shades alone. And Bandit, too. “Ah’ll be sure ta call ya if ah see anything.”

By now, Max had grabbed a pillow to muffle his laughter, and hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight.

“Okay, ma’am. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Anytime, sug!” Shades added for good measure.

There was a long silence after that. While Max tried really hard not to smother himself, Shades collapsed on the other bed, exhaling a long sigh of relief. Bandit just stared at them.

At last Max removed the pillow, asking, “Shades, do you always do stuff like that?”

To which neither of them could help laughing.

“It’s all about being able to improvise,” Shades told him after he caught his breath. “I used to do routines like that when people called to complain about Sandy’s band. Pretty good, huh?”

“Hell yeah!” Max replied. “What now?”

“Now we get our act together.” Max would have to learn the limitations of brute force in this place, that it was ingenuity and resourcefulness that kept you from disappearing around here. Alone, Shades would have disappeared sooner or later, but now that he was teamed up with Max, they had become a force to be reckoned with. Still, he feared there would be a crackdown coming. A measure of just how much trouble they were in. More than his own, paradoxically. “That was too close.”

Fortunately, the guards didn’t come back, and after a few minutes they were finally able to regain some measure of composure. After that, they practiced for a couple minutes before Max went in to take his shower. Before he went, though, he told Max to practice like he had in Paradise, until it stuck in his head and was second nature. He could see that underneath Max’s carefree façade was the discipline of a warrior. The way Max trained, as if preparing to face the entire Security force himself. There were definite differences, and Max’s training was clearly incomplete, but his native style definitely bore a strong resemblance to Karate, appeared to be the Sixth Dimension’s answer to his world’s martial arts styles.

Master Al had told him that you had to practice a technique at least ten thousand times to truly understand it, and it was only after years of training that he had seen what his sensei meant. It made him wonder how many times Max had practiced those moves back in Paradise.

As Shades did some practicing of his own, attempting to assimilate some of Max’s wilder moves into his own repertoire, he couldn’t help overhearing his friend singing in the shower. On one hand, he was impressed that Max had already learned most of the lyrics, but on the other hand, he found he was a little envious. Then again, he always was with people who could sing better than he, and that was a pretty long list. Once upon a time, on a whim, he had attempted to sing backup vocals for Nowheresville. They never made it through even one song. After all of them had a good laugh, Shades never brought it up again.

Some of those songs spoke of things that have (will have) happened in some world or another. It made him wonder what Max would have prevented if he could go back. Just what his friend lost so many years ago that could still bring such sorrow to his eyes. That could make him sing some of those songs as if from personal experience.

As for himself, if it didn’t make him think of John, then he thought of Amy. Just another reason why he couldn’t go back anymore. The endless questions. The endless questions family, friends, associates— the authorities— would pose to him. Not to mention how he would face John and Amy’s folks after that night. That, and he didn’t want to return to Earth without John and Amy, or at least finding out what became of them.

And of course, he was still worried about the guards. There was an intensity to that battle that was greater than any he had ever fought, even more personal than his desperate struggle on that terrible night, the like of which he had never experienced before. He was proud of himself for putting up such a good fight under such awkward conditions, but he was beginning to suspect that Max had fought tougher adversaries, as fighting them hardly even seemed to break his stride. As if even his run-in with Tranz-D’s robo-guards may not have been his first real combat experience.

And the guards’ injuries were escalating with every encounter, they would really be on the lookout for the two of them in the future. They would have to lay low the next day, and think of new ways to lower Max’s profile in public. After that door-to-door manhunt, though, he was even more worried about Bandit.

That they were on the alert for a black-and-white panther didn’t bode well for their long-term safety. Though they kept a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign up when they were out and about, they had to let the cleaning staff in sooner or later, which always meant sneaking Bandit out about every day-and-half. He hoped they didn’t notice the toilet plunger he bought, or the unusual number of newspapers he picked up in the lobby. Or that they were hiding a scratching post in the closet. Or any of the other more subtle measures they had resorted to in order to conceal their feline secret.

One thing he now understood: a panther was definitely not a house pet.

Nothing to do but be as vigilant as possible, Shades reflected as he trained. When Max emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, Shades decided to see just how well he had it down, unleashing his own version of Max’s kick.

“Whoa!” Max remarked as he watched his friend. “I didn’t know you could jump that high!”

“Not as high as you,” Shades conceded.

“Still,” Max told him, “it’s like on the diving board— you just have to get used to moving around in the air.”

“Yeah. I suppose.” Shades pulled off his other headphone, again telling himself that it was because it wasn’t part of the Shorin-ryu arsenal, “I just never trained in aerial moves.”

“Say Shades,” Max asked, fishing a plastic card out of his robe pocket, “who is this Dexter guy? Is he your brother or something?”

Shades was in the midst of switching off his Cam-Jam and wasn’t fully paying attention, so he reflexively snapped, “Don’t call me Dexter!”

When he saw the perplexed look on Max’s face, he realized that he had never told Max his real name. And that the card was his driver’s license, which must have fallen out of his pocket while he was changing earlier. During his time here, he had experimented with different identities, playing different roles without anyone here to wave his “normal” self in his face, building a new persona for himself. Something that more closely matched on the outside what he was on the inside. In all that time, he had never given his real name to anyone, save for DJ.

“Well, he’s me,” Shades finally answered, somewhat chagrined. All of his old friends knew that name, but since coming here, he had almost forgotten his old name, like something from a past life. “I didn’t mean to lie to you… It’s just been a long time since anyone called me that. I haven’t gone by the name of Dexter since I was in middle school. Everybody calls me ‘Shades’,” he laughed, tapping his shades, “so I guess it kind of is my name anymore.”

“Shades,” Max agreed, handing him his license back. Then he said, “There’s something else I’ve wanted to ask you about.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, it’s about this place…” It had been bothering him for some time, and now that he wasn’t busy swapping stories and learning the ropes, he had begun to sense it more and more the longer he was here, and he still couldn’t think of the words to describe it. “You’ve been here for a while… Doesn’t this place creep you out?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

“I have,” Shades admitted, “but not on this level.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. A long time ago.” Shades’ own imagination had spooked him out on more than a few occasions over the years, but what he had to deal with now was that this place was real. “Back before my dad disappeared, he was stationed in Alaska for a while. Well, one time we went out camping on the Deshka River, and my cousin Charlie was along for the ride. This place was out in the middle of nowhere, we had to go there by boat, it was so far from the nearest town. About the only ways you could get there were by boat or by helicopter. Dark side of the moon…

“Anyhoo, Alaska is also called the Land of the Midnight Sun because, during the summer it doesn’t get dark. We were there during the summer, and I can tell you from personal experience that it doesn’t get any darker than twilight for a few hours, then it gets light again.”

Land of the Midnight Sun… To Max, it sounded as fascinating as any place else he had heard of.

“That night,” Shades continued, “Charlie and I sat out on a dock on the river. I don’t remember what we started talking about, but it eventually turned to spooky stories. We just kept telling each other ghost stories, and the whole place just seemed to change. As I said, it doesn’t get dark in the summer, but after a while it was as if something happened to the place, it just got really creepy. And there was the tree.”

“A tree?”

“Next to the dock, along the bank, there was this weird, twisted tree. It probably wouldn’t have looked so bad from most angles, but from where we sat, it looked almost alive… I mean all trees are alive, but there was just something wrong about this one. Like it was gonna pull up its roots and attack us or something…”

Max couldn’t help shuddering; the thought of a tree up and attacking someone was so unnatural to him, he had a hard time picturing it.

“For a while, we were afraid to move, we had scared ourselves silly with our own stories. In fact, we sat out there all night, neither of us leaving our lawnchairs. After that, the tree didn’t look so evil anymore, but we never looked at it the same way again.”

Shades wondered for a moment why he had told this story. He knew it had just been their own childish fears, and sitting there well past their bedtime— as fathers are more likely to allow— messing with them. He had meant to use this as an analogy, but it worked all too well with the evil aura here. Now he found that his attempt to make light of their fears was starting to backfire on him.

“This place does the same thing,” Max told him after a moment of silence. “Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”

“I know.”

“Shades, how do you sleep with this going on?”

“Very carefully,’ Shades said, borrowing one of Arthur’s favorite answers to such questions. He himself didn’t get as much sleep as he would have liked, but he was fast adapting, finding that he didn’t need a lot of sleep to function. “Remember, it can’t hurt you unless you let it.”

“I guess, but it’s still creepy.” Now that the conversation had shifted this way, he found himself recalling old stories. Many tales passed through the Islands, but few as scary as this one. “You know, I remember a story I heard a long time ago. It’s about this ship called the Twylight.”

Just the name gave Shades the chills.

“It is said that this ship only appears in foggy weather.” Max had heard the tale of Twylight around the campfire, and now he felt the same tingle he had experienced back then. “People would just stumble upon it out of the mist. A derelict, never anyone onboard. No one knows what happened to her crew, but some of those who come aboard disappear one by one. Those who manage to get off always said that when they looked back, the ship was gone…”

“I’ve read similar accounts,” Shades told him. He wanted to laugh, but Max’s tale was too eerie to really make light of. Not in this atmosphere. Highway mythology had its ghost-cars, and the high seas had a much longer history of spook stories. “It makes me think of all those Bermuda Triangle stories I—”

“You know about the Bermuda Triangle!” Max remembered that strange book he had flipped through back at the Centralict Library, and he wondered how Shades knew about it.

“Yeah…” Shades paused for a moment, more spooked by this than by Max’s story. Chris Nimrod’s ridiculously long science-has-all-the-answers trip immediately came to mind, and he wondered what the little know-it-all would make of that. That Max had heard of the Bermuda Triangle held implications that sent his mind reeling. “But where did you hear of it?”

So Max told him about the book, and Shades realized that he had read the very same volume years ago. Then Shades indulged in his years of research on the Unknown, telling him of ghost ships, haunted houses, and other disturbing accounts he had read. The more they talked, the more a nameless fear began to permeate the room, as if something malevolent had settled in and refused to leave, simply staring at them. Even when they tried changing the subject, the conversation always found its way back to all things spooky.

And so it went until they were at last too tired to be creeped out, settling into an uneasy sleep.

Justin reached out and pressed the button on yet another door, again getting the password prompt.

He pounded the wall— next to the controls, wasn’t going to make that mistake again. After building up his stockpile of food and water bottles, he had resumed his exploration, free of the Enforcer’s constant interference. In addition to those measures, he had also taken to using his staff— which, being a pulse weapon, wasn’t restricted by his ammo— to destroy hall and vent sensors as he went to make it harder for the security system to track him. Unfortunately, hours of walking up and down in different directions had still failed to yield a single unlocked door that didn’t lead to a storage closet.

When he first thought of it, his plan for accessing the computers he had seen through the vents in various rooms had seemed so simple, he could just scream. In the storage closets, he at least had stacks of boxes and other objects he could use to get up and down from high vents, whereas in most of the rooms there was little furniture, most of it built-in or too heavy for him to budge, and never anything right under the vent. It was hard enough getting down without twisting his ankle or something, and getting back up… left him without any useful escape route.

He was starting to think he would just have to risk it anyway… when he heard it.

“No… way… No fucking way…”

For a moment, he thought he was hearing things, that this place had finally succeeded in unhinging his mind. But when it refused to go away, he knew it was real. Even as his brain was telling him he should get his ass in gear, the rest of him refused to budge.

All of the hope he had felt earlier fell right out of him as he turned back toward his closet. Against the despair and denial weighing on every fiber of his being, he had to force one foot in front of the other every step of the way back as those tracks droned and rattled somewhere in this place’s bottomless background. When he reached the vent, he crawled in, wondering why he felt such a strong urge to just lie down and go to sleep, why his body felt so slow.

Maybe, if he just went to sleep, he would finally wake up from this nightmare…

But as he moved deeper into the shaft, he started moving faster, his fierce desire to live overruling his premature surrender before he could fully give in to it. Crawling faster and faster, becoming increasingly frantic. Imagining those tracks coming closer and closer. Even when he was around the corner, he kept on going.

It was only after he felt like he was going to pass out that he finally stopped.

But how…? his mind simply refused to finish the question. He had had a sinking feeling about leaving NK-525 behind after the explosion, but he had been so certain he had killed it. Now he wished he had taken the risk. For a moment, he wondered if there was perhaps more than one Enforcer Unit, but somehow he knew better.

Then, for the first time in years, Justin Black simply slumped where he was, just sobbing.

Shades and Max sat in a secluded corner of the food court, munching on burgers and fries from some place with a late-Sixties slant on futuristic. It was a new place, and much like other new places, where they came from and where they went was a total mystery. Staffed by the usual cast of cardboard shadow-employees. Back on Earth, Shades had sometimes wondered if the people he saw had any sort of life beyond that of their public face, sometimes even after he and his friends had made their own debut on the wage-slave scene— he feared these people no longer did. That their only reality was on stage. The way they had learned to simply not notice certain things. He suspected they wouldn’t even know how to go about quitting anymore. He often got the feeling that he and Max were seeing, walking through, a different world than those around them.

After two days, cooped up in their hotel room, it was time to catch a breath of fresh air. Or at least as fresh as any air here could be.

Shades was telling his friend more stories from his childhood in Lakeside. Wistfully recounting sunny summer Sunday afternoons; long lazy spring weekends; carefree romps through fresh winter snow; cloudy, moody autumn days. No job, no pressure, no problem. Sort of peaceful dreamy…

“Shades?” Max asked. He had told Shades all about his Crow’s Nest before, and now, “Did you have a place to go to think about stuff?”

“Yeah.” Shades often thought about his own Lookout in this place. About bringing Dad’s old binoculars up there years ago, pretending he was spying on enemy territory. More recently, going up there to practice his Karate. And nowadays, wondering how often Amy had passed through over the years. “And mine was a cliff, overlooking Flathead Lake.”

He often used to imagine it was an ocean. As a child, he had read not only of the Unknown, but also of epic adventures; it was how he thought his life, how the world, should be. That electric current of sensation as he stood up there, the wind whipping through his hair, that breathtaking sense of adventure and mystery that had followed him everywhere he went as a kid.

Had never really stopped following him.

Now that he thought about it. From the moment he was first told to get a job, it had merely gone underground, biding its time. Now, since he had wound up in the Sixth Dimension, it had resurfaced. The belief that he was destined for more than just work and worry.

Back then, his heart and mind were filled with visions of he and his friends going off on some big adventure. He suspected that he and Arthur’s road trip pact was some remnant of that. Somewhere along the way, he had fallen into the rank-and-file, discovered at first that he was actually afraid to leave his high-maintenance comfort zone. Even as he talked to Max, he vowed that if he ever escaped this air-conditioned hell, he would never go back to his old life.

He now had Max and Bandit at his side. And John and Amy to search for, for he still felt they had somehow not seen the last of each other. Just hitch a ride all over the Sixth Dimension…

After they finished their meal, they made their way along the least-used route they could find, Max finished his drink, tossing it into a blue trashcan built into the wall.

“Say Max,” Shades intoned as he noticed what Max was doing, “just were you planning to send that?”

He couldn’t help busting out laughing as a vision popped into his head of them receiving an angry letter telling Max to quit sending his garbage to their dimension.

“What did I do?” Max had seen Shades use the trashcans before, and he was quite sure he was doing it right.

“Well, you see, that’s a mailbox, not a trashcan…” At first, Shades was trying to figure out how to explain postage, when another thought occurred to him. He had probably wandered past those mailboxes any number of times, and only now did he realize an interesting possibility. “You can use it to send things to other places…”

“What is it?” Even with those opaque glasses, Max could see his face light up.

“I’m not sure… I think you just gave me an idea, Max.” Somehow things still got in and out of here, and he still had no idea how. “I’ll have to think about it later.”

And think about it very seriously, but for now Shades told Max to not put his garbage in the mail and they continued their conversation about Lakeside. The more Shades told him about his old home, the more Max wanted to see it for himself; hell, the more Shades told Max about it, the more he himself wanted to go back. Not just back through the dimensional rift, but back in time as well, back to when Lakeside was still a secret. Of course, he couldn’t help laughing when Max took his figurative California Invasion literally, though he found the image of a ragtag army of locals marching down to the lakefront rather laughable.

And Max found himself wondering, didn’t he and Justin once talk about California not too long ago? He wondered if this “California” Robert had spoken of from his travels, and this land Shades mentioned were one and the same.

“That reminds me…” Remembering when Max found his license in the bathroom the other night, Shades was reminded of something he wanted to show him. Reaching in his jacket pocket, he whipped out his wallet. “You asked me about my friends, and I knew there was something I was trying to think of yesterday…”

He then proceeded to show Max several wallet-size photos that he usually carried around with him. Of John and the band in Sandy’s basement. Arthur’s school picture. His mother and father in what was the last picture ever taken of them together.

“Your mother is a very beautiful woman,” Max told her. And he could see that Shades had very good friends, indeed.

“Thanks.” Shades found himself wishing he had a photo of Amy. At another mall, in another life, the two of them had walked past a photo booth. Admittedly, he was worried about being late for work, but he also hadn’t wanted to come on too strong.

Now he wished he had.

As Max looked through these glimpses of this friend’s life, he remembered a gizmo from Dad’s Outland treasure-trove, a device called a camera. His parents brought a few tantalizing pictures of the outside world home with them, and also several extra rolls of film. Of course, there was no place to develop them, so they remained locked up in a chest. It all made him wish he had a few photos to show Shades. Wanted him to see Cleo and Lance and Mom and Dad, wanted him to see the Islands, in spite of himself.

Found himself wondering how they had changed, what they might look like now…

As the two of them continued to talk, Shades began to feel the weight of this place on his mind. It was hardly the first time, but it still bothered him every bit as much as it did then, for he feared getting used to it. He could sense it was also bothering Max, but talking about old friends, good times, elsewhere, seemed to help more than he originally thought. Though he feared even that would eventually reach the limits of how much good it could do.

This was like a vacation in Hell.

Of course, with the Card, there were so many things he and Max could do. Except leave. With the exception of the guards, everyone acted friendly and chirpy. Too much so, and it was all fake. Everything looked like the most ultra-hip, ultra-modern suburban fantasy.

Underneath this front, though, Shades felt as if everyone was living in a bad dream that was trying just a little too hard to put on a friendly face. Everything felt like a mask. The place looked tantalizing on the surface, even though he had grown bored with the shallow trappings of malls a long time ago, still he sometimes got the irrational idea that if he put his foot through the sheetrock and plastic and cardboard, it would all be just as hollow as a movie set. Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to see what lay underneath the glossy surface, picturing shadowy cameramen, alien maggots oozing out, or just hungry darkness behind the stage sets.

It put him in mind of the one time he had tried to see what lay behind the scenes in this sinister place. Perhaps he had gotten a little too cocky right after he first obtained the Card, and he decided to take one of the side doors in the halls. In real malls, there were hallways and corridors used by everyone from janitors and security guards to shipping for the various stores, and he had wondered if perhaps there was an exit back there somewhere.

Sure enough, just like in his world, there were long passageways with occasional doors along the sides. Yet though it could have been his imagination, the halls seemed somehow dimmer, and dingier their real-world counterparts, and he quickly lost his nerve to even look behind any of the doors, as the entire atmosphere back there quickly flashed him back to his nightmare’s about Amy’s aimless flight through halls that looked entirely too much like these ones for his taste. That sense that, rather than escape, only traps or hidden dangers awaited him behind any of them.

Before he could regain the nerve to explore, though, he was interrupted by footsteps. Striding, patrolling footsteps, the sound alone of which made him certain it was the guards. When he fled in the wrong direction to get back out in the main hall, he quickly found himself racing down various passages trying to evade footfalls that seemed to approach from every direction. Rolling carts, talking voices, and the dread certainty that if he was caught back here, he would see a side of this place never seen by the public…

Just when he was certain that he was trapped back there, hopelessly lost and on the verge of getting caught, he bolted around a corner and found himself right back out in the mall proper. If he had thought his first-day experience with the pay-phone was unsettling enough, he quickly concluded that the back ways were never to be used as a hiding place or an escape route. The other day, after the pool incident, Max had tried to drag him into one of those doors when they nearly ran into some guards, but Shades resisted fiercely, at the time merely telling him it was a bad idea.

Later, would recount his harrowing experience behind the scenes while telling spook stories that night.

His time here held all the stretched-out timelessness of summer vacation when he was a kid. As if it could last forever, a thought that, in this place, he didn’t find very reassuring. Unlike this new nightmare, he actually loved summer vacation with a passion he held for no other season, not even Christmas. And mourned its loss, pining away for endless hours at work these past two summers. Time had seemed almost to stand still when he was a child, doubly so in summer. Which somehow seemed to last as long as the other seasons of the year put together. At least until the last week or so of August, when the gods seemed to press fast-forward. He would go to sleep one summer night, and the next morning Mom would be waking him up early and telling him that no son of hers was going to be late for school on the first day of the year, and, once upon a time, Dad telling him that fun was fun, but discipline was also important. Of course, Douglas MacLean was a man who also managed to have plenty of fun when he was off-duty, hunting, fishing, out-of-town vacations…

In spite of the dullness and complacence he resisted reflexively, he feared there was no time left for sleeping in. More and more certain was he that summer was passing into autumn, and Halloween would be hot on its heels. And something told him that he wouldn’t want to stick around for when the masks come off…

So naturally, he was in a hurry to test his new idea. With increasing frequency, he was plagued by nightmares about the guards capturing them, leading them away to a part of the mall he knew no one else ever got to see. Of being thrown out the “back door” into the void.

No return from 86… he thought and shuddered, wondering if it could be real, if that was what really happened to those who disappeared.

No matter who built this place, it was never meant for human beings to live.

This had become Justin’s single strongest conviction in the interminable days since he first found himself deposited here. Everything was possessed by digital demons, and he felt that something ominous slept in the bowels of this place. Even here in the darkness of the vents, he felt it pressing in all around him, smothering him.

No escape seemed to be this place’s mantra, and he was beginning to fear that all those damn machines just might be right.

In order to keep his mind off it, he found himself reliving odd chapters from his past. Although Mr Morgan was the one who first taught him how to read, he also remembered another who had taught him still more. He managed to forget a lot about the painful things that had happened to him in his early days in the Triangle State, so naturally someone who was actually kind to him would stand out.

There were people who passed through the Triangle State from time to time who actually decided to put down roots, and most of them wore out their welcome all too quickly. Bringing in “strange ideas” like democracy, human rights, revolution, or even the crazy idea that the Authority devote some of its vast wealth to benefit the rest of the islanders. And the Board wasn’t having any of it. Mercenaries, missionaries, wannabe revolutionaries, even peaceful individuals who only wished to help others, all of them labeled Instigators by the TSA.

Emily was one of the latter, a wandering teacher devoted to spreading literacy, a soft-spoken young woman who often spoke out openly against the tyranny of the Authority. In retrospect, Justin believed her intentions were good, but he had to wonder if she really knew what she was getting herself into. During her short tenure on Benton Island, Justin, among other streetrats, could go to her boat near the edge of the harbor for reading lessons and whatever food she could scare up. If she had just settled for giving free food to vagrants, she might have lasted for a while, but since she insisted on teaching, and trying to compile the sad history of the Triangle State (and worse, telling people, in her own words, to unite for justice in this place that Justice had long forsaken), all Justin remembered about it was that she was found dead one morning, floating in the water of the harbor.

Now that he thought about it, he remembered that there was also a young man in Benton who, he recalled, was in love with Emily, and if the stories were to be believed, killed several guards trying to prevent her death. Later, captured without a fight and sent to the mines; it was said that when Emily died, he had lost the will to fight. Had lost his will to live. As he remembered these bits and pieces of the tapestry of misery the Authority had woven into those islands, he wondered if that broken man and Jasper, the mad bomber of Pullman Mine, weren’t one and the same.

Emily, I’m comin’ home!…

Those words snapped back to him across time and space, and he was now certain it was so.

Anymore, Justin often found himself lost in these remembrances. During his days in the Triangle State, he had spoken less and less as the stakes became greater and greater, but during his short time with Max in Paradise, he had come to enjoy the singular act of conversation itself. Now he wished his friend was still with him, just so he could hear the sound of another human voice in this vast tomb of soulless machines.

At times, he was surprised to find that he feared finding Max’s Enforcer-mangled carcass on one of his supply runs almost as much as he feared his own death. Visions of his friend decomposing on some forgotten stretch of hallway, or charred and blackened in a closet somewhere. Or even of Bandit, who surely didn’t deserve such a gruesome fate. Of finding out that he truly was all alone against this monster.

As time dragged on, not knowing where Max was, or what was happening to him, was starting to become as maddening as his own predicament.

While Justin was busy running for his life in the twisted maze that was Tranz-D, Max and Bandit lay curled up on their bed.

Seemingly sleeping the sleep of the just, though Shades suspected that his friend’s dreams were at least as haunted as his own, while he sat at the desk in their room. Pen in hand, nothing in mind. Max had a certain innocence about him, and he could sense that something deep inside his friend fought hard to keep it that way in spite of all that happened to him. He hoped someday Max would tell him what happened all those years ago.

All the same, though, he was grateful for Max’s company in this place where he walked alone among many.

So many, and he suspected that none of them were real. Turned into flesh and blood phantoms by the curse, empty shells that gave a whole new definition to facelessness. He had what so many of his peers seemed to want— a ton of money, even cool junk to buy with it— but he lacked the one thing he desired most, the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Trapped in a place that represented everything he had spent the last three years of his high school career trying to escape.

He would gladly trade the Card for a ticket out.

Max may have inadvertently caused a lot of trouble in the little time he was here, but it also had the side effect of shaking Shades out of his growing, numbing sense of complacence. Of almost three weeks of sinking deeper into limbo. And now Max’s misunderstanding with the mailbox had given him an idea.

As far as he could tell, people under the curse couldn’t get in or out of here, but things could. And did, on a regular basis. He had seen things that could only have come from Earth. Had seen identical CD cover art, and heard lyrical matches to songs word-for-word. And movies scene-for-scene.

And none of it was any sort of novelty here. Which meant that it was clearly going on before the Flathead Experiment. Though he and Max were unable to get out on their own, it just might be possible to send an S-O-S of sorts to someone on the outside who was not under the curse.

And again he wondered for a moment why so many things in his life ran on road-trip and seafaring analogies these days. Still, he couldn’t sleep, and this was all he could come up with. Had spent all that time talking Max to sleep, but had calmed his friend at his own expense, and now he couldn’t stop thinking about his own friends.

After a while, he finally put pen to the sheet of hotel stationery:

DEAR AMY,
EVEN AS I WRITE THIS, I’M STILL NOT SURE HOW TO EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED THE OTHER NIGHT, AS I STILL DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS MYSELF. FIRST OFF, I’M SORRY I WASN’T ABLE TO PICK YOU UP SATURDAY NIGHT, AND I HOPE YOU DON’T HOLD IT AGAINST ME IF WE EVER MEET AGAIN. I’M SURE NEWS OF MY DISAPPEARANCE HAS REACHED YOU BY NOW, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, AND I WISH I COULD TELL YOU WHERE I WENT, BUT I NO LONGER KNOW WHERE I AM. I HOPE I CAN CATCH UP WITH YOU SOMEDAY, BECAUSE I’VE ALWAYS LIKED YOU & WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU. I’LL NEVER FORGET YOU UNTIL THEN.
-SOMEDAY, Dexter.

By the time he finished writing that, he began to wonder if he shouldn’t have written an apology to Amy’s parents. He supposed a part of himself still wanted to believe she still safely there to apologize to, and he had no clue what to write or how her parents might take it. That, and his growing conviction that she had made a disappearance of her own that night. He was still uncertain how he knew, but for now he felt farther from her than ever. And he had always felt as if he was on the outside looking in, the amazing disappearing boy. He wondered what she would make of his adventurous new lifestyle…

He then added the address she had given him that fateful day. He knew from years of wandering Lakeside roughly whereabouts most of his classmates lived, but still thought it would seem creepy if he already knew where to pick her up. Fortunately, the ink was only slightly smudged from that night’s storm, so now he had a clear mailing address to work with.

After pondering that for a while, he followed up with:

YO JOHN,
I HOPE YOU FARED BETTER THAN I DID FRIDAY NIGHT. I REALLY WISH WE’D WORKED OUT A BETTER PLAN. I FEEL TERRIBLE FOR EVEN DRAGGING YOU INTO THIS MESS. WHEREVER YOU ARE, I HOPE YOU’RE DOING BETTER THAN I AM. I STILL DON’T KNOW WHERE I ENDED UP, BUT I WILL TRY TO FIND YOU. IF WE EVER MEET AGAIN, I HAVE A NEW FRIEND NAMED MAX. HE HAS A COOL CAT NAMED BANDIT, AND I THINK YOU’D REALLY LIKE THEM. I REALLY HOPE WE MEET AGAIN, AND THAT YOU’RE NOT TOO ANGRY. I HONESTLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON THAT NIGHT, AND I’M STILL TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED.

(OR, IF THIS IS TO MR AND MRS DOE, AGAIN I’M SO SORRY. I HOPE YOUR SON IS OK, AND I WILL DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO FIND HIM. I’M SURE BY NOW YOU’VE HEARD SOMETHING OF THE STRANGE EVENTS OF THE OTHER NIGHT, AND I’M AFRAID WE GOT SEPARATED IN THE STORM.)
-STILL SEARCHING, Shades.

While he had no idea where to even begin explaining anything to Amy’s parents without sounding like he was somehow involved in her possible disappearance that night, he had no choice with John’s. After all, he was the one who dragged their son out into that storm. That made him responsible. Then he added John’s address, which was scribbled among the notes in his wallet.

Even as he wrote, Shades wondered yet again what things would have been like if they hadn’t gotten separated. Would we have escaped the Mall as a team? Or would there now be three of us and a cat in this room? Or perhaps they would have wound up someplace else. And never met Max and Bandit in the first place. A tangled web of possibilities, and even Amy quickly figured into them…

Side-by-side, watching each other’s back, as he and Max now did for each other. It was as if his experience since that night had somehow opened up doors in his mind, or he had found some long-lost key. The certainty that the three of them had gotten mixed up in something that fateful night, something entirely too big for three teenagers to handle on their own.

For a while, he contemplated how to date these letters, finally settling for the increasingly meaningless numbers on his watch readout. Thinking about it, he felt as if time was still frozen on the Morning After back on Earth, and it almost gave him vertigo trying to picture it. As if this limbo-place were a detour in Time itself. Even his destinations were in another dimension, and was pretty sure no outfit on Earth could send packages to other worlds, but something deep inside told him that the 6-D Postal Service could.

Finally, he wrote:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONFUSE:
TRAPPED IN SINISTER MALL IN THE SIXTH DIMENSION WITH NO WAY OUT! REQUESTING RESCUE. FOR ANYONE WILLING TO RISK HELPING US, WE CAN OFTEN BE FOUND AT A PLACE CALLED BANKSHOT. DIRECT ALL QUESTIONS TO DA BOSS DJ, AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T TALK TO SECURITY. BEWARE THE CURSE! DON’T EAT THE FOOD! DON’T DRINK THE WATER! DON’T BUY ANYTHING! OR THE EXITS WILL ALL VANISH, AND YOU WILL BE TRAPPED HERE LIKE US. COME AT YOUR OWN RISK, BUT PLEASE GET HELP FOR US, FOR OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED.
-PRISONER

Shades read back his own S-O-S a couple times. It almost made him laugh. He just kept picturing some adventurous would-be Don Quixote finding this and questing for the Mall of the Curse. As much as it made him laugh, it was the most desperate thing he had ever seen written on a piece of paper. Having never read the words Beware NK-525.

Much to his relief, he was glad Max was finally starting to adjust to being back among people, yet he still had a long way to go. In the meantime, the two of them had to stand together. They were both prisoners, and there was no one else to turn to but each other; even were they not friends, it would be an alliance of necessity.

He still had no idea just where he was going to send that last to, but he figured he would think of something. Just writing it was a start, had allowed him to get a lot off his chest. Now that he had stayed up writing that, his eyes felt like they were going to fall out of their sockets.

Putting his letters aside, he decided he was exhausted enough to join Max in unconsciousness.

Justin walked down the hallway, trying to make as little noise as possible.

During his long years in the Triangle State, he had learned to move about very quietly, and now he was starting to get the hang of making little sound even on this metallic floor. Over the many over-long days since the Enforcer reappeared, he had not been idle. Both above and below ground, he was gradually carving away at the network of scanners surrounding the nearest rations storerooms, using the regenerating power of his laser staff to create a growing area where he could move about undetected. Using the existing markers in the hallways, and his own marks in the vents, he was hoping to work his way in a consistent direction. Perhaps eventually toward some kind of exit.

All the while trying to keep NK from sitting on the food supply.

Even the simplest aspects of his life had become overly complicated. When he was younger, he could get away with wearing dirty clothes all the time, but it was only after being able to wash everyday in Paradise that he realized just how thoroughly he had become desensitized to his own B-O; cramped in the shafts here, the only thing for him to smell was himself. He grabbed as much food as he could each time, and that was to say nothing of using the can, for he had yet to find an accessible bathroom anywhere that didn’t look like an even more likely tomb than a closet, so all he could do was use any closet where he could find something to wipe his ass with. And remember not to go back to that particular closet again.

For two infinite weeks, this was his life.

Lately, he had been having weird dreams about people he once knew, and people he only vaguely remembered, trying to give him directions. Seeing Eleanor and Poe vanish around corners. Trevor or Slash somehow pointing NK-525 down the hall, saying, He went that way! Mirage Mr Morgans warning him against going certain ways, often holding or pointing to warning signs he couldn’t decipher no matter how hard he tried. Visions of Jesse Fletcher trying to lead him down various hallways, saying, Max went this way…

He feared he wouldn’t be able to hang on to reason much longer.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure where he found the nerve to come out here anymore, but he knew his very survival depended on uncovering more of this place’s secrets. Just one unlocked door could be the difference between life and death. To that end, he had decided a little recon was in order.

As he peered around another corner, he froze.

In spite of the cleaning drones hard at work form floor to ceiling, there were still carbon scars streaking up and down the walls. Justin could tell right away that a massive firefight had taken place here at some point. From the looks of it, though, it appeared that there was heavy fire coming from both ends of the hall. The more he thought about it, this looked awfully familiar to him. It was when he saw the ladderwell door, the very one he had cut through gods alone knew how long ago, looking very much as it had when last he saw it, that he realized he had been going in circles.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt. Beyond rational thought. Almost beyond fear. This scenario was cutting him down an inch at a time.

“No…” It was all he could do to whisper.

Justin stood there for a long moment, trying to regain what little he feared he had left in the way of a grip, just staring at his handiwork from what felt like a lifetime ago. He knew the longer he stood around, the less time it would take the Enforcer to catch up with him, yet all he could think of was that this was the only place he had been through in all this time that he was sure Max had also passed through. The last place their paths crossed. Before, when he looked at this spot, he had imagined Max escaping the guards there, but this time…

Justin shook his head, as if negating how grim this scene looked to his now-opened eyes.

Seeing the ladderwell had just given him the idea of sabotaging sensors on adjacent levels to confound NK when the alarm system abruptly activated, scaring him so badly he cried out in spite of himself.

“Fuckin’ A!” he screeched. “I didn’t even do anything!”

He knew the drill. In a matter of moments, these haunted halls would be swarming with robo-guards and Junkyard Dogs, and the Enforcer wouldn’t be too far behind. Even as his mind raced, the only good thing he could think of, was that if he didn’t do anything to sound the alarm, it had to mean that someone else had, renewing his hopes that Max might still be alive. Wasting no time, he dashed down the hall, taking a couple random corners for good measure before popping open a storage closet, hoping he had enough of a lead—

“Get lost. This hiding place is taken.”

Justin simply stood there, struck speechless. It had been a small eternity since he had last heard a human voice.