Through the shadows of early morning, three figures sprinted among the trees.

In the lead, as always, was a black-and-white panther. Holding his own in second was the cat’s human companion, followed by a smaller figure close behind. Moments later, their interwoven shadows emerged from the forest with them as they raced across the clearing, making right for the pond.

Then it was into the water, splashing out into the middle and scaring away all the fish.

“Hey Justin!” Max laughed as he surfaced near the ribbon of waterfall, shaking water out of the shaggy mane he had accumulated over the years, customarily bound by his headband, “You’re getting faster! You were really keeping up with me for a while!”

As opposed to Max having to hold back so that his friend wouldn’t get left behind near the end. That silvery laugh, the like of which Justin had never heard before. Of course, it had been years since Justin Black had heard a laugh what wasn’t bitter or jaded or cruel and mocking. And Max’s was infectious; he found it made him want to laugh like that, too.

“Damn straight!” Justin replied. Over two months in Paradise had done him a world of good. Though Max’s training left him exhausted by nightfall most days, somehow when he woke up each day he felt more energy and vigor than he had in years. More healthy and alive. A hell of a way to start your day, a good reason wake up in the morning for a change.

After years of living underground, he was surprised while swimming the other morning to discover that he now had a tan.

Max had been training his ass off since he first agreed to the training, but he could tell his friend had slowed down his own routine to give him a chance to catch up. When they reached the water, he still ran to his waist and dove in while Max always took a long flying leap from the water’s edge— in moments like that, he could see how far he still had to go. He still couldn’t quite get over his new friend’s sheer strength. It was a raw, animal strength, forged from training in the wild all these years; just another creature of the jungle. Justin had seen people with bigger muscles, but he doubted most of them were actually stronger than Max. In spite of Justin’s being smaller and lighter than him, Max was also somehow faster, too, especially for such a big guy.

The only area in which Justin surpassed him in that department was that he was quicker on the draw.

“One of these days…” Justin promised himself, wondering if he was really considering competing with an athlete of Max’s caliber. Those words also made him think of their as-yet unfinished raft, the other thing he had vowed to do one of these days.

The other morning, he had had a dream about just jumping into the Ocean and swimming away from the Isle of Paradise to a jumble of places and people he could remember virtually nothing about upon waking. There had even been music, but he couldn’t place the tune. Music had been a rarity in his life, in the Triangle State in particular. I must be going crazy here… he had thought.

Though he kept his strange dream to himself, he and Max had talked of many things during his time here. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that Max was overjoyed just to have someone to speak with after years of solitude. That, and Justin found, increasingly, that he loved to talk; his own years in the Triangle State had become more and more silent as the stakes got higher, and now that that sad, superimposed silence was broken, he refused to let it rear its ugly head ever again.

As far as he was concerned, escaping from the TSA was the best damn thing that ever happened to him. Speaking of escape, “Say Max?”

“Yeah?”

During Justin’s quiet reverie, Max had gone ashore and grabbed his gear. He now stood near the edge of the forest; it was his turn this morning to scare up some breakfast.

“I was thinkin’ about the raft last night.” So far, they had come to something of an impasse in their plan to build a seaworthy vessel with which to leave the island. “It might take some work, but maybe if we dragged my wreck over to yours, we could build something around that.”

“You mean to attach the Cyexian ship to the damaged part of yours?”

“Which damaged part? Max, you’re gonna have to be more— What the hell…”

Max turned around at his friend’s abrupt change of tone to see both Justin and Bandit, who was still paddling around merrily a moment ago, drifting toward a growing whirlpool now forming in the middle of the pond. The second or two Justin had paused in confusion proved dangerous; even as he began to thrash away belatedly from the mysterious vortex, it was becoming increasingly obvious he was already trapped in its current. Bandit, having been closer to it even as it formed, was faring no better though he paddled mightily.

Both were slowly losing their battle against the pull.

“Max! Help! ”

Once again, Max’s life was about to take another dramatic change of course, in ways he could never have foreseen, and once again Max rushed off to meet his destiny head-on. If he had not made his move when he did, he may have passed out of this tale entirely, for what would happen to them below would prove to be far more interesting than anything that would take place on the Isle of Paradise any time soon.

Without hesitation, Max finished throwing on his pack absently, for he still had it in hand— taking with him the very tools with which he would enter the next phase of his life— and charged out into the water. Later, he would wonder what the hell he had been thinking, but for now he splashed after Justin with all his might. For no other reason than that he was closer than Bandit.

Justin hardly seemed to notice, struggling against the very boots his friend had suggested wearing in the water to enhance his training and were now dragging him down, as Max caught up with him and started hauling against the pull of the whirlpool. It was a noble idea, but of no avail. Max instead found himself twirled about, replacing his friend as the one closer to the vortex.

Max was a strong swimmer, but the pull of the whirlpool was stronger.

The last thing he remembered over his and Justin’s frantic cries, was seeing Bandit losing his own battle and sliding back into the current as he swirled into the gaping hole that had so recently appeared in the bottom of the pond.

The view into that void was almost hypnotizing.

“Holy shit!” Justin gasped as he surfaced, the rush of water pushing him away from where he landed. He turned and looked up through the mist and spray of the roaring, echoing waterfall and was dazzled by what he saw. A liquid flood of light flowed into the cavern from the surface, shimmering off the distant walls in patterns of blue and green. One of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

Before he had glimpsed more than a portion of what he was beginning to realize was a very large cavern, he caught sight of Bandit paddling around a familiar form drifting nearby.

“Max!”

His friend was floating on his back, but making no movement whatsoever. Now it was Justin’s turn to just jump right in, grabbing one of Max’s pack straps and dragging him toward the edge of the water.

“Damn! That wasn’t there yesterday…” He muttered, straining against his burden, somehow managing to haul Max ashore. His friend hadn’t seemed that heavy when they were practicing their fighting techniques; now he knew what the term dead weight meant. As he dragged Max up onto a beach of pure white sand, he moaned, “Come on, Max… Don’t you dare die on me…”

He had started out meaning to be a smartass, but by the time he finished speaking, he realized that he was more worried than he wanted to admit.

He had to shove Bandit’s snout out of his way as he examined his friend. The first thing he noticed was that Max was still breathing, which relieved some of his fear. The next thing he spotted was a lump on the side of his head. At this he paused.

For all he knew, there might have been some water down here to begin with, but now that he thought about it, he understood that there may have been substantially less water in the cave when Max went down. He remembered that his friend went under first, merely delaying his own fall in what he guessed to be an attempt to rescue him from the whirlpool—

And that was where Justin was when the lights went out.

“Hey!”

The rushing water that had, only seconds before, been a near deafening roar amplified by the echo of the cave, now dwindled to a lonely trickle. He caught only a shifting, shrinking splotch of light where the hole had been, then nothing as the cavern was plunged into total darkness.

Or perhaps not total darkness.

After a few seconds, he noticed that he could still faintly see the ceiling of the cave, and the surface of the water. And noticed, much to his dismay, that the ceiling appeared unbroken, giving him the disconcerting impression of feet, yards, perhaps fathoms, of solid stone. It was a very claustrophobic feeling, on the heels of that, his subterranean surroundings dredged up Pullman memories he could really have done without.

“The hell…”

After a moment it dawned on him that it should be pitch dark down here, and his eye caught the steady light shining from around a fold in the cave wall. Around the bend he found a hole in the wall. Beyond the gap, which was easily large enough for two people to walk abreast through, was a hallway. The hole cut in from the side, and the hall stretched out of sight to both his right and his left. The walls were made of dark metal, folded outward at mid height. What appeared to be fluorescent-looking lighting panels provided illumination from between hexagonal supports. Given that he was deep underground, his best guess was that it must be some kind of bunker.

“This was under here the whole time… Just wait ’til Max sees this—”

Then the hole flickered, revealing a brief glimpse of rock-solid cavern wall, then flashing back to the hallway again. He stood there for a long moment, just staring at the hole, wondering if it was going to do it again.

If Max saw this…

He looked back around the bend to see that Max was still lying on the sand. Bandit paced by his side, managing to convey more concern than Justin would have attributed to an animal. Justin stood for a long moment in thought before he decided what to do.

“Bandit…” Justin felt kinda silly talking to a cat, but he had seen Max do it all the time, and he was starting to get the impression that his feline companion sort of understood what he was saying. “Bandit… uh… you stay with Max, okay? I’m gonna go see if I can’t find some help.”

Bandit looked at him for a moment, then started shaking himself dry, continuing to glance at Max’s inert form at intervals.

With that, Justin turned back to the mysterious hole and stepped through, hoping against hope that there was someone or something that might help him.

A short while later, Max started coming to.

He wasn’t really sure which he noticed first, the cold sand and stone beneath him, or the pulsing pain in his head. Cold. Wet. The smell of stone and water, and a peculiar tang in the air. The sense of needing to watch out for something…

“Justin!” he gasped as his eyes flew open, revealing mostly darkness.

It only took a matter of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, even as it all came rushing back to him. The whirlpool, trying to save Justin and getting sucked in… Justin.

Max glanced around the cave frantically for some sign of his friend. The cavern he could only see the nearer edges of, vanishing into yawning blackness wherever the other side of the water was. But Justin was nowhere to be seen. He caught sight of Bandit, who had been standing an apparent vigil at his side, taking in some relief on that account.

Remembering how deep the water was, how he had hit his head on the bottom before he made his dazed attempt to surface, he found himself fearing the worst for Justin. He had managed to emerge on his back before he blacked out, lucky not to have been waterlogged. Still he couldn’t figure out how the whirlpool entered this place, and he worried still more about his friend.

“Justin! Where are you!?”

He relaxed a moment later when he saw the marks in the dirt, where someone had clearly dragged him up onto this bank of sugar-white sand. Then the dragging footprints leading around a fold in the cavern wall. To where he now realized the light was coming from.

Hauling himself slowly, carefully to his feet, he wrung out his vest as best he could, then put it back on. Noting with some surprise that he still had his medallion, even after his harrowing experience with the whirlpool. Grabbed his pack and prepared to follow his friend, wondering where he had gotten off to anyway.

Around the bend, the light he had seen earlier shone out through an irregularly-shaped hole in the cavern wall, its edges glowing a wavering, ghostly white. The hole itself seemed to cut into the side of a long, hexagonal corridor whose ends Max couldn’t see from here. It was easily wide enough, even at floor level, for several people to walk side-by-side, with angular supports at regular intervals, the walls themselves slanting inward toward the floor and ceiling. Exposed pipes and cables ran the length of the walls, and lighting tubes the like of which he had seldom seen except on Outlander vessels back in the Islands were mounted on the ceiling between supports. The whole thing appeared to be made of dark metal, making him wonder where it came from and who built it.

It was utterly unlike anything he had ever seen in his life. Random details of his parents’ and Uncle Angus’ accounts, as well as bits and pieces of Outlander tales, whispered through his head. Increasingly, he felt as if he was living in one of those stories.

He looked down to see a trail of wet, sandy footprints leading into the hall and veering to his left. Justin had definitely gone this way. Aside from the fact that he couldn’t see any other way out of this place, Max simply didn’t want to let his friend get too far ahead of him. This place was strange, and he would prefer not to wander it alone.

He slid his pack off his shoulders. After rummaging around in it for a moment, he came up with the items he sought. He stuffed his last remaining power clip in his last intact pocket and armed his power pistol. Checking to make sure he still had his laser sword, he wondered if Justin still had his staff, for he had never seen his friend without it. He didn’t know if this place was dangerous, but he would feel a little better if he knew Justin had a weapon.

Prepared as he could be, Max approached the opening.

He looked over his shoulder to see Bandit just gaping at the hole without any pretense of feline aloofness. “What’s the matter, boy?” Max asked, but the big cat continued to stare at the hallway beyond with a distrust that did not inspire confidence. Still, “We’ve got to find Justin, Bandit. We should try to stick together. Come on.”

An anticipation the like of which he hadn’t felt in years coursed through him as he stepped toward that bizarre entrance. And an odd, tingling sensation struck him as he crossed over into the hallway. Then he was on the other side. The passageway was not the mirage or hallucination he half expected it to be. It was as if he had somehow passed through a wall or something, for the air on this side was noticeably warmer than the chill of the cavern.

He turned around and saw Bandit still standing there, refusing to come any closer.

“Come on, Bandit. Please? I can’t leave you here…” The look on Bandit’s face said that Max could perfectly well leave him here. Leave me out of this, it said. Though Max could tell his companion wanted nothing to do with this, he decided to test Bandit’s resolve.

Max turned and started following Justin’s trail.

After a few paces, Bandit stepped hesitantly through the opening, clearly not liking the experience one bit.

“See, that wasn’t so bad.” Though Bandit’s face seemed to say otherwise. Yet Max still couldn’t help but think of his fun encounter with the devilfish years ago, and he silently hoped that he wasn’t getting in over his head this time.

Hesitating no longer, he resumed following the footprints, eager to catch up with Justin. After a few support sections, the hall crossed an intersection. The trail turned left at this junction. A move that, by his estimation, should have rounded back on the cave. Instead, it was another hallway leading farther than the eye could see.

Hoping that perhaps Justin had learned something helpful about this mysterious place, Max pressed on, Bandit following with clearly apparent unease.

Justin paused in front of one of the many doors he had passed on his wayward way. He had seen no one about, and wondered if there was anyone else to be found. The place was just so damn quiet.

The more he saw of the place, the less he liked it. And the more he questioned the wisdom of his plan. Now he began to wonder if he should have waited a little bit to see if Max woke up before he took off. He certainly wished he had thought to grab some stuff from Max’s pack, and felt like a sitting duck wandering in a strange place without any firepower. The more he thought about it, he couldn’t make up his mind which was worse: being alone, or being practically unarmed here.

At least his laser staff was still secure in its makeshift boot sheath, but it did little to alleviate his own growing insecurity.

And so the conflict played out in his head. Trying to find his way back go see if Max was alright, now that he was certain there was no help to be found around here. Then wondering if perhaps those here were merely asleep or something. Wondering if they might decide he was some kind of threat. After all, the only thing he was certain of was that somehow that hole in the wall didn’t really belong being there. His unease increased another notch at the image of the gap in the wall winking out of existence— and not reappearing— and he began to wonder if he hadn’t made some grave error…

Torn between going back or investigating further, Justin finally decided to take one last stab at seeing if there was anyone here who could tell him what was going on.

The doors themselves were made of somewhat lighter grey metal than the walls, and had small keypads set in the alcove next to them. The keys were marked with semi-familiar symbols that Justin hoped he was interpreting correctly, it seemed too close to be coincidence. Above each keypad was a slot that looked as if it was made to accept something small and flat.

Cautiously, he pressed the button marked ÖPEN, and after a second, the UNLOK key lit up. He paused for a moment, then pushed it. Then the whole number pad lit up.

Justin had seen locks like this slapped on critical (secure) places and things back in the Triangle State, and he knew this was going to be tricky. Especially since he had no idea how many digits the code might be. Experimentally, he just started hitting numbers at random, figuring that the worst that could happen was that the door wouldn’t unlock.

“Justin! Where are you!?”

Max’s voice seemed to come from all around, echoing up and down the corridor with a metallic atonality to it that Justin barely recognized.

“Max!” he called back, “I can’t tell where you are!”

“Justin! Can you come back to where you came in?”

Justin paused for a moment, realizing how quickly this had become too complicated. He turned to go back the way he came, but as he did so it dawned on him that he had been so busy gawking at this place, he hadn’t paid any attention to which way he had turned before. Between that and this place’s seemingly bottomless echo, he had no idea where either Max or the entrance was.

“Dammit!” Justin screamed, slamming his palm into the number pad in frustration.

“What!?” Max’s voice demanded.

“Max!” Justin shouted, “We’ve got a—”

He was cut off in mid yell as alarms started blaring all around him.

That was when he remembered something else about the electronic locks back in the Triangle State. A lot of them had alarms built in. He had never dabbled much in them himself, but he belatedly recalled overhearing that doodling around too much or making too many failed attempts— typically three— would set off an alarm, and he wondered how he could have been so stupid.

“Oh shit…” he muttered, bracing for the worst.

Later, he was certain that Max had tried to say something else, but whatever it was had been drowned out by the deafening warble.

“Halt!” a loud, digitized voice commanded, making itself heard above the din.

Even as Justin snapped his head in the direction he thought that voice was coming from, an energy bolt sizzled past his head, splashing off one of the support beams in a shower of sparks. For a moment, he was caught like a deer in headlights as his eyes froze on the group of grey body-armored figures that had materialized a couple junctions down. His cry of alarm never quite made it from his brain to his mouth.

Justin’s paralysis broke when he saw the other black-and-grey-clad guards leveling their weapons. His startled yelp finally found its way to his lips as he bolted around the nearest corner.

“Halt, Intruder!” he heard that computerized voice order, as several shots glanced off the corner wall. Then loud, clanging footsteps moving in closer.

The alarms had diminished, fading to an obnoxious background noise that would drive anyone nuts after a while, and now he could hear more armored boots clanking around from all directions.

“Where the fuck did they come from!?” he demanded, more to himself than anyone. This whole place had seemed so deserted only moments ago.

“There is no escape!” the approaching voice declared.

Hoping for the best and fearing the worst, he ducked into an alcove just around the next corner, flattening himself against the cold metal wall. Just for good measure, he drew his staff.

A moment later, the guard jogged stiffly around the same corner, clanking right past him.

But Justin moved just a hair too soon in spite of himself, and the last guard spotted him, turning around and proclaiming: “Intruder on visual!” The others turned around and moved to surround him. “Surrender! Resistance is—”

Justin wasn’t having any of it. He fired up both electric-blue blades and swung at the nearest guard’s weapon. The guard had no time to react to its quarry’s bold surprise attack. Not only did he get part of the gun, he also took most of the guard’s hand off.

Now it was his turn to be caught off-guard as he gazed at the jumble of wires hanging out of the guard’s arm. A robot. He had never seen such a thing, but he had heard traveler’s tales of them. Still, he wasn’t sure yet if they were worse than the TSA crew; they didn’t seem very bright, but they were more than adequately armed.

Meanwhile, the guard seemed to not to notice, and swung its remaining hand, slamming Justin against the wall.

“Shit!”

Seeing their target was down, the other two guards that had followed Justin around that corner moved to hem him in on both sides. The disarmed one simply stood in front of him, looking almost comically helpless with its gun hand lying on the floor. Ignoring the rising lumps on both his cheekbone and the back of his head, Justin sprang to his feet. Having somehow managed to not lose his grip on his staff, he unleashed both energy blades in a swiveling swirl of light and busted out some badass moves on these stiff, clunky androids.

“Damn!” Justin remarked as the last piece of robo-guard hit the floor. All that training really paid off! Max had taught him some vicious techniques, and if he ever caught up with him again, his new friend was going to have to teach him more.

Having cleft the guards and sliced them at several points, he could see they were entirely mechanical. As he suspected. As he glanced nervously up and down the halls, he found himself wondering how his friend would fare against these strange foes.

After Justin made his frantic retreat, a door near the one he had been trying to unlock slid open, its lone occupant having reawakened.

And a different kind of machine emerged from the darkness beyond that door. Narrow, malevolent infrared optics glowing from within as sensors picked up on Justin’s residual trail. Tank-like tracks started rolling as it reactivated its weapons systems.

As was the case with all previous Intruders, none of the gateways had been compromised. As before, the subject simply appeared in a random point in the sector without apparent origin. As was always the case before, its reported movements were already taking on a random, disorganized, apparently aimless, series of directions. And, as all others before it, this one was also going to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

For the first time in many years, it had an Intruder to hunt.

Max didn’t have to walk around more than a couple bends before Justin’s trail began to deteriorate beyond his tracking abilities. He was beginning to wish he had grabbed his boots— what was left of them— before he jumped in after Justin. The cold metal floor of this place was numbing his bare feet with every step.

As he stood at the current junction, he found himself staring at the doors that lined the halls. At least he assumed they were doors. They were the right height, and set in alcoves and made of a lighter grey metal. There were no handles, just small slotted keypads next to each one.

Just out of curiosity, he pressed the key marked ÖPEN, pondering the peculiar spelling used here. With a faint hiss, the door snapped open, sliding right into the wall. Both he and Bandit jumped back at the abrupt movement, then Max peeked inside.

Beyond the threshold was a compact utility closet, a tiny room in which even a handful of people would find themselves crowded. Shelves were lined with what looked like small wheeled metal boxes. There were dozens of them, all with a glassy black strip running around the top of the sides, which for some reason made him think of eyes.

“Hey!” Max yelped as the door snapped shut behind him a few seconds later. Only a faint light shone from a clear panel above the door, rendering everything in shadows. Between Bandit pawing at the door outside, and the way all those boxes seemed to stare at him, it was hard to resist the impulse to start blasting.

Instead, he focused his attention on the matching keypad on the inside, which he had noticed while looking around. From its shadowy relief, he could see it was identical to the other pad, ÖPEN and KLÖZ, LOK and UNLOK, the number pad below, the mysterious slot above. Remembering where the ÖPEN key had been, he punched it, and the door opened again.

Max took a hasty step out of the little room, not liking how positively claustrophobic it made him feel.

He decided to instead resume his search for his friend. Turning to his feline companion, he wondered if Bandit could sniff him out. Earlier, he had noticed how peculiar the air was in this place. After living his whole life with forest, jungle and sea smells, this place smelled as close to nothing as he had ever encountered. And he suspected Bandit could pick up anything for miles around in this atmosphere.

Yet whatever Bandit’s nose might be detecting, his ears had picked up on something more compelling. A moment after he perked up, Max was able to hear it, too. A sound the like of which neither of them had heard before. Bandit pawed his leg urgently, but Max decided to stand his ground.

Moments later, it was accompanied by a sight neither of them had seen before, either. Max wasn’t sure whether to be amused or terrified as he watched a line of those little metal boxes moving along the floor. Again, he resisted the urge to open fire and decided to stick around and watch.

Perhaps now he would get to see what they did. The sound that had alerted them to the tiny machines’ presence was the faint whirring noise coming from underneath them. The little automatons didn’t even notice as he dropped to his hands and knees and scanned along the floorplane and finally figured out what they were doing.

They were scrubbing the floor.

Max simply stared in shock and horror as the pint-size cleaners wiped away the trail he had followed thus far. The walls seemed to close in a little tighter around him. Not only was he cut off from Justin, but the way back to the cave had also been erased.

Glaring at his own fuzzy reflection on the dark cobalt steel floor, he tried to figure out what to do next, his thoughts leaping. No idea where Justin had gone, or how to find him. No idea how big this subterranean complex was, or what it was doing under Paradise, it just seemed too big to fit under the island. How ill-prepared he was to go exploring down here, and how Justin was even worse off. He felt completely disoriented, an effect this place seemed to specialize at inducing.

“Justin! Where are you!?” Max cried out, wondering a moment later why he hadn’t thought of this before. With as little noise as there was in this place, Justin should be able to hear him even from a long way away.

He realized a moment later, though, that his brilliant plan seemed to have a few holes in it. For he had been only half right. Justin’s “Max! I can’t tell where you are!” echoed off all the walls and seemed to be coming to him from everywhere at once. He sounded close by, but in what direction?

His friend may as well have shouted at him from another world for all the good it would do him.

Thinking frantically, Max demanded, “Justin! Can you come back to where you came in?”

After a long moment, he heard something that sounded like “Dammit!” but he wasn’t completely sure.

“What!?” Max called.

He listened to the sounds of the machines’ tiny motors as they faded away. Then he and Bandit were all alone again.

At least until a moment later when Justin’s “Max! We’ve got a—” (problem?) was cut off by a jangling barrage of alarms.

After a moment of anxiously listening to footfalls shuffling all around his position, Justin finally gave up on trying to wrestle one of the guard’s weapon from its severed hand. These androids were apparently designed to clamp down on whatever they were holding, probably some security feature meant to prevent what he just tried to do. Deciding that he would just have to make do with his staff for the time being as he beat a hasty retreat for the next junction, all the while keeping an eye out for more of the robo-guards he could hear moving from every direction.

The only good thing he could think of about the alarms, even after they had died down, was that it masked the sound of his own movements. He had no idea what the guards’ auditory range was, but he took some consolation in the fact that they made a lot more noise than he did. But now he was afraid to call out to Max again, for fear that they would definitely hear that.

Totally cut off, even though he doubted they were more than a few “blocks” apart.

As he scrambled down another hall, he was now grateful to Max for suggesting that he wear his boots while swimming as a training exercise. With all of the running he believed he had ahead of him, he really wasn’t sure he could pull it off without them. He just wished they would hurry up and dry out; he would be able to move a lot more quietly without all the squishing noises.

Most of the guards appeared to be moving in a different direction than he was. Good for him, but he wondered if it was so good for Max. Then he thought that perhaps if he followed them, they might lead him to his friend.

Justin’s train of thought was completely derailed by the sight he came upon at the next intersection.

Or rather, the sight that came upon him. Several new machines were coming right at him. Almost canine-looking quadrupeds, about two feet tall at the shoulders, and seeming to make little sound as they closed in on him. Each of the hi-tech hellhounds glared at him with glowing red optics.

In that second of shock and surprise, before he made his own move, Justin had time to reflect that these creatures were totally different from the robo-guards in some fundamental way he just couldn’t quite put his finger on.

And then they were upon him, and when they showed no sign of slowing down, he knew things were about to get ugly. Whisper-quiet servos driving pistoning legs even Bandit might not be able to outrun. Bringing to bare razor-claws and gaping jaws of stainless-steel teeth.

Again Justin cut loose with more of the moves Max taught him. His twirling slash hacked the droid-dog’s head and front claws off in a blazing double-sweep. But its body still banged into him before he could get all the way out of its way, knocking him down.

Even as he rolled out from under the lifeless metal shell, one of his blades gouging the floor, the other two guard dogs, seeing what happened to their fellow, jumped aside and aborted their initial attack.

As Justin crouched on the floor, holding his staff before him to ward them off, the remaining machines paced like caged lions in front of him. In their infrared eyes he could see a cold, computerized intelligence burning that he did not like at all. No sooner had he thought this, than he saw each of them edge around him, aiming to strike from different angles.

“Shit, this is too much…”

And then, as if on cue: “Intruder on visual! Surrender! There is no escape!”

Several more guards at the next intersection.

His split-second of inattention was all these battery-powered predators were waiting for, and they sprang. Thinking fast, he spun his staff in front of him, mangling both mechanoids even as they fell upon him. Though he was bowled over by the debris, this was probably a good thing, as it dropped him to the floor just in time to avoid a volley of shots streaking down the hall at his general position.

Justin had only a moment to gawp at the steel claws stuck in the floor only inches from his nuts before he was up again, skidding around the corner to escape from the hailstorm of energy beams tracking just one step behind him.

The cuts and bruises of his last couple confrontations aside, he wasn’t so sure his luck would hold up a third time in a row. He was beginning to wonder if his automated adversaries weren’t right about the subject of resistance as he beat feet down the hall. All the time expecting to get blasted before he could make it around another corner.

Before he could get there, the guards came into his current hall section and opened fire.

“This is nuts!” he panted as he continued his retreat, managing to get two lengths before his pursuers made it around that corner. The one thing working to his advantage was that he could run almost twice as fast as these stiff machines. But he also knew he might run into another patrol at any moment, or that if he was caught by more of those robo-dogs, he would really be in trouble. That, and another chilling thought occurred to him: Even if he was faster, he would probably run out of steam before they did.

Then he got an idea.

Moving quickly— before he got another Intruder On Visual— Justin stopped in front of the first door he saw and tried to open it. When it refused to open, instead demanding another code, he moved on to the next. He could feel precious seconds slipping through his fingers; he could only afford one more try before he lost his window of opportunity and would have to start running again.

The next door did open.

He didn’t waste a second ducking inside. The door closed only seconds before the guards came charging down the hall. In the darkness of the closet, he heard one of the guards at the next junction shout, “Split up! The Intruders cannot have gotten too far!…” and the sound of marching feet stomped off in anther direction. He would never have guessed the products of such advanced technology could be so stupid.

Justin slumped against the door and collapsed to the floor, relieved to be safe. For now.

Max just about hit the ceiling at the sound of the alarms, and Bandit was taking it even worse.

“Justin!” he cried, trying to make himself heard over the noise, “Where are—”

“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”

Against the deafening warble, Max never even heard the clanking footsteps emerge from a room around the corner.

At the sound of that harsh, digitized voice, Max wheeled around, deciding that he was not as alone as he had previously thought. From the next intersection he saw a black-and-grey-armored figure approach. Even before the figure brought its sidearm to bear, Bandit was already snarling at it as Max had never seen before, just standing there with his hackles rising before his eyes.

Hoping he wouldn’t need it, Max held his power pistol behind his back.

“Another Intruder has been detected on this level…” the armed figure stated, as if Max wasn’t supposed to be able to hear. Max supposed his adversary was speaking of Justin, and he quietly hoped his friend was alright. “Requesting assistance to capture and hold…”

“Excuse me…” Max began, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say even as he said it.

“Silence! Do not move!” the armored figure snapped, sounding a lot like Justin’s impression of TSA guards. Something he found less than encouraging. “Surrender and come quietly, Intruder! There is no escape!”

Based on Justin’s horror story of the mines, Max had decided that he wasn’t going to come quietly. Even as the guard launched into more instructions that he didn’t bother to pay attention to, Max whipped out his pistol and fired.

His aim was true, but the shot had no effect.

Even as he marveled at the idea of armor that could repel stun shots (which he had been told most armor couldn’t), he knew he was in trouble. He moved as quickly as he could, despite the knowledge that he could never hope to outrun a laser beam. His second shot hit the guard, who didn’t even flinch.

Yet his luck hadn’t completely deserted him. Right before the guard could pull the trigger, Bandit sprang, knocking Max’s opponent to the floor. The two struggled for a moment but, much to Max’s dismay, the guard was stronger, knocking the panther aside with one sweep of its arm.

But Max had wasted none of his window of opportunity. Furious at what this powerful foe had done to his best friend, he whipped out his laser sword. In a flash of motion that was too fast for an armored person to keep up with, he kicked the guard back down even as it tried to get back up, feeling an almost numbing jolt in his bare, cold foot as it collided with twice his weight in steel, his energy blade cleaving the barrel off the guard’s gun. He finished by pointing the neon-green blade in the enemy’s face.

“Don’t—” Max began, but the guard started getting back up anyway. He watched in dismay as it tried to swat the blade aside and instead getting its arm sliced right off. “Move…”

For a moment, he just stared, jaw hanging slack, at where the guard’s arm ended and where the mess of wires and mechanical components hanging out of it began. At least now he understood why his stun shots had no effect. Apparently, even the guards here were machines.

Realizing that he was free to use his full power against these bizarre adversaries, and that even his best might not be enough, he wasted no time and simply chopped the robo-guard’s head clean off, the laser blade cutting through the machine’s armor as easily as it did through air.

“Damn…” he muttered as he picked up his power pistol.

“Halt, Intruder!” More guards at the next junction. “Surrender your weapons! Resistance is futile!”

“Resist this!” Max shouted as he opened fire on them, no longer bothering with stun mode. As the firefight erupted, Bandit bolted. Even as he gunned one of the androids down, Max could see how quickly the situation was spiraling out of control, and he decided he was with Bandit.

Fearing that his feline friend might have gotten too far ahead of him, he dashed down the hall, hoping his superior speed would give him an edge against these clunky robots. Years ago, Uncle Angus had commented once on how tough it was to fight machines, even with energy weapons, and now Max was finding out for himself. A moment later, Bandit came bounding back his way, and he heard the sound of more guards up ahead, shouting and clanking. Max turned and dashed down a different section, calling, “This way!” and Bandit skidded into a turn of his own and followed.

“Halt, Intruder! Stay where you are! There is no escape!”

Can’t they come up with something new to say? Max asked of no one in particular as he fled down another stretch of the hallways that seemed to continue forever in all directions. He was beginning to suspect that this place might have an entire army of androids to throw at him, and he doubted he had enough ammo to fight even half of them.

As he was trying to figure out where exactly he was running to anyway, he spotted out of the corner of his eye a door that was different from all the others he had seen. Instead of a keypad, it had a latch handle, and could swing outward on hinges. Thinking perhaps that he could lock the guards out from in there he opened the door.

And nearly fell down the emergency ladder well beyond. Designed to function even if there was no power, it spanned several levels above him and one below. Max reached out and grabbed the ladder rail just in time to avoid falling in.

He climbed partway down, then dropped the rest of the way. If he took the time to climb, he feared the guards would catch up with him. As it was, he didn’t know whether or not the things could climb.

Not wanting to stick around and find out, he snatched up his pistol and opened the door on his level. Even as he cleared the bottom of the narrow well, Bandit made a graceful landing right behind him. Above, he heard his pursuers clank to a halt at the entrance.

“The Intruder is no longer on this level! Alert all commands on levels seventy-five through one hundred…”

Max wished he understood what and where they were talking about, then their words might be of some strategic use to him.

Though he got an answer to his earlier question at the sound of metal feet clanging on ladder rungs. Hoping to slow them down, Max leaned out and fired upward at them, ducking back in a moment later to avoid a salvo of counterfire. As a last resort, he slammed the door shut, turning the latch and blasting it several times, fusing it.

His sense of accomplishment was short-lived, though, as an all-too-familiar voice said: “Intruder detected on Level 86! Concentrate search pattern around—”

“Shut up!” Max yelled as he blasted the machine, bringing it down with several shots.

But the damage was already done. Seconds later, several more guards converged on that intersection, and Max noticed that, not only was this level more brightly lit, but the walls were straight, rather than bent into hex patterns. Worse still, no supports or alcoves to provide even a hint of cover.

Then, just as Max was about to make a break for it in a blaze of cover fire, when things couldn’t get much worse, another group of guards showed up at the other end of the hall.

He managed to pick off several of them before he found himself trapped in the midst of a lethal light show. For a moment he thought of hitting the deck to make himself harder to hit, but then he knew they would just move in and tackle him. As the crossfire intensified, his only thought was I’m going to die… in this place I don’t even know…

A moment later, he did hit the deck as one of the guard’s shots hit its mark, and as everything faded to black, he heard Bandit’s desperate yowls, and the last thing he remembered was wondering if he and Justin would have had a better chance of survival if they had been able to join forces down here.

After an interminable amount of time, which was probably only ten or fifteen minutes, the alarms and commotion died out into this place’s former silence.

Justin Black had had to get over his fear of the dark at a young age in order to get by in the Ruins, but in this place of unknown risks, he really didn’t like being unable to see what was going on around him. That, and after the dry, cool, sterile air outside, there was a musty smell in the darkness of the closet that made his nostrils flare, as there was something about it he instinctively disliked. At last he could no longer stand it, and he reached along the wall for a light switch, finally finding one.

As the lights came on, he saw that he was in a storage closet of some type. Behind him were stacks of boxes, and a couple wall-mounted shelves bearing more boxes. Only a few square feet of open floorspace in here.

And nearly half of it was occupied by a pair of skeletons.

Justin stared at the dead couple for a long moment, trying not to scream. Upon closer inspection, he saw that they were not just blackened, blistered-looking skeletons, but dead bodies that were nearly mummified, what was left of their skin stretched across the emaciated remains of their frames. They both huddled in the corner opposite of him, facing the door. As if they had been standing guard against something. In one bony hand, each corpse clutched a double-barrel power pistol in a final death-grip.

On one hand, he was glad to finally see weapons he could get his hands on. But on the other, though, the hands that were currently clutching them gave him the creeps. Mostly because he believed he was beginning to understand what had happened to these two unfortunate individuals.

He envisioned them spending their final days (or hours) in this very closet, hiding from something. There was something about this scene that chilled him to the bone. What were they hiding from? Something worse than the guards? Then again, he figured they might have been doing alright until they ran out of ammo or starved to death or something.

However much juice they had left, weapons were still weapons as far as he was concerned. No prying this time; the skeletal hand crumbled to dust as he pulled on the gun. He would need these, along with anything else they had, more than they did now.

He searched their dusty clothes, trying not to touch the crumbling corpses any more than he had to as he worked. All he found was one spare clip between them. He also found a flashlight, a mysterious plastic card, an empty canteen, and a pen.

On one of them he also found a very disturbing note. Written in a rather shaky hand.

“Beware NK-525…” Justin whispered, the yellowed paper already beginning to disintegrate in his fingers.

He sat there for a long moment, trying to keep a lid on the nameless fear buzzing in the back of his mind. Clearly these two, whoever they were, had been hiding from someone, more likely something, called NK-525. He tried not to think about it as he resumed his preparations; after all, whatever happened to these guys had happened long before his time.

Justin took the double-barrel pistols and the corpses’ gunbelts, combining them so he had a holster slung at each hip, their stacked barrels fitting perfectly. They hung at just the right height; they felt completely natural when he reached down for them. He tried his new draw, careful not to actually pull the triggers, as he didn’t want to risk injuring himself firing in such a confined space, or worse, somehow getting the guards’ attention.

Or, worst of all, wasting what little ammo he feared he had left.

After readying everything, he noticed just how quiet everything had become. Gone were the alarms, and he was certain he hadn’t heard any patrols stomp by in a good long while. Armed with his new guns, Justin stepped out of the closet to take a quick look around.

Remembering which closet he came from, in case he needed to make a hasty retreat, he advanced to the nearest junction. Looked right, then left, seeing nothing. Then he went to the other intersection, seeing more of the same.

The halls were empty. For now.

Still he fell back to the closet, not entirely sure why. Perhaps he just didn’t trust that silence. As empty as the halls looked, he still felt as if something nasty was waiting for him out there. Much as he hated his present company, they at least were harmless.

It was a maddening feeling, waiting, but he decided to try to form a plan. Yet he doubted much would come of it, but the stakes were too high not to try. The robo-guards were troublesome enough, but those canine models worried him more; he had already begun to think of them as the Junkyard Dogs, naming them after the guards he had escaped from in the Bone Yard so many years ago. Definitely the wrong direction to start thinking. For the longer he stood there, the more it seemed to him that the Triangle State had expanded a hundred fold, and the Works had been reduced to…

A closet.

Max awoke to a dull ringing in his ears.

He rolled over, nearly falling off of whatever he was lying on. As he rolled back, just in time, it all came flooding back to him. He sat straight up, looking around frantically.

The first thing he noticed was that he had no idea where he was. The second thing was that he was all alone, wherever he was, and this calmed him somewhat. Lastly, much to his relief, that he no longer had to listen to that piercing alarm anymore.

When he saw Bandit curled up on the bed next to him, his relief was multiplied by the sight of his old friend. For his part, Bandit lifted his head in idle curiosity, the settled back in. Seemingly content that his boy was alright.

He still felt somewhat hazy, but the last thing he remembered was getting shot. Yet when he tried to examine his wound, he discovered that there was none to speak of. Then he realized why he was on pins and needles earlier: the guards had hit him with stun shots.

Max knew what it felt like. It had been years since his days of training in the Islands, but he still remembered the last training session his uncle Angus sat in on. How he had stunned him without warning. When he woke up, he saw that Dad wasn’t amused. All Angus did was shrug and crack his peculiar smirk. They’ll have to know what it feels like sooner or later, or something along those lines. Good old Uncle Angus and his Be Prepared For Anything spiel.

Then a flash of insight.

…Capture and hold… The guards’ words drifted back to him. Those machines were designed to capture rather than kill interlopers. He wondered if Justin knew that. How many guards he had “killed” so far.

It dawned on him a moment later that the guards might return at any time, and he decided to take stock of the situation before anything else could happen. The room he was in was of moderate size, with a pair of what had to be the most comfortable beds he had ever slept on. He spotted an alcove with a computer and several compartments built into the wall.

Most of the compartments had what appeared to be glass panels, and it only took him a second to spot his power pistol inside one of them. He sprang to his feet and made a bee-line for the compartment, trying to open it and finding it locked. So he stepped back and gave the clear panel his hardest kick, and Bandit looked up from his catnap apprehensively.

The panel didn’t even crack. Max kicked it several more times without even putting a dent in it. Whatever it was made of, it was transparent as glass and hard as steel. He tried hauling on the handles, and it didn’t take long to realize that it would take a strength greater than any human possessed to wrench it open.

That was when he noticed that his laser sword wasn’t in the compartment. Wasn’t in any of the clear compartments. Even as he searched again, trying to keep calm, he found himself picturing Justin’s old friend Trevor running around with it…

Then he realized that it was still stuffed in his pants pocket, and Trevor vanished in a puff of vindication. For whatever reason, the guards hadn’t searched him. He then fired it up and went to work on the compartment panels. Years ago, Dad had told him that, aside from strong energy fields and a couple bizarre exceptions worthy of tales in and of themselves, he had never seen anything that an energy blade couldn’t cut through.

The panels, whatever they were made of, may have resisted his previous efforts, but they were no match for Max’s blade. In addition to liberating his gun, he also found his pack, and some other gear. Boots with strange buckle-straps (a little small, but as long as he kept the straps loose, they fit okay); pants, lightweight, with lots of pockets (too short, but his new boots reached high enough to conceal this); no shirts, but he found a jacket to wear in this place where the air was as cool as night in Paradise. After ransacking all of the cabinets, most of the other items he found were either of no immediate use to him, or whose use he could not discern, but on some instinct, he pocketed several mysterious plastic cards and a wad of various-colored papers with a blend of familiar and unfamiliar words and symbols, which he was fairly sure was used as currency in some places, at least according to all the stories he had ever heard. Happy just to have pockets again.

Though he was uneasy about the idea of stealing, he also had this growing impression there was no one here to steal from anymore.

Standing off to the side of the door where he could get the jump on anyone— or anything— that entered, Max put on his new clothes and organized his things. He had originally been uncomfortable with the U-553 clothes he had appropriated from the Cyexians, but over the years he had simply gotten used to them, and now he was more than happy to be rid of them. As he stuffed the tattered scraps into a compartment, he saw the computer terminal in the same alcove as if for the first time.

He had only heard stories about computers, but he decided it might be worth a try.

The screen lit up even as he reached for the keyboard. TRANZ-D SEKÜRTË DREKTRË, the screen read in glowing green characters. Like the controls on the closet door, Max found these symbols difficult to read because they were both so similar, and yet so different from anything he had ever seen.

He quickly discovered that pressing buttons made the corresponding symbols appear on the screen. The only problem was that the computer didn’t seem to like anything he typed. When he stumbled upon a listing for MAPS/SKËMATIX, he became determined to get at them, though he knew this might take a while.

Max would spend more time thinking than typing before he got anything useful.

Meanwhile, Justin had sat in the closet for some time, doing some thinking of his own.

He could no longer stand the silent, staring company of his morbid new friends. After ransacking the two crumbling corpses, the only coherent thing that remained was half a skull, whose one-eyed leering was creeping him out by the minute. His new guns’ previous owners almost seemed to admonish him for still breathing. He had contemplated piling boxes in front of the long-dead pair, but decided that it would take too much strength. Now that he was no longer running for his life, he noticed that he was starving.

He again cursed Max for insisting on going running before breakfast, and his stomach seconded the motion.

He looked at the other two occupants’ remains, wondering how long it had been since they had eaten. Soon he would be forced to abandon his hiding place if he was going to avoid their fate. Still there was something about the name, a jumble of numbers and letters, that made this NK-525 business more disturbing to him even than the corpses themselves.

Finally, he told himself that these two had died long before he was even born. Given how many years must surely pass between Intruders, he doubted anyone would linger around here for that long. Then again, those androids apparently had, and that thought made him feel more hunted than he had even in the Triangle State. Worse still were those things he had started to think of as the Junkyard Dogs— he’d rather fight the Authority’s soldiers any day. Just something about them suggested they were made for a totally different purpose than the regular robo-guards.

Realizing that he needed to act while he still had the strength to do so, he set out again into that deceptively silent labyrinth, arming the right-hand pistol with the extra (hopefully) full clip and put the other two into the left’s slots, keeping that hand free to operate controls and such.

Having no clue how to get back to where he came in, he traveled in a straight line for a long time. He was still too sacred to touch any of the door controls, and terrified at the thought of calling out for Max. And he was pretty sure Max was in the same boat, assuming he was still alive. A thought he quickly shunned, surprised by his own worry. While looking around, though, he happened to notice something he hadn’t before. Painted on the walls, at regular intervals, were numbers and other symbols.

He just wished he could figure out what they meant, then he might be able to find his way around.

While he found it useful that only every other light panel was lit, making for readily available concealment behind the supports— at least as long as he saw them first, and not the other way around— what bothered him was having the lighting concentrated around the intersections. Making crossing through them unseen even more difficult for hapless Intruders, Justin noted bitterly.

After traveling for a while, he reckoned that he had long since left the edges of the Isle of Paradise. Not only was he underground, but that also meant he had to be under the sea, as well. Yet somehow he knew that wasn’t quite right. Something had happened, but what exactly, was beyond him.

Though he wasn’t sure how it was possible, Justin was feeling more and more lost by the minute when he found a door that was different from all the others he had encountered so far. A manual door, which stood out in this place of such thorough automation, and hanging wide open. Inside was a ladder well.

It was the carbon scarring on the inner walls that held his attention, though. As if there had been a shoot-out down at the bottom. His first thought was of Max, and he started climbing. The two of them covering each other’s backs would greatly increase their odds.

At the bottom, he found that the door wouldn’t budge, so he carved out the handle with his laser staff, seeing once he was through that the handle had been “fused” with several laser blasts. On the other side he found a very different type of hallway. The walls were off-white and no longer slanted at the sides. Not to mention at least somewhat better lighting.

But this place still held most of the creepiness of the levels above. He still couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being followed, but the crisscrossing slashes of black on the walls and floor told him that Max was still alive and kickin’ when he came this way. Justin set out again with some hope of finding his friend, NK-525 all but forgotten.

Max looked around the next corner, then took a quick look behind. Bandit followed, looking even more apprehensive than his human friend.

While Justin was hiding in a closet, his friend had been arguing with a computer. It took a lot of ÄRR’s and AXES DNÏD FÖR DRÄÇUN UV ËMRJENSË’s, and he was finally ready to just give it up and go looking for Justin when he happened to hit on the right menu to find a map, more by accident than any deliberate effort on his part. Turned out there was a dedicated button for the maps, which made him all the more certain that all of his clumsy attempts at giving commands would probably have gone nowhere if his fingers hadn’t stumbled upon it. What the screen showed him was a map of what was still only part of this place. It was vast beyond reckoning, boggling his mind. If he was reading it right, just the portion of it he was looking at was bigger than the Isle of Paradise— possibly bigger than Layosha itself. Crisscrossing hallways forming layered symmetrical patterns; blocks of rooms, closets, stair/ladder wells; water, power, communication and other lines laced through it, running from level to level. And in the center of it all was Room 3694.

YÜ AR HËR.

Fortunately, making it print a copy of the map wasn’t as complicated as finding it in the first place. Much like the map display, there was actually a dedicated button for that next to the computer screen. And though he couldn’t find any information about Justin, he had found a point on the map that interested him. 6-D LÏBRÄRË / INFRMÄÇUN SENTR.

A library, if he was reading that right. A place of books and information. His parents had visited a few real ones in their wanderings, and Max quickly decided that this might be his only chance of finding his friend. To find out what was going on here, and how to find his way around.

Something that he found both intriguing and rather less than encouraging to think about, was that it bore no real resemblance to anything from any of the stories he had ever heard. There were elements, like these robots and computers, but nothing that specifically rang any bells. As if he had wandered into a place none of them had been before. Once upon a time, this might have evoked a sense of accomplishment, but right now all he could think about was finding his friend and finding their way out of here; of making this eerie place a memory to one day tell tales of his own about.

He checked the numbers on the wall at the junction to make sure he was still on the right track, then checked his map to see which way to go next.

The door to Room 3694 was locked, and he had ended up chopping it down with his energy blade. The noise was thunderous against the silence of this place. A silence he no longer trusted. Before any guards even had a chance to show up and recapture him, Max had bolted in the direction his new map indicated.

And he hadn’t dropped his guard since. For there were elements of this place’s very structure itself, especially its unnatural repetition, that gave him the creeps. There was something strange— sinister, he feared— going on in here, and he feared for Justin.

According to the map, he was getting close now, so he moved swiftly to the next junction, his silence complimented by his companion’s feline stealth.

Justin was at wit’s end.

No robo-guards had shown up to bust him, yet the mere memory of them kept him silent. The last thing he had seen moving was a group of those little cleaning droids, on their way to erase the last piece of evidence he could find that Max might still be alive. Though he was becoming more and more confident in his solitude in this area, his overall uncertainty kept him from dropping his guard entirely in spite of the monotony.

The automated security aside, there were less tangible— but more disturbing— things about this place that gave him the hoodoos. Underneath Paradise there was this maze that was bigger than anything he had ever seen. And all of these machines, but one thing bothered him still more.

Where are all the people?

Before he left the closet, he had cut one of the boxes open, just to see what was stored there, finding what he increasingly believed was the final proof of human presence: rolls of toilet paper. Undisturbed since only the gods knew when, most of the paper crumbled to powder even as he pulled the box open. As if it had been sitting there even longer than those two corpses.

He hadn’t thought much of it then, but now he turned it over in his head as he wandered around. He’d bet everything in that bag he stole from Slash that behind those myriad other doors he would find even more things that machines had no use for. Yet, aside from two eerie skeletons in a closet, there wasn’t a soul around.

Around the next corner Justin found a door unlike the others he had seen so far. Twice as wide as the others, and painted red, split down the middle. The sign above it was marked: ËMRJENSË RËZRVZ.

He tried not to flinch as he pressed the ÖPEN key. And of the UNLOK key lit up. Taking a risk, he fired up his staff and slashed down the middle. Another slash to the side cut out a nearly three-foot wedge.

The slice of door hit the floor with a monolithic boom, but at least it was open. Still, he jumped inside and listened for a long moment. When he heard no alarms, he relaxed a bit and turned his attention to the room itself.

Lights slowly winked on, revealing rows of locker-like compartments. Each one had a control keypad next to it, and the compartments were marked: STÄSIS STÖREJ ÜNIT. A transparent panel allowed him to see what was inside.

Bottles of water, and ration bars in the next one.

He was again taken aback when he tried to open one and the tiny readout next to it told him: DË-AKTIVÄT STÄSIS. Fearing more alarms, he pressed the off button, and the compartment popped open without incident. His sigh of relief was brief, though.

“Water!” Justin snatched one of the bottles out. Tore off the seal, opened the lid, and started chugging. Having not noticed until now just how thirsty he really was. He slammed the whole thing down in seconds. “Water!”

Popping open the compartment above, he started stuffing ration packs, and a couple water bottles, into his mine camp jumps, wishing he had clothes with pockets. But having no intention of stopping to eat until he could find another, unoccupied closet. This place was vast beyond his reckoning, but if there were more of these oases in this desert of steel, he would at least be able to survive down here for a long time.

And so would Max.

He opened a couple more compartments, just to see if they contained anything else besides ration bars—

A noise at the door froze him on the spot.

That strange, nameless fear returned as he slowly turned to see who (or what) was there. Justin could hear his own neck creak as he turned, and time seemed to slow down. With his luck, he somehow doubted that was Max. He winced at the sound of the other door grinding back on its own tracks, his hand clamping a water bottle in a white-knuckle grip.

“PREPARE FOR EXTERMINATION, INTRUDER!” a new digital voice thundered.

“Oh shit…”

That broke Justin’s paralysis, and he ducked around one of the shelves just in time to avoid a powerful energy beam right where his head would have been. The concentrated laser blast obliterated one of the panel covers. Then he heard tank-like tracks roll into the room.

“THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THE ENFORCER NK-525! ALL INTRUDERS WILL BE DESTROYED!…”

Justin kept moving, trying to keep the compartments between himself and his automated adversary. So far he had yet to get a good look at this robot that claimed to be the dreaded NK-525, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to see it. That harsh computerized voice and the two corpses in the closet were enough for him. He was playing hide-and-seek with this mechanical monstrosity, with limited cover and instant death if it got in one good shot.

Justin could feel the terror of those two poor souls’ final hours as the Enforcer stalked him among the compartments.

Then he remembered the bottle he was still clutching in his hand. In a stroke of desperate inspiration, he chucked it around another corner. A second later, he heard the tracks moving in the direction of that sound.

Justin seized his opportunity without hesitation, bolting for the door and dashing down the hall, not even daring to look back.

Realizing that its quarry had evaded it, NK-525 rolled for the door, super-laser recharged and primed to fire again.

“RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!”

Justin ducked around another corner before it could bring its lesser guns to bear on him. The Intruder had a head start, and could run faster than its tracks could carry it, but that didn’t matter. Its echo-location sensors— among others— ensured that the hunt was still very much on. One observation the Enforcer had made over the centuries was on its side.

That biologics, unlike machines, tired.

According to the map, Max needed only to round another corner.

Bandit didn’t seem to sense any danger, so he felt they were doing well. Max wasn’t sure what to expect when he got to the library, but he hoped it wasn’t all computers; he needed more information if he was going to be able to find Justin at all here. What daunted him more, though, was the thought that it might be heavily guarded.

He told himself that there was no point in worrying about it until he got there.

Down the next hall he found a door completely different from any of the others he had seen. It was twice as wide as the others, green, and split down the middle. Above the door, a digital display read: 6-D LÏBRÄRË.

This appeared to be the place. Max tried to open the door, but the display above the door briefly flashed the message: ¥IS DÖR IZ LOKD. PLËZ KUM AGEN.

As he stood there looking at the keypad, he remembered the cards he had taken with him. A closer examination revealed that the cards were all the right size to fit in the mysterious slots he had noticed before. He stood there for a long moment, weighing the risks; he was sure that doing something wrong here would be a quick way to summon the guards, as he was beginning to suspect Justin had not too long ago. Resigning his fate to the unknown, he inserted the card.

And nothing happened.

To Max, this was both good and bad. Bad because he was still locked out. Good because at least he hadn’t set off any alarms. Deciding that he had already come this far, and he had no better plan, he pressed his luck and tried another card.

This time the door opened.

Beyond was a long, narrow room. Lights blinked on to reveal a desk on either side of the entrance, and a pair of metal poles at the other end. Seemingly standing guard over a door over there, which he believed would lead to the rest of the library.

Max walked past the desks, which were empty, crossing to the two poles. The doorway itself was so black it almost hurt his eyes to look at, in a way that was almost mesmerizing. He reached out and placed his hand on it, finding the blackness solid and immovable; his hand was numbed by the mere touch. Next to the “blank” door was another keypad.

Figuring that it had worked for him before, he inserted the card again.

The doorway flickered— didn’t open, but flickered— and a room appeared on the other side. Beyond were walls filled with more books than in all the Islands, more than he had ever dreamed he would see in his life. His fears about it being all computers evaporated at the mere sight of them.

As he walked through the doorway, he felt a tingling sensation, not unlike what he had felt when he passed through the opening in the cave earlier. When he looked back, he saw that the edges of the doorway also glowed that same shimmering, ghostly white.

It was only after he was through being overwhelmed by the spectacle and unique scent of so many books in one place that he was able to take in the rest of the place. Thick public carpet, cropped short for thousands of trampling feet. Like everything else in the room, rendered in dull institutional colors. Once his eyes moved past all those books, what halted him in his tracks was the window in the corner revealing an open sky.

“But… I thought we were underground…”

In that view Max discovered a whole new level of disorientation.

Fearing that he might lose his way back, as he had before, he looked back over his shoulder to see Bandit still standing in front of the other side of the door. He turned around and said, “Come on, Bandit. We have to find a way to help Justin…”

Indecision.

“Do you want to stay in that weird place?”

And again Bandit passed through, clearly not enjoying the experience any more than he had the first time around.

And so Max resumed his exploration of the 6-D Library, Bandit at his side. In the next room, Max found a lone book lying on a table. Idle curiosity drew him hither.

The Bermuda Triangle: Case by Case, the cover read. Now that he thought about it, why the language had switched back to something he could understand was beyond him. Not that he was complaining; the mysterious characters back there gave him a headache.

Unable to resist having a book in his hand again after more than five years, Max opened it and started leafing through it, wondering if this Bermuda Triangle had anything to do with the Triangle State.

While his friend was busy browsing books, Justin was running for his life.

So far, he had picked up no more robo-guards or Junkyard Dogs, but what hunted him was more than enough. Though he had no more than half-seen glimpses of this new enemy to go on, the persistent, clicking and clacking of its treads, interspersed with the occasional There Is No Escape and Resistance Is Futile, told him on some primal, survival level that he was better off battling the other ones any day. Having met NK-525 for himself, he no longer needed any warnings from its past victims to realize that it was not so much a machine as it was a monster masquerading as one.

His hard-won lead over the Enforcer was slowly diminishing. He knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer even though he also knew there was no “second place” in this kind of contest. The only plan he could think of was fifty-fifty, and his desperation increased as his window of opportunity continued to shrink.

After a couple more turns, and the sound and sense of malevolent machine closing in, he finally decided to make a move while he still could.

This time the first door he tried actually opened, and he scrambled inside, slapping the close button. The door snapped shut before NK-525 came around the corner. Despite being out of breath, Justin held it anyway as he listened to the sound of approaching tracks.

Approaching… Approaching… Almost past…

His heart froze as the whir of servos stopped. Afraid to even exhale, he sweated more than a wax statue as that silence dragged on, and he began to feel faint. It was the image of a cold metal claw reaching out for the controls that most likely saved his life as he aimed one of his new pistols at the control panel and blasted it, jumping back from the shower of sparks.

Justin started breathing again, figuring that he had bought himself some time.

“INTRUDER IS TRAPPED! THERE IS NO ESCAPE!…”

Trapped. Never had a closet seemed so small. Even as NK-525’s weapons started hammering at the door, all he could come up with was an image of his own huddled, charred skeleton waiting for some other unfortunate soul to someday puzzle over his fate. With an increasingly detached curiosity, he wondered if that hypothetical explorer might stand a chance of avoiding his doom…

It was while his eyes were roving around frantically and his mind’s eye was imagining his imminent demise that he spotted the ventilation grill in the wall.

Feeling the growing heat in the tiny room, he fired up his laser staff and sliced the grill away. Much to his relief, the shaft was large enough for him to fit. He looked over his shoulder to see a glowing red blotch in the door growing, starting to melt.

Justin crammed himself into the vent, ignoring the eye-watering pain in his knees and elbows as he wiggled in and started squirming as fast as he could. The doors in this mysterious realm were thick and solid, but he doubted they would withstand NK-525’s firepower for long.

Even as he shimmied around a bend in the shaft, he heard the closet door crumple inward in an explosion of laser fire that would have annihilated him if he was still in there. As the debris clattered to the floor, he heard that ominous voice.

“SCANNING… SCANNING… INTRUDER NO LONGER ON VISUAL… LOCATION UNKNOWN…”

Not caring how much noise he made, Justin bent and rolled and wriggled as fast as he could, fearing it wouldn’t take the Enforcer long to figure out—

“INTRUDER DETECTED! THERE IS NO ESCAPE!”

“Shit!”

Justin felt a blaze of heat under his feet as NK-525 fired its super-laser down the vent, blowing away the corner he had just worked his way around only seconds before. Several more shots strobed in the darkness, intensifying the heat as he crawled away from it.

“ALL INTRUDERS MUST BE DESTROYED! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!…”

Justin crawled for some distance before he finally collapsed from relief and exhaustion.

Without meaning to, Max had completely lost himself in the 6-D Library. And in just one book, at that. Though this Bermuda Triangle turned out to have nothing to do with the Triangle State, it made for fascinating reading none the less.

Instead, it recounted tales of people and places he had never heard of. Miami, Bermuda, Bimini, Puerto Rico, Andros (a name he recognized from his father’s journey, and wondered vaguely if it was the same place)… A map with lines connecting the places called Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico in a triangle, not unlike Justin’s crude, twig-doodled map of the Triangle State. Most of the book contained strange tales concerning people and ships that vanished in those waters without a trace.

One name in particular jumped out at him right off the page. Windfall. The former name of Uncle Angus’ ship. Stripped of The Edge version’s weapons, the photo on the next page otherwise looked identical.

Max stared at this image for a long time, wondering what it could mean. Remembering all he could of his parents’ accounts of their journeys and especially Robert’s lifelong curiosity about haunted places. Since coming down here, he felt as if he had wandered into one of those places.

He noticed earlier that many of the shelves held multiple copies of the same volumes, and many of their titles suggested a focus on the mysterious and unexplained. Even so, there were thousands of individual titles in this room alone. And he could see still more in the room after this one.

It made him wonder how so many books could be written about one subject. No matter how fast they could read, he doubted anyone could get through more than one or two of these rooms in one lifetime.

“Excuse me…”

Max had been so engrossed in his musings that he had failed to notice the speaker’s approach. In a startled blur of motion, Max snatched his power pistol, pointing it at the owner of that voice. In the same instant, Bandit snapped awake with a surprised snarl.

“Don’t shoot!” the speaker blurted as he jumped back, throwing his hands in the air. Short and wiry, standing only an inch or two taller than Justin, the man was nearly bald. He goggled at Max from behind thin metal-rimmed spectacles.

“Who are you?” Max demanded. The other man’s long silence told him just how afraid the guy was. He lowered the gun, and the other relaxed noticeably. Max told him, “Um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought you were one of those guards.”

“Apology accepted, young man,” the bespectacled one replied, “though I’m not sure what you’re talking about. We don’t have any guards around here… Besides,” he resumed, with a bit more confidence, “guns aren’t allowed in the library. Would you please not do that again? I think you just took ten years off my life.”

Max paused for a moment, just stood there, trying to figure out what to say for himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the other man said, not sure exactly what this young man was so confused about, but remembering that it was his job to help him. “Where are my manners? I’m Conan Swanson, Branch Manager of the Centralict Library. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well…” Max tried to figure out where to begin.

“By the way, don’t you know that animals aren’t allowed in here either? Only helper dogs, and you look like you can take care of yourself.”

“Huh?” Max tried to figure out what a “helper dog” was for a moment, then, “Oh. This is just Bandit. He’s my friend.”

“There’s a sign at the front door—”

“But I came in through that door,” Max cut him off, pointing to the next room, at the strange door he came in through.

Swanson gaped at that door for a long moment, now it was his turn to be speechless.

Finally he managed, “The warpgate… to Tranz-D? It’s open…”

“Conan?”

“But… how? The Gate Room has been locked for centuries…”

“I opened it.”

“Wait a minute— are you from Tranz-D?”

“No. I just… I don’t know how to explain. I’m trying to find my friend. We got lost in there this morning, and there were these robot guards…”

“This is amazing…” Swanson muttered, moving closer to inspect the room beyond. “Do you know what this means? This warpgate has been sealed for almost ten thousand years…”

Max tried for a moment to imagine that last figure, then grabbed Swanson’s shoulder, telling the librarian, “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. It’s dangerous.”

Swanson remembered the young man’s power pistol, and how alarmed he had been a moment ago. “Right. So… uh, what’s your name, young man?”

“Max.”

“Do you have a last name, Max?”

“No. Nobody does where I come from.”

“Interesting.”

“I guess. But what is Tranz-D?”

“Well, I have to admit it’s something I’ve always been intrigued about, ever since I first started working here. But there’s not much to go on. Tranz-D is said to be another dimension, created by a very advanced civilization— they had even opened up warpgates to other points all over the space-time continuum. Back when the gate was open— long before my time, of course— it’s said that this library used to get a lot of visitors from other planes of existence. That’s about all I really know…”

“Other planes of existence…”

“You sound like you’ve have a busy day, Max. Let’s go have a little chat in my office. I think we both have a lot of explaining to do…”

This bio-creature was proving to be quite a nuisance, more troublesome than most, and it still hadn’t gotten around to dealing with the other Intruder yet.

Another breach. Damaged guards. Messes disturbing the delicate balance of the cleaners’ energy rations. A broken holding cell. Escape and network intrusion. A time-consuming detour to an elevator. Stolen food and water rations.

And now a ruined storage closet. These intrusions were becoming more and more frequent with every passing century, especially in recent decades. As NK-525 continued to patrol the halls, the Enforcer Unit ran projections of how many Intruders it might have to deal with a hundred years from now at this rate while waiting for some indication of where this particular Intruder might emerge from the ventilation grid.

In all of its many long years patrolling this sector, only two Intruders had ever escaped from NK-525, and there had been no reports of their whereabouts in over two-hundred years, but the Enforcer’s only focus was on finding this Intruder.

And neutralizing it.

“Alright,” said the librarian, “here is my understanding of things…”

Conan Swanson’s small, out-of-the-way office was several levels down from where Max first entered. They had traveled through a succession of rooms and down a great spiral stairway, swirling for at least a dozen floors above and below, to get there. Max was no longer so sure he could find his way back to the warpgate even if he tried.

“This isn’t really my forte, but I’ll try to explain it as best I can.” Swanson drew a line on a piece of paper. “According to most books I’ve read, the first dimension is just a line, an endless line.”

Max sat on the other side of the desk as the librarian drew his diagrams.

“A line has only one dimension: length. But if you square it—” and he turned the line into a square “—you have two dimensions: length and height… Max, are you paying attention?”

It wasn’t that Swanson’s lecture didn’t interest Max, but right now the box of cookies on the other side of the desk was offering some serious competition. A moment later his stomach put in its two cents on all this running around without even a bite of breakfast. When he realized that his new friend was staring at him, Max’s embarrassment was quite apparent.

“I’m sorry, Conan. It’s just that I didn’t even get to have breakfast before I wound up in there…”

“Ah.”

Figuring that this young man must have passed through many perils to accomplish as much as he had, Swanson offered him the whole box. Max had never tasted peanut butter before, but it only took one bite to decide that he had just found a new favorite. When Bandit actually started drooling, Max offered him several, and the big cat inhaled them.

As Max continued to munch down the box, Swanson resumed his impromptu presentation on dimensions, telling him, “So now you have two dimensions, but if you cube it…”

It took just a moment to draw the square into a cube.

“…You get a new dimension: depth. This is the way we see things around us. You get it so far?”

“Yeah.”

Max remembered years ago when Mom had tried to tell him something like this, but back then he had found it confusing. This time he found he could follow the basic line of thought.

“Good,” said the librarian, “because this is where it gets tricky. I don’t know how to ‘draw’ the fourth dimension because—”

“Wait a minute— there are more?”

“Yes, and plenty of them, according to some theories. One guy I’ve been reading lately— Hawking, I think his name was— insists there are at least nine or ten… Anyway, as I was saying, the fourth dimension is said to be time. Everything moves through both time and space.

“I don’t know much about what’s beyond, but one book I read claimed that the creators of Tranz-D used the secret of the fifth dimension to create the warpgates, perhaps even Tranz-D itself. But the weirdest thing, now that I think about it, is how many travelers I’ve met who insist that this world is the Sixth Dimension. They say that beyond this district is a vast, seemingly endless jumble of realms. Some say the rules are different than the realm they came from, like another world…”

Much like how Mom and Dad, and even Uncle Angus, always described it. By now he and Bandit had decimated the entire box of cookies, and his attention had turned more fully to the implications of the librarian’s words. Now he asked, “So what do you know about the seventh?”

“Nothing, really, but based on what a few people have told me, the Seventh is even more of a headache. A real nightmare.”

“Hmm…” Max’s head was reeling from this massive dose of information, and his thoughts wandered from one idea to the next at random as he tried to piece it all together.

“Anyway,” Swanson remarked, “this is getting way off track.” His fixation thinly veiled, he said, “You came from Tranz-D, yet you say you’re not from there. So how did you end up in that world in the first place?”

Max tried to think back. So much had happened in the meantime that this morning felt like a long time ago. Starting with he and Justin’s morning swim, he explained about the whirlpool, the cave, and the hole in the wall.

“Was this hole shaped like a door, by any chance?” Swanson asked him.

“No.”

When Max further described the hole, Swanson told him, “It’s likely that you passed through a rift between dimensions when you entered Tranz-D.” Then, after a moment of contemplation, “It’s entirely possible that the dimensional integrity of Tranz-D itself is deteriorating, and ‘holes’ are appearing between that dimension and others… But why?…”

“Holes between dimensions…” To Max, this was starting to sound like something from one of his parents’ more bizarre accounts.

“Please tell me, Max, what was going on in there?” Swanson pressed him still further.

“Well… nothing, at first. There was no one around. Then this alarm started and there were robot guards everywhere…”

“Androids…” Swanson mused after Max explained about his capture and finding his new gear in the holding cell, “but no people…” Yet, after such a battle, he had no trouble seeing why Max was so wary. “And you say you have a friend trapped in there?”

“Yeah!” Max nearly knocked over his chair standing up. He had gotten so lost in this place, and the librarian’s explanations. “I almost forgot! I’ve gotta go find him!”

“Whoa! Slow down, man,” Swanson said. “Do you even know where to begin? Your friend may still be alive but—”

“He has to be,” Max cut him off with quiet determination, and a look the librarian was sure must have a sad tale to go with it, “Not him too… He’s my friend. I have to go back and see.”

“Well, on one hand, I would suggest you go find him as soon as you can. But given what you’re up against, I wouldn’t recommend going in unprepared.”

“I have to do something.”

“I know. Most of what little we have about Tranz-D is on the thirteenth floor, the same level as the warpgate. The Centralict Library has been built and rebuilt many times over the centuries, but those books are always kept near the warpgate. After all, it’s said that the creators of Tranz-D were also the founders of this library. Of course, I don’t like to go to that section anymore unless my work takes me there.” Even as he said this, he tried to remember what errand had brought him to that section to begin with anyway. “You see, in recent years, people have started disappearing without a trace. From time to time. At first, I just liked to believe people were leaving without telling their friends, but it’s gotten worse over the years. I shouldn’t even be telling you this— my supervisors don’t like us to talk about it— but now I’m beginning to think that the disappearances may have something to do with that warpgate… If something has gone wrong in Tranz-D… Maybe deterioration of dimensional barriers…”

“I have to try.”

“Good luck, Max. I hope you find your friend.”

Seeing that he wasn’t going to be able to get any further information out of Max as long as he was focused on finding Justin, the librarian gave him directions back to the warpgate, and some info on where to find the most useful books he could think of. In spite of Swanson’s warning, Max had decided to try to get some more information. In spite of his sense of urgency, he reminded himself that he had no way of finding Justin, and would quickly become as lost as his friend was.

As he wandered among the stacks, scanning the guide signs, he thought about all his parents’ tales, and his increasing certainty that he was now living in one. Back then, he had believed in them unquestioningly. During his long years in Paradise, had wanted to believe as the outside world grew ever more distant.

In fact, now that he thought about it, he had never really stopped believing.

Yet Max would soon be doing his believing someplace else, as the room shimmered for a moment, and then was vacant.

How long he was out, Justin could only guess, but when he awoke, the cold metallic darkness of the vent shaft told him that his day thus far was no mere nightmare, as he was so fervently hoping. On top of that, he was starving.

Fortunately, the place he had crawled to was bigger than the shaft he originally entered, and he had enough room to dig in his coveralls for the ration bars he had grabbed earlier. He tore the wrapper open with his teeth and chowed down. A long time ago, he had heard it said that the greatest spice was hunger, but he couldn’t remember who said it. No matter. Never had one of the damn things ever tasted so good.

It wasn’t until he was on his fourth bar that he realized that he had eaten all of the rations he still had. He could have sworn he had grabbed more, but he probably lost them in the chase, and he again cursed the TSA.

If I just had some fuckin’ pockets…

He found he still had two bottles of water left, one of which had awakened him because it was digging into his groin. No food, only a day or two of water left, and a trigger-happy Enforcer Unit on his ass. He just kept telling himself that no matter how things looked, this still couldn’t be worse than the Triangle State.

All the same, he still felt trapped. Cornered. Nearly was, back in the closet. Yet he knew he couldn’t stay here too long, or he would suffer the same fate as those other two guys.

Then it dawned on him that he wasn’t trapped. If these vents were as big as their echo suggested, they must reach all over this place. As long as he traveled in here, no one (and nothing) would be able to follow him. Not even the Junkyard Dogs would be able to fit in those vent grills.

After drinking some more water, he started moving again, quickly discovering how much he had tenderized his knees and elbows. He still hadn’t figured out how to navigate down here, but then it occurred to him that he didn’t need to. For now, if he traveled far enough through here, even that bastard NK-525 couldn’t possibly know where he emerged.

He actually started laughing, no longer even caring if anything heard him in this maze of darkness and echoes.

At least until he crawled into a vertical shaft, falling head over heels into yawning blackness before he could stop himself.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Justin dug his back and his heels into the walls, sliding several feet before finally wedging himself near the end of his legs’ reach.

He listened to the sound of one of his water bottles as it bounced against the sides of the shaft once… twice… thrice… finally clanking on the bottom many levels below.

“Fuckin’ A…” he groaned.

Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to stay in this precarious perch for long, worked his way slowly up to the next level. Then he rolled over onto his side, waiting for his heart to slow down to a more reasonable rate.

“Where’s my flashlight when I need it…”

After a moment of thought, he was chagrined to realize that he had picked up a flashlight from that dead pair. And it had been that, not a water bottle, that had been digging into him earlier. He knew he would have to make selective use of it, though, for he doubted the power cells would hold for long.

The whole room seemed to waver before Max’s eyes like a mirage, then resolved itself into a completely different room.

There were still shelves of books, but they weren’t as tall, and they crowded around him. Whereas he had previously been walking in the open. Even the lighting had changed in some subtle way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

But at least Bandit was still at his side.

A moment later, he noticed another major difference. Beyond the shelves, he could hear mingled strains of conversation. He had heard faint murmurs from the other levels on his way back up earlier, the only suggestion that there had been anyone besides himself and Swanson in that entire library. A fact he had found reassuring after the fake vacancy of Tranz-D, but not only was the light different, on top of that this place even smelled different than the Library.

“Looks like he was right about the rift…” he commented to himself.

For a moment, Max was afraid to move, for fear that he would step between dimensions again. Then he told himself that whatever was going on was beyond his control, and he didn’t want to get separated from Bandit in yet another strange place. Around the corner he saw people showing each other books or searching among the shelves by themselves. Dressed in styles he had never seen before, even among Outlander visitors.

More people than he had seen in the past five years, just in this room. More than ever, he wished Justin was still with him, it had been too long since he was in the company of others. Too long, he knew. Thinking about his friend filled him with an unarticulated dread, even though he knew it was all he could do to deal with his own situation. He knew that he was the Outlander here, and this left him with mixed feelings.

Hoping he could find someone here as helpful as the librarian was there, Max approached one of the browsers, saying, “Excuse me, man…” faltering for a moment before deciding on the direct approach, “Where am I?”

“You’re right there,” the young man replied, smiling as he turned back to the magazine whose title was a word Max didn’t recognize.

“But where is here?” Max pressed, not sure if the man understood him.

“This isn’t a joke, is it?”

“No, I’m serious. Where is here?”

“This a trick question?” Max was getting the impression that this guy was getting annoyed, bothered in some way he didn’t quite get.

“No,” Max told him, trying to keep from sounding too impatient. He could see the man’s eyes kept roving back to the page. “I don’t know where I am. I’m lost. Would you tell me where I am? Please?”

“You’re at the mall, dumbass,” the man told him, turning back to reading as Max walked away. Conversation over. “Seriously, dude, lay off the crack, okay?”

Max had no idea what that last remark was about, so he shrugged his shoulders and set out searching for more information.

He didn’t get very far before a little girl remarked, “Wow! That’s a big kitty!”

“His name’s Bandit.” Max couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s curiosity and delight.

“Hi, Bandit!” The girl reached out. Then she hesitated. “Can I pet him?”

“Bandit?” It was something Max hadn’t thought about in years.

The girl reached out, and Bandit let her pet him. In fact, he even seemed to be enjoying it. Max’s relief quickly melted into amusement at the amount of attention his feline friend was getting lately.

“Jessie!” A woman stepped in, grabbing the girl by the wrist even as she was scratching him behind the ears, right where he most liked it. “You know better than to play with wild animals.”

“But Mom…” the girl protested.

“Bandit isn’t going to hurt her,” Max assured her, remembering a moment later just how protective a mother can be. Still, he couldn’t help feeling slighted.

“Jessie, don’t ever do that again…” Yet her mother wasn’t even listening to him. She whisked her daughter away, launching into a very maternal-sounding lecture about the dangers of wild beasts and strangers (in general, and what an awful man Max probably was in particular) as they walked away.

The two of them stood there for a moment, Max scratching his head, then they moved on to the next section. Which Max discovered right off wasn’t another section, as it was in the Library, but an enormous corridor. He gazed up past lines and letters that glowed in the same radiant colors as energy blades, at a ceiling that hung many feet above him, seeing clouds drift by through arched skylights. People passed both ways through this palatial hall by the score, garbed in ways he had never seen before. Bright colors seemed to be all the rage; shorts, t shirts, faded jeans, and various types of footwear the like of which he had only seen on the feet of Outlanders. Some at leisure, some in haste, others flocked to booths that further piqued Max’s already insatiable curiosity.

The dazzling array of novelties would likely have distracted him for hours if not for the fact that, of the many scents he and Bandit now explored for the first time, the ones that stood out smelled like food. Following their noses, they made their way down the corridor and around a corner, to what appeared to be the source. Wafting from this place were aromas neither of them had ever smelled before, all of them easily more tantalizing than anything Max had caught a whiff of in many years.

There was a large open area where many people sat at tables, and still more people flocking to several counters with brightly colored signs above them, from which they seemed to be getting the food. At first, all they could do was just stare at this scene, then Bandit led them up to one of the counters. There was currently no line at this one, so the young man at the counter, who name tag read James, spotted Max right away.

“Welcome to Happy Burger,” he told Max, “Where Life’s A Holiday! May take your order?”

“You mean food, right?” Between the irresistible flavors he smelled, and having had so little to eat in the last day or so, it was all he could do to talk, and try not to drool.

“Yeah. What else?” James replied. “So what do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Max told him, little realizing that he was playing into a script this man had been learning for months. “What have you got?”

“Well, our special today is the Happy Burger Holiday Value Meal, which comes with—”

“What’s a Happy Burger?”

James blinked, then said, “You’ve never heard of Happy Burger?”

Max shook his head, and Bandit continued to stare at the counter with a look that reminded him of sharing their first ration bar that first morning years ago.

“We’ve got locations from coast-to-coast,” James informed him. “You been living under a rock or something?”

Max just stood there, contemplating how delicious whatever he was smelling must be.

“Do you want a Happy Burger?”

“I guess.”

“How many?”

Max looked at his friend, remembering just how much the big cat could eat, then said, “Three, please.”

“The meal, or the sandwich?”

“The meal, I guess…”

James pushed some buttons on what appeared to be another computer, the told him, “That’ll be $14.97 please.”

“Huh?”

“The meal costs five bucks, and you ordered three of them, so that’s fifteen dollars. You do have money, doncha?”

“Hmm…” Max now remembered hearing about how people bought food in other realms. Then he remembered the odd pieces of paper he had taken from Tranz-D and why they had seemed somehow familiar. Robert had something very much like them in his collection— cash, he called it.

He dug in his pocket, bringing out several of the notes and handed them over, saying, “Is this enough?”

“Um, I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t take Canadian.”

“What about this…” Max remembered there seemed to be several distinct types, so he fished it all out and handed it over.

James looked at Max in utter puzzlement, then sifted several bills out, shoving the rest back to Max.

Meanwhile, somebody came out from the back, where he could vaguely see people bustling about (where that mouth-watering aroma was coming from), and handed him a tray laden with three wrapped sandwiches and cardboard sides of a strange yellow food he had never seen before.

Max bowed his head in gratitude and took the tray—

“Wait— you forgot your change.”

“And your drinks,” the young woman who handed him the tray added.

“Oh.” Max took the money offered to him.

“So, what do you want to drink anyway?”

“Some water would be good.” Until they mentioned drinks a moment ago, Max had been too hungry and confused to notice how thirsty he was.

The woman placed three cups of water on the tray, Max bowed his head and thanked them again, then walked away, trying to balance the heavy tray while keeping a very excited kitty out from under his feet.

“Weird…” James muttered as he watched them wander away.

Max found an empty table near the glass-and-chrome railing overlooking a colossal atrium. As he sat down and unwrapped his sandwiches, he looked over the side, seeing the neon-lined railing of several levels above and below his. He gave one of the sandwiches to Bandit, who made it disappear almost in one bite, he sampled some of the yellow things. They were really salty, but good.

Alternately munching them down and sipping water, laughing because he hadn’t seen a drinking straw since he was little, one of Mom’s odd Outlander prizes. Bandit eating off one of the seats and lapping up water out of one of the cups while Max watched the comings and goings of the people on the other floors. It wasn’t until he had exhausted his supplies of fries that he remembered the last sandwich.

He would find that once he got rid of the crunchy green things, Happy Burgers didn’t taste half bad. Much to his surprise, just having a decent meal made him feel much more optimistic about his situation, resolving to set out and try to find a way back to the Centralict Library to resume his search for Justin.

A couple hours later, Justin climbed out of a random vent grill.

The scenery hadn’t changed at all. For a moment he was terrified that all that crawling in a straight line had somehow gone in circles. It was just hard to swallow that this place could really be so big.

He felt like he had been in there all day, but at least now he was certain that NK-525 no longer had a clue where he was. Now all he had to do was keep a low profile, and not set off any more alarms. That eerie silence— a silence he would never fully trust again— cut through his thoughts, and a stressed-out anxiety made it hard to concentrate.

Still he knew he needed to make a plan, and fast. He wished he knew where Max— or even Bandit— was. As much as he worried about his new friend, even being able to find the hole in the wall would be helpful.

Then again, now that he thought about it, even if that mysterious hole hadn’t vanished again, he was strangely certain there was no other way out of that cave. Just thinking about his current position, relative to the pond back in Paradise (above?), hurt his mind. There was some piece missing from this puzzle, and he wished he knew what the hell it was.

Strangely, he found himself hoping Max was doing better than he. And he couldn’t help but wonder now many of those supply rooms there were, and if there was one nearby. Perhaps he could organize more supplies without that damn NK-525 breathing down his neck.

Of course, there was no way he could know that the black, glassy-looking panel he just walked past at the corner of that particular junction was a wide-beam infrared scanner— originally used to measure traffic, but now turned to other purposes— whose snare was invisible to the unaided human (and many other species’) eye.