The only route out of Imra is an underground passage that’s been chiseled out of the black volcanic rock. Gorog leads the way with his fire, which was an excellent choice of tool. It’s seeing a lot more action than my dagger or Carole’s robe. But even with light to guide us, we’re unable to travel fast enough for my taste. When Pomba Gira conjured the copy of Kat, it was like a mirage taunting a man who’s gotten lost in a desert. My desperation is physical. Every breath I exhale is thick with longing. My hunger oozes from every pore.
“Hey, Simon. You’re not going to believe this.” Carole interrupts my thoughts as soon as we’ve put Imra behind us. I give her less than my full attention. “Back in the real world, I saw Arkan and his girlfriend on the news. I should have recognized his costume straightaway. He was wearing it the night of his accident. I’m pretty sure his full name was Jeremy Arkan. He and his girlfriend lived two towns over from me.”
I stop. I’m listening now. “You live in New Jersey?” I ask. “I thought you were Southern. You’ve got an accent.”
“I grew up in Memphis but I live in Morristown these days,” Carole says.
I start walking again. “Gorog,” I call out, picking up the pace as I hurry toward the ogre. “Where are you from?”
“In real life?” he asks. “Elizabeth, New Jersey.”
I know six people who’ve been given one of the Company’s special disks. All six of those people hail from the small state of New Jersey. At least three—Kat, Brian and West—were diagnosed with an extremely rare condition. In my head I hear Busara asking the question I was unable to answer. What are the odds?
I’m sifting through all the random clues I’ve collected when I run straight into Gorog’s hairy back. There’s a colorful curse on my tongue, but it stays there when I see why he’s come to a sudden stop. There’s a bend in the tunnel ahead, and whatever is just beyond it is issuing an eerie blue light.
“What the hell is that?” Carole whispers.
Finally, a question I can answer. “I think it’s my guide.” I step around Gorog and lead the way forward.
“We get to meet him!” Gorog’s far more excited than he should be. “Oh, man, this is gonna be good.”
Sure enough, the Clay Man is waiting for us around the bend. He’s leaning back against one of the rough rock walls with his eyes closed. The amulet on his chest is glowing. His eyes open as we approach.
“You have companions,” the Clay Man says, making it perfectly clear that he doesn’t approve. If I ever gave a shit, I no longer do.
“Their names are Gorog and Carole,” I say. “I’m taking them with me to find the exit.” Neither of them steps forward. Gorog’s excitement has been replaced with wariness, and they both look like they’re on the verge of backing away.
“Don’t worry, he’s not going to hurt you,” I promise them, though I don’t know that for certain.
“You cannot let these avatars slow you down,” the Clay Man says.
“Slow me down?” I’m getting kind of pissed now. “I wouldn’t have made it out of Imra without them. By the way, where the hell were you? I could have used a little guidance back there. Isn’t that supposed to be your job?”
“As I told you, I travel in Otherworld’s liminal spaces,” the Clay Man says. “The wastelands, tunnels and border areas are all open to me, but it is too dangerous for me to enter any of Otherworld’s realms.”
“I don’t understand,” Gorog says. “What are you? Are you one of us or one of them?”
“There is no need for you to understand,” says the Clay Man dismissively.
“Are you one of the Children Simon told us about?” Carole asks.
“Certainly not,” says the Clay Man snippily.
“Yeah, speaking of the Children,” I jump in. “We just had the pleasure of meeting the goat man’s mother. Not to be too graphic, but how the hell is that possible?”
Apparently the Clay Man doesn’t share my dirty mind. “How many times do I have to explain that this world does not operate in the way that yours does?” he lectures me. “Digital DNA can be combined in many different ways. Intercourse is not the only option.”
“You sure seem to know a lot about this stuff,” Carole says. “I’m starting to think you might not be one of those NPC thingies.”
“I am Simon’s guide, nothing more, nothing less. My goal is to keep him alive until his mission has been completed.”
“Okay, fine. But why does Simon get the special attention?” asks Carole. “I mean, he’s a great guy and all, but the rest of us are trying to get out of here alive too.”
Gorog nudges Carole. “I told you,” he says. “Simon gets the special attention because he’s the One.”
“There is no One,” the Clay Man informs him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Gorog replies, undaunted. “Simon’s not ready for the truth yet. You don’t want to freak him out.”
The Clay Man chooses to ignore the ogre. “Simon, I’ve come to tell you that it’s time to make camp.”
“Here?” Carole scoffs. “In a tunnel?”
The Clay Man acts as though he didn’t hear and continues to speak only to me. “The passage to the next realm is long. You do not have the energy to reach it. You must leave Otherworld temporarily in order to refuel.”
“I’m fine,” I lie. I’m hardly in tip-top shape. “I ate a shitload of buffalo back in Imra. I think I can make it a bit farther. Besides, I thought I was stuck here until I found the exit. How am I supposed to leave?”
“I will help you,” the Clay Man tells me. “I have no choice. You have been in Otherworld for almost forty-eight hours. The detour to Imra was unexpected. You were never meant to be here this long. Your avatar may be healthy, but your real-world body has not received any liquids or nourishment for two days. If you neglect it much longer, your quest will be over before it’s truly begun.”
I don’t care if I’ve been here for two weeks. I’m not leaving Kat behind in this place just to eat a ham sandwich. “I’m telling you, I can keep going.”
“I’m afraid I must stop you,” says the Clay Man. “As I said, I do not have a choice.” He grasps his amulet and disappears. But I go nowhere.
There’s nothing to do but keep on walking, so I start back down the path. Suddenly I’m blinded by a searing white light, and it feels like a piece of flesh is being ripped off the back of my skull. The tunnel is gone and my eyes are desperately trying to focus on a different world. I’m blind and dizzy and completely disoriented.
“Simon!” a female screeches. The voice is extremely familiar, but I can’t place it. “What in the hell is going on? How long have you been here? What did you do to your hair? And oh my God, Simon, is that what I think it is? Oh my God, I can smell it. Get up this instant! Your mattress is totally ruined!”
I’m thrashing around like a fish at the end of a line. Everything around me is wet, and I realize I’ve pissed all over myself. And not just once. The world is coming into focus. I can see my mother standing over my bed, holding my disk in her hand. Her hair is a mess and she’s still in her robe. I catch a glimpse of Louis, our gardener, outside the bedroom door. We lock eyes for a moment before he hurries away.
“What are you doing in here?” I demand. “I thought you were in London.” My throat is so dry I can barely speak. But I manage to snatch my disk from her hand.
“We got back last night! Then I wake up to a text that says you’re in your room and you’re going to die unless I take some device off the back of your head. And I came to your room and couldn’t get in, so I had Louis force the door open. What the hell is that thing you were wearing, Simon?”
“You got a text?” I ask. “From who? Who sent it?” It’s proof that someone IRL is controlling the Clay Man. Whoever it is knows about the disk, obviously. Is it the same person who sent it to me? Does that mean the Clay Man is Martin? Marlow? Or maybe even Todd?
“I don’t know who sent it!” she exclaims, shoving her phone at me. I take it and look down at the text. It says exactly what she told me it said. I don’t recognize the phone number.
“Get out of my room,” I tell her.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on, Simon! Are you on drugs? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“Get out now,” I repeat, more loudly. I pull myself off the bed. My legs are unsteady and I stumble toward her.
“I’m waking your father up,” she says, rushing out of the room, leaving her phone in my hand.
The last thing I need is a visit from my father and his favorite nine iron. I grab a duffel bag from my closet and stuff it with some clothes, my mom’s phone, two auxiliary batteries and my gear from the Company. I throw on a T-shirt, but there’s no time to change the jeans I’ve got on. I’m still wet, smelly and weak when I drop out of my window and onto the lawn.
My father always told me I’d never amount to anything in life if I didn’t stop acting impulsively and start thinking things through. It sucks to admit it, but even complete assholes are right sometimes. I should have had a plan before I hopped out of the window. I have no money, no credit cards. According to my mom’s phone, it’s just after seven a.m. on Saturday morning. Nothing in Brockenhurst is going to be open. My head looks like it was shaved with a blunt machete and my jeans have been marinating in piss for the past two days. I pause on a neighbor’s lawn to guzzle down water from a garden hose. I’m so hungry that I briefly consider breaking into the house to scavenge for food. But I can’t run the risk of getting arrested right now. I have to get back to Otherworld as quickly as possible.
The house’s garage door comes to life and begins to rise. I scuttle behind a bush and watch a Mercedes pull out into the drive. Inside it is a middle-aged couple wearing matching pink polo shirts and gingham sun visors. I suddenly know exactly where I need to go.
When I show up at the Brockenhurst Country Club, the front desk attendant appears visibly confused to see me coming up the stairs. I don’t have my wallet with me, but it’s not like I’ll need ID. The kishka works better than any plastic card could. The closer I come, the more difficulty the attendant seems to have closing his mouth. His eyes keep traveling from my haircut to my sopping-wet crotch.
“Morning!” I say, employing my special smile.
His nostrils twitch ever so slightly when my stench hits his nose. “Good morning, Mr. Eaton.”
“When’s my dad’s tee time?” I ask him. My father plays golf at the club every weekend.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” the attendant informs me.
I’ll need to be long gone by then. “Excellent,” I say. “He asked me to let you know he’d like to buy everyone on the course a cocktail when he hits the ninth hole.”
“Very well, sir,” says the attendant. “And what about you? Is there anything I can help you with today?”
“You can get me a table in the restaurant for breakfast,” I say. “But I gotta wash all this urine off before I sit down to eat. It’s a terrible problem, you know. But what can I do? The condition runs in the family. The old man pisses himself about three times a day.” The attendant’s jaw drops and I give him a wink. “What do you say we keep that entre nous, sport?”
“Of course, sir,” he says. But I can see he’s already feeling for the phone in his pocket.
When I reach the locker room, my clothes come off and go straight into the trash. The shower feels like a gift from God. I’d stay in forever if the bacon in the restaurant weren’t calling my name. Out of the shower, I use clippers to even up my new hairdo. Without hair on my head the kishka looks twice as big. I lean over the counter to examine it. When I stand back up, there’s another set of eyes staring back at me in the mirror.
The first thing I notice is that the guy’s wearing pink shorts, which immediately brands him as a total douchebag. The second thing I notice are the bandages on his hands.
“Marlow,” I say. When I turn around, I expect him to bolt. I can tell he’d like to, but he doesn’t. “Looks like somebody got a makeover.”
He cleans up nicely, my little buddy Marlow. All that scraggly hair is gone—along with the black jeans and hoodie. His clothes finally fit that pretty J.Crew face. A face that, as I watch, is gradually losing all its color. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen him at the country club before. Now that I do, I can tell Busara was right. He is a rich kid. This is obviously his natural element.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I can’t figure out if it’s an admission of guilt or an expression of sympathy. I’ll probably beat the crap out of him either way. “Oh, yeah?” I snarl, and step toward him. “Why don’t we find out how sorry you really are?”
He puts a hand up as if to ward me off. “I’m serious. I really liked her,” he says. “I never thought…”
The water shuts off in a nearby shower. Marlow glances nervously toward the stall. He’s practically shaking with terror.
“I have to go. I just wanted to know if you got it,” he whispers as a man emerges.
“Got what?” I demand. For a fleeting moment I wonder if he’s talking about the disk. But there’s no way someone this pathetic could get his hands on a Company prototype.
Marlow is staring at the man who’s joined us. He’s a hairy little hobbit with the kind of glasses that tells me he spends at least ten hours a day staring at spreadsheets. Yet Marlow seems completely unnerved by the guy. “We’ll talk later,” he tells me, turning tail and heading for the locker room door.
“No,” I yell, rushing after him. “Now!”
“Sir! Sir!” A muscular arm clotheslines me just as Marlow disappears behind the closing door.
“What?” I bark, annoyed that Marlow’s been allowed to make his escape.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let you leave the locker room like that.” I glance down and realize I’m dressed in nothing but a towel.
By the time I’m wearing clothes again, Marlow’s long gone, and I’m too hungry to search for him. I need to eat. I head straight for the restaurant, claim a seat and order double portions of pancakes, bacon and sausage. Whenever I catch one of the other diners staring at me, I give them a saucy wink and their eyes flick away. I can’t remember ever being this hungry, and I have to distract myself to keep from snatching the food off everyone’s plates. So I force myself to concentrate on what just happened. I run down the list of all the things that Marlow might be sorry for. It’s long enough to be meaningless. Maybe he’s sorry for trying to murder Kat. Or maybe he’s just sorry for driving her to the party. Or maybe he’s sorry for pretending to be a black-clad stoner when he was a pink chino shorts guy at heart. It’s impossible to say. But Marlow’s apology is another clue to throw on top of the growing heap of evidence that something seriously weird is going down. And what did he mean when he’d asked if I’d gotten it? Gotten what? Could he have been talking about the disk?
I could spend the whole morning wondering, but right now I have bigger fish to fry. I pull my mom’s smartphone out of my jeans. I’m pleasantly surprised to see she hasn’t cut off the service yet. I open the Web browser and type in Jeremy Arkan. A picture of the Otherworld knight appears on the screen. He and his girlfriend lived in a town about twenty miles from Brockenhurst. I scroll through the accompanying article and stop when my eyes land on a set of familiar words. Locked-in syndrome. Jeremy Arkan was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome, just like Kat, Brian and West.
I pull up a new screen and do a combined search for locked-in syndrome and New Jersey. The list of results goes on for four pages. I count at least twenty-five individuals who’ve been diagnosed with the condition. All in the last three months. Busara said locked-in syndrome was rare, but when I Google it, I’m still surprised to discover how rare. And yet in less than a year dozens of new cases have been reported in northern New Jersey.
I scan an article about a fifteen-year-old boy from Hoboken named Darius who was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome after an accident. At the end of the story it mentions that he’s now a patient at a long-term-care facility in New Jersey that specializes in caring for people afflicted with the condition. But it doesn’t give the facility’s name or an address. I go back and add the words long-term care to my search query. Ten articles, each focusing on other patients, mention a similar facility, but none of the articles name it.
I click on my browsing history and gaze in horror at the list of Web pages. Dozens of people in northern New Jersey have been diagnosed with a rare condition that makes them perfect candidates for the Company’s disk. It looks like many—if not all—of them have been moved to the same facility. And it seems highly unusual that not a single reporter was able to uncover the name of the place.
When I look up from my phone, the world around me has changed. Before I typed in Arkan’s name, I was sitting in the restaurant of the country club I’ve been visiting since I was eight years old, surrounded by a familiar crowd of overprivileged but harmless assholes. Now it feels like everyone is a potential suspect—a player in a game I don’t understand. I have no idea how many people are in on the conspiracy I may have just uncovered, but there’s no doubt something big is going on. Patients in one little part of the world are being diagnosed with a rare brain condition. And as hard as it is to believe, it looks like the Company might be involved somehow. Locked-in syndrome is suddenly all the rage—and they just happen to show up with a ready-made therapy? But the idea’s still nuts. It would mean Milo Yolkin was involved, and that’s almost impossible to swallow. The gamer geek genius I’ve seen on television is about the last person on earth who’d have a hand in something as sinister as this.
If there are answers to be found, they’re at the facility where the patients have been taken. My breakfast arrives as I hastily type out a message to Elvis, the hacker who owes me his freedom. I attach links to five of the articles I found and ask him to hack into a few hospital servers and find the name and address of the long-term-care facility that the locked-in syndrome patients were sent to. Then I dig in to my food. My fingers and face are covered in bacon grease when a response text arrives from Elvis.
Back to you in a few hours. You played Otherworld yet? I hear the AI is insane. Least you can’t say I didn’t warn you. The revolution is nigh.
Holy shit. I think he might be right.
I’ve lost my appetite, but I keep mindlessly shoveling food into my mouth. I need enough energy to stay in Otherworld long enough to finish my mission. While Elvis hunts down the facility’s real-world address, I need to find Kat in Otherworld. The collapse at the factory definitely wasn’t an accident. Could the Company have been responsible for that, too? Are they doing more than kidnapping the minds of people who are already injured? Could they be arranging those injuries as well? If so, there’s a chance that Kat has the information that can blow the top off an enormous conspiracy, close the facility—and help me set her free.
I’m swallowing a glob of pancake and sausage when four women in white glide into the restaurant like the chicest of ghosts. One of them is Dr. Ito. The lump of food gets stuck in my throat, and I chug a glass of OJ to wash it down. My first instinct is to duck under the table, but I keep my wits about me, and once I’m no longer in danger of choking to death, I raise the menu to hide my nose and do my best to remain perfectly still. Her eyes pass over me three or four times without landing. I credit my new haircut.
I wait until the doctor’s deep in conversation with her companions before I attempt to rise from my seat. Unfortunately, the waiter arrives to fill my water glass just as I slip out of my chair. We do a little dance trying to get out of each other’s way. Then water from the waiter’s pitcher drips onto a girl eating nearby, and she shrieks as the icy liquid trickles down the back of her neck. There’s no expression on Dr. Ito’s face when she looks up and her gaze settles on me. Anyone watching us both would assume she’s never met me before. But her eyes travel from my nose to my hair and I see an epiphany register on her face. She knows why my hair’s gone. As Dr. Ito turns back to her friend, she casually removes her phone from the pocket of her tennis skirt. She glances at the screen, presses a button and places a call.
I’m outside the country club in five seconds flat. I take one look at the long drive that leads from the club to the street and instantly realize there’s no way I’ll make it anywhere on foot. As I see it, I have one option—and no time for moral quandaries. Next to the club entrance is a bike rack, and lucky for me, no one locks their bikes at the club. Why would they need to? Rich people don’t steal—right?
I’m pedaling as fast as I can, my duffel bag bouncing against my back as I review my options. I need to find somewhere private and safe to reenter Otherworld—and I need to do it fast. Home is out of the question. So, obviously, is Kat’s house. I don’t have any other friends, and without my wallet, paying for a hotel is impossible. As I run through my very short list of options, there’s only one that meets all the criteria. And it really sucks. I turn right at the next light and head for Elmer’s. I’d rather not return to the scene of the crime, but I figure it’s one of the last places anyone’s likely to look for me.
I haven’t been back since the collapse, and it’s shocking to see the place in the light of day. The shell of the building is still standing, but there’s a mountain of debris piled outside. The authorities must have removed it all from the basement during their search for victims. I pull up alongside the mound and carefully cover the bike with boards. When I’ve finished, there’s barely a trace of it.
The building itself is wrapped with yellow tape printed with the words DANGER: DO NOT ENTER. I try my best not to rip it or pull it loose as I squeeze between the lengths and climb in through a broken window on what’s left of the ground floor. I edge around to the stairs, which are still intact, and climb up to the third floor. It looks different in the light of day, but I have no trouble finding the hole I was standing by the night of the collapse. From its edge I can see straight down into the basement where four people died.
The floor around me is covered in a layer of dust, and there’s a mandala of footprints in the center of the room. Leaving a fresh set of tracks across the floor, I look for the alcove where I hid the last time I was here. I find it and see that the sleeping bag is still here, bunched up in a corner. The dust on top of it is undisturbed, and it looks like a pile of garbage. It’s an unexpected bonus.
When I pick up the sleeping bag, I realize it’s kid-size. I shake it off outside the nearest window, over a patch of weeds behind the building. As the dust blows away, a face emerges. It’s Yoda. He’s standing in front of a tree looking smug, both hands on his cane. I recognize the image in a heartbeat. Years ago, Kat’s mother bought a bag just like this one at a thrift store in town and gave it to us for our fort. On cold days, Kat and I used to huddle beneath it for warmth.
I’m not the kind of guy who usually believes in signs, but I’m pretty sure this means something. Why was it here the night of the party? Could it actually be the same bag from the fort? I reach inside and run my hand over the lining. Kat’s bag had a tiny rip midway down that formed a pocket. We used to leave notes for each other there. My heart skips a beat when I feel a square of paper tucked inside. So the sleeping bag is hers, but why is it here at the factory? I pinch the paper between my fingers and pull it out. As I unfold it, I realize it isn’t a note. It’s a hastily taken photograph of an architectural blueprint, and it’s been printed out on regular copy paper. The image is blurry and off-center, but I can make out what looks like a wall covered with dozens of hexagonal windows. It almost looks like a wasps’ nest. I squint and hold the page closer, but I can’t make out the fine print. Why did Kat have it? And why did she hide it in the sleeping bag? When I find her in Otherworld, I’ll ask her what it means.
I tuck the page into my duffel, retrieve my Otherworld gear and spread the sleeping bag out on the floor. Only when I lie down does it occur to me that I’m about to take the biggest risk of my life. I’ll be leaving my body behind in an abandoned factory where it will be utterly defenseless. I could get eaten by raccoons and never know the difference. And no one knows where I am. If something goes wrong in Otherworld, there’ll be no one around to remove the disk.
All the more reason to act fast and get to the exit, I decide. I strap on the visor, attach the disk to the back of my skull, and I’m gone.