“No!” Bryson pulled him to a stop. “It’s over there!” He pointed to the other side of the disk.

Michael had learned to trust his friend’s gaming instincts a long time ago, so he didn’t argue. He turned and followed Bryson’s directions. Underneath them the stone felt like sand, gritty and seeming to shift with each step. A splintering crack sounded to their right, and with horror Michael saw a ten-foot-wide chunk of the disk crumble away and fall into the cloudy abyss.

“Look!” Sarah yelled, pointing to the left of the section that had just disappeared.

They were close enough to see the number four. Bryson had been wrong.

“Sorry!” he yelled.

The disk spun again, throwing all of them to the ground. They landed on top of each other, scrambling to right themselves. Michael put his hand down and felt a shot of panic when it hit nothing but air. His elbow scraped across rough stone, and he jerked his arm back from a jagged gap as Bryson pulled him away from it. Michael landed on top of Sarah again, who grunted and pushed him off, but he held on. The whole disk was trembling now, as if they were at the epicenter of an earthquake, and the terrible sounds of cracking stone relentlessly filled the air.

Michael knew they couldn’t afford to be careful anymore. He jumped to his feet and grabbed both of his friends by the hands.

“Come on!”

Yanking them along, Michael sprinted across the disk, jumping over several more gaping holes that had formed. To his left, another huge piece of the stone broke away from the edge and fell, then another to his right. In the middle, where the old Satchel had sat in her chair, a section exploded in a spray of rocks, the dull purple light of the clouds shining through the hole when it was gone. Michael kept going, running and jumping, staring at the spot exactly opposite the four o’clock section they’d just left. At the moment there was no Portal where they needed one.

They were just a few feet away when the disk spun, throwing them once more to the stone. Booming cracks sounded louder than ever, and Michael didn’t have to look back to know that half the disk had just disappeared into the abyss. He got to his knees, as did his friends, and stared at the ten o’clock spot. There was still no Portal.

“Come on!” Michael screamed at the empty sky. “Come on, you sorry piece of—”

A black rectangle winked into existence, a flat plane hovering just a few feet away. Michael knew it wouldn’t be there long, that there was a chance they’d miss when they jumped. But the time for thinking was long gone.

He got to his feet and pushed Bryson toward the Portal. Bryson ran, leaped through its inky surface, and was swallowed by the blackness. Sarah was right behind him. Her foot slipped but not enough to make a difference. She made it.

There was another explosion of thunder and the world filled with light and sound. Michael ran forward and crouched, jumping just as the disk started spinning again. The momentum flipped him around so he faced the crumbling stone—he was flying backward. He saw what was left of the disk, a sea of rocks and a mist of dust. For a moment he didn’t know if his body was going in the right direction or what would happen to him. That one moment stretched on forever.

But then his back hit the Portal and the sky turned black.

CHAPTER 14

SPOOKED

1

He landed on a wooden floor with a hard thump, and a jolt of pain shot up his spine. Faded flower-patterned wallpaper, frayed and peeling at its edges, covered the walls of a wide hallway that stretched out in front of and behind him. Above, a lone lightbulb hung from the ceiling, providing a dull glow. Bryson was lying next to him, stretched out with his head down on his arms, and Sarah had already gotten to her knees, though she looked a little dazed.

“We sure like to cut it close, don’t we?” Bryson muttered.

Sarah reached down and poked Michael. “How’d you figure it out? Ten o’clock?”

Michael was feeling pretty good about himself, but when he moved, his whole body ached. Groaning, he sat up anyway. “That stupid riddle was just describing how the number looked. Think about it.”

Bryson and Sarah exchanged a glance, and Michael could see it click for both of them at the same time.

“A tower,” Sarah said. “Then a dark and hollow moon.”

“A one and a zero.” Bryson was shaking his head as if he was the dumbest person on the planet.

“Sorry I’m so brilliant,” Michael said. “ ’Tis a burden I must bear.”

Sarah started to smile, but it dissolved before anything so bright actually formed. “Do you think it’s true?”

“What?” Michael and Bryson asked together.

“Oh, come on. You know.”

“The one and done thing?” Bryson guessed.

Sarah nodded. “Yeah. If we die, that lady said we can’t get back onto the Path.”

Michael had kind of forgotten about that in the madness. “We’ll just have to be careful not to die, I guess.”

“And it could be worse,” Bryson added. “I half expected her to say they were going to break into our code—mess with our Cores. At least we know we’ll go back home safe and sound.”

That didn’t make Michael feel much better. “And fail our … mission, or whatever this is called. Tick off the VNS. Have our lives taken away from us, get thrown in jail, have families killed, who knows? I’d rather be dead.”

“We just can’t die,” Sarah said softly. “It’s not a game anymore. We can’t die and we can’t let each other die. Deal?”

“Of course,” Michael said.

Bryson gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s especially not let me die. If you guys are cool with that.”

The lingering pain in Michael’s back had drained away, and he finally focused on their surroundings a little more. The hallway in which they sat was stretched out into a gloomy darkness, as if it went on forever both ways.

“Where’d they send us now?” Bryson asked. “And how do we know it’s still on the Path?”

Sarah had closed her eyes for a moment to scan the code. “It seems to have the same structure and feel in programming as the stone disk. Complex and almost impossible to read. Fun stuff.”

Michael got to his feet and leaned back against one of the walls. He waited for a few moments to see if anything would change. “It feels like we’re in an old-timey mansion or something.”




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