Then he put on the breastplate. It was cool to be able to do something like putting on magical armor so easily, like a blindfolded soldier assembling a rifle. He wished he had not had to join up with a brainwashing evil empire in order to gain the knowledge. Apparently he had to learn things the very, very hard way. The breastplate hugged his wound, and pain leveled him. If he hadn’t been propped up by the armor he would have fallen over. His brain wanted to pass out to save him from the hurt. He ordered it not to. He was very commanding. He rewarded his brain for not passing out by encasing it in a very cool-looking helmet he grabbed off the wall. His face was now the only exposed part of his body, and all the bits of armor seemed to realize they were in place and they emitted many more clicks and whirs and then there was the hiss of gas filling the cavity between his skin and the armor.
All at once, his shoulder didn’t hurt anymore. He felt universally great. He wondered if there were nano-machines in the gas, stitching up his wounds. He should have asked Doondredge, during his evil period.
Tom’s most common dream involved flying. In the dream, he was going about his business and suddenly, he remembered that he knew how to fly. He wondered why he’d forgotten and why he didn’t remember more often as he relaxed into himself and then lifted off the ground into effortless, thought-propelled flight, which would usually take him to the roof of some girl from school’s house, though not in a pervy way.
It was like that with the Vapornaut armor. He just relaxed and a hundred different points on the armor became tiny jet engines emitting little cones of fire.
He rose.
He willed the suit to take him forward through the arch, following the trail of bloody Elgg footprints into a large, empty hallway. It was night, and everyone was asleep, just the way Kyle and the king had planned it. The roaring of the Vortex was louder now. Tom followed the prints, and the roar grew and grew. He followed them to a dead end and looked up. There was an opening the size of a manhole cover. He floated up and through the hole, and found himself in the enormous, deafening chamber between the Vortex and the Executive Orb. His feet touched ground again. He looked toward the Orb and saw the Elgg who had nearly killed him.
It was almost all the way up the spiraling path, fighting the world-wind. He could still intercept it and buy himself some time. Tom stepped off the precipice. The fall would have done to him what the Elgg had tried to, if he had not been wearing a suit of auto-flying armor. The jets went into overdrive and Tom began to fly across the chasm between himself and the Elgg. About halfway across, he entered the jet stream blowing straight out of the Vortex, and the jets on his armor became almost unnecessary. He was catapulted toward his target. The Elgg turned its head. An expression crossed its face like it was thinking, Didn’t I just fatally injure you? They were kind of cute when they were confused, Tom thought.
It started bounding at double speed. Tom landed on the path in time to see it placing its paw up to the surface of the orb. Just like when Tchoobrayitch had done it, the print triggered a mechanism that started the Orb floating out from the wall.
Tom was running toward it. It turned and barked a plume of purple electric fire at him. The Vapornaut armor deflected it, but Tom held up his hands up to block his still-exposed face, and when he brought them down again, he saw that the Elgg had skittered up to the top of the Orb. Tom took a jet-assisted leap, and just as he was closing in on the beast, it spread its wings and dropped down, disappearing, leaving only the glassy, unbroken Orb top for Tom to land on.
On the one hand, this was very bad. It meant Tom had a limited amount of time before the Elgg roused the king and whoever else, and the plan was completely ruined.
On the other hand, he had seen a new expression in the Elgg’s eyes: fear. No one had ever been afraid of him before. Not even animals. He’d walk by squirrels on the way to school that wouldn’t dart out of his path the way they did when other people walked by, even if those other people were four years old. There wasn’t time to enjoy how cool and intimidating he felt, though. He had to go do the job.
He leapt into the wind and found that flying toward the Vortex was much, much harder than flying in the opposite direction. He held his hand up again to keep his eyelids from being blown off. All he had to do was fly far enough into the giant rock-encircled hole and drop the grenade.
Where was the grenade?
It was in his left hand. He’d picked it up without even thinking about it. He just assumed he would have forgotten it. It seemed like a Tom thing to do. But he’d grabbed it without anybody reminding him to, without even reminding himself. It was like there was a more competent person inhabiting him, but he also got to stay inside of his body and see everything through his own eyes.
The straps of the plastic bag containing the grenade began to stretch as the wind blew it backward. Tom was afraid they’d break and he’d end up reversing the Worldflow of the chasm floor instead of the Vortex like he was supposed to, so he unwrapped it as he flew. There was nowhere to put the empty bag. His armor didn’t have pockets. He let it go. It flew right up into his face, temporarily blinding and suffocating him, held there by the wind. He ripped it away. He held the bag out as far as he could and let it flutter away. It flew back toward the Orb opening on the far side. He felt bad about littering in a world that wasn’t his own, but then again, he was in a particularly evil part of that world. They probably littered all the time. This was a just and righteous littering.
The rim of the Vortex drew close. He couldn’t tell if the armor had somehow enhanced his hearing or if the howling wind was truly the loudest noise he’d ever heard. He entered the cave. He didn’t know how deep you had to go before you reached the point where one world became another one. It was even darker than it had been in the void. He wanted to just throw the grenade, but he was pretty certain that if he did, the wind would blow it backward, and he would be like a klutzy character in an old silent movie throwing a baseball and having it land behind him. But he also didn’t want to be over the line that separated worlds when the thing went off. He wondered if it would actually “go off,” if it would explode, or what. He hoped he could observe it without getting pulverized by the cross-world super-wind.
He held the bottle out in front of him and crawled forward, through the air. The jets on his armor were working so hard he looked like the grand finale of a fireworks show that never ended. The ultra-dark got darker somehow.
Then the bottle wasn’t in his hand anymore. But he hadn’t dropped it. It had been pulled away. He could suddenly feel the incredible wind on the fingers of the hand that had been holding it. He held the hand up to his face. In the light of his armor’s jet flames, he could see that the fingertips of the armor had been snatched off along with the bottle, by the portal. He was lucky: he still had his actual fingertips.
He was wasting precious milliseconds being concerned about his fingers. He turned himself around. The wind buffeted him forward toward the Vortex’s mouth, and then it didn’t anymore. The wind died. Compared to the unreal sound of the wind, the hundreds of jets on his armor sounded like the lightest spring breeze.
Then it started up again, twice as hard, in the opposite direction. On the one hand, that was good: it meant the grenade had worked. On the other hand, it was bad, because the jets immediately kicked in full blast to compensate, yet Tom was still barely crawling forward against the Vortex’s suction. He crested the mouth. Something was flying at him. It hit him in the face, spreading and sticking and flapping. It covered his face. He reached up and pulled it away: it was that stupid bag. His littering had come back to haunt him. He let it go and looked up just in time to see something much bigger coming at him full-speed: the Orb.
He rolled away to the left and watched the Executive Orb go shooting by, exiting perfectly through the rocky mouth of the Vortex. It worked! It actually worked! He had done something!
As the Orb went by, Tom saw
a shattered spot on its surface, an outline, like when a cartoon character runs fast through a wall, leaving a brick silhouette of their tortured form. He looked back toward the big circular hole in the wall where the Orb once nested and saw a figure in Vapornaut armor framed by the night sky, all jets blazing on full: King Doondredge.
It was dark in here now that the light given off by the Orb was burning in some other world. Tom couldn’t see if Doondredge was coming after him or trying to fly in the other direction and escape. Either option was unacceptable. He willed his suit to fly at his enemy. It became very clear a moment later that the king was headed right at him, thrusters on full, aided by the Vortex’s suction. He was coming at Tom fast.
Tom went to roll left again. Doondredge missed him, but wheeled around, leaving a sparking arc in his wake, and punched Tom in the side of the head. Tom was thankful for the helmet for one half second, until his head hit the inside of the helmet. Why didn’t they pad these things? Then he was grateful for the helmet again two seconds later when automatic healing mist made the side of his head feel better.
Doondredge was fighting his way back to Tom through midair. All Tom could think was, He’s not supposed to be in here. The Vortex: he’s supposed to be in there.
Tom held up the gauntlet of his left hand to block another punch. He could punch back, right? He was wearing strength-equalizing super-armor, after all. He swung at Doondredge’s head. It ended up being more of an openhanded slap that bounced harmlessly off his enemy’s helmet. Doondredge looked at him now with more confusion than anger. They were in a midair battle to the death. Why was his enemy slapping him?
With his opponent shocked by his lame tactics, Tom took the opportunity to do something even lamer. He reached out with the glove that no longer had fingertips and poked Doondredge in the eye. Hard. He left his fingers there. Doondredge swatted his hand away. Tom could see him scream in pain but he couldn’t hear it over the wind. He saw blood droplets get sucked away into the abyss. Had he just gouged an eye? Was that how that worked? Doondredge gritted his teeth and floated back a foot or two. Then he punched Tom square in his exposed face.
It seemed like absolutely everything that had happened in his life recently plunged Tom into a pit of blackness, but somehow, the punch didn’t. He kind of wished it had, though. His nose now was a blood geyser that would have made the elementary school nurse call in an exorcist. The red stuff was leaking away in a straight line, water-droplets-on-the-space-shuttle style, into the Vortex, chasing Doondredge’s eye blood. His enemy was nowhere to be seen.
He felt someone pawing at his back. Tom tried to flip around but he couldn’t. Doondredge was behind him, holding him, and Tom could feel his hands clanging around on the back of his armor. Not hitting. Just working.
Tom started to feel flecks of something hitting him in the face. He looked toward the hole where the Orb had once been. Its edges were fraying, flying off toward the Vortex, sending little shards of kingdom past Doondredge and Tom and into the next world. Tom had no choice but to watch as this happened; he still couldn’t turn around. Then the hole was eclipsed by a white moon that was very bright and very close and actually not a moon at all but the Wall, uncoupled from the nameless kingdom, resized by Kyle, carried by Kyle. Kyle was flying. He wore no armor. Just jeans and sneakers and his Drama Department T-shirt. Tom found that he was not jealous that Kyle could fly. Tom found he was proud.
Kyle was bearing the Wall from underneath, Atlas style. He swung his legs over the edge of the hole as he passed through. He glided out over the chasm, holding the big pearl of a protection spell. Hopefully it had the strength to hold back a Vortex that now wanted everything in this world to come through it, even if it had to tear it all apart. Kyle would have to place it just so over the Vortex’s mouth. It was energy and wouldn’t just move there by itself the way the Orb had.
Suddenly Tom could turn around. Doondredge had let him go after seeing Kyle and becoming absolutely hypnotized with hate. Doondredge hovered, his jets burning steadily, and raised his right arm, pointing his fist at Kyle. Things on his fist began to grow and change and whir and spark. His armored hand was taking on a new shape.
Tom had an opening. How should he use it? Doondredge had seemed to be looking for something on the back of Tom’s armor. What if Tom looked for the same thing on the back of Doondredge’s? Tom flew around behind him. Doondredge looked back and smirked, as if telling Tom he could do his worst, he was in no way afraid of a slapping, eye-gouging patsy. He refocused on Kyle, who was now halfway over the chasm.
Tom had no idea what he was looking for. Some sort of off switch? He should’ve just punched him square in the face. But what if it had ended up being another slap? No, what he really should have done is just caught the Elgg before it could wake him; then the bastard would already be in the Vortex with the rest of his cronies. He pounded on the back of Doondredge’s armor. Nothing. There was no button. No switch, no panel. There was nothing. He pounded harder. He reared back. He punched.
The armor cracked at the small of Doondredge’s back. He had punched through the diamond or the crystal or whatever it was and gas was leaking out all around his hand. Doondredge’s armor’s jets sputtered and died. Kyle was almost at the Vortex mouth. Chunks of crystal were flying everywhere. It would tear the kingdom apart if Kyle didn’t cap it soon.
Tom ripped his gauntlet out of Doondredge’s back. The king started to fall to the chasm bottom, then was caught by the riptide of world-wind and sucked toward the Vortex. Tom saw that Doondredge’s armored hand had changed fully. It was no longer a fist. It was sharp. Something ignited on the king’s wrist, and the sharp projectile was launched, leaving a bare hand behind.
Doondredge tumbled and disappeared into the Vortex, but the projectile flew away from him in the opposite direction. It was a fist-sized missile, and it was headed straight for Kyle.
Tom’s brain commanded the armor to fly as fast as possible. Faster, even. The missile was arcing, fighting the Vortex wind, and Tom was catching up to it. It was closing on Kyle. A hundred meters, Tom thought. Why did he always try to judge distances? He didn’t even know how many feet were in a meter.
Could he catch it? Yes, he could. But not with his hands.
Tom didn’t think. He just flew up between his friend and the missile that wanted to kill his friend.
The missile’s path was a straight line, Tom’s path had been a curved one, and the lines intersected right at the chest of Tom’s armor.
And then the missile went through the armor.
And then Tom was in a blackness more complete than the one he experienced when Kyle had teleported them into the throne room, more complete than the void, more complete than any blackness he could have imagined when he was in second grade, lying in bed under Pokémon sheets.
And then he wasn’t anywhere.
Tom heard a voice he recognized.
“He’s alive! Kyle, you’re a genius, my son!”
It was a voice he recognized but he’d never heard it use that tone before, so he almost didn’t recognize it. It was the king of Crap Kingdom, and when Tom opened his eyes, Kyle’s face was close to his, and the king’s was farther away, and the king was clapping and smiling and hooting.
“Welcome back,” Kyle said to Tom.
“Thanks, Kilroy,” Tom said.
“Kilroy,” the king said, “who in the blazes is Kilroy?”
“It’s what Tom used to call me in like sixth grade,” Kyle said.
“Tom? He’s Tom?” the king said. “No, this was not the agreement. When I authorized you to use the spell, I did not authorize the reviving of Tom, I authorized the reviving of J!”
“Jason?” Tom said. He couldn’t help himself. “He’s gone.”
“What do—how do you know about—what do you mean?” the king said.
Tom sat up. They were in the thro
ne room of the castle in Crap Kingdom. Shattered Vapornaut armor lay piled to one side. Tom was still wearing the black T-shirt. It had a rip in the center, but his torso was miraculously unharmed. He was sure that it had been harmed, and then Kyle had made it not that way.
“I was in the void during the mission,” Tom said, “and I met this . . . soul, I guess, and he’s, like, soul-neighbors with J—with Jason. And he told me all about him. And then all of the sudden I was in the middle of the Ghelm kingdom, and I’d been injured, or my body had, and J was gone and I was there instead.”
“Impossible!” the king said. “He’s lying. He’s merely trying to take credit for J’s actions.”
“Then how would I know what happened after that? Because I got in some armor and I flew out and—”
“Sorcery! The same way you know these things about J. Ghelm sorcery. And I will not hear any more of it.”
“Listen, I don’t know why I ended up back in my body,” Tom said. “I don’t know if it was an accident I ended up there or if J got hurt so he figured he would rather spend the rest of my life on Earth in my body instead of dying there, for real, in the Ghelm kingdom—”
“And that,” the king said, “is blasphemy. You came from Earth to betray and sow doubt. Jason came here to teach and heal. Kyle is the same way.”
“Wait,” Kyle said. “J’s from Earth?”
“England, I think, judging from when I heard that voice recording in his laboratory,” Tom said. “Is that why you talk that way?” he asked the king.
“We spent every waking moment together,” the king said. “Regardless of his origins, for you to besmirch his legacy is a greater crime than anything you have yet done. You will be sent back to Earth at once and you will never show your face here again, on pain of death. Kyle, send him back at once.”
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