“It’s not him!”
Hyko turned to her, a great smirk on his rugged face. Sir Kendall had come off as so arrogant and domineering, but it was nothing compared to Hyko, who seemed every inch the outlaw. “There’s a certain King Solomon fable—not the baby one, but another,” Hyko said, pale blue eyes glittering. “The Queen of Sheba presents King Solomon with two identical flowers and asks if he can tell which is the real one. The flowers look identical. They even smell the same. Then a bee flies up and lands on one, and the riddle is solved. You see, King Solomon knows that a bee will always choose the genuine flower.” Hyko stood, apparently satisfied with his inspection, and kicked Paul again, in the ribs.
“Uf.” Paul curled up, holding his middle.
Alix couldn’t breathe.
“Now in our story, I’m King Solomon, of course. You, my dear, are the bee, and you have chosen this Sir Kendall to save. Therefore, this is the genuine Sir Kendall. No woman would choose a fake Sir Kendall over the real thing.”
“No, Hyko, you’re wrong! Tell him Paul!”
Paul’s laugh sounded strange. “One must never take a lady’s word for the quality of her jewels or the names of her lovers.”
“Stop talking like that!” she yelled.
Hyko beamed. “And you’re going to tell me that’s not Sir Kendall?”
“Yes!”
Hyko waved a lazy hand out to where the real Sir Kendall lay. “You only confirmed what I knew. The real Sir Kendall wouldn’t be caught dead in a T-shirt that says Moogie’s Clam Bake. Now, get to your task. Any more talking and I’ll make him even sorrier.”
Sir Kendall watched the proceedings from his spot on the grass outside the cage. Why not slip out of his handcuffs? Was he waiting? Biding his time?
Alix hacked at the rope, wishing it were Hyko she was hacking at, a dream that became all the more impossible when he instructed her to throw the knife into the woods. He then made her enter the cage and tie Paul’s wrists and ankles to the bars with square knots. “His left to the left side of the cage, his right to the right side, and his ankles together to the end. And don’t think I won’t check your work. Every fuck-up loses you a digit.” He shoved his big gun into his belt, flicked his hand under his coat, and produced a small hatchet.
She crawled to Paul’s side. His chest rose and fell with alarming rapidity. She looped one of the ropes around his right wrist. “I am so sorry,” she whispered, hands shaking.
“Tighter,” he whispered. “You won’t hurt me, Alix.”
“Hey girlfriend,” Hyko said. “Talking’ll cost you a pinky.”
“Jesus!” She wiped away a tear, trying to figure out how to stop this madness. Paul gazed over at Sir Kendall. Looking at Sir Kendall usually upset him, but now it seemed to calm him. His dark hair stuck in clumps to his forehead; a line of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Sir Kendall watched Paul back. What had happened between them?
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“Shh.” Paul spoke without taking his eyes from Sir Kendall. “It’ll be okay.”
She stifled a sob. Why had he suddenly decided to be Sir Kendall’s savior?
“Hey kids, I have an idea,” Hyko strolled nearer. “I was going to save the thumb removal part of the festivities for later, but—” Hyko tapped the ground next to Paul’s hand with the hatchet. “That’s like saving dessert for after dinner. I say, let’s begin our festivities now.”
Alix gasped. “You can’t!”
“Don’t worry, our festivities will be awesome all the way through.”
Panic rose in her throat. “Hyko, you’re an idiot. It’s not him.”
Paul extended his thumb outward from his hand, pale against the dirty metal floor of the cage. He had the look she’d seen in the ring—the calm, beautiful eyes that saw everything. It broke her heart. This was a man with a code, a man who fought for what he believed in. “No,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” Paul said. “I need to step up for him.”
“You don’t need to step up for him!” Tears rolled down her cheeks and her heart burst with the most overwhelming sensation she’d ever experienced. It had always been Paul. This was the man she’d dreamed about, the man she’d fantasized about.
The man she loved.
“Alix, listen—” Paul was starting to say something, but Hyko was there, pressing his boot to Paul’s cheek, garbling his words.
Fear and rage boiled up in her. “Get off him.”
“Why so gloomy, GFF? I’ll have you know I’ve sharpened this hatchet, which is far more than Sir Kendall did for me. Do you remember, Sir Kendall? The knife you used to sever my thumbs was like a dull steak knife from a church cafeteria. Do you know how that felt?” Hyko turned to her. “Let’s just say it was other than the best feeling ever.” Hyko stepped down harder, squishing Paul’s face even more.
“Get off!” Alix flew at Hyko, two hands whomping onto his chest, pushing him off Paul. He stumbled backwards, banging back on the cage bars, smiling all the while, as though he thought it was funny. She didn’t care that he had the hatchet; she hauled off and hit him in the chest—once, again. She went for his smirking face.
He fended off her blows with one arm, laughing. “Girl can hit. You’d prefer it later? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? I suppose we could hold off.”
“Leave him alone, Hyko! None of this is real. The thumbs thing didn’t even happen in real life. Sir Kendall did not do that. Just listen to me, please. None of what you think happened ever happened.”
Hyko smiled a glittering, toothy smile. “A lot of desperate people have tried to stop me from doing a lot of bad things, but no one’s ever gone that route. Nothing is real? That’s your gambit? Points for originality.”
“Listen to me: I conjured both Sir Kendall and you with a kind of magical computer program. I have this process where I can transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional reality. I make pictures into real-life things, right?” She watched Sir Kendall, who followed with interest, but he didn’t look surprised. Or was it an act? Maybe he planned to ambush Hyko. “I know it sounds crazy, and it sort of is, but you’re not from this world. You’re from a comic book, and Sir Kendall’s from a commercial.”
Hyko raised a finger. “Perfectly logical as this all sounds…”
“Go look it up. Derangerous dot com. You know it’s farfetched that Sir Kendall somehow cloned himself right under your nose. He didn’t. I made him. Paul isn’t a clone, he’s a fighter from Los Angeles who played Sir Kendall in the commercial. And you both are going to wink back out tomorrow night at seven forty-six.” She looked down at Paul, tied to the floor of the cage. “It takes a day for the stuff to appear, a week to wink out. And everything weirdly improves. That’s why the necklace was so amazing. Those rubies.”
Hyko pointed to the keychain gleaming in the grass nearby. “Bring me that keychain. I presume one of those keys locks this cage.”
She glared at him.
“Go ahead, or I’ll take your thumbs.”
Still she glared.
“Tempting, I know.” Hyko swung the hatchet. “As far as body mod goes, it blows the earlobe-hole and lip-ring set completely out of the water. One…two…”
She retrieved the keys for Hyko, hating herself. She’d brought a man to life out of selfishness and thoughtlessness. She had been like poison to Paul. To the whole world. She would find a way to make it right. She had to.
Hyko threw her three pairs of handcuffs. With all the weaponry and handcuffs in his pockets, it was a wonder he could walk. “Get in there and cuff his wrists to their respective sides of the cage, and then cuff your wrist to his.”
She complied, clicking the metal circle around her wrist, then Paul’s.
Hyko came over and kneeled. “Your cloning operation wasn’t even on my radar, I’ll give you that,” he said to Paul, jerking at the ropes and tightening the handcuffs. “Or was it surgery?”
“Hear me ou
t,” Alix said. “Both of you were transformed from computer images into three-dimensional reality last week at the exact same time. Let me just ask you, can you name one TV show or movie you saw last month? Can you answer questions about your childhood? Have you noticed that everybody else in the world can? Somebody else dreamed you up—you and your whole sunspot weapon plan, bringing a second Dark Age and drugging the water supply…”
Hyko adjusted his hat, frowning down at Paul. “Well, well, someone’s been a busy secret agent.”
“It’s all online, dude,” Alix said. “In your comic book. This is not your world. And Sir Kendall didn’t hack off your thumbs; the girl who wrote the Derangerous comic book did that…in the story she made up. And when I brought you and Sir Kendall into this dimension from the same picture, your stories meshed.”
Hyko smirked. “Yes, yes, I’ll take that under advisement.” He took out a syringe and shoved it into Paul’s thigh. His thumbless hand reminded her eerily of a Muppet hand.
“What are you doing?”
“A painful immobilization agent.”
Paul’s gasp was like a shot to her gut. “God! He’s already roped, cuffed, and in a cage.”
“He’s Sir Kendall Nicholas the Third, my dear.” Hyko stood, walked out, and shut the cage door on them both with a loud clang. “Quite the cage. Handy.” He dropped the keys in his pocket.
She kneeled next to Paul and put her free hand on his sweaty chest. He was breathing fast. She rested her hand on his heart. He was so strong and brave. “Paul,” she whispered.
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t. He was tied up and being threatened by a deranged bully, just like when he was a kid. And now he’d been shot up with some kind of horrible poison that would—what? Immobilize him? While giving him pain?
She looked out at Sir Kendall, still there on the grass, watching them. He looked…calm. “What are you doing with…” she motioned to Sir Kendall.
Hyko strolled up to him. “I could use a Sir Kendall double, and every man has his price. Or every clone.” Hyko patted Sir Kendall down. “I’m hoping we become great friends.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Hyko released the cuff that held Sir Kendall to the cage, yanked him up by the collar, and re-cuffed his hands together.
Sir Kendall allowed it, turning over Alix’s words in his mind. So he and Hyko had landed in an alternate world.
Hyko didn’t buy it, but Sir Kendall did. It was the only thing that made sense; it explained his communications problems, the vivid quality of details, how different he was from the others—stronger and smarter, yet with a disturbing lack of mundane knowledge. And the magic book! It was so outrageous and so obvious, Sir Kendall wanted to laugh. He’d even worried he was the clone at one point.
Instead he was a character from a commercial.
Hyko pulled him around the carriage house. Sir Kendall went, walking heavily. The Paul walk.
Nothingness, Paul had called him. But surely he was more than that. Surely a mere commercial character didn’t feel all the dread and pain he felt around Paul. And the urge to save him now that he was under threat—where did that come from? And he had his own world to save, too. He wasn’t nothingness; he wouldn’t accept it.
One of the perks of wearing Paul’s clothes and shoes was not having the usual array of weapons on him for Hyko to find. It had helped to fool Hyko. Luckily, Hyko hadn’t bothered to examine Sir Kendall’s toenails, or he would’ve discovered one last weapon. Hyko had also made the mistake of cuffing Sir Kendall’s hands in front of him. More comfortable, but less secure. Hyko would’ve never done that if he knew who he really was.
Sir Kendall felt thankful for Hyko’s famously bold and rash decisiveness.
What’s more, Sir Kendall felt positively liberated to know he’d never truly killed anybody or even taken Hyko’s thumbs, at least not in this world, where it seemed to matter more. It was like waking up to find a distressing memory was nothing but a nightmare.
He was tempted to devise a way to stay in this place with its robust food and smells and parents and lawn statues and love. To stay in this place where good people led sunny lives that weren’t connected to dark, snarled plots. To stay in a place where he wasn’t a monster.
Surely the magic book held the key to staying. But what about Hyko? They’d popped in together. If one stayed, wouldn’t the other stay, too?
It was only a matter of time until Hyko realized the truth of this, too, and got the same thought about staying. Good God, Sir Kendall could only imagine the chaos Hyko could create if he found the magic book and figured out a way to stay. Luckily, Sir Kendall had hidden it. They would go back to their world.
Sir Kendall had cherished that world once; he’d cherished it enough that he’d been desperate to keep Hyko from destroying it. He found, when he thought of it, that he still cared a great deal. The launch was still set to go off there. People would die. He couldn’t let that happen. He would complete his mission and save that world.
Hyko opened the door and pushed Sir Kendall into the house.
To save his world, he needed to know the location and timing of the launch. Surely it was more than a day away. Once he coaxed that information from Hyko, he’d find a way to turn the tables before they blinked back, so that he could return with Hyko subdued.
Apparently, he had twenty-six hours in which to accomplish this.
It went against everything in him to pretend to be Paul with the slouchy walk and the hard expression. But this was the game now. As long as Hyko thought he was Paul, he’d underestimate him.
Was it possible Paul understood that? Was this Paul’s way of teaming up with him?
Yet, Paul had stopped fighting him before Hyko arrived on the scene. That hadn’t made sense.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Hyko said, pushing Sir Kendall through the kitchen and into the living room. “Actually, two. One, why were you fighting him? And then, two, why say you’re Sir Kendall? Why protect him?”
Sir Kendall thought fast. Paul obviously knew the truth about the magic, but he hadn’t when he first arrived. He’d thought Sir Kendall was a crazy man who’d had his face surgically altered. Sir Kendall decided to play that Paul.
Hyko shoved him onto the broken couch and took the Italian chair. He crossed his long legs, and waited, gun at the ready. “Well?”
“Hell if I’ll take the place of that foppish ascot,” Sir Kendall said, using Paul’s accent.
“Foppish ascot.” Hyko smiled. Big.
Sir Kendall swallowed and looked away. Hyko had always been a looker—handsomeness was one of the ways he ensnared his female agents—but he looked even more glorious now, somehow. He had a big mouth and a big Adam’s apple and long fingers that looked all the longer due to the absence of his thumbs. And the palest of blue eyes. Those eyes would fool you.
“The man’s a nut job,” Sir Kendall added.
Hyko twisted his generous lips, lost in thought.
Sir Kendall pondered what Alix had said about the rubies increasing in brilliance. Had Hyko increased in brilliance, too? Had he?
“Why protect him, then?” Hyko asked. “Why claim to be him when I showed up?”
Sir Kendall shrugged as he’d seen Paul shrug. “No offense, but you seem to be playing the nut job game with him, and you had the gun. I figured, if Sir Kendall wanted to be Sir Kendall…”
Hyko eyed him with those big blue eyes. “Thought there might be something in it for you?”
“Why not?”
“You were wrong. Sir Kendall spoke up out of a sense of honor,” Hyko said. “All very boring.”
Sir Kendall’s heart swelled.
“You’re a surgical double?”
“I’m done talking to you.” Sir Kendall clamped his mouth shut, trying to hold his face as Paul typically did. Fifty percent of a disguise was how you held your face.
“You’ll see life with me is far superior to that of a double.” Hyko strolled around th
e place, then came back to stand behind Sir Kendall. He touched his hair, tugged on it a bit, as if to test its strength. “It is quite a likeness. Not perfect, but...” He walked back around to the front of him and stared into his eyes. “…compelling.” He proceeded to grill Sir Kendall on what his instructions were, what he knew of Sir Kendall’s plan.
Sir Kendall, as Paul now, played dumb. “He has my face,” he blurted at one point. “And I don’t like it. How would you like it?”
“Interesting,” Hyko said. Sir Kendall could only guess what his old enemy was thinking. “Can you tell me what Sir Kendall has out in his car?”
Damn. Sir Kendall shrugged.
Hyko went into the closet and came back with bungee cords and duct tape, which he used to truss him up further. He’d have to hop to move. Sir Kendall could get free…given twenty minutes and the right tools.
“No offense.” Hyko strolled out of the house. A crash. Sir Kendall closed his eyes. That would be the windshield of his Alfa.
Hyko came back in with the crude radio and set it on the coffee table. It was mounted on a slab of wood—wires, antenna, battery pack, crystal tuner.
“This puts a new light on things. Do you know what I’ve been up to, Paul? You mind if I call you Paul?”
Sir Kendall shrugged. Yes, he had wondered what Hyko had gotten up to, beyond that one appearance in town.
“Well then, Paul, I’ll tell you. I was checking on a certain launch program I have. It’s in a faraway place; I had to travel there by plane. I had to, let’s just say, put the screws to a lot of thumbs to get down there, because bank accounts were jammed up. Do you know why? Why I had to go down there?”
Sir Kendall shook his head.
“Because I found myself out of communication with my people. And do you know what I found when I arrived there?”
Where? Where? If only Hyko would give him a location! Sir Kendall shook his head.
“Nothing. None of my equipment.” Hyko took off his hat and set it aside. A long, golden lock of hair fell over his eye as he toyed with the makeshift controls on the radio. The signal whined. “It was as if my sunspot machine had been stolen. I blamed it on Sir Kendall. I’d imagined he’d stolen it and was trying to make me think I was crazy by creating a communications bubble around me. I could get on the Web easily enough, but none of my people were accessible. I could find a pizza parlor, but my home in Malibu was wiped off Googlemaps. It was all so strange. I was coming back here to confront Sir Kendall.” He worked the crude radio a bit more.
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