Gadget — now Gadgorak Prime no more; he was at last himself in his own Dreamworld — found himself standing in the immense, central sword-chamber of the Fortress of Darkness, Dràchynthyr in hand, the Proton Weapon on his back. The Sorceress Discordia and Trahn had disappeared, and in their place stood Dizzy and Mystikite, dressed just as they had been in the Real World — he in his jacket and slacks, and she in her Evangeliojaeger with her guitar strapped to her back. Viktor was here, too, and still wearing his Evangeliojaeger; he blinked and glanced around nervously, obviously unsure of where he was or what he was doing here. Gadget reached up and felt — ah, that was what felt weird; he still had the Mind-Weirding Helm on his head. The dead, wrecked-out, smoldering bodies of the Automatons lay scattered about the chamber all around them. At his feet, a few feet ahead of him, lay the ghost trap; it sat there, a small light on its side blinking, indicating that Lord Greystone lay trapped within it. Gadget blinked once or twice, adjusting to the change in scenery. He stumbled only once as he once more became accustomed to his Otherworld body.

  “Uh, hey guys . . . uh,” he said, “what the hell are you three doing here?”

  “Beats the hell outta me,” said Mystikite, looking around. “One minute we’re standing in Arkenvalen’s summerhome’s back yard . . . the next minute, we’re here. Wherever here is. Looks like somebody got the shit beaten out of ‘em, though. And recently.”

  “What the devil are all these thing?” asked Viktor. “The remains of some robot army?”

  “Yeah, this is my Dreamworld,” said Gadget. “This is where I’ve been coming in my sleep.” He walked over to one of the fallen Automatons and yanked off its front-facing chest panel. He reached in, and grabbed one of the circuit-boards and a handful of wires. He yanked it out. Sparks flew and smoke curled into the air as he did so. He shoved the circuit board and wiring into his pocket.

  “What’d you do that for?” asked Viktor.

  “First rule of being an inventor and being in a strange place,” said Gadget. “You never know when you’ll need spare parts.”

  “Speaking of which, nice place,” remarked Dizzy, nodding as she looked around. “I definitely approve. The dead robots are a nice touch. A few throw-pillows, and this place would spruce-up really well.”

  “So how did we get here?” asked Mystikite.

  “The Twizion Particles,” said Gadget. “It’s the only explanation. Somehow between them, and the telepathic link with Ravenkroft and the alien . . . somehow it must’ve . . . I dunno . . . brought this place to life in a pocket universe of some kind, somehow. I truly have no idea. The alien, though. It has to be here somewhere. Right now we’re in Ravenkroft’s mind. We have to find the alien, wherever it is in here, and then I have to mind-meld with it and you, Dizzy . . . that’s where you come in with your guitar. I think that’s the way this works, at least. We just have to find the fucker, first.”

  “Well how the frak do we do that?” asked Dizzy.

  “The Khaototronometer!” said Mystikite. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the machine. He switched it on, and the display flickered into life. The waveforms on the display fuzzed into existence, and he stared at them for a moment. He then pointed to the long tunnel that Trahn and Gadget had come through earlier to reach the sword-chamber. “That way.”

  “Back to the lower level of the Fortress of Darkness,” said Gadget, mostly to himself. “Great. More Tyrannen. Just what I need.”

  “More what?” asked Dizzy.

  “Yes,” said Viktor, “what are ‘Tyrannen,’ exactly?”

  “Don’t ask that,” said Gadget. “Seriously. They’re foul creatures. And they’ll probably be even fouler now that my mind is wired-up to Ravenkroft’s mind. Who knows what kind of goblins are lurking in that maniac’s skull cavity.”

  “You just had to mention that,” said Mystikite, “didn’t you. Look.” He pointed, and Gadget followed the direction of his gaze. There, entering the sword-chamber from the tunnel, were the Tyrannen. A lot of them. He put two fingers to his temple and . . . nothing. The Mind-Weirding Helm wouldn’t work. Damn. Something about this place . . . the Dreamworld. Maybe it didn’t work here. Who knew.

  Just then, a Tyrannen burst forth from a nearby shadow and grabbed Mystikite with its fat, all-too-human hands. Mystikite responded by whipping around and punching the thing right in its ooze-drooling snout. The Tyrannen had oily-black skin and hulking upper bodies; their fangs were bared, their lips curled into snarls; their tusks a gleamed bone-white. They seemed smarter this time around, sneakier. Beak-like shards of bone covered their misshapen noses; milky-white cataracts covered their eyes, eyes that gazed straight at Gadget, Mystikite, and Dizzy, and that burned with a lust for prey. Each of their good eyes were bright yellow, their slitted pupils like that of cats; they gleamed with murder-bright hatred for all things geek. The large, curly horns of a ram topped misshapen heads only barely that of feral teenage boys, protruding through their manes of greasy-black hair. They still wore their rough-cut football jerseys that looked freshly torn from hides of jackals, and tribal necklaces made of pocket-protectors and the remnants of horn-rimmed glasses. Undeterred by his attack, the creature came at Mystikite again.

  He dodged the thing’s next attack — a flying kick thrown as it gibbered triumphantly — and managed to grab the creature by the ankle, and twisted. The creature yelped in pain and surprise and went sprawling on its back, but kicked again — one, two, once with each foot — one of which connected squarely with Mystikite’s face; he went stumbling backward. Gadget unsheathed Dràchynthyr and stalked forward, a disgusted scowl on his face. He swung the sword high and brought its blade crashing down into the thing’s skull with a mighty splat! Brains and blood flew everywhere, spraying Gadget with pitch-black remnants as the creature dropped. Just then, he spotted two more — one to either side of them, and a third, creeping out from behind him through the doorway they had just emerged from. The first Tyrannen came at them swinging a dagger, and caught Mystikite off guard just as Gadget’s sword-swing missed him; the dagger went deep into Mystikite’s side, and he screamed in pain and dropped to one knee. The second Tyrannen rushed at Gadget, who swung his sword wide and landed a nasty, black-bloody cut on the thing’s chest.

  Undeterred, it reached for the arm of one of the dead Automatons, ripped it off with a loud screech of twisting metal, and threw it at Gadget and Mystikite. Gadget dodged it, but a third Tyrannen grabbed him around the waist, hard, and lifted him off his feet. Gadget kicked backward mightily, landing a blow to the thing’s knee; it cried out a primal shriek of pain and dropped him; he spun around, sword in hand, and beheaded the thing. Black blood geysered to the ceiling, and its body fell, twitching. A fourth Tyrannen emerged and punched Mystikite in his injured side, but that only seemed to make Mystikite angry; he rounded on the thing and began pummeling it with his fists, sucker-punching it in the face, knocking it back and over one of the dead Automatons. It scrambled to its feet and launched a kick at Mystikite, catching him in the stomach. He “oofed” and went hurtling into the wall, but recovered, and came out swinging.

  As Mystikite fought with that Tyrannen, the three that had come through the tunnel entrance loped toward Gadget, Viktor, and Dizzy — none of whom wasted any time defending themselves. Dizzy leveled her Interphase Pistols at the creatures and strafed them with a line of fire. But the three creatures raised their rounded metal shields — they had obviously pilfered them from armor of fallen knights — and somehow, the shields deflected the blasts. Damn! Dizzy rolled her eyes, and leapt forward, her only option to engage them hand-to-hand. She kicked at the shield of one, knocking the shield aside, and it attacked her with its sword, while Gadget charged at the other two with a yell and with Dràchynthyr raised high. They were both armed — one had a mace, and the other had a dagger. He went at the one with the mace first, while Dizzy and Viktor fought with the other two. Dizzy parried the attack of the one with the sword with her gauntlets, and punched it in the face. Viktor punched the other on right in the snout, and sent it stumbling backward; it came at him afresh, swinging its sword, but Viktor caught the blade in his left gauntlet and bent the metal backward, drew the Tyrannen in toward him by yanking on it, and punched it a second time, shattering its front teeth. The monster howled in pain, and staggered backward. It rebounded, and snarled at him, bloody ichor oozing down from its mouth, and came at him, screaming and ululating, and Viktor grabbed it by the throat and snapped its neck. Gadget, meanwhile, whacked his sword into the other Tyrannen’s mace, forcing it away with all his strength, and then kicked at the thing with his foot. His blow connected, and the Tyrannen went stumbling back. He attacked, swinging his sword at it’s neck, but he missed as it ducked backward and swung its mace at him. It crashed into his arm, a solid hit. Dizzy fired her right Interphase Pistol at it, hitting it squarely in the head; sparks flew from the wound as it fell over, dead.

  “Thanks!” he said.

  “No problem!” she shouted.

  Meanwhile, the second of the Tyrannen came at Gadget with its dagger and buried it in his shoulder — the shoulder of his sword-arm. Gadget dropped Dràchynthyr and cried out in pain, and stumbled into the closest dead Automaton with an awful slamming noise. Agony echoed through his body, pulsing from the wound, rivulets of blood covering his arm, as Dizzy continued her battle with the other Tyrannen. The Tyrannen hooted with glee and jumped on him, throwing its weight against him and crushing him against the Automaton. With a yell of fury, Gadget managed to grapple the thing’s shoulders and use its weight against it — it went crashing into the wall as they spun around, Gadget now at the fore, choking the thing, his sweaty, bloody fingers digging into the creature’s awful flesh as he snarled in primal anger, the rage pulsing through him like electricity. No more; never would the Tyrannen victimize him — no, not ever! Its eyes bugged out and it let go of him and shoved him away, bleeding from the throat where his thumb had opened a wound. Gadget stumbled back, tripped over Dràchynthyr, and landed smack on his back.

  One of the other Tyrannen that had swarmed reached down for him, but just then, he heard a mighty yelp of anger and pain come from behind it, followed by the mass of a school-desk. The desk crashed down onto the Tyrannen, and there was Dizzy, and there was Mystikite, the two of them suddenly fighting the other two Tyrannen despite the wound in Mystikite’s side that was busy gushing blood. Mystikite grabbed two pieces of the broken desk — the Tyrannen that Dizzy had crashed it into was splayed out dead on the floor, black blood thump-gushing from a wound in its head — and began fighting with them it, using them as weapons with both hands. He whirled around and clobbered one of the Tyrannen with the metal rod that had belonged to the desk’s frame, and its head whipped to the side, black blood spouting from the concussion, the broken-bone-white of its skull shining through the inkiness that pulsed from its veins. It toppled over and fell, just as the other Tyrannen came at him with its dagger. But Mystikite was ready for it — he spun around and grabbed the Tyrannen by the wrist, twisting and squeezing hard — the thing yelped in pain, and grabbed at him with its other hand. Dizzy brought her repulsivator boot up, and planted it on the Tyrannen’s chest, and kick-shoved the creature into the nearest dead Automaton. The shriek of warping metal; the guttural snarl of the beast. Mystikite cocked back a fist and sucker-punched the other Tyrannen as it came at him.

  Viktor, meanwhile, fought off two more of the creatures by himself; they came at him swinging swords — he parried their blows using the gauntlets of his Evangeliojaeger — and he fired his Interphase Pistols at them, one then the other, putting them both down with headshots. They fell to the ground, smoking holes in their skulls. Another one leapt at him from the shadows, and leapt onto his back, surprising him. He cried out in terror as the thing got him in a headlock and tore at his flesh with its claws, hooting and gibbering, and bit into his neck, drawing blood. Viktor whirled around, almost dancing with the thing on his back, and put his right Interphase Pistol to the thing’s head, next to his own, and fired. The thing’s head exploded like a melon with a firecracker inside of it. Blood, brain, and bone fragments went everywhere, covering the side of his head and the nearby walls as the Tyrannen’s body fell limp off of his back and flopped onto the floor, its neck smoldering.

  The Tyrannen that Mystikite punched reeled from the blow, but then swept its feet under Mystikite and knocked him to the ground. It got up and knelt on him, one knee on either side of his head, hooting in triumph as it reached for its dagger, just as Gadget managed to get to his feet again, holding his shoulder and wincing in pain. He grabbed Dràchynthyr and then kicked the Tyrannen holding Mystikite right in the face. The thing rolled off of Mystikite, who scrabbled up off his back just as Gadget brought down his sword and plunged it into the thing’s chest. The creature let out a black-bloody shriek as more blood sprayed upward and onto Gadget’s face. For a brief moment — in between two moments in which he felt nothing but shock and horror — came a brief feeling of glorious triumph over evil. In that moment, he felt something shift inside him, something powerful and fundamental. The fear . . . the fear was gone. The horror at these monsters and their evil was still there, but Gadget realized , in that one single moment, that he was free from the game of “victimize the nerd” forever . . . free from the Tyrannen at last. For in that moment, he saw them for what the hell they really were: Sad, pathetic bullies with nothing better to do with their lives. Panting for breath, Gadget helped Mystikite — he looked weak, and paler than usual, and clutched his side with a death-grip, the blood seeping through the cracks between his fingers — to his feet. For a brief moment, the four of them just stood there, breathing heavily, hyper-alert for any other threats as they glanced around the sword-chamber.

  The four of them exchanged a long series of looks, and Mystikite grabbed at the wound in his side and winced. He limped back over to where they had been standing before, and retrieved the Khaototronometer from a gucky pile of Tyrannen blood and entrails. He wiped it off on his jacket, which didn’t help much, because it too was covered in muck.

  “Um. Uh,” he said, checking its display screen, clutching at his side, and then pointing to the tunnel entrance. He winced again. “Yeah. Like I said. That way.”

  They made their way down the long tunnel. It was darker than Gadget remembered from his time here as Gadgorak Prime. They finally made it to the lower level of the Fortress of Darkness, with its black-lighting and weird, bumpy black-and-white checkerboard-tile floors, and its labyrinth-like hallways. The coast looked clear. No more Tyrannen that Gadget could see. But that didn’t necessarily mean that they were out of danger. Trahn had said that there were no Dark Wizards here. Wraiths and Tyrannen, yes. Dark Wizards, no. Other creatures? Maybe. But that had been when this World had been a place where he had traveled alone; now he had brought dark passengers with him — Ravenkroft and the alien. Who knew how that had changed things. They had to be careful.

  “What’s this?” asked Mystikite, bending down to retrieve something that winked in the light. Lying in the muck on the floor, he had spotted a small, silver, electromechanical-looking cylinder. He picked it up and cleaned it off with his fingers. One end of it looked like it had a crystal mounted in it. He turned that end away from him and twisted the bottom of it. A neon-bright shaft of brilliant, blue, electric light erupted from the crystal-end of it and stopped about a meter out, the end of it just hovering there impossibly in the air . . . A sword made out of pure light. “Whoa!” he shouted. “A fucking light-saber! Cool! I’m so keeping this.” He waved it around in the air. It even made the swooshing, humming noise one would expect. “Your imagination rocks, dude. What was this doing just laying there, I wonder?”

  “Dunno,” said Gadget, and he shrugged. “Maybe it’s a leftover from my Star Wars phase from when I was a teenager.”

  Mystikite shut off the light-sword and promptly shoved it into his pocket. “Well, finders fucking keepers. Mine now.”

  “Whatever dude,” said Gadget. “Knock yourself out.” He happened to glance down at his own sword, Dràchynthyr. “Hey, I just noticed something. Dizzy, here, take a look at this. Dràchynthyr has an expansion port, of all things. Right here, on the grip, on the end. It has what looks like a quarter-inch audio input port. Or maybe it’s an output port. Like for headphones or something. I wonder what that’s for.”

  “Dunno,” she said, coming closer and examining the sword. She shrugged. “Beats the crap outta me. I didn’t design it. It’s your telepathic dreamworld, not mine. So, you tell me.”

  “Fascinating,” said Viktor, inspecting it. “Could be this is intended to be used with your guitar, Weatherspark. Perhaps young Gadget’s mind has anticipated our needs ahead of time.”

  Dizzy looked thoughtful for a moment. “I bet he’s right. We hook the guitar to the sword, and use that to send the signal through the alien when we find it. So we have to plunge the sword into the alien, somehow.”

  “Which means we gotta get close,” said Gadget.

  “Right,” said Mystikite. “And oh what fun that will be.”

  “Okay,” said Gadget, “which way, Mystikite?”

  Mystikite consulted the Khaototronometer. He pointed straight ahead, toward the stairwell that led up one floor. “That way.”

  Just then, Gadget saw shadows cast down the stairwell . . . lumbering, shambling shadows. Not Tyrannen; nope, those loped and hunkered, they did not shamble and shuffle. This was something different. Then, their new assailants emerged, coming down out of all three of the stairwells that led upward . . . and as he spun around — as did Dizzy, Viktor, and Mystikite — Gadget saw them emerging from the tunnel behind them as well, right from where they had just come:

  Zombies.

  Gadget had always hated zombie movies with a passion — they were the one brand of horror guaranteed to always make him squirm; they genuinely terrified him. Not because of the gore . . . No, he could handle that. Rather, it was their relentless, downbeat nihilism that got to him. The sheer and utter hopelessness they spoke of. The stark, raving grimdark of the genre, the implacable bleakness that permeated the entire premise. That was what freaked him out. What they represented. And here they were, in the flesh, coming at him for real. Coming for him at last, here in his Dreamworld. Coming to make him one of them.

  Mystikite activated his light-sword, and Dizzy took aim with her Interphase Pistols. Gadget sheathed his sword and grabbed the wand of his Proton Weapon and switched it on. Viktor fell into a fighting stance.

  “Whoa shit!” screamed Mystikite as one of them grabbed hold of him from behind. The zombies from the tunnel reached for him with a dozen zombie hands, their grips fairly strong for the groaning undead. He swung his light-sword and lopped off zombie hands left and right, and took off one of the things’ arms. Yet still more grabbed at him, and managed to snatch him by the jacket, even as he cut a few of them down. They yanked him toward them as Gadget screamed his name. A second later, he was crowd-surfing and descending as strong, half-dead hands clawed at his clothes and skin, even as he sliced off a few heads, they dragged him down to the floor. Teeth clamped into his shoulder. He screamed and whirled around, and whack! — off came the zombie’s head with the light-sword as he sliced through another’s torso and down came a shower of hot, wet blood, bone-shrapnel, and gooey, mutated brain-matter. He rounded on the next zombie, punching it square in the face; its skin tore and the jawbone broke off and flew, but still it kept its milky-white cataract-eyes focused right on him; it didn’t even blink at the pain of suddenly being jawless, its flesh hanging ripped and flaccid beneath its nose and cheeks, its tongue lolling out sickeningly. He swung the light-sword and sure enough, the thing's head sliced cleanly in two, cooked blood and gristle sliding off in either direction. And still the others grabbed for him.

  “In the name of George Romero and Ash from Evil Dead,” yelled Dizzy, “Unhand that horror-movie hero!” By that time, a fresh gaggle of zombies had raised Mystikite up on their outstretched, clawing hands and were carrying him away, despite his punching and kicking and slicing like mad with his light-sword. He cursed; he wasn’t doing much good; it was like fighting a hydra: For every one he took out, two more took its place. And they just kept on coming, a relentless horde, a force of nature. Gadget, busy blasting and cutting a swath through them with the beam of his Proton Weapon, saw Dizzy take aim with her Interphase Pistols, and —

  “Muuuaaaad’dib!” she yelled. Krak-BLAM! The bolts of energy flew from her Interphase Pistols and took out three zombies at once; they did not fall, but rather simply exploded, their heads and limbs torn from their bodies, blood and black ichor splattering all over. Then, one of the monsters grabbed her by the throat from behind and hauled her toward its stinking mouth. She wrenched herself around. Even with the raw adrenaline probably coursing through her, she was no match for its powerful limbs — at least, at first. Its eyes were pale and filmy, its skin jaundiced and slick with perspiration, its hair a thinning wisp on its head, its nose crooked and bleeding mucus, the insides of its mouth black. These weren’t your ordinary Hollywood zombies; no, these things were quick and deadly and moved with strength and purpose. There was a thinking — if terribly mutated — half-dead brain at work behind those filmy eyes. Before Dizzy could wince away from the explosion, Gadget put his Proton Wand to her attacker’s head and turned it into a bloody spray of blood, electricity, bone and gray matter. Dizzy wiped the mess out of her eyes and saw —

  Viktor yelled as he punched through one of the zombie’s heads, as several undead hands reached for him and grabbed him from behind. He spun around, dragging the zombies with him, the artificial muscles in his Evangeliojaeger overpowering them . . . But still they attacked him, more piling on, several grabbing at him from the front as well, clawing at him, grasping onto his Evangeliojaeger with their scraggly hands and gripping him tightly. He whirled and punched, and grabbed one of the zombies by the throat, and squeezed, the thing’s neck bursting in his grip like a rotten root. He turned around and blasted one with his Interphase Pistol, then another with the other Interphase Pistol, and threw two off of his left arm and into the nearest wall, smashing them into the stone. One of them leapt onto his back and bit down into his neck. He screamed and blasted it with his Interphase Pistol and its head exploded. He whirled around again and backed up into the wall, smooshing the zombies on his back, their bones cracking. He kicked the one in front of him and blasted it, then blasted two more, then another, the another . . .

  Gadget screamed as he felt their cold fingers press into his arms, grope his inner thighs, claw across his chest, and cut across his face with their fingernails as they wrenched him around. “Diz, help!” he hollered, and wrenched his head away from one’s white, filmy eyes and hot, cobwebbed crypt-breath. He turned to his left, just as one dug its fingers into his arm, and punched for all he was worth; his hand smashed through the thing’s face, collapsing it like a rotten melon, and thrust out the back of its skull covered in gristle. Disgusted, he pulled back, and two more grabbed him by the shoulders. He grabbed the remaining creature by the throat and without thought, wrenched its head around and snapped its neck. Another one came at him. He jerked backward and shoved the Proton Weapon’s wand up under the thing’s chin and wrenched the handle-bar grip to one side. Sure enough, the top of the zombie-thing’s head exploded with blue-white light, and it collapsed. Then, he heard Dizzy yelp in surprise. He ducked, and a blast of warm air shot past his head and slammed into the zombie that had been closing in behind him, burning a hole through its chest. It dropped to the ground a smoking corpse. He yelled, “Thanks Diz!”

  “No problem!” she screamed, kicking one of the zombies in the balls — he heard them crunch, but to little avail — and then broke another one’s fingers with her gauntlets as they pawed and grabbed at her. She furrowed her brow in concentration again, then smiled, whipped around, and blasted it and three other zombies into cobalt-blue oblivion, and then looked and yelled “Gadget!” He yelled something back, and —

  Viktor punched one of the zombies, its face crunching before his fist, as two more leapt onto his back and undead hands reached out to grab him. He kicked at them, crunching their bones, and blasted at them with his Interphase Pistols. Their heads exploded, and their carcasses fell to the floor, smoking. He took aim at the ones currently overwhelming Dizzy, and fired. The blasts tore through them, causing them to explode. Dizzy managed to fight the rest off herself, and Viktor then took aim at the horde troubling Mystikite; he ran toward them, blasting away at them, trying not to hit Mystikite. He blasted away, his Interphase Pistol fire colliding with their bodies, burning them up where they stood.

  “Thanks Vic!” yelled Mystikite, as he swung his light-sword and sliced off one of the remaining zombies’ heads.

  “My pleasure!” shouted Viktor.

  Gadget punched a zombie in the face as it put its thick, sallow fingers around his neck, and tried to head-butt another. Woozy-headed, he stumbled backward and right into another’s arms. Shaking and panting, he wrestled with the Proton Weapon, and bit down on a clammy finger as one grabbed his face from behind, and then he found the handle-bar grip. As if out of sheer anger at having his perfectly rational world invaded by these . . . these things that had suddenly dared to become real, he put the gun inside one’s mouth and fired. Slimy grey matter, blood, and slivers of bone pelted him as the heat from the weapon’s discharge washed over him. Another one lunged at him. He grabbed its arm and yanked down, absolutely on fire with adrenaline, and it broke, but the zombie did not slow. Crimson red flowed, no, poured out of the wound. He turned and blew the chests and heads — one, two, three! — out of and off the three that was currently dragging Mystikite away despite his having felled at least two dozen of the things with his light-sword. He punched another in the face as it lunged for his neck, then took aim at another. He blasted away at it, finally nailing it.

  The zombies clawed at Gadget and their fingers raked his skin, and one’s teeth bit his neck, and he sweated and shook, his breath a hollow shudder, all the anxiety and fear uncoiling deep in his belly like a serpent awakening with a guttural roar; each manic, racing thought nipped at the tail of the next like a hungry piranha. Finally, punching and kicking and screaming, suddenly screamed, “That’s . . . IT!” He jacked the Proton Weapon’s power level up to 100%, and then yanked the handle-bar grip all the way over to one side, and blasted out the most powerful streamer of nuclear fire the weapon was capable of. He fired off a tentacle of bright, yellow-and-orange flame that slammed through the eye-sockets of one then another and then yet another zombie, splitting and twisting, writhing and diverging and glowing with brilliant electric hellfire. Gadget twisted his body, standing still now and visibly shaking from the effort of controlling the weapon’s fire. Mystikite and Dizzy both ducked to avoid the stream as he whisked it in their direction. Four then five then six, he blasted out tentacle-like tendrils of fire that exploded through the zombies.

  A moment later, and the lower-level of the Fortress was empty but for the three of them. They stood there, alone again, covered in zombie muck and panting for breath, and surrounded by dozens of smoking body parts, smoldering zombie corpses, simmering puddles of ooze, bubbling puddles of blood, goopy piles of entrails, and scattered shards of bone fragments. Mystikite turned off his light-sword and cringed at the mess.

  “Right,” said Mystikite, nodding decisively. “That does it. Your dreams are definitely fucked up, dude. How do you even sleep?”

  “You’re tellin’ me,” said Dizzy. “I’m getting you a dreamcatcher for Christmas, Gadget. Not that those things actually work, mind you, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

  “What a bloody mess,” commented Viktor, heaving for breath. He was shaking, trembling. “I’m never watching a George Romero film ever again.”

  Gadget sighed. “So. Up one level still, right Mystikite?”

  “Uh,” he said, and consulted the Khaototronometer. “Right. I don’t suppose you could bother to dream me up a spare change of clothes, could you? These are ruined, and they stink.”

  “I, uh . . . I don’t think it works that way,” said Gadget.

  “Figures,” said Mystikite. “But yeah. Up one level, and we go from there.”

  “Let’s move, then,” said Gadget.

  The four of them emerged from the front gates of the Fortress, exiting through the twisted, melted remains of the doors of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High. They found themselves not in the arid, dusty valley that Gadget remembered, the place where the Fortress normally dwelled, here in his Dreamworld, and where he had once fought the Wraith creatures, but instead, high upon a cliff-face, overlooking a vast, panoramic view of an entirely different awesome landscape entirely: A gigantic, stone labyrinth that stretched for miles in all directions, vanishing over the horizon on all sides, absolutely jaw-dropping in its sheer size and complexity. Vines, weeds, and other vegetation grew along its edges and across its high, stone walls, and one could see down into its maze of passages from above. Robots guarded the Labyrinth. They were tall, mean-looking machines that looked made out of other machines — pieces of cars and airplanes, rearranged into robot forms, their arms and legs bearing wheels and gears, door-pieces and fins; their eyes headlights and their mouths grills and control consoles; their bulky weapons mounted to their arms, their articulate hands made from pistons and churning levers. Deceptibots, but not of gigantic proportions; only the size of ordinary humans. They patrolled the perimeter of the labyrinth as well as the inner passageways, which large bank-vault-like doors stood between and connected.

  “Whoa,” said Mystikite, gesturing to the scene below. “Check that out.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Gadget.

  “Damn,” said Dizzy. She laughed uncomfortably and quoted David Bowie: “‘You remind me of the babe.’”

  “Please, don’t let’s get that going,” said Mystikite. “We’ll be here all day.”

  “‘What babe?’” further quoted Gadget, cracking a smile. He couldn’t resist.

  “‘The babe with the power,’” quoted Dizzy.

  “‘What power?’” sighed Mystikite, going along with the Labyrinth quotes reluctantly, knowing he was powerless to stop an avalanche once it had begun.

  “‘The power of voodoo,’” continued Gadget.

  “‘Hoodoo,’” Dizzy went on.

  “You do!’” continued Gadget.

  “‘Do what?’” supplied Mystikite.

  ‘”’You remind me of the babe,’” finished Dizzy.

  “‘What babe — ?’” began Gadget, grinning, starting the whole thing over again.

  “Okay, and there’s where we stop that train,” said Mystikite. “One repetition only or, I swear to God, I take out my light-saber and murder every goddamn one of us including myself.”

  “Jesus dude . . . decaff,” said Gadget. “Okay. What’s the Khaototronometer saying?”

  “Down there,” said Mystikite, nodding at the labyrinth. “The alien is in the maze somewhere, but I think it’s situated beyond the horizon line, somewhere. Pretty far off from here. But definitely within the main structure. We have to find a way into and through the labyrinth. Doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy. At least we have weapons.”

  “Yeah, there is that,” said Dizzy. “But how do we get in?”

  “Looks like there’s an entrance down there,” said Viktor, and he pointed. A hundred feet away from where they stood — and two hundred feet below — there was a small clearing in the forest of vegetation around the labyrinth, and there also sat a break in its high stone walls. And, therein, there lay a large, arched gateway, and inside that lay a huge set of double, metal doors ten feet high and twelve across that looked like they were designed to slide apart. A small control panel stood next to them, and a faceless Deceptibot stood guard on either side. There appeared to be a dusty, dirt path that led down from the cliff-face where they stood, through a rough thicket of trees, and then out and into the clearing.

  “Well?” said Dizzy. “What’re we waiting for? Let’s get down there.”

  “Y’know, I’d like to know where Misto, Darmok, Buffy are,” said Mystikite. “Especially Buffy. Shouldn’t they be here, somewhere?”

  “They should be, yeah,” said Gadget, as they started down toward the labyinth. “I wonder where they are?”

  Buffy blinked and turned around, suddenly finding herself elsewhere. What the hell had just happened? One minute she had been standing in the back yard of Viktor’s parent’s summerhome . . . and the next minute, she was here, this place, wherever “this place” was. She stood in the midst of a dry, arid valley, along with Misto and Darmok, and there, about a hundred yards away, stood an immense, scary-looking, medieval castle-like fortress built on top of what looked amazingly like an equally-scary-looking version of her old high-school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin High. And about a dozen yards away — and this she could scarcely believe — sat a spaceship, of all things, facing the castle-like fortress. But not just any spaceship; no, this was none other than a preying-mantis-shaped, twin-engined, banged-up-looking Firefly-class cargo transport ship, similar to the Serenity from Joss Whedon’s classic, erstwhile scifi TV show Firefly, just sitting parked there amid the dry tundra of this place, awaiting a crew to captain her. A dusty wind whipped past her, pelting her with sand. A sandstorm brewing. But, despite Buffy being a Vampire, and despite it being broad daylight and there being not just one but two suns in this place, the sunlight here did not burn her, nor did she burst into flames. How bizarre.

  “Uh guys?” she said, shielding her eyes from the brightness here, “Where the hell are we?”

  “Beats the crap out of me,” said Darmok, turning to her, also looking around. “I’ve got zero clues. But that ship over there looks damned welcoming right about now.”

  “I’ll say,” said Misto, coming over to where they stood. “We’ll figure out where we are and how we got here later. Right now we need to get out of this sandy-ass wind before it blows us away.”

  “Right,” said Buffy. She had to agree. The wind was getting stronger — and dustier — by the minute. They had to take shelter, and the fortress was farther away than the ship. And besides that, the fortress looked terrifying. She did not want to go in there.

  They headed toward the Firefly-class transport ship, the rear loading platform of which lay open and waiting, as though expecting visitors or a shipment of cargo. Once inside, Misto looked to the side of the platform and found the control panel, and hunted for the controls to close the platform. He found them, guessed at which one did what, and then punched one of the buttons. He must’ve guessed correctly, Buffy thought, because she heard a giant motor rev up and whirr into action, and the platform hatch lifted up and closed beneath them. They were sealed onto the ship in the cargo bay area, the dust-storm outside now a dull, distant sound. The cargo bay was a large metal room, about forty feet wide, sixty feet long, and twenty feet tall, with metal cargo containers stacked hither and thither, and pipes and electrical conduits running along the walls and ceiling, with a railed walkway running along both upper walls, and with another one running across the midsection above, and with metal stairwells leading upward. The walkways in turn led to metal hatches. Another metal hatch sat about twenty feet from them, with a small control panel next to it; another control panel — the one Misto had used to operate the cargo-bay door — jutted up from the floor on a raised pedestal near to where they stood.

  “Whew,” said Misto. “Thank goodness that’s over. Now. To your question, Buffy. Darmok. Where the hell are we? And how did we get here?”

  “Why do you both keep asking me that question?” said Darmok. “I already told you — ‘beats the crap out of me.’ I have no idea where we are or how we got here. The last thing I remember seeing was . . .” She trailed off, and Buffy saw a flash of insight light up in her eyes. “Ohhh,” she said. “That might explain it.”

  “What?” asked Buffy. “What might explain what?”

  “The last thing I remember seeing,” said Darmok, “was your friend Gadget mind-melding with that Ravenkroft fellow and releasing the Twizion Particles. So I think I know what happened. It’s a remote possibility, but . . . It’s possible that the Twizion Particles, combined with Gadget’s telekinesis and his telepathic link to the Zarcturean and Ravenkroft . . . somehow opened a transdimensional portal and created a temporary, psionically-projected universe, into which we were then catapulted. So this world wer’e in now — which is a pocket universe, one that exists in a pocket of transdimensional space — exists entirely within the telepathic link between your friend, Ravenkroft, and the Zarcutrean. It’s made up of their thoughts, their unified streams of consciousness. Everything in it is a projection of their conscious and subconscious minds, merged together into a single cohesive reality, given form and structure by some outside agency. Probably that NeuroScape thing your friend Mystikite wired into the Mind-Weirding Helm back at the hotel, remember? We have to be very careful, here. If I’m right, then we’re in serious danger . . . because even though it has coherent rules that it obviously operates by, this world is inherently unstable. It won’t last long — just until his battle with the Zarcturean is over — and when it colllapses . . .”

  “Well that’s certainly not good,” said Buffy.

  “Definitely bad news,” said Misto. “So what can we do?”

  “We need to find your friend Gadget,” said Darmok. “He’s here. Somewhere. He has to be — it’s his Dreamworld we’re in, after all. We need to get to the bridge of this spaceship.”

  “Follow me, then,” said Buffy, smiling. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s my Firefly trivia, and I know the layout of this ship better than any other fan, hands-down. So come on. Let’s move.”

  Misto and Darmok fell in behind Buffy as she led them up the metal staircase nearest them, up onto the walkway, then up the second flight of metal stairs and up through the hatchway, then down a long, tight metal corridor that seemed to go up an incline and through two more hatchways, and then finally up another, shorter flight of stairs, and into a cramped control room that could seat three, with a large, forward-facing window that overlooked the scene outside. The control room had two seats that were situated behind two large, almost-identical control consoles — they looked patched together from all sorts of oscilloscopes, switchboards, keyboards, patch-cord consoles, dashboards, gauges, and other electronic flotsam — and one seat that sat behind a smaller console that looked like a DJ’s mixing console combined with a rackmount web server gone haywire. Misto sat himself down in the third seat, while Buffy and Darmok sat down in the other two. They all three exchanged looks that said the same thing: Now what’ll we do? We have no idea of how to fly this thing.

  “Well,” said Darmok, rubbing her hands together. She reached forward and grabbed the main feature of the control console in front of her, a pair of large joysticks mounted to either side of the main controls. “It’s my guess that these control the ship’s flight path. Power, pitch, yaw, and roll. Since this console faces the main view port, I’m guessing that mine are the main controls, and yours, Buffy — since your console is situated slightly behind mine — are the auxillaries for everything, in case my station is damaged or goes down. The keyboards and screens in front of us probably access the ship’s main computer — probably for navigational input and control, so the nav computer can take over piloting duties, and for general use, as well. That switch right there is probably for nav-computer override of the piloting controls, and probably allows for emergency pilot-interrupt of the nav-program. This thing over here — ” She gestured to the console with the oscilliscope screens and digital readouts, with the sliding levers and switches on it — “is probably the main engineering interface, and what amounts to Helm control. It links to the engines. It’s what engages the ship’s main drive and what switches between main drive and thruster power . . . and what lets us have fine-grain control over where the power from the engine core routes to.” She swiveled in her chair, and turned around to face Misto. “Your station, Misto, is comms, I’ll bet. And what amounts to radar, and laser tracking, if this ship has it. Your station keeps track of nearby ship traffic and all communications, and spots incoming bogies or weapons’ fire, such as space-quantum torpedoes or other projectiles. The labels on the controls ought to be fairly self-explanatory, everyone. If you can play a flight-sim videogame, you can fly this ship.”

  “I guess this is a bad time to mention this,” said Buffy, feeling more than slightly anxious, “but I tend to suck at flight-sim video games.”

  Darmok sighed. She wasn’t helping Buffy feel any better. “Well,” she said, “just do your best. Besides, like I said. Your station is auxillary. Just in case mine is damaged. You shouldn’t have to fly unless something untoward happens to me.”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Buffy, and she did. Dammit, she thought, there’s a reason that line keeps popping up in every Star Wars movie.

  “So what’ll we do now?” asked Misto. “Just sit here and wait? For what? Until we just happen to see Gadget or Dizzy go wandering by?”

  “Well, have you got a better idea?” asked Darmok.

  Misto thought a moment, and then snapped his fingers and smacked his forehead. “Yes! As a matter of fact, I do! D’oh! Why didn’t I think of this before! Buffy — the communicator pin! The one Dizzy gave you!”

  “Ohhh yeah!” said Buffy, realization dawning on her. “Duh. Good thinking.” How could she have forgotten that, too? She reached up and touched the tiny Starfleet emblem she kept pinned to her corset’s bust-line. It chirped and twittered a small, digital cricket-like noise. She cleared her throat and intoned: “Come in, Dizzy. Come in, Gadget. Can either of you read me? Over.”

  For a moment, only static answered her. Then:

  “Yes! We read you! Huzzah!” came Dizzy’s voice from the pin, albeit crackling with static. “Where the frak are you, over?”

  “We’re in a . . . in a dry, dusty valley . . . some kind of desert place, over. About a hundred yards away from this big, castle-like thing that looks a lot like my old high-school. And we’re onboard . . . well, this one is hard to explain. We’re onboard the Serenity. From Firefly. Over.”

  Silence for a moment. Then:

  “Dude, we just left the Fortress!” came the reply. “We’re . . . wait a second, this doesn’t make any sense. When we left the Fortress, we didn’t come out in any dusty valley. We came out on a cliff-face overlooking a labyrinth. And wait a second, you said you’re . . . where? Over.”

  Buffy raised her voice a bit, and spoke in a clearer but more abrasive tone. “We’re basically. Onboard. The Serenity. From Joss Whedon’s. Firefly. Over!”

  “Dude, Gadget says that’s frakkin’ amazing! He used to dream about the Serenity!” came Dizzy’s voice over the com-link. “We can’t wait to see that. But we can’t see you. Nor you us. Gadget thinks we’re in . . . some kind of . . . simultaneous spaces . . . Like different rooms of a house that occupy the same space but slightly out of phase with each other. If we can change the ship’s transdimensional phase, then maybe we can see each other. Does the ship have a hyperdrive? Because he says he used to dream about installing a hyperdrive onto the Serenity. Yes, he says, he knows he’s weird. Over.”

  Darmok frowned at the engine control panel and flicked a couple of switches, and the console came to life. Lights came on, and the main oscilloscope screen flickered into life. Digital readouts came alive with numbers and decimal points. The nav computer began spitting out text onto its green-and-black screen. Darmok typed a command, and then smiled, seemingly satisfied with the results.

  “If you’ve seen one hyperdrive subsystem’s self-check on startup,” she said, nodding, “you’ve definitely seen them all. Yes, the ship has a hyperdrive of some kind. I don’t know exactly which kind just yet — whether it’s a warp-field propulsion drive or a gravimetric, rotational jump drive — but it has one. Give me a few minutes — or better still, let me pop down to the engine room — and I’ll figure it out.”

  “Go,” said Buffy, nodding to her.

  Darmok nodded back, got up, and went to the hatchway, then stopped. “Er, you might wanna tell me how to get to the engine room, first.”

  It was twilight by the time the four of them reached the bottom of the cliff. Gadget crouched behind a large nearby tree trunk, scoping out the entrance to the labyrinth, as did Dizzy, Viktor, and Mystikite. The two Deceptibot guards stood at attention, one on either side of the gateway arch and the sliding metal doors that led into the maze. It was a safe bet that they could see in the dark. There were two more Deceptibots up on top of the high stone wall above the arched gateway that patrolled back and forth every so often, making a total of four guards that they had to deal with. All four had pulse-rifles mounted to their arms.

  “Great, we’re here. Now what’ll we do?” said Mystikite.

  “Well, I dunno,” said Gadget. “There’s four of us, and four of them, though. Even match.”

  “Yeah,” said Dizzy. “And the two on top of the wall circle back here every ten minutes like clockwork. Probably because they are clockwork. So if we time this right we only have to deal with two at a time. If at all, if we can get in quick enough.”

  “Only Diz, Viktor, and me have ranged weapons,” said Gadget. “And mine isn’t that accurate. We’ll only get one shot at this.”

  “But how do we actually get in?” asked Viktor. “You have to open the doors. The control panel looks like it needs a security code to access it. None of us have the code.”

  “This whole place is weird metaphors,” said Mystikite. “Like the NeuroScape. The ‘security code’ is a way of locking us out of Ravenkroft’s mind, places he doesn’t want us going. A way of keeping us away from the alien. Like those vault doors we saw from above, like the labyrinth itself is a way of keeping us from discovering where the alien is hidden inside him. If we can defeat the security code, we defeat him. So we just have to figure out a way around it. Or maybe . . . maybe I have to figure out a way around it.” He thought a moment. Then, he had an idea. “Wait a second. Diz.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your Iron Man suit. It has an onboard computer system, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It handles movement, artificial muscle control, equilibrium, power flow, reflexes, neural interfacing with my brain, all that stuff.”

  “Do you think it could handle code-breaking?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, “I think if I told it to via the neural interface, I think it could probably handle it.”

  “Good,” said Gadget. “Where’s the main interface? I mean, where’s the main I-O bus?”

  “Here,” she said, and pointed to a small panel just above the main zero-point reactor. She extended the index finger of her gauntlet toward it and a small Philips-head screwdriver extended from it, and began spinning. She used it to undo the screws on the panel, which popped open, revealing a mass of wires put together with screw-top connectors. “You want the four red ones and the blue one. The blue one carries the bus-power; the red ones are the data lines. Just be careful you don’t short anything out.”

  “I’ll handle this.” Gadget reached into his pocket, where he had put the circuit board and wiring from the fallen Automaton, and yanked out the wiring portion. He straightened the wires and began to work. He removed the screw-top connectors and spliced in four long wires to the red data lines, and one long wire to the blue power line, and let them dangle from the panel. He then attached alligator clips to their ends and used a piece of the Automaton’s circuit-board to give them something to clip on to so they didn’t click into each other and short each other out.

  “Okay,” he said. “There. Done. Now when we take those guards out, we can patch you into the control panel and you can try to hack the security code for us.”

  “Roger-roger,” she said. “If we take them out.”

  “Yes, that’s it, Weatherspark,” said Viktor, “think positive.”

  “You guys ready?” said Gadget. “Like I said . . . we’ll only get one shot at this.”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Dizzy, and shrugged.

  “Same here,” said Mystikite. “Ready.”

  “Okay,” said Gadget. He watched as the two Deceptibot guards on the wall marched away from their posts, departing right on schedule. “Mystikite, you run out and distract the two at the gates. We’ll cover you.”

  “Me? Figures. Just for the record, I hate you both. And also, just so you know, my penis is freaking gigantic. Like, enormous.” He stood up, and activated his light-sword. It swooshed out of the end of the small silver cylinder, lighting up the whole area with a brilliant, neon-blue glow. Mystikite stepped out from behind the tree, and into the clearing. “Hey!” he shouted at the Deceptibots. “Hey you! Yeah, you, metal-head! Can-opener-balls! Over here! Yeah, that’s it! Lookit me!”

  The Deceptibot guards turned their metal heads in his direction, lowered their weapons into position, and fired at him. But Mystikite was quick. He whipped his light-sword into position, and deflected each of the pulse-blasts with its light-blade. The blasts bounced right off the sliver of light and rebounded right back into the Deceptibots themselves; sparks flew from their torsos as the blasts impacted, and they dropped in their tracks. They hit the ground, two smoldering, clanking husks of metal.

  “Well that wasn’t so hard,” he said, deactivating the light-sword, and ran for the archway. He made it under, and stood next to the sliding metal doors, awaiting their arrival.

  Gadget, Viktor, and Dizzy crept out from behind the tree and ran for it. Just then Gadget nearly jumped out of his skin as a pulse-blast impacted the ground next to him. The Deceptibot guards on the wall had returned ahead of schedule, and were firing at them. Bright purple pulses of energy flew from their weapons, headed right for them, and blasted into the ground right next to them.

  “Run for it!” cried Dizzy, and they ran toward the archway.

  They did — and they had almost reached the protective cover of the archway when Gadget took a pulse-blast to the chest. It slammed into his ribs with the force of a sledgehammer — and he went sprawling to the ground.

  “Gadget!” cried Dizzy. She and Viktor stopped running, and both returned fire to the Deceptibot on the wall that had hit him. Dizzy hit it in the shoulder, and it returned fire. It missed her, and she and Viktor both went to help Gadget up. They grabbed him by the hands, and he scrambled to his feet. He felt dazed and stunned and his legs felt like jello, but he managed to stand and run anyway. Despite the pain in his side, he scrambled to his feet and kept on going, running. He looked to his left and saw one of the robots taking aim at him; he ducked and rolled, and the blast went flying over him. He got back to his feet and ran on, motioning for Dizzy and Viktor to go on regardless.

  The two atop the wall continued firing at him, but they were far enough away that they missed, their blasts crashing into the earth on either side of him. Huffing and puffing for breath, his muscles on fire — Jesus, was he this out of shape? — he finally made it to the tall arched doors of the entrance along with Dizzy and Viktor. Mystikite activated his light-sword and sliced off the cover of the control panel. Sparks flew and the wiring there lay exposed. Gadget grabbed the wires dangling from Dizzy’s Iron Man suit and began fiddilng with the exposed wires from the control panel.

  The two Deceptibots on the wall above them kept firing at the spot where they had just been, and one of them jumped down onto the ground outside of the archway. Dizzy raised her right Interphase Pistol and fired at it, as did Viktor. Direct hit — the blast from his Interphase Pistol hit it square in the chest. Sparks flew from the wound and the Deceptibot went crashing to the ground. The other Deceptibot from the roof jumped down next to its fallen brother a second later though. Viktor fired at it and missed, and then fired again and hit it in the shoulder, deactivating its arm. It switched its pulse-rifle to its other arm and fired at them. Mystikite deflected the blast with his light-sword and the blast ricochetted and flew back at the Deceptibot, and hit it in the head. Sparks flew, and the Deceptibot dropped to the ground, smoking.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Then, the air in the clearing exploded with a blinding ferocity, an enormous clap of thunder that blew them back against the doors of the labyrinth, accompanied by an arc of lightning that leapt from the ground to the midst of the air and back again; then a glowing sphere of blue-white light that expanded from an infinitesimal point outward to ten, then fifty, then a hundred . . . then three hundred feet wide. Out of the sphere, there coalesced a shape. The shape of a spaceship. Then, the sphere vanished, leaving only the metal hull of a ship they didn’t need any help recognizing, for it was emblazoned in all their fannish memories perfectly well: It was the Serenity — or a ship just like it — from Joss Whedon’s seminal science fiction TV show Firefly. Only this edition, Gadget knew, came equipped with a hyperdrive, one that its new crew had just used to hyper-jump to their current location. The ship, smoke curling off the metal of its hull, settled to the ground, and a moment or two later, the cargo bay doors yawned opened and the motors there whirred as they moved into position. And there, walking down the incline, were Darmok, Misto, and Buffy.

  “Whoo hoo!” said Gadget, grinning, his ribs and legs still tingling from the pulse-blast. “You guys made it!”

  “Thank whatever gods there are,” breathed Viktor. “Michaelson. You’re alright.”

  Behind them, the doors to the labyrinth slid open. Mystikite cut the wires connecting Dizzy to the control panel using his light-sword. They didn’t have time for a happy reunion, though, as from above them, atop the wall, a volley of pulse-rifle fire strafed the ground near where the Serenity’s cargo bay doors had opened. Darmok took aim at the Deceptibots on the wall with her Decimator pistol and fired, as did Misto. Gadget, Dizzy, Viktor, and Mystikite retreated inside the labyrinth, and Buffy made a run for it as well. She made it inside as Misto and Darmok continued to fire at the Deceptibots as they made their way to the labyrinth’s entrance. The made it inside — though just barely — and the doors slammed shut them. For better or worse, they were now trapped in the labyrinth, all of them.

  “Glad you guys could make it,” said a familiar voice as the doors slammed shut. Gadget, Misto, Viktor, Dizzy, and the others all whirled around to see who it was.

  “Pris?” said Viktor, peering into the darkness. Night had come. Though the labyrinth had no roof — they could see into the sky above — they now had only moonlight and the alien stars above to guide their way. “Is that you, my dear?”

  Pris grinned. She leaned against one of the stone walls of the labyrinth. She tossed a glowing energy-sphere back and forth between her hands. “Yeah, it’s me, dad. One of the advantages of having the NeuroScape wired into that thingie connected to your psyche, Gadget. But dad, listen. We can’t linger here. The Deceptibots will be here any second. They can Portal between any two parts of the labyrinth they want to. It’s their domain. The corridors are connected via short-distance Portals — of a kind — that are blocked off by some kind of high-security combination locks. Each one is unique and uses a weird kind of advanced mathematical encryption that I’ve never seen before. C’mon, all of you. Hurry. We have to break through the encryption and make it to the next corridor before they show up.”

  Misto watched as the girl named Pris stepped over to the far wall of the corridor. Three large, glowing, concentric dials stood embedded into the stone, with a series of mathematical symbols and equations inscribed around their outer edges. A glowing digital strip outlined the perimeter of each dial, with changing mathematical equations flowing in circles around each one.

  “Okay,” said Dizzy. “We’ll use the onboard computer in my suit again.” She stepped toward Pris and the dials.

  “No,” said Pris, holding up her hand. “The system will sense any tampering with its circuitry. We have to do these by hand. Which of you is the best at advanced mathematics? And no dad, I know it’s not you. No offense.”

  “None taken,” said Viktor, and he sighed. “There’s only one of us who’s the best at that.” His eyes went to Misto.

  “Yeah, that would be me,” said Misto. Who was this girl? He didn’t know. All he knew was that she had shown up on Ravenkroft’s computer system and have saved their butts back at the summerhouse, and that was good enough for him. She was on their side; that was all that counted. “Professor Emeritus of Physics, Morchatromik University. Stand aside, miss.” He cracked his blue, furry knuckles and stepped toward the dials. He examined the equations rolling back and forth on the digital readouts, and took stock of them.

  Okay, he thought. I can do this. He examined the variables, and the operators. This was complicated. He turned the equation over in his mind, and then discovered another variable. Then another. Then a third. Then he got tripped up on an integral, and then realized he needed a summation, and then to do an integral, and had to start over. Damn. So he began again, then realized he needed to approach it from a different angle. He grasped the dials and began to rotate one, then the one next to it, tentatively reaching for the answer. Then he realized his solution was wholly wrong. Fuck!

  “Hurry!” said Pris. “They’ll be here any second!”

  “I’m goin’ as fast as I . . . well, shit, that won’t work either.” He sighed in frustration, and shook his head. “I can’t solve this. This is too complex for a human mind. It has too many variables.”

  “Come on Misto,” said Dizzy. “If there’s anyone who can, it’s you.”

  “Yeah Misto,” said Gadget, “I believe in you.”

  “Yes Michaelson,” said Viktor. “If anyone can — ”

  “We’re all counting on you,” said Darmok.

  “Gee, way to put zero pressure on the poor guy,” said Buffy.

  “Well if everybody would just shut up, I’m sure he could actually concentrate,” said Mystikite.

  Misto shook his head again. “I don’t think this is possible to solve without a computer. If I had a laptop and a copy of Mathematica, it would be a cinch. But I don’t.”

  “Wait,” said Pris, and she grinned. “You have me. I think I can help. Hold tight, Misto. I think I know a way to enhance your capabilities with those of the Positronic Metacognitive Processor grid. At least temporarily. Though I don’t know if there’s a way to avoid permanent brain damage . . .”

  “Uh, say what?” said Misto.

  “Brace yourself,” said Pris. She closed her eyes, and clenched her fists at her sides. Her body began to glow with a soft, white light from within, her skin lighting up, a hazy blue-white aura appearing around her edges. Her body quickly became a bright white torch of burning incandescence, which then collapsed into a glowing sphere of energy about a foot in diameter, hovering about three feet off the ground. Misto then saw the sphere shoot forward through the air and felt it shoot through him and into him. He cried out, and stumbled back a pace or two. His vision turned white for a moment, and he felt himself grow warm, the world swimming with brighter colors once he reopened his eyes. Everything seemed more vivid, now. His heart raced, and his muscles felt tenser — but stronger. His mind felt positively alive with an almost electric sense of accelerated thought; his brain felt like it was in overdrive.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, and held up his hands and examined them. His vision blurred and doubled for a second, and then snapped back to crystal clarity. Better than usual, even. “What’d she jsut do to me?”

  “Wow!” breathed Viktor. “I had no idea she could do that!” He paused. “What did she just do?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said Dizzy. “I’ve got zero clues, here. Hey, Misto. Try the equations again.”

  “Uh, right,” he said. He grasped the dials. He felt dizzy suddenly, a sensation of vertigo overtaking him, his head singing, his spirit soaring. He instantly felt ten times stronger, faster, and above all, smarter . . . and positively drunk on the power now flowing through his brain. Thinking felt like flexing some enormously powerful muscle that he’d never known his body possessed. He found himself contemplating complex metaphysical constructs — M-theory, the inevitability of the Singularity, the implications of the existence of quantum wavefunctions — the like of which had never entered his head before, but that now fell apart before him like strands of thread pulled from an unraveling tapestry. The mathematics before him also fell apart, like autumn leaves fluttering away in a breeze, suddenly resolving into an easily-solvable puzzle — one so easy it was almost insulting — and one he instantly knew how to figure out. It was just a matter of approaching the problem correctly . . .

  “Shit!” cried Gadget. “The Deceptibots!”

  A pulse-blast slammed into the wall just over Misto’s shoulder as he worked the dials, startling him. Nonetheless, he tried to focus. He turned the largest dial left, then right, as another blast hit the wall next to his head, and his heart pounded in his chest . . .

  Gadget and the others leapt into action around him. Viktor fired his Interphase Pistols at the Deceptibots as they approached, and managed to blast the head off of one of them. The forcefield on his Evangeliojaeger protected him as its compatriots fired back. Gadget fired his Proton Weapon, the streamer of fire lighting up the corridor, and Dizzy fired her Interphase Pistols at the Deceptibot intruders as well, who fired back at them. Misto kept his eyes on the dials as he worked them, back and forth, moving the symbols into position one by one. Finally, the mathematics on the digital readout aligned, and flashed brightly, indicating a partial solution. The other parts of the equation blinked at him, indicating more work to do. He continued to turn the dials, one at a time, and the symbols continued to line up . . . one, then another, then another. Then — click! The stone wall before him immediately split in two, and the two halves slid apart, disappearing into the walls on either side, just as a pulse-blast flew past him and blasted into the far wall of the next corridor. The only illumination came from their weapons-fire.

  “Let’s go!” he cried to the others, and turned around and saw the Deceptibots the others were busy fighting. Pulse-blasts whizzed past his head as he ran into the next corridor. Mystikite’s lightsaber chopped through the metal arm of one of the Deceptibots just as Buffy’s twin fire serpents burned through the chest of another one, just as Dizzy blasted another two with her wrist-mounted Interphase Pistols. Gadget fired his Proton Weapon at one coming around the corner, and blew its head off before it could aim at Darmok, who took out another one with her Decimator pistol before it could aim at Dizzy. Viktor kept firing his Interphase Pistols, as one by one they backed away from the next wave of Deceptibots that came spilling through a freshly-opened Portal that had appeared on the rear wall of the previous corridor — eight of them in total, blasting away at them — just as the doorway that Misto had just opened slammed shut behind them, sealing them in.

  “Jesus, I’ve got to get my Mind-Weirding Helm working!” said Gadget as they stopped, all of them heaving for breath. They hurried down the corridor, and turned left at the next junction. It was the only way they could go; and with so little light to see by, it was hard to tell where one wall ended and another began. They then came to a fork in the pathway that led either left or right, from what they could see.

  “Damn it, we need more light,” said Viktor.

  “You aren’t wrong,” said Mystikite.

  “Here,” said Buffy. “I can help with that.” She blinked her eyes, and the blue, flickering aura of flame appeared around her and engulfed her body once again, lighting up the passageway. They could see again.

  “C’mon Pris, don’t fail me now,” said Misto, muttering mostly to himself. He was sweating, panting for breath. His head hurt, and he felt tired, and dizzy-headed. But he couldn’t let the others know; he refused to let them down. “Which way?”

  He felt a sudden urge to turn right, a tugging in his stomach in that direction. Was that Pris, inside him, urging him on? He thought it was. And so, he followed it. He turned right, and went down that corridor instead of the left one. At its end, he felt the urge to turn left, and so he did. The others fell in behind him, following his lead. He turned one corner and then another, left then right then left again. He had no sense of distance covered or direction, or of elapsed-time . . . there was no indicator of progress save for the clatter of their footfalls on the stone to tell him how far they had journeyed.

  “Dude,” said Mystikite. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Nope, not a clue,” he replied. “But I think Pris does.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Quiet!” said Dizzy, as they followed along behind him. “Pris knows what she’s doing.”

  They kept moving forward, turning right, then right again, then going straight ahead some more, then heading left and then right, then left again, journeying deeper into the labyrinth with every turn. They soon came to another dead end, a stone wall, where once again they came upon a series of dials and digital readouts. There were more dials this time, and the equations displayed on the circular readouts looked even more complex than the last time. Misto’s head zinged with the sweet intoxication of raw intellectual voltage. His eyes wide, his fingers worked the dials, once again moving on their own and with preternatural speed, the solutions to the equations unfolding before his mind’s eye, like the petals of blossoming flowers opening to embrace the sun. He felt drained, tired; exhausted. But he refused to give in or give up. At long last, a click came from inside the lock, and the wall began to move, splitting down the middle, the two halves drawing apart with a deep rumbling groan. A battalion of Deceptibots awaited them on the other side.

  Gadget, standing next to him, opened fire. The streamer of nuclear fire cut down the robot in the center — it sparked and rattled to the floor, a dead heap of junk — as the other two moved in to grab him. Pris shot forward out of Misto’s chest, a blazing ball of incandescence, and passed into and through one of the Deceptibots that had hold of him. Misto watched as the creature’s head glowed a bright red and melted. Pris exploded back into view and shot into another of the Deceptibots, leaving a molten hole in its chest. It dropped to the ground in pieces, electric arcs leaping to and fro across its circuitry.

  “That’s my girl!” cried Viktor, as he opened fire with his Interphase Pistols and gunned-down two of the Deceptibots, their pulse-blasts ricochetting off his forcefield. Dizzy opened fire as well, and gunned down three of them with a spray of Interphase Pistol fire, but she took two pulse-blasts to the arm of her Iron Man suit, momentarily crippling her against the wall. Buffy backed her up with her serpents of flame, which wrapped around the Deceptibots and melted their casings, turning them to sludge even as they fired at Darmok, who dodged out of the way almost just in time, but got tagged in the shoulder and went slouching against one wall, wincing in pain. Mystikite sliced through the Deceptibot’s arms and legs with his lightsaber and tried to deflect the pulse-blasts from the others with its blade of light.

  As the Deceptibots closed in around Misto, their metal fingers outstretched, Pris attacked one and then another with her white-hot incandescence, distracting the others just long enough for Gadget to get to his feet. He fired his Proton Weapon at one of the remaining Deceptibots, and the blast blew the metal creature back against the wall and blew it apart. Two others grabbed Misto; their metal fingers felt cold and hard against his furry skin. He wrenched himself free and punched one of them in its face — hitting it hurt like hell — and left a satisfying dent, but it quickly recovered and came at him again. Pris was there in an instant, burning through the thing’s head and then moving to attack the second. Once it dropped — a glaring red hole melted into its midsection — another came at him, but Dizzy fired her Interphase Pistol and blasted it to pieces, sparks flying from its metal hull. Viktor fired at another two with his two Interphase Pistols, one then the other, and blasted their heads off in showers of sparks.

  Suddenly, a pair of mechanical hands grabbed Misto, spun him around, and pinned him to the wall. He struggled mightily, but couldn’t get free; their grip was as strong as the steel from which they’d been wrought. These Deceptibots were bigger, too; taller, bulkier, their limbs thicker, the metal of their hulls duller. And there were five of them. Pris’s light glinted off their heads. One of the Deceptibots raised its arm, aiming its pulse-cannon at his head. The cannon lit up with cold, cobalt light. From within, Misto could hear something charging. At such close-range, a single blast to the head would kill him. He swallowed hard, and refused to close his eyes. No, he thought, he would meet his death with what honor he could. He —

  There was a bright flash of light behind the Deceptibots. And then, Pris was suddenly there, once again in human form and delivering a powerful roundhouse kick to one of the Deceptibots, aiming for its head with her right combat boot. Her foot connected with the thing’s forcefield and the Deceptibot went stumbling backward. It recovered quickly, turned, and aimed its cannon at Pris, but she reacted even quicker, and threw another kick at it. Her foot knocked the cannon aside. She leapt forward and kicked again; this time, her foot impacted the thing’s chest and knocked a hole in it; sparks and lightning bolts exploded outward. Pris came forward and punched through the Deceptibot's head, her bloody knuckles punching out the back of it, wires in her fist, as the other two let go of Misto and moved in around her. Gadget fumbled with his Proton Weapon and fired at one of them, then fired again; he managed to blow one of their arms off. Mystikite swung his lightsaber and lopped the arm off of another as it fired at Pris, and he deflected the blasts with the lightsaber’s blade just in time. The Deceptibot he’d injured turned back around and headed back toward him — reaching for him with its remaining hand — while the other one moved toward Pris. Viktor shot it dead, and Darmok took care of the one right behind it.

  “Thanks!” shouted Misto. He turned back around to face the dials on the wall, and panicked. “Pris, I need help with this!”

  Pris turned back into a glowing sphere of energy, and rocketed back across the room and into him. He once again reeled from the ecstasy of the merger, then got himself under control and focused on the mathematics. Or tried to. His heart hammered, and his hands shook. He tried to force them to stop as he studied the dials before him, and began turning them, lining up the symbols and equations . . .

  All around him, the action continued: Dizzy thrust her Interphase Pistol into a Deceptibot's face, and fired. The thing’s head exploded in a shower of sparks and circuits; metal and plastic bits rained down everywhere. Meanwhile, Pris grabbed a Deceptibot heading for Mystikite by the shoulders and of all things, head-butted it. The circuitry on its face fractured, but then it grabbed her and threw her against the wall. Buffy, who flickered with blue flame, her fire-serpents coming out to play and wrapping around it, melting it. Pris kicked at it and knocked the pulse-cannon out of its hands as it melted. She kicked again, her boot landing squarely on its melting chest, driving it backward and away from her. Gadget raised his Proton Weapon and fired at the one Mystikite currently fought. The Deceptibot's head exploded, and bright electrical arcs leaped out. They sizzled and caressed its body as it fell to the ground, a sparking heap of junk.

  Click! The lock before him tumbled, and the wall cleaved itself in twain, and the two halves began sliding apart. They went through into the next corridor, and followed it to the end . . . and then he felt the tugging in his stomach again. They turned left. Then right. Then right again, and then followed that corridor for awhile, before turning left. They went left again, then right, then right again, and then left. They followed down a corridor that seemed to go on forever, and then turned right again, and then left. And then they came to another combination lock. Misto worked the dials, with Pris guiding him from inside, and after a few moments, he once again heard the satisfying click. The walls split in two, divided . . . and that was when they saw another wave of Deceptibots, accompanied by the stampeding dinosaurs.

  “Whoa, holy fucking shit!” said Mystikite, skidding to a halt as the corridor yawned open before them. He saw the four charging, loping velociraptors first and the five battle-ready Deceptibots raising their weapons at them second, fully aware that they still had four Deceptibots left over from the last corridor hot on their trail.

  Actual velociraptors, he had learned in science class in high school, would have been only knee-high to someone, say, Misto’s size. But these were not ordinary velociraptors. No, these were stylized Deinonychus antirrhopus, imported straight from the movie Jurassic World. They stood nine feet tall, with enormous claws, shiny green scales, and bright yellow eyes, their teeth razor sharp and glistening in the light of the gang’s weapons-fire, Buffy’s flames, and Pris’s otherworldly glow. And they were coming at them fast, along with the Deceptibots. The dinosaurs’ bird-call-like whoops and shrieks echoed down the corridor, sending chills down his spine. “Shit, shit, shit — guys! Guys!”

  “Ohh holy crap,” said Misto, as the dinosaurs approached. “That’s not good.”

  “Well, what’ll we do?” shouted Viktor.

  “We fight,” said Buffy. She whirled around, and the twin tentacles of fire extending from her body whipped around with her. Darmok and Dizzy both ducked down to avoid them as they went sailing over their heads and sliced through the metal body of a Deceptibot unlucky enough to be in their way. One down, eight to go. Mystikite deflected the pulse-blasts of one coming at him from the front using his lightsaber. Dizzy activated the forcefield on her Iron Man suit, and several pulse-blasts ricochetted off of it as she punched and kicked her way through three of the Deceptibots; they fell apart like hunks of junk, her robotically-augmented muscles pummeling their heads and mechanized bodies. Five to go. Buffy’s fire-serpents writhed through the air and wrapped around two more as they fired their weapons at her. A pulse-blast took her in the chest; sparks flew from the wound, and she fell to the ground, knocked out, a bloody, charred wound on her chest.

  “Damn it!” cried Mystikite. “Buffy!” He went to her and dragged her into a nearby alcove that jutted off the main corridor. Viktor fired his Interphase Pistols at the two Deceptibots and took them both out; sparks flew from their chest-pieces and they flew backward and rattled into the stone walls of the corridor, useless scrap. One of the Deceptibots locked onto Mystikite and Buffy and tried to follow them. Mystikite sprang out in front of them and slashed at it with his lightsaber and decapitated it. It fell to the stone floor sparking and twitching. Four to go, plus the velociraptors, who now came barreling into the corridor, screeching and snapping at the others. Dizzy fired at one of them with her Interphase Pistols, and Darmok and Miso fired at another two of them with their Decimator pistols. Luckily, they made for big targets. One of the screaming beasts exploded in a shower of dinosaur guts, blood, bone, and entrails as Darmok’s Decimator fire slammed into it. Viktor and Gadget took aim at the other two, Viktor with his Interphase Pistols, Gadget with his Proton Weapon. But the dinosaurs were fast — one of them grabbed Dizzy in its mouth. Luckily the metal of her Iron Man suit protected her from its powerful, incisive jaws, though it buckled in spots, and she screamed in surprise and pain.

  “Guys! Frakkin’ help me!” she cried.

  “Dizzy!” cried Gadget. He scurried around to the side of the rampaging dinosaur as Viktor went around to the other side, and fired his Proton Weapon. The glowing orange beam of nuclear fire flew forth from the wand, and blasted the dinosaur into the wall, a blistering fireball erupting from its side. It screamed in torment as cooked dinoguts blew out its other side, and it dropped Dizzy from its jaws as it fell over, smoldering on the floor.

  Dizzy got to her feet, her Exoskeleton bent all out of shape but still somehow functioning. “Jeez,” she said, her suit’s servomotors whirring in complaint as she moved. “Holy Jurassic Part, Batman!”

  The other dinosaur rounded on them and came after Gadget. It snapped at him with its jaws, but Gadget dove out of the way and rolled on the floor to get away from it. It snapped at him again, but Viktor got in the way, and it snapped Viktor up instead, its huge teeth chomping into his Evangeliojaeger.

  “Viktor! No!” cried Dizzy. She took aim with her Interphase Pistols and fired at it. But the dinosaur’s hide was thick; her Interphase Pistol fire impacted and the dinosaur stumbled to the side, but not before it could chomp on the metal of Viktor’s Evangeliojaeger once or twice. Viktor screamed in pain and torment, blood flying everywhere as the dinosaur wriggled its head back and forth, chomping again, its teeth penetrating the Evangeliojaeger and slamming into Viktor’s body, piercing it in several places, penetrating all the way through. Dizzy winced, and fired again. This time she finished off the dinosaur; it collapsed, burning, smoking holes in its side. Viktor’s limp body fell out of its mouth and flopped out onto the floor, his Evangeliojaeger covered in blood. Dizzy ran to him, and knelt by his side, as did Gadget, and Misto. Mystikite checked on Buffy in the alcove first — good, she was still breathing, and her pulse was steady — and then went to see to Viktor along with the others. Darmok was there, too.

  “Heya, Vic,” said Misto, putting a hand on his shoulder. He was barely conscious, and he had blood spattered on his face.

  “Did I — did I win?” he asked, and chuckled a little.

  “Well, you get to say you took on a dinosaur,” said Dizzy. She wore a pained expression. It was plain she didn’t like seeing him like this. “That’s something few people can say, at least.”

  “Good then,” said Viktor. He coughed up blood. “At least I get to go out . . . on a high note of scientific observation. I observed a dinosaur. As it was feeding. Pity it was feeding on me, is all.”

  “Yeah,” said Dizzy. She swallowed, and put her hand on his other shoulder.

  “It’s a pity we didn’t get to . . . know each other better . . . sooner,” he said. “I get the feeling that in a different life . . . we could’ve been . . . friends, Weatherspark.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Viktor tried to move. “You know, I think I can still make it.” He winced in pain and then laid back, and hit his head on the stone floor, and winced again. “No. No I can’t.”

  “Rest easy, old friend,” said Misto. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Thanks, by the way,” said Gadget. “You saved my life back there, Vic.”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Viktor. “I had to do . . . something worthwhile with my life.”

  Pris reappeared, the blob of light reappearing from within Misto’s chest, whirling around him, and then coalescing back into human form next to him. She knelt next to Misto, tears streaking down her face, causing her raccoon-like mascara to run. “Daddy,” she said quietly, “please don’t die. This . . . this is a dreamworld. People aren’t supposed to actually die in dreams. If you die in a dream, you just . . . you just wake up. In the real world.”

  “I’m . . . I’m afraid not this time, my love,” said Viktor, growing weaker. Blood ran down from his mouth. He reached up, his fingers trembling, and caressed her cheek, leaving a spot of blood there. She grasped his hand and held it. “I’m afraid this dream is over, for me.”

  “No,” said Pris. “I won’t allow it.”

  Viktor closed his eyes, and exhaled. He furrowed his brow. “Don’t grieve,” he said. “It is . . . logical.” And with that, he exhaled one last time, and stopped breathing.

  Pris collapsed on top of him, crying.

  “Guys?” came a voice. It was Buffy. Mystikite turned around and ran toward where she lay in the alcove, and knelt down next to her.

  “Buffy, thank the gods,” he said, as her eyes fluttered open. “I mean, I know you can’t exactly die from that shit, but still.” He helped her to her feet.

  “What — what happened?” she said, as she stood up with his help.

  “You took a pulse-blast,” said Dizzy. “From the Deceptibots. They’re gone now. Don’t know where they went, don’t particularly care. Viktor’s dead.”

  “We gotta get outta here,” said Pris, drying her eyes and sniffling. “There will be more. But I don’t just want to leave him here.”

  “Pris, I’m so sorry,” said Misto softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry. He didn’t deserve to die. Underneath everything else, I truly believe that Viktor was a good person.”

  “I didn’t know him,” said Darmok, “but he seemed to genuinely want to do the right thing. To set things to rights.”

  “Yeah,” said Pris, nodding. She gathered herself up and stood. “He was a good person, and he did want to do the right thing. And I guess we do just have to leave him. But I don’t want to.”

  “We don’t have any choice, Pris,” said Dizzy. It was obvious she was trying to sound comforting, in her own way. “We have to leave him.”

  “He deserves better,” she said, turning to her. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, he probably does,” said Mystikite. “Anybody deserves better than that.”

  “I have an idea,” said Buffy, walking over to where she stood. “Here, let’s give him a Viking funeral. It’s not the best we could do, but . . .” She blinked, and the aura of blue flame flickered into existence around her body, and the usual serpents of organic fire extended from her body, writhed through the air slowly, and gently wrapped around Viktor’s corpse, setting his clothes and body aflame beneath his Evangeliojaeger. He burned, the smell of cooking flesh spreading throughout the corridor, the thick smoke clouding all around them, and spiraling up through the labyrinth’s open ceiling and into the night air above. Gadget coughed.

  “Hey,” he said, blinking suddenly in surprise, and sucking in a breath. “Check this out. I think . . .” He put two fingers to his temple, and blinked again. “Yeah! Guys! I got it back!” Viktor’s body levitated into the air, shakily at first, then more steadily. Viktor continued to burn brightly, as the others all stood around in a moment of silence. Surprisingly, no Deceptibots attacked them; no dinosaurs, either. The only sounds came from the crackling flames engulfing Viktor’s body as it floated upwards toward the night sky above, clearing the twenty-foot walls of the labyrinth, and floating outward and to the side as it ascended into the clouds above, becoming a burning speck in the sky. The others all craned their necks to see as it eventually vanished into the clouds. It didn’t return.

  “Well,” said Pris, swallowing a hard lump of sadness, “I guess that’s it, then. Dad’s gone. Guess I better get used to a lonely existence in the NeuroScape, once this is all over.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Buffy. “My Physion Bio-Printer. Or Ravenkroft’s version of it. We could Bio-Print you a body to inhabit.”

  “Hey, good thinking, babe,” said Mystikite. “But we’re counting our chickens a little too early. First we need to get the hell outta here and find Ravenkroft and the Alien, and give them what they’ve got coming.”

  “Right,” said Gadget. “So come on, guys. Let’s get moving. Pris — are you okay? Well, I mean, I know you’re not okay, but--”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Let’s move.”

  And so, they continued on through the labyrinth. Pris cried off and on the whole way, but she managed to soldier on, for she knew the height of the stakes, and nothing mattered more to her now than seeing Ravenkroft — the real one, this time — dead as dust. She said so, several times. They turned right, then left, then right again, maneuvering down the corridors one by one; right, then right again, then left, then left three more times, then yet another right turn. They remained free from the presence of Deceptibots and dinosaurs for the time being. Then they came to another combination lock, this one more complex than the last three had been. Pris once again turned into a ball of iridescent light, and entered Misto’s body. He swooned briefly, and then set to work on the dials; there were five of them this time, the equations more daunting.

  “Okay, why haven’t the Deceptibots attacked us again?” said Dizzy. “I’m suspicious.”

  “Hey, don’t ask that,” said Mystikite. “You’ll jinx us. What I don’t understand is why they’re here at all. This is Gadget’s Dreamworld, right?”

  “It’s also Ravenkroft’s Dreamworld, now,” said Gadget. “It’s a co-created reality. We’re at war, here. It’s his imagination versus mine.”

  “Oh, terrific,” said Mystikite. “That’s great.”

  “Got it!” said Misto. His furry hands shook, and he trembled. He panted for breath. He did not look like he was in good shape. A splotch of light coalesced on his back as Pris exited his body, became a floating irradiant sphere, and then coalesced into a human-shaped, glistening blob of light, then turned back into herself once again. Misto nearly collapsed, but caught himself on the wall of the labyrinth. The stone wall ahead of them split itself in two, and began sliding apart.

  “Misto?” said Dizzy, and put a hand on his blue-furred shoulder. “You don’t look all that good. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, waving away her concern, sweat glistening on his fur. “Pay me no mind. I — “ But he stopped talking then, as the wall sliding apart revealed a whole new section of this imaginary-battlefield-brought-to-life, stretching beyond the labyrinth into a whole new dimension of weirdness.

  When Gadget had been a teenager and still in high school, he had read a book called One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey. In it, a character named Chief Bromden, a large, docile Native American psychiatric patient, narrated his observations of a psych ward in hospital and focused on the antics of a fellow patient named Randall McMurphy. The Chief suffered from the delusion that the world was being swallowed up by the machinations of something he called “the Combine,” a gigantic complex of “machinery” that threatened to engulf everyone and everything, a metaphor for society and its machinations of conformity. Only when Gadget had read the book, his sci-fi-oriented mindset hadn’t gone in that direction . . . He hadn’t seen the Chief’s “Combine” as a vivid metaphor for society, or its tentacles of conformist power reaching into everyone’s lives. No; he had, in his na?veté, seen it as a literal machine, branching out and into everyone, turning everyone and everything into cyborg-like, soulless minions of orthodoxy. A cybernetic conspiracy of Mundanity, its black, mechanized tendrils extending into the hearts, brains, and minds of the entire Human race.

  When he had been a little older, he had read another book, Stephen King’s Black House. In that book, toward the climax, the hero, Jack Sawyer, a man who had the power to “flip” between parallel worlds, came upon a gigantic machine called “the Big Combination,” a towering complex in which hundreds of children — all of them powerful telepaths — were forced to trudge on conveyor belts in order to power an eldritch machine that could break down the support structures that maintained the “Beams,” the pinions that supported the Dark Tower, the lynchpin of all reality. The name of the thing had reminded Gadget of the Chief’s “Combine,” and the two concepts had become intermixed; he had imagined, then, the idea that “the Chief’s Combine,” the dominant paradigm of Mundane Reality, was like King’s Big Combination: A towering complex of machinery in which the inner-children of all Humanity — that was his mother, the psychiatrist, talking — were forever trapped, chained to paper-pushing desks, forges and foundries, and other workstations that represented their hopeless, nine-to-five careers, their boring real-world responsibilities, their rewardless fast-food jobs, and their thankless roles in the grown-up world of tax-forms, parenthood, and workaday, stress-filled minutiae. Chained to these positions, and watched over by vicious monsters that would whip them if they fell behind in their trudges, these poor souls would find a release only when they closed their eyes and Dreamed, escaping to better worlds only in their minds. These were the Mundanes, and the geeks and nerds of the world, who thought they had no time to indulge their would-be fannish appetites, and who starved their inner-children out of some wrongfully-perceived need to “act their age.”

  This was what lay before them now. This thing — his version of the Chief's Combine, given Literal Life here in the Dreamworld.

  They, the geeks and Mundanes alike, could only be freed from this delusion if someone came and set them free from it; so far, no one had come to do the deed, for no one had been brave enough, strong enough. No one had yet discovered the central nexus-point of thought for the entire paradigm; no one had found where it originated from, its central point of departure in all of Human thought . . . . because until now, there had been no central nexus-point. No one had ever created one. It had not existed — until now.

  The Chief’s Combine spread out beyond the labyrinth’s final set of sliding-apart walls. The Serenity stood here too — somehow, it had been transported to this new location — about ten yards away from where they now stood, off to one side, parked roughly the same distance away as it had been from the entrance to the labyrinth in the first place. About fifty yards from where they stood, at the edge of the labyrinth, there began a dirt road winding from the edge of a tall, barbed-wire fence, on over and through a series of dry, dusty hillocks of dirt and clay. An arid, dusty breeze blew dirt and sand past them as they stood there. And there, beyond the hillocks and the path, about a mile in the distance, stood the Combine: A gigantic dark tower of steel and iron, like the skeleton of a skyscraper-in-progress, haphazardly welded together out of many different pieces, it rose up out of the desert like the bones of some giant, dead android’s arm, reaching to the skies in one last grasp at freedom from its burial place. Spotlights that shined from the ground with an eerie, purple-white luminescence lit it up in the darkness.

  Each of the prisoners he now saw down there, slaving away in that rising tower, was not a literal single person, in and of themselves . . . No, each one represented a thousand, maybe a million people . . . each one was a whirling nexus of dreaming minds, trapped here within this ceaseless dungeon of slavery and servitude, each one of their tired pairs of eyes looking out as a multitude of souls peering into the dark abyss of a future wrought from nothing but pain and hardship. With each of them freed, a hundred thousand Mundanes would maybe finally awaken from their long, day-to-day sleep of serving the dominant paradigm, and perhaps learn to see the world in brighter colors for a change. This was a chance to save them. A chance to save them all.

  To Gadget, this place also represented something else, something that sent shivers down his spine: The Combine Clinic. When he had been but a boy, his mother — ever the research psychiatrist — had taken him to a place called the Combine Clinic, to undergo an experimental treatment for his bipolar disorder. They had tried a combination of electroconvulsive therapy and custom mind-expanding drugs; a combination which did not produce the expected results. It had made him worse. The delusions and hallucinations had been the worst part; the mood swings and the anxiety had been second-worst. He had raved for days, screaming at his doctors and nurses. Long-term confinement had been discussed. His mother had been beside herself — mostly with guilt for ever bringing him there. She checked him out against medical advice, and checked him into a hospital where he could recover, and later sued the Combine Clinic out of existence. This place, here, was a symbolic representation of the Combine Clinic . . . it stood for the mental corruption that the place had caused, the way it had destroyed his sanity for a brief time. It stood for the enslavement of minds to madness.

  “What . . . the ever-loving . . . fuck . . .” said Mystikite.

  “Oh no,” breathed Gadget. Mostly to himself, he muttered, “It’s worse than I ever imagined it as.”

  “So do we go around it?” asked Misto. “Or do we go through it? Your call, I guess, Gadget. I vote we go around it, though.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” said Mystikite. “Looks like too much trouble.”

  Within the Combine’s structure, Gadget could see — using his Mind-Weirding Helm — the slaves to the dominant paradigm: Rows upon rows of desks stacked high with paperwork and children chained to them and their drudgery; children working forges producing weapons, their skin burnt by sparks and molten metal; children hauling ore and rocks, and dragging heavy loads. They were mostly naked, save for some who wore tattered rags. And watching over them — occasionally whipping them with glowing energy-whips, causing anger and bile to rise in Gadget’s throat — were creatures similar to Ravenkroft’s Biomechanoids; they had the bodies of deformed men, robotic cyborg parts attached to their bodies, and the heads of animals. The sheer scale of the ghastliness of it made for a spectacle unlike any other. This was Ravenkroft’s doing. Ravenkroft had somehow summoned this up from within his mind, pulled it out of him, and confronted him with it. Only . . . No. Not entirely. No, something about this felt real. As though it truly meant something, as though if he were to go there, to this place, and actually free those children, it would ripple out and have a real effect on the world. As though if he did so, out there in the Real World — he admonished himself; he had to stop thinking of it like that; this world was real; every bit as real as the Otherworld that they were from — then the Human race as a whole would be better off for it . . . and there would truly be a consequence, and a good one, to their actions here. Maybe it was worth taking on the challenge. Maybe avoiding it, going around it, was the wrong answer.

  “No,” said Gadget, shaking his head. “We go through it. We have to save the children.”

  “Children?” asked Buffy. “What children?”

  “The ones held captive there,” said Gadget. “There’s thousands of them. And they’re not just any children, either. They’re the insides of our fellow geeks and nerds. And the insides of Mundanes. Even if they don’t know it. Their inner-children . . . the parts of themselves that the Mundane world forces into submission to its needs and wants. Ravenkroft conjured this up from inside me, but he doesn’t know the full power of what he’s messing with. This whole thing is connected back to the real world — and everyone in it — back through me, somehow. So it’s my responsibility to see that it’s taken care of.”

  “Huh,” said Dizzy. “So that’s what the dominant frakkin’ paradigm actually looks like in the flesh.” She sucked in a breath and smirked. “Heh. Doesn't look so tough, after all.”

  Buffy nodded. “So what’s your plan?”

  “Yeah,” said Mystikite. “Please tell me you actually have one.”

  “What, I’m supposed to come up with a plan that quickly?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Mystikite. “It’s your idea to go there and free the children. So you come up with the plan.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Gadget. “But, like, I only had the idea like five seconds ago. Can’t come up with a plan in like five seconds, dude. We don’t even know the layout of the place. We need reconnaissance, is what we need.”

  “I can be of assistance in that department,” said Pris, speaking up suddenly. She stepped forward, and once more, she began to glow around the edges, and then collapsed into a glowing ball of light. Her voice echoed from nowhere in particular as she said: “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  And with that, she shot off into the night, headed toward the Tower of the Combine.

  Pris returned thirty minutes later. The ball of light she had become rocketed back toward them from over the nearest dusty hillock and exploded back into humanoid form, and then coalesced back into Pris’s usual self. Gadget stepped forward.

  “Well?” he said. “What’s up? Did you scope the place out?”

  “Did I ever,” she said, nodding. “There’s a guard-bunker, about a hundred yards from the base of the tower, and an electrified barb-wire fence going all the way around he tower, which is a mile wide on all four sides. The fence is twenty feet tall and has only one gate, about twenty feet wide, right on the main road. Six dozen Biomechanoid Stormtroopers at the bunker, along with about two dozen Deceptibots. They patrol the perimeter every fifteen minutes in groups of six, accompanied by six Deceptibots. And the tower has eight hundred levels, if you can believe that . . . with at least a thousand prisoners on every level, with about eighty-eight Stormtroopers per level, too. From what I could tell, it divides up like this: Seventy thousand, four hundred and eighty Biomechanoid Stormtroopers, and twenty-one thousand, one hundred and twenty Deceptibots. Give or take, I mean; there could be more of each, I couldn’t get an accurate count because of all the movement. The prisoners are all chained, and in electrified shackles; they wear oxygen masks on the upper levels going into the clouds. The Stormtroopers are all armed with energy weapons of some kind, along with energy-whips for keeping the prisoners in line. The electrified shackles and chains are all controlled by a central computer that’s in the guard-bunker. There’s also an alarm system that will trip if anything breaches the main gate. And there’s automated pulse-cannons mounted all along the perimeter of the fence, at thirty-foot intervals, also computer-controlled. ”

  “Damn, good work, Pris,” said Dizzy. “You da man. Well, woman.”

  “I like to think so,” said Pris.

  “So how the hell do we get in?” said Mystikite.

  “Full frontal assault,” said Darmok, shaking her head. “It’s the only way. We should use the spaceship.” She gestured toward the Serenity. “We get in, and we crash the gate and open fire. Then once we’ve overwhelmed them, we force the Stormtroopers to stand down and release the prisoners. All forty-four thousand Stormtroopers, all five hundred thousand prisoners.”

  “And if they don’t stand down?” said Buffy, “and take the prisoners hostage instead?”

  “Then we go in ourselves,” said Darmok, “and start laying waste to them. With Gadget’s Mind-Weirding Helm in play, and with your pyrokinetic abilities, Buffy, we should be a match for them, even with their superior numbers.”

  “I dunno,” said Mystikite. “Forty-four thousand. That’s a lot of endurance you’re asking of us. Not to mention the colossal risk to our necks!”

  “Plus we’ll have the weapons on the spaceship,” said Darmok. “That will even the odds, once we’ve flushed the Stormtroopers out, separating them from the prisoners, and lured them into an open confrontation.”

  “Only problem with that,” said Gadget, “is that the Serenity — just like every Firefly-class ship — has no weapons. It’s a cargo-ship, not a fighter.”

  “Well we can take care of that,” said Dizzy.

  “How?” asked Gadget. “We don’t have any weapons to put on it.”

  “Sure we do,” said Dizzy, and she grinned. “We’re connected to the NeuroScape, remember? Mystikite made the modifications to your Helm back in the hotel room, adding the NeuroBand Headset features to it. So right now, we’re tapped into the NeuroScape as well as your Dreamworld. The NeuroScape is what’s giving this pocket universe its form and structure. All we need to do is figure out how to access the software from in here, and we can hack ourselves some sci-fi weaponry into existence and bolt it onto the Serenity. Right Mystikite?”

  “Easier said than done, but yeah,” said Mystikite. “Gadget, you’re the one wearing the Helm, so give it a shot.”

  “Well . . . what should I do?” asked Gadget.

  “Okay,” said Mystikite. “Close your eyes. Reach out with your mind. Search your feelings, Young Skywalker. Use the Force, Luke. I’m being serious, by the way. Try to reach out with your mind and feel for the telepathic threads of the computer’s software. You’ll recognize it; it won’t feel human or like the alien. It will feel cold, and rhythmic; a perfect, really fast, pulse-like heartbeat blasting away like a Morse-code signal, buried somewhere behind everything else. Can you hear it? Can you?”

  “I . . . I think so,” said Gadget. He had his eyes closed as instructed, and though he had to strain himself in order to do so, he did hear something similar to what Mystikite described. It sounded like a fast-paced telegraph tapping out an all-points-bulletin to the stars, a radio-telescope signal coming in from some distant part of the galaxy. Yes, that was it. He grabbed hold of it with his mind, imagining himself wrestling with it as though it were a slimy snake; it was slippery, and he struggled to hold onto it. “Okay,” he said. “Now what?”

  “Now sort of merge with it,” said Mystikite. “Fold it into your consciousness. Imagine that it’s a bright white stream of energy that you’ve got your arms around and are wrestling with, and that you’re hugging it so tightly that it slowly seeps into your body, and blends into your insides. It should tingle, and give you a real head-rush once it merges with you. And then open your eyes and I’ll tell you what to do next.”

  Gadget did so. He pictured the writhing serpent of the Morse-code-like signal as a bright white beam of energy and then wrangled it, brought it closer, and then closed his arms tight, and brought it into himself. His head sang for a moment, zinging with a sudden rush of power. He saw flashes of program code and advanced mathematics in his mind’s eye, and he felt lightheaded and dizzy for a moment. He blinked open his eyes, and the world appeared in much brighter colors.

  “Whoa,” he said. He blinked a few times, and staggered on his feet, trying to regain his balance. “Okay. What’s next?”

  “Now,” said Mystikite, “try this. Put your hands out in front of you, like you’re going to type on a keyboard . . . and then focus on the idea of a keyboard. Conjure one up in your mind’s eye. And then, the same way you focus on doing things telekinetically, push the keyboard into existence. Go on, you can do it. A Jedi can feel the force, flowing through him . . .”

  Gadget did as Mystikite instructed. He put his hands out in front of him, and felt for a keyboard. Then he closed his eyes briefly, and pushed the keyboard in his mind out and into existence, reopened his eyes, and there, hovering before him just under his fingertips, he beheld a holographic keyboard, floating in the air.

  “I did it!” he exclaimed, grinning. “Yes!”

  “Great!” said Mystikite. “Now then . . . type exactly what I tell you . . .” Mystikite walked him through the command sequence for bypassing the Roleplayer Generisys system and calling up his private Room of Requirement System, which he had programmed into Roleplayer Generisys as a backup years before. When Gadget finally hit the “Enter Key,” the air in front of them split open — a Portal opening, a hole in space. The hole widened, as though a pair of doors were sliding open, revealing a large, spatially-impossible room beyond, hanging there in space before them. Dizzy stuck her head inside.

  “Whoa,” she said, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. “This is awesome! Mystikite, you da man.”

  “What have I been telling you?” he said and smiled. “My penis is enormous. You really have no idea, none of you.”

  One by one they filed through the impossible doorway that hung open in space there on the dusty hillock, and into the Room of Requirement beyond. Inside its stark-white walls, floor, and ceiling, they found a cornucopia of deadly machines, Gadgets, and gizmos. High-wattage fluorescent lights cast a harsh glow down from the ceiling. Dizzy looked like she was in hog-heaven, her eyes glistening with curiosity and eagerness as she looked around at the shelves and racks of equipment. Gadget himself was impressed. It seemed that when he had designed this place, Mystikite had thought of almost everything weapons-related that any Player Character — in any sort of game or campaign ever — could have ever wanted to outfit themselves with. The Room was twenty feet from floor to ceiling, about eighty feet across by a hundred deep, and was lined with — and its floor stacked with — racks upon racks of rifles, cannons, gatling guns, particle beam weapons, ray guns, machine guns, pistols, and shotguns. Some were large and some were small; some so big they would have to be mounted to be mounted on vehicles, some so small they could fit in the palm of one’s hand. Some he recognized: Here, he found the BFG from the Doom video-game franchise; there, he saw a Star Wars blaster. Some, he didn’t: One weapon looked like a cross between a bazooka and a high-powered Tesla coil. There were also workbenches scattered throughout the room, outfitted with all sorts of tools; more and different kinds than could be found in any machine shop or automotive garage.

  “I’m thinking we need something from this shelf, over here,” said Dizzy, motioning toward the rack of equipment nearest her. It held what looked like a ten-foot-long gatling-gun, with large power coils wrapped around each barrel, each of which was the size of a rocket-launcher tube, with large circuit boards and what looked like a dynamo mounted to the butt-end of it. “Yeah, this will do quite nicely, methinks.”

  “Now we’re talkin’,” said Mystikite. “Damn I’m glad I programmed this into things. I intended it as a way for PCs to cheat the Roleplayer Generisys way of doing things, and as a way to equip NPCs during play. I never imagined I’d be using it for this.”

  Gadget summoned the keyboard again. It got easier the more you did it. He typed out a series of commands and called up the weapons catalogue. He flipped through the images until he found one that matched the weapon Dizzy had her eye on. “Looks like that’s a PX93 Multi-Fire, Multi-Phasic Pulse Cannon, Dizzy.”

  “Maybe we can use this too, whatever it is,” said Misto. He put his hand on a large, cylindrical device that had a longish barrel, a thin glass-like nozzle, and four smaller cylinders mounted to its sides, along with a series of cables wired into them that traveled down and into a small, squarish base covered in gears, pipes, and other mechanical parts. “We’ll need to figure out a way to mount this stuff to the Serenity, though.”

  “That’s what these are for,” said Mystikite, patting his hand on one of the workbenches. “I made sure to outfit them with enough tools for practically any job. We can modify the weapons in any way we need.”

  “That’s a DZ13, quad-laser cutter,” said Gadget, turning to Misto. “It can cut through almost anything, even ten-inch chromium.”

  “And this?” said Misto, gesturing to a very large, blocky-looking device, ten feet wide and five feet across, with a compliment of large, lozenge-like capsules lined up beside it.

  “That’s a quantum torpedo launcher,” said Gadget, consulting the weapons guide. “Meant for mounting on a ship just like the Serenity. It also contains a force-field generator, useful for creating a defensive shield around a spaceship.”

  “Ah, here it is!” said Mystikite, pulling aside one of the racks of weaponry on its wheels. “Found it!” He pulled out a rolling cart. On it, covered with a sheet which he pulled aside, was a large, bulky machine that resembled a surface-to-air missile launcher, but with what looked like a large satellite dish plugged into the business-end of it. “Ladies and gents, feast your eyes. A genuine, military-grade Portal Gun. I designed this one myself, for a Shadowrun campaign that never took off. It was meant to be mounted on a helicopter and used for opening portals for troops to move through. Now it’s just collecting dust. I figure if we can install it on the Serenity, we’ll have two methods of really fast travel open to us: One — the ship’s hyperdrive. Two — Portals. Those can come in handy in a tight spot, and are useful for other things, too... like redirecting the flow of falling matter... or oncoming troops!”

  “Great,” said Gadget. “One of those too, then. But uh oh. That thing looks like trouble.”

  “Why?” asked Mystikite.

  “Well, I’m looking at the specs for it. Apparently, you designed it with some limitations. It can only fire once every three rounds, and it requires two rounds to charge. So basically, once you fire it, you have to wait three rounds, then charge it for two rounds, then fire again. So five rounds total between firings. That and it deals damage to whoever fires it via a recoil effect.”

  “Well, we’re still using it,” said Mystikite. “It’ll come in handy.”

  “We gotta be careful, though,” said Gadget. “We don’t wanna load the ship down with too many weapons. She still has to fly, y’know.”

  “Yeah, good point,” said Mystikite. “I think these four should do it, for now. Now all we need to do is install them. I wonder if those Stormtroopers at that tower have patrols that venture out this far? If they do, we’re sort of sunk. They’ve probably seen the ship by now if they do.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Pris, suddenly piping up. She had remained silent all this time, simply looking around at all the weaponry. “I checked their patrol patterns while I was there. They’re concentrated around the tower and its perimeter. It’s like they don’t even know the labyrinth exists. Or that we’re here. I think this whole world — this ‘pocket universe,’ as you call it — was stitched together ‘on the fly,’ as it were. It’s not very well put-together. I think we can use that to our advantage.”

  “That’s good to know, Pris, thanks,” said Gadget. He paused, and looked around. “Hey, guys. While we’re here, we ought to take the opportunity to arm ourselves a little better, too.”

  “Good thinking,” said Mystikite. He clipped the lightsaber to his belt, and wandered down the aisle of weapon-racks, looking left and right until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a weapon that looked like a cross between a small crossbow and a pistol, with a coil of brass tubing wrapped around the barrel and a collection of circuit-boards near the butt-end near the stock. The weapon also had a small brass sphere mounted on the reverse end as well, and what looked like a motor with several gears attached. It even came in a holster and a leather a belt, which Mystikite buckled around his waist, and which he re-clipped the lightsaber to instead of to his belt. “Ah, been a while since I’ve seen this one. An oldie but a goodie. She shoots rapid-fire superheated plasma-bolts. They’ll burn right through anything.”

  Misto gave Darmok the Dreamworld’s version of the Decimator pistol she had originally given him, which gave her two of them, and reached over to the nearest rack of weapons. He pulled out a large weapon that looked like one of the Deceptibots’ pulse-cannons, only fiercer somehow, and more heavily-mechanized on the outside. “Heh. This should even things up a bit. I wonder what it does.”

  “It probably doesn’t shoot marshmallows,” said Dizzy. “Just a guess, off the top of my head.”

  Buffy picked up what looked like a set of heavy-looking, dark golden vambraces with circuitry etched into them and wires adorning them. She slipped them over her forearms and threw the switches on them. They locked down onto her arms tightly, and the circuit pathways lit up with a bright yellow light. “Hey,” she said, holding up her arms and examining them. “Yo, Gadget. What are these things?”

  “Those?” he said. “Let me look.” He scrolled through the weapons catalogue, looking, then found them. “Those are ‘KL45 Shockwave Bracelets.’ You hold them out in front of you and concentrate on the effect you need to project, and they take your focused mental energy and use it to deliver one of three effects — either a forceful forward shockwave that repels anything in front of you, or a gravitational wave of attraction that pulls something toward you, or, if you criss-cross them, they produce a bubble of force that expands outward from you like an explosion. The shockwave does 5d20 damage to whatever’s in front of you... the gravity wave doesn’t do any damage... and the explosion does 10d12 damage to everything — and everyone — around you. Just for future reference. So be careful with them. You go nuclear with those, you might get us, too.”

  “So these dice figures Gadget keeps reading off,” said Dizzy. “Do we have to roll frakkin’ dice every time we fire or use these weapons? ‘Cause that’s going to frak with, like, our lifespans if we do.”

  “Nope,” said Mystikite. “The system will do it for you. At least, if this were purely the NeuroScape, it would, so I’m assuming that will happen here, too. I hope.”

  “Darmok?” said Misto. “How about you? You trading up?”

  “No thanks,” said Darmok, holding up her Decimator pistols. “I’m okay with these, honestly. They’re reliable, and I know how to use them. Besides, I’ve gotten used to them, and I’ve even come to like them. I don’t think I’d want to use anything else.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Mystikite. “Gadget? How about you?”

  Gadget smiled. He put his finger to his temple. “What need have I for conventional weapons? I’ve got this. A Jedi’s ally... the Force it is! ”

  Mystikite grinned. “How about you, Pris?”

  Pris walked over to the nearest weapons rack and peered at it for a moment, looking back and forth at the various implements of destruction. She seemed to consider them for a long moment, thinking it over. Then, she lowered her head and sighed. She reached up into the sleeve of her jacket and pulled out a crooked wand made of ash and willow, and stared at it for a minute or so, then smirked. She turned to Mystikite and smiled.

  “I think I’m good,” she said.

  Gadget looked around at all of them. They were all looking at him expectantly, for some damn reason. Even Dizzy. He wished they would quit doing that. “Well!” he intoned, and then clapped his hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “Ladies and gentlemen. Shall we to our ride, then? Methinks we’ve got work to do.”

  They worked on the ship all night . . . which in this place was longer than it was in the ostensibly-“real” Otherworld. Misto used his new weapon — which turned out to be a powerful laser rifle — to kill and simultaneously cook a large jack rabbit that happened by the ship, and to start a campfire for them, so that they would have something to eat for dinner and some warmth in the cold night air. The moon glowed brightly that night and hung large in the sky, giving them some natural light as they worked, going back and forth between the Room of Requirement and the ship. Not that they needed it; they found a set of high-intensity carbon arc-lamps in the Room, and those provided more than enough light to work by.

  The hardest part turned out to be welding the metal support beams for the weapons onto the lower superstructure of the ship, and moving the beams into place. That required Misto, Mystikite, and Buffy to do the heavy lifting — the three of whom were the only ones with superhuman strength — while Dizzy held the arc-torch and the sparks flew. It was a good thing that Dizzy’s usual get-up included a pair of welding goggles, because Mystikite had forgotten to include any in the Room of Requirement.

  They mounted the weapons onto the forward underbelly of the ship, just under the cockpit. Gadget used the Helm’s powers of telekinesis to lift the ship up and to aid Misto, Mystikite, and Buffy with lifting the steel beams and the weapons, and to guide them into place as Dizzy welded. Then Darmok fed the wires up into the ship, and fed them along the power conduits up into the cockpit, where she wired them into a brand-new weapons console that she had constructed especially for the purpose of controlling their newfound firepower, made out of a laptop computer, the design of which Mystikite had copied from his actual laptop back in the “real” world. Pris programmed the new control software for them, with Darmok consulting on its design, creating it from a piece of Pris’s own consciousness, saving them time.

  They also outfitted the ship with a forcefield system they found in the Room, as the Serenity, in its base configuration, also didn’t have any shields. Well, it sure did now. Their new shields would take about two hundred direct pulse-blasts, or their equivalent — or about 280 points of damage — before falling to fifty percent power, and then another 140 points before falling to 25 percent, and then another 100 points before failing completely. Then, they would need to recharge for three rounds, before returning to full power. Gadget was proud of himself for extending their efficiency, as in their default configuration, they would’ve only lasted for about 200 pulse-blasts before failing utterly.

  When they were finished, just as the overlarge moon began to fade from the sky, and just before the first rays of dawn and the twin suns began to rise above the horizon, Gadget stood back and admired their handiwork, with Dizzy by his side. They exchanged a grin.

  “Y’know, the name Serenity doesn’t fit her anymore,” he said. “Not with all those weapons mounted on her. She needs a new name. Something fierce, and proud.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” said Dizzy. “She does need a new name. Hmm. Lemme think a second. Fierce and proud, huh? How about — The Thunder Road, after the ship in the movie Explorers?”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Not bad. But I was thinking something more fannish. Ooh I know! We could name it after a filk song!”

  “Oh good idea!” she said. “How about the U.S.S. Carmen Miranda’s Ghost. Like the Leslie Fish song.”

  “Nah,” he said. “Too long and involved. Hmm. How about, the S.S. Rocket Ride, after the Tom Smith song?”

  “Eh, kinda leaves me cold, no offense to Tom,” she said. “Let me think. Ah, I’ve got it. The Dream Rider. After the Mercedes Lackey tune.”

  “Ooh, mmm, I kinda like that,” he said. “But, no. It’s not fierce, y’know? It needs to be fierce. Mean-sounding, like something that can take on an army. Wait. It’s coming to me. Ah! I’ve got it! That old Mercedes Lackey and Heather Alexander song . . . Demonbane.”

  A voice came from behind them, startling them. It was Misto. He sang the first catchy verse of a folksy-sounding song set in a dark, minor key.

  “The U.S.S. Demonbane, hmm,” repeated Dizzy, turning the phrase over with a shrug, considering it. “Yeah, seems legit. Sounds good. I like it. I like it a lot.” She smiled. “You’re good with naming things, Gadget. Naming things gives you power over them, and imbues them with power of their own. And with a name like that, our little ship here is gonna kick so much ass it’s unreal.”

  “Damned right it is,” said Misto. He put an arm around either of them. “Stop. Listen. Can you smell that?”

  “Uh, what?” said Gadget.

  “Viktory. It’s in the air. I can feel it, all around us. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us together. We’re going after that tower . . . and we’re going to free those poor Geeks and Mundanes trapped there. And once we do, the whole world is gonna change. For the better. You’ll see. We’ll set humanity on a path toward a brighter future. Together.”

  “Uh, right,” said Gadget. “We will. We attack at dawn.”

  “Roger-roger,” said Dizzy, and gave him a thumbs-up. “What’s our strategy? And how’re we gonna get the Geeks and Mundanes to safety?”

  “Get the others,” said Gadget. “I wanna talk about that with Darmok.”