Hideo steps away from the door first. “I recognize some of the pieces here.” He nods at the dark marbles hovering in the air, and when I look closer, I notice that they glitter a deep scarlet and sapphire.
Immediately, I know what he means. These are from the game that Sasuke had once made up with Hideo, when they’d gone to the park and thrown red- and blue-colored plastic eggs all across the grass and then raced to retrieve them. When Sasuke had been stolen away. Remnants of that memory are now scattered in here, distorted into a nightmare.
I look back at the door’s two hovels. They’re the slots where the marbles fit, harkening back to how Hideo and Sasuke had once played this game.
“We need to collect them,” Hideo says. “One red, one blue.”
Hammie looks out at the hovering dark marbles. She nods at the closest one, and before anyone can stop her, she crouches against the steps and takes a flying leap off the side, launching into the air in the blink of an eye.
“Wait—!” Hideo starts to shout.
She seizes the closest one to her, twists in midair, and shoves it into her pocket. As she falls, she shoots out her rope and snags it on a crack in the stairs. She swings in an arc down further on the tower, dangling to a stop below us.
“Got one,” she calls up to us.
Every single one of the sweeping red lights suddenly shoots toward us, flooding all of us in a scarlet glow. A deafening horn echoes across the landscape.
This was a trap. The marbles are needed in order to get through the door, but making contact with those same marbles has also alerted Zero to exactly where we are.
“Climb!” Asher shouts down at Hammie, right as we see a whirlwind of security bots cluster at the base of the tower.
Hammie doesn’t waste another breath. She starts pulling herself up the rope as quickly as she can. Roshan darts down the steps two at a time toward her, but the bots are moving so fast that I know they’ll catch up to them before Hammie can get back to us.
I glance at Hideo and toss him one end of my rope. He catches it. Then I swing down toward Hammie and Roshan. But the bots are swarming up too fast—they’ll catch up to them before I can make it. Below me, Roshan has reached Hammie and positioned himself in front of her as she pulls herself up onto the lone island of a step she’s on. He narrows his eyes at the approaching bots and crosses his forearms. His shield appears.
The bots clash against it. Roshan winces as he’s pushed back, his boots digging hard against the stone steps, trying in vain tokeep them from pushing him right off the edge. Hammie hops to her feet and lunges back up the stairs toward us.
Roshan’s shield can’t sustain the hits anymore. The glowing blue circle shudders as the bots throw themselves once more at it, and then it flickers out. I scream something. They charge forward at him.
“Hey!”
My head jerks up at the sound of Asher’s voice. He’s leaped off the stairs to grab on to another marble. Half of the security bots shift direction toward him now, while the others slow for an instant, giving Roshan just enough time to turn and race up the steps after Hammie.
I dart past them both as they rejoin Hideo at the top. Roshan glances at me. “Where are you going?” he shouts.
I don’t answer right away. Instead, I stop beside Asher and crouch down, then pull a stick of dynamite from my utility belt. I fit it against the steps, right before the bots. “Move!” I shout at Asher.
He already sees what I’m doing. As I turn tail, so does he, and we sprint up right as the dynamite goes off behind us.
The explosion knocks us to our knees. Behind us is a gaping hole in the steps, so wide that it stops the bots from following us. They gather at the edge in a crowd—it won’t be long before they start leaping across the gap.
“Put them in!” I hear Asher shout. Hammie and Roshan take the two marbles and shove them into the slots on either side of the door.
The bots are climbing and clawing, making their way across the chasm in the stairs. They’re racing up toward us.
The door swings open. Hideo grabs my arm. The bots are almost on top of us.
Hammie leaps through the door, followed by Roshan. Hideoshoves me through the entrance. Beside us, one of the first bots to reach us latches on to Asher’s arm, its metal fingers closing around him in a tight grip. He kicks out at the bot’s chest—it loosens its hold, and he throws himself inside the door. I turn around just as Hideo barely makes it in, slamming the door shut right as the bots lunge at it.
We collapse against the ground. My heart’s racing so fast that I find myself clutching at my chest, as if that would help me breathe.
“Well,” Asher gasps out as he meets our eyes. “That was different.”
Hideo winces, bracing himself against the door. His face is ghostly pale now, mirroring what he must look like in real life, and I know he’s growing weaker from blood loss. The image of his body glitches slightly—flickering in and out before solidifying again.
I hurry to him and touch his arm. We are running out of time, and his wound is our ticking clock. He gives me a slight smile that’s closer to a grimace. Then he nods at the new place we’ve arrived in.
Hammie collapses against Roshan, letting out a long breath. I can feel my hands shaking in my lap. When I look around, I realize that we’re all sitting inside a glowing white space, with no walls or ceiling. Where’s this?
