Time seemed to slow down as I rounded the corner onto my street. The wind blew dried leaves between my feet as I ran, and the red brake lights of my family’s van winked out as they finished pulling into the driveway.
Blue, silver, green, gray, black. Hue was communicating silent panic in the back of my mind, but I still didn’t speak his language.
My dad was lifting two bags of groceries out of the trunk. Mom was unbuckling the Squid from his car seat and settling him on her hip, helping him readjust his grip on the little container of bubble solution they’d probably just bought him at the store. Jenny was pulling her backpack out of the car, laughing at something our dad had said, and standing in the shade of the rickety old tree house I’d hardly ever played in was the Old Man.
My family didn’t see him. Mom turned to say something to Dad as he started to take the groceries inside, and I swear she must have looked right at the Old Man, but she didn’t see him at all. Mom and Dad were smiling at each other, and the Old Man was watching. He was smiling, too.
He was standing in the grass, just standing, arms dangling at his sides. He looked peaceful, like this was all he’d ever wanted. Like he’d been waiting for this moment his entire life.
“Mom, Dad!!” I shouted, but the wind stole my words away. It was a blue wind, a silver wind, and it was blowing so fast it was getting hard to see. It was stealing the colors, draining the green from the grass and turning everything to gray. It blew the bark right off the trees, the texture off the buildings, and every speck of sand and rock came pixel by pixel off the asphalt.
They all swirled around me, becoming numbers and letters and equations as they passed. Everything was dissolving into data all around us, and he was still smiling. They were swirling around him, too, and then some of them spun off. They created a mini dust devil in front of him, moving counter to the rest of the whirlwind, forming into the shape of a woman. She raised a hand comprised entirely of elements from the periodic table, and all the swirling figures sparked green. She moved her fingers around like writing, and then the wind changed, moving in the opposite direction. Counterclockwise, now.
Sh
e leaned down to kiss him with elliptic lips, the logarithmic spirals of her hair whipping around the perfect numbers of her face. Then the pixels and symbols and sums and products flying up from the world around me all connected, humming and buzzing like a swarm of bees. They swirled around me, obscuring my vision of the Old Man and the woman made of figures. They attached themselves to me like metal to a magnet, and I knew no more.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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“I’M SORRY.
“I couldn’t stop it. I can’t stop it. I don’t even know if I want to.
“Isn’t this my destiny?”
“The pup awakes.”
“You were informed of his condition already. You were told he would wake.”
“I still don’t understand your decision to bring him here. It was my wish that he be erased along with his world.”
“Your passion is your folly. It would be a logical waste for the Harker to die when we can still use him, especially since your plan to entrap the other Walkers has failed.”
There was a sound like the snarling of an animal; a low, warning, guttural growl. “Your science has failed us as well, has it not? FrostNight is not strong enough to perpetuate itself.”
“Which is why we can still use the Harker.”
“He has escaped us twice now,” the first voice snarled. I was all too aware of who it was—it was the only thing I was aware of, right now. Lord Dogknife.
My brain felt like it was swirling around inside my head, and it kept repeating words I couldn’t attribute a voice to: I can’t stop it.
“And the last time,” the voice went on, “it was my perseverance that kept him and the girl from interfering with the Adraedan’s lock on InterWorld.”
“A plan which ultimately failed.”
“That matters little, as we have found the power from another source. We can perpetuate the Wave even without the Harker.”
“Yet your other power source is not as strong. With the Harker, we are guaranteed success. It is the clear choice.”
They continued to argue, but the voices faded into the background. I didn’t care what they were saying. I didn’t care where I was, or what was going to happen to me.
My world was dead.
My family was dead. My supportive, good-natured father who always stood up for what was right and my smart, creative mother who’d not only believed my crazy tale about being an interdimensional freedom fighter, she’d made me a necklace and wished me good luck and let me leave home forever. My funny, sensitive little sister and my adorable baby brother who loved Cheerios and blowing bubbles. Mr. Dimas. The boy riding his skateboard down the street, and the nice lady next door who’d babysat for me sometimes when I was younger. They were all gone.