InterWorld (InterWorld 1)

Then he stopped and seemed to be resting. I felt utterly useless.

“Jay?” I said. “You’ll be fine. Really, you will.” I wasn’t lying. I was saying it, hoping that by saying it I was somehow going to make it so.

He surprised me by shoving himself up to rest on one elbow—his other hand grabbed my shirtfront and dragged me with surprising strength down until my face was only an inch away from his mask. Once again I looked into the wavering reflection of my own features, grotesquely mirrored in the suit’s surface.

“Tell . . . the Old Man . . . sorry . . . made him . . . short one operative. Tell him . . . my replacement . . . gets my highest . . . recommendation.”

“I’ll tell him, whoever he is,” I promised. “But will you do me one favor in return?” He feebly cocked his head at a questioning angle.

“Take off your mask,” I said. “Let me see who you are.”

He hesitated, then he raised one hand to his face, prodded the suit material just under the chin with a finger. The material covering his head changed from reflective silver to a dull gunmetal gray and sort of shrank back into a ring around his neck.

I stared. It hadn’t made any difference. The mask was still in place. At least, that was my initial thought, brought on by the shock of seeing Jay’s face.

It was my own face, of course. But not exactly. Jay looked to be at least five years older than me. There was a splotch of scar tissue across his right cheek, and the lower part of his ear was knuckled with keloid growth as well. But there weren’t nearly enough scars to hide who he was.

He was me. That was why that voice had been so familiar. It was my voice. Or rather, it was what my voice might sound like in five years.

I wondered why I had not known all along, and I realized that, on some level, I had. Of course he was me. Cooler and braver and wiser than me. And he’d given his life to save me.

He looked at me with eyes dulling. “Get . . . moving . . .” His whisper was barely audible. “Can’t lose . . . a single operative now . . . too dangerous. Tell him . . . FrostNight . . . comes. . . .”

“I will, I promise,” I said. But his eyes had closed. He was unconscious.

It didn’t matter. A promise was binding, whether Jay heard me make it or not. I had heard me make it, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life trying to justify to myself why I hadn’t done the right thing.

I lowered his body and rocked back on my heels, feeling a sudden lump in my throat. I’m not sure how long I stood there, just breathing.

Then I looked down at the figures he had drawn in the sand.

It had to be important. But when I looked closely at the characters, they made no sense. It seemed to be some kind of mathematical equation:

{IW}:=O/8

I didn’t understand what it meant, but the symbols seemed to take root in my brain, glowing in my mind’s eye.

It was quiet in that rocky place. I could hear Jay’s gasping breaths and the hiss of the windblown sand and nothing else. I didn’t know how long it had been that way, but I knew that unequal battle between the dinomonster and the little mudluff could have ended only one way. I felt sorry for the little soap bubble thing: first bait in a trap, then killed trying to save Jay and me from a monster.

I stood, turned and looked back. There was no sign of either critter. I took a few cautious steps forward, trying to get a better view.

Nothing but settling dust . . .

Jay’s skin was changing color, taking on a bluish tint. There must have been venom on that creature’s teeth, like he’d said. And if I’d listened to him, and not been stupid, he would never have put himself into the jaws of death, trying to get me out of them. I’d rushed in where angels probably really did fear to tread—and Jay was dying because of that. Because of me. It was my fault. There was no one else to blame.

I looked up at the sky, and I made another promise, to anything that was out there, anyone who was listening, that if Jay lived, if he pulled through this, if I got him medical attention and he was fine, then I’d be the best, hardest-working, nicest, coolest person anyone could ever be. I’d be St. Francis of Assisi and Gautama Buddha and everyone else like that.

But his eyes were closed, and he was not breathing, or moving, now, and it didn’t matter what I promised or how good I was going to be in the future or anything.

Nothing mattered.

He was dead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I COULDN’T LEAVE HIM there.

You’re going to laugh at me, but I couldn’t. It might have been the sensible thing to do—maybe if I could have dug a grave or something, I would have felt okay about leaving Jay in the desert at the borders of the edge of the In-Between. But the ground was baked, hard red mud with a thin layer of sand over it.