The Silver Dream (InterWorld 2)

“Yep. As long as I’m escorted at all times.”

“You were in here alone,” I told her, then stumbled forward a bit as Hue bumped me from behind. I’d almost forgotten about him. I looked over my shoulder, noting the mudluff was a rather indignant shade of purple. “Sorry, Hue.”

He turned a more pleased shade of pink, and Acacia laughed. “He stayed between me and the door the whole time,” she informed me—and then linked her arm through mine. “So. Let’s have the tour.”

I knew that if I walked out there with Acacia on my arm, I would really never hear the end of it. Ever. For eternity, squared and cubed. I wasn’t remotely ready for that. So I walked her to the door, then used the pretense of opening it as a way to disentangle us. I gestured her through in what I hoped was a gentlemanly fashion.

She gave me a little curtsy before stepping out, her amusement as visible as if she could turn colors like Hue. Praying that everyone I knew—which was pretty much everyone, period—was in class or on assignment, I started down the corridor, mysterious girl on one side and mudluff on the other.

“So where are we now?” She was looking around like we were at a theme park, taking everything in. “Everything” being, at the moment, a corridor with occasional floor-to-ceiling pipes, stanchions, and wallcom panels.

“A corridor. Deck twelve, to be exact.”

“I can see that, thanks. In what sector?”

I wasn’t sure why I was giving her a tour in the first place, since she’d already known where my room was and knew that the different areas of the ship were specifically called “sectors” (and something about the way she’d said “sector” tugged at my memory in an odd way, like trying to remember a dream you’d had the day before), but it seemed to be making her happy.

“It’s the barracks. Sorry, we don’t have a fancy name for it or anything.”

“Yet,” she amended, but I got the feeling she was just saying it to mess with me. It was probably always called the barracks. Why would we want to call it anything else? It wasn’t even divided by gender; wasn’t much point, especially since there were a few para-incarnations of us who seemed to be both, or neither. As I’d observed before, Acacia was the first real, genuine girl who wasn’t an incarnation of us.

“So what are you going to show me first?”

“What do you want to see?” I asked, without much hope of a real answer. I didn’t get one.

“Whatever you want to show me.”

I gave up. I was stuck with her because she’d deemed it to be so, and there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it. I wasn’t even sure I minded; she was a mystery, and she was interesting, and my complete inability to answer any questions about her had rankled a little. Earlier in the mess hall was probably the most popular I’d ever been in InterWorld, and I hadn’t even been able to enjoy it.

“Okay,” I said, turning the opposite direction down the hallway that led to the mess hall. That’s where pretty much everyone would be right now, and if I had to play tour guide, I’d prefer to do it without an audience. “Well, right next to the barracks are the lockers, where we suit up to go on missions. No one’s going out right now, so it should be empty.”

“A row of lockers,” she commented, looking like she might be making an effort to seem impressed. A considerable effort.

I moved her through the room to the wide double doors nestled between the security pillars. They lit up when we reached them, little red lines scanning over me, then Acacia. I realized I’d better identify her before it decided she was an unknown and therefore dangerous.

“Joe Harker, with—”

“Welcome, Joey.” It was the kind of voice that could drive you crazy over the phone, the voice of a maddeningly calm mature female whom you just knew was smirking at you, even though she was just a disembodied vocal pattern. “Welcome, Acacia. Proceed.”

I turned to glance at her as the doors slid open. Her smirk matched the one I was pretty sure the voice had sported. I had to ask, even though I didn’t think she’d give a straight answer. “How’d it know you?”

“I told you. I have clearance.” She stepped through the doors into the briefing room, leaving me to hurry after her.

That happened twice more as I showed her the briefing room and the receiving room. I realized as we were walking that, although Acacia had found both the base and my room by herself, she was honestly letting me lead her. I’d taken extensive classes on body language and facial expressions, and I was fairly confident that she truly didn’t know her way around. I was just as confident that she’d probably give me a run for my money in a sparring session. She had an economy of movement to her that suggested she was well scho

oled in some kind of martial art, a liquid grace that was just about as dangerous as it was fascinating.

“So this is where new recruits come in?” She was leaning over the railing, staring out at the world on the other side of the dome. It was kind of hard to tell where the world ended and Base Town started, since the dome was translucent and the floor of the receiving room was covered in perfectly manicured grass.

“Usually, unless there’s some problem.” I hesitated before explaining further, then continued. If the Old Man had given her prime clearance, he obviously wasn’t keeping many secrets. “The formula we all learn is like a generic address; it’ll take us to whatever world the base is on, then we blip the radar and the pilots bring InterWorld to us. In a bad situation, the ’port team will teleport people directly into Base—usually to the infirmary—but most of the time the whole ship pulls up and they walk on board.”

“Must be a sight to see,” she murmured, tilting her head to look up at the sky. It was just growing dark outside.

“It is,” I said, remembering where I’d been when the dome picked me up. I remembered Jay’s body beside me, and how I hadn’t been able to feel anything at all by the time they’d come to get us. “C’mon,” I said, my voice a little more gruff than I’d intended it. “I want to show you something else.”

There were very few things on InterWorld that weren’t run with military precision. We had gardens, libraries, gymnasiums, and even an entertainment room for our downtime, but all were kept neat and clean and overseen by a teacher or senior staff appointed by the Old Man. There was no graffiti on Base Town, no litter, no gum under the desks we studied at. There were no murals, no bushes cut into the shape of dinosaurs, no sculptures—there was nowhere on the entire base that showed we were people, with thoughts and feelings and imagination.

Except for the Wall.