Someone had just Walked nearby.
Hue had gotten behind me, and when the laser was fired again, he sort of turned into a giant, flat bit of reflective rubber. He caught the laser beam and flung it back out again, off in a different direction, snapping back into his usual sphere. It was like watching someone stretch a balloon way out, except it didn’t pop and just returned to its normal shape.
When he did, though, I could see past him. I could see the person standing there, arm still extended, laser still out. And it was not anyone I’d expected to see.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Exterminate target: Joey Harker,” said J/O, and fired again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM LOOKED like the J/O I was used to except for the scrapes and injuries from the rockslide—and the laser pointed at me. I wasn’t used to seeing it from that angle. J/O and I had gotten off to a rocky start, but we’d been teammates for two years now. I’d gotten used to the snarky comments, even given most of them back to him, but now he was actually trying to kill me, which was several light-years beyond snarky any way you looked at it.
Hue did his laser-bouncing trick again, but I could tell it was hurting him. He turned a pained reddish green, seeming to huddle around himself. He couldn’t take much more—and here I was, on a bit of floating ground with the In-Between all around me, and no weapon.
Well, no weapon on me. The In-Between, however, was full of random things….
I leaped off the ground patch, jumping toward what looked like a metal trash can lid or manhole cover, except it was bright blue. I swung it around, using it as a shield just in time to deflect another laser blast as I landed on a beach ball–like sphere. It looked solid enough; unfortunately, what things look like in the In-Between isn’t always what they are. The globe popped like a soap bubble (bub-bell, whispered the memory of my little brother’s voice), and I fell about ten feet onto a path that smelled like too-sweet perfume and looked like the road to Oz.
J/O landed in front of me a moment later, and I used my makeshift shield to deflect another blast. A single look at him told me that trying to reason with him would be useless—he was in serious Terminator mode. His gaze locked on me as it would on a target, nothing more, and I knew he’d just keep coming.
“J/O, in accordance with InterWorld’s laws and code of conduct, I order you to cease fire!” Knowing it was futile didn’t really help. He was still my friend and teammate; what else could I do?
He ignored the command, as I’d assumed he would, and fired again. The shot was aimed for my head, and I brought the lid shield up again. There was a flare of red light all around it, and I could see tiny, veinlike cracks spreading across the surface. I was going to have to find a new shield.
I hurled the thing à la Captain America, silently thanking my Alternative Phys Ed teacher for training us in the dubiously useful art of discus throwing. J/O brought his arm up to block it, and I heard a crack as it made contact with his retractable laser. Hoping fervently that my improvised weapon had broken his built-in one, I jumped off the path and opened my senses for another portal. I could Walk around in the In-Between, so long as I was careful; doing it too much could get very disorienting, and if there was anywhere in the Altiverse you didn’t want to get lost, it was here. Well, here and the Nowhere-at-All.
There wasn’t a portal near enough for me to Walk through, so I couldn’t get back to Base, but I spotted some shafts of light filtering through a floating porthole. I snatched one of them out of the air, or what passed for air here. It was warm, and too bright to look at directly. I wasn’t sure if it was sharp, but I was hoping it would serve to distract him enough that I could…I wasn’t sure, exactly. I didn’t really want to hurt him.
He, on the other hand, obviously had no problem with hurting me….
There was a shimmer behind me and I turned, twirling the light beam around in a figure eight. His next laser blast (no such luck of its being broken, apparently) ricocheted off my makeshift sword and I felt, for a moment, like a Jedi. J/O had turned to the dark side and I was forced to fight him, whether I liked it or not.
“J/O,” I tried again, but I didn’t have time to do much else. His laser retracted and he strode forward, grabbing one of the light beams for himself. Something clicked in the back of my mind—he wasn’t just trying to kill me, he was trying to beat me. His laser was a better weapon than the light sword, but he wasn’t relying on the laser. He was accepting a challenge, taking an opportunity to beat me in an even fight. That meant he was motivated, at least in part, by his ego.
And that meant that, regardless of why he was fighting me, the J/O I’d known was still in there.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get the chance to try reaching him. I’d seen J/O sword fight once before, in a duel to the death on the Malefic. He’d won, and it hadn’t been a close call. J/O was good, and the likelihood of my getting sliced into sushi was growing with every parry and riposte.
I sprang backward, swiping my sword through a floating blob of jellylike substance, sending bits and pieces of it splattering toward my former teammate. I let go of the light-beam sword at the same time, not waiting around to find out if I’d hit anything. My shoulder hurt, as did the areas that had been burned by his first laser blast, and I had to find a portal and Walk back to InterWorld. I had to tell them something was wrong with J/O.
There was an explosion behind me, and I didn’t even stop to see what it was. A blast of heat ruffled my hair as I jumped again. I had no idea where I was going, but with my shoulder as messed up as it was, climbing wasn’t really an option. The only place I could go was down. I wondered if the In-Between had a “ground” or anything like it.
I kept running, sometimes hurling things behind me, sometimes catching a glimpse of him right at my heels if I jumped or ran or fell past a reflective surface. I was just barely able to stay ahead of him, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep it up. He had the advantage of being a cyborg, never mind his not having a fractured shoulder and several bruised ribs. Which were all starting to ache abominably.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. One instant, I was running through an upside-down forest with odd-looking giant flowers instead of trees, and the next I was sprawled flat on my back in a great amount of pain. I was too disoriented to even see what I’d run into, but in the In-Between it could have been anything. Instinct propelled me to my feet and I cast about for a portal, but no luck. J/O was closing in, and I had nowhere to go.
“J/O,” I tried again, one hand clutching my shoulder. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but quit it! Do a h
ard restart or something! Reprogram!”
“Target confirmed,” he said in our voice, which I’d long ago gotten used to but was still so odd sometimes, especially when it was saying something like this. “Joey Harker.” He raised his arm, laser engaging again, aimed—
“Call me Joe,” I said. As last words went, they were maybe not the best I could have come up with, but they seemed appropriate. A red light flared at the mouth of J/O’s built-in weapon, and I looked around in a last-ditch effort to find something I could use.
There was the sound of a laser firing, and I felt nothing. Literally, though it took me a moment to realize I hadn’t been hit.
“Unexpected variable,” said J/O, just as I saw the figure hovering about three yards from us. “Acacia Jones.”