I looked up. The Binary clones that hadn’t fallen were moving again; there were fewer of them by about half, but they still outnumbered us. J/O and Jai might have managed to destroy the Professor’s mechanical vessel, but he had to exist elsewhere as well.
Right as that thought went through my mind, one of the clones near me shifted into the figure I remembered, with the unwrinkled pants and tweed jacket and bow tie. He still wore the Coke-bottle glasses, but one of the lenses was cracked and his hair was mussed. His eyes still contained nothing but static, and I could still tell he was looking at me.
“Very clever,” he said emotionlessly. “But an ultimately useless sacrifice. Our Silver Dream awakens. The Wave is coming.”
As before, it was like a shadow was passing over the sun. The room darkened, and I got the impression that the colors were all whipping away on the sudden wind.
“Joe!” Acacia screamed. “Get—” Whatever else she was saying was cut off. There was a sudden sound like rolling thunder, deafening and ominous, and a dark flash. Avery yelled incoherently, and through the mass combat of Walkers and Binary scouts, I caught a glimpse of Acacia curled up in a crumpled heap on the floor. There was some kind of dark rune circle pulsing a sickly purple beneath her. Avery slashed at Lady Indigo with his sword, trying to dodge around to get to his sister, but she wheeled around and caught him with one of her legs, knocking him into the far wall.
I started forward, but a sudden flare of dark mist rose up in front of me, and a strong hand grabbed me by the throat.
I felt my feet leave the ground as Lord Dogknife raised me to his eye level, black fog rising up off his skin like steam on a summer day. His breath smelled like carrion, and I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me as he growled in my face.
“You have been nothing but a thorn in my side since we met, little Harker,” he hissed, shaking me like a misbehaving pup.
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. He’d used almost the exact same phrasing I’d thought to myself, and for some reason in that moment, it was funny.
It was probably hysteria.
His red eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at me. What little peripheral vision I had told me my friends were trying to get to us, but most of them had their own problems; there were still several hundred Binary clones firing plasma blobs and wielding electroneural emitters to deal with. Hue was hovering nearby, alternating various colors of distressed, but he couldn’t help, either.
“You find something amusing, little Walker?” he hissed. “I would adorn my throne with your skin, were you not going directly into the heart of FrostNight himself. Do you see, little Walker? He comes for you.”
The equations were swirling around in the air again, numbers and letters and formulas, and I struggled against Lord Dogknife’s grip. I couldn’t see Avery or Acacia from here, but I could still hear Lady Indigo cackling. I didn’t have any kind of weapon on me at all, and FrostNight was swirling all around, ready to destroy this world with me on it, to feed off me. . . .
Then, abruptly, it all constricted. All the numbers and letters and everything, shrinking and forming into a beautiful, perfect sphere about five times the size of a beach ball, hovering above the five-pointed star. It looked almost like a miniature planet, flashes of silver and blue swirling around it like clouds. I’d seen it before, when it was first created. FrostNight.
Lord Dogknife shook me again, and I felt something shift in my pocket—right! Josephine’s switchblade . . .
I relaxed my grip on his hand, slowly going limp like I was losing consciousness, and let my arms fall to my si
des. He laughed in my face, and I smelled the awful scent of death again.
I felt my feet touch the floor again as he lowered me slightly, though it wasn’t enough to find purchase or stand. The tiles slid beneath my heels as he dragged me over to the star, to where FrostNight waited.
Wind rushed against my skin, and I heard the flapping of wings as Jo launched herself at Lord Dogknife. Through barely open eyes, I saw her wielding a long, thin piece of metal like a spear; she must have lost the blaster. Lord Dogknife ducked out of the way as she came at him, and I used his motion to disguise mine as I reached into my pocket for the little knife.
Jo rushed past him as he dodged, expertly wheeling around in the air and kicking off against the wall to come at him again. This time he was ready for her, and grabbed the bit of metal out of the air as she thrust it at him.
I drew in as much breath as I could—not easy, considering the viselike grip he had on my throat—and flipped the knife open, raising my arm to strike as he threw Jo back against the far wall.
The blade bit down into his outstretched arm, cutting deep. He howled, the fingers that had been curled around my neck snapping open reflexively as the weapon sliced through skin and tendons.
My feet touched the floor more firmly for a precious half second before his other arm snapped out, managing to grab the front of my shirt. I felt his claws scrape against the skin of my chest as he scrabbled for whatever hold on me he could get, and my back collided with the tile as he shoved me down.
“Insolent child!” he roared. Dark blood dripped sluggishly from the knife still stuck in his arm. “I’ll give you to FrostNight piece by piece!”
“Joey!” Jakon yelled from off to my left, but I was pinned to the ground by Lord Dogknife’s strong grip.
He slashed at my face with razor-sharp black claws, and all I could do was turn my head and shut my eyes. The pain went through me so quickly I didn’t even comprehend it at first; the adrenaline pumping through my system kept me from feeling it for a few precious seconds longer.
I felt the tile against the right side of my face, the coolness of it sharply contrasted with the burning pain starting to throb on the left side. In a moment of lucidity, I realized I couldn’t feel that iron grip on my shirt anymore—I tried to open my eyes, and caught a glimpse of Jakon clinging to Lord Dogknife, slashing at him with her own claws. My vision seemed somehow sideways, and everything was blurry, tinted red. I crawled away from them, numb, some detached part of my brain noting the drops of blood falling from my face to splash crimson against the white floor.
The pain I’d started to feel sharpened into nothing less than agony. I felt sick. Even worse than how much I hurt was the abrupt feeling of wrongness, of my skin feeling too big for my face. I couldn’t see out of my left eye at all.
“Joe!” Acacia’s voice reached my ears over the rush of wind, the blaster shots and various other sounds of fighting. “Get out of here!”
I struggled to my knees and put a hand up to my face, fighting the wave of nausea that came over me. With one eye covered like I was about to take a vision test, I found Acacia’s lean figure through the crowd. I couldn’t tell how far away she was.