Chapter 3
Behind the laughter painted eyes
Deep in the shadows where we hide
The sun climbs high and the sun goes down
On people waiting to be found
Waiting to be Found--Ashton, Becker, Dente
It was 7:30 AM, and the morning sun slanted through the trees along Lewis road, where Zach and Savannah lived. Savannah was waiting at the bus stop on the corner, a little apart from the other kids. They pretended not to see her, but some cast nervous looks at her just the same. With her black clothes, straight black hair, and black makeup, she looked like a vampire. She was wearing a large purple crystal around her neck today, which she kept fingering as if she wanted to curse them with it.
In reality, Savannah was worried about Zach. He had logged off the chat with his usual dark farewell, and then the power had gone out. She knew how a little thing like having his drawing taken away could affect him, and was growing more and more anxious as the minutes ticked by. Where was he? His mother's car was in the driveway. If he had killed himself, wouldn't she have found him by now? If she heard sirens, she knew she would throw up. She clutched her crystal and prayed to the universe that Zach was okay.
His door banged open and he bolted into sight, carrying his backpack in one hand and shoving the remains of toast in his mouth with the other. He ran halfway down the street, then slowed to his usual slouching walk, looking as sinister as Savannah did. She heaved a relieved sigh, which she masked from the other kids with a shrug. Maybe her crystal had worked after all.
Zach was still chewing as he walked up to Savannah and nodded to her. "Where were you?" she whispered, pointing to her black wristwatch.
"Overslept," he muttered. He hooked his backpack over one shoulder and whispered, "I need to talk to you about something."
"Me too," she whispered back. "You first."
"No, you."
Savannah reached into her pants pocket. "I found this last night. Is it yours?" She held out her hand, and Zach's eyes popped. She was holding a green digivice exactly like his own.
"Put it back!" he hissed, looking sidelong at the other kids. "That's what I need to talk to you about."
Confused, Savannah pocketed the device, but there was no time for questions, for the bus arrived in a whoosh of exhaust. They boarded it and found seats in the back. They stared down each new student coming down the aisle, and as a result everyone sat at the front of the bus, as far as possible from the Goths.
Once the bus was in motion, Savannah turned to Zach. "Okay, what?"
He reached down the front of his black sweatshirt and pulled out his own digivice, which he had put on a string. "I've got one, too. They're called digivices."
"Okay, but what are they? I never bought one of these." Savannah pulled out her own and compared it to his.
Zach grinned the rare grin he showed only to her. "They link us to an alternate dimension called the Digital World. I went there last night."
Savannah's eyebrows lifted. "How much medication are you on?"
"It was real, Sav! I thought I was dreaming, but when I woke up this morning Spikemon was still there. He's my partner, and I had to hide him in my room. If Mom sees him she'll flip out."
Savannah inspected him. "You don't look stoned..."
"I'm not high!" Zach pushed her away. "Look, come home with me after school and I'll show Spikemon to you." He stuffed his digivice back under his shirt, then froze as a new idea occurred to him. "Savannah ... you have a partner, too!"
She looked incredulous, but there was no time for further discussion, for the bus had arrived at school and it was time to leave.
Zach doodled during algebra and dozed through history, wishing the day would pass quicker. At lunch he found Savannah and they sat in the corner together. "Look," he said, pulling out his binder. Sketched on a sheet of paper within was an incredibly realistic dinosaur, like a young tyrannosaurus. "This is Spikemon," he said, sliding it toward Savannah. "He's green, and has light brown stripes on his back, but I left my markers at home."
"Nice," said Savannah. She stared at it, frowning, then said, "So, you're telling me--"
"Telling her what, Holling?"
They looked up to see Rick Sterling standing over their table, grinning. He was carrying a cafeteria tray in one hand, and with the other he grabbed Zach's sketch, tore it free and held it up. "Will ya look at that! Freaky boy is doing cute little dinosaurs now!"
The other jocks laughed, and Rick's current girlfriend tittered. Zach stood up. "Give it back, Sterling."
"Oh? Who's gonna make me?" said Rick, leering. "A puny geeky Goth and his--" Here he called Savannah a word which brought her to her feet, raging. This elicited more guffaws from the crowd gathering around them.
"I'm going to kill you," whispered Zach, clenching his fists. He saw a nark run off in the background, and snatched for his drawing.
Rick held it over his head. "Skinny boy can't reach! Maybe if he played football he'd have some muscles!" He crumpled up the paper, threw it under the tables and walked off. He had seen the nark, too.
Zach and Savannah sat down again, too angry to speak. A teacher arrived on the scene and stalked past, looking for suspects, but left them alone. Rick went unchallenged as well.
"They never punish him," fumed Zach. "Just because he plays football..." He grabbed his binder and began to scribble an image of Rick dying a gruesome death. But he was distracted again when a voice said, "Are you okay?"
Zach and Savannah looked up to see a freshman in nondescript clothing, and black hair in braids. She was holding Zach's crumpled drawing. "Yeah," Zach said stiffly. Freshmen were as far below sophomores as sophomores were from juniors, and according to pecking order, this girl had no right to speak to them.
But she smoothed out his drawing and handed it back to him. "It's good," she said, then ducked her head and returned to her seat.
Zach kept drawing and ignored the crumpled paper beside his lunch tray, but Savannah folded it and put it in her own backpack. "Don't let them see that one," she whispered. "I have to go to study hall."
Zach nodded without taking his eyes from his paper. He was pouring all of his hatred into the look of agony on the cartoon Rick's face.
Zach and Savannah walked home again, this time so they could talk. Zach had forgotten Rick in his excitement over showing Savannah the Digital World. He positively chattered, and Savannah began to wonder if he was telling the truth. She had never seen Zach like this. As they turned onto Lewis road, Zach asked, "Could you come have dinner with us? I asked Mom this morning, she's expecting you."
"Okay, okay," said Savannah. "Let me tell Mom where I'm going."
Zach waited outside as Savannah climbed the steps to her front door and went inside. Her yard was mowed, and their house had been replastered last year. Her dad was an illustrator for several magazines, and between that and Savannah's mother's night job, they could afford such luxuries as a new computer and fancy art software. Zach wondered what they would do if they knew Savannah was about to get a new pet.
A moment later Savannah emerged and clattered down the steps, carrying a stack of homework under one arm. Her mother came to the screen door. "Home by eight, Savannah."
"Okay Mom!" Savannah called, and raced up the street with Zach.
"Mom's not home yet," said Zach as he unlocked the door. "Perfect. Hey Spikemon, I'm home!"
There came the thud of a door being flung open, then the rattle of claws on wood floor. Savannah peered around Zach and shrieked as a bipedal shape bolted toward them.
"Zach!" Spikemon half-roared, and flung his forearms around Zach's knee. Then he saw Savannah and backed up. "Who's that?"
"This is Savannah, my friend," said Zach. "She's a digidestined, too, because she has a digivice."
Spikemon stared at her, and sniffed her proffered hand. "I thought you were Jokemon for a minute," he said apologetically. He waved his short tail to and fro. "Is your mouth black all the time?"
"No, this is make-up," said Savannah, looking amazed at the conversation. "Um. I can wash it off."
"Good idea," said Spikemon, his tail still swaying. "Jokemon is a virus type. Your partner might attack you by mistake."
With an odd look at Zach, Savannah hurried to the bathroom. Zach detoured to the kitchen.
"Spikemon, that was rude," he said, digging through the pantry. Spikemon watched his partner with interest and said nothing.
"You hear me?" said Zach, emerging from the pantry with a bag of tortilla chips.
"I heard you," said Spikemon. "I was rude. Can I have some?"
Savannah reappeared, her gothic makeup scrubbed off, looking like a normal girl with a dark complexion. "Hello," said Spikemon. "So that's what you look like!"
"Yeah." Savannah did not dare feel offended, and in a daze made herself a sandwich, watching Spikemon out of the corner of her eye.
Between them, Zach and Spikemon polished off a whole bag of chips and two cans of Pepsi. "Mm, I feel like I could digivolve today!" said Spikemon. "And maybe your partner is in Digiforum, Savannah."
"Oh," she said, trying to look as if she understood this.
Once snacktime was over, the three entered Zach's room. Zach pulled out his digivice. "Okay Sav, this is going to feel weird, but don't worry, it's perfectly safe."
"Has it been extensively tested?" asked Savannah. Her sense of humor was returning. The idea of travelling through a computer to a different world seemed ridiculous.
"I think so," said Zach. "Get your digivice, hold it up like this, and press the blue button. Watch." Spikemon curved a paw around Zach's leg, and Zach pressed the button. A white box appeared on the screen, and Zach and Spikemon melted forward and vanished through the screen in a swirl of color.
Savannah stood still, staring. She had seen such things happen in movies, but to see someone vanish right in front of her was unnerving. The white box on the screen remained open, waiting. She looked at the device in her hand, fighting back the urge to scream. The digivice's screen announced that Zachariah Holling had successfully entered the Digital World.
With a surge of skepticism that temporarily outweighed her fear, Savannah held her device toward the screen and pressed the blue button.
She did not like the conversion to data at all, but kept from screaming until she had landed beside Zach and Spikemon in a grassy meadow. Then she screamed and stood panting, looking around at the afternoon sun streaming over the grass.
"Aw c'mon, it wasn't that bad, was it?" said Zach, grinning.
"No," said Savannah, "just weird. I have--I have numbers in my head!" Like Zach, she instantly knew that it was 4:15 PM, and that she was Savannah Reed, age: 16, run: 5, swim: 3, fly: 0, power: 1, knowledge level: 6, morale level: medium. She recited them to Zach, who announced that he was higher in run and power, but he had a courage level, not a knowledge level.
"What happens if your 'fly' starts going up?" asked Savannah as they began walking, Spikemon in the lead.
"I don't know, maybe you grow wings," said Zach, grinning like an idiot. "This is the ultimate in coolness. Our own world that nobody else on Earth knows about!"
"There have been other Digidestined," said Spikemon over his shoulder. "They were from your world. But we haven't had any for years now."
"All that matters is that there's none here right now," said Zach. "How far is Digiforum?"
"Not far," said Spikemon as they entered the trees. "We go down a hill and it's at the bottom."
Savannah's digivice beeped, and she checked it. "Scanning for partner," she read aloud. "Locating ... uh, I think it glitched." She showed it to Zach. Where the device ought to have displayed a name, there was a line of gibberish.
"That's weird," said Zach, pressing a button to change the screen. As he did the gibberish changed to the word 'Ropemon'. "Oh, there it goes," said Zach. "Hey Spikemon, know anybody named Ropemon?"
"Nope," said the dinosaur. "But a lot of digimon live in Digiforum."
"Ropemon is within half a kilometer, I think," said Savannah, squinting at the tiny screen. "What will a Ropemon look like?"
"A coil of rope with eyes," said Zach. "Or maybe a snake."
"A snake," said Savannah thoughtfully. "I'd be okay with a snake. As long as I don't get a kitten or a teddy bear or something."
"Oh, that's Monzaemon," said Spikemon. "He lives in Gigaterra, though."
Zach and Savannah snickered.
They walked on through the trees, a warm wind brushing their faces. The trees looked normal enough from a distance, but if one drew close, the texture of the bark appeared in a grid of tiny squares. "Data," said Spikemon with a shrug.
Savannah plucked a leaf and held it against her palm. The delicate veins were made up of tiny pixels, although it smelled and felt like a leaf. To her complete surprise, the leaf evaporated into tiny particles that drifted to the ground like confetti. "Spikemon, why did it do that?" she called ahead.
Spikemon looked over his shoulder. "Its data collapsed. Now the tree will gather data from the ground and generate another."
"This is weird," muttered Savannah to Zach.
"Yeah," he replied, picking a leaf for himself. After a while, it too evaporated.
The trees began to thin ahead of them, and the breeze freshened. As they moved closer to the edge of the forest, the three caught whiffs of woodsmoke. Spikemon paused and sniffed. "Funny," he remarked to Zach as his partner caught up with him. "It's not cold enough to light the bonfires. I wonder if something's wrong?" The little dinosaur trotted ahead, tail waving nervously.
Then the echo of a roar came to them, carried on the wind. Spikemon broke into a run, and Zach bolted after him, Savannah on his heels. "Spikemon! Wait up!"
The roar came again, the sound of an enormous beast bellowing in anger. Spikemon vanished from sight among the trees, but Zach and Savannah found him a minute later, looking down with flared nostrils. Perhaps five hundred feet away, down the hill, was an old-fashioned fort made of logs. A few buildings were visible above the log walls.
What caught their attention was the beast circling the fort, snorting fire at its wooden walls. It looked like a stegosaurus, twenty feet tall with enormous diamond-shaped fins on its back, and a tail studded with metal tipped spikes. Its sides were covered in horny scales, and all four feet were armed with sharp talons.
"Now that is Jurassic Park gone wrong," panted Zach, watching it.
"It's a virus-type," growled Spikemon through his teeth. "He's going to burn down Digiforum if I don't do something!" He started forward, but Zach grabbed him by the tail.
"Wait a minute. We can't just attack that thing! We need guns or something!"
"You wouldn't last five minutes," said Savannah, holding up her digivice. "I got a reading on him. He's Loricamon, champion level, and his stats are higher than all of ours put together."
"All the more reason to take him down!" snarled Spikemon, struggling. "Let go, Zach!" He writhed out of his partner's grasp and galloped down the hill, roaring a squeaky battle roar.
Zach looked at Savannah. "He's such a brat. What do we do now?"
"Go after him, dummy," said Savannah. "He's going to fight, and all you can do is keep him from getting killed. I'm going to find Ropemon. Maybe he can help."
"That thing's huge!" said Zach as Loricamon whirled to face Spikemon. "I'm not going down there!"
"Then sit here and watch," said Savannah, looking at her screen. "I'm going to find my partner."
She slipped down the hill at an angle to the two dinosaurs, leaving Zach crouched in the grass, wishing he were anywhere but in the Digital World.