Dislclaimers: See Chapter One. On with the story…

7

Wyatt had been pacing around the photo lab for two hours, wondering if anyone was watching or listening, if Dante was really going to hand him off to Maldark-not that he'd blame him if Dante thought Wyatt was using his mom's death to trick him. At least that explained what kept Dante from playing the game and joining Never Fail. Dante had gone to juvy and Barbra was dead. Could this universe get any worse?

Wyatt really needed to get out of this timeline.

Waiting for something to happen, for them to kill him or Maldark's Tenrecs to break down the door and take him, was making Wyatt crazy. Wearing a hole in the floor with his pacing wasn't helping. He searched the lab for something that might help him escape. There wasn't much left in the demolished room except a pair of tongs and a broken pair of scissors. He could try digging out of the room with the tongs, but he really hoped he wasn't going to be locked in there for the six to seven years it would take to accomplish that task. He tried picking the lock with the half-scissors, but that didn't work out at all.

Ultimately, he sat down against the door and started talking, just in case there was a guard or anyone on the other side who was willing to listen.

"Once again, I'm very sorry about the misunderstanding. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I really can help get rid of Maldark if you would just open the freaking door and listen for one minute!" When no one answered, Wyatt picked up the scissors and tried again to pick the door lock.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone kicked the cover off the air conditioner in the ceiling. A masked figure drops into the room. Wyatt brandished the sad little half-scissors in self-defense. When the monster stepped towards him, the teenager warned. "No, don't come any closer. I have a…scissor."

"Wow. There's no way that could have sounded threatening even in your head."

He stared at the intruder. The clothing was different, the mask was different, but the computer-distorted voice was familiar and he was not lightly to forget the Atomic Wedge that hung from the avatar's belt. Was this avatar related to the red-skinned hunter from the tavern? What had they called him? Mahtava, yes, that was it.

The avatar cocked his head at Wyatt. "You're a computer genius and your go-to escape plan is picking the lock? What were you planning to do if you did get the door open? Appeal to the Grinders' humanity again? How'd that work out for you?"

The avatar called him a 'computer genius'. That meant he/she/it recognized Wyatt…more than recognized, maybe even knew him.

"Have we met? In this timeline?" Wyatt asked.

The hunter was picking up an intact chair and setting it beneath the open air duct. "You want out of here or do you want to keep asking questions and waving your pathetic little scissor at me? Is that the thanks I get for saving your butt again?"

Wyatt dropped the scissor. "You are the avatar from the tavern! You tried to kill me!"

The avatar gave a snort beneath that mask. "How did I do that? By cutting through that fence so you could escape that monster mob?"

He scratched his head. "You did that on purpose?" Somehow, in his panicked state, that hadn't even occurred to Wyatt.

When he kept standing there, Mahtava grew impatient. He came over to grab the teenager and bodily shoved him towards the chair, gesturing for him to climb into the duct. Up close, Wyatt got a better look at the avatar's red flesh.

It was red paint.

"You're human!" he gaped.

"I take it back. You are a genius." It sounded more like sarcasm than a compliment.

Something in the sass was also familiar. Wyatt stared. The hunter might be hidden beneath layers of tattered clothing and armor, but he recognized the posture, the impatient stance… "Angie?"

The masked figure froze for a second, hesitating. Finally, she removed the mask to confirm it.

Wyatt was stunned. "But…they said you were dead…what…how…when?" She was not vaporized! She was alive and armed to the teeth and offering to help. Overjoyed, he tried to hug her. Angie used her Krav Maga skills to flip him over her shoulder. He landed on the floor with a painful thud.

"Ow." Nevertheless, he grinned up at the girl. "Fine, but I'm still happy to see you. You're alive! How'd you know I was here?"

Angie offered him a hand up. "A friend told me. And I'd like to stay alive, so if we're done with the reunion, can we get moving before the Grinders find out I'm here?"

She used chair to boost herself back into the air duct. Wyatt followed, still seeking an explanation. "Lyle said the Grinders killed you."

She led the way as they crawled along the ducts. "Who's 'Lyle'? He's misinformed."

"Lyle didn't send you?"

"Again, who's Lyle?" she repeated.

Wyatt was confused. "No one else knows I'm here, so, seriously, who sent you? Wait, was it Guy?" Considering Guy's level of loyalty to the Grinders, that didn't seem likely.

They had made their way to the vent above the gymnasium. Angie checked to see that the room was empty before she kicked out the grate and dropped to the floor. Wyatt stayed close behind. She closed to the far corner of the gym, near the mangled bleachers. There, she opened a hidden trapdoor. Beneath it was a ladder. Angie led the climb down into the tunnel below. Wyatt kept up the barrage of questions.

"Okay, you aren't going to tell me. And you don't know Lyle…but you do know me?" Wyatt stared with interest at the huge tunnel they'd entered. It was big enough for a train to pass through. The walls had a metallic sheen. He was pretty sure only a Chameleomole could have made this tunnel. The pieces of skin shed by the monster confirmed as much.

"Wyatt Black. Daventry Hills' favorite computer buddy. Yeah, I know you."

As soon as Wyatt jumped off the ladder, Angie whirled suddenly to shove the wedge against his throat. He choked out: "What-?"

Angie's eyes narrowed. "I know you're dead, Wyatt, 'in this timeline'. Who are you really and what kind of game are you playing? Pardon the expression."

He found it difficult to talk and think with a weapon stuck in his neck, but Angie's grip was freakishly strong. He did his best to rasp out: "Okay, let's just do the short version this time. Stole a chronometer-this chronometer-" He fished the timepiece from his pocket and held it up for her to see. "-from the Doubleback. Maldark sent it went back in history and screwed up our timeline. Photo of us from the other timeline." Again, Wyatt displayed the item in question and Angie managed to look without relaxing her hold on his neck. "No, it isn't photo-shopped. That's you, me, Lyle, and Dante. We called ourselves Never Fail, and we stopped Maldark's invasion."

Angie was interested now. "How?"

"Lyle-that's Lyle," Wyatt pointed him out in photo, "used a sorcerer's flame spell that merged our weapons into one superweapon that sent Maldark back into the game."

Angie frowned.

"That's why I was looking for you and Dante and Lyle-you're my best friends, the only ones I knew would believe me, the only ones who would help me figure out what Maldark messed up in our history and fix it."

She took the photo from his hand and pocketed it. He hoped that meant she believed him. Her frown turned into an out-and-out scowl. "So you're BFFs with Maldark's Most Wanted and the little traitor-"

Anger at the accusation made him forget to be afraid of the weapon at his neck. He broke free of her grip and dodged out of her reach before she could try to pin him again. "Don't call him that! Dante could've killed me, but he didn't."

She shook her head at him. "No, he just locked you up to hand you over to Maldark…"

"He's still my friend, in any timeline. I don't care what you think he's done."

Angie crossed her arms. "Yeah, whatever you say, champ. Say I believe this-did you figure it out? What Maldark messed up?"

Wyatt held up the chronometer again. "I figured out he kept Lyle from becoming Wizza by injuring him in a football game…it happened on this day." He pointed to the date on the broken chronometer. "About a year ago, I guess. Something happened to Dante that day, too, that got him thrown in jail, which I'm guessing was the end of Sir Bickle…and his mom is dead because of that." He forced a smile at her. "You're here. At least Maldark left you alone. What about me? How did I die 'in this timeline'?"

She balked, but Wyatt demanded: "Hey, I think that's a reasonable question!"

Angie raised an eyebrow at him. "You sure you want to hear it? It's not going to be creepy and weird for you?"

"It absolutely will be...but yeah, I want to hear it."

Angie nodded. "For some reason, you already knew about the Leaks before Maldark invaded. You were running around trying to 'bard' them. You had some weird guy with a lute following you around the school, that was pretty strange. I figured out what was happening when I saw the Leaks abduct Max Ross."

"Just like in my timeline…and we went to the server farm together to save Max, right?" Wyatt guessed.

"That's right. And to try to shut down the servers, patch the firewall, stop the invasion, but-"

Wyatt knew what went wrong. "It didn't work. We didn't have Dante and Lyle to help…thanks to the Doublebacks screwing with our history. No Dante and Lyle meant no superweapon to stop Maldark. I'm glad to know I tried, at least. What happened next?"

Angie looked at the ground, toeing the dirt with her boot. "Maldark sent you and Max into the game-then he set off some kind of orb bomb, destroyed the server farm and erased the game…while you two were still inside."

She was right; it was creepy and weird to hear the details of his demise. "He let you live?"

"I didn't have an avatar. I wasn't a game warrior…I wasn't a threat." It was clear she found that insulting.

Wyatt grinned at her. "Showed him, didn't you?"

Angie smiled a bit, but it was a rather grim smile. "He left me in the server farm when he set off the bomb. He assumed I burned up with it." Wyatt's eyes widened, horrified at that. "Like you said-I showed him."

"And my family?"

Did the kid ever run out of questions? she wondered. Then, she remembered how many questions she'd had after waking up in the rubble of the server farm to find her city overrun by video game monsters. "Non-game warriors were made into slaves. Your family's probably alive. Miserable, but alive."

"And your family?"

She was surprised he asked. "Safe for now."

They lapsed into silence, each mulling the answers the other had provided. Angie led the way along the tunnel. She knew every inch of every Chameleomole tunnel in the city. She had explored them all trying to find if one tunnel ran beneath the force field to the outside of the barricade. What she'd discovered was that the energy wall stretched all the way underground…and the charred remains of the Chameleomoles that has tried to pass through the wall were sufficient warning not to touch the barrier.

The tunnel angled downhill until they finally came to a fork. A little ways down the left fork, the passage opened into a massive cavern.

Wyatt stared in awe. The cavern was enormous and teeming with people…hundreds of dirty and looking tired and hungry, but alive. Guy moved among them, lugging the crates of food Wyatt had seen at the tavern and again in the Grinders' headquarters above the tunnel.

"Whoah-who are-?" Wyatt recalled Lyle talking about how many people the Grinders had 'vaporized'…maybe they'd been 'executed' just like Wyatt. "-these are the people the Grinders supposedly killed, right?"

Angie patted his shoulder. "Ah, see, he is quick after all. Maldark doesn't come looking for slaves or dissidents if he thinks they're dead. This is the only place in the city where Maldark's goons can't see or hear us."

Wyatt was impressed. There had to be at least two hundred people taking refuge in the massive cavern. "And you rescued all these people from the Grinders?"

"She had some help."

Dante leaned against the cavern wall. Distracted by the throng of activity and the surprise discovery of what was in the tunnels, Wyatt had walked right past the Grinders' leader without noticing him. He heard Angie's soft gasp of surprise. He stepped between her and Dante, hoping to buy her a few seconds to escape if his one-time friend decided to start shooting with that Hail Razor. He only regretted that they'd led him to the refugees, for he was sure to bring Mald…

Angie pushed past Wyatt and stormed over to Dante. "You shouldn't be down here! If Maldark finds out-"

Dante ended her tirade by kissing her. She not only let him get away with it, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss.

Watching two of his best friends tongue-stabbing each other was not Wyatt's biggest shock since the timeline changed…but it might have been the grossest. They'd momentarily forgotten about him (and everyone else in the tunnels paid the teenagers absolutely no mind), so he tried to process the disturbing sight.

Finally, he figured it out: "Wait-he's the friend who told you to bring me to the tunnels?"

Dante's reverie was interrupted when someone punched him right between the shoulder blades. This time he did let out an involuntary yelp of pain. He whirled to face his attacker, not at all surprised to see a very pissed off, red-skinned, masked figure wielding a boomerang-shaped weapon.

"Damn, girl, that hurt!" He glared at 'Mahtava', rotating his arm just to make sure she didn't break his freaking shoulder. Wasn't it bad enough she'd almost broken his nose during their 'fight' at the foundry?

She circled around the wreckage of broken computers, piles of unusable clothing, items scavenged from the school, and the worn out mattress with threadbare blankets that was Dante's room in the Grinders' HQ. "Be glad I didn't punch you someplace else."

"And did you steal my socks?" Dante added. He already knew the answer, since he'd found his old gym socks lying on the sidewalk outside the factory. "Why are you so psycho today?"

'Mahtava' pulled off her mask and threw it at him. He batted it away in self-defense. Arms crossed and staring daggers at him, Angie Prietto was no less intimidating than she'd been with the mask. "You could have given me a little warning when you decided to kill 'Mahtava'…I can't believe you fragged another one of my avatars! Now I'm stuck here until I come up with a new one!" She started stripping off the armor, boots, and tunic of her disguise. It wasn't as if she could use them again. She wasn't in the mood to try to scrub the red paint off her arms and neck, so she left it alone for the time being.

He supposed that was a fair complaint. Dante hadn't been able to get her alone to tell her about Maldark's threats that morning, or that he'd had to 'execute' Mahtava to appease the warlock for a little while longer. Since Angie Prietto was supposed to be dead, the only way she could poke her nose out of the tunnels was if in disguise as an avatar like Mahtava. Angie had spent three weeks as Mahtava, rescuing human slaves and allowing the Grinders try to capture her as a good show for Maldark. The Grinders would 'vaporize' the fleeing humans, and Mahtava would make a narrow escape during the confusion. Now, they had to start the cycle over again with a new avatar.

Dante started rifling through boxes and trash bags, pulling out pieces of armor and outfits he'd taken from various monsters during the past few months. "You know the deal. I can't keep letting 'Mahtava' escape. Maldark gets upset. I'll set you up with a new disguise-and, by the way, could you not leave your mask lying around? Maldark almost saw it this morning."

She rummaged for the cleanest tank top and shorts that she could find. Living in a burned out high school in a burned out city during an alien invasion didn't leave access to conveniences like washing machines or showers. They were lucky just to have drinking water. Feeling somewhat more human in the comfortable clothing, Angie stretched out on her half of the mattress and watched him, unapologetic. "Whose fault is that? You're the one who likes me to wear it, perv."

He didn't deny that. "Better believe it-it's like bringing home the hottest girl at Comic Con."

Angie knew in geek world that was high praise and felt somewhat appeased—flattered even. Still, she hid a small grin and rolled her eyes. "Terrific. I'm Queen of the Nerds."

In response, he started tossing pieces of clothing onto her until she finally started tossing them right back. "Did I see Gus and Philbert with the group from the factory?" Dante hadn't been able to get a good look at the people they had liberated that morning before he'd had to start teleporting them to the tunnels. "They okay?"

"They're confused, could stand to gain back some weight, but they're all right." Now that she was calming down and taking a good look at Dante, she finally noticed that he was not quite steady on his feet, and that he was singed around his neck implant. Again. Alarmed, she sat up. "You're not all right."

He shrugged.

Angie grabbed his arm and pulled him down onto the mattress so that she could inspect the red burn. Damn Maldark. She used some of their small water supply to wet down a piece of cloth and pressed it over the gruesome welt on his neck. "What happened?"

Absently, he reached out and gently touched the rough patch of Chameleomole skin grafted to her neck, hiding her own battle scars.

"Doesn't matter. I brought in someone," he finally said.

There was iciness to his tone that told her just how this 'someone' had gotten under Dante's skin. "Who is it? You need me to take him to the tunnels-or smack him around a little?"

That got a smile out of him. Dante thought it over. Angie knew Wyatt Black before the invasion. She'd told Dante the story about going with the geek to try to stop Maldark at the server farm. If anyone could figure out if he was an imposter, it would be her. "I want you to help me figure out if this guy is for real or if he's crazier than me."

She raised an eyebrow. "Nobody's crazier than you."

It was his turn to be flattered. "Thank you." For a reward, he produced a new avatar mask from underneath the debris pile and offered it to her.

The mask was even uglier than the last three Dante had given her, but, at least, there was not a chance in hell anyone would recognize her when she was wearing it. "Okay, how many of these costumes do you have?"

"Twelve…maybe twenty." Dante plunked it onto her head. He nodded, satisfied with the effect. This mask would scare a Scurr queen back to her nest. "Good-bye Mahtava. Hello…Kutisha."

Angie was convinced he had a list of ridiculous avatar names stashed wherever he kept these god-awful costumes. "Seriously, where do you get these names?" she asked as she adjusted the mask and wrapped one of the tattered jackets around her shoulders. She modeled the half-begun new avatar gear. "How do I look?"

He looked her up and down, a wicked grin spreading across his face. She knew that look; a tingle ran down her spine in response. Angie barely had time to pull off the mask before he pounced.

When it didn't appear that Dante and Angie were going to come up for air any time soon, Wyatt finally raised his voice: "Guys, I'm begging you, please stop!"

They did, but Dante kept his arms around Angie's waist, in no hurry to let her go. She passed him the photo of Never Fail from the other timeline. Dante gave it a serious looksee and couldn't help but laugh at their doppelgangers. "Oh my God, we were nerds…"

"You're still a nerd," she told him.

Dante didn't deny it. "The QB was a gamer clan geek? You sure this was another timeline and not another planet, Wyatt?" he asked, returning the photo to its owner.

"Yeah, the other Dante thought that was funny, too," Wyatt said.

"What do you think? What's the verdict?" Dante was watching Wyatt, but the questions were directed at Angie. The fact that Angie had taken off her mask in front of Wyatt was answer enough, but Dante still wanted to hear it from her.

"I think he's telling the truth," she said, adding: "Probably."

Wyatt was still trying to piece together the connection between Angie, her avatar alter-ego, and Dante's crew of psychopaths. "So, you and Dante? How did that happen-er, I mean, you've been working with the Grinders all along?" he asked Angie.

She was dreaming of purple-skinned warlocks, fire-breathing dragons, wormholes formed of pure light, all of it underscored by the gut-twisting feeling of bearing witness to the end of the world. In the dream, there was that computer geek telling her how an accident had formed a bridge between the online game and the real world, and the warlock was about to cross into the real world. He carried a gun-he called it a Blast-A-Ton-that he had 'pulled out' of the game. If she had not seen the monsters with her own eyes, Angie would not have believed it.

In the dream, she remembered following Wyatt, which was probably insane given that they had only his one weapon and it was two of them against an army of game mutants. He insisted they had to rescue Max Ross, the creator of 'Conqueror Of All Worlds', that Max was the only one who could rebuild the firewall between game and reality and save the world. They had tried. They had followed the monsters that abducted Max to the server station. As soon as the fight began, she quickly discovered that all her Krav Maga skills didn't compensate for the simple fact that bare knuckles and powerhouse kicks did very little against the computer-generated monstrosities. Still, Angie had given her all.

Her all had not been enough.

Maldark had overpowered them with almost no difficulty. As soon as Max opened the portal to the game realm, the warlock began the invasion of Earth. Every form of nightmare creature had poured from the vortex into the human world. For his next trick, Maldark had killed Max…nothing but a flick of his wrist and lightning flashed from his scepter to burn a hole through his creator's chest…just to ensure that Ross would never shut down the wormhole.

Wyatt had been next. He had tried to shut down the vortex himself. He'd barely taken two steps towards the computers when Maldark's Three-Toed Tenrecs had converged upon the teenager. In the melee, the boy and the monsters had stumbled through the gateway and into the game world.

Angie might have gone after Wyatt, might have tried to rescue him from the computer realm, but she never had the chance. Maldark had turned his weapon against his own domain. A glowing ball of red fire materialized in his palm. As if he were blowing his land a goodbye kiss, Maldark had pitched the fire into the vortex. The gateway screamed like a living thing as all creatures left inside the computer program were incinerated. In the few seconds that elapsed as Angie watched in horror, the game world-at least, the parts of it not already transplanted into her world-was erased, Wyatt along with it.

Still, she'd tried. Wyatt had lost his weapon during his ill-fated scuffle with the Tenrecs. Figuring that she was dead no matter what, Angie had dove for the weapon and taken her one and only shot at Maldark.

The Blast-A-Ton had shot out a freaking dog. In her dream, Angie still heard Maldark's mocking laughter at the sight of the pathetic canine. He'd turned it into a Fire-Breathing Dragon, which he left to destroy the girl and the server station. Angie's last memory was pointing the Blast-A-Ton at the back wall of the building and praying, trying to shoot her way out before the dragon burned her alive.

She woke to pain…an ache through her entire body, but particular agony on her left arm and the left side of her neck. There was weight across her body, only just this side of crushing her. Her legs were pinned, but she could move her arms. The slightest motion of her left arm caused fresh spasms of pain, but she bit her lip and continued to try to move. It was dark, but a shaft of light illuminated a small area around her so she could see that she was half-buried under the charred rubble of what had to be the server station.

The light was purple.

She was dazed and in pain, but her memory was full of images of monsters swarming from the game portal and her instincts screamed at her to get out of there and hide. So, Angie fought her way, inch by inch and hour by hour, until she was free of the rubble.

That was her first glimpse at the destruction that Maldark had wrought over Daventry Hills and of the dome of energy that now cut the city off from the rest of the world. Barely anything of the city she knew remained, not even a pharmacy where she could buy ointment for the deep burns on her arm and neck. She figured out quickly that there was no place to hide from the monsters. They were everywhere. Of the human population, Angie saw not a single soul. She wondered if anyone else was alive.

She thought of her family. The night that Angie had followed Wyatt to the server station, her family had made plans to visit friends in the nearby town of Ridgecrest. She had made an excuse about a geometry test in order to stay home and help Wyatt. Her parents and brothers were safe on the outside of the energy cage that imprisoned her. Angie was grateful for that, but terrified for what was happening around her.

She found no sign of the Blast-A-Ton weapon and figured it was either buried beneath the rubble. She dug for a while, but eventually gave up hope of finding the weapon. Angie retreated, deeper into the woods where fewer mutants seemed to tread and the monsters were somewhat easier to avoid. As the days passed without a sign of another human, fear gave way to resignation, and finally to rage.

No help was coming, not while that dome was up, but Angie had to believe there were other human survivors in the city. Hiding in the woods would not help them, and it would not save her from Maldark. Even if the Army should blast its way through Maldark's energy barrier, they wouldn't have the first clue how to defeat the computer-born menace, much less the proper weapons.

She needed weapons, and she needed to take down that dome. Max had said some gamer geek crap about 'merging weapons in a sorcerer's flame'. Okay, she had to add 'find a sorcerer' to her shopping list.

First and foremost, she needed a weapon to defend herself. And a disguise if she wanted to move among the mutant population. Medicine for the burns would be nice, for she was sure they were becoming infected. Food-other than the berries she had found in the forest—would be best of all.

She began to search.