Out of This World Read online

  Mazzy led them onward, her face grim with determination. They took a clanking elevator to the lower levels, where the darkness was barely relieved by flickering yellow lights in cages, and vents oozed a foul-smelling steam that made Thomas complain about his sinuses. Some of the doorways were blocked with dirty iron portcullises, which screeched open with startling speed when they pressed the touchpads nearby.

  “The cells are close,” Mazzy said as she led them through a wide chamber where thick black pipes ran along the roof, dripping moisture. “Careful, though. They’ve got Gristlers loose down here.”

  “Gristlers?” Thomas asked nervously.

  “Monsters created by the Mechanics, half flesh and bone and half machine, bred for mindless savagery,” Gradius said.

  “Is that one?” asked Thomas, pointing. They followed his finger to a doorway, where a hunched creature like a massive hyena had just loped into the room. Its legs and the ridge of its spine were metal, there were exposed cables at its neck, and its brassy eyes whirred and glowed green in the dark. Quivering lips peeled back over dripping fangs as it saw them.

  “Yep,” said Mazzy. “Run?”

  Gradius grabbed Thomas’s collar before he could take her advice. “Run and it’ll chase you,” he said. “You won’t win that race.”

  “I’m willing to try!” Thomas wheezed, straining at his collar like a stubborn puppy.

  “Back off,” Gradius told them, his gaze fixed on the Gristler. “All of you, slowly. Back the way we came.”

  Jack hated the coolness and authority in that voice. He didn’t want to do as he was told. To obey would be like admitting Gradius was in charge. But the sight of the Gristler drove any better ideas out of his head. He had no idea how to fight that thing, so in the end, he shuffled toward the exit with Mazzy and Thomas. Gradius detached himself from the group and walked carefully the other way, out into the center of the chamber.

  The Gristler growled at Jack and took a menacing step toward him.

  “Hey! Over here!” said Gradius, waving his hands. “It’s me you want!”

  The beast’s attention wavered between Gradius and the others. It seemed to be deciding which was the better target. Then Gradius clapped his hands and whistled at it, and that made up its mind. With a growl, it broke into a charge, heading for Gradius.

  “Go!” he shouted at the others, and they ran through the doorway as the creature bore down on him. Mazzy slapped her hand on the touchpad on the other side, and the portcullis rattled down behind them, cutting them off from the chamber, leaving Gradius alone with the beast.

  Jack clutched the bars and watched, aghast, as the monster opened its jaws to snatch up Gradius. But the jaws snapped shut on nothing; Gradius had rolled aside, moving so fast that Jack had to blink to be sure he’d seen it. The creature swerved with a howl and snapped at him again, but Gradius backflipped and landed smoothly on his feet.

  “He’s like a ninja!” Thomas gasped.

  “He’s all right,” Jack said grudgingly. “I mean, he wouldn’t win at the Olympics or anything.”

  “Don’t you have blasters and a sword?” Mazzy called to Gradius.

  Gradius backward-rolled to avoid a lashing tail and surged back to his feet again. He gave her a wink. “I’ve got another way.”

  With that, he sprinted toward the doorway that the Gristler had come through. The beast roared and gave chase, thumping after him on metal paws.

  “Run like hell? That’s his plan?” Jack muttered. “Wow.”

  Mazzy whacked him on the arm. “Can you give him some support? He’s trying to save our lives here!”

  “I bet I could save our lives if you gave me a chance,” Jack grumbled under his breath. But he knew it was a lie. The more he watched Gradius, the more certain he became that he would never be the boy his parents had wanted him to be, that he couldn’t ever live up to their expectations.

  Gradius was fast, but the beast was faster. In a few bounds it closed the distance between them. It leaped for Gradius just as he reached the doorway, but he threw himself into a slide and skidded through on his hip, slapping the touchpad as he went by. The portcullis thundered down just as the Gristler passed beneath it, catching it in midair and slamming it to the ground. The creature was pinned to the floor by the portcullis spikes, twitching feebly, its jaws opening and closing inches from Gradius’s legs. Then it gave a long wheeze, and the light in its eyes went out.

  “Whoa,” said Thomas, amazed.

  Mazzy palmed the touchpad and let them back into the chamber. “I have to admit, that was seriously impressive,” she said.

  Gradius was back on his feet and dusting himself off. “All in a day’s work,” he said modestly. He tried the touchpad again, but the portcullis only made a grinding noise and didn’t move. It was jammed by the body of the Gristler. “Guess I’m stuck on this side. I’ll make my own way around, meet you at the cells.” He gave them a quick salute and disappeared.

  “See you there,” said Mazzy. She looked back at Jack and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

  “What?” Jack said, shrugging. “All he did was single-handedly kill a seven-hundred-pound death machine. It wasn’t that great.”

  “Mazzy!” Boston cried as the door to his cell slid open and he saw her standing there.

  “Rescued by a bunch of kids,” said Mazzy, shaking her head in mock despair. “This is a new low, Boston.”

  He grinned at her, rushed over, and swept her up in a hug. Jack was pleased to see her hug him back with genuine affection. The closeness between the ragtag crew of the Epsilon gave him hope for the future. He’d never experienced anything like that before, and he wanted to be near it. He wanted to be part of it.

  “I can’t believe you found us!” Boston said.

  “What, you thought I’d leave you behind?”

  “We did leave them behind, actually,” Thomas pointed out. “When we decided to go with Gradius to—”

  Jack put a hand over his mouth.

  “Gradius Clench is here?” Boston asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Jack cried. “We turn up to save you from certain death and all you can do is ask about Gradius Clench?”

  “Don’t mind him; he’s jealous,” Mazzy told Boston.

  “I am not jealous!”

  “Envious, then.”

  “I need to make sure the others are okay.” Boston led them to the next cell. Like the first, it was nothing more than a solid metal door with a number stenciled on it.

  “The Epsilon still had a damaged thruster from when we escaped them on Earth. We couldn’t outrun them, even in Combat Mode, so we had to surrender,” Boston told the group. “I thought they were going to kill us. Turns out TOF-1 reported that he was chasing you through the temple, but they lost contact after that.”

  “Yeah, he got eaten,” said Jack, with some satisfaction.

  “I know. Scorch and the Changeling found his blunderbuss at the temple in the end. There was no sign of you, but they saw the star map and figured you’d had some help escaping. They took us here for questioning to find out what we knew, maybe see if we could get them any closer to Gradius Clench.”

  Mazzy plugged her cable into the keypad, and the lock beeped. They pulled it open. Dunk was standing just inside the door, glaring, as if he’d been expecting them the whole time.

  “I’d better be getting compensation for this,” he told them. “Being kidnapped counts as overtime, you know. Union rules.”

  “Hello to you, too,” said Mazzy. “Where’s Ilara?”

  “They took her to a special shielded cell, down the way,” said Boston, pointing. “Something that dampens her Host powers. They didn’t want her mind-controlling the guards.”

  “Well, let’s go fetch her. It’s only a matter of time before the Mechanics catch on to us.”

  They hurried down the corridor until they came to a cell door that was painted with yellow-and-black stripes, with the words extreme hazard printed across them.

  �
��Sounds like Ilara,” said Boston. “Mazzy, would you?”

  Mazzy saw to the lock and they opened the door. Inside, Ilara sat rigidly in a large metal seat that hummed with power. Her hood had been thrown back, and a band of metal surrounded her head. She stared blankly ahead and did not seem to see them.

  “Get her out of there,” Boston snarled, hurrying inside. Mazzy went with him. In moments they had found a switch and deactivated the chair. As soon as the band around her forehead had been removed, Ilara slumped forward.

  “Aaaa! There’s a giant slug on her head!” Thomas squealed as he saw the bloated, brightly striped creature attached to the back of Ilara’s bald skull, reaching from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. “Get it off!”

  “Oh, that?” said Dunk. “That’s supposed to be there.”

  “It is?”

  Dunk scratched a spot on his nose. “The Hosts let those slug things attach to their babies when they’re young. They grow up together. It’s what gives ’em the powers to read minds and whatnot. Disgusting, if you ask me.”

  “Ilara, are you all right?” Mazzy asked as they lifted her out of her chair. “What did they do to you?”

  Ilara’s eyes focused and she looked around wildly as she recovered. “Are … are they gone? Are you really here?” Then she broke into a smile of relieved gratitude. “Thank you! Thank you for saving me! I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come!”

  Boston and Mazzy exchanged an uncertain glance. “Erm … you’re welcome,” said Boston.

  “They must really have shaken you up, huh?” Mazzy said.

  Jack caught the strange look between Boston and Mazzy and wondered at its meaning, but he soon forgot about it. Now that the crew was all together again, and everyone was safe, they grinned in relief and slapped one another on the back. Boston shook Jack’s hand and Thomas’s, too, and even Dunk grudgingly thanked them.

  Jack beamed like an idiot. It felt so good to be included in that warmth. No longer were he and Thomas a pair of useless hostages; they’d proved their worth now. He began to wonder if maybe he could be part of this, after all.

  “Ah, good!” said Gradius, who had appeared in the doorway. “Looks like we’re all here, then. We might want to get going. The elevator’s on its way down, and I’m betting there’ll be a whole heap of guards here soon.”

  Boston did a double take from Gradius to Jack and back again. “He does look like you,” he told Jack. He checked them both again. “Better haircut, though. Nicer teeth, too.”

  “So happy you noticed,” said Gradius, giving him a dazzling smile. “Now, shall we?” He invited them out of the cell.

  “Right! Back to the Epsilon, and let’s get out of here!” Boston said.

  “Not quite,” said Gradius. “Mazzy? I believe you owe me the location of a certain Firehawk? They are launching at dawn, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Mazzy, giving Boston a sheepish look. “Sorry. Escape will have to wait. We have to save the universe first.”

  Boston rolled his eyes. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

  It was not far to the mysterious location Mazzy had discovered in the facility’s computer records, but they were forced to go on foot. There were too many of them for Gradius’s tiny gunship to carry, especially since Dunk weighed as much as the rest of them put together. They slipped away under cover of the drifting smoke, with the wail of alarms rising behind them.

  To stay unobserved they were forced to take a route up a sharp ridge and back into the rocky peaks, where narrow paths ran alongside jagged gullies. Toxic sludge bubbled and blorped at the bottom, belching wafts of eggy stench up at them as they passed. It was hard going, but necessary, because the Mechanics were looking for them now. Several times they were forced to hide from surveillance robots cruising menacingly overhead.

  “You’re muttering,” Thomas told Jack.

  “I am not muttering,” he muttered, glaring at Gradius’s back.

  “You are so. You’ve been muttering to yourself for five minutes now.”

  Jack kicked at a stone and said nothing. The poison in the air made his eyes sting.

  “Why don’t you like him?” Thomas asked.

  “Who?”

  “Gradius, dummy. It’s obvious.”

  Jack shrugged.

  “I mean, he’s pretty cool, right?” said Thomas. “And he’s a good guy to have on our side. It must be like finding a long-lost brother for you, right? I wish I had a brother.”

  “He’s not like a brother. Didn’t you hear him? We’re clones!”

  “Well, a twin, then! That’s even better!”

  “No, it’s not!” Jack said, exasperated. He struggled to think how to explain it. “Look, we started off exactly the same, right? Identical in every way. Except he turned out to be some superbad awesome hero of the galaxy with, like, perfect hair and a warehouse full of confidence, and I turned out to be … me. Just some kid who can draw a little. Don’t you get it? He’s like a living monument to what I could have been, if only I’d tried harder, done better. He’s like a better version of me, and that makes me … that makes me the worse version. The reject. The spare.”

  “Now, that’s not entirely fair,” said Thomas. “Sure, you might have started off the same, but you grew up on two different planets. Who knows how different his life was from yours? He was probably getting massaged by weird octopus women after his workout while you were getting elbow dropped by some doofus in a tracksuit.”

  “That’s my dad!” Jack thought for a moment. “Was.”

  “Sorry. Look, I’m just saying, you can’t compare yourself to someone you don’t really know. Everyone can make themselves look like things are going great if they put in a little effort. Besides, it wasn’t him who saved me from the Fangbeast. Remember that? I’d have been eaten for sure if it wasn’t for you. You risked your own life to save me. That was the coolest thing I ever saw.” He poked Jack in the chest. “I don’t care if he’s a superbad awesome hero of the galaxy. I’d rather have you as my friend any day.”

  Jack couldn’t keep down a smile at that. “Huh. I suppose that was pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

  “Sure was. So why don’t you stop acting like there’s only space for one of you? You can both be superbad awesome heroes if you want to.”

  “Thanks, Thomas,” said Jack, feeling better. “Hey, you know, you should be having an asthma attack about now.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, all this smoke in the air. And your nose isn’t running anymore, either.”

  Thomas dabbed at his nose in surprise. “But it’s always running. I mean, so much that if I forget to drink a glass of water at night I dehydrate.”

  “It’s not running now. Welcome to the world of dry upper lips.”

  “What do you think it means?” Thomas asked, amazed.

  “You heard what Boston said. We Earthers have amazing immune systems from fighting off all those deadly viruses. Maybe yours couldn’t cope with things at home, but with the wussy germs they’ve got out here, you might never get sick again!”

  Thomas’s eyes shone. “No more sick days! Think of it! That’s like another third of my life I’ll get back.”

  “Maybe we belong out here, you and me,” said Jack.

  “Yeah,” said Thomas. His gaze became distant, and a silly grin spread across his face. “Yeah.”

  They caught up with Boston, Mazzy, and Ilara, who were a little way ahead of them. Dunk was at the back, complaining to himself, and Gradius kept himself separate from the main group, as if eager to be on his own. Jack remembered how reluctant he had been to bring them along. With the exception of Mazzy, they were deadweight as far as he was concerned.

  “You think the Firehawk is really nearby?” Thomas asked Mazzy.

  “I know it is,” said Ilara, before Mazzy could reply. “I have seen it in our enemy’s mind.”

  “I thought you couldn’t use your powers inside that chair?” said Boston
.

  “They tried to stop me.” She smiled. “They didn’t try hard enough. I couldn’t get much, but I got something. It was General Kara herself who questioned me. I saw in her mind the image of a burning bird, a thing of terrible power, and also … a cave.”

  “A cave?”

  “A secret way. The Firehawk is heavily guarded, but there is a route beneath the security fences. An old tunnel. Kara had it in mind as an escape route, if ever she should need one. We can use it to get in unseen.”

  “Do you know where it is?” Mazzy asked excitedly.

  “I believe I do,” she said. “Follow me.”

  They let Ilara take the lead, and she took them by difficult paths down among the peaks. Twice more they had to hide as scout robots passed by overhead, silhouetted against the glowing rings of Braxis Prime.

  “It’s getting dark,” said Jack.

  “Oh, those robots can still see us in the dark,” said Gradius. “It’s just that we won’t see them.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Mazzy, tapping the side of her eye socket. “Night vision comes as standard on these babies.”

  The last light of the day was draining from the sky when they came in sight of the Firehawk. They stood on a cliff overlooking a canyon full of poison sludge and stared at it through a crack in the peaks. It was bigger than a battleship, with a colossal wingspan: a vast metal bird resting on a launch ramp, pointed diagonally upward to the sky. Massive thrusters hung beneath its wings and tail.

  “The Firehawk is an aircraft?” Jack said.

  “Huh,” said Dunk. “I used to work on building those, back in the factories on Thuvia, before they fired me for crimes against hygiene. It’s a cargo hauler. Flies like a drunk whale.”

  “What good does an aircraft do the Mechanics?” Boston wondered. “The moment it pokes its nose through a rift gate, it’ll get blasted to pieces, no matter how big it is.”

  Mazzy’s eyes briefly danced with calculations. “Looks like that’s what they mean to do with it, though. It’s pointed directly at the rift gate we came through.”

  “There must be more to it,” said Gradius. “We need to get closer. They said they were launching at dawn. That gives us mere hours.”