blood from my face and watching it swirl down the drain.
‘Any questions?” came a familiar voice.
Aja stood in the entrance to the shower with her arms folded, looking smug. I quickly grabbed my towel and covered up. Sheesh, could this get any worse?
“I’ve got a ton of questions,” I said while turning off the shower. “But first I want to know why my nose hurts so bad if this is all happening in my head?”
Aja chuckled. “You’re not hurt, Pendragon. Not really. When we leave the jump, your nose will be fine.”
“Good. Would you mind turning around so I can get dressed?”
Aja rolled her eyes and looked away. I went quickly back to my locker and changed into the clothes I had put there in my earlier fantasy. The locker room was empty now. The other guys were long gone. As I tied up my hiking books, Aja came over and sat down next to me on the bench.
“Lifelight took your thoughts and created a perfect fantasy,” she explained. “The Reality Bug took those same thoughts and also found the flaws and fears. Rather than only pulling out the good, it also found the bad. Just like reality. Getting beaten like that was something you feared might happen. You probably even worried that one day your coach would overdo it and get sick. The Reality Bug found those fears and made them real.”
“But what’s the point?”
Aja stood up and paced. “Haven’t you learned anything? The people of Veelox will never leave Lifelight on their own. The territory is crumbling because nobody wants to take care of real life. Reality is too much trouble. People have to work and repair their homes and grow food and have babies and deal with other people who might not agree with them, and basically do all the things that it takes to run a world. But in Lifelight they don’t have to worry about any of that. That’s why Saint Dane is winning. He’s got fantasy on his side. But my Reality Bug is the ideal solution. It makes Lifelight less than perfect so people aren’t staying in as long as they used to. It’s forcing them to return to real life.”
“So… you’ve already tried it with other jumpers?”
“A few. Every time they ended their jumps earlier than planned. It works, Pendragon. Once I’ve fully installed the bug, it will affect every jump in every pyramid on Veelox.”
Aja sat down beside me. It was the first time she seemed happy.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “The bug will make Lifelight more like reality, so it won’t be as attractive anymore. And nobody will know why. I’ve buried the bug so deep that no one will ever find it.”
I hated to admit it, but Aja’s plan made a whole bunch of sense. Still, there was something that bothered me.
“I think it’s great, Aja, I really do,” I said, still trying to form my thoughts. “If everything works out the way you say it will, then you did it. You beat Saint Dane.”
“Thank you!” she said with a big, dramatic breath, as if this were the one thing she had been waiting for me to say all along.
“But-“
“There’s no buts,” she jumped in.
“Maybe not, but you said the battle on Veelox was going to happen inside people’s imaginations. I understand that now. But aren’t imaginations hard to control? I mean, look at me. I got hammered. You said this came from my own fears. What if somebody fears something really big? I mean, the jumps could get dangerous.”
“So what?” Aja shot back. “It’s a fantasy. Nobody gets hurt. They’re all lying safely inside the pyramid.”
“So when we come out,” I asked, “my nose won’t hurt anymore?”
“Exactly!”
I wanted to believe her, but something else was bugging me, so to speak. The Reality Bug was nothing more than a really advanced computer virus. And computer viruses were scary. You never knew where they’d turn up or what damage they’d do. I once got a virus on my computer at home that trashed my hard drive. If a virus could wreck my little PC, I’d hate to think what it might do to a system as complex as Lifelight.
“Tell you what,” Aja said. “I’ll prove it to you. Let’s do the final test. Right here, right now.” “Test?” I asked nervously.
“Your control bracelet,” she said. “Remember the middle button?”
I lifted my arm to see that the silver band with the three buttons had reappeared. “The middle button alters the jump, right?”
“Exactly. Press the button. Let’s see what happens.”
“Are you crazy?” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “What if things go wacky?”
“I hope they do,” Aja countered. “It’ll be the only way I can prove to you that no matter how wrong a jump goes, all we have to do is end it and everything will be fine.”
I shook my head and paced. This was getting scary.
“This is the final test, Pendragon. Pressing that button is the first thing the jumpers will do when their jumps go bad. They’re all going to try and change their fantasy. Let’s see what will happen when they do.”
“What do you think will happen?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It all depends on you.”
Truth be told, I was scared to death of what might happen. What if a fire broke out? Or an earthquake hit? I didn’t want to have to go through that kind of mayhem, even if it was just a fantasy. My nose hurt bad enough.
“C’mon, Pendragon,” she cajoled. “You’re the big brave Traveler who beat Saint Dane all those times. Be the hero again. Push the button. Let’s prove the Reality Bug works once and for all.”
“You promise we can end the jump right away? I mean, all I have to do is say ‘Stop!’ and you can make all of this go away?”
“You can end it yourself, remember?” she said, pointing to my control bracelet. “Just press the right button. That ends the jump. Everything should work exactly as normal, except the Reality Bug will alter the fantasy.”
Aja seemed to have found the solution to the turning point on Veelox. If her Reality Bug worked, it would force people to live in the real world again. The Travelers would have beaten Saint Dane and set the territory back on the right path. If all that was left to do was test the middle button, we had to do it.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“You already asked me that,” she answered impatiently. “Haven’t I impressed you yet?”
Okay, she had. I took a deep breath, raised my arm, and put my finger over the middle button on the silver control bracelet.
“Ready?” I asked her.
“Always,” she answered.
I pushed the button. It glowed red for a moment and then…
Nothing happened. The ground didn’t shake, the roof didn’t collapse. We stood there like a couple of dopes. “Nothing changed,” I said. “Maybe it didn’t-” Then it all hit the fan.
Aja lifted her arm with the large, silver control bracelet. “My controller,” she said with surprise. “It’s activating.” “What does that mean?”
A second later a beam of light shot out of the wrist controller and projected a holographic image. If the idea of the Reality Bug was to dig into my subconscious and pull out all my fears, it did a very good job. Because standing in front of us in that locker room was the one thing I feared most.
Saint Dane.
“Checkmate!” the demon laughed.
“Is this my fantasy?” I asked Aja, stunned.
“No!” Aja answered with a shaky voice. “Your jump isn’t tied into my controller. This is real. It’s a recording.”
“Aja, you sweet thing,” the image of Saint Dane said. “Did you really think I’d let you sabotage Lifelight? I worked too hard for too many years helping those programmers create Lifelight to allow you to destroy it with a simple computer virus.”
Aja shot me a look. This wasn’t my horror fantasy.
It was hers.
“Sweet, little Aja,” Saint Dane’s image said. “I’ve watched you from the day you were born.
I made sure the directors picked you for the phader program; I saw you grow into an arrogant little Traveler; and I even helped you program your nasty little bug. I’m sure Pendragon has told you I’m always around. I’ll bet you
