Rabbits(77)

“So what happened next?”

“I asked him how he knew the Magician, but he was kind of cagey. And when I came right out and asked him if he’d ever heard of Rabbits, he disconnected the call.”

“Shit.”

“I tried calling back, but the user account called Fatman had been deactivated. I tried again and the computer froze. When I booted it back up, the entire program was gone.”

“That’s…weird,” I said.

“No shit,” Chloe said as she pulled one of the Magician’s old Windows laptops out of her backpack.

“Wait, you stole the Magician’s laptop?”

“No, I borrowed a computer from my absentee boss, just in case he needed saving from the consequences of playing an ancient and potentially deadly game.”

“You know it’s called a personal computer for a reason.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, K.”

“Holy shit. You think I’m the one being dramatic here?”

“I do,” she said as she hit enter on the old laptop and the password screen gave way to the familiar launch logo of Windows 95.

“What happened to not playing the game for a while?” I asked.

“I wasn’t playing the game. This guy was just…on the screen.”

Suddenly I thought about Crow’s warning. What if he made Chloe forget I existed? Or what if he did something worse than that? I pictured the look on Baron’s face when we’d climbed through his window and found him sitting in front of his computer. I didn’t think I could handle seeing Chloe like that.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” I asked.

“What else are we gonna do, play Tetris?”





26


    IS THAT A FUCKING CROSSBOW?


Along with the outer space elevator scenario, there’s another dream I’ve been having for as long as I can remember.

It begins with me staring at a sheet of ice, what appears to be the surface of a frozen lake. It takes me a moment to realize that my body is freezing, but then I’m shivering as I examine the cracks, colors, and shapes in the ice. The cold is intense, but the mosaic of the ice is so beautiful that I’m able to momentarily forget about the pain and just trace the artistic perfection in the surface of the lake with my eyes.

It’s at this point that I suddenly realize I’m not above the ice but beneath it.

And I can no longer breathe.

This is when I understand that I’m about to die. Panic sets in, and I begin to thrash wildly beneath the freezing blue water, clawing, kicking, and screaming at the surface. But every action does nothing but push me farther down into the icy darkness.

While I’m stuck there beneath the ice, thrashing and dying, I can see everyone up on the surface skating and walking hand in hand, laughing and having fun, and beyond that the blur of families on the grass, laughing at their barbecues and playing Frisbee.

And behind all of that, I can see the sun shining beautifully, way high up in the sky.

Then, just as I’m about to succumb to some weird Leonardo DiCaprio–esque Titanic trip to the unforgiving bottom of that cold wet world, the ice becomes something else.

It becomes glass.

A windshield, to be more specific.

And then I’m speeding along that dark country road in the truck with Annie and Emily Connors. I can hear the sharp crackle of static on the radio, and I can smell the Body Shop Dewberry perfume oil that Annie had been wearing.

The snowy static from the radio feels electric as it fills my ears, my head starts to shake, and a loud screaming pain slowly begins to tear my mind apart.

Then, as the world around me blurs and begins to fade away and the pain from the static in my head becomes too much to bear, I sense the dark thing coming toward me from somewhere outside my reality.

I realize the world is about to end.

And that’s when I wake up.



* * *



—

“Are you okay?”

I was looking into Chloe’s face, my kitchen ceiling visible behind her in the distance.

I was lying on the floor.

I sat up and the world slowly slipped into focus. “What happened?”

“You had another…episode,” Chloe said.

“What time is it?” I asked, as I did my best to remember what had happened, how I’d ended up on the floor of my kitchen looking up at Chloe.

“It’s seven forty-five,” she said, helping me up. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“You stole the Magician’s laptop,” I said, “we looked over a few things, and then I was here.”

“I borrowed his computer. We’ve been through that bit. That was two hours ago.”

“It was?”

“I’m taking you to urgent care.”

“I’m fine,” I said as I scrambled to stand.

“Oh, well then,” she said, “as long as you say you’re fine.”

I gave her the finger—along with what I hoped looked like a carefree smirk—and sank into one of the white plastic chairs at the dining room table.

What the hell was happening to me?

The last thing I remembered was worrying about Chloe for some reason. And then it came flooding back—not the missing two hours, but the reason I’d been so concerned.