I blink at the abrupt change in her tone. Her voice has dropped about a dozen decibels, and she sounds more fearful than furious.
“It’s me, Nish. I don’t know what’s happening or if any of this is real, but I’m trapped in some kind of nightmare. Everyone’s been awful to me, and—”
“Oh, my Helios, it’s you!”
Nishi throws the dagger aside and crushes me to her chest. We hug so tightly that I can’t breathe, but I don’t care. I’d rather die right here, clasped in the arms of my best friend, than anywhere else.
I hear her soft sobs in my ear, and soon I’m crying, too. When at last we let go of each other, we wipe our wet faces on our sleeves, and I shove the clutter off my bed so we can sit.
“How is any of this happening?” I ask.
“The Sumber.” Now that she’s not putting up a violent front, Nishi sounds much weaker than I first realized. “It took me a while to remember, but I finally figured it out,” she says, her hands trembling. “The gun Imogen pointed at me was a Sumber. She shot me, and then the nightmares started.” Even though she looks so different, it’s comforting to know she’s still the same quick study I remember.
“H—how long have we been here, Rho?”
I almost cringe at hearing her sound so brittle and breakable. And as I open my mouth to answer, I realize I have no idea how much time has passed.
“I’m not sure. . . . It feels like—”
“Forever,” she finishes for me, and I nod as our eyes meet. “Just try to focus,” she orders me, and I’m relieved to hear some of her bossy Nishiness coming back. “What can you remember before the nightmares?”
For a brief moment, the fog lifts a little in my mind, and I see Crompton standing before me, flanked by a Stargazer and a Dreamcaster. As I raised my Scarab to shoot him, the Zodai beside him raised weapons of their own—an Arclight and—
“I was hit by a Sumber, too,” I say, piecing it together out loud as I go. “I think it was a few days after you. But how did we find each other here?”
Her gaze loses its intensity as her focus drifts away. “The Sumber’s mind control must run off Psynergy . . . and our Psynergy signatures must be naturally drawn to each other. What can you remember from before you fell? Who shot you?”
As usual, while I’m still trying to process the new information, she’s pressing us onward. If we were in class, Deke would be groaning and begging our instructor to ban Nishi from the room until the rest of us mastered the lesson.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks in surprise.
“I just really missed you,” I say, reeling her in for another, longer hug. Neither of us says anything as we hold each other, and I close my eyes as I breathe in her thick, dark hair. Even now, unwashed and in an alternate dimension, it still holds hints of the expensive, lavender-scented products she imports from Sagittarius. “I’m going to find you,” I whisper, tears threatening to overtake me again.
“I know, Rho—”
She cuts out and yanks on my hand, and we leap off the bed just as an explosion blasts above us, and the ceiling comes crashing down on the mattress.
“RUN!” she shouts.
Fingers laced together, we burst out of my room and hurtle down the hallway, ducking our heads and skidding to stops as chunks of the cement compound begin crumbling down around us. “Don’t let go!” calls Nishi over the deafening quaking and thundering.
We turn the corner toward the dining hall and freeze as a massive ball of fire rolls our way. She shrieks, and I pull us in a new direction.
The air grows hotter with every breath as the fire burns up more and more of our oxygen until I shove open a searing red door, and we topple into the swimming complex. Sucking in synchronized breaths, we leap into the salt water.
We stay down as long as we can, and when we finally surface for air, there’s no trace of fire, not even a wisp of smoke. “What’s next?” I ask between breaths.
“Something worse,” says Nishi darkly. “It’s always something worse.”
We climb out of the pool and take each other’s hands again as we step through the red door—only we’re no longer in the Academy.
The gray hall has turned glossy black, and it extends infinitely in either direction. The feeling that I’m being watched is back, and I pull Nishi along with me through the passage at a quick clip.
“How do we wake up from the Sumber?” I ask as we hurry hand in hand past symmetrical rows of nondescript doors.
“It’s not up to us. Whoever has our bodies has to administer the antidote.”
I slow down in disgust at the thought of someone else having complete control over me. And suddenly the polished ground rises before us like a black wave.
Nishi’s grip on me tightens as we start to slide backwards, and we wheel around to run in the opposite direction—but we skid to a stop as the path ahead starts rising, too.
“What do we do?” I ask.
Nishi yanks open one of the nondescript doors, and we escape into an unknown room. As the door shuts behind us, I look around and see we’re standing in the entrance hall to Zodai University.
Every campus includes this identical chamber, a remnant from the days when all our worlds were ruled as one. The mismatched walls are crafted from stone, and they represent the four elements—sapphire for water, tigereye for earth, ruby for fire, and gold for air. On the ceiling above us is the ancient crest of the Zodiac Galaxy: a massive Helios with twelve sunbeams, each one pointing to a different House symbol. Within the sun is our old name: Houses of Helios.
I used to cut through this place every morning when I visited the solarium.
“Where’d the door go?” asks Nishi.
I turn to see there’s no longer the outline of a doorway in the wall made of rubies, and I hear a strange flickering sound. “What is that?”
“Do you smell—”
Nishi’s voice cuts out as a blast of red flame blazes out from the wall, like a fiery hand reaching out for us.
We leap across the room, falling back against the wall of cool sapphires. “What’s happening?” I shout as water starts to shower down from the blue wall, drowning my words and drenching us both.
Since the fire’s flames are still reaching out for us, we tread along the wall of gold to avoid the water and the heat—until a strong gust of wind punches out from behind us, blowing our bodies across the room.
Nishi and I lose hold of each other, and my back hits the tigereye wall, and then I slide down to the floor. Behind me the stones tremble from the impact.
Water is still falling from the sapphire wall, and by now it’s about a foot high, so I’m soaked once more. Nishi reaches down to pull me up, and then we back away from the brown wall as its shaking intensifies.
Tigereye stones begin dislodging and rolling down like pebbles, spraying our heads and faces and legs until we’re forced to huddle together in the middle of the room, equidistant from all four sides.