Neil Gaiman: Eternity’s Wheel

Mr. Dimas nodded again. “What happened after you got out?”

“We tried to go back to InterWorld, but we couldn’t get there. The Old Man had figured out Joaquim’s energy drain on the ship, and thrown the engines into overdrive to get away. We were waiting for our ship to pick us up when we saw it warp away, followed by a HEX ship. It’s … that HEX found InterWorld Base Town is …”

“Bad, I imagine?”

“Very bad.” I watched as he secured the wrist brace around my hand. It hurt, but I relaxed immediately now that I didn’t have to concentrate on trying not to move it too much. “InterWorld might be able to stay ahead of the HEX ship, but they’re gonna have to keep running, which means they’re essentially trapped. They can’t stop, not even for a second.”

“Let me see if I have anything for that burn on your wrist and the one on your side.” Mr. Dimas stood, leaving me in momentary confusion. What burn on my side? I shifted, finding the rough texture along my skin, and the pain that came with it. Right … It was from J/O’s laser. That was something I’d left out of the retelling. My teammate J/O, a cyborg version of me, had been turned against us by a Binary virus. Acacia had saved me from him, too, left him wandering through time looking for us. …

“He wasn’t on the ship,” I said suddenly, as Mr. Dimas sat back down across from me.

“Who wasn’t?”

“J/O. A teammate of mine, he’s a cyborg me,” I explained, only half listening to what I was saying. My brain was moving too fast for my mouth. “He’d been infected by a Binary virus and was working with Joaquim. He attacked me—that’s where I got the burn on my side from his laser cannon—but Acacia threw us through time and he couldn’t find us … but that means he wasn’t on Base Town when they had to punch it, he must have been left behind. He’s still out there somewhere—” I stopped, not wanting to alarm him, but the sentence continued on in my head. He could come find me. He could come here .

“I have to go,” I said, but Mr. Dimas was shaking his head.

“Not with your injuries,” he said firmly, putting a hand on my fractured shoulder when I tried to stand up. I winced, and he gave me a look that said see? “You can barely walk, and what little medical attention I’ve given you won’t help much unless you sleep and heal .”

“You might be in danger,” I tried.

“You are in danger, and you’re not going to get out of it without dying unless you rest, not to mention eat.” He fixed me with a stern look over the top of his glasses, the look I remembered from sitting in his classroom.

My stomach gave a loud growl just then, as if to punctuate his sentence. I glanced down, betrayed, and felt heat rise to my face. “Okay,” I said quietly, making the decision to leave as soon as I’d eaten. I wasn’t going to put him in more danger than I already had, and besides, I had things to do. My army wasn’t going to gather itself.

“Good,” he said, straightening up. “Now. Important question: What do you want to eat?”

“I—” I stopped, it suddenly occurring to me that I could have anything I wanted. InterWorld kept us fed, of course; protein bars and enhanced vitamin water, very nutritious and not at all delicious. But I was home now, back on my world, and I could have anything. “Pizza,” I said. I know it’s cliché, but cut me some slack—I’m a teenage boy. What would you have asked for? Broccoli?

“I’m not surprised. What do you want on it?”

“Pepperoni and broccoli,” I said. Shut up, it actually sounded good.

Mr. Dimas left to get the pizza (“I’ll go pick it up,” he’d said, “and you’d better be here when I get back, Joseph. I mean it.”) and I relaxed back on the couch again, seriously considering passing out. Instead I forced my mind into some semblance of meditation. It was the best I could do right then; I was still exhausted and hurting and worried, and every passing car or creak of the house settling made me jump.

Even with all my injuries and fears and concerns, I couldn’t stop thinking about Acacia. I hadn’t gotten to that part of the story in my retelling to Mr. Dimas, of how we’d been standing together watching the HEX ship stalk its InterWorld prey, and Lord Dogknife had attacked from out of nowhere. … She hadn’t even seen him coming. I didn’t know what he’d done to her, except that the second time he’d knocked her down, his claws were slick with blood and she hadn’t gotten back up.

I remembered her expression just before we’d been attacked. Most of my memories of her were like that, actually, moments of action frozen in time. I remembered her grinning at me a second before the sound of laser fire filled the air when J/O had found us; I remembered the way her face had been tilted toward mine before Lord Dogknife had attacked. I leaned back against the couch, remembering how she and I had sat back-to-back in a moment of respite, both of us injured, talking strategy and keeping each other going. I wondered if our friendship (relationship?) would be any different if we hadn’t formed the majority of it while running for our lives.

Most of all, I wondered where she was now. I didn’t know if she’d vanished of her own volition or if Lord Dogknife had sent her away or if she’d been rescued. I didn’t know what the chances of seeing her again were, and I wondered if I ever would at all.

The rest of the night went by in a daze. I ate five slices of pizza and downed three bottles of water, as well as two more painkillers. Mr. Dimas had tended my injuries, fed me, and let me use his shower. He gave me his guest room (after making sure I wasn’t going to bleed on anything) and made me promise not to leave without telling him. I finally collapsed into bed around nine, still dizzy from the whirlwind of events.

I remember that the food tasted good, and I remember enjoying it, but I was hard-pressed to remember what it had actually tasted like . My body was working overtime trying to heal, and in order to do that, it had to make me sleep.

I was afraid to. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve seen things that would give the devil himself nightmares (if he even existed anywhere; that kind of theology was something we’d never really gotten into in basic studies), and I’d come through the other side just fine. Now, though … not only was I afraid of the dreams I might have, I was afraid of something coming to find me. I was afraid of being so exhausted that I’d sleep right through something breaking in and hurting Mr. Dimas before it ever even got to me.

That, ultimately, was why I was here instead of with my family. Because I couldn’t risk danger coming right to their door, to Mom and Dad and my little siblings. But my social studies teacher? Apparently I was willing to risk him.

Utterly disgusted with myself, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

I must have slept deeply for at least a few hours, because the first time I startled awake at a noise was around three A.M.

It had been a quiet noise, the kind you can’t really identify once you’re awake even though you know it’s what woke you up. It might have been a thump or a creak. … Had I shut the door when I went to sleep, or left it ajar? It was open now.

The bed jiggled as something jumped up onto it, and I bolted upright, simultaneously aggravating my injuries and startling the hell out of a cat.

“Right, cat … Mr. Dimas has a cat,” I mumbled, staring at the creature hunched down near my feet. It was an orange tabby whose name I didn’t remember, but I recalled him using the cat’s habit of bringing in dead mice and birds as a parallel lesson for something or other in his class.