Mikey smiled and shook his head. “You poor dumb shits. You never did
figure it out, did you?”
He stepped around the fallen robots and moved to the shattered window
wall, shards of glass crunching under his feet.
“Now it’s too late.” He looked down at Craig’s corpse. “While that little
shit kept you running around in circles, I finished this.”
Mikey held his prize high. A trick of reflection from the broken window
made it appear that there were two of him, one floating in air and both
holding the key.
Gilligan growled and scrabbled for his gun. Mikey looked over at him and
he froze. Wiz wanted to scream, he wanted to run, he wanted to go for
Mikey’s throat. But he couldn’t do any of it. Like Mick and Jerry he was
rooted where he stood.
Mikey looked up and Wiz saw his eyes were red and glowing like an animal
caught in the headlights.
“Always one step ahead. That’s the difference between a real master hacker
and people like you, Zumwalt. We’re always one step ahead.
“Anyway, I just wanted you to know before . . .”
Out of the corner of his eye, Wiz caught a movement in the shattered
window wall. Now there were two reflections in the glass. He shifted his
eyes back to the room, but Mikey was alone with the key.
Then he looked in the window again. There was someone standing in front of
Mikey’s reflection.
Duke Aelric.
The elf’s silvery armor was marred and stained. There were nicks in the
blade of his curved sword and what looked like a burn mark along his
helmet. Wiz had no idea where he had been, but he’d obviously been in a
hell of a fight.
The elf stepped forward and laid both his hands on the key.
“Mine,” he said.
There was still no one in the room but Mikey took the black convoluted
thing in a double death grip.
“I made it,” he yelled. “I can use it. It’s mine!”
The muscles in his arms quivered and the veins in his neck bulged as
though he was trying to hold the key against a tremendous pull.
In the window Aelric’s teeth were set and splotches of high color stood
out on his pale cheeks. His muscles swelled and rippled under his mail as
he strove to wrest the key from Mikey’s grasp.
Aelric and Mikey both seemed to flicker. Behind them Wiz thought he saw
other things, some of them manlike. The sky darkened and began to run like
wax-or perhaps it was his vision closing in. Faster and faster the images
flickered until it was like watching an old silent movie. Then they
flickered faster yet and there were two images superimposed on each other
in the glass.
Mikey alternated with something large and vaguely manlike with fur and the
pointed ears of an elf. The thing with Aelric was manlike too, but it
shone so brightly it hurt Wiz’s eyes.
Mikey’s breath was coming in harsh gasps and his arms were shaking from
the strain. Aelric was straining too, but he wasn’t shaking. A fraction of
an inch at a time the key moved toward the elf.
With a cry the Mikey in the window broke away. As soon as he released the
key it was as if he had been sucked down a tunnel. With a despairing wail
he dwindled and vanished in the distance.
The real Mikey whimpered, slumped to the floor and lay still. The black
thing he had held was gone.
There was still no sign of Aelric in the room, but in the glass he stood
with the key resting in the crook of his arm.
“Well done, Sparrow,” the image said.
Wiz found he could move again.
“Are you really there?”
“I am here,” the reflection said. “As for reality . . .” He shrugged in
the old Aelric manner.
“Now,” he said, turning serious, “I think you will find that resistance
has collapsed. You will have perhaps another day before this World starts
to decay. I would suggest that you and all your people be gone by then.”
“And the key?”
“With it we can close the gate forever on these others.” He seemed to sway