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  Chapter Twenty Nine

  “This is impossible,” I whispered, clutg Sptsy in shaking hands.

  “We need your help, Henry Rider,” they said in unison.

  I paused. “W- What?”

  They raised their hands, gesturing to the room around us. “This is a pce built by evil men for an evil purpose. We were brought here. Experimented on. Harvested like animals.”

  Their outstretched hands tightened into fists.

  “We took back our freedom. But there are other pces like this. Other people like us. We must find those pces, Henry Rider. We must destroy them.”

  The one who had been wearing the mask took a threatening step toward me.

  “And we must kill those responsible.”

  I raised Sptsy. “Stay away from me!”

  They paused, their expressions unreadable. I’ll admit, right then I was so scared that if I hadn’t used the bathroom before leaving McGus’ pce, I would have needed a new pair of underpants. All of this was too mue to take in at ohe masked man…Legion…whatever he, or they, or it, was…it scrambled my brain like eggs. I couldn’t even begin to process their story, or this pce, except…

  Except that if they were telling the truth — and I couldn’t think of why they would lie — then that meant they weren’t bad guys.

  “Help us, Henry Rider,” they said again. Their voices were mostly monotone, but I thought I could detect a hint of desperation in their words.

  “What does any of this have to do with me?” I asked.

  “More than you realize. You will uand soon.”

  “But…” I paused and took a deep breath. “What would I have to do?”

  Legion fixed their eyes on me. “Bring us the boy.”

  I froze. “Why?”

  “You know the power he holds inside himself.”

  “His ughter?”

  “Yes. With that, we create a on that the ones who built this pce will be defenseless against.”

  Something about that made the hairs on the bay neck stand up. Why would they han’s ughter? What kind of on did they think they could make out of it? And who would they use it against? After all, it wasn’t like ughter could ever…hurt…

  “No,” I whispered as horrible realization dawned on me.

  Across from me, Legion’s eyes narrowed in suspi. “What?”

  I shook my head, pressing my back even harder against the wall. “You- You want to make Ethan’s ughter like yours! And you want to use it to kill kons!”

  Slowly, they nodded. “Yes. A on to destroy the evil that caused us so much pain.”

  Holding Sptsy in one hand, I finally reached for the Cube with my other. “Well, fet it! I won’t help you murder my own people!”

  My fingers closed around the Cube, but I froze when Legion took a step toward me — all of them.

  “How disappointing,” they said with a threatening edge in their voice. “We had begun to think that you were different.”

  They began to spread out, surrounding me. I gulped. With my back to the wall, I had o run.

  “We thought that perhaps you actually cared for human lives, unlike your brethren.”

  “St- Stay back,” I warhem, taking Sptsy in both hands again.

  “But you misuand us. We aren’t requesting your help.”

  The no-longer-masked man stepped forward, reag into the pocket of his coveralls. I tensed up, waiting for him to draw his knife. My cheek burned with the memory of what he’d doh it st time. But it wasn’t the khat he pulled from his pocket.

  It was anlowing amulet.

  “We’re demanding it.”

  The small stone, only a little bigger than a quarter, bathed me in blood-red light. I stared at it in horror, the full realization of how much doodoo I was in crashing down ohen, as ohe Legions rushed for me. I instinctively swung Sptsy, giving one of them a solid blow to the gut, but while he fell the others crowded arourying to pin me against the wall. Growling, I swung for another, but the Legions behind me grabbed hold of Sptsy. They were weak, starved nearly to death, but their bined weight was still enough to nearly yank her out of my hands.

  “Nobody touches my hammer!” I screamed, spinning around and kig the closest Legion in the chest. She flew backwards, straight into the others behind her, knog them all down like dominoes. But the others quickly moved to fill that gap keeping me from esg.

  “Do not fight it, Henry Rider,” they said, eerie voices ringing in my ears. “This is justice. Soon you will uand.”

  Frantic, I found myself without an inove on any side. The Legions pressed in close, trappihe one who’d worn the mask stepped closer with the glowing stone dis the palm of his hand.

  “You will help us,” he said softly, alone.

  Those eyes…they were set in a human’s face, on a human’s body, but the thing peering at me from ihem wasn’t human. Not anymore. I didn’t know what it was. I doubted there was even a word for it. And now it wao turo whatever it was.

  You have no idea how much that terrified me.

  “NO!” I screamed. As fast as I could, not giving Legion any time to react, I charged my shoes with magic. I was bsted up into the air, s across the room to nd oher side before spinning to face the freakish mob.

  They came for me again, but the distance I’d created gave me a few precious seds. I pulled the Cube out of my pocket and took it in both hands. I didn’t know where I was, and that made ing dangerous. I could actally teleport myself a million lightyears into space, or straight into the ter of the earth. But that wouldn’t matter if I stayed here a Legion have his way with me. I…

  Too te. The first Legion lunged for me, and I narrowly dodged out of the way. Charging my shoes again, I spotted a cord hanging from the mae up above that looked like it could hold my weight. Once I there, out of Legion’s reach, I could take my time and out of here as safely as possible. I released the magic, shot up into the air, and…

  Half a dozen hands ed around my ankles.

  With a yelp, I crashed back down, smag my head against the floor. Pain fshed through my skull. Doing my best to ig, I kicked behirying to throw the Legions off. As weak as they were, though, they refused to let go.

  A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see the unmasked man standing there. His face betrayed ion as he k down, amulet in his hand.

  “No,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “Please, no!”

  “We need you, Henry Rider,” he said.

  “Let me go! Don’t do this!”

  More Legions came to hold down my arms. So many of them that all I could do was squirm helplessly.

  “You will uand,” he promised. “Once you are one of us.”

  He reached out and pressed the talisman against my forehead. I screamed in horror — but it immediately died in my throat as something came rushing out of the little stone . Whatever it was, it had no physical form. It didn’t even truly exist in this dimension. But the amulet created a doorway for it that led from its world directly…into…me!

  My eyes widened, but my body fell still. Thoughts. Living thoughts. Evil thoughts. They flooded into my brain, like a bursting dam, washing the part of me that was me farther and farther back. There was nothing I could do. No way to fight. All I could do was wat horror as the formless entity filled me from head to toe.

  The io go of me and backed away. Slowly, I stood up. Only, it wasn’t me doing it. I could still see through my eyes, feel with my skin, but they were no longer mi was like I was watg a movie, uo affect what I was seeing in any way.

  NOOOOO! I screamed inside my head. Legion ignored me. That’s what this was, I realized. Those thoughts were Legion in its true form. They were what was trolling all these people.

  And now me, toet out of my head! Let! Me! Go!

  I threw myself against Legion as hard as I could — I’m not sure how to describe it, sihis was all taking pside my head — but it was like trying to move a mountain.

  As I fought, things started to appear before me. Not in the real world. They were like memories, or at least echoes of somebody else’s memories. Legion’s memories. With our minds pressed together this closely, pieces of it were passing over into me. The thought made me shiver, but that didn’t stop the images from ing. I tried to ighem, focus on the horror show that was happening in real life, but slowly they began to draw my attention.

  I could see through other people’s eyes. Brief visions of them being attacked in dark alleyways, abandoned roads. Drugged to sleep, only to wake up here, ected to a terrible nightmarish mae. They were Legion. I could feel it. A, somehow they weren’t.

  Glowing amulets were put on their heads, robbing them of trol of their own bodies. Just like what it had doo me, yet different in a way I couldn’t uand. The amulets ahem to ugh, so they ughed. And ughed. And ughed. For weeks. Months. Sitting here in this grimy prison, uo move, rarely fed, they ughed even though there wasn’t a speck of joy in their hearts.

  That ughter was captured by the masks they wore and sucked up into the mae. And still they ughed, until they either went insane or died. If they went iheir ughter would turn gray. Workers would e, take away the bodies, and repce them with new people. Then the process would repeat itself. Never ending. Always suffering.

  If I was in trol of myself, I would have thrown up. Laughter is the universal nguage of joy. But this…this ain and misery. The exact opposite of what ughter should have been! Who was depraved enough to do something like this? To corrupt one of the only purely good things left in the world?

  The answer came, and I immediately regretted asking.

  People with skin as white as snow, hair as bright as rainbows. Kons. Of course. It was the most obvious thing in the world. These people were being harvested for their ughter. Why would anybody do such a thing uhey wao feed on it? But the mere thought of my people doing something so utterly heinous broke something inside of me. If I’d still had my knees, I would have fallen to them. If I’d still had my lungs, I would have screamed.

  But then, one day, something had happehey didn’t uand pletely themselves. But there had been a magical malfun. The amulets had backfired, sug their minds — their very sciousnesses — right out of their skulls. They’d been taken to a dimensiohoughts were given form, and crushed together so hard that they’d ceased to be individual minds, and instead became one singur entity. A Fraein monster of twelve brains, twelve people, twelve souls.

  Legion.

  The malfuning pendants had allowed Legion to reach bato this world, trolling any living thing they touched like living puppets. With all those brains put together, their intelligence had skyrocketed, allowing them to think and act faster than any mortal being. Using these new powers, they had broken free, killed everyone in the facility, and plotted how to take their revenge.

  Ethan was the key to their master pn.

  And I was the key to Ethan.

  All of that fshed through my mind in a split sed, and by the time I uood everything, my body was only just getting to its feet. With my hand, Legion squeezed my N.O.S.E., ging the disguise so that it covered the amulet on my forehead. Then it pulled the Escher Cube out of my pocket.

  Please, I begged. Don’t do this! I’ll do anything! Please!

  But Legion ignored me. Pulling memories from me just like I had doo it, a picture of Mauldibamm appeared in my mind. I began to turn the Cube with quick, perfeents. The bunker, and the ions, vanished. I screamed so hard it shook the very core of my being, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Legion knew where Ethan was.

  And I was ing for him.