AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you get tired of waiting for neters, the entire book is for sale on Amazon in print and on Kindle!

  Chapter Twe

  Snapping the st row of the Escher Cube into pce, I appeared in an alleyway somewhere in North Dakota. I checked my N.O.S.E. to make sure I roperly disguised, and stowed the Cube in my pocket before stepping out onto the street.

  Roger Talon was my target today. Forty three years old. Blue. Five feet, nine iall — or he had been, at least. He’d been a ma the Wombo World here in town before it shut down three years ago, and the letter said this was the most likely pce to find him. Where those letters came from and who wrote them, even McGus couldn’t say. But somehow they always knew when a kon became a maiam, and could usually tell us where they were hiding.

  “Hey, Ethan,” I said as I hurried across the street toward the restaurant, “think they still have any…ht.”

  Wow. Just a couple weeks ing the dork around, and it already felt weird to go anywhere without him. I shook my head. All the more reason to get this over with quickly. That, and lunch.

  I tried one of the doors. Locked. A quice around told me the area was deserted for the moment, so I drew Sptsy and smashed the dht off its hinges. I rushed inside even before all the gss had stopped falling, Sptsy raised for an attack. If the maiam was here, there was no way it hadn’t heard that. But if I made sure to keep myself between it and the exit, it would have o run except face first into—

  The man in the ask.

  I recoiled in shoearly tripping over my ow as he stepped out of the abandoned kit. In one hand, he held the same knife he’d threatened me with st night. The bde was coated with a bck liquid. Iher…

  “Broccoli cheese ice cream,” I swore.

  Roger Talon’s monstrous corpse hung from his fist, as limp as a dishrag. Thick bck blood dripped from its throat to sptter on the floor. With an indifferent flick of his wrist, the masked man flung it across the room so that it nded right in front of me. It began to dissolve. I looked from it to the masked man, too stuo move. He didn’t move either. For a long, tense minute, we just stood there and stared at each other.

  Finally, he looked around. “Where is the boy?”

  “Somewhere you’ll never find him!” I sightening my grip on Sptsy.

  He shook his head. “Disappointing. We seem to have wasted our time, then.”

  “What are you—”

  “Then again,” he cocked his head in thought. “Perhaps not. Let’s use this ce to talk, Henry Rider.”

  My heart ounding so hard that I thought it would break my ribs. The Escher Cube’s sharp er oking my leg through my pocket. Nothing was stopping me from grabbing it and ing the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks out of there. For some reason, though, I didn’t. He hadn’t attacked me yet. Maybe this was my ce to get a clue as to what was going on.

  “Fine,” I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt. “Let’s start with this: give me one good reason why I shouldn’t break every bone in your body!”

  He o the disappearing maiam. “sider that a peace .”

  He took a sudden step forward, and I backed away, but all he did was step on the puddle of bck goo that had been Roger Talon. Raising his toes, he ground his heel into it like he was crushing an annoying bug until the st few inky wisps had faded into nothingness.

  “You and we are more alike than you know,” he said.

  My cheeks burned. “I’m nothing like you!”

  “You are a warrior, fighting to extermierrible evil from the world.” He looked me in the eye, and I shivered. “And so are we.”

  “You’re a murderer!” I snapped.

  “Murder is an act of senseless violence. Unjustifiable. We have never murdered anyone.”

  “Tell that to…” I paused.

  “Who, Henry Rider?” he asked. “Who have we killed? And why? Will you judge us without even knowing what crimes we have itted?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Do you want to know what is truly happening?” he asked a mier.

  Sy dread began to creep into my heart. I couldn’t tell why, but something about the way he said that bothered me. Those words were…heavy…somehow. They carried more meaning than he was letting on.

  Swallowing, I hesitantly said, “Fiell me.”

  The masked man slowly looked to his left, then to his right.

  “Words are ie,” he said. “To uand, we will have to show you.”

  Then he lunged for me.

  I swung Sptsy with a yelp, but she soared harmlessly over his head. Ice filled my veins when I saw that knife ing for me. That would be the merciful way out. If he was feeling particurly cruel, he’d poisoh his ughter again. I could still remember the—

  Instead, he grabbed me by my face.

  “See the truth with your own eyes, Henry Rider,” he whispered, “and decide for yourself who is evil and who is i.”

  He gave me a shove, sendioppling over backwards. I hit the ground hard, striking my head against the fln the dizziness, I scrambled bay feet, Sptsy held out to block his attack. If McGus couldn’t beat him, then I didn’t have a prayer. I had to fend him off long enough to grab the Cube and…

  I paused.

  Where the fudge marshmallow chimigas was I?

  The Wombo World was gone. Where dusty windows had let in the sunlight, there were now gray crete walls. Humming fluorest bulbs bathed the se in dull, lifeless illumination. It reminded me of a tornado shelter I’d been in once, only bigger. At least as big as the cil chamber back at the Grand Lark. There were no windows or doors that I could see, no way in or out.

  And no masked maher.

  Not sure what to think, I took a step backwards. What in Curly Howard’s holy name was going on? I’d been thrown around a er, that much was obvious. But a er to where? And why? I took aep back, and my heel bumped against something. Biting back a scream, I leaped forward, whirled around…and my mouth fell open in shock.

  Wooden chairs — at least a dozen of them — made a ring around a massive bck mae. Shaped like a e, it came down out of the ceiling above, its point just a few inches above the floor. It was silent right now, but every few seds a spark of electricity would arc across it. Thick wires and tubes big enough for me to crawl through snaked in and out of it.

  I lowered my eyes, and realized with a sick lurch that I wasn’t alohere were people sitting in those chairs, dressed in hospital gowns that didn’t look like they had been ged in weeks. Slumped forward and unmoving, all that kept them from falling out of their seats were the leather belts ed around their chests, arms, and legs. Little pstic masks, like what you’d hook up to an oxygen tank, were fasteo their faces with thick rubber tubes that ran up to the bck mae above. But I barely noticed any of that. My eyes were glued to their foreheads.

  Foreheads that all bore a familiar glowing red amulet.

  “Are you beginning to uand, Henry Rider?” asked the masked man. His voice came from behind me, but when I spun around there was nobody there.

  “What have you done?” I demanded.

  “Revenge.”

  I spun again, and finally spotted him. He was standing in front of the bck mae, iween two of the chairs, with his hands resting on the heads of the people sitting ihe idea of attag him didn’t even y mind. This pce, that mae, those poor people…my brain was on the verge of exploding fr to take it all in at once.

  “What have you doo them?” I forced myself to ask.

  The masked man cocked his head. “You still do not uand. We did not put ourselves here. We only wish to show you the truth.”

  I stared at him, unprehending. Ever since I’d first entered him at Ethan’s house, he had spoken like he thought he was more than one person. We. Us. I’d just assumed it roduct of his insanity. But now something was different. When I’d mentiohe people in the chairs, he had responded as if he…and they…were somehow…

  No. It couldn’t be.

  “Who…” I swallowed, hardly able to breathe. “Who are you?”

  There was silence as the masked man pted his answer — and then one of the bodies spoke.

  “We are the ones who disappeared,” he said, raising his head to look at me.

  One by ohe others followed suit. What I had assumed were corpses fixed their cold, acg eyes on me, and in perfect synization began to rise from their seats. The leather belts that restraihem slid free on their own. I backed away until I hit the wall behind me.

  “We are Ange Dorsey.”

  “Michael Walters.”

  “Carlos Ramirez.”

  “Troy Rainer.”

  They gathered in front of the mae, and then parted to let the masked man approach me. Slowly, he reached up and pulled the rubber mask off his face. I gasped as it fell to the floor as limply as Roger Talon’s maiam, the fay enemy revealed to me at st. Little more than flesh and bone, I could clearly make out the shape of his skull just beh the skin. Sunken, deranged eyes. Bald except for a few wispy bck hairs that stubbornly g to his scalp.

  And anlowing talisman.

  “Our name is Legion,” they all said together, “for we are many.”