the tellers’ lane. The vault door was no heist-movie prop: no great steel circle, like a stone rolled in front of a cave. But it was steel, and larger than Michael, with a spoked wheel dead center like a spiked eye.
He said, “Hey!” padding to his feet. “Hey-hey-hey! Hey, Bubbo-Gum!”
A large dent on the vault door—an impact crater—twisted his reflection. There were thin scratches marring the door, too. Shriek scratches! It tried to get at Patrick in there! Bub’s really here!
Without thinking, Michael threw himself into the door with everything he had.
It didn’t even buck.
He fell back from it, shoulder throbbing.
His panting fogged the faceplate.
Michael wiped at the faceplate madly, realized wiping the outside would do nothing, felt for the suit-back, and tore the hood off messily, the zipper screaming.
He threw himself against the door again—
—and it wouldn’t open again. It was like a door in a video game that was not designed to be opened.
“Bub!”
There was no reply, save a dry clicking behind him. Michael tensed. But it was only a mini rock slide on the debris.
Calm it. Calm calm calm.
But in his brain he saw: Patrick, clawing the door, wheezing ’cause there wasn’t air in there, fingertips bleeding. How long had Patrick been in there? Michael guessed, Eight minutes and forty-three seconds. Excellent skill, very helpful.
He threw an inarticulate yell of rage, but it was more than a yell, was more like a protest. He had done everything: he had rescued Patrick through a series of Hells, had talked Holly to his side, he’d killed a dark genius with a sniper he’d conjured from nowhere. He had mutated their future.
And now, now Patrick was in there, with no air to breathe—
How, said a small voice, did he get in there?
It was as if someone—or Something—had dropped the thought into his head.
Patrick couldn’t have opened the vault. The door was too heavy.
The Shriek hit the door and shut it, he imaged.
PULL IT open! You have to PULL!
The vault door swung open lightly in Michael’s hands.
Not only oxygen had been sucked from the vault: time had, too. As the door swung open, a terror, beneath the neat rows of safe-deposit boxes, was revealed eternally. It was far worse than Cady Gibson. It was Patrick. His face was blue, pinched. He wasn’t breathing.
This wasn’t real. It wasn’t true. His brother wasn’t sitting here, dead.
Because Patrick was pretending. His candle was not snuffed, Michael insisted.
I know it’s not real, he thought. I know. I know it’s not, I know I know—
Michael cried, “Please, Bub—!”
—a gasp—
Patrick’s eyes blew open, his breath flying out.
Michael, quite quickly, slid against the door, to the ground, began to laugh and cry. . . .
It was like Patrick was shooting up and out of a pool after a breath-holding contest. He bent forward, his hands on the floor, coughing. “It got hardta . . . hardta . . . breathe . . . . I held it in,” he said. Hacking still, he flexed his biceps over his shoulders, his orange toy gun in one hand. Look at me, World’s Awesomest Holder of Breath and Kicker of Undead Badonkadonk.
Even though Patrick wasn’t looking, Michael gave a thumbs-up. He wiped his eyes, his fingers coming away shaking, but he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Guess what, Game Master?” Patrick said. “Guess what, I found—Hey.” He raised his eyes and saw Michael. If it was possible to cough indignantly, that was what Patrick did. “No. Out.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not s’posed to be here.”
I just saved his life, he thought, and he’s acting like I pooped on his b-day cake.
“Get out,” Patrick repeated, getting to his feet.
But Michael had just seen something.
There was something else in the vault with them.
There was a clear plastic tunnel stickered with BIOHAZARD. The tunnel led to a zip-up plastic door. Past the door, a metallic halo secured in the ceiling draped a pyramid of heavy plastic biomedical sterile tarps. Banks of ultraviolet lights, flickering, gave them the look of arctic ghosts.
Within the tarps was a laboratory. Steel tables and charts and tubes and a gyroscopic machine sporadically spinning beakers. A moment of joy, then a sense of unreality washed through Michael.
It’s too small.
That was it. This lab was too small. Was it . . . like, a decoy? How could the hope of every possible future fit in here? It couldn’t contain the importance.
It wasn’t big enough to be the . . . the, like, Last Level.
Don’t you know yet, Michael? It doesn’t look like the Last Level because