The Leveller - Julia Durango Page 0,50

I remember who I am now. I am Nixy Bauer and something bad happened, but Jill is here now. Everything will be okay.

I slowly force my eyes open.

“Thank God,” says a voice above me. It is not my mother’s.

A salty sea breeze drifts across my face and I breathe it in. The person behind the voice slowly comes into focus. Brown curly hair, brown eyes, long lashes.

“Nixy, are you okay?” He is kneeling on the floor beside me, one hand still on my face, the other hand resting awkwardly in his lap.

I struggle to remember his name.

Wyn?

Wyn Salvador.

I gasp and bolt upright. I remember now. I’m in the MEEP. Trapped in the MEEP.

“Where’s Kora?” I ask him. “Did she get away? We need to go after her.”

Wyn blinks. He seems confused.

I look around and see we’re in Mama Beti’s house, the hallway lights twinkling above me. “What are we doing here?” I ask, wondering why exactly I’m lying on the floor.

“You don’t . . . you don’t remember,” Wyn says. It is not a question.

I search my memory, trying to recall the circumstances in which we came to be in this unusual position. The last thing I remember is uncovering Kora at the Tropicana but I don’t remember where she went after that, what we did with her. I shake my head. “Sorry, I—what’d I miss?”

Wyn smiles. It’s a strange, rueful grin. Then he glances down at his right hand, which, now that I get a good look at it, appears to have had several bones removed.

“Did Kora do that to you?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbows. This sudden surge of anger makes me feel like my old self again. “Because I will take her down.”

Wyn shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t Kora.”

“Then how? Who?”

“You,” he says, almost apologetically.

My mouth drops open and I pull myself up to sitting. “No.”

“Yes,” Wyn says, getting to his feet. He offers me his good hand and hauls me off the floor.

I stand, unsteadily at first. Wyn circles an arm around my waist and I swivel away. Whoa. What is that about? “Hey, hands to yourself, buddy,” I half joke.

Wyn stares for a moment. “Just to be clear, you don’t remember anything after spotting Kora. Like, nothing. Nothing at all.”

For some reason, I’m embarrassed. “No. Was there something . . . important?”

He sighs. “I’ll tell you about it on the way there.”

“The way where?”

“You’ll see,” says Wyn, leading me through the rubble and out of the room. “But first we’ve got a date with Larry.”

Larry. I smile. At least, thankfully, I remember him.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“BRRRAAAAAOOOKKKK!”

Larry , it seems, is excited to see us. As the kraken speeds toward us on the seawall I try to look cool and collected, but it’s hard not to break out my crossbow and start pumping arrows into him. He’s a kraken, after all, and a mighty big one.

Wyn must see the flash of panic cross my face because he puts his good hand on my shoulder.

I’m not sure why he has a sudden onset of the touchy-feelies, but I handle it a little more gracefully this time.

“Remember, none of this is real,” Wyn says, just as Larry raises a beastly tentacle and splashes us.

The cold water makes me gasp. “Well, it feels real,” I say, somewhat less enamored of Wyn’s world and its cutting-edge sensory modules than I once was.

On the walk here, Wyn filled me in on my memory lapse. Kora is dead. Or at least, we think she is. And then, apparently, like an idiot, I willingly stepped into the Black. Wyn doesn’t know what happened to me there, but I guess I started screaming bloody murder. He said it sounded like someone was torturing me, like I had gone stark raving mad with pain and fear.

Fortunately, he was still holding my hand at that point and somehow managed to pull me back to the MEEP.

Unfortunately, I squeezed his hand so tightly I did some major damage to his avatar.

I glance down again at his limp hand.

“I told you, it doesn’t hurt,” he assures me. “It’s just useless until I gulp down a healing potion.”

“Right. So what are we doing here?” I ask, jumping as Larry extends one of his purple tentacles in my direction.

“Going for a ride,” Wyn replies just as Larry wraps a tentacle around us and lifts us in the air.

“What the hell? What the hell?!” I yell as Larry starts thrashing through the sea. He has the