The Guardians of Zoone Read online

  “That’s Scuffy Will,” Ozzie said. “The shoeshine boy.”

  As he said it, two motos marched into the picture and began hassling Scuffy. There was no sound coming from the screen—Ozzie desperately searched for a knob to control the volume, but there wasn’t one.

  “They want to see his work permit,” Cho deduced. “Lady Zoone hasn’t required one from Will in the past, but . . .”

  One of the motos clamped onto Scuffy with metal pincers. As he tried to wriggle free, the other moto jabbed him with his forked hand. A crackle of lightning rippled across Scuffy’s body, causing him to spasm, then go stiff and collapse to the ground. The motos picked him up and carted him away, trampling his shoeshine kit in the process. They left it behind, busted on the ground.

  “Where are they taking him?!” Ozzie cried.

  “Oh no,” Fidget murmured.

  She was pointing at yet another screen. It showed the Infinite Wood of Zoone—only a giant swath of it had been cut down. A machine rumbled out of the forest, equipped with a giant blade.

  Ozzie gasped. “They’re cutting down the trees!”

  “They’re motonizing Zoone,” Fidget moaned. “They want it to look like this place! No world in the entire ’verse will be safe. The motos control everything.”

  “How could Lady Zoone let this happen?” Ozzie demanded. “Where is she? Why isn’t she stopping this?”

  “I told you!” Fidget said. “She’s under a spell or something. Or the motos tricked her.”

  “Zaria’s not the type to be easily fooled,” Aunt Temperance said.

  “No,” Cho agreed, pacing back and forth in front of the monitors. “But one thing is certain: Watching these pitiful images will not help us—or Zoone. We need to keep moving.”

  Everyone began filing out, down the corridor they had come from, but Ozzie lingered a moment longer, gazing at the place he loved, a place now being slowly destroyed. Even as he stood there, he saw the needle on Zoone’s meter tick upward.

  Six percent motonized.

  He turned to catch up with the others. Tug had been right: There was a story being told on the screens. A story of devastation.

  They had only made it halfway down the corridor when they heard the sound of returning motos.

  “They’re done with the fire,” Fidget surmised, raising her blender. “We’ll have to bash our way through.”

  Cho gently lowered the blender with one of his giant hands. “No, lass. We’ll find another way out.”

  He led a retreat back to the command center and across to the corridor on the opposite side. They only made it a few steps, however, before everyone instantly froze. The left wall of the corridor featured a long window, and it was impossible to ignore what was on the other side of it: an operating room.

  There was a table in the middle, with a patient strapped to it, though from their vantage point, all Ozzie could see of him was a pair of boots sticking out. What he could see clearly were the moto surgeons. There were three of them, with scalpels and saw blades for hands, though one had what looked like a blowtorch. All of them were splattered with blood.

  “That door in the command center said Operations,” Ozzie whispered.

  “Oh,” Aunt Temperance murmured in realization. “I thought it meant industrial operations. Not the . . . medical kind.”

  Fidget waved her hand in front of the window. “I don’t think the motos can see us. It’s a one-way window. The patient must have been the one who we heard scream. At the beginning of his . . .”

  Torture, Ozzie thought. What else would you call being operated on by a moto?

  They could still hear the moto guards approaching from the other side of the control hub, but no one moved, transfixed by the scene in front of them. Then one of the moto surgeons activated a pedal and the operating table tilted upward to reveal the patient.

  Ozzie would have screamed, but the sound stuck in his throat. Because the patient wasn’t a person—not really. If anything, it looked as if someone had mashed together a human and a moto, but had decided to skimp on the human. He watched in horror as the lurching, jerking monster of a man was released from his restraints and slid off the table to begin staggering across the room.

  Fidget gasped. “That’s Klaxon! But he’s missing an arm . . .”

  It took a moment for Ozzie to digest her meaning—because the man did have two arms. It was just that one of them was fully robotic. It was skinny and made of metal, with pincerlike fingers at the end. As Ozzie stared at him, Klaxon raised his metal arm jerkily upward and wriggled the pincers, as if trying them out for the first time.

  “They amputated his real arm,” Fidget thought aloud. “They replaced it with a moto one.”

  “Wh-why w-would they do that?” Ozzie stammered.

  “It’s not just worlds they want to motonize,” Fidget said slowly. “It’s people, too. And he’s patient zero! The first experiment. I think they’ve been doing it to him all along. Bit by bit. Because . . .”

  She trailed off, as if overcome with disgust. Ozzie couldn’t blame her. Klaxon’s head was encased in metal—it looked like a helmet covered with switches and antennae, but riveted directly to his head. He was also wearing goggles, but Ozzie could see nothing behind the lenses; they must have replaced his eyes, too. The bottom part of Klaxon’s face was flesh, but it was chalk white. His body was encased in thick armor with hoses, like the ones on a scuba tank, protruding from his sides.

  The doorway slid open and Klaxon staggered into the command center. As distressing as it was to watch him, Ozzie found himself creeping back to the opening of the corridor to continue spying upon the half-moto man.

  He’s not a machine or a human, Ozzie thought. He’s something in between.

  At that moment, the moto guards entered the command station from the opposite passageway, but they immediately halted when they saw Klaxon. There was a clamor of banging and clinking as they raised their metal hands in salute.

  “All hail Friend Klaxon!” they droned. “Friend, it is time to continue your mission.”

  Klaxon lumbered across the chamber toward the door of static. He used his new metal claw to begin flicking a series of switches on the nearby control pad. “Yes. I have a mission to complete,” he said inexpressively. “Motonization must continue.”

  His voice blared from all directions at once, causing Ozzie to realize that it was being amplified through speakers in the base—and beyond. That’s why we heard his scream from across the scrapyard, Ozzie thought.

  Klaxon pressed a switch on his chest plate and the archway’s curtain of static shivered away, revealing the world beyond.

  Zoone.

  Ozzie’s heart leaped—and so did his legs, straight toward the door. But Cho reeled him back into the corridor with one mighty hand and clutched him against his side. The other hand clamped over Ozzie’s mouth.

  Zoone was there. Right there. Ozzie could see through the archway and onto the terrace at the top of Zoone Station. He could smell the night air. He could hear the flutter of the station’s banners in the breeze. He could see the nexus’s many moons smiling in the sky.

  Ozzie thrashed to break free of Cho’s grasp, but it was already too late. The moto guards had spotted them and now they rolled into the middle of the command center, blocking Ozzie and his friends from the door to Zoone. Klaxon stepped through the archway and clicked a switch on his chest, and the door shut.

  Zoone was gone in an instant.

  There was no sound, no slamming of a door. The archway simply returned to a buzzing sheet of static. Ozzie sagged in Cho’s arms. He had been so close!

  As one, the motos opened their clamshell hands to reveal their menacing weapons. “Do not worry, friends,” they announced, scuttling forward. “We will save you.”

  “Time to go,” Cho declared. He finally released Ozzie from his grip, but Ozzie remained where he was, eyes fixed on the door. That’s when he realized Aunt Temperance was still standing there, too. This who
le time, she had said nothing. She was just frozen, staring into the command center.

  Ozzie reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers, but she didn’t squeeze them back in response.

  “Aunt T?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “That wasn’t Klaxon,” she whispered. “That was Mercurio.”

  14

  Remnants of the Past

  “Wh-what?!” Ozzie spluttered. “That’s . . . that’s impossible.”

  He couldn’t reconcile Klaxon with the picture of the man in Aunt Temperance’s locket. How could she tell it was him through all the metal and machinery?

  “It was him,” Aunt Temperance said. Her voice was quiet but full of certainty. Even though the motos were still approaching, weapons whining and whirling, she was looking past them, toward the door to Zoone. Where Klaxon—Mercurio!—had gone.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Fidget snarled. There was a control panel on their side of the door; she bashed the blender against it and a metal panel slid down, blocking off the motos. The robot in the lead had been so close, with its buzz-saw hand extended, that the door sliced its arm right in two. The limb clattered to the floor at Ozzie’s feet, its blade still spinning.

  Aunt Temperance didn’t even notice. She just continued staring ahead, except now at the closed door. Then sparks began flying from the seams.

  “They’re cutting through!” Cho cried. “We must flee.”

  Ozzie twisted Aunt Temperance around to face the corridor, but she didn’t move. He locked his hand onto her wrist and began tugging her through the maze of ramps and hallways.

  “They hurt him,” she murmured over and over again. “They hurt him. Why are they doing this?”

  Ozzie remembered what Lady Zoone had said about Mercurio in the memory marble: He’s in trouble—terrible trouble.

  No kidding, Ozzie thought. But Aunt Temperance was in trouble, too, he realized. She was the one he was really worried about.

  At least the motos were slow, same as always. By the time they made it outside, there was no sign of them.

  “We have to stop,” Ozzie told Cho as they entered the scrapyard. “Aunt T needs to rest. She needs—”

  “Not yet,” Cho said over his shoulder. “We must stay one step ahead of the motos.”

  “Or a lot more steps than that,” Tug added. “Just to tell you, those motos have pretty long arms.”

  “One of them doesn’t,” Fidget said as she tapped her fingers on the blender. “Not anymore.”

  “Mercurio’s arm,” Aunt Temperance murmured, as if she was clinging vaguely to the conversation.

  “Cho, we really need to stop,” Ozzie insisted.

  The captain glanced back and seemed to take in Aunt Temperance’s condition. “I know a place,” he conceded. “This way.”

  He guided them through the heaps of junk until they arrived at a gutted-out warehouse. It had a roof, but most of the walls had rusted or fallen away over the years.

  “There’s a second story,” Cho told them. “Let’s catch our breath there. We’ll be able to see when they’re getting closer.”

  They climbed to the top to find still more junk—but, strangely, there was also furniture. Human furniture: chairs, shelves, and a table with three wooden legs, the fourth being an improvised rod of metal.

  “What is this place?” Ozzie wondered.

  “I’m not sure,” Cho replied. “I’ve taken refuge here before, during my explorations, but I never felt it was safe to stay for very long. Too close to the base.”

  “People must have lived here,” Fidget said, glancing around. “Maybe at the end, in the last days of Creon.”

  “Maybe,” Cho said. He took a seat on one of the chairs and passed around his flask of Arborellian nectar. Ignoring the offer, Aunt Temperance dropped her bag and meandered over to the open wall of the building, which offered a view of the debris field and the moto base.

  “Aunt T?” Ozzie said, following her. She still seemed in a daze, and it was a long way down to the ground. “Are you okay? Are you sure—was it really him? Mercurio?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Temperance said, her eyes planted on the base. “You don’t forget the first person you fall in love with. No matter what they try to cut away. But why . . . why are they hurting him?”

  Ozzie shifted uncomfortably. “It’s like Fidget said, I guess. They’re trying to make everything, everyone—”

  “But him. Why him?”

  Ozzie didn’t have an answer for her. He just stood there, awkwardly.

  “Zaria said we have to save him,” Aunt Temperance murmured. “How?”

  Ozzie didn’t know that, either.

  Aunt Temperance finally turned around and shook her head, as if to clear it. She marched back to the others with considerably more purpose in her steps. “We need to rescue Mercurio,” she declared.

  “The thing is,” Fidget said, “I don’t think that’s Mercurio anymore.”

  “It’s him. I told you—”

  “He’s more moto now than man, that’s what I mean,” Fidget interrupted. “It’s too late to save him. How much is even left of Mercurio when he’s half machine?”

  “They can’t turn his soul into a machine,” Cho said pensively.

  “Or his heart,” Tug added.

  “There’s no way I’m going back there,” Fidget said. “We’ll be the ones who end up on the operating table. Aunt T, you’ll just have to . . .”

  “Have to what?”

  Fidget shrank back. “Find another boyfriend?” she suggested quietly.

  “You don’t have the faintest clue of how love works!” Aunt Temperance exploded. “Do you?”

  Fidget snorted, but Aunt Temperance was right, Ozzie realized. Fidget’s parents had arranged a marriage for her without giving her any say in the matter. She hadn’t even met her husband-to-be. That kind of match definitely had nothing to do with love.

  “Mercurio wasn’t just some boy I had a crush on,” Aunt Temperance said. “We loved each other. We were engaged.”

  “What?!” Ozzie burst out. He still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of Aunt Temperance having a boyfriend. But a fiancé? Who are you? he wondered, for what felt like the zillionth time in the last few days.

  “We need to rescue Mercurio,” Aunt Temperance repeated.

  She had that steely glint of determination in her eye again, which, Ozzie had to admit, was a relief. She might be springing news on him left, right, and center, but he much preferred this version of her to the silent one.

  Ozzie turned to his friends. “She’s right. We need to follow Mercurio to Zoone.”

  Fidget scowled. “You saw how that door worked, right? You need to know the code.”

  “I don’t get it, anyway—you can’t just manufacture a portal,” Ozzie said. “They’re magical. The tracks have been here since forever. Right?”

  Fidget nodded. “The tracks to the nexus are natural. Zephyrus Zoone—Lady Zoone’s ancestor—was the one who discovered them. The Council of Wizardry eventually added doors to regulate them, but you’re right, Oz. You can’t just build your own track.”

  Cho shook his head. “Somehow, the motos did just that. But they must originally have reached Zoone a different way—through a regular portal. And that means we can, too.” He looked intently at Ozzie. “You said there’s a station here, with a door that led somewhere else. What did it look like?”

  “It was stone,” Ozzie explained. “It had this creature on it. Like a bear with giant teeth.”

  Cho’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “That’s Unta, the tusk bear! Which means that’s a door to Untaar!” He stood up and punched his fist into the palm of his three-fingered hand. “Of course! That’s how the motos have begun taking over the wild lands. There’s a portal that leads straight there.”

  “We don’t need to go to the wild lands, Cho,” Ozzie said. “We need to go to Zoone.”

  Cho was walking in a circle, scratching his beard. “I know the wild lands
. How to cross them. I know where we can find another door, one that will lead to the nexus.”

  “And how long will that take?” Aunt Temperance wondered. “Is it safe?”

  “It’s possible,” Cho said emphatically. “Unlike using the door in the base.”

  Aunt Temperance grimaced. “What if Mercurio comes back here, to Moton?”

  “What if we’re all dead by then?” Fidget countered.

  “I don’t think we can stay here any longer,” Cho said. “If there’s a way out of this desolate realm, then we should take it.”

  Aunt Temperance exhaled. “I agree. Which means the sooner we leave, the better.”

  Everyone began collecting their things, but Ozzie just stood there, dumbfounded. “Wait a minute,” he said. “That’s it? We’re leaving?”

  Fidget goggled at him. “Aren’t you listening? We’ve got a death army of tin cans marching toward us and—”

  “We’re so close to Zoone,” Ozzie interrupted. “We can’t give up this easily!”

  Aunt Temperance’s face pinched like a knot. “We’re not giving up at all, we—”

  “We need to go back to the base!” Ozzie growled, stamping his foot. “Start another fire, distract the motos, get back to the door. We can hack in, we can—”

  Cho dropped to one knee and put a heavy hand on Ozzie’s shoulder. “Listen, lad—don’t you think I would already have gone through that door if there was a way?”

  Ozzie twisted away, toward Aunt Temperance. She had to take his side. Now that she knew where Mercurio was, now that she had found him . . . “You want to go to Zoone,” he said. “Right?”

  “Desperately,” she said. “But we have to—”

  Ozzie didn’t want to hear any more excuses, any more rationalizations. “Yeah, I get it,” he snarled. “Overruled again.”

  He turned away from her. I’ll just go back myself. I defeated the glibber king! I can deal with some motos . . .

  He stormed off into the junk. He heard Tug start after him, only to be followed by Aunt Temperance saying, “Leave him, Tug. Let him cool down.”

  Cool down, Ozzie thought as he disappeared around a junk pile. Cool down this.