The Guardians of Zoone Read online

  Ozzie quickly got dressed. He could hear voices coming from the kitchen; Aunt Temperance and Uncle Mercurio were already up. He hurried down the hall.

  “Miss Blunt took the day off,” Aunt Temperance explained when she saw Ozzie glancing around. “We’re going to spend the day together, remember?”

  Ozzie nodded. He got himself a bowl of cereal and climbed up to the stool next to her at the kitchen bar.

  “What is that?” Aunt Temperance wondered, staring disapprovingly at his bowl.

  “Um . . . cereal?”

  “Looks like a cauldron of sugar.”

  Mercurio chuckled. “Well, I think I’ll leave you two to it. Let you get to know each other better.”

  He vacated the penthouse, leaving Ozzie and Aunt Temperance to sit there, side by side.

  “Well,” Aunt Temperance said, “what do you want to do today?”

  “I don’t know,” Ozzie answered. “We could go to the mall.”

  “That sounds a bit uninspired,” Aunt Temperance said. “How about the art gallery?”

  Ozzie scowled.

  “Have you ever been?”

  “Well, once. For school.” Which was kind of a lie. His class had taken a field trip there, but he had ducked out that day and gone to the arcade instead.

  “Come on,” Aunt Temperance encouraged him. “It’ll be fun.”

  That was the exact opposite of the word Ozzie had been thinking of. But, as he stared into her smiling eyes, he decided she was the sort of person who was worth the risk of gazing at agonizingly boring artwork all day.

  “How do you like that old building of ours?” Aunt Temperance asked as they sat on the bus, heading for the gallery. “It’s been in our family for generations. I grew up there, too, you know.”

  “Really?” Ozzie asked. “Have you seen the basement?”

  “Ah,” Aunt Temperance said with a smile. “You mean ‘The Depths.’”

  “The Depths?”

  “That’s what I used to call it when I was your age. It’s mostly storage for the tenants. But Grandpa always said there was a hint of magic down there.”

  Ozzie snorted. “Like what? Unicorns and fairies?”

  Aunt Temperance laughed. “I think he meant something a bit more . . . spiritual. He was one of a kind, Grandpa. I wish he was still around; then you could have met him, too.”

  “My dad never talks about him,” Ozzie said.

  Now it was Aunt Temperance’s turn to snort. “They were very different people. One believed in magic and the other in . . .”

  She trailed off.

  “What?”

  Aunt Temperance frowned. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

  Ozzie nodded. “What’s it like being in the circus?”

  “And now we’re right back to talking about magic,” Aunt Temperance said. “You know, we’re going to be performing in the city all this week. I wanted you to come to one of our shows, but your parents . . . well . . . they don’t really approve.”

  “Of what?” Ozzie asked.

  Aunt Temperance didn’t reply. She just tapped her fingers on her knee and stared out the bus window.

  Ozzie stood on the curb with Uncle Mercurio and Aunt Temperance, waiting for their taxi to arrive. The art gallery had been better than Ozzie had expected. To be fair, he hadn’t expected much, but gazing at the paintings—an exhibit of French Impressionism—with Aunt Temperance serving as his personal tour guide had been its own type of magic.

  “When am I going to see you again?” Ozzie asked her as the taxi pulled up.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “Hopefully soon. It depends on when we’re back in this part of the world. But we’ll stay in touch, right? I’ll send you postcards.”

  Inwardly, Ozzie groaned. He already got enough of those from his parents. But he didn’t say this to Aunt Temperance as she wrapped him in a hug and clutched him tightly.

  “We have to go,” Uncle Mercurio said.

  Aunt Temperance nodded, kissed Ozzie on the forehead, and followed him into the cab. Ozzie watched wistfully as they pulled away, then went inside and trudged up the stairs to the penthouse. Miss Blunt was heating up some instant noodles.

  “They left?”

  Ozzie nodded, wandered off to his room, and threw himself on his bed. He wasn’t sure what he had hoped would happen when he met Aunt Temperance, but he had this feeling that an opportunity had slipped through his fingers. A familiar sensation burbled inside of him.

  Loneliness.

  There was nothing unusual about that but now it seemed . . . worse. Accentuated, somehow.

  He thought of the trip to the art gallery.

  “There’s something about painting that I’ve always found enchanting,” Aunt Temperance had told him. “It’s like life. You start with a blank canvas and get to create anything you want.”

  Not for me, Ozzie grumbled to himself as he languished on his bed and thought of boarding school. To him, it felt like someone had already done the painting for him. He couldn’t add to or smear the colors because they had already dried. They were hard: fixed, permanent, and black. No, that wasn’t quite the right color. Dark blue, or navy. Miss Blunt’s favorite color. She said it was comforting. Ozzie had always thought of it as boring. But now it felt like it was the only color on the canvas.

  “I don’t want to go on like this,” he murmured.

  Miss Blunt stuck her head through his door. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? Come get your noodles.”

  Ozzie didn’t even look at her. “Not hungry,” he said. He gazed at the ceiling until he eventually drifted to sleep.

  Ozzie awoke to find himself shackled to a chair by his wrists and ankles. There was even some sort of helmet on his head.

  “What the . . . ?” he mumbled, tugging at his restraints. “Where am I?” He felt vaguely ill, like he had just awoken in a different time zone. The wrong time zone. But if this was a dream, it was the most realistic one he had ever experienced. He could actually feel the metal cuffs digging into his skin and a tingle in his scalp from the helmet. He tried looking around, but it was hard to move.

  A monitor lowered from the ceiling on a long mechanical arm and stopped at eye level. The screen was buzzing with static, but a moment later it tuned in to reveal the leering face of some strange half-robot man.

  Ozzie screamed.

  “Give it a moment,” the man on the screen advised. “It will come back to you.”

  And it did come back, like a dam bursting open and flooding his memory. Zoone. Klaxon. Aunt Temperance and Captain Cho in the stasis tubes. The Destiny Machine.

  This isn’t a dream, Ozzie realized with a shiver. This is real. He reached to rub his forehead, but his hand only made it as far as his chest because of the shackles.

  “Now you see what lies before you,” Klaxon said from the screen. “Misery. Despair. No matter which path you choose, you end up the same. Without Zoone. And—”

  “Alone,” Ozzie murmured.

  “Yes,” Klaxon agreed, his voice rich and heavy with satisfaction. “Alone.”

  Ozzie’s stomach ached with hollowness. Everything in the simulation had felt so real. In that artificial existence, he had never visited Zoone. Never met his friends. Never gotten to know, truly know, Aunt Temperance. These were terrifying possibilities to consider. But . . .

  What was worse? Was it knowing that Zoone did exist but that it was going to be destroyed by motos and he was helpless to stop it? Or was it never knowing about the nexus to begin with? Ignorance is bliss, he recalled one of his teachers saying (though had that been in reality or in the simulation?), but Ozzie wasn’t ignorant in this moment, strapped to Klaxon’s chair.

  “I can see that you are in torment,” Klaxon said. “Do you not want to end this agony?”

  Yes, Ozzie thought instantly.

  “You have seen different paths and how they end. It does not matter. Motonization is the only way to prevent pain.”

  “No,” Ozzie mo
aned. He strained against his bindings, only to slump against the chair, feeling exhausted and heavy. It was like the tubes connected to his helmet were siphoning away his will, his resistance.

  “Suffering, despair, misery: These things are inevitable. The constants of the multiverse. You have experienced this firsthand. Everyone feels pain, no matter what the path.”

  Ozzie shook his head, felt the tug of wires and cords. And that was when another answer occurred to him. “Actually,” he told Klaxon, “not everyone.”

  The rims of Klaxon’s goggles spun. “What?”

  “Not everyone was unhappy in the simulation,” Ozzie said.

  The lights on Klaxon’s helmets began to flash red, rapidly, as if an alarm had been activated. “You were unhappy.”

  “It wasn’t miserable for Aunt T. It wasn’t miserable for you.”

  Klaxon showed his metal teeth. “It was miserable for YOU, human boy. You cannot go back there. You will be in pain. Terrible pain.”

  Ozzie suddenly remembered something Aunt Temperance had said, not in the simulation, but here, in reality, not long before entering the machine herself.

  What if pain is important?

  Ozzie stared at the image of Klaxon on the screen. How many times had Ozzie himself wondered what it would be like to have a switch for his emotions, to be able to turn them on and off with the flick of a finger? To ignore his feelings? To not be—as his mom put it—too sensitive?

  It had just been a grumbling, unconsidered idea . . . but Klaxon had considered it. And he’d done it. He had tried to extract his humanity, replace it with gears and cogs. Villains always liked to strut around in comic books and taunt heroes with lines like “We’re not so different, you and me. We’re the same.” But, in this case, Ozzie realized with a sinking feeling, it was true. He was like Klaxon.

  But he didn’t have to be.

  “What if . . . what if I want to feel my pain?” he murmured.

  The lights on Klaxon’s helmet began to blink more rapidly. “Why would you want that?”

  This is the way through, Ozzie realized. The way to beat him. . . .

  “Send me back,” Ozzie announced.

  “NO!” Klaxon roared in his mechanically enhanced voice. “It will be terrible for you. Do you need me to tell you what happens to you on that path? Do you need me to show you more? Because—”

  He abruptly stopped, as if suddenly becoming conscious of his outburst. “Oh,” he said in a more level tone. “I see. You think you have defeated me. That you have chosen the alternative to motonization.”

  “I didn’t make the choice you wanted me to,” Ozzie declared proudly. “You need to release me.”

  “Yes,” Klaxon agreed. “You will be released. Back to your chosen life.”

  “Good—wait! What?!” Ozzie cried. “What do you mean ‘back’? You said if I didn’t choose motonization, you’d let us go.”

  Klaxon reached up with his metal hand to flick a switch on his helmet. The red lights stopped flashing. “No,” he said. “I said I would release you. And I am going to release you. Into the simulation.”

  Ozzie wrenched in vain at his shackles. “You rigged everything. I never had a chance of winning, no matter what.”

  “You could have chosen motonization,” Klaxon said impassively. “Instead, you will experience a lifetime of being unloved and alone. You will know only pain.”

  “But that’s just a simulation,” Ozzie said in confusion. “What about me here? In reality?”

  “You will live out your life in this chair, confined to a coma-like state as you experience the simulation,” Klaxon explained emotionlessly. “My motos will feed you intravenously, and you will grow old, and you will die. But do not worry. Not for a very long and agonizing time.”

  “No!” Ozzie shrieked, thrashing in his chair. “You can’t do this! You cheated!”

  Klaxon leaned forward, and his face became bigger, more menacing on the screen. “I believe you are crying, human boy.”

  He was right, Ozzie realized. Hot tears were streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t even wipe them away. Instead, he fell limply against his chair. He felt so heavy again.

  “Tug!” he moaned. “Fidget! Scoot . . .”

  “They cannot hear you,” Klaxon said. “No one will ever know what happened to you here. Your friends will become motos. Everyone you know will become motos. The entire multiverse will eventually become motonized. You will be the last human alive. In a way.”

  Klaxon clicked a series of buttons and Ozzie felt his helmet begin to buzz. Then he felt a prick in his arm, and everything started to fade away.

  “You could have chosen motonization,” Klaxon said, though now his voice sounded faint and distant. “But now it is too-too-too late. I am afraid that door has closed.”

  29

  Down in the Depths

  “Hey, spaz!”

  “We’re talking to you, Oddball Sparks.”

  Ozzie turned around in the school hallway and sighed as the infamous Twin Tormentors, Billy and John, swaggered toward him. They weren’t literally twins, but they dressed more or less the same and had the same haircuts. Ozzie prided himself on being immune to their insults, but even he wasn’t immune to their fists. After they circled him like a pair of sharks, John shoved him into Billy, who expertly shoulder-checked him into the nearest row of lockers. Ozzie slammed into the wall of metal, face-first. With a groan, he crumpled to the floor and listened to the symphony of laughter coming from the horde of onlookers.

  “Maybe one day, you’ll get your shirt on right, Oddball,” John heckled.

  “No wonder you’re an orphan,” Billy added.

  “I’m not an orphan! I’ve got parents!” Ozzie retorted. Somewhere, he added to himself.

  The bell rang; everyone bustled off, except for Ozzie, who just remained on the floor, leaning against the lockers. “At least they didn’t pick on Aunt T,” he murmured, though he instantly wondered why they would. The Twin Tormentors didn’t even know her. It was just that Ozzie had this distinct memory of being teased about his “hysterical” aunt.

  Must have been a dream, he thought.

  Weeks had passed since Aunt Temperance and Uncle Mercurio had come to visit. For just the briefest of moments Ozzie had felt like his life had brushed up against something different. Something unusual. Maybe even magical.

  But now it was back to reality. And, in a way, it was almost worse. He couldn’t explain why exactly. Maybe it was because he had glimpsed something, had seen it dangled in front of him—and then it had been abruptly yanked away.

  Ozzie sighed. “I really hate my life,” he announced to no one.

  A teacher thrust her head out of the nearest doorway. “OSWALD SPARKS! Stop goofing off and get to class!”

  Miss Blunt’s going to freak, Ozzie thought as he trudged home after school. The cheek below his left eye had started to swell. It hadn’t turned purple yet, but it was definitely yellow and tender to the touch. There was no way he’d be able to hide it from Miss Blunt, which would mean she’d insist on telling his parents, which would mean they’d contact the school, which would mean Ozzie getting hauled to the office to explain the situation, which would mean an agonizingly fake apology from the Twin Tormentors in front of the principal. Then it would just be more of the same.

  Wash, rinse, repeat.

  The washing machine of life sucked.

  He took the long way home, trying to delay the start of the inevitable cycle, which took him past the swanky apartment building on Portage Avenue. The building was old, but not outdated like the one Ozzie lived in. For starters, it had elevators. It even had a doorman, though, as Ozzie passed by the front entrance, he noticed that he was new. He couldn’t quite remember what the usual doorman looked like, but this one was tall, with broad shoulders and a chest as wide as a tree. It looked like he might burst right out of his snappy turquoise uniform.

  Ozzie slowed down to stare. The doorman seemed to have a bruise under on
e eye, just like Ozzie. He tipped his hat at Ozzie, then turned to open the palatial doors of the apartment. A kid bounded out, giggling and full of mirth—which really annoyed Ozzie, prompting him to stick his foot out and send him tumbling across the pavement. His backpack burst open to disgorge a pile of books, snacks, and toys.

  The kid slowly rolled over and stared at Ozzie, his bottom lip quivering.

  Ozzie snorted. Tripping the kid had made him feel better. Look, he wanted to say, it’s a bully-eat-bully world, and I need to get fed as much as the next guy. But instead, he just spat at the kid’s feet and kicked the nearest of his books. It skidded into the street.

  The doorman wandered over. Ozzie expected to get lectured, but instead the man patted the kid on the shoulder, fetched his book, and wiped it dry on his coat. He calmly helped him repack his bag, then tipped his hat again at Ozzie.

  What a weirdo, Ozzie thought.

  He continued home, fuming, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in front of the door to Apartment 2B.

  Again.

  It was the third time this week.

  Why do I keep coming here? he wondered in frustration. As far as he knew, the apartment was vacant—no one, at least according to Miss Blunt, wanted to live there.

  His eyes landed on the opposite door, the one he had heard the knock come from before. And now he heard it again.

  This is ridiculous. If someone’s knocking, that means someone’s down here. Whatever trepidation he was feeling was overruled by an overwhelming sense of curiosity, so he began the descent. Down he went, turning and twisting into the darkness.

  He reached the bottom, expecting to find an apartment door, but instead found a narrow passageway. He continued along, following the sound of the knocking. He eventually reached a T-junction and turned right. There was a door at the end of the corridor, but it definitely wasn’t the kind that would lead to an apartment. It had wide wooden slats, ornate metal hinges, and a strange metal “Z” hanging lopsided halfway up it. The knocking was coming from the door all right—from the other side, as if someone was trying to get out. Which was more than just a little eerie, but he had come this far, so Ozzie approached the door. Once he was right up next to it, he could see just how old it was. The hinges were streaked with rust, and bits of turquoise paint were peeling from the gray wood.