THE HISS OF THE Minaret slid down Ahmad’s ear canal like a droplet of water. He awoke, trying to shake it out. He accidentally thwacked Winnie with an errant arm as he wiggled. She shot up, a groan on her lips.
“Ouch! Ahmad!”
“Sorry! But didn’t you hear that?”
Ahmad blinked, feeling disoriented. The last thing he remembered, he had been trying to clear his mind from Vijay Bhai and Titus Salt’s confusing conversation by distinguishing the programmed stars from what might have been layers of the real world—his world. It was unsettling to him how readily he was forgetting the actual sky. Not that there were many stars visible at all from Manhattan, where the city lights outshone them.
He remembered the blanket, and T.T.’s whistling snores, and staring until his eyes ached toward the distant Minaret, willing it to blaze with cold green flames. But now, there was dry earth under his hands.
Also, it was oppressively warm.
He sat up straight. Winnie did too, her eyes wide. They were in the middle of a jungle, bristling with garishly green foliage and tangled undergrowth.
The branches of a tall banyan swayed in the breeze, the pixel surfaces shifting with shadows in a way that made them seem real. There were bizarre trees nearby too, trees with trunks that glittered, as though they were injected with the genes of some deep-sea jellyfish, and had leaves shifting through every color imaginable.
“Great. Just great,” Ahmad muttered, trying to smooth down his sleep-mussed hair.
Winnie’s eyes were wide. “How did this happen? We were in the city!”
“I guess the Architect didn’t want to wait for us to get here on our own time.”
Apparently, they had slept right through the Minaret’s call. The countdown clock was already sliding backward through livid red numbers above their head.
“What? That is so unfair!” Winnie finally seemed to be awake. “Wait, where is T.T.? And your uncle?”
They were nowhere to be found.
And there was nothing left of the previous level. The game had shifted its world completely, folding the outlines of the dock into a path through the dense underbrush. Only the boat remained, as out of place as shorts in a snowstorm.
But at the end of the path, something stood, flickering in the first rays of daylight. A person, watching and waiting.
Not the MasterMind, or even T.T. It was a boy with high arched brows, an imperious smirk, and dark-circled eyes.
The Architect himself.
“You!” Ahmad gasped.
“Well, I’m pleased to see that you’ve made it this far,” the Architect said.
“In spite of all your little games and tricks,” Ahmad responded sharply. “Maybe you’re losing your touch!”
The Architect puffed out his chest. “If anything, I’m stronger. I was weaker before, easily cowed and devastated by the game’s undoing. But it’s a new day, and you’d better prepare with everything you have. I’m not one to throw down the dice lightly, and every turn of this world will bring a twist of fate to light.”
There was a dramatic pause.
“Oh, great,” Winnie said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Wait, what happened?”
When Ahmad reached out and tapped the silent Architect on the shoulder, his fingers slipping right through the apparition, he shuddered back to life.
“Well, I’m pleased to see . . .”
“He’s a hologram,” Ahmad said grimly. “Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered to come and greet us himself.”
“In a way,” T.T. said from behind them, and they both jumped. He had a tendency to appear out of nowhere, quiet as a mouse. “This is one of his new Shades—stop touching it, Ahmad!”
Winnie clutched Ahmad’s shoulder. “Yes, don’t bother with it. He’s trying to scare us. I see a path. I think that is where we are supposed to go next.”
“Ahem. Yes. I shall guard the boat in the meantime,” T.T. said, stroking his whiskers, perhaps enticed by the lure of more chenna murki.
Ahmad and Winnie eyed him, and he recoiled defensively. “Listen! I may be fierce, but inside my heart, I am still little. I’m just a mouse in a big, very hungry world. You’re human. You’ll be fine.”
“And what about Vijay Bhai?” Ahmad asked anxiously. “Do you know where he went?”
T.T. tittered nervously. “Ah, yes, well . . . he said he had a new idea about where to locate his balloons, and a few things he wanted to investigate. Don’t wait for him. He is not officially a player, you see.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine, Ahmad,” Winnie said soothingly. “Like T.T. said, he’s not a player so that means the game will probably save all its nasty tricks for us and leave him alone.”
“Was that supposed to be comforting?” Ahmad asked with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s all I’ve got right now, okay?”
Ahmad relented. “Okay. Fine. We’ll see you later,” he said to the giant, hungry mouse.
“Let’s go, Ahmad.”
They grabbed their knapsacks, clasped hands, nodded at each other, and started to wade through the underbrush.
The next challenge awaited.