BY THE TIME MORNING—WITH its hustle and bustle on every street corner—had started to settle into early afternoon, Ahmad and Winnie were getting antsy.
They had attempted to make the corner of the tea shop that faced the Minaret their base. Nothing too fancy, just a nest of sheets and pillows and their knapsacks neatly tucked into a corner, ready to be claimed at a moment’s notice.
In spite of the previous night’s storm, the sky was clear and calm. Madame Nasirah, at least, had returned to high spirits, happily pouring tea and fresh steamed milk delicately from one of her etched carafes, served alongside hot spinach pies. It was not a comfort to Ahmad.
“Five . . . six . . . seven . . . ,” he mumbled to himself.
He anxiously fiddled with the satchel in his lap, taking inventory, making the hologram flare upward with its small blast of air that made Madame Nasirah jump and clutch her scarves.
Winnie, on the other hand, paced.
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
It was on her fifth round through the tiny shop that Madame Nasirah put her foot down.
“Enough. If you need to stay busy, I’ll give you a task.”
Madame Nasirah reached into a drawer. Ahmad’s eyes widened as she pulled out sheets of blank paper.
“You like drawing maps of Paheli, right? Try and fill these in while you walk through the city. Keep track of what’s shifted during the night. It might be a clue as to what the Architect is planning.”
“Oh man!” It felt like years since he had gotten to chart out his beloved city—the Paheli that lived in his mind, rather than this waking nightmare. Ahmad eagerly took the sheets and the proffered pen that went with them.
“I wonder if I still know where everything goes!”
Winnie, however, narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“You want a map of the city? But you’re the Gamekeeper! Shouldn’t you know where everything is? Or if it shifts?”
Ahmad tugged on Winnie’s arm, his ears burning. “Winnie!”
Madame Nasirah chuckled. “Gamekeeper in name alone, I’m afraid. The more you children move about this world, the more I’ve realized how much of it has transformed around me.”
Ahmad and Winnie looked at each other. Ahmad tried to telepathically message Winnie with his brain.
Knock it off.
It felt silly, jumping out of their skin at every word the woman said. After all, she was the only person in this world who had thought to help them at all. Could they really not trust her?
“All right,” Winnie decided. “We’ll help while we wait for the Minaret to sound. But we’re not going on foot.”
Ahmad didn’t like where this was going.
A few minutes later, he didn’t like the speed they were going either.
“Winnie! Winnie, slow down!” he hollered, clutching his seat rest with both hands and squeezing his eyes shut.
They had reclaimed their flying rickshaw, and Winnie was enthralled with playing pilot once again. “Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “Don’t be such a baby. My dad goes faster when we are on the L.I.E.”
Her foot pumped on the gas pedal as Ahmad peeked out from beneath his lashes. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus on keeping his very delicious breakfast down. His stomach lurched. And Vijay Bhai hadn’t turned up yet. There was no note, no awkward bumbling through the door, and no sign. It didn’t make sense.
Winnie insisted that the Gamekeeper shouldn’t know that his uncle was even in the game, but Ahmad was no longer sure. Shouldn’t they tell the one adult in here who actually cared if they were alive or dead? Maybe she was too focused on them to notice that Vijay Bhai had entered the game with them.
Winnie took a hard left and Ahmad’s head jerked against the glass. He blinked the stars out of his eyes.
“What happened?” he demanded.
Winnie turned and looked at him ruefully. “Traffic.”
Sure enough, there was a long line of floating cars trailing off into the near distance. Ahmad groaned and sunk into his seat.
“Great. It figures.”
“Never mind,” Winnie said sunnily, her smile returning to her face. “We’ve already seen most of this main avenue by foot anyway. How about we try and find a shortcut instead?”
Ahmad sat up straight. “Wait, I don’t think you should—Winnie!”
She was already steering out of the line, ignoring a few horns being blown in her direction—and man, it was weird that the sound was comforting to Ahmad—before sidling in between two buildings and cruising down an unfamiliar street.
For once, the car maintained a good speed, and Ahmad craned his head, looking down with interest. This street wasn’t full of the familiar shops. He did see what looked to be a restaurant or two: not with fancy metal tables outside or sunlit balconies, but small lines of people waiting eagerly for packed bags and little containers.
“Fast food,” he whispered to himself. It warmed him. Paheli still had some good city roots to it after all.
But something else caught his eye.
“Wait, Winnie. What’s that?”
He pointed, and then regretted it, as the entire car slid to the side along with Winnie’s eyes.
“The wheel! Keep hold of the wheel!”
“Okay, okay! Sheesh.” Winnie peered over it owlishly. “It looks like some sort of alleyway. We can go through it if you want.”
Ahmad could only nod. He was sure he’d seen a flash of bright neon blue, like the sparks that flew when you tried to plug a charger into a slightly dented and twisted wall socket. There was something down there.
Something different.
Winnie took the car down lower, and Ahmad gasped.
“Look at that!”
“Oh man,” Winnie muttered. “What is it?”
She descended to street level, narrowing her eyes as the car hovered.
“Dad always drew the line at me being able to parallel park, because he said he didn’t want to be part of the news story: ‘Twelve-Year-Old Steals Parents’ Car and Goes on Joyride Through Side of Building.’ But I don’t see why . . . Ahmad!”
She sighed as Ahmad, not waiting for the car to properly stop, leaped out the passenger side.
“It’s a doorway of some sort!” Ahmad called back over his shoulder giddily. There was a strange electricity sparking through him. It felt like when he spent hours wandering over terrain in a new video game, trying to find the next quest—and then, suddenly, his controller gave a little jiggle in his grasp or his character found a new path to go down, and the adventure continued.
“I think we’ve been down this alleyway before,” Winnie said, walking up to him. She frowned at the colorful neon archway looming over their heads. “Funny, I feel like I would have remembered this.”
“You don’t because it wasn’t here before,” Ahmad hissed excitedly.
This was their next challenge. He could feel it.