Nelly landed on top of Wylder, knocking the wind out of him. The floor was moving, and he couldn’t see anything until she rolled to one side. Where were they? What was with the smoke? Had the room caught on fire? He sat up, gasping. The comic book was in his hand.
Definitely not the Wigmore Room!
Not any part of the convention center. Not even the real world.
CLICKETY-CLACK, CLICKETY-CLACK.
He had found the portal—or the portal had found him—but where in the comic book were they? Not the bathroom. On the roof of the train.
Wylder’s breathing came almost normally now, but he didn’t have his balance yet. He stayed sitting down.
The smoke swirled around him, and the floor kept swaying.
Addy, he thought. Rescue Addy.
He had been on the train roof before. So was he back at the moment when Nevins had flipped all those pages and everyone had ended up here? Or maybe—since Wylder had left the comic for a while and come back—maybe this plot would not be an exact replay of the old one. Maybe Addy was somewhere under these clouds of smoke, and maybe she wasn’t.
“Addy!” he shouted. “Addy, are you there? It’s me, Wylder!”
Nothing.
The girl next to him lifted her head. “Nelly,” she mumbled. “I’m Nelly.” She struggled to sit up. “My stars!” she said.
The train veered gently around a curve, and the smoke streamed away to the left. Wylder used the moment to peer at the comic book, and there he was!
The comic book was open at the page he’d marked, the one with Addy in the bramble bush at the bottom right-hand side. Wylder and Nelly were now in the panel at the top left.
Wylder concentrated so hard on making the right deductions that his brain felt like one of those speeded-up traffic movies: stop-start-zoom. The big train display and the beam of light were connected to the portal—that was for sure. He’d seen it outside the Wigmore Room just now and outside the bathroom this morning. And it seemed as though when you went through the portal, you landed on whatever page of the comic was open! When he saw Addy in the bathroom that first time, the portal opened right there. This time, he was on the same page as Addy, the one he had been looking at, but in a different scene from her. He was at the top of the left hand page, and Addy was stuck at the bottom of the facing page. The question was, how to get there? He didn’t want to go through the story, fighting Lickpenny and the lammergeyer. That might take forever, and he might not escape!
He peered at the next panel to see what might be in store.
Oh no.
Captain McGurk held Nevins by the scruff of the neck. “It is forbidden to climb onto the roof of a moving train. Especially now, in an emergency situation.”
Wylder hardly heard this. He couldn’t take his eyes off the metal spike that was now the captain’s leg. That Medico ServiDude really had cut it off.
“Ho-ho!” called the captain. “Come back, girl!”
But Nelly had scrambled away, vanishing into the smoke.
“Let me gooooo!” whined Nevins.
“Hello, Captain McGurk,” said Wylder. “Nice leg.”
“Don’t get cheeky,” said the captain. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’ll come quietly,” said Wylder. “I’m just going to bring my hands down long enough to turn this page.”
“This what?”
“This page.”
THWIP!
Wylder smelled something sharp and piney, like air freshener or deodorant. Or pine trees. He was on the next page, and things were going badly!
He leapt to his feet. It was exhausting, bouncing around the story like this! You had to be alert every second. Something always seemed to be going wrong. The disaster on this page could be called Bad Day on the Railroad Tracks. Lickpenny flew his robotic lammergeyer at Isadora, who slashed with her whip to keep it at bay. Flynn—poor old Flynn Goster—lurched toward Wylder, waving his new robotic hand. Or was the hand waving him? Here it came now! Wylder ducked under a wild swing.
“Sorry, Cowboy!” Flynn staggered down the train track as if the hand was pulling him along.
Wylder didn’t stop to think how cool it was to get an apology from his hero. He was not here to help Flynn. He had come a long way to find someone else.
“Addy!” he called. “Addy, where are you?”
She had flown into a bramble bush, but which one? Wylder was on the right page, but there were dozens of bramble bushes. The darn things were everywhere.
“Yoo-hoo, Addy?”
“Wylder!”
There she was, down the track!
“Addy!” He ran toward her and then stopped. He couldn’t exactly hug her, even if that’s what he felt like doing. She bashed her way out of the bush, rubbing her arm, her face lit up in the biggest grin. Her hair was a crazy mess, with twigs and stuff all through it. She waved and ran toward him, and then she stopped too, the grin sort of fading to an awkward smile.
“Hey!”
Wylder could tell she had a lot more to say, just like he did. “Hey back,” he said.
She was still in Nelly’s clothes, but Wylder had spent the last hour with Nelly. He could see the difference between the two girls now. Addy’s face was sharper, smarter, with no pout. And she had the rat slung around her shoulders like a scarf. Definitely Addy.
“You found me,” she said. “Finally. Not bad for a … I mean, not bad.”
He ducked his head. He’d set out to do something big and he’d succeeded. Not bad at all.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I got stuck. I wondered if it was a page bump.”
“Looked like it,” said Wylder.
“Did you see me take Lickpenny? And zimmer Flynn out of choking himself? I saved his life! Holy cannoli, I am so pumped!”
She was fizzing with energy.
“Yeah, that’s great. Uh, listen, Addy. We should—”
“Hey, look out!”
The lammergeyer swooped low. The children flung themselves to the ground. Wylder heard the metallic claws clash together, and then the bird was past, leaving behind a smell of burnt onion.
“That was close, eh, Addy?” he said. “Addy? Addy?”
The mechanical bird turned around and headed after Flynn, who was staggering down the track. Isadora, in pursuit, high-stepped down the tracks, and Addy chased her.
“Come on, Wylder!”
He scrambled to his feet. The wind was in his face, and his hair blew up off his forehead.
“Wait up!” he shouted to Addy, who did not.
Flynn’s robotic hand changed direction every second—pointing here, there and everywhere—firing some kind of laser beam. Flynn frantically tried to control it with his real hand, but not a chance. The laser finger pointed at a pine tree and—ZZZZZTT!—the needles crackled into flames. It pointed at one of the railroad ties and—ZZZZTT!—another burst of fire. Now the hand forced Flynn to aim straight at Isadora and at Addy right behind her. And at Wylder! Flynn howled and tried to throw his arm away from its target, but the hand was too strong. The finger remained steady, ready to shoot. All Flynn could do was shout a warning:
“It’s ducking time!”
Addy and Wylder fell to their knees, faces down. Catnip was thrown from his perch on Addy’s shoulder. He bounced on the ground and skittered into her bag. Isadora executed a sideways somersault and landed in a crouch, whip at the ready.
ZZZZTT! The beam passed over their heads, burning a hole through the trunk of a tree.
“Take cover!” Isadora ordered them. “Behind the rock!”
Wylder crawled after Addy to a spot behind a boulder. The stony ground hurt his knees. Isadora leapt in front of them as Flynn shot sparks at the railroad ties.
“This is dangerous!” said Wylder.
“No kidding!” Addy brushed her tangled mass of hair back from her face. She didn’t look upset at all. She looked kind of excited.
“So let’s get out of here!” Wylder held the rolled-up comic like an ice cream cone.
Above their heads came a fwapping sound. Isadora called out. Wylder followed her gaze to see the lammergeyer rising from the ground, its talons tightly gripping Flynn’s mechanical hand, lifting the kicking hero slowly into the air. Lickpenny, on the bird’s shoulders, waved his device with a look of glowing triumph.
Isadora uncoiled her whip as she ran toward them. Addy stared after the mechanical monster. “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that Lickpenny is going to use Flynn to break into the armored car. Give me the comic book.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you!” pleaded Wylder. “We can leave now. The ad for ComicFest on the back page will take us home!”
“These people need us!” she screamed. “We can’t just leave them to die!”
She lunged for the comic in his hand. He yanked.
THWIP!