They reappeared on the platform in orbit, the unflawed Skidsphere glimmering below. Wobble stood nearby, the gap behind him closed once more. Listing to one side, with dozens of metal teeth missing from his smile, the machine appeared as battered as ever. Although, as ever, he was healing.
The same couldn’t be said for Bian.
“Oh, snakes,” Johnny breathed, rushing to where she lay collapsed. Her skin was black. No sign of her stripes. Pressed flat against the platform, one of her eyes hung over the edge. Johnny thought of the Drop, holding on to his molecules . . .
“She took it all,” Shabaz whispered. “All of it.”
“Hold on, Bian,” Johnny said. The Skidsphere flashed below without a trace of the black that covered Bian’s side as it rose in short, weak heaves. “Just stay with us, we’ll fix you up.”
“Yeah, right,” she croaked and the eye hanging over the edge pulled itself up. “Not this time.”
“Shut up, we can do this,” Johnny said, trying to pull himself together. After all they’d just done, his mind felt like mush. Even his skin felt exhausted.
“You shut up,” she wheezed. “I haven’t got long and I think I’ll hold the spotlight while I can, Johnny Drop.” She had a point. Swinging the only eye she could, she said: “Albert?”
“Right here,” Albert said, holding her hand in his own, all three eyes on her. “Right here, Sticks.”
“You haven’t called me that in a bit,” Bian murmured. “I’ve missed it. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” Albert said. “I knew the rules going in. You don’t have to—”
“Anyone else want to interrupt the dying chick?” Bian snapped, and for just a second the ghost of her yellow stripes shone through the black. “You’re as bad as he is.” Albert sent a guilty glance at Johnny, then squeezed her hand and didn’t say anything else. “Better,” Bian murmured. “Where was I? Oh yes, I was apologizing for treating you like grease.” She chuckled. “It’s a wonder what you ever saw—”
“I saw a star,” Albert interrupted, his voice tight with grief and pride.
She studied him for a heartbeat. “Okay, that one was sweet. See Johnny, I told you he could be sweet.”
Johnny didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t dare.
“Now I know even a dying girl’s last wish isn’t going to make you two play nice—you’re both too ‘boys’ to do that—so how about this: remember what you did here together. I don’t care how you feel, what you did to each other in the past; you remember what you and Shabaz and Torres and Torg and . . . oh snakes . . . Betty!” Her eye went wide. “I treated her like crap—snakes, I can be a bitch when I’m nervous.”
“I’m pretty sure she liked you,” Torg said, his voice as tight as Albert’s.
“I’m pretty sure she liked you, Torg,” Bian said, and again her stripes flickered beneath the black. Then the stripes were buried once more and she fell silent, nothing but the agonizing rise of her breath. “Maybe I would have been better after this,” she whispered, her voice barely audible now. “We shouldn’t have to die so young. We’re just figuring it out. We should have a chance to . . .”
Then her side went still and her eye dropped back over the edge. Oh, Johnny thought, unable to think of anything more. He started to reach forward . . .
Bian’s body evaporated.
Albert sat like he’d been carved there, staring at the space in his hand where Bian’s had disappeared. “See you later, Sticks,” he whispered.
An urge to know why he called her that surged through Johnny so strongly that he had to fight it down. Beside him, Shabaz, Torg, and Torres hung their eyes, their stripes dim with grief. Trying to think of something to say, Johnny opened his mouth to speak.
“No one will remember this,” Albert whispered harshly.
Johnny blinked. “What?”
Albert was still staring at his hands as if by keeping them open they might fill again. “No one will remember this.”
Johnny had a lot of experience with Albert’s anger. Albert had a lot of experience with Johnny’s own rage. But Johnny had never heard that tone before. “Wait, what are you talking about? Of course she’ll be remembered.”
“Really?” Albert’s eyes swung up and the hurt and venom in them was so vivid Johnny backed up a tread. “Just what do you think happens now, Johnny Drop?”
“Now?” Johnny said, the word sounding idiotic even as it emerged from his mouth. He was exhausted: Bian was dead; Albert was so pissed it vibrated the air. “What are you—?”
“There’s two possibilities,” Albert began.
“Look, would you just slow down for a—”
“There are two possibilities,” Albert spat. “One: you go back in there,” he stabbed a finger at the Skidsphere, “and they pick a hero to celebrate saving the world. Who do you think they’ll pick, Johnny Drop? Think it’ll be the girl who hopped from skid to skid or the jackhole with two names?”
“Snakes, Albert, I won’t let that—”
“The second possibility,” Albert said, his voice a hammer, “is the one I’d bet on. That the sphere we just recreated was based on the Skidsphere we knew before we got out here. Which means none of what happened out here happened. And the skids that . . . the skids that died—Brolin, Aaliyah, Bian, all the others—couldn’t have died out here because this . . . didn’t . . . happen. And what’s the easiest way for history to justify that?”
“Do you want an answer?” Johnny snapped. “Do I get to say something?”
“The next time the great Johnny Drop doesn’t have something to say will be the first.”
“Oh would you just back the—”
“You know,” Torg drawled, “I’m pretty sure Bian said something about wishing the two of you would get along. Pretty sure I heard that. Course, probably wasn’t important.” His voice took on a rare hardness. “Being her dying words, and all.”
That stopped Johnny. And Torg may as well have slapped Albert. His entire body went still momentarily, then his eyes dropped. “Yeah,” he said softly. “She did say something like that.”
Beneath them, the Skidsphere dappled like leaves shot with sunlight in the breeze. The only sound was the soft creak and whir of Wobble pulling himself back into shape.
“Albert,” Johnny said. “Al,” he added, and it was the first time in a long time he’d called Albert that. “Maybe those things happen. I can’t stop seventy thousand skids from celebrating . . . from doing whatever the hole they want to do. But we don’t have to let them forget Bian or anybody else. Hole, you won’t—”
“I’m not going back.”
Johnny started to snap something about not interrupting again but he caught himself, glancing at Torg who—having said his piece—now sat silently, watching them with a sombre expression. Behind him, Shabaz and Torres did the same, both overwhelmed by the speed and emotion of the events. They weren’t the only ones.
“What do you mean, you’re not going back?”
Albert took his time. When he finally spoke, it was like he was choosing each word. “I can’t. I can’t go back to playing the game. I can’t go back to . . . to playing Albert to your Johnny. Like nothing happened.” One eye dropped to his hands. “Even if Bian was there . . . I couldn’t do that. I can’t. I won’t.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Go be the star, Johnny. It’s what you always wanted.” He chuckled. “Hole, it’s what we all wanted. Live fast, die fast. Play the games. But not me. Not after this.”
Johnny got it. Had their positions been reversed, he’d probably have felt the same. For the first time he put himself in Albert’s treads, imagining what it would’ve been like to be good, even great . . . but not quite great enough. He shuddered. Yeah, that would have full on sucked.
“So . . . uh . . . what are you going to do?”
Albert swung an eye towards Wobble. “Betty didn’t make it through.” A statement, not a question.
“Affirmative,” the machine whirred. “They had-had the entire Antaran army out there, sir.”
“Is she dead?”
“Unconfirmed. There was a loss of signal.”
Albert appeared to consider this. Then . . . “Want to go see if we can find it?”
Wobble’s entire body stopped in mid-whir. “Yes, sir,” the machine replied. “Yes, sir, I would.”
“Then I guess that’s what I’m going to do,” Albert said, swinging his second eye back to Johnny.
“That’s what we’re going to do,” Torres said firmly, rolling forward.
“Right,” Albert said, smiling a rare smile. “That’s what we’re going to do.” Pursing his lips, he looked at Torg. “How about it, squid: want in?”
I’m pretty sure she liked you, Torg.
Torg stared at Albert, his eyes tight and searching. His trail-eye drifted and looked over the edge, down at the Skidsphere. The reflected images popped and flashed in the eye for a minute, then the lid slowly closed.
“Yeah,” he said to Albert. Glancing at Wobble, he grinned. “Yes, sir, panzer-sir, I would.”
Johnny half-expected Albert to make the same offer to Shabaz. He didn’t expect one for himself. “So you think you’re going to find Betty?”
“Someone should find out what happened to her. Don’t you think she earned that?”
“That’s the least she earned.” Johnny tried to imagine fighting his way through that storm in the Core alone. He couldn’t do it. He’d just been a part of something pretty amazing himself, but he couldn’t imagine taking on that hurricane of black and white by himself. Then he pictured Betty: twisting, turning, doing things most skids wouldn’t have even thought to do. If anyone could have survived . . .
Swinging an eye towards Torg, he sighed. “Who’s gonna keep me clean at the pits?”
“Johnny, ain’t nobody ever kept you clean.” A smirk crept across Torg’s face. “You’ll manage. Got to grow up sometime, squid.” His expression sobered. “You get it, right?”
And that . . . that almost broke Johnny. Snakes, he’d miss Torg. “Yeah, you old panzer, I get it.” He paused, and then added, “I hope you find her.”
They held the gaze, then Johnny swung an eye. “Speaking of panzers . . .” he said, looking at Torres. “You did all right.”
Torres cast a guilty glance at Albert, who—lips twitching with amusement—took the moment to go examine the far side of the platform. He’s got some tact after all, Johnny thought, as Torres rolled right up and leaned in.
“You did too,” the young skid whispered. Her expression was so sincere that Johnny almost laughed. “Really.”
“Thanks, Torres,” Johnny said, fighting down the urge to pat her on the stripe. In a slightly louder voice he added: “Take care of Torg for me, would you? He’s crazy old.”
“So’s your game,” Torg grinned.
Shabaz met Albert as he rolled back to the group. “Thanks for everything, Albert,” she said. “I mean it, I . . . thanks.”
“My pleasure,” Albert murmured.
Johnny turned to the machine humming nearby. “You’re amazing, Wobble. I don’t know what happened to Betty, but I saw you defending us when we were in there. Whatever happened to Betty, she’d have been proud of you.”
Gears whirred and the lids over Wobble’s lenses tilted. “That-that’s my boy and mama’s getting it framed. Thank you Johnny Drop Johnny Drop.” Two of his arms still hung at a weird angle and one of his teeth was forever gone, but you could still see the Anti that Wobble had been once.
It hurts, he’d said. More than once. Johnny leaned in and whispered: “Keep at it, Wobble. You’re making it better.”
The lids tilted even more and Johnny half expected tears to appear in the lenses. “Thank you,” Wobble said without stuttering. “Thank you.”
Johnny bobbed an eye and looked at Albert. “I’m pretty sure all Shabaz and I need to do is jump back into the sphere. How are you getting out of here?”
“Same way Torres and I got in.” Albert’s stripes tilted. “With Torg and Wobble along, it’ll be like popping a squid.”
The fact that he didn’t actually answer the question just made Johnny chuckle. Always the gearbox. Aloud, he said: “Well, don’t let us keep you.”
That at least drew a smirk. Albert looked at Torg. “You ready?”
“Are we going to need the guns?” Torg said, trying not to sound too eager. Albert glanced at Johnny. “Not at first,” he said, still smirking.
Torg swung an eye towards Johnny and tilted his stripes. “I tried. All right, Albert, let’s tread.”
“Good. Torres?”
“All set, boss.”
“Wobble?”
“Affirmative.”
Crisp Betty, Johnny thought. I’d follow the jackhole. He grimaced. A little.
“Get tight,” Albert said, rolling over to the edge. As the others joined him, he bunched up.
Johnny rolled his eyes. Show off. Before they could leap or launch or whatever the hole they were going to do, Johnny called out, “Hey, Al?”
An eye swung.
“Thanks for coming back. Really.”
The eye hesitated, then bobbed once. Then they all disappeared.
Johnny stared at the now empty platform. “Okay. That was cool.” He glanced at Shabaz. “Now I want to know how the jackhole did it.”
Shabaz chuckled. “He was probably cheating.” She peered over the edge. “You sure we just have to dive into that? Seems we had a far longer road to get here.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Johnny said. “But Betty said we are the program and this is the only thing I can think of. Unless you got any other ideas.”
“Me? I’m just along for the ride.”
Johnny stopped. He focused all three eyes on Shabaz. “No. You weren’t.”
Shabaz held the gaze. “No,” she said. “No, I guess I wasn’t.” She sniffed. “Do you think . . . do you think if Albert was right and it’s all just a reset . . . do you think we’ll remember Bian and the others?”
That was a good question. “I hope so,” Johnny said softly.
“Yeah,” Shabaz said. “Me too.” An eye wandered towards the wall separating them from the Core. “Think they’ll find Betty?”
“He’s got Torg, Torres, and Wobble with him. That’s a pretty sweet crew.” His stripes twitched. “So yeah, if anyone can do it . . . it’s Albert.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”
They lined up along the lip of the platform. “That was a nice thing you said to Albert,” Shabaz said, snapping a thinlid into place. “Right at the end. That was good.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, looking down on the glimmering sphere below. “Well, Bian was right. We did something here. Together. We should remember that.” He glanced at her. “Shall we?”
She smiled back. “Let’s go home.”
Johnny and Shabaz dived over the edge, heading for home.