THE METALLIC LINING of the portal tightened around him again. Rick lay in the coffin-like glass box, staring up into Miss Ferris’s impassive face above him. His mind was swirling with so many thoughts and questions, he could barely pay attention to her instructions.
“Get as close to the fortress as you can and find out as much about it as you can,” she said down at him. “But don’t push it. Don’t put yourself in any danger. The cost of failure is too great. Greater than you can imagine.”
Rick could barely nod in response, the metallic lining was already wrapped around his head so tightly.
“You’ll notice we gave you an extra fifteen minutes to stay this time,” Miss Ferris went on. “According to our brain scans, the fact that you played video games so much has made your mind well-adapted to being in the Realm.”
Rick didn’t know whether to be proud of this or ashamed.
“But again,” said Miss Ferris, “don’t push it. Before you go too far in any direction, make sure you know where the nearest portal point is, and make sure you can get back to it in time if there’s any trouble. Under no circumstances are you to stay past the time we’ve allotted to you. Under no circumstances; do you understand me?”
Rick could only answer with a grimace as the lining seemed to creep over the top of his head like a living thing. Again, he felt as if invisible needles were injecting themselves into his scalp.
“We recorded the location of the new portal point you discovered in the Blue Woods. You should come out this time, at exactly the place from which you left.”
One corner of Rick’s mouth turned up. Like a save point in a video game, he thought.
“Good luck, Rick,” Miss Ferris said.
She spoke, as always, without emotion. But, strangely, he found himself smiling a more or less warm farewell at her. With all their angry exchanges back and forth, he hadn’t noticed it until now—but the fact was, crazy as it seemed, he was beginning to like this oddly robotic woman. He was even beginning to trust her, weird and secretive as she was.
She closed the lid of the box and stepped away.
After that, it was all as it had been before. His heart sped up as the glass coffin lid lowered over him. A claustrophobic sweat broke out on his temples, the droplets streaming back into his hair. The prickling in his scalp grew more painful as the lining of the coffin tightened around him even more. Then came that buzzing sound again, and the vibrations. And something in him began to release, as if he were falling asleep.
Then, just as before, he seemed to lose his grip on himself. He seemed to slip down inside his own mind, until he was surrounded by black nothingness. And again, in the center of that black nothingness, there emerged a cylinder of light.
As before, he focused his will. And with a conscious effort, he sent his spirit through that cylinder like liquid through a straw.
Once again, he entered the Realm.