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at Paxton, his uncertainty mirrored in his mentor's gaze.
    Paxton shook his head. "That's not true. The Councilman prefers to stay inside, but he does leave when he has to."
    "So where is he then?"
    Turning back to the stylus, Paxton wrote, "Stylus, can you tell us where he has gone?"
    No.
    Paxton frowned. "No, you can't tell us or no, you can't tell us where he's gone?"
    I don't know.
    Both Paxton and Eric stared at each other in confusion. "I don't understand. Has something changed that you aren't getting the information you need?"
    "Is it broken?" Eric figured to clear the air right away.
    "No, at least I don't think so. Stylus, are you broken?"
    No. Cloudy. Injured.
    Paxton immediately laid it on top of the paper. "See, we probably overused it."
    "No way. We have to figure out what's wrong. For all you know this is related to Storey's stylus. Maybe hers has been broken. They are all connected remember."
    "I remember," he answered testily. "That's still a big assumption."
    Eric tried to be patient. "I'm not assuming anything. I'm asking you to pick it up again and get more answers."
    Paxton waffled then relented. He reached out for his stylus hesitantly. "I don't want to hurt it."
    "Then ask it if you are doing anything to hurt it."
    Paxton asked the question and his shoulders sagged with relief when the answer came back 'no.'
    "Now find out who's been injured," Eric urged.
    The ensuing conversation blew him away. He'd been right. Something had happened to Storey's stylus and it had gone into sleep mode. Leaving her alone and probably in the Louers' dimension.
    "Sleep mode?"
    We turn off and hibernate after a long period of inactivity...or if someone happens to pick us up that we feel we are better off to hibernate from.
    Eric didn't like the sound of that. "Can it tell if something happened to Storey?"
    The answer came back negative. But that could mean it didn't know.
    Shit. "I have to go find her. And her stylus apparently."
    "I don't have a good feeling about this," Paxton said.
    Eric's stomach twisted in agreement. "While I'm looking for Storey, maybe you can find my father."
    Walking past Paxton's work desk, Eric snatched up a second codex for Storey, just in case. Last time he'd been in that horrible place, they hadn't had enough traveling power for everyone and that shortage had sent them into the newly created fourth dimension. Back then it had been empty. Now...it could be full of Louers. Securing the new codex to his right arm, he used the codes he'd thought to never repeat. The one difficult thing about codex travel, it needed coordinates. He'd only been in one place in that horrible land – a prison. Therefore, that's the only place he could return to.
    As blackness swirled up around his body, he sent out a silent hope that he'd make it through this trip fine.
    The last thing he wanted was to end up a prisoner – again.

CHAPTER 5
    S torey prided herself on staying calm and rational in difficult circumstances. She'd learned a lot through the skirmishes in Eric's dimension and knew she needed to control the panic crouching on the edge of her mind. The bottom line to her situation is she had to find her stylus. It had been elemental to every successful thing she'd done so far.
    Why had it stopped communicating? Did it have batteries to run dry? Or, as it was bound to her, maybe it needed to spend time with her to recharge. With a few short steps, she returned to the wall she'd tried to bust through. She'd been so sure the stylus had been on the other side, and that's the last sensation she'd had of it, then it had stopped.
    Cracks went up and down. Cupboards?
    Could it be?
    Quickly she searched for some way to open them. "Cupboards open." Nothing. Crap, this again. "Storage open. Door open. Wall open?"
    Nothing.
    She pounded along the crack, hoping it might have a release lever. Again nothing. The longer she stared at the wall the more she could make out the vertical lines that had to be there for a reason.
    It