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of someone dead at all.
I listened to the noises of the busy city street outside our alley,
and, for the first time, I noted the complete lack of human voices.
There was only the sound of machines and walking… a rhythm I now
found to be completely lifeless and hollow. I stared at her for a
long moment, unsure what to do. "Can I trust you?"
    She tilted her head down a few degrees,
screwed up her face, and let a few tears run free. "No."
    "So it's probably not a good idea if I let
you come with me."
    She clenched her fists, and I saw a single
drop of blood eke out from her excessive grip. "I'd try to build
one," she gasped. "Eventually. The plans are… in my head… it wants
me to…"
    There was nothing else I could say… unless…
"You can still help me," I said quietly, noting her intense strain
to hold onto her own will. "I need a first generation iWorker
device. The absolute most basic, no mind control, no
networking."
    She nodded, eager to be helpful in any way
possible to any entity that was not the it that controlled
everyone else. She ran to a nearby dumpster and pulled at a rusty
panel. "Here, here …" She pulled out several circular devices and
picked at them until the least damaged remained. "You stick it
behind your ear, right here, and just… do… and it'll pick up on
it."
    "Thank you," I told her, studying the device.
If this thing could control a body without the mind interfering,
perhaps it could help us leave the perception-altering book in
another universe. I pocketed it, and then faced her. Never make
promises, I knew. Never make promises. I couldn't tell her she
would be alright. "I'm sorry…"
    Blood poured from her clenched fists as she
squeezed her long nails harder and harder into her palms,
momentarily clearing her thoughts. "It's alright. I'm glad there
are still free people."
    I nodded, and then departed.
    "Come back," she called, just as I rounded
the corner. "I was lying. There's nothing weird about the lights at
all."
    Goddamnit.
    "You still have the book?" my second asked as
I stepped back into the forest. "Damn."
    "Watch your language," I told him. I drew the
iWorker out of my pocket and brought it up for the kids to see. "I
couldn't leave the book, but - this just might be our ticket." I
looked back and saw the homeless girl lurking at the other side of
the portal, watching us with a neutral half-smile. I wished that
I'd had the courage to kill her and free her from her invisible
prison. If it had been anyone else, maybe...
    Thomas, the younger boy who'd once followed
me into another world, was also present. He was old enough to pick
up on my momentarily visible sadness. "Who's that girl?"
    I turned away, unable to watch her any
longer. "Nobody…"

Chapter Four
     
    It began when I found the neighborhood
children still hanging around the portal on Thanksgiving.
Apparently, no, they didn't have any place to be. Their parents
were all working. The parents of every single child were holding
down two or three jobs each.
    It was small wonder the kids had such free
reign over the suburb and Virginia backwoods, and why nobody else
had found out about the portal. There simply weren't any adults
around to watch or warn.
    And, apparently, I filled that void. Repeated
questions had led to the best answers I could give, and then to
proposed preventative measures, and then… to more.
    I crested Dead Man's Hill, so called by the
local children for its cliffside rise. One wrong move meant a nasty
fall into one of the large ravines that so plagued the foothills.
For the last several days, while waiting for another habitable
destination in the portal, I'd been using it to show the kids that
horror and risk were real factors in life, and that the fear
they brought meant paralysis and death for the uninitiated. "Come
on!" I shouted, waiting at the top.
    In the lead, as usual, was my
eighteen-year-old second. He ran up the steep and leaf-slippery
incline with a dramatically red face, releasing torrents of