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When it’s Colton’s turn, the giant picks up a claymore, which looks like a dagger in his massive hand.
Itzel forms a lightning ball on her palms. “I’m good.”
Nina makes a scabbard and a scimitar fly into her hands and attaches them to her waist. “I probably won’t need these, but it doesn’t hurt to have them.”
Edith grabs an ax and straps it to her back, while Stanislav does the same with a saber.
Spotting a few Gomorran guns, I grab one, and Valerian and Dylan do the same.
“Should I distribute the grenades?” Colton booms.
“Not yet,” Valerian says, picking up a pair of sai—pointy dagger-like weapons.
“What kind of grenades are we talking about?” I ask as I strap a dagger to my waist and a katana to my back. I’m no expert on the daggers, but I’ve studied how to wield the katana in the dreams of two Kendo masters who’d hired me to help them dream-spar ‘to the death.’
“Sleep and poison grenades,” Valerian replies. He seems to have finally gotten over his irritation with me. “The first in case we want you to dreamwalk in a group of enemies, the other in case we need a weapon of mass destruction.”
“Wouldn’t the poison kill us along with the bad guys?” Felix asks.
“Not if you keep the mask on,” Itzel says.
“Got it.” Felix walks over to a big contraption I hadn’t noticed before. It must be a new version of his robot suit, and it boasts four arms, Hindu-goddess style.
“Keep the mask on,” Itzel says when Felix starts to take his off.
“She’s right.” Dylan straps a rapier to her waist. “A virus can penetrate the robot faceplate. If I had designed the suit for you, I would’ve—”
“We made the suit before we knew about this mission,” Itzel says. “Besides, who cares? His head will fit, even with the mask on.”
“Well, I care,” Felix grumbles, climbing into the heap of metal. Through a speaker in his chest, he says, “I can barely breathe.”
“You’ll survive,” Valerian says, then packs away the map and leads our ragtag procession to the hub room.
“How about I go first?” Chester says when we all approach the purple gate that is step one of our journey.
No one objects. His chances of getting randomly attacked are minuscule compared to those of us without his probability manipulation powers.
Once Chester steps through the shimmering plasma, the others follow. When it’s my turn, I step in with some excitement. The one thing I’ve never really done much is Otherland spelunking, since that’s more dangerous than visiting dream worlds, yet not that much more entertaining.
Or so I thought.
When I come out on the other side, I exhale in wonder.
Chapter Nine
The sky above us is a fluorescent purple, with pink cotton-candy clouds—a combination I’ve never used in my dream world creations because, ironically, I thought it was too unrealistic to exist in nature. There’s also a Saturn-like ring around this planet, and two moons—one slightly smaller than Earth’s and one twice that size.
As we hurry to the next gate, I notice that my steps are lighter, indicating a different gravity from that on Earth and Gomorrah.
The most worrying part is the air. Even through the mask, it feels unusually thick and sweet—but I figure if it were poisonous, Valerian would’ve planned for it.
“I’ve been on this Otherland before,” Ariel whispers. “There’s a gate to the Las Vegas airport nearby.”
Felix glares at her. “You go into Otherlands to end up on the same world? The risk—”
“Beats an eight-hour plane flight,” she mutters back.
Chester lets out a sigh. “Too bad Vegas isn’t where we’re headed. I love that place.”
I’m sure he does. He can win at any game of chance, no matter how much the odds are stacked in favor of the house.
Felix is staring at the yellow shimmer that is our destination. “You know the gate we’re about to take was on Hekima’s list of ‘dangerous ones to avoid,’ right?”
“I’m sure that asshat was exaggerating,” Valerian says coolly.
“Let’s hope so,” Itzel mumbles under her breath.
Oblivious to any possible danger, Chester steps into the new gate like I’d step into my favorite restaurant. The rest of us follow more cautiously. And it’s a good thing we do.
When we emerge on the other side, Hekima’s description doesn’t seem all that exaggerated. For starters, the temperature and heat make the bathhouse from Valerian’s dream seem chilly in comparison. Then there’s the pterodactyl-like birds that circle in the sky like vultures above a desert.
Before I can ask Valerian to make us invisible to the fauna, a pterodactyl dives for us.
Almost casually, Nina extends her hand. With a pained shriek, the flying creature stops mid-flight and slams into a nearby cliff.
Stanislav mutters something in Russian in an impressed tone, and Felix replies, “Da, da.”
The rest of the flying creatures must not be choosy eaters; they swarm around the body of their fallen comrade with loud shrieks of glee.
