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Nobody is here.

Leaping to my feet, I examine the whole apartment, just in case.

Empty.

I can’t believe I now have yet another thing to worry about. I pace the living room for a few minutes before I decide that I must talk to someone about this. Maybe one of my friends is still dreaming? If they’re on Gomorrah, it’s still nighttime here and will be for a while.

The question is, do I dare go back into the dream world? What if the Nutcracker is waiting for me there?

It feels unlikely. It seems that part of his strategy was to catch me while I was still unaware of my dreaming, and for that to happen, I’d need to be dreaming naturally. Besides, if I give up dreamwalking completely, I’ll be powerless.

And there’s an extra precaution I can take—if Pom is willing.

Touching my looft’s fur, I dive back into the dream world.

Beet-colored Pom appears at my feet as soon as I pop into my dream palace.

“I’m sorry for being such a coward,” he says, his ears droopy.

“Don’t say that.” I muss the fur on top of his head. “That thing could’ve killed you. Then where would I be?”

Pom’s fur darkens. “Killed?”

“Well, yeah. And I have no clue what that means for you. If he’d killed me, I’d have gone homicidally insane.” I frown at him. “Can you go insane?”

He turns full black. “No idea.”

“Then let’s not find out. If the attack happens again, run away, exactly like you did.”

“Okay.” His fur lightens a bit. “But I will keep warning you about nightmares—else that thing could get a jump on you.”

“Perfect. And there’s something else I need you to do. If the Nutcracker shows up while I’m dreamwalking inside your dreams, you have the power to wake me up, so I’ll need you to do that after you disappear.”

“You got it.” Pom turns teal and gives me a crisp army salute.

“Let’s test it now.”

With a nod, he disappears, and I find myself back in my apartment.

I touch Pom again, and once I greet him in the palace, I teleport us to the tower of sleepers and check the surrounding rooms.

Out of everyone, only Felix is here, so I connect with him.

He’s dreaming of working with Itzel on a new robot suit. It’s a memory, actually.

Banishing Dream Itzel, I explain to Felix that he’s asleep and take him to my cloud office, where he paces the cloud as I tell him about the fight, finishing with, “When I woke up, there was no one there, which means this dreamwalker—if that’s what that was—didn’t touch me to get in. He or she either had a connection with me already, or set up one remotely, from outside my apartment.”

Pom, perched on my shoulder, turns pitch black.

Felix stops pacing the cloud. He might already know what I’ll ask, but I say it anyway. “If it’s the latter, there’s bound to be security footage of him—or her—creeping by my door.”

His unibrow does a little dance. “I’ll check on this as soon as I wake up. But are you sure this was a dreamwalker and not Pho—I mean, Collywobbles?”

“Well, the latter is extremely powerful and would’ve ended me quickly… Unless the idea was to just toy with me.”

“And you don’t know any other dreamwalkers, right?” Felix asks.

“If I did, I’d ask them to teach me how to wage a battle in the dream world. I got lucky this time.”

Felix looks around, eyes bulging. “Can he show up here?”

“Should that happen, I have a plan.” I pat Pom’s furry feet, and he proudly puffs up. “Besides, I think the Nutcracker needs me dreaming naturally, to catch me unaware.”

“How about doing something proactive in case he does show up again?” Felix asks. “I can help.”

Good idea. I could, for starters, make my body more solid.

Gathering my power, I attempt to turn my flesh into metal.

Only my pinky solidifies—and I can’t feel it at all.

With another effort, I force the metal pinky to bend. It does, and some feelings go back into it. It’s a start. I bend the pinky some more, until it eventually feels like a regular one, only slathered in Novocain.

My index finger is next, then the whole arm, then finally my torso.

“What do you think?” I try to ask. The question doesn’t come out. I guess the metal exterior is messing with the function of my throat.

It takes me a few minutes to fix that problem. When I finally master my newly metallic body, I ask, “Can you attack me?”

Felix walks over and gingerly pokes my midsection.

“You’ve got to do better than that.” I create boxing gloves around his hands. “Punch me.”

He does.

I feel the punch, but the impact is definitely dampened.

“The problem is that this takes up a lot of concentration.” I create a baseball bat to replace Felix’s gloves. “Hit me with that.”

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