worrying works. What do I do next?
He flipped through the book again, stopped randomly, and landed on:
RULE #22: WHENEVER YOUR HEAD IS TOO FULL OF NOISE, MAKE A LIST.
That felt like the best advice Dad had ever given him. His notebook couldn’t help him work this out; he needed to go old-school technology. Will locked the door, sat at his desk with an oversized sketchpad, and went to work getting it all out on paper.
And whatever you do, don’t start with Brooke.
Six weeks remained in the school year; then summer vacation loomed, a yawning void he’d been dreading, with no idea how he’d be able to fill it. But that could be a plus. Now that he felt back on his game, he had six weeks to identify what he needed to do and how to go about it. All the unfinished business from last fall that he’d had to hang on a hook, for self-preservation, while his mind, body, and soul knit themselves back together.
Will began writing down questions in big capital letters:
HOW ARE THE KNIGHTS OF CHARLEMAGNE CONNECTED TO MR. HOBBES AND THE BLACK CAPS?
Will had every reason to think the Knights were finished after they’d tried to kill him last November. Ten of the twelve Knights had been arrested. Only the group’s leader, Lyle Ogilvy, and Lyle’s partner in crime, Todd Hodak, remained at large. Todd hadn’t been seen or heard from since the attack. Lyle’s whereabouts, a frequent subject of campus rumors, remained unknown. Will knew there wasn’t much left of the Lyle he’d known, after barely surviving an attack from the wendigo that he’d summoned to destroy Will.
But can I be absolutely sure that the Knights were destroyed?
Will and his roommates had discovered frightening proof of a connection between the men he called the Black Caps—who’d chased him out of Ojai, then kidnapped his parents and made it look like they’d died in the plane crash—and the Knights. They’d found a videotape of a meeting recorded by Ronnie Murso—the roommate Will had replaced in their pod, who’d been missing for nearly a year. A tape that, before he and his father disappeared on a fishing trip, Ronnie had gone to heroic lengths to hide from everyone but his roommates, leaving a coded trail of clues to his secret that Will and his roommates had been able to crack.
Ronnie’s recording covertly captured a meeting between the Caps’ leader, the fearsome bald man Mr. Hobbes, and Lyle Ogilvy. Hobbes could be seen giving Lyle a piece of aphotic technology he called a Carver, a mysterious device that could be used to open a portal between here and a dimension called the Never-Was.
Will had learned (from his dead–undead–badass Special Forces helicopter pilot–guardian Sergeant Dave Gunner) that the Never-Was is a purgatorial dimension where the monsters he called the Other Team came from. A prison where this elder race of beings had been banished from Earth eons ago by the celestial organization that Dave worked for—the Hierarchy. The same group Dave claimed Will now worked for as well, as a low-ranking “initiate.” With the treacherous help of human collaborators, like the Knights and Caps, the Other Team had long been planning a jailbreak in order to retake control of the planet, and the agents of the Hierarchy were all that stood in their way.
When Mr. Hobbes, posing as a federal agent, tried to kidnap him, Will also realized that the bald man was some kind of monster/human hybrid himself. Hobbes hadn’t shown himself since. How could he and his roommates hope to stop creatures like Hobbes and his minions? He could barely write fast enough to keep up with his thoughts, trying to make sense of all the connections.
THE ABILITIES WE HAVE TO FIGHT WITH
ME:
- Speed (from enhanced fast-twitch muscles, as well as … ?)
- Incredible stamina (extreme oxygen-binding ability in my red blood cells)
- Amazing restorative ability/self-healing (related to the blood condition)
- Telekinesis: the ability to create energy and
He flipped through the book again, stopped randomly, and landed on:
RULE #22: WHENEVER YOUR HEAD IS TOO FULL OF NOISE, MAKE A LIST.
That felt like the best advice Dad had ever given him. His notebook couldn’t help him work this out; he needed to go old-school technology. Will locked the door, sat at his desk with an oversized sketchpad, and went to work getting it all out on paper.
And whatever you do, don’t start with Brooke.
Six weeks remained in the school year; then summer vacation loomed, a yawning void he’d been dreading, with no idea how he’d be able to fill it. But that could be a plus. Now that he felt back on his game, he had six weeks to identify what he needed to do and how to go about it. All the unfinished business from last fall that he’d had to hang on a hook, for self-preservation, while his mind, body, and soul knit themselves back together.
Will began writing down questions in big capital letters:
HOW ARE THE KNIGHTS OF CHARLEMAGNE CONNECTED TO MR. HOBBES AND THE BLACK CAPS?
Will had every reason to think the Knights were finished after they’d tried to kill him last November. Ten of the twelve Knights had been arrested. Only the group’s leader, Lyle Ogilvy, and Lyle’s partner in crime, Todd Hodak, remained at large. Todd hadn’t been seen or heard from since the attack. Lyle’s whereabouts, a frequent subject of campus rumors, remained unknown. Will knew there wasn’t much left of the Lyle he’d known, after barely surviving an attack from the wendigo that he’d summoned to destroy Will.
But can I be absolutely sure that the Knights were destroyed?
Will and his roommates had discovered frightening proof of a connection between the men he called the Black Caps—who’d chased him out of Ojai, then kidnapped his parents and made it look like they’d died in the plane crash—and the Knights. They’d found a videotape of a meeting recorded by Ronnie Murso—the roommate Will had replaced in their pod, who’d been missing for nearly a year. A tape that, before he and his father disappeared on a fishing trip, Ronnie had gone to heroic lengths to hide from everyone but his roommates, leaving a coded trail of clues to his secret that Will and his roommates had been able to crack.
Ronnie’s recording covertly captured a meeting between the Caps’ leader, the fearsome bald man Mr. Hobbes, and Lyle Ogilvy. Hobbes could be seen giving Lyle a piece of aphotic technology he called a Carver, a mysterious device that could be used to open a portal between here and a dimension called the Never-Was.
Will had learned (from his dead–undead–badass Special Forces helicopter pilot–guardian Sergeant Dave Gunner) that the Never-Was is a purgatorial dimension where the monsters he called the Other Team came from. A prison where this elder race of beings had been banished from Earth eons ago by the celestial organization that Dave worked for—the Hierarchy. The same group Dave claimed Will now worked for as well, as a low-ranking “initiate.” With the treacherous help of human collaborators, like the Knights and Caps, the Other Team had long been planning a jailbreak in order to retake control of the planet, and the agents of the Hierarchy were all that stood in their way.
When Mr. Hobbes, posing as a federal agent, tried to kidnap him, Will also realized that the bald man was some kind of monster/human hybrid himself. Hobbes hadn’t shown himself since. How could he and his roommates hope to stop creatures like Hobbes and his minions? He could barely write fast enough to keep up with his thoughts, trying to make sense of all the connections.
THE ABILITIES WE HAVE TO FIGHT WITH
ME:
- Speed (from enhanced fast-twitch muscles, as well as … ?)
- Incredible stamina (extreme oxygen-binding ability in my red blood cells)
- Amazing restorative ability/self-healing (related to the blood condition)
- Telekinesis: the ability to create energy and
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