Chapter 19

chapter nineteen GET UP. "OK! I'M AWAKE!" I shout. "Just trying to help," Evie says with a shrug. I squint up at her. "Wha...? Was I... Am I alive?" "Nope. You're totally dead right now." "You're the worst," I say, slowly sitting up. Evie chuckles. "I don't know what you were doing. You were mumbling a lot. And then you weren't doing anything at all—just breathing and drooling—for, oh, six hours. I played a lot of Game Boy."

"SIX HOURS?" I exclaim. "But... No, that can't be... It was just a few minutes. Then the Mortar Monster screamed, because its self-destruct thing had finished—" "No. I finished it." "But... you ran away..." I look over at the Mortar Monster. It's dead—frozen, halfway through its folding-in-on-itself self-destruction. Evie's weapon juts out of it like a toothpick in a club sandwich. "I don't like you, Jack. But I didn't do anything when Bardle died. So I did something this time." I blink. "I don't like you, either, Evie."

Then suddenly everything I realized in the Nothing World comes flooding back to me. "Evie! The Howler is still alive! It's going to the Tower. I mean, it's controlling and taking the—" "Mallusk?" Evie asks, sounding surprised. "Yes! How'd you know I was gonna say that?" "Mallusk?!" Evie exclaims. "YES! But how'd you—" "No!" Evie exclaims, yanking me to my feet and turning me. The Mallusk is sliding and roaring, no longer a steady, all-powerful bulldozer of a beast. It jerks left, then right—thrashing in pain. And at the very front and center of the Mallusk— tiny, so tiny—something is happening. A burst of light. And then another. The Mallusk jerks again now, careening in our direction. And I see that it's Yursl up there, near the Mallusk's horns.

VA-SHOOM! Swirling energy—pinks and blues—erupt from the spot where Yursl is standing. "The Howler!" I gasp— but then there is another energy flare, erupting outward, and I reel back as the Howler is exploded through the air— The Howler crashes to the ground, landing in a pile of gnarled, rusty train track. Yursl removed it from of the Mallusk's brain. Somehow. And destroyed it.

Sure is nice to have a conjurer around. A thick storm of dirt fills the air as the Mallusk slides to a violent halt, like an airplane touching down with no landing gear. The Mallusk's front end is almost fully buried in the ground. And then my friends are rappelling down the mountain-sized monster. And they're racing toward me, across the tangle of corroded train tracks. Johnny Steve hurries after them, trying not to trip on his little spy trench coat. My head is spinning. I look to Evie—and she's just as confused as I am. "Hey, friend!" Quint cries. "What are you...? How are you...?" I start, but that's all I get out before June slams into me, lifting me off my feet, and Dirk and Quint are joining in. "The Mallusk? You guys?" I manage to squeak out through Dirk's bear hug. "How any of it? ALL OF IT?!" "I believe I can best answer that," Johnny Steve says, sounding like Sherlock Holmes, He gives Evie a quick nod, then adjusts her coat. He pats its side, beating out some of the dust that has gathered. Evie flicks his hand away. "Now!" Johnny Steve begins. "Allow me to regale you with a story. I will do my best to recall the details exactly as I remember them."

"Buddy," June says. "There's not time for But Johnny Steve just cocks an eyebrow, grins, and begins narrating the tale of JOHNNY STEVE: SPY GUY! You see, from the start I was worried about the chances of the good guys winning. After Jack's poor first day, I knew I had to act.