Alex couldn't answer. He was sitting in his chair with blank eyes still staring at the screens.

Alex was dead. On his neck were bite marks. There was no mistake. The quig in my fantasy jump had somehow killed Alex out here in reality. Whatever the Reality Bug had done, it had turned Lifelight inside out. Right now, in cubicles all over the pyramid, all over Veelox, people were in mortal danger as they faced their worst nightmares in their own fantasiesa for real.

"Shut it down," I said.

Aja continued to stare at Alex, unbelieving. She couldn't move.

"Aja, shut it down!" I shouted. "You gotta save those people!"

"This can't be happening," she said, stunned. "They're just fantasies"

I grabbed Aja and forced her to look at me. "Not anymore they're not!" I shouted.

"But it's illusion!" Aja argued. "It's not real!"

"Is that real enough for you?" I asked, pointing at poor, dead Alex.

"There must be some other explanation," she argued.

"Yeah?" I shot back. "Then how do you explain this?" I let her go and turned my back to her, shoving out my arm. What I wanted her to see was proof positive that what was happening inside Lifelight was no fantasy. I showed her my arm. It was the arm that got sliced by the claw of the quig when we escaped under the bleachers. My jumpsuit was cut, with dried blood around the edges.

"That blood is real," I said. "It hurts, and so does my nose. My injuries didn't go away when we got back."

Aja stared at my arm as if her brain wouldn't let her accept what her eyes were seeing.

"Aja," I said softly. "It's not a fantasy anymore."

She looked at me with confusion. Her orderly world had just been blown apart. Then the door to the cubicle flew open and a phader ran in.

"Aja!" he shouted with terror. "It's happening all over Veelox. Lifelight has been totally corrupted."

Aja forced herself to think. She blinked once, then her eyes focused. "Did you contact the directors?" she asked.

"They're all jumping!" the phader answered. "Every one. We can't get to them!"

Aja looked to Alex's control board.

"Shut it down, Aja," I said again.

"I can't," she finally answered. "There's no such thing. People would die."

"But we have to do something!" I demanded.

Aja was thinking fast. I saw a spark in her eye. An idea. She turned back to the phader and said, "We've got to suspend the grid."

"What?" the phader shouted. "We can't!" "Do you have a better idea?" The phader didn't.

"Get your key!" Aja commanded him. She reached around her neck and pulled out a black-cord necklace from under her jumpsuit. Attached to it was a large, green card.

The phader hadn't budged.

"Move!" Aja commanded.

The phader was shocked back to reality. He hurried to the control panel while pulling out his own cord necklace. He had a green card on it, just like Aja's. The two stood at opposite ends of the complex array of controls.

"I hope you know what you're doing," the phader said softly.

Aja shot the guy a look. "Insert!"

They both took their green cards and inserted them into slots on either side of the control array. Aja then flipped about a dozen switches, the last of which was behind a clear, plastic cover. She lifted the cover to reveal a red toggle switch. The phader was working a duplicate set of switches, with the final being a similar red toggle switch.

Aja took a breath and said, "On my mark. Three, two, onea suspend."

They both flipped the red switches.

Instantly all the monitors went blank. The thousands upon thousands of images that were being displayed had been replaced by the same single, flat color of green. The alarms all stopped as well, leaving everything eerily quiet.

I looked to the phader. He was crying.

"What happened?" I asked.

Aja stared ahead blankly. Her voice was calm and even. "We just suspended the grid."

"You mean, you shut it down?" I asked.

"No, the jumpers are still in Lifelight, but the jumps are frozen. Nothing will happen to them. All over Veelox. Millions of people are lying in the grid, waiting."

"For what?"

Aja then looked at me. Her eyes were red and frightened. "They're waiting for me to figure out what went wrong."

(CONTINUED).

VEELOX.

"How could you do that?"

"What happened?"

"This is impossible!"

Aja was in the center of a storm of phaders and vedders, all screaming at her, wanting to know why she suspended the grid. Whatever that meant. No sooner had the two switches been thrown, than the blue- and red-suited technicians came flooding into the control room, demanding answers. Most of the computer screens now showed live images of phaders and vedders from all over Veelox who were demanding to know what had happened. It wasn't until those faces started showing up on all those screens that I realized the full deal.

Aja hadn't only suspended Lifelight here in Rubic City, she had suspended the entire territory. At that moment millions upon millions of people all over Veelox were lying in suspended animation.

"Everybody, listen to me!" shouted Aja. Nobody did. They were too scared. I can't blame them. Their world was on the verge of crashing. Heck, if they weren't scared, they should be.

"Please, let me speak!" Aja begged. But the questions kept coming.

"My whole family is on a jump!"

"We've got to get back online and get them out!"

It was borderline chaos. All I could do was stay out of the way and hope that Aja could handle this. Finally she went to the control panel and with a look of pure determination, pressed a large green button. A screeching horn sounded that forced everyone, including me, to cover their ears. I saw that the technicians on the monitors were cringing as well.

After a few seconds Aja took her finger off the button and the horn fell silent. The phaders and vedders went silent too. They must have been afraid Aja would blast them again. Aja hit another switch and spoke into a microphone on the console. Her voice was amplified throughout the pyramid and heard by the technicians on the monitors.

"My name is Aja Killian," she said calmly. "I'm the senior phader on duty here in Rubic City. I'm the one who authorized the suspension of the grid."

Everyone started shouting again.

Aja jammed on the horn. Again, everybody quieted down. She released the button, but kept her finger close, ready to blast it again if anybody got out of hand.

"We had an emergency," she explained. "Jumpers were in trouble throughout Veelox."

I looked at the wall of monitors and saw several of the technicians nodding. For the first time I noticed how young they all looked. I scanned the monitors, searching for at least one gray-haired, wise scientist who would save the day. There weren't any.

"As best as I can tell," Aja continued, "the processing code has been corrupted."

People gasped. Whatever that meant, it must have been bad.

"How can that be?" a phader shouted, risking another blast from the horn. "That's never happened before!"

I looked to Aja. This had to be one of the toughest moments of her life. She knew exactly how it could be. Things had gone whacko because she had introduced a bug into the system. A Reality Bug. Worse, it was a bug that Saint Dane had somehow made even more powerful than it was supposed to be.

"But it has happened," Aja said firmly. "The jumpers are in danger. Suspending the grid was the only way to buy us time to solve the problem."

Everybody seemed to agree. Score one for Aja.

"With the grid suspended, the jumpers are totally safe," she continued. "I've been monitoring the situation and I believe I can ferret out the problem."

"We can't leave them inside like that," a vedder called out.

"We don't have any choice," Aja shot back. "If we go back online without solving the problem, we'll be back where we started and the jumpers will still be in danger."

I saw a lot of nervous heads nodding in agreement.

Aja then said, "Who is the senior vedder on duty?"

A guy stepped forward who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. "I just came on duty when the alarms started going off," the guy said softly.

I'll bet he wished he had overslept.

"How long are the jumpers safe with the grid suspended?" Aja asked.

"Theoretically, forever," the senior vedder answered. "But it's never been tried before, so who knows?"

"That's okay," Aja said confidently. "It won't take forever 151 160 to fix the problem. I'm going into the Alpha Core to start unraveling this."

"What do we do in the meantime?" the senior vedder asked.

"Nothing," Aja answered. "Just don't go far from the pyramid. When I crack this, everyone should be ready to go back online."

She then looked up at the faces on the monitors. "The same goes for all of you," Aja said to them through the microphone. "Let me work on the processing code. I'll keep you updated on my progress."

It was a great performance. Aja had shown total authority, and from the looks on everybody's faces, they believed she was going to solve the problem. The question was, did Aja believe she could solve the problem? I wanted to think so, but when she flipped the switch to turn off the microphone, I saw that her hand was shaking. Oh man. She was barely keeping it together.

She then glanced at me and we made eye contact. There was no mistake. She was scared. I hoped nobody else saw it. She then looked to the senior vedder and said softly, "You'll take care of Alex, right?"

The vedder nodded sadly.

Aja gave me a quick look and said, "Let's go."

She then walked away from the console, through the crowd of technicians, and out of the control room. I'm sure she felt the heat of everyone's eyes on her, searching for some sign of assurance that she would solve the problem.

I followed her to the far end of the glass corridor and up to a solid door marked alpha core-authorized personnel only. She took the same green card from around her neck and inserted it into a slot near the door handle. A metallic clicksignaled that the door was unlocked. Aja entered and I followed right behind her.

Inside was another control room that was a little different from the others. This one felt more important. Maybe it was because it was behind solid walls instead of glass. There was only one large monitor on the wall, and one control chair facing it. Beneath the monitor was a vast array of switches and knobs and lights, just like in the other control rooms. One arm of the control chair was extra long and held a silver keypad that looked way more complicated than the ones in the other control stations. I had no doubt that this was where we would have to undo the damage and save the territory.

Aja fell into the chair and started to cry.

Uh-oh. Not a good start. It must have taken every ounce of willpower she had to hold it together in front of the phaders and vedders, but now that we were alone, she lost it. I felt bad for her, but I was feeling worse for all those people who were stuck in the vacuum of Lifelight. Their only hope of getting out safely rested with Aja, and she wasn't looking all that capable of saving anybody. Finally she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

"I didn't want you here on Veelox, Pendragon," she said. "Do you know why?"

"Uha no" was my dumb but truthful answer.

"Because you're you," she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Give me a break," she said with tears forming again. "You're the lead Traveler. You swoop into a territory and take on Saint Dane like some kind of fearless savior. Denduron, Cloral, First Eartha every one a victory for the good guys. It's all so simple for you."

I wanted to laugh. I really did. Fearless? Savior? Me? Yeah, right. I didn't know what stories she had heard, but her information was definitely twisted.

"I'm not like you," she went on. "I'm not some big adventurer. What I am is smart. Smarter than you. That's not a boast; it's fact. My whole life I was trained to maximize my intellect. I lived with teachers and scientists. Evangeline was my only friend. It was a cold way to grow up. I hated it. Then one day your uncle showed up to tell me I was a Traveler. Suddenly it all made sense. I knew what I was meant to do. All the training and studying and loneliness I had to endure meant that I had the tools to protect Veelox. It was like I had suddenly come alive, because my life had purpose. I was all set to take on Saint Dane with the weapon I knew how to use besta my brain."

Aja stopped talking. I think she was trying to hold back tears. She swallowed and said, "The reason I didn't want you here, Pendragon, was I didn't want you to take that chance away from me."

I was slowly starting to get the picture. Finally. Aja had been cold toward me because she feared I would take away the one thing that gave her life meaning.

"But as it turns out," Aja continued, barely keeping her emotions down, "I not only failed to save Veelox, I made things worse. I didn't stop Saint Dane, I helped him!"

"We don't know that yet-"

"No?" she shouted, spinning the chair toward me. "I created the Reality Bug. It's my fault that millions of people are in danger. And that Alex isa I thought I was being so smart, and all along I was doing the worst possible thing."

"Aja, you have to understand," I said carefully. "Saint Dane may have had a bigger part in this than you know."