“Jade,” said Tapestry. “Do you remember us at all? We were the two champions who you encountered at the Hawktail Casino?”
She couldn’t answer them with words, but Malcolm thought he saw a gleam of recognition in her eyes. Tapestry nodded to Malcolm, giving him an expectant look. He gave a shrug and stepped forward.
“So, uh, I know we were never the best of friends, or anything,” said Malcolm. “But for the record, I’m the one who killed Rain Dancer. He was our common enemy.”
“We don’t have all night, Malcolm,” said Tapestry. “Just get to the point.”
Malcolm bit back a frustrated remark and continued.
“Look, we’re trying to rescue the champion that Rain Dancer forced you to imprison,” said Malcolm. “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on in the world, but things have fallen off the deep end, and we need his help to fix things. And for that, we need your help.”
Jade Portal blinked. Whether it was a yes or a no, Malcolm had no idea.
“So… We need you to open a portal from here onto the spaceship, Jupiter III.” He frowned. “Uh… It’s somewhere in space?” He glanced over at Tapestry, suddenly realizing a massive flaw in their plan. “Tapestry, how is she going to know where exactly to make the portal lead to?”
“I have that covered,” said Tapestry.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it and smoothing out the creases. Malcolm realized that it was a news article about the ship, with photos of both its exterior and interior.
“That’s not going to tell her where it is right now, though,” he said.
“That’s not how her portals work,” said Tapestry. “Think about it. If that were the case, she’d have to account for both the Earth’s rotation and orbit every time she used her power, which I don’t think she’s doing.”
Malcolm shrugged.
“It seems like a big bet to make, given that she can’t speak to confirm it for us.”
Jade Portal blinked several times in quick succession.
That’s either a definite yes… or a definite no.
“That’s it, though, isn’t it?” asked Tapestry. “You use the concept of a place, rather than its absolute positioning? Blink once for yes.”
Jade hesitated, and then blinked once. Tapestry breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” she said. “Perfect. Jade, here is our plan. We need to get onto the ship, but just for a few minutes, so we can borrow the spacesuits. Then, we’ll come back here and–”
Heavy footsteps sounded from down the hall, along with shouting. Malcolm looked at the door, searching for a way to lock or bar it and finding nothing.
“We don’t have time,” he said. “We have to do this. Now.”
Jade needed no further encouragement. She stared at the article Tapestry had in her hand, and closed her eyes. A luminescent green portal burst into existence against the room’s wall, almost like someone had turned on a broken projector in a dark room, bright and psychedelic.
“If she’s off by even a hundred feet, we’ll be stepping through this portal to our deaths,” said Malcolm.
Tapestry smiled at him.
“I’ll go first, if you’re scared,” she said.
The footsteps were almost upon them. The two of them didn’t have time to trade barbs. Malcolm walked over to Tapestry, grabbed onto her hand, just in case, and stepped through the portal.
CHAPTER 16
The sensation was indescribable. It didn’t feel like anything painful, but the immediate shock of transitioning from one environment into another was similar to being roughly woken up from a dream. Malcolm’s stomach turned over as he somersaulted through the air, weightless and inside a dimly lit spacecraft.
Whoa… This is weird. And kind of spooky.
Tapestry followed, pushing through the portal with more force than he had and colliding into him as she emerged onto the other side. The green portal disappeared an instant after she’d made it all the way through.
Neither of them said anything. Malcolm supposed that Tapestry was having a similar reaction to his own, struggling with the dizzying and physically confusing sensation of weightlessness.
They were in a small room with a single table in the center. Four open, circular hatches led to other parts of the ship, and there were handholds along each wall to make movement easier. Malcolm noticed that the four chairs around the table all had what looked like seatbelts, most likely to keep the astronauts from floating off once they’d sat down.
“Tapestry…” Malcolm said, realizing it had been almost a minute since either of them had spoken. “Are you okay?”
“I’m… alive,” she said.
Malcolm tapped off the wall, turning himself to face the direction he’d last seen her in. Tapestry was floating upside down, in relation to him. Making eye contact with her made his head hurt, as though some part of his brain was trying to work facial recognition and failing due to their shifting relative perspectives.
“This was part of the plan,” said Malcolm. “We did it. We’re aboard the Jupiter III.”
“The portal closed behind us, Malcolm,” said Tapestry.
“Jade will open it again,” he replied, sounding surer than he felt. “In the meantime, we need to find those spacesuits.”
Anchoring himself against the wall with one hand, Malcolm took a slow survey of his immediate surroundings. The room they were in looked like it was designed as a general meeting space, which made sense. A single LED light was active overheard, though there were at least a half dozen that he could see that were either turned off or nonfunctional.
Tapestry looked worried, and also like she was about to throw up. Malcolm gently pushed himself off the wall and over to her, moving much faster than he’d anticipated. He caught another handhold next to her to steady himself, and then set a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “This is all part of the plan, remember?”
Tapestry took a deep breath.
“You’re right,” she said. “I just… don’t do enclosed spaces so well.”
Malcolm nodded.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “But we’ll be okay. It kind of reminds me of our old headquarters. At least, the ambience of it.”
“Kind of.” She smiled, probably more at the fact that he was trying to cheer her up than anything. Malcolm noticed that her animosity for him seemed to fade as soon as they were under pressure, and felt guilty for appreciating the change.
“Does the article you have contain a map of the ship, by any chance?” asked Malcolm.
Tapestry shook her head. “We’ll have to find the spacesuits on our own. I’m guessing they’d be near the airlock, or possibly the crew quarters.”
Malcolm frowned. “Speaking of which, where is the crew?”
The question hung in the air between them. Malcolm had heard only a few details about the sabotage that had befallen the Jupiter III, just enough to know that the ship wouldn’t be able to complete its mission. But this didn’t match up with what he’d been expecting.
He’d assumed that the astronauts aboard would either still be alive and just stranded on a damaged ship, or they’d all be dead, trapped inside a sarcophagus in space. But as far as he could tell, there was no trace of them whatsoever. No bodies, no blood, not even any signs of struggle.
“Maybe Multi had someone hack the ship,” suggested Tapestry. “Maybe he created a fake emergency, lured them into an airlock, and flushed them into deep space.”
“Maybe,” said Malcolm. “Or maybe he came through a portal, just like we did.”
“We’d see more traces of a violent confrontation if that was the case,” said Tapestry. She scowled, crossing her arms over her breasts. “I have a bad feeling about this.”