Eternity's Wheel Read Online Free

Dimas stood, leaving me in momentary confusion. What burn on my side? I shifted, finding the rough texture along my skin, and the pain that came with it. Right . . . It was from J/O’s laser. That was something I’d left out of the retelling. My teammate J/O, a cyborg version of me, had been turned against us by a Binary virus. Acacia had saved me from him, too, left him wandering through time looking for us. . . .
    â€œHe wasn’t on the ship,” I said suddenly, as Mr. Dimas sat back down across from me.
    â€œWho wasn’t?”
    â€œJ/O. A teammate of mine, he’s a cyborg me,” I explained, only half listening to what I was saying. My brain was moving too fast for my mouth. “He’d been infected by a Binary virus and was working with Joaquim. He attacked me—that’s where I got the burn on my side from his laser cannon—but Acacia threw us through time and he couldn’t find us . . . but that means he wasn’t on Base Town when they had to punch it, he must have been left behind. He’s still out there somewhere—” I stopped, not wanting to alarm him, but the sentence continued on in my head. He could come find me. He could come here.
    â€œI have to go,” I said, but Mr. Dimas was shaking his head.
    â€œNot with your injuries,” he said firmly, putting a hand on my fractured shoulder when I tried to stand up. I winced,and he gave me a look that said see? “You can barely walk, and what little medical attention I’ve given you won’t help much unless you sleep and heal .”
    â€œYou might be in danger,” I tried.
    â€œYou are in danger, and you’re not going to get out of it without dying unless you rest, not to mention eat.” He fixed me with a stern look over the top of his glasses, the look I remembered from sitting in his classroom.
    My stomach gave a loud growl just then, as if to punctuate his sentence. I glanced down, betrayed, and felt heat rise to my face. “Okay,” I said quietly, making the decision to leave as soon as I’d eaten. I wasn’t going to put him in more danger than I already had, and besides, I had things to do. My army wasn’t going to gather itself.
    â€œGood,” he said, straightening up. “Now. Important question: What do you want to eat?”
    â€œI—” I stopped, it suddenly occurring to me that I could have anything I wanted. InterWorld kept us fed, of course; protein bars and enhanced vitamin water, very nutritious and not at all delicious. But I was home now, back on my world, and I could have anything. “Pizza,” I said. I know it’s cliché, but cut me some slack—I’m a teenage boy. What would you have asked for? Broccoli?
    â€œI’m not surprised. What do you want on it?”
    â€œPepperoni and broccoli,” I said. Shut up, it actually sounded good.
    Mr. Dimas left to get the pizza (“I’ll go pick it up,” he’d said, “and you’d better be here when I get back, Joseph. I mean it.”) and I relaxed back on the couch again, seriously considering passing out. Instead I forced my mind into some semblance of meditation. It was the best I could do right then; I was still exhausted and hurting and worried, and every passing car or creak of the house settling made me jump.
    Even with all my injuries and fears and concerns, I couldn’t stop thinking about Acacia. I hadn’t gotten to that part of the story in my retelling to Mr. Dimas, of how we’d been standing together watching the HEX ship stalk its InterWorld prey, and Lord Dogknife had attacked from out of nowhere. . . . She hadn’t even seen him coming. I didn’t know what he’d done to her, except that the second time he’d knocked her down, his claws were slick with blood and she hadn’t gotten back up.
    I remembered her expression just before we’d been attacked. Most of my memories of her were