"So what happened?" Maurice asked. "It imploded? Or it escaped?"
"We're not really sure," Jane said, after the two of them
exchanged those looks that always implied compressed communication. "About
ten minutes after that experiment of becoming visible to it again, it came to a
place where we could see the shield. It was sort of glowing, just for a
few seconds, but getting stronger as the doppelganger approached it. Again, no
color we could recognize."
"And when it leaped, it got through?" I guessed.
"The creepy thing sort of flashed and this spiderweb of really
ugly, dirty light spread out from the spot where it hit the barrier," Kurt
said. "Then it was gone. If it blew up or it got through the shield, who
knows? We had no trouble crossing the border and we flew up and down along the general
area, looking for signs. No more trail of bruised light, no footprints in the
snow, no humming feeling. Nothing."
"Weren't the kids doing something with the shield?" Pop
asked after several minutes of everyone around the table looking thoughtful.
"I mean, yeah, it's a little embarrassing to realize that this shield
we've talked about around our town for years is real, know what I mean? We've
kind of sidestepped it, almost joking about it, but now to realize that yes,
there is a dividing line, and it's been protecting us, or not protecting us
because it's been sabotaged …" He shook his head. "So if the kids
have been monitoring it, checking out its health or whatever, maybe they felt
something?"
Maybe I was finally tired, but it took me until he finished talking to
realize Pop meant London and Sherwood. And what he was saying made a lot of
sense.
We got a few more surprises when Kurt stepped into my office to get my
tablet, so we could contact our friendly AI's with a screen all of us at the
table could look at. We discovered Sherwood had been pinging me. And hadn't been
able to ping Kurt and Jane.
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