Tim smoothed the line of the Cloak across his chest. "It's part of the game."

"You look like a dork," said Hulk Hogan, but she said it with such a huge glittery smile it was hard to be mad at her.

"Thanks," said Tim.

"Caroline, this is Levitt. He's in my class with Dr. Dade." Caroline nodded in exaggerated recognition. Clearly she'd had a run-in with Dade as well. "I just realized, I don't know your first name."

"Tim."

"Lata." Tim remembered.

Neal piped up. "Tim's my roommate."

"Small fuckin' world," said Caroline. "Listen, Neal here's been talking up his weird room in the wall for two weeks now, so we figured we'd check it out just so he'd shut up about it. You hanging out, or..." She gestured broadly at the Cloak.

"Thanks, but I have a game to win." He held up the MiloBall, as if that would explain everything. "We're in the lead."

"Obviously."

Across the lobby, the east security door opened. Reese stepped out, two blue armbands tied together around the bulk of his right arm. He stopped at the top of the steps and gazed out across the expanse of the lobby at Tim like some ancient megalithic hulk. "You've got something that belongs to me," he called out.

Lata, Caroline, Neal and Malcolm all turned their heads to look at Reese, then back at Tim, like spectators at a tennis match. With Lata and Caroline staring at him, waiting for his next move, Tim felt a surge of bravado. He wasn't exactly Carl Lewis, but he was sure he could outrun Reese. He held up the MiloBall. "Come and get it, then." His audience all whipped their heads back to Reese.

For a moment nothing happened. Then Reese vaulted over the steps with balletic grace and landed on the floor of the lobby in a runner's crouch. He started sprinting toward Tim, moving his 300-plus-pound body at an unbelievable speed.

"Shit," said Tim. Logically he knew there a multitude of options. As long as they were both in the Neutral Zone of the lobby, Reese couldn't touch him or the MiloBall. He could just stay put. Or he could make a break back for the east door and try to disappear while Reese's inertia was still carrying him to the west door. But logic had abandoned Tim. He felt like Indiana Jones trying to steal away with the gold idol, and Reese was the boulder. His body told him one thing: run, or be flattened.

Tim lunged for the security door and tugged on the handle. It rattled in the jamb in protest. "Buzz me in!" he shouted at Ben.

"I told you, I'm neutral—"

"Fucking buzz me in goddamn it" Tim looked over his shoulder. Reese was almost at the west steps. Ben rolled his eyes and reached for the button to unlock the door, just beyond his fingertips.

"Could you guys keep it down?" Fedora Guy was looking at Tim, his goatee twisted in annoyance.

"Shut up," said Lata. She turned to Tim, a half smile on her face. As Reese barreled past her, she reached for his arm. She couldn't hope to stop him physically, but her fingers brushing his arm made him slow, lose his single-minded focus. Both feet on the west steps, he turned to her. "What?" he said.

Lata shrugged.

With a theatrical groan, Ben heaved himself off his stool and pressed the button. The door buzzed and gave way. "I hope you're happy," he said. Tim gave a grateful smile to Lata and dashed through the door, pulling it shut behind him. As he ducked into the stairs to the laundry room, he heard Reese pounding on the glass behind him.

Reese would be through the door and in pursuit in a few seconds. Tim had to pull off the jailbreak as quickly as possible. He slammed through the door at the bottom of the stairs, into the empty laundry room. One of the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling flickered, never quite resolving into a pattern. The door to the gym was at the far end of the room. He heard the faint buzz of the security door opening somewhere above and behind him.

Tim ran for the gym door. Halfway across the laundry room, he nearly tripped on a tennis ball, but he managed to maintain his balance. Heavy feet were pounding down the stairs behind him. Tim reached the gym door just as Reese burst in, his rapid breathing loud enough to drown out the buzzing fluorescent. He may be deceptively fast, but he doesn't have the stamina.

At the back of the gym Roland and Rosa were both pedaling listlessly on stationary bikes. In a stroke of luck, there was no Blue guard. "Jailbreak!" shouted Tim.

"Finally," said Rosa. She jumped off the bike and headed for the door Tim had just entered.

"Not that way." He tagged both of them and steered them toward the stairs up to the far west end of F1T2, and all three hit the stairs at a sprint, spurred on by the sucking gasps of their pursuer.

"You found the MiloBall," said Roland.

"I got the MiloBall," Tim said. "You don't know where their Mausoleum is, do you?"

Roland reached the door at the top of the stairs first. He pushed it open and they all tumbled through onto F1T2. Halfway down the hall ahead of them, at the steps up to F1T1, waited another Blue player, a lanky freshman whose name Tim didn't catch.

"I have an idea," said Roland. The freshman advanced on them. Reese's footfalls, slow but implacable, echoed in the stairwell behind them.

Rosa pointed to her left, down the northern branch of the doglegged F1T2. "Run," she said.

Roland reached for her hand. "You don't have to do this."

Rosa gave his hand a squeeze, then pulled hers away. She pushed her oversized glasses back into place. "Yes I do." The stairwell door flew open, disgorging Reese onto the hall. "Run."

They ran. Tim didn't look back.

"Fourth floor," said Roland. Tim lowered his head to make for the stairs ahead of them, but Roland grabbed his arm. "In here." He opened what looked like a bedroom door and pulled Tim inside.

They were in the tunnels. Tim could barely see anything. The only light came from under the door. Cold air blew from somewhere ahead of him. "This way. Watch out for the Shambling Horror."

"He's up on Third. I don't think he'll be bothering us."

Roland led him into the breeze. "Stacy made the mistake of telling her team where she hid the Mausoleum. I got one of the rookies with the Hoop." After thirty seconds of walking, Roland stopped. He pressed a button on the wall to his left. With a ding, an elevator door opened, and they stepped inside.

Roland pressed the button for the fourth floor. The door closed, and the elevator started to rise. "I don't know how much you know about the fourth floor," he said. "There's a contingent up there. A few seniors. They don't like leaving Wintertree. They definitely don't like us coming up there, running around playing MiloBall. So they like to make things a little difficult for us."

"Difficult?"

"Jut stick with me. I know where the Mausoleum is."

The elevator dinged again, and the door opened onto a warning. Painted on the wall facing the elevator door, in glowing purple letters: GO AWAY. The O was crowned: King Milo. Above Tim's head, a fluorescent black light buzzed.

Roland reached for a doorknob next to the Y. "You ready?" Tim nodded. Roland turned the knob, and they stepped out into the nightmare of the fourth floor.

The entire hall, as far as Tim could see, was hung with white sheets from ceiling to floor, erasing any identifiable landmarks. All of the hall lights were off, and strobe lights affixed to the ceiling flickered crazily, distorting all sense of space and time. All around Tim, thick slabs of decaying bass juddered and shook the walls, enveloping his head in an impenetrable helmet of noise. It sounded like The Fat of the Land played at half speed.

Roland opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out.

"What?"

Roland put his lips to Tim's ear and shouted. "Follow me!" He sounded small and far away, a lost traveler in an unfamiliar land. He proceeded down the hall, into the chaos, Tim at his heels. He made a left onto a new hall, then another left, then a right, then a left again. Every new hall had the same sheets, the same strobe lights, the same music, which had no individual identifiable source. They made another right, then two more lefts. Tim was sure they'd looped back around to where they started, maybe more than once.

Tim stopped Roland and shouted in his ear. "Are you sure you know where it is?" He couldn't hear his own voice.

Roland just nodded. He made another left. Out of the corner of his eye, Tim thought he saw something moving off to his right, but when he looked again, there was nothing there. Just the strobe lights tricking his eyes.

Up ahead, Roland was groping along the sheets on the right-hand wall, looking for an opening. He found one, reached in, and opened a door. A ghostly purple glow leaked into the hall. Roland beckoned for Tim to follow, and he disappeared behind the sheet. With a last look behind him, Tim followed.

They had entered a bathroom. All of the lights in the ceiling panels had been replaced with black lights, and the white doors of the stalls to Tim's left and the white curtains of the showers to his right glowed purple. Ahead of him, on the big plate mirror above the sinks, King Milo glowed as well, somehow 3D. Tim stepped closer and touched the outline of Milo's face. He was drawn in shaving cream.

The music wasn't quite so loud in here. Roland pointed to the third shower from the sinks. "This one."

Tim pulled back the curtain and found, sitting on the damp floor of the shower, a cardboard box about two feet on each side, the edges reinforced with blue duct tape. The Mausoleum.

There was a Polaroid camera inside the box. Tim swapped it for the MiloBall. He pointed the camera at the ball in the box and clicked the shutter. The flash illuminated the shower, and for a split second the real world was visible.

"Let's get down to the auditorium," Roland said. They pushed back through the white sheets into the strobe-lit hall. Tim felt full. There was some hole in him, some want that he hadn't even realized was there, but now it had been fulfilled. It might have been months. Months of a gnawing emptiness that he mistook as the normal state of affairs. What else might he be missing without knowing it? As he walked, he held up the developing Polaroid and watched the image emerge, like a diver rising from the black depths. Tim now felt those crushing depths himself, and he wanted to surface.

Ahead of him, Roland hung a right. Tim shook the Polaroid and followed. Behind them, a white shape detached itself from the wall and inched forward, frame by frame, its movements hidden in the spaces between the light.