Jack woke up the next morning, groggy with a splitting headache. His back was cramping, so he tried to flop over onto his stomach. Nothing happened. Jack attempted to move again, but everything was numb and heavy as if he were being smothered by a thick blanket. Was he tangled in the sheets?

At first, his mind couldn’t accept what was happening and kept trying to shift a limb, a finger, an eyelid, anything. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of struggle, Jack managed to force his eyes open.

He immediately wished he had left them closed.

His vision was filled with a shower of silent, gray static, the kind that washes over you when you stand up too fast.

He waited for them to clear but the static went on and on. It was a never-ending sheet of dull, grey scribble. The kind that writhes with sickly pastel colors, where your eye tries to focus and can’t quite get a grip on anything solid.

Numb as he was, Jack could tell that he was moving. Not moving himself, but still moving. He felt it first in the pit of his stomach, the swooping sense of a car cresting a hill and speeding on down.

Sensation gradually started to return to his limbs, although, try as he might, Jack still couldn’t move them. He was being pushed through the shifting gray static, squeezed through it, by a steady pressure that crawled along his body. The only sound he could discern was his own heartbeat, thumping so slowly Jack couldn’t understand how he was still conscious. The thud, thud, thud sped up fractionally as time went by as if to keep pace with the fear that filled him.

He was trapped in his own paralyzed body. Trapped in a nightmare world. His mind teetered on the edge of fear, longing to panic and dash itself to pieces against his shifting cage walls.

Fortunately, while Jack’s thought processes were glacial, they did eventually shift and slip into place.

I must be in the portal.

That calmed him somewhat. That meant this hell wouldn’t go on forever. He was just moving from one place to another. Jack wondered if his friends were behind him, but he couldn’t turn to see. All he could do was keep control of his mind, keep it focused on the hope of release.

Eventually, something changed. The rolling pressure stopped and the sense of movement abated. Maybe this was it. Jack hung in limbo, hoping that he was about to be released back into the world... into any world.

A blunt force, about the size of a fist, nuzzled up against his back. Another pushed against his chest. He hardly felt them at first, but the pressure increased rapidly until it was crushing him between the two points. They began to move, and Jack was spun and twisted between them, like a worm rolled between the thumb and forefinger of a giant schoolchild.

Jack tried to push them away and couldn’t move his arms. He tried to run and his legs failed him. He tried to scream and he was unable to even open his mouth. He screamed silently anyway, in his mind, sure that he was about to die.

In the middle of this nightmare, Jack caught a flash of something bright in the dull static. Three figures sped past him. Three blank faces he recognized, even veiled in the gray. Each was still as a statue, frozen in mid-step.

A window blinked open, in the corner of Jack’s unmoving eye, a window filled with glorious color. He strained to see more of it, to see through it, but it was too far out of his fixed view. Each frozen body, Zac and Steve and Zoe, seemed to come to life just before they hit the window. Each of them stepped through.

More than that, he couldn’t see.

The giant fingers rolled him away and back again so that he was facing the window squarely for a few moments. Finally, he could look past the staticky void to the other side. He could see his friends, staring back at him.

No, staring through him. Waiting.

An older man appeared behind his friends. They turned their backs on Jack just as the window winked out of sight.

The giant fingers toyed with him. Jack was still frozen in limbo, perhaps forever. All he could see was static.

Jack wanted to scream, but his lips were sewn shut. He couldn’t move his tongue or take a breath. He couldn’t fill his lungs, and he was dying from it, dying for light and life and for air... when air rushed against his skin and the ground fell on top of him.

As the air hit, right before the ground hit much harder, Jack heard a strange voice whisper, “It's alright, little one. It's alright."

For a long moment, Jack lay still, his mouth open, sucking in great lungfuls of air. Had he actually been dying? Or had it been some kind of weird stasis? Jack had no intention of going back to find out. It had been hideous. Terrible…. Really, really uncomfortable. Right?

The experience was already fading like a dream.

Jack’s reverie was rudely interrupted when Daiki stumbled over him and fell, landing heavily on Jack's small frame. The big suitcase fell on top of them both.

“Ooomf! Get off me!”

“Well get out of the way, you idiot!”

They scrambled out of the path of the open portal, which was eerily silent on this end. Other than the lack of sound, it looked almost the same as the one they stepped through, back on the beach. The same flickering green flames and gray innards, though it wasn't so blinding here. Jack thought inside the portal seemed to writhe and hurriedly looked away.

They were in a small forest clearing. The portal light reflected from the surrounding trees, throwing shifting green shadows everywhere, even in the bright daylight.

“That was horrible.” Jack rubbed his arms, trying to shuck the feel of smothering pressure. The experience had mostly faded, like a nightmare after waking, leaving only an impression of fear.

Daiki shrugged. “It was nothing. Just like stepping through a door.”

Jack was staring incredulously at his blasé friend when the light flickered. Daiki breathed in sharply and Jack snapped his attention back to the portal, expecting to see Zac or Steve emerging from the void. The portal flickered again, but no one appeared.

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“Is it supposed to do that?” Daiki was standing closer to the fiery hoop and he leaned forward, as though he could look into it, although there was no depth to the gray. It was just a flat wall. There was nothing to see.

Daiki reached out his hand to touch the center of the hoop. As his hand approached, the light flickered again. Then it vanished, and the portal along with it.

Making a sound like a strangled cat, Daiki almost lost his balance in his shock. Jack leaped forward to do something, anything, but there was nothing to do.

The after-image of the portal burned in his eyes, overwhelming the gloomy forest surroundings.

“What...” Daiki spun in a slow circle, searching for another portal. “But where are the others?”

“Oh god,” Jack said, his voice breaking as the enormity of what had just happened struck him. “Zac. Steve. Zoe.”

Daiki took a deep, shaking breath. “What should we do?” He stared at Jack. “Well? Do something!”

“I can fix this…” Jack stumbled to the exact spot where the portal had been, but there was nothing there. No scorched soil, no hidden catch, no footprints leading away.

“I can fix this, I can…”

He dug a foot into the forest floor, then dropped to his knees and started scrabbling around, searching, but with no idea what he was looking for. He stared straight up and then all around the clearing, hunting for something. For anything. Any clue.

There was nothing. They were alone, surrounded by nothing but trees.

Jack’s mind was blank. He stuttered but nothing useful came out of his mouth.

“You got us into this Jack…” Daiki screamed at him. “Do something! Save them!”

“I don’t know what to do.” Jack was back on his feet and rushing wildly around the clearing, trying to find something his mind or hands could seize, someway to get back into control, but there was nothing to see. Nothing to grasp. Only trees in every direction. “What should we do?”

“How about we go back in time and warn them not to listen to you?” Daiki’s voice was filled with venom. “How the hell should I know what we should do? They… they can’t be…”

Daiki walked all around the space where the portal had been, where Jack had tossed up leaves and soil in his frantic search. It was a patch of forest floor like any other.

“I- I'm sorry.” Jack’s legs didn't want to hold him anymore, and he sank down in the leaf litter.

“You never freakin' think, that's your problem.” Daiki was usually the cool one, but right now his features were distorted with emotion.

Jack buried his face in his hands. His friends were gone. They could be dead, they could be trapped in limbo, and it was all his fault.

“You just charge off on your little adventures and...”

“Greetings Jack and family members.”

Daiki leaped a foot in the air and Jack started violently, rustling the dead leaves around him. He noted, with the still-rational part of his brain, that the fallen leaves were similar to very dark pine needles. Similar, but not quite the same.

While looking up for the source of the voice it occurred to him that, without the radiant stain of the portal light, all the greens in this forest were actually black. Black leaves as far as he could see.

Mico was crouching on a tree branch, on the edge of the clearing, just above their line of sight. He seemed perfectly at home, gripping the silvery bark with the claws of his feet and the trunk of the tree with one hand. His mechanical wing was outstretched, a bright spot of green in the black and gray forest, poised, ready to wave so that Mico could speak.

“Mico!” Jack felt dizzy with relief. He had never been so happy to see anyone as he was to see that tiny pterosaur.

“Mico, where are the others?” Daiki asked urgently.

“There are no other Micos. There is only Mico.”

“No, Mico, I mean the other- family members. Jack's family members. The portal closed before they could come through.”

Mico cocked his head, his purple eyes close to black in the sparse light.

“Acceptance three and four?”

“Uh... and five.” Daiki turned to Jack as if waiting for him to chime in. Jack swallowed but didn’t say anything. So Daiki continued.

“There are three people missing.”

“Only up to three family members permitted.”

Mico said it without a trace of judgment but Daiki gave Jack a pointed look. It took an effort, but Jack made himself speak.

“Not the time, Daiki.” Jack tried to keep his voice steady. “We're sorry, Mico. Another person came with us. But... we haven't seen any of them since we stepped through the portal.”

Jack had a vague inkling that he was forgetting something. He pushed it out of his mind.

“Do you have the required foodstuffs?”

“Are you kidding me?” Daiki said. “What food? This is no time for food!”

“Jack was asked to provide certain edible items.”

“You're asking about.... what, that junk-food?” Daiki’s eyes flashed and his face twisted with fury. “Our friends are trapped in limbo!”

Daiki lunged forward with his hand outstretched as if he was going to grab the little creature. Mico, however, was perched higher than even Daiki could reach and only peered down at him calmly, not even bothering to shift away. Daiki pounded his fist into the tree instead. He did a double-take after doing so and then poked the trunk with a finger.

Jack, meanwhile, was throwing down his pack.

“It's open! Oh shit, I must have forgotten to close it when I put it on.” Jack distinctly recalled checking to make sure the pack was closed. Maybe he had opened it again after that? He couldn't remember. He couldn't think straight.

“The plastic bag is split open... I don't understand how it could have happened...”

He pulled out the supermarket bag which had been holding the requested candy. The chocolate bars and gummy bears and boiled sweets. All gone. Vanished somewhere in the portal.

One lonely bag of chocolate chips fell out of the big hole in the bottom of the bag. Otherwise, it was empty.

Mico landed beside Jack with a crunch of dead leaves.

“Thank you for the requested items,” he said and held out his tiny, non-metallic hand.

“Mico, you don't understand. It all fell out.”

Jack heard Daiki's exasperated sigh and gritted his teeth. Oh like you’re Mr. Perfect, Daiki.

He was immediately stabbed by remorse at the thought. At least Daiki didn’t lose his friends in limbo.

“It must be in the portal somewhere. If you open the portal back up, I… I could go look for it.”

Jack was sick to his stomach even thinking of doing going back into the portal, but if it meant finding his friends he would do it. The thought of them, paralyzed in that hell, being pummeled by an over-excited, creepy gray blanket was killing him.

What was it he’d forgotten? It felt important.

“Thank you for the requested items,” Mico said again, jiggling his claws expectantly.

Jack gave up and put the large bag of chocolate chips near the tiny hand. Mico grabbed it and bounded with ease to the nearest tree, dragging the bag- which had to weigh more than twice what he did- behind him. He used his metallic claws to scale the tree, which Jack noticed was covered in a thick coat of silvery... fur. In fact, all the trees were covered in fur. If Jack hadn’t been so incredibly anxious, he knew he’d be fascinated.

Mico paused when he reached the first branch, well above the two humans, and glanced down.

“Please remain here.” He leaped to another tree and disappeared into the gloom.