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would have, which would have been very difficult to explain.
    Well, here was the thing (so Rick told himself): if Molly was in love with V-One now, Rick had no business complaining about it or getting jealous about it or anything like that. He had avoided Molly. Ignored her. And he’d gotten all . . . let’s say fascinated . . . He’d gotten all fascinated with the beautiful Mariel. And it wasn’t Molly’s fault if Mariel had turned out to be . . .
    What exactly had Mariel turned out to be? That was the question that had been bedeviling Rick ever since he found those glass coffins. Mariel had been so much to him, meant so much to him, but now . . . now that he’d seen what was in the coffins . . .
    Rick had only recently found out about the three MindWarriors who’d been sent into the Realm before him. One of them had died in Kurodar’s weird world. Rick had seen the poor guy’s Realm self rotting in the Spider-Snake tunnels beneath the Scarlet Plain. The other two—so Rick now believed—were Favian and Mariel.
    When Rick had returned from his last Realm immersion, he had gone in search of the truth. He’d used a flash drive his father had given him to override the MindWar compound’s security. He had made his way through the maze-like tunnels of the compound. He had come to a secret room at the compound’s center. And that’s where he had found the two glass coffins, foggy inside with refrigeration mist.
    In one of those coffins, he had discovered the body of ashort, stocky black man. The man was lying in suspended animation, but still breathing. Peering through the mist, Rick recognized him immediately as the RL version of the blue sprite Favian. Which meant that the other coffin . . .
    The other coffin held Mariel. His heart had sped up as he moved to the edge of the box. What would her RL self look like? Would she be as beautiful as she was in the Realm? Would she be older? Younger? Would there be a wedding band on her finger?
    He came to the edge of the coffin and looked inside. His breath caught. His eyes went wide.
    There was nothing there. Nothing except a box. It was a plastic black box. It had blue lights that flashed dimly beneath its shiny surface. It seemed to be some kind of computerized device or something.
    Rick wasn’t sure what it was, but he had to wonder: was that machine the real Mariel? Was that all she was: a computer-generated image of a human being? Had Rick formed an infatuation with an illusion? Had he given up Molly—the real, warm, human Molly—for someone who wasn’t even there?
    Rick turned to Molly now. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, but he felt that he had to say something, something to let her know it was okay if she was in love with Victor One, that whatever happened, he just wanted her to be happy. He wanted to make sure she knew that. Even though it wasn’t true.
    He opened his mouth to speak, but he never found outwhat he was going to say. Before a word could cross his lips, there were two sharp raps on the door.
    Rick looked over his shoulder and saw his father standing there, Jameson hovering just behind him.
    â€œMars wants us,” the Traveler said. “We’ve got to go.”

4. MARS
    THE BEAST WAS huge and hideous. Thrashing tentacles that seemed to reach for miles across the blackness. A single eye glaring from the end of each tentacle. And above them all, a tremendous globular head, its enormous eyes so full of hatred and rage they seemed to burn with a white fire.
    It had been little more than a week since Rick had killed the Octo-Guardian, but already he had forgotten just how horrible a creature it was. Seeing it now again in the 3-D holographic theater in the compound’s underground auditorium made his throat feel tight with disgust. The thing looked as if it were right there in front of him.
    He watched as his own image—a 3-D image of himself closed inside