Down into the Nether Read online

  “The news is reporting that Herobrine’s message is part of some virus or prank that took over everyone’s devices,” Maison said. “They’re trying to blame different groups and governments. No one is going to believe us when we tell them who’s really behind it. Everyone else thinks Minecraft is just a game.”

  “Has he done anything else besides sending the message to everyone?” Alex asked.

  “No more messages since the one this morning, but he’s definitely letting his presence be known,” Yancy said. “People are coming home to find their houses ransacked and their possessions stolen. Crime is up. People are scared and angry.”

  “Was there anything else he said on the message this morning?” Alex wanted to know.

  There was another long silence. “Yes,” Yancy said finally. “He said, ‘It won’t be much longer before my armies and I advance on you. And when your world is destroyed, you can thank Stevie for me.’”

  CHAPTER 8

  THAT’S WHEN I ABOUT LOST IT. “NO!” I CRIED, covering the sides of my face with my hands. “No, this can’t be! I destroyed the portal to protect you!”

  Overcome with horror, I turned and ran from Alex. She shouted out to me and I ignored her, racing all the way to the house. Herobrine’s sign remained propped out front, taunting me. When I got close enough to read the words, I let out a choked cry.

  STEVIE, YOU ARE THE TRAITOR FROM THE PROPHECIES.

  “No!” I cried. “No!”

  Alex ran up behind me, holding the music disc close. I saw her eyes scan over the sign, reading it. “I—I don’t understand,” she said, suddenly not so take-charge anymore.

  I whirled on her. “Of course you do! I betrayed everyone because I trapped Herobrine in their world! He can do whatever he wants with them now. I’m the terrible traitor the prophecies all talked about! It was me all along!”

  By yelling like that, I was taking out my anger and horror on her, even though she didn’t have anything to do with the choices I’d made. I’d been the one who destroyed the portal without discussing it with anybody else. I had destroyed it because I was so certain it was the only thing I could do to save the others. Me, me, me, a whole world was about to be destroyed because of me!

  I could hear Yancy talking through the music-disc phone, asking Alex what was going on. In a shaky voice, she told him what the sign said.

  Maison’s voice got on the music-disc. “Stevie, don’t believe it!” she said. “Herobrine is just calling you the traitor to upset you. That’s what he does!”

  “But he’s right!” I said. “All this time, I was so sure Yancy was going to betray us. I … I never thought … I was really trying to help….” I trailed off pathetically. There was nothing more to say.

  “Stevie!” Yancy said. “Listen to me, man. Maison’s right. You can’t beat yourself up over this. All you have to do is make a new portal and we can all get together again.”

  Alex seemed to brighten up at this idea, but I knew it wasn’t that easy.

  “I can’t remake the portal,” I said. “When Maison made it, she used stones she’d never seen before. I’d never seen those stones before either, so how would I know where to find them?”

  “Yancy, you made a new portal,” Maison said, “when you hacked my computer. Make a new one now!”

  I heard clanking noises, which I guessed were computer keys. Then I heard everyone on the other side gasp.

  “What is it?” Alex demanded. I stared intensely at the music disc as if it would let me see what was going on over there.

  For an answer, we heard Herobrine’s voice.

  CHAPTER 9

  “THERE’S NO NEED TO BE ALARMED,” HEROBRINE purred evilly.

  “He’s on my computer screen again!” Maison exclaimed. Alex and I hushed, not wanting Herobrine to know we were listening in.

  “Oh, I’m on more than your screen,” Herobrine said. “I’m everywhere now. Were you impressed this morning when I spoke to people in all different languages? That was nothing. When I hacked everyone’s system, I not only learned their language of choice, I learned a lot of unpleasant and embarrassing things about them that I’m all too ready to share with the world. Thanks to me, everyone’s personal fears and embarrassments will become common knowledge as I spread it throughout the Internet. That’s another form of what you call cyberbullying, right?”

  “You’re lying,” Yancy said. “No one is powerful enough to hack everyone.”

  “Yancy, oh, Yancy,” Herobrine said. “I enjoyed hacking your email. Teenagers do like to write angsty, diary-like stuff, don’t they? I found out that you’d been emailing some pretty private, personal things to your therapist. It’s very good reading. Remember that time you were in fifth grade and all the kids egged you and chased you home after school?”

  “You had no right to read that!” Yancy yelled. “That’s just for my therapist and me!”

  “Seems you were bullied pretty badly before you decided to act like a bully yourself,” Herobrine said. “That’s often how it goes, though, isn’t it? Bullies make bullies. You made me.”

  “I didn’t know kids did that to you,” Destiny said in a hushed, shocked tone.

  “It was because he was too smart,” Herobrine mocked. “So good at math and science and computers, so bad at being sociable. Apparently in your world that’s a bad thing! The other students were envious of his good grades and took it out on him. He used to come home crying almost every night in elementary school and would hide his cuts and bruises from his parents. He felt like the most helpless person in the world, until he discovered he could bully online, where it didn’t matter if he wasn’t sociable or wasn’t strong enough to beat up others. It was the perfect platform for him to take his anger out on the world.”

  “I’m not like that anymore,” Yancy said through gritted teeth.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Herobrine said. “I took every negative and embarrassing piece of personal writing of yours and published it online. Now the whole world knows. Look!”

  “No!” Yancy said.

  Alex and I stared at each other, alarmed. We couldn’t see what was happening, but we had a feeling Herobrine was showing the websites that held Yancy’s darkest and most private secrets.

  “I have to take those things down!” Yancy said, and I heard the clanking of more keys.

  “It’s gone ‘viral,’ as you like to say,” Herobrine said. “Millions of people must be reading it by now. Just think of this as your reward for betraying me at the temple. And speaking of traitors….”

  Herobrine’s voice sounded as if he were grinning. “Stevie!” he called. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re listening in.”

  What should I do? I thought. Try to pretend I wasn’t listening? Speak up and confront him?

  Before I could figure out what to do, Herobrine went on, “Stevie, thank you so much for aiding and abetting me in my takeover of Earth. I couldn’t have done it without you and that portal! I especially love that this happens after you’ve been acting so self-righteous and so suspicious of Yancy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maison said. “Stevie isn’t here, and he can’t hear you.” I knew she was trying to protect me.

  Herobrine chuckled. “I find that highly unlikely,” he replied. “But if you’re telling the truth, I have a message for you to pass on to our dear old Stevie. Tell him as much as I enjoyed kidnapping his cat, it’s no skin off my back that Ossie is safe with him again. Tell Stevie I captured a much bigger prize this time.”

  It was then the last piece of the puzzle fell together.

  “Dad!” I cried out.

  CHAPTER 10

  “STEVIE, YOU ARE LISTENING!” HEROBRINE gushed. “Yes, Stevie, it turns out that your father might be the most feared mob slayer around, but capturing him was easy. He’s here on Earth with me, and you can come see the two of us the next time you go through the portal.”

  He stopped and laughed. “Oh, that’s right—you d
estroyed the portal and can never return to Earth again. Well, I’ll have to say ‘good-bye’ to your dad for you, since you were never able to.”

  “Don’t hurt my dad!” I shouted. “Give him back to us! Herobrine! Herobrine!”

  But there were no more words from him.

  Yancy exclaimed, “The computer crashed!” And then there was chaos on the other end.

  “What crashed into them?” Alex asked worriedly. She didn’t understand the slang from the other world. “Are they hurt?”

  Destiny got on the music-disc-phone. “Herobrine disappeared from the screen and then the whole computer stopped working. Yancy’s trying to turn it back on.”

  Several tense minutes passed. I’d never felt more useless in my life.

  “It’s not working!” Yancy said. “I’m calling tech support.”

  Maison got on the music-disc-phone then. “Oh, Stevie!” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I was panting and trying not to be sick. Alex saw I was in no state to talk and quickly replied for me, “He’ll be fine. What about you?”

  I heard Yancy in the background, yelling, “What do you mean, you can’t help us? Guys, tech support is saying that everyone’s computers just crashed and they’re swamped!”

  “Everyone’s computers?” Destiny breathed. “Then there’s no way we can make a new portal here.”

  Overwhelmed, I grabbed the music disc right out of Alex’s hands. “Maison, Maison!” I called. “I’m so sorry! Please, you’ve got to help my dad!”

  “We’ll do everything we can, Stevie,” Maison said. “But this is a big world and Herobrine could be anywhere. And without any computers to do research on where he is—”

  Yancy spoke to me then, serious and straightforward. “Stevie,” he said, saying my name like a general says an order. “It’s up to you. You and Alex have to find a way to make a new portal to our world. It’s our only hope now.”

  Alex looked deep in thought, her hand to her face. I was mad at my helplessness and the fact that Yancy thought I could do something about building a new portal.

  “Don’t you get it?” I shrieked. “I can’t make a new portal! I don’t know where to find those stones. I’ve never seen stones like that before or since, and neither has my dad, and he knows everything there is to know about the Overworld.”

  Alex came out of her thoughts slowly and spoke, “I’ve seen those stones before.”

  I turned to look at her. “You have? Where?”

  “A long time ago,” she said. “I came across those stones during one of my trips to the Nether.”

  “The Nether!” Maison said. “That’s it! You and Alex have to journey down into the Nether and find those stones again!”

  “It’s not that easy,” Alex said. “It’s not like I have a map, and the Nether is always dark. That means there are hostile mobs no matter what time of day it is. Even if we find the stones, there’s no guarantee we’ll find our way back, or even make it back without being overrun by mobs.”

  “So you can’t do it?” Destiny asked.

  For the first time in a long time, Alex smiled. “Oh, I never said that,” she said. “I’m always up for a good challenge.”

  “Then hurry!” Maison said. “Time is running out!”

  CHAPTER 11

  ALEX GRABBED ME BY THE SHIRT AND YANKED ME over to the shed where Dad kept all his supplies. My dad was a big believer in preparedness, so his shed was chock-full of useful things he’d collected over the years.

  “Alex, what are you doing?” I asked, stunned.

  She was already hauling out Dad’s supply of obsidian. “I’m making a portal to the Nether. What does it look like?”

  “I—but—do you even remember where you saw those stones in the Nether?” I asked.

  I could tell the others had already made up their minds that we had to go to the Nether, and it was our only option. But the Nether was so unsafe. This underground world was dark and crammed with lava and monsters, and you could only get to it—or get out of it—through special portals. I’d barely ever been to the Nether, and the only time I had gone was with Dad. I wasn’t allowed to go without an adult. I’d done things like stop a zombie takeover of the Overworld, but Dad still said that going into the Nether by myself was out of my league.

  It was incredibly easy to get lost and not find your way back to the portal. We could be trapped there forever. Cliffs jutted out over fiery depths and lakes of lava. Half-broken bridges gave people the impression they could cross from one rock to the next … only for them to fall down, down, down below and never be seen again.

  And then there were the mobs. Go into the Nether, and you might find yourself face-to-face with a ghast, a white flying creature with a box body and tentacles. It looked kind of like a squid, only it could fly and it would hurl fireballs at you. And water changed to steam in the Nether, so if you got hit by the fire, you were out of luck.

  Unfortunately, ghasts were only the beginning. There were also blazes, which were little fiery yellow mobs that could burn with fire without getting hurt. They could hurl three fireballs at a time. Magma cubes looked like little square heads that hopped around, which might be pretty funny until they transformed into multiple smaller magma cubes and all attacked you. And don’t forget the wither skeletons. These were kind of like the skeletons we had in the Overworld, but they were striped black and carried vicious-looking swords.

  There was still the Wither, a giant mob boss with three heads that could fly, spinning over you while it attacked. It shot blue skulls at you, and those things were so dangerous they could destroy something as solid as obsidian.

  Normally if you got hurt you needed food and rest. That was basically impossible in the Nether. If you made a bed to rest, that bed would just explode on you. Even beds here were dangerous.

  In other words, take whatever is bad and scary about the Overworld at night, multiply it by like ten times, and then you have the Nether. Plus eternal darkness. Plus lava everywhere. There were endless reasons why I was scared of the Nether.

  For some reason, none of this seemed to be bothering Alex. “No, I don’t remember where exactly I saw those stones,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “So we’re just going to go traipsing around the Nether, which is a totally enormous territory, and just hope we stumble across the stones in time to stop Herobrine?” I asked, annoyed. It sounded ridiculous! “Besides, even if we find those stones, who knows if it’ll even work to make a new portal? Maybe Maison has to make it from her computer and it can’t be built on our end. It’s not like we’ve ever made one of those portals before!”

  Alex was in the middle of stacking the obsidian blocks together to make the portal, and now she turned and glared at me, hands on hips. “I know it’s crazy,” she said. “But the point is: can you think of anything less crazy?”

  “Yes!” I said. “Anything else!”

  Alex stepped up and got into my face. “I don’t think you understand the situation, Stevie,” she said. “At least this is doing something. How else are we going to save your friends and your dad unless we find a way back to their world?”

  Bringing up Dad was an especially low blow, because there was no way I could argue with that. And I couldn’t come up with any other better ideas. I started to stammer nonsense and Alex said, “All right then.”

  She went back to putting the portal together while I hovered anxiously over her. First she put the black obsidian blocks in a frame shape, making sure there was enough space in the very middle for us to get through. For the last bit, Alex got out some flint and steel to make the fire in the middle. That’s what made the portal come alive. The center of the portal burned bright purple with more purple flakes trembling in the fog. It sure was a pretty portal for something that would take you to such a nasty place.

  I called into the music disc, “Maison, can you think of any other ways we can get back to your world? Has Yancy fixed the computer yet?”

  There was a moment
of silence. I didn’t think anything of it until there was another moment of silence, and then another. I shook the music disc.

  “MAISON!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. When there was still no response from Maison, my stomach plummeted to my feet.

  Alex snatched the music disc from me. “Is it broken?” she asked, shaking it as well.

  I had a much worse first thought: What if the silence meant Herobrine had already gotten them?

  A strain of music came out of nowhere. For a moment I thought it was from the music disc in Alex’s hands, but then I realized it was coming from her toolkit. Alex snatched the toolkit up and pulled out the third music disc we’d found. The music disc we’d used as a phone was as silent as could be, but this music disc was spinning without a jukebox and releasing those music notes.

  Alex and I stared at each other over the music disc, hopeful and startled and daring to believe. Was it going to be another prophecy?

  The music creaked out, spooky and dark and sinister like the Nether. Then a harsh voice began to speak, the words lined up almost as if they were poetry.

  “The king of mobs has escaped the Overworld.

  He eyes the prize of another world.

  The stones for a new portal

  call out from their home in the Nether.

  A traitor by mistake can be a

  hero by his actions.

  It is only by confronting the darkness

  that Herobrine can finally be defeated.”

  That’s when the music disc began to glow. One long stripe of light flashed out from it, pointing to the Nether portal—pointing to our destiny and the destiny of the two worlds.

  CHAPTER 12

  “DO YOU THINK IT WILL LEAD US TO THE STONES?” I asked in a whisper. I could barely say the idea out loud because it was so explosive.

  Alex shook her head, and I swore I saw a little smile. “I’ve never heard of music discs doing that,” she said. “But I’ve never heard of them working as prophecies, either. I say we follow this disc and see where it leads us.”