Free InterWorld by Neil Gaiman

ran over to Jay, grabbed his arms and dragged him, stumbling and leaning on me, away from the action. I figured that overgrown soap bubble wasn’t going to last long.
    I stopped a good five hundred yards away. Jay sat down hard on the sand. The roars and tremors from the now-unseen monster continued. I could see clouds of dust and occasional rock fragments being hurled into view. It would have been funny except for one other thing I now noticed: a trail of blood, thick as paint and wide as my hand, stretching unbroken from the edge of the chasm back to Jay’s body.
    I gasped and knelt quickly beside him. The silver suit had been pierced through on either side of his body—two brutal punctures on his left side, three on his right, just above his hips. The monster’s teeth had each left holes over an inch in diameter, and Jay’s blood was pumping from them. There was no way to stop it, and I don’t know if it would have doneany good anyway—he’d already lost so much blood.
    Weakly he held up a hand, which I grasped.
    “I’ll get you back to InterWorld,” I said, not knowing what else to do or say. “We’ll go through the In-Between—it won’t take long—I—I’m so sorry—”
    “Save it,” Jay whispered. “It…won’t work. I’m bleeding…like three…stuck pigs. And I think the thing is venomous. You wouldn’t believe…how much it hurts….” His voice was muffled and dull.
    “What can I do?” I asked helplessly.
    “Put my hand on…the sand,” he said. “Got to show you…how to go…the final distance….”
    I put his hand down on the ground. He drew something in spastic, jerking movements in the sand.
    Then he stopped and seemed to be resting. I felt utterly useless.
    “Jay?” I said. “You’ll be fine. Really, you will.” I wasn’t lying. I was saying it, hoping that by saying it I was somehow going to make it so.
    He surprised me by shoving himself up to rest on one elbow—his other hand grabbed my shirtfront and dragged me with surprising strength down until my face was only an inch away from his mask. Once again I looked into the wavering reflection of my own features, grotesquely mirrored in the suit’s surface.
    “Tell…the Old Man…sorry…made him…shortone operative. Tell him…my replacement…gets my highest…recommendation.”
    “I’ll tell him, whoever he is,” I promised. “But will you do me one favor in return?” He feebly cocked his head at a questioning angle.
    “Take off your mask,” I said. “Let me see who you are.”
    He hesitated, then he raised one hand to his face, prodded the suit material just under the chin with a finger. The material covering his head changed from reflective silver to a dull gunmetal gray and sort of shrank back into a ring around his neck.
    I stared. It hadn’t made any difference. The mask was still in place. At least, that was my initial thought, brought on by the shock of seeing Jay’s face.
    It was my own face, of course. But not exactly. Jay looked to be at least five years older than me. There was a splotch of scar tissue across his right cheek, and the lower part of his ear was knuckled with keloid growth as well. But there weren’t nearly enough scars to hide who he was.
    He was me. That was why that voice had been so familiar. It was my voice. Or rather, it was what my voice might sound like in five years.
    I wondered why I had not known all along, and I realized that, on some level, I had. Of course he was me. Cooler and braver and wiser than me. And he’d given his life to save me.
    He looked at me with eyes dulling. “Get…moving…”His whisper was barely audible. “Can’t lose…a single operative now…too dangerous. Tell him…FrostNight…comes….”
    “I will, I promise,” I said. But his eyes had closed. He was unconscious.
    It didn’t matter. A promise was binding, whether Jay heard me make it or not. I had heard me make it, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life trying to justify to