“We can count on each other,” Winnie replied. She reached out and gently pressed her hand against his arm. “We’re going to do this together. As long as you can promise me that, I’m in.”

Ahmad looked her in the eye for a long moment. And then he nodded. “Together.” The word felt unfamiliar in his mouth.

They awkwardly grasped each other’s hands and turned to face the shimmering doorway left behind by the MasterMind’s screen.

They stepped forward, bracing themselves on each other, and looked downward as the wind lashed at their hair and faces—thankfully, free of sand for the moment. There was a small platform waiting for them. Together, they leapt down.

As the wind whooshed hot and heavy into Ahmad’s ears and head, he thought he heard a familiar voice call to him from the stillness they’d left behind. A voice that said, “Don’t go—”

But it was too late now. Because they were falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Longer than they should have been. But then Ahmad felt his feet settle on solid ground, and looked down.

If New York City could see what was below them, it would wither with envy—because the city they gazed at was gorgeous.

The city from the game rose up with elaborate floating skyscrapers that reminded Ahmad of the pictures he’d seen of Dubai. The occasional faint glimmer of an anchorless oasis darted in and out between the unmoored buildings. Laughter bobbed up to them on the breeze, broken through with snatches of songs. There were tunes Ahmad could recognize from his aunt’s favorite Bollywood films and his father’s classic Bengali music CDs, smuggled back to the States under layers of his uncle’s clothing and homemade sweets.

They leaned back into the doorway to avoid a stray flying rickshaw, skittering forward with no visible driver, and a passenger shrouded in gloom behind the thick curtain within its carriage. Ahmad, though, couldn’t crane his head like Winnie to try and curiously ogle the person within.

Not when he saw it.

“No way,” Ahmad said breathlessly, his eyes drinking in the sight of a gilded, glowing funicular rail. It was right in the place where he had once sketched it out on a stray piece of notebook paper during math class. It was right where it had always been in those dreams.

Just beyond it, at the very center of the digital city, was a minaret, tall and towering, glimmering at its tip with a green flame.

Glowing words bobbed just above it: WELCOME TO PAHELI.

“It is my Paheli,” Ahmad mumbled to himself. “But . . . how?”

“Hey, Ahmad, you okay? The height getting to you?” Winnie placed her hand on Ahmad’s shoulder. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he was swaying back and forth.

“It’s not—it’s just—”

Of course, this would be the moment that his traitor tongue started its stumbling routine again.