by James Riley
“Beth!” Kiel shouted, and jumped toward her, but the flying robot slammed him in the chest. He crashed back into the lab, breaking the computer they’d been using earlier as well as plenty of glass beakers.
As Kiel collapsed in the lab, Bethany’s entire being lit up with rage. “Don’t you touch him!” she shouted, mirrorlike armor growing out all over her as she stood. The remaining robots shot at her with their lasers, but the beams just reflected off in various directions as they hit.
“DETECTING FURTHER NONSCIENTIFIC BEHAVIOR,” the flying robot said as she strode toward it, her body growing larger with each step. “NOT DETECTING MAGICAL ENERGY. UNSURE OF—”
“Detect this!” Bethany roared, bringing a now-massive fist down on the robot’s head. The force of her blow almost crushed it completely, and she turned to the rest of the robots, her arms spread wide. “Who’s next?”
The robots looked up at her with confusion, or maybe even fear, as Bethany continued to grow, now taller than the massive troll-like robot had been. Her head pushed up against the hallway’s ceiling, and she grunted in annoyance, shoving upward with her shoulders, crumbling the floor above her with a snarl. Rubble and lab equipment came tumbling down onto the robots. They tried to escape, but Bethany just reached out and gathered the rest of them in her giant hands.
“You do not attack my friends!” she shouted, her voice echoing through the collapsing building as she grew through more floors above them. She clapped her two hands together and enjoyed the satisfying crunch, then opened her hands and let the metal parts fall back to the ground, now at least thirty or forty feet below her.
Kiel slowly emerged from the laboratory, holding his hand over his head as light shone down from outside. “Beth?” he shouted up at her. “I’m okay! You can turn back to normal!”
She looked down at him and released a huge sigh of relief, which almost knocked him off his feet. “Looks like the great Kiel Gnomenfoot needed someone else to be the hero for a change, huh?”
He cringed at the force of her voice, then nodded. “I’ve got zero problems with that. Just come down here.”
“Why?” she asked. “The view is great up here. And I can make sure there aren’t any more Science Police.”
But as she looked around, she realized there wasn’t much of anything anymore. The white wall of nothingness had moved in closer, having now reached the gelatin-like city square. The rest of the city had been enveloped. The multiplex had basically collapsed around her, leaving just the space she was standing in free of rubble. She glanced back down at Kiel and wondered what she’d been thinking. He could have been hurt! She had to be more responsible! And all of this while the city was disappearing around them and her father was in danger!
Wait a second. No, that was how the old version of Bethany thought. This one had just saved Kiel, and everything had worked out okay. And why worry about her father when she’d obviously find a way to fix things? That way just made her crazy.
“I think you got them all!” Kiel yelled up to her, cupping his hands around his mouth. “But also, you seem to still be getting bigger. Can you at least stop growing?”
She smirked down at him, then leaned over and picked him up by his cape.
“Hey!” Kiel shouted, twisting around in the wind as more of the science center came down around them. “Are you sure this is safe?”
She shook him a few times. “Do you really think I don’t know what I’m doing, Kiel Gnomenfoot?” She lifted him up to her eye level. “I can’t believe you said you’d handle them. You must be so embarrassed right now.”
He slowly spun around at the ends of her fingers, trying to turn himself by kicking or waving every so often. “You know, we could talk about this back down on the ground?”
“Oh, I’m very comfortable,” she said, jiggling him again.
“That’s not helping!” he shouted. “How are you doing this, anyway?”
“I told you, Charm gave me superpowers,” she told him. “I’ve got the ability to turn into anything inanimate.”
“Oh, really? Because you seem pretty animate to me!” he said, still twirling around.
She paused, staring at him. Yes, he was being annoying, but he did have a point. Just like the superstrength, she shouldn’t have been able to grow to giant size or create the mirrored armor.
So how exactly was she doing this?
CHAPTER 17
Dr. Verity leaned over and unlocked Owen’s straps, an evil-looking ray gun in one hand. “Looks like we’re going to need to talk, just you and me, up in my laboratory. I wouldn’t try to escape if I were you. After all, I can vaporize you without a second thought.” He paused, considering it as he tapped the ray gun against Owen’s forehead. “Sometimes without even a first thought. Instinct, you know.”
At the touch of the ray gun, Owen’s imagination flooded back into his head. “But . . . but how did you get here?” Owen asked, not able to stop himself as a surge of curiosity filled him from out nowhere. “You shouldn’t be here. How did you cross over to this world? I thought all the portals were gone. Did you find another way? I bet I can think of some . . .”
The questions seemed to confuse the scientist, and he stood back up. As soon as he did, Owen’s imagination disappeared, and he started feeling much less curious and a lot more terrified. “You know my name but don’t know how I got here?” Dr. Verity asked, frowning. “Now, that might be even more unexpected. How do you know me?” He peered at Owen, bending down so they were just inches apart. “I really haven’t seen your face before.” He stood back up, biting his lip. “Quite a mystery, my friend.”
Owen glanced at the nearest door, trying to think of how serious Dr. Verity’s threat of vaporization had been. He slowly lifted a hand, only to have the ray gun barrel pushed into his forehead hard enough to leave an imprint. “Ah-ah, you don’t move until I say so,” the scientist told him.
Again, a flurry of ideas filled Owen’s brain at the touch of the fictional ray gun. “We’ve never met,” Owen said quickly, his mind racing. “I just had nightmares of you after reading the Kiel Gnomenfoot books!”
Dr. Verity’s eyes widened with rage at Kiel’s name, and the ray gun pushed harder into Owen’s skull. “I’d watch your language around me, child,” he said. “Saying that name could give you quite a headache.” He left the ray gun in place for another moment, then pulled it away, and Owen took in a deep breath in relief, only to immediately freeze as the ray gun abruptly pushed into his head again.
“Now, wait a minute,” Dr. Verity told him, staring him right in the face from just inches away. The doctor was so close, Owen was almost overpowered by his breath, a mix of garlic and death. “The machine doesn’t take nightmares. It only uses memories you’ve experienced, and dreams aren’t stored in the same cortex in your brain. You couldn’t have seen me in it if you’d never met me. Try again.”
Owen’s mind raced with possibilities, and part of him was surprised by how clearly he was thinking with his imagination back. It wasn’t just having more ideas. It was like he could think around problems and see them from multiple sides. Right now, he needed a story to tell Dr. Verity, but not just any story. It had to be something the fictional scientist would believe too.
“Um, I saw the movies about you and, um, he-who-must-not-be-named—”
“Now you’re just insulting both of us,” Dr. Verity said, his finger twitching on the ray gun. Owen scrunched his eyes closed, hoping getting vaporized didn’t hurt as much as being eaten by a dinosaur. Then something beeped on Dr. Verity’s wrist, and Owen’s eyes flew open. The doctor glanced down in irritation, then looked curious for a moment. He ran his wrist over Owen’s chest and paused.
“Interesting readings,” the scientist said, putting his ear against Owen’s ribs and tapping them with the ray gun. “See, most of you reads as a native to this reality. But not all of you. In fact, there’s a specific part of you that shows as coming from Quanterium. Now, how is that possible?”
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Owen opened his mouth without knowing what to say, hoping that something brilliant might fall out, but before he could speak, Dr. Verity pushed his head in close again. “You wouldn’t be here as a spy for the Quanterians still out there, would you?” He tapped Owen’s chest. “And what is this, some sort of tracer? A weapon that they’ll use once I’m in range?” He gave Owen a disgusted look. “As if you or those idiots could ever harm me. Either way, it’s a waste of good science. Still, I can use it. Come along, and we’ll figure out this mystery together.” He clapped his hands, then moved toward the door opposite the one Owen had come in.
His imagination disappearing left Owen feeling more drained than he remembered. Was this what life was like without it all the time, and he just never noticed? Through the haze, he did realize one thing: He needed to escape, and with Dr. Verity’s back to him, this seemed like a pretty logical time to try.
While the scientist focused on a tablet for a moment, Owen counted to three, then leaped off the dentist chair, sprinting for the exit. His hand reached the door just as a ray bolt sliced through the air inches from his ear.
“Are you too backward to understand simple commands?” the scientist asked, not even turning around, in spite of the fact that the ray gun still pointed directly at his head. “I said come along. This is your last warning.”
Owen swallowed hard, then turned and followed Dr. Verity out the other door. There, he gasped, realizing he recognized where he was for the first time. A long spiral staircase led both up and down, and solid wooden doors dotted either side of the hall in both directions. Many of them had intense-looking keypad locks on them now, which was new from the last time he’d been here.
This was the Magister’s tower, the one in Jonathan Porterhouse’s yard that he and Kara had seen before they were tested. That meant that all the guards and force fields were protecting Dr. Verity. But were they keeping him in . . . or others out?
“Chop-chop!” the doctor yelled, and started climbing the stairs two by two. Owen moved to follow, passing by rooms where magical creatures and deadly experiments had once been kept. Now, though, Owen could hear humming machinery, and odd bursts of light shone from beneath the cracks of many of the doorways.
“I wiped this place clean of all its filthy magic, of course,” Dr. Verity was saying from a dozen stairs up, the ray gun still aimed right between Owen’s eyes. “Truly disgusting. Why your world let it fester here for so long, I’ll never know. But once I took over, I turned it into a sort of monument to all that is good and scientific.” He glanced back down with an evil grin. “Plus, I know it’ll just kill the Magister when he finds out.”
When he finds out? That was an odd way to put it. Could Dr. Verity have a way back to the fictional world?
A thought hit Owen out of the blue, and he almost tripped on a step. Either his imagination wasn’t fully gone, or his brain wasn’t as far gone as he thought, because Owen realized that if Dr. Verity could get back to the fictional world . . . maybe he, Kara, and Bethany could get there too! If they could find more of their friends, they might actually have a chance to beat Nobody.
Except his older self had told him that was exactly what would happen. Owen and his friends would fight their way to Nobody, but one by one, he’d lose his friends along the way, leaving Owen to face the fictional monster alone.
“Are you seriously just standing there?” Dr. Verity shouted down from the stairs above Owen, sounding deeply pained. “You’re not making a great case for keeping you alive, you know. You’d be just as easy to carry up here as a corpse.”
“Sorry!” Owen said, then quickly followed Dr. Verity the rest of the way up, making sure not to get lost in thought along the way. Knowing that the scientist knew of a way back to the fictional world changed everything. Now he couldn’t just run away. First, he needed more information. And that meant keeping Dr. Verity as close as possible, just so he could think clearly with his imagination intact.
They reached the top of the tower, where a now-metal door was covered in keypads, handprint identifiers, and even retina scanners. As Dr. Verity typed in numbers on a variety of the pads, the scanners all covered him from head to toe, running laser beams over his face, eyes, and hands. Finally, a voice said, “Welcome, Your Eminence,” and the door slid away, revealing what used to be the Magister’s office.
Instead of a cozy library filled with magic, though, everything was now covered in shiny metal, with lab equipment buzzing and beeping all over the place. Science Police robots, the foot soldiers of Dr. Verity that had terrorized Magisteria during the war, stood at attention around the enormous room, while various experiments bubbled or made eerie noises on almost every available surface. Everything looked like it was about to explode or rupture or suck in all space and time at the slightest touch, so Owen made sure to keep his hands to himself as he followed Dr. Verity inside.
“All aboard,” the scientist said, slapping the only empty spot in the lab, a long metal table covered in white paper.
Owen lay back on the table, trying to stay calm by taking deep breaths. Whatever the evil scientist had planned wasn’t going to be good, so he was going to have to pick his moment incredibly carefully if he had any chance of escaping.
Dr. Verity began fiddling with various machines across the room, and several beams of light passed over Owen’s chest. Dr. Verity frowned, then came closer to the table. Owen stopped breathing, wondering if he’d have a chance to attack, but the scientist passed right by him and knocked on the head of one of the robots.
“You, and your friend there!” Dr. Verity said to the Science Police robot. “Come hold this kid down. We’re going to do some surgery.”
Owen’s eyes widened. Did he say surgery? That wasn’t part of the plan to get back to the fictional world!
The two Science Police stepped out of their lineup and grabbed Owen’s arms. He struggled against them, but they barely seemed to notice as they strapped him down. A moment later, he was trapped once more.
Only this time, instead of his being interrogated or brainwashed, Dr. Verity planned to cut him open.
“What are you going to do?” Owen shouted, struggling with all of his strength, but the straps were too strong. Even so, the Science Police robots bent down to hold him in place, cutting off all movement.
Dr. Verity rolled his eyes. “Why do I even talk if no one listens? I told you, I’m going to pull out whatever technology is inside you, so I can figure out where it came from, which will probably be the Quanterians who haven’t been rounded up. Sure, they’re a great scapegoat for the nonfictionals, but I’m getting bored with controlling a population through fear. Gets old after a while, you know? I need the Quanterians for my brainwashed army anyway.” He leaned in close. “Now hold still while I knock you out. Trust me, this is going to hurt. A lot.”
The doctor pushed something against his arm, and Owen felt a strange, wet mist touch his skin. Immense pain flashed through his body from his arm outward, growing so intense that he quickly, mercifully passed out.
CHAPTER 18
Bethany gently set Kiel down on top of the science center rubble, then brought her newly enormous hands close to her face to stare at them.
How could she have done this? She’d definitely been getting better at using her inanimate superpowers during her training; her father had made sure of that, running her through drill after drill, changing out just her hands or feet for inanimate objects, switching on the fly. But changing between a bouncing ball or a statue was still incredibly different from turning herself into a giant or giving herself superstrength.
“Maybe it has something to do with Quanterium?” Kiel shouted up from below. “Maybe whatever Charm’s machines did to the planet is changing your powers, too.”
She considered this for a moment, then shook her head. “I was able to do something like this back in Jupiter City, too,” she told him, poking her gigantic arms. “Maybe I should just turn back.”
Kiel nodded an
d moved away to give her some room. Bethany closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. It had all happened so fast during the battle against the robots, but whatever she’d done, it hadn’t really felt like using her superpowers did . . . or jumping in and out of books, for that matter. This seemed different somehow.
“Are you changing yet?” Kiel asked. “Because nothing’s happening.”
She opened her eyes long enough to stick out her tongue at him. “Shh. I’m thinking.”
“I have faith in you, Beth,” he shouted. “You’ve got this!”
She smiled briefly, then turned away from him, not needing the distraction. This shouldn’t be that hard, honestly. She’d done it once . . . but what had she actually done? She retraced the steps in her mind. Both times she’d used this new power, she’d been frustrated or in pain, and just sort of . . . changed. It was almost like a subconscious desire more than anything.
She tried picturing herself back as a normal-sized Twilight Girl, like she did when using her superpowers, then opened her eyes and cursed. Still a giant. Just to experiment, she next tried using her superpowers to turn into a tiny bouncing ball again, and that worked, sending her plunging down toward the science center. She switched herself back to human in midfall, only to find herself forty feet tall still.
“This is annoying!” she shouted, punching the ground in frustration. The entire science center shook at the impact, making Kiel almost fall over, though he still looked supportive. What was this new power? Admittedly, it was awesome, but the whole thing was useless if she couldn’t control it!
This kind of thing had never happened before she’d been separated from her old self. Had her nonfictional self been holding her back with all of her rules and guilt and anxiety? If that was true, then this new power must be a good thing, because anything her nonfictional self was against, Bethany was definitely for.