by Corey Tate
Thaught let go, and Kane continued to scream for at least another minute.
Suddenly Kane made eye contact with Scott. He thrust out his hand and muttered something, hitting Scott in the chest with a gray light.
Scott had the sinking feeling that he had just lost something important, and then Kane smiled an evil smile. Then there was a flash of light, and Kane disappeared.
Scott stepped back and wiped his hands on his shorts.
“Is it over?” Seth asked, standing up. “Is he dead?”
Scott looked at Seth.
“Yeah, it’s over,” he said. “And I don’t think so.”
“Good. Now you have to go home,” Seth said.
“Does he have to?” Claire interjected, staggering up to them.
“Yes,” Thaught answered shortly. “The Gateway will close sooner than anticipated. We’ve been messing with it unnaturally, and it is now unstable.”
There was a long silence and some muttering from the crowd. The rest of the Icranu teams congratulated each other and started to carry off their wounded. They left Scott, Thaught, Seth, Claire, and Billy alone near the wormhole.
“Will any of you come with me?” Scott asked.
Seth thought about it for a couple seconds.
“Not this time, buddy.”
“Why not?” Scott asked.
“Because a dozen Upgrades escaped through the wormhole and are now on Earth. You have to find them, and I have to stay and make sure things here are safe. Plus, I think I’ve sorta got to help rebuild this place.”
“Why?” Scott asked, stunned.
“Because I noticed, when there was a break in the clouds,” Seth told all of them, “this planet has light and warmth, and I want it to be like Earth. I want money and cars and trains and stuff like that. I can help with that, since I know where to start. No, not like Earth. Better. We’ll make our own way.”
“Who’s gonna be the king or whatever?” Scott asked.
“No kings or monarchs,” Thaught said. “We will have a council, and we will take advice from the residents of Inno Mountain. They have schools, hospitals, and a self-sufficient life there. They are withdrawn from the world, but with Seth as our liaison controlling the Otherfire, we can bring them back into the world, and bring our world into theirs. Everybody wins.”
“I’ll go with Scott,” Billy suddenly declared.
“What?!” Claire asked. “I just got you back! And you won’t have any curses there to help you. And you’re blind!”
“Thanks for reminding me, sis,” Billy huffed. “Terminus and Kane did some experiments on me, though. I’m even better with tech stuff now that I can’t see, and I’m kind of in the future constantly. I’m basically living two steps ahead all the time.”
The others shot him quizzical looks.
“I know it’s weird,” he admitted, somehow sensing their expressions, despite his blindness.
They all were silent after that one, imagining the horror of being treated like an animal. Going through what Billy had to go through. Being experimented on. Having your eyes taken away.
Wait a minute . . . Scott was remembering.
He looked over next to the Gateway. The boy was there, still invisible.
“Hey, show yourself!” Scott yelled to him. “Or I’ll make you.”
The boy jumped a little but stayed crouched.
When his friends reacted and stared, Scott knew the boy had just made himself visible. Seth, especially, was staring at the kid.
“Brandon?!” Seth asked, incredulous.
“Seth?” the boy responded, looking at Seth’s changed appearance and finally recognizing him. “That you?”
“Yup.” Seth grinned, then addressed the group. “Brandon’s the dude who created the portal to send me to Earth in the first place, before he got captured.”
Brandon thought about waving, but he was busy calibrating the portal.
Seth thought for a moment, then said, “Brandon, why are you here?”
Brandon nodded in Thaught’s direction. “He freed me from Terminus, and I’ve been working to keep the wormhole calibrated and stable so if any Upgrades slipped through, at least we’ll know where and when in history they landed on earth. So we—I mean, so Scott—can find them.”
Brandon sounded exhausted. Then he added, “But Thaught’s right—it’s becoming unstable. And it’s sucking up all the available energy—I won’t be able to create a new portal until Halley’s Comet has completely passed, days from now. Scott, if you’re going to go, you have to go fast.”
Scott took this all in and nodded silently, thinking of what he was leaving behind and what he had to do. If he went back to Earth, then he wouldn’t have another chance to see Armadron, or Seth, again.
“Yes, you will,” Claire said aloud. “We’ll have Brandon when we need to reach you.”
Everyone else looked slightly confused, but Scott nodded in agreement.
“Go to your family,” Thaught told him. “See your mom and your brother. Find those escaped Upgrades and take them in. Teach them that there’s more to life than killing. We’ve killed enough, and I think it’s time we put that behind us.” Thaught smiled. “We will take care of things here. You have Nick and Billy as well to help you. Now go.”
“Wait,” Seth interjected. “You still have your Bastum?”
Scott checked his pockets, but it wasn’t there. He pulled out his Smartphone and Jared’s blue inhaler instead.
Seth took Scott’s phone and shot a little bit of electricity through it. He gave Scott back his smartphone and smiled.
“Not sure if it’ll work,” Seth said, grinning, “but it would be sick if we could talk. That electric frequency I just shot into your phone is the same that is in my Bastum. It’s how we talk here. We don’t have cell towers, so Bastums access our own bioelectric frequencies.”
Scott just laughed and rolled his eyes, pocketing his dead cell phone.
He looked at each of his new friends, trying to memorize their faces.
“I guess this is good-bye for now,” he said.
“For now,” Thaught said and winked.
“Wait!” Seth yelled.
“What?” Scott asked, suddenly anxious to get back.
“Tell my . . . parents that I fell off the side and drowned in the confusion. Please.”
Scott looked at him for a long minute, thinking about how that would go down. He would cross that bridge when he needed to.
“That’s messed up,” Scott said.
“Be creative then,” Seth told him.
“Okay.”
Scott and Billy gave everyone hugs and stepped through the wormhole. Claire was not happy. She had her arms crossed and was looking away, trying to keep her tough persona.
“I love you, Billy!” she suddenly yelled. “Be safe, little brother!”
Scott and Billy both stepped through, and Brandon immediately threw down his arms, exhausted, and collapsed to the ground on Armadron.
On Earth, the first thing that Scott heard was yelling. It sounded like Nick and a hundred terrified cruise passengers.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was on the deck of the cruise ship again. People were running everywhere, upturning chairs and furniture in a mad dash for safety.
Scott looked around and Accelerated, instantly sighting Jared and his mom in his mind. They were still in their room, hiding with a crew member.
“What the hell is going on?” Nick was yelling.
Nick came over to Scott and Billy, who stood by the bow of the ship.
Alarms rang out. Beep! Beep! Beep!
“Attention all passengers and staff! Attention all passengers and staff! We are now in full lockdown mode. Go to your cabins and lock all doors immediately. Do not come out until you are instructed to do so. This is not a drill.”
No freaking way, Scott thought.
“Guys, come on!” he yelled.
Billy and Nick followed Scott to the edge of the ship. Scott hid
along the side of the pool house and instructed the others nearby to do so as well.
“What the hell are we hiding for?!” Nick cried, standing up. “The Upgrades are out there, and I owe that guy Walton a freakin’ beating.”
“Nick!” Scott said, trying to get his thoughts in order, “I think we went back in time before I left, by about ten minutes.”
Nick chewed on this new piece of information.
“So what do we do?” Billy asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“I don’t know—”
Crack!
Gunshots, and lots of them, were getting closer.
Suddenly, from their hiding spot, Scott saw himself and Sam break out from the lower decks and sprint across the ship, dodging bullets.
I look terrified, Scott thought, seeing himself cowering at every little sound.
He watched himself and Sam get to the edge of the ship and look down at the vortex that would surely take them to the wormhole below.
The Conjurers in black robes were not far behind them, and they had guns. The deck of the ship was clear now. Everyone had run to their rooms for safety.
Scott saw the Conjurers start to take aim with their guns, as his past self and Sam talked frantically by the edge of the ship, oblivious to the threat.
“Stay here for a minute,” Scott told Nick and Billy.
He teleported behind his past self and telekinetically threw him off the ship and into the vortex, using Claire’s power.
“Hey, you can’t be here!” Sam cried.
“But I am,” Scott said.
“But how . . . ?”
“Sam. Leave. Now,” Scott said. “If you don’t go to Armadron with me—the other me—right this minute, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I’m not going to let you die again . . . I’m going to find a way to save you, Sam, I promise.”
He tapped into Claire’s power and delved into Sam’s mind. Without really knowing what he was doing—and only following his instincts—he erased the memory of this meeting from her mind.
She instantly lapsed into unconsciousness from the shock, and Scott caught her. He looked at her for another second and then pushed her over the side, just as another bullet clipped her in the leg, narrowly missing him.
When Scott turned around, all five Conjurers formed a semicircle around him, guns at the ready.
In the blink of an eye, Scott suddenly realized what he had to do. He couldn’t hurt them: he had to let them go. He had to make them go after his past self so that all that had happened on Armadron could still occur.
Nick crept up behind the Conjurers with a broken chair leg in his hand, with Billy in tow behind him.
Scott waved him off.
Just before the Conjurers opened fire on him, he teleported behind them and called up a torrent of water. It didn’t come.
He tried to make metal from the ship attack them.
Nothing.
Scott wrapped them all in his telekinesis and threw them off the ship. They felt much heavier than normal, and he felt exhausted as they went over the side.
As they descended into the sea, one Conjurer turned around in midair and fired at Scott.
Scott immediately called upon the curse that he had gotten from the boy with enhanced strength.
The bullet flew through his left bicep and he screamed, falling to the deck.
Nick ran over to him and propped him up.
“Scott,” Nick said, shaking him. “Heal yourself or something. You copied the curse from that kid who tried to kill Claire and Thaught.”
Oh, Scott remembered. Right.
He tried again and again. But nothing happened.
Next he tried to go intangible, Danny Phantom-style. It worked!
Ping!
The bullet fell through his body and hit the deck of the ship.
Billy walked over, waving his hands out in front of him. Here he was completely, truly blind.
Scott barely heard Nick saying something to him.
“Scott! I said, what curses do you have left?”
Scott thought it all through quickly in his head.
No more water. No metal. No strength. Controlling earth is gone too, I can feel it. No more healing power either.
“I’m left with telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and phasing,” he told Nick. “And I think that I’m losing those too, but slower than the rest because they have to do with my mind or something.”
“Good,” Nick said. “Now get up. We need you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re on Earth, with no curses and no idea where we are on this floating rock, and Billy is actually blind.”
Oh.
Scott stood up and looked around. Everyone was off the main deck, presumably hiding from the gunfire. Everyone who was still alive, that is.
“I guess we should go find my family then,” Scott said cheerfully. “Apparently I haven’t seen them for a whole ten minutes.”
Wait! There’s more!
Are you ready to get a head start on what happens next? You can read the first chapter of Book 2 in The Otherworld Series for free. Download the first chapter by visiting:
www.coreytatebooks.com/zwataru.
About Corey Tate
Corey Tate is the creator of The Otherworld Series, a series that drops readers smack in the middle of a fast-paced intergalactic conspiracy spanning six planets. The series follows a small group of savvy young people with supernatural abilities who must stop the inhabitants of the Chaos Dimension from their malevolent schemes—or die trying. The author, who is active duty Air Force and a martial artist, weaves psychological and military tactics into the actions of his engaging heroes—and those of their diabolical enemies—in the battle to save the Six Worlds Complex. Learn more about Corey (and read sample chapters for free!) at www.coreytatebooks.com.