One glow hit another just feet away from him, and the entire universe began to explode.
“BETHANY!” the Magister shouted into the nothingness, his voice not traveling at all in space, even as his magical spell of protection quickly peeled away beneath the force of the bomb. Everything turned to bright white, and the Magister closed his eyes, awaiting his end.
Except nothing happened.
He opened his eyes, and found himself on a white plane of nothingness, surrounded by arrows, lines, and numbers.
“You’re lucky,” Bethany said from behind him. “I thought about leaving you there in that last one. It’s pretty intense science fiction, and they don’t mess around with their endings. If I remember right, that bomb started a second big bang. Even your magic wouldn’t have survived that.”
The Magister pushed himself to his feet, and instantly attacked, casting the spell Paralyzed With Fear straight at Bethany.
Bethany, however, just smiled.
The Magister’s mouth dropped in surprise, and he quickly cast another spell. Nothing again. “What is this place?!” he shouted.
“I found this in the books you took. Probably from Jonathan Porterhouse’s school days. This is where I’m leaving you. You can’t do any harm here, since your magic won’t work. And if your magic won’t work, that means you can’t keep stealing my power. And that means you’re not jumping back out after me.” She shrugged. “Should have looked before you leaped, I guess.”
“Where have you brought me?” the magician demanded. “Why does my magic no longer work?”
She grinned wider. “The entire point of this place is that there’s no such thing as magic. Everything here? All the graphs and numbers and equations? It all adds up to you not going anywhere. Maybe I’ll let you out someday. After you pass a test, to show what you learned.”
“You can’t do this!” the Magister shouted. “You’re no different from the rest of your kind, taking my freedom while you laugh. Enjoy yourself, girl! Enjoy yourself at my expense!”
Bethany’s grin faded, and she sighed. “Here’s what you don’t understand about the fictional world,” she told him. “I don’t know if authors watch what you do on some kind of television in their brain, or make the stories up purely from their imaginations. But we don’t read about you because we’re bored, or just to amuse ourselves. We read about you to be with you, to walk in someone else’s shoes, to experience another life. Some of those lives are hard, and others are easy, but we’re with you every step of the way. We read about people in impossible situations because we’re dealing with horrible things ourselves, in our lives. And you going through your story helps us with ours, no matter how yours ends. Though I do think we both like a happy ending, don’t we?”
“That doesn’t give you the right—”
“Think about it this way,” she said. “You thought of yourself as alone for so many years, fighting against Dr. Verity. But there were hundreds, even thousands of readers on my world who lived it with you. Who felt every victory, every defeat, and want more than anything for you to win. Who cried, actually cried when they thought you died. Those are the people you’re trying to make suffer, the ones who’ve been on your team this entire time. Just something to think about.”
And with that, she leaped out of the page from Jonathan Porterhouse’s old school math book about multiplying fractions, leaving the Magister to scream alone into nothingness.
CHAPTER 40
The Science Soldiers pushed Charm’s floating stretcher through the halls of the Presidential Palace, and Owen followed, trying not to stare at the wonders around him. Water flowed against gravity in energy fields that transported it to the higher floors. Lights exploded at atomic levels, miniature nuclear bombs that continually formed new atoms, then split those, creating perpetual light without using any energy.
And then there were the holograms.
As far as Owen could tell, the palace was filled with people, unlike the city outside, yet no one was real. Everyone used the same kind of hologram technology that Dr. Verity had used on their spaceship, going about their business while their body stayed home. It was almost like the Nalwork, just with fewer ads.
The Science Soldiers walked right through the holograms, at least the ones who didn’t pay enough attention to step out of the robots’ way. Just to test, Owen ran a hand through a hologram of a man in what looked to be a formal uniform of some kind. The man gave him a strange look, and beneath his helmet, Owen blushed. Whoops.
The robots continued on into the palace, finally arriving at the largest, most expensive-looking of all the rooms Owen had seen so far. This seemed to be some kind of audience chamber for the president, and it was empty of people, holograms, and soldiers. The clank of robot feet on glass floor seemed extra loud as the Science Soldiers walked Charm toward an extremely large desk made of brown metal, sculpted to look like wood.
The chair behind the desk turned, and Dr. Verity pushed to his feet, a wide smile on his face. “Welcome, soldiers,” he said, and gestured for them to line up before him.
The soldiers immediately moved to stand at attention, Charm’s unconscious body floating just in front of the line. Owen quickly took a spot at the end of the line and tried his best to stand as still as possible in the same pose as the rest.
“Commander, report,” Dr. Verity said, stepping in front of Charm’s body. “I see you found the missing daughter of the former president.”
“AFFIRMATIVE,” the commander said in its monotone voice. “CRIMINAL CHARM MENTUM WAS LOCATED IN THE CRASH SITE OF THE SPACESHIP PREVIOUSLY LICENSED TO HER FATHER, THE FORMER PRESIDENT MENTUM, NOW DECEASED. SPACESHIP IS NOW UNUSABLE, DUE TO—”
Dr. Verity waved his hand. “I don’t care. What about the boy?”
“NO YOUNG HUMAN MALE WAS LOCATED—”
Dr. Verity smiled. “Oh, yes, he was. There was indeed a young human male located at the crash site. But we can get into that later. For now, there are more important matters to discuss.” He reached down and touched Charm’s cheek, shaking his head sadly. “It didn’t need to come to this, Ms. Mentum. You never should have survived the first attack on your family, honestly.”
Owen gritted his teeth to keep still while Dr. Verity turned his back and sighed. “And now you’ve gone and injured yourself even further, which surprises me. I figured you’d survive the crash over the boy. But . . . could it be? Did you protect him?” He began to laugh, then patted her shoulder. “Oh, my dear girl. What a waste!”
“ORDERS, SIR?” the Science Soldier commander asked, but Dr. Verity just waved his hand again.
“I’m not finished, Commander. You see, things are about to change. My armies are even now beginning their attacks on Magisteria. And without the Magister, those pathetic magic-users will have no one to organize them, to lead them against my antimagic robots from all realities.” He stopped, as if considering things. “Still, those spell-eaters will do their best to defend themselves, casting their disgusting magic and such. Why waste the time and energy to fight them? Why not just use our new weapon?”
“WEAPON, SIR?”
“Why, the very same one that Kiel Gnomenfoot hoped to use against me, Commander. The one he journeyed all the way here to find. You see, the fabled Source of Magic has been locked away under this palace for thousands and thousands of years. When the first magic-users left Quanterium, they hid the Source inside the Vault of Containment to keep it safe. Here, on a world of science!” He snorted. “Truly disgusting that it’s been here so long. But I’ve developed a weapon—a bomb, really. It’s quite simple. It takes the power of the Source of Magic, recognizes any quantum connection between the Source and those who have ever used magic, anyone in all of history, and destroys them. Rather dramatically, too, I’d imagine. I’m hoping they’ll be burned from the inside, personally.” He smiled. “Billions will die, of course,” he said. “Throughout space and time. But magic will quite truly be no more. And it will all be thanks to the majes
ty of science!”
A bomb?! That’s what this had all been about? Everything Kiel and Charm had done, seven books of finding keys, and it’d all been a manipulation, a trap on Dr. Verity’s part? And now here Owen was with the first six keys, and a heart for the seventh, delivering them right to Dr. Verity? He had to escape before the doctor found him!
Dr. Verity stopped and glanced at the Science Soldier. “No questions, Commander?”
“NO, SIR.”
“Obedience,” Dr. Verity said, clapping his hands. “I love obedience! The fun part of all of this, though, Commander, is that I shouldn’t have been able to do any of this. You see, those clever little magic-users thought of everything. They knew that we pure, true-hearted scientists might someday want to destroy their precious Source. So they ensured that only a scientist working with a magic-user could possibly locate all the keys to open the vault.” He grinned. “But what self-respecting Quanterian would ever associate with a Magisterian? I needed a magician if I had any hope of getting into that vault.” He made a face. “Given that I was once one of those horrible creatures myself, thousands of years ago, I know how things worked there.”
Dr. Verity gave the commander a look, and when the robot didn’t say anything, the scientist hit a button. The robot jolted, then asked, “WORKED, SIR?”
“Science builds upon what exists, Commander. Just like logic. But magic . . . dirty, horrible magic creates something where nothing once existed. And magic so infuses Magisteria now that it’s changed how life there works.” He shook his head. “There, those with nothing inevitably become the most important. Orphans. Forgotten children. The least among the least. Magisteria takes those downtrodden and builds them up, just like magic does.” He looked disgusted. “You should see their greatest heroes. All came from nothing. It’s almost a cliché there now. But when one understands the reasoning why, then one—I—can work with it. All I had to do was drop a child into one of their cities, produce a threat, and sit back waiting for my hero. Nothing could have been easier!”
He hit the button again, and the commander jumped. “HERO, SIR?”
“But I needed a trustworthy child,” Dr. Verity told the robot. “One I could count on to follow through and eventually see things my way. And since I trust no one but myself, I had no choice: clone myself. And it worked! My old friend the Magister found the little me and taught the boy everything he’d need to know to deliver me my keys. And do you know what, Commander?”
“NO, SIR?”
Dr. Verity leaned forward, then looked around as if to check if anyone was listening. Then, he whispered, “I think that boy might have even found the last one, the Seventh Key. The one that was destroyed!”
Dr. Verity waited for a reaction, but got none from the Science Soldier. Finally, the doctor sighed and shook his head. “You’re a terrible audience, you know that?”
“YES, SIR.”
“Good,” Dr. Verity said. “Now, if only there was someone else here to listen to me go on and on like this. Someone who thinks he’s disguised, tricking me into letting him run free in the Presidential Palace so he can go open the vault and use the Source of Magic against me.”
. . . . Uh-oh.
“Kiel?” Dr. Verity said, and the other Science Soldiers all took one large step back. Owen quickly did the same, but far too late.
“Oh, Kiel, let’s not play this game anymore,” the doctor said, picking up a laser rifle almost three feet long from the desk and aiming it right at Owen. “Please, you’re insulting my intelligence! And if there’s one thing I absolutely won’t stand for, it’s an insult to my intelligence.”
Owen winced and pulled off his mask.
“Ah, there he is!” Dr. Verity said, beaming. “The apprentice magician. The one destined to defeat the big bad Dr. Verity. The clone himself, ready to take a shot at the real deal!” He winked. “You are quite intimidating.”
And then Dr. Verity shot Owen right in the chest with the laser rifle.
“Well, at least you were,” the doctor said. “Commander! Have your soldiers search his body for the keys.” He grinned widely. “It’s time I got to play with a weapon of magical destruction!”
CHAPTER 41
A shrink ray?!” Kiel shouted at her.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Bethany asked, frantically looking through the shelves. “Stop complaining and help me look!”
“A shrink ray,” Kiel repeated. “You do understand that when you shrank down the monsters, you hit me as well? Meaning they could still easily eat me? Not to mention the insects that used to be normal-sized but now were spiders the size of small horses?”
“You’re fine,” Bethany said, pulling a book off the shelf, then tossing it away. Where were they?
“A shrink ray,” Kiel said, shaking his head. “I was almost eaten for a forty-third time!”
“Forty-fourth,” Bethany said absently. “And aren’t you the one who told me to be more fictional? To take more risks? Don’t you like danger?”
“Well, yes,” he said indignantly. “Though it is a bit less fun without magic, I can’t lie. What’d you do with all those monsters, anyway?”
She nodded at a large overturned bowl in the middle of the library. “Rounded them up and threw that over them,” she said. “They’re kind of cute, at that size.”
“Not if you’re that size too,” he said, tapping the bowl. “Aww, look at the little blob monster! Blub blub blub!”
“We’ll put them back where they belong as soon as I find the last Kiel Gnomenfoot . . . the last you book.” She’d seen copies of the series when she was in here last. She’d even taken a copy of the first book, which she’d used in her chase with the Magister. But where had it—AH! “Kiel Gnomenfoot and the Source of Magic !” she said, yanking the book off the shelf. “This is it!”
“Shouldn’t it be blank without me in it?” Kiel asked, giving the book a confused look.
Bethany quickly opened to the one of the final chapters. “No, because Owen somehow turned into you and lived out your story.” Of course he had. Why had she assumed that just because Owen was trapped outside of space and time he still couldn’t get himself into trouble?
“No one turns into me,” Kiel said, looking offended. “I’m one of a kind.”
“Now you’re two of a kind,” she said, showing him the page she’d flipped to.
Kiel’s eyes opened to find Dr. Verity bending over him. “AAH!” he screamed in surprise, and tried to push himself backward but found he was strapped down.
“Wow,” Kiel said, cringing. “Things don’t look like they’ve gone too well.”
“I know,” Bethany said quietly. “You need to get back in there and take his place.”
Kiel glanced over the page. “He’s getting his heart taken out? That doesn’t sound healthy.” He sighed. “I knew it had to end. That’s what the historical documents from the future told us, back when we found the Second Key. I knew I wouldn’t live through this. Though having my heart removed does explain a few things.”
“We need to get him out of there!” She started to reach into the book, but Kiel grabbed her hand.
“Find a place where he’s not being watched, or you’re just going to turn up in the book,” he said quietly, all the arrogance of a moment before gone. “I’ll switch with him then, and no one will know.”
Bethany nodded, and flipped forward a few pages. “Here. He’s been knocked out by the Science Robots to have his heart taken out.”
Kiel nodded and prepared himself. “I’m ready.”
Bethany started to take his hand, then stopped as something occurred to her. “You don’t know any magic.”
“Doesn’t seem so, no.”
“But you’re going to just switch places with him? You’ll be trapped without any spells!”
“I knew it was coming,” he told her. “It’s been nice having this little break from things, out here with you. But now it’s time to get back to the real world.” He shrugged.
“Or my version of it.”
Bethany closed the book. “I’m not going to just let you die.”
“It’s how things are meant to go, Bethany. You can’t change a life story.”
She glared at him, hearing her own voice telling Owen the same thing. And then she heard herself snort. “Don’t be stupid. We just need Jonathan Porterhouse. He wrote it, he’ll change it.”
“The book is written.” Kiel grabbed the copy from her hand and showed her the words. “See? It’s all there! Look. Look at the end—”
She knocked the book out of his hand. “Don’t look at the end! I’m going to find Mr. Porterhouse, and he’s going to fix this. I don’t care how.”
“You don’t even know where he is!” Kiel said. “Just bring me back, Bethany. Owen doesn’t belong there. I do.”
Bethany glanced around the library. “You’re right, I don’t know where he is. But I can find him.”
And she could. She had the magic, after all.
“How? Didn’t you say the Magister hid him in one of these books? It’d take years to check them all.”
“Not if I use a spell,” she said, letting out a deep breath. The location spell she’d learned would find him, of course. After all this time, she knew that magic did what it was supposed to do. The only problem was, this was it. Spells were only good once. Which meant she’d be no closer to finding her father, and nothing good would have come of any of this. For a moment she couldn’t do it, any more than she could cast the spell the day before in the library.
Bethany glanced up at Kiel, ready to admit she just couldn’t. Kiel stared at her with concern, looking like he was ready to catch her if she fell.
Well, okay, maybe one good thing had come out of this.
She raised her hands the same way she’d seen Kiel do, then felt the location spell she’d learned to find her father run through her mind. She took a deep breath, then recited the words, and her whole body began to glow with the same warm feeling like hot chocolate on a cold day. And then she released the glow, saying Jonathan Porterhouse’s name.