Worlds Apart

by James Riley

  “What, like a file or something?”

  “Looks like a couple of videos,” Kiel said, and pushed a button.

  The computer beeped, and a video projection appeared in the air right above it, showing Charm holding a familiar-looking ray gun.

  “Hello. Hi. This is a message for, um, whoever finds this.” She sighed, looking deeply disgusted. “Wow, I hate doing these. But whatever. There’s a very real chance that I’m not going to make it back from where I’m going, so it’s good to have a record.”

  She held up the ray gun, showing it to the camera.

  “This is the Prospect Enhancer, as my scientists called it. But to me, it’s just a possibility ray gun.” She brought it back and put her finger on the trigger. “I built it to use against a faceless mound of waste named Nobody.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Owen’s muscles eventually stopped twitching from the Taser, but since his face was covered by a hood again, everything still felt incredibly disorienting and surreal. Without being able to see, and with sounds muffled by the cloth, it was almost like this was some kind of dream . . . or it would have been, if he weren’t getting pushed and pulled everywhere, tripping and smashing against the ground every few feet without any way to catch himself.

  Finally getting shoved into a seat felt like a kindness, though he landed on his handcuffed hands and had to maneuver himself off of them. The floor beneath him started rumbling, followed by a jerking and a sense of motion, so apparently they were moving him again.

  Wherever they were going, it didn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to reach. Moments after the sense of motion stopped, rough hands yanked him to his feet, tore off his hood, and tossed him into the air.

  The rush of air on his face energized him enough to at least try to get his feet under him as he flew, then hit the ground hard enough to send a shock wave up through his legs. The force of his stop knocked him off-balance, and he fell back against a large, black shuttle he’d apparently been riding in.

  A large black shuttle that now hovered behind him.

  Owen slowly stepped away from it, staring in shock at the vehicle as it floated a few feet off the ground. This was five years in the future, and they already had flying cars? When had that happened?

  A second hooded figure appeared in the shuttle doorway, and Owen moved out of the way, not wanting to get hit. Someone yanked that person’s hood off as well, revealing Kara looking confused and disoriented.

  “Wait!” Owen shouted, but he was too late; the guard tossed her from the shuttle as well. Owen leaped forward to try to reach her, and she crashed into him hard, her momentum sending them both to the ground.

  “Owen!” she said, rolling off of him and struggling to her knees, her hands cuffed behind her back too. “Are you okay? Where are we?”

  “No idea,” he grunted, catching his breath after getting her shoulder in his gut. He nodded at the hovering shuttle as he rolled to his knees too. “Are you seeing this, or is it just me? It’s floating, right?”

  She nodded. “Is that unusual? We are in your future.”

  “Well, we weren’t anywhere close to it in my time,” he said. “But we also didn’t have soldiers burning books, either.”

  “Get up,” a black-helmeted soldier said, yanking Owen painfully to his feet, then undoing his cuffs. Kara followed a moment later, but as she rubbed her wrists, she glanced past Owen and stiffened at the sight of something.

  “What is that?” she asked softly.

  Owen sighed, really not wanting to see whatever horrible thing was there. Knowing he’d regret it, he slowly turned around.

  Thousands of black helmets were lined up in rows, like an army preparing for battle. Each held one of the laser rifles Owen had seen at the book burning, along with other science fiction–looking weapons. Men and women in white lab coats holding computer tablets made their way between the ranks of black helmets to travel back and forth between various tentlike buildings.

  But none of that was what had surprised Kara. Behind the army of black helmets was something oddly familiar: a giant black tower rising into the sky, one that Owen had first seen in the pages of a Kiel Gnomenfoot book.

  The Magister’s tower.

  For a moment everything started to make sense. Whatever he’d thought before, this had to be the fictional world! That’s why his interrogators had asked him if he was fictional. Sure, it didn’t explain why they burned books or how everything had turned into a crazy fascist society, but maybe this was what happened when Quanterium invaded Magisteria. And if Quanterium had invaded, that definitely explained the technology and robotlike soldiers.

  “Did they build that thing in the middle of some guy’s yard?” Kara asked, pointing past the tower, and her words gave Owen a cold chill.

  He looked to where she was pointing and found another familiar sight: Jonathan Porterhouse’s mansion.

  All of the hope running through him at the discovery of the tower crashed to the ground, dead. This wasn’t the fictional world. This was the version of the tower that the Magister had built on Jonathan Porterhouse’s property after escaping from his books into the real world, back when Owen and Bethany had first met. The Magister had built it as an exact replica of the one in the books, and he had been using it to unleash fictional monsters on the nonfictional world.

  After Bethany defeated him, she and Owen had eventually convinced Mr. Porterhouse to tell people it was built for the Kiel Gnomenfoot movies, something he’d resisted making previously. But after his characters popped out of their books and threatened his life, suddenly Jonathan Porterhouse worried a lot less about keeping his stories pure, and he let the movie studio run wild.

  Last Owen had heard, actually, the studio wanted to open the tower for tours. Only rumor had it that the first production assistants to explore the tower had run for their lives, screaming. Knowing what kind of things might be in there, Owen wasn’t really surprised. And that was even after Kiel had sealed the doors leading to truly frightening things.

  But what was this army of black helmets doing here? Why were they mobilizing on Jonathan Porterhouse’s property? Plus, everything nearby glowed with a weird blue light, almost like it was covered by a force field or something. The various hovering shuttles passed through it okay, but the trees growing close to it had branches sheared off right where they touched the light.

  Owen rubbed his forehead, feeling an enormous headache coming on. Flying cars were one thing, but force fields were definitely not coming in five years. What had happened in that time?

  “Into the Determination Center,” one of the black helmets said, shoving Owen forward. Kara followed just behind, and a group of the black helmets escorted them to one of the tent buildings close to the Magister’s tower.

  As they got closer, Owen noticed that the tower door was guarded by a smaller gate of shimmering blue light, as well as four of the black-helmeted soldiers. But why guard the tower? Nothing in there could get out, not after Kiel had locked it down. Maybe someone had broken into the sealed-off areas and released some sort of magic? Was that how they’d managed to build all of this new technology?

  But none of it seemed magical so much as science fiction-ish. Of the two planets from the Kiel Gnomenfoot books, it definitely felt more like Quanterian tech, honestly.

  “In here,” a black helmet said, pushing Owen toward a door that slid open as he neared. Owen started to object, a bit tired of all the shoving, but one look at his own reflection in the cold glass of the man’s helmet made him turn quickly around and walk inside.

  The Determination Center was filled with men and women in lab coats, all with various intimidating-looking instruments in their hands. As he entered, every one of them turned to stare. The nearest one roughly pulled Owen over, then ran a long, silver stick in front of him from head to toe. It lit up slightly around his chest, but otherwise had no reaction, and the woman frowned.

  “Getting a slight reading around the heart,” she said,
then nodded to the next scientist. This one grabbed his arm and immediately stuck him with a needle, hard enough to make him shout out in surprise and pain.

  “Oh, it’s going to get worse than this,” the man said, sneering at him as he pulled blood out of Owen. “And you deserve it. Welcome to the real world, fictional scum. And don’t bother with the refugee story. We all know the real reason you’re here is because you hate our reality.”

  “Fictional what, now?” Owen said. “I’m not . . . what refugee story—”

  But before he could finish, another scientist pushed a screen in front of him and stared at it, frowning. “We’ve got a prototypical Homo sapiens,” the man said, like he was checking off a list. “No extraneous extremities, no obvious mutation or genetic manipulation like some of the others. No signs of alien or mythological background. Could be fantasy related? Psionics also a possibility. Confirming some kind of technology in the heart region, could be fictional.”

  “I’m nonfictional,” Owen shouted, wishing he was close enough to Kara to get at least a little bit of imagination back. He really needed an idea of how to get out of here! But before he could move, a loud beeping behind him made all the scientists look up.

  The woman with the silver stick at the door had just run it over Kara, and the stick was going off like the most horrible alarm clock ever, bright lights flashing in time with the horrible noise.

  “She’s one of them!” the woman yelled. “Get her out of here immediately. Freeze her with the rest!”

  “One of who?” Kara asked, but the scientists just stared at her in disgust. Two of the black helmets burst in from outside and grabbed her arms. “Hey, let go!”

  “No!” Owen shouted, and leaped toward her, pushing the screen in front of him out of the way as he tried to climb over instruments and people to help her. A scientist grabbed him by his shirt, but Owen whirled around and kicked the man as hard as he could, and the scientist released his grip.

  “Owen!” Kara shouted from just outside the door as black helmets flooded in, their laser rifles all buzzing as they aimed at Owen. He froze and put his hands into the air, unsure what else he could do.

  He gritted his teeth in anger as he heard Kara scream again, farther away this time. He tried wracking his brain for ideas, something that might help him escape the tent and free her from the guards, but his mind just went blank. Argh, why did he have to be so useless without his imagination?

  The black helmets slowly dropped their weapons and left the tent as the scientists turned back to Owen. “Test that one’s genetics,” the woman with the silver stick said, pointing it at him. “He’s probably cloaking his fictional makeup somehow.”

  “I’m not fictional!” Owen shouted. “I’m Owen Conners, from—”

  “We know who you are, Mr. Conners,” said a woman toward the back of the building. She gestured, and a screen appeared out of nowhere in midair, showing the older version of Owen in the hospital. “However, the real Owen Conners is currently lying in a bed ten miles away. So tell us exactly how you’re standing here, five years younger?”

  “I’m not his fictional twin, if that’s what you’re saying!” he shouted. Two scientists grabbed him, and he struggled against them, but one stuck another needle into his arm, this time injecting something, and the world turned all woozy.

  “How do you even know about the fictional world?” Owen asked, glaring at the weirdly blobby things standing all around him.

  “You claim to be nonfictional, but you’ve never heard of the invasion by the fictionals?” one of the blobs said. “It happened here in your own hometown! Next time come up with a better story.”

  Owen started to say something snarky in reply, but he couldn’t get past what the blob had said. An invasion by fictionals?

  And then the room spun violently, and Owen collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

  CHAPTER 14

  That’s the weapon that the man in the suit gave to our supervillains!” Bethany shouted, pointing at Charm’s ray gun.

  Kiel paused the video and looked at Bethany. “So she built it? But how did that man get it, then? And how does she know Nobody too? He really gets around, huh?”

  Bethany frowned as Kiel’s fists opened and closed nervously. Was he just joking to cover his fear? “She must have faced him after I saved my father. I missed a lot of it, since I was a light ray at the time.”

  Kiel just stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. “I think you left that part of the story out, but sure, okay. Anyway, why would she create something that could make people disappear?”

  “Maybe she’ll explain,” Bethany said, nodding at the video. Kiel reached out and hit the button, starting it again.

  “I’ve had my scientists working on this ever since that Nobody guy beat me up and sent me back here,” Charm said, staring at the ray gun. “Whoever he is, he can change himself into anything or anyone he wants. So if I’m going to destroy him, and I am, I needed some powers. And a friend of mine gave me a good idea on just how to do that.”

  She spread her fingers, and diagrams appeared on the screen, diagrams that Bethany recognized. They were the plans Charm had developed when working on Owen’s superhero power ideas. As Charm zoomed in, Bethany gasped, realizing these plans in particular were for her powers.

  “I gave my friend the power to turn into anything inanimate, by rewriting her DNA,” Charm said, then waved her hand at the camera. “Don’t bother with science questions, it shouldn’t have worked. Different reality, different rules. But back here in the real world of Quanterium, I figured that could be a good starting point, only we’d have to take it to another level entirely, enabling whoever had the power to change into anything they wanted. So we developed the possibility ray gun for just that reason. To give me the same abilities as this Nobody idiot.”

  “Whoa!” Bethany shouted, grabbing Kiel and turning him toward her. “Are you kidding me? She didn’t build these as weapons. She made them to use on herself !”

  Charm paused for a moment and seemed to collect herself. “I . . . I lost some friends, fighting him,” she said slowly, her voice getting quieter. “I mean, I know this thing is dangerous. I’m probably smarter than anyone else on this planet.”

  “She’s not bragging, she really is,” Kiel whispered.

  “She’s not acting like it!” Bethany said.

  “But he hurt my friends,” Charm whispered, looking off camera. “Bethany’s already gone, but to find her, I’m going to need to take him down first. And then I have to find out what happened to Nice Flying Girl and Annoying Cape Kid. But above all”—she stopped again and swallowed hard—“I need to find Kiel.”

  “Me?” Kiel said.

  “She means Owen, I think,” Bethany said quietly.

  “I know he’s in some ridiculous disguise,” Charm continued. “But I’m going to find him and bring him home. And considering he shouldn’t have disappeared from the powers I gave him, I’m betting Nobody had something to do with that, too.” She banged her robotic arm down on the table in front of her angrily, breaking the table in half.

  “Wow, she really cares for him,” Kiel said.

  “I’ll come back when we’re ready to test,” Charm said, then switched off the camera.

  “Is that it?” Bethany said as the video disappeared.

  “Two more files,” Kiel said. “This one’s the next day.”

  The video appeared in midair once more, this time showing the view from behind some goggles.

  “Experiment Alpha, mark,” Charm’s voice came from off camera, and the goggles shifted to show the possibility ray gun in her hand. “Testing Prospect Enhancer on Science Police robot.” The goggles shifted again as the ray gun warmed up, then focused in on an inanimate robot.

  “Uh-oh,” Kiel said.

  “Everyone hold on to your behinds,” Charm shouted. “Here we go!”

  A beam launched out from her possibility ray gun, striking the robot directly in the chest. At first
, just like with Bethany’s father back in Jupiter City, nothing happened, and Charm began to swear loudly and angrily. But then the robot flashed with light, and where a Science Police robot had stood, there was now a boxy red-and-blue robot at least three times the size.

  “Greetings, humans,” the robot said. “I am Idealistic Peak, leader of the Noblots. How did I come to be here?”

  “That’s . . . odd,” Charm said. “It doesn’t seem very controlled. Maybe—”

  The robot flashed again, then appeared back in its normal size, only much less intimidating. “Oh, dear,” it said. “I do hope I am not interrupting anything. Should I show myself out?”

  “Okay, not good,” Charm said. “Shut it down. Shut it all down!”

  The flashes of light appeared faster and faster, and the goggles turned away as Charm growled in pain, until the light grew continuous, then disappeared completely, along with the robot.

  “Yikes,” she said. “Okay, this doesn’t work at all. We’ll need to start over completely—”

  “On the contrary,” said another voice, and the goggles turned toward it, only to stop on a faceless humanoid creature.

  “You!” Charm shouted.

  “Yes, me,” Nobody said, reaching out and taking the weapon. “And as I was about to say, I think this weapon works just perfectly.”

  And then the video ended.

  Neither Bethany nor Kiel said anything for a moment. Finally, Kiel reached out and started the third video.

  Charm appeared on-screen, now looking like she’d been through a war. Her robotic arm hung loosely from her shoulder, and she seemed to be trying to fix it with her other hand, even as she addressed the camera.