Pick the Plot

by James Riley

  “Whoa!” Owen said, and looked up just in time to get slammed in the head by a third creature’s tail. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell back to the dirt floor, unconscious.

  Readers, you just changed the entire backward time line. If Owen had been living this forward, he would have made it all the way from the air lock to the volcano, so he couldn’t have been knocked out at this point. Basically, you have just created a paradox that might have ended time entirely, if not for Kara’s presence. Please be a bit more careful next time. Turn back to page 1. (Or cheat a bit and turn back to page 35.)

  HELP HER!

  The thought pounded in his head, but Owen barely heard it, as he was already moving. He slammed into the bald woman from behind, knocking her to the ground, then jumped up onto the table next to Kara, ready to kick anyone who got close.

  “What are you doing?” Kara shouted, her eyes on the advancing crowd of prisoners instead of on Owen. “You were supposed to escape!”

  “I couldn’t just leave you like this,” he told her. One of the prisoners grabbed for his foot, but he kicked the man’s hand and began circling Kara on the table.

  “I’ll be fine tomorrow morning, no matter what,” Kara told him. “Go now! It’s not too late!”

  But it was. A group of prisoners moved to block the door, while hands shot out and grabbed both Owen and Kara, ripping their feet out from under them. Both hit the table hard, and Owen felt a little woozy as prisoners carried them to the Countess and held them before her.

  She smiled down on them evilly. “Now, children,” she said. “This might all be reversed at the stroke of twelve, but believe me, I’ll enjoy taking your time. If you have any memory of it, tell me tomorrow what it’s like to turn to dust.”

  And with that, she touched her glove to Owen’s cheek.

  I appreciate your noble impulses, readers, but this story doesn’t seem to allow for them. It’s almost as if Owen’s presence here negates any good you might wish to do. Either way, turn back to page 1, or try your choice again on page 132.

  As Dolores began to disappear from view, Owen instantly recognized his own time power. Not sure what else to do, he quickly kicked his power into gear, his body vibrating faster and faster as everything began to slow down around him. Everything except Dolores, who blurred back into sight as he matched her speed.

  “It’s been too many years, boy,” the bald woman said, slipping between the now-frozen rebellious time travelers. As she passed each one, she reached out and flicked them in the forehead, which seemed ominous.

  Owen tried to think of a brave, intimidating response. “It’s only been a few hours for me,” he said, glaring at her threateningly.

  She smiled, touching the eye-patch woman’s neck. “Do you know how many years I spent trying to re-create your powers? Mother thought it was a fool’s errand, of course. But I gathered the finest scientists I could find in all the future and put them to work. It still took them over a decade.”

  And it took Charm maybe twenty minutes while in the middle of fighting shadows and giving his friends superpowers, too. “Maybe they just weren’t very smart.”

  “Since then, though, I’ve had quite a bit of time to practice with it,” she said, and disappeared.

  Owen’s eyes widened and he looked all around him, but Dolores was nowhere to be seen. Where had she—

  Something hit him, and he slammed against the wall to his right. Before he could react, another hit knocked him into the opposite wall, and he collapsed to the ground, trying to breathe.

  “See?” Dolores said, reappearing right above him. She leaned over and grinned. “Not so fast anymore, are you?”

  “Still fast enough . . . ,” Owen said, struggling to his feet, “to outrun—”

  She disappeared again, and what felt like ten, a hundred, maybe a thousand kicks pounded into Owen’s stomach, so fast they felt like a constant hit. He doubled over in pain and collapsed to the ground again.

  “I’m sorry, you were saying?” Dolores asked, crouching down on the floor next to him. “You know, I wouldn’t normally strike a child. But you’re special. You’ve had this coming ever since you betrayed my mother in the time prison.” She grinned. “You skipped your punishment then, but justice always finds you in the end, Owen Conners.”

  Owen groaned, agony filling every corner of his mind. He needed to get help, but how? He couldn’t even move fast enough to escape from the woman, let alone find anyone who could possibly stand up to her. If he could just reach Kara, maybe they could time jump . . . except whatever was interfering with the other time travelers’ bracelets would nullify Kara’s, too.

  “No more tough talk?” Dolores asked, still lying next to him. “That won’t do. Let me get you back on your feet.” She stood up, then grabbed Owen by his armpits and yanked him to a standing position, only for him to weakly fall back against the wall for support.

  Dolores disappeared for a second, then turned up again, time bracelets running up and down her arm. “Look what I found,” she said, showing them off to Owen. “The last of the rebels’ time machines. Now, what should I do to these, I wonder?”

  Owen eyed the bracelets. He had to stop her. Without the bracelets, Owen’s older self and the others would not only be stuck here in this time, but they’d never be able to find the older Kara or the Countess. They’d be sitting ducks for Dolores and the Countess’s guards. He couldn’t let her just get away with this. The fact that she and her mother were free was because of him, after all. There had to be something he could do to fix this!

  And maybe there was. If she could move faster . . . then so could he. Owen closed his eyes and willed himself to move even quicker.

  Dolores leaned in closer. “This is adorable. You’re trying to speed up, aren’t you!” She grabbed his hand, and Owen gasped as energy pulsated through him, sending his heart racing. “Don’t worry, boy. I’ll help you out.”

  Owen began to see spots as his robotic heart beat faster and faster. “What are . . . you doing?” he asked, his vision narrowing until all he could see was Dolores’s face.

  “You wanted to go faster, so I’m adding my speed to yours,” she whispered in his ear. “Now I’m going to be generous and give you a thousandth-of-a-second head start. If you can reach the door where Kara is before me, then I’ll let you two go.” She giggled softly. “But if I win, then she’s all mine.”

  She let go of Owen and stood back as he practically exploded with vibrating energy, then she raised her hand like she was starting a race. “Ready?” she asked.

  He nodded, the entire hallway pulsing in his sight.

  “Go!” she shouted, and dropped her hand.

  The distance to the end of the hall couldn’t have been more than twenty feet, but the way he was feeling, Owen wasn’t sure he’d last five. He exploded toward the door, sprinting as fast as he could, feeling like he’d had all the sugar and soda in the world. His heartbeat echoed in his vision and hearing as he ran, and the air in front of him kept popping for some reason.

  None of it was enough.

  When he was still ten feet away, something burst past him, and Dolores reappeared at the door, leaning against it casually like she’d been waiting for hours. Owen stumbled to a stop, then fell to his knees, hoping his robotic heart wouldn’t break from all of this speed. His entire body screamed with soreness, like he’d just run a few marathons, even though he’d barely made it ten feet.

  “Oh, c’mon,” Dolores said, standing over him. “I’m trying to torture you here, and you can’t even run a short distance. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “You’re a monster,” Owen told her. He forced himself to slow down as much as he could until all that was left was the time energy that Dolores had given him. His heart began to beat more slowly, and he took a deep breath in, trying not to think about what was going to happen. Not only had he just failed to save himself and Kara, but there was now no way he’d ever get back to Bethany or stop Nobody. He’d
let down two entire worlds.

  “Monster or not, you just lost the race,” she told him, grinning widely. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Don’t touch her,” Owen said, and attempted to push himself to his feet, but his muscles wouldn’t respond.

  “Who’s going to stop me? You?” Dolores asked, still standing over him. “I dare you. I dare you. Stop me before I get to the door, Owen. You can’t even move! Do it! Try to stop me! Do—”

  And then Dolores went crashing down the hallway, plowing into the assembled robed guards.

  Owen looked up to find his older self fading in and out of view, moving almost too fast to see. “You might have won the last time we raced, Dolores,” he said. “But now it’s time for a rematch.”

  Turn to page 328.

  No!” Kara shouted into the jungle, her hands clenched into fists. “Where did it go? Where did the prison go, Owen?!”

  He shook his head. How could it have just vanished like that? Was it invisible? Owen put his hands up and walked forward, but didn’t run into anything. “I don’t get it. What could have happened?”

  Kara turned away from him, hands grabbing her head. “It must have been the Countess! I don’t know how, but she must have stopped it from ever being built. But there’s no way she could have done that. It was too big a deal! She would have had to infiltrate the entire Time Security Agency, if not—”

  And then Kara went silent, standing motionless for a moment, her mouth hanging open. “No,” she said finally, grabbed the bracelet off of Owen’s hand, and disappeared. Before Owen could even blink, Kara reappeared, looking just as upset as when she’d left.

  “It’s gone,” Kara said, falling to the ground, not even looking at him. She dropped her head into her hands and shook it. “The entire agency . . . just gone. It never existed now. It was never even created.”

  “What?” Owen said. “But how can that be? The prison was here. Those two agents were here! Someone had to put you here. And you remember the agency, so how could it have never existed?”

  “I’m immune to paradox,” Kara whispered almost too softly for him to hear. “Time distortions don’t affect me.”

  “But they affect me!” Owen shouted, his voice causing the nearby insects to go quiet. Remembering the large roaring creature outside his cell window back when the prison existed, he took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “This can’t be real, Kara. You can’t just make something not ever have existed!”

  “The Countess must have found the agency’s founder,” Kara said, shaking her head. “But there’s no way she could have. I mean, all agents’ origins are kept hidden for just this reason, but the founder’s identity is their greatest secret. The rumor is that the agency locked the founder away, just so no one could ever find him or her, even though a lot of people tried.” She sighed. “I think my future self even looked.”

  “So the Countess, what, just killed this founder, and now there’s no longer a TSA? No one is guarding time from time travelers?”

  “I knew this would happen,” Kara said, her voice barely loud enough for Owen to hear it. “The moment I’m out of the prison, it all falls apart.”

  He leaned down and grabbed her hand. “It’s not safe here. Even if the Countess doesn’t come after us, there are plenty of hungry dinosaurs out there.” Not to mention that they had to return to the present and find a way back to Jupiter City.

  Kara nodded, then stood up. She fiddled with the buttons on the bracelet, then turned to him, her eyes red around the edges. “I’m going to get you to safety first,” she said, taking his hand. “After that . . . I don’t even know. I thought I could fix things by hiding in here. I thought I could take control of my life.” She clenched her teeth, breathing slowly in and out. “But you can’t fight destiny, can you? All of this power to travel through time, and I can’t fix the one thing I need to. I can’t stop the future.”

  “What . . . what is going to happen, Kara?” Owen asked.

  She looked up at him again and forced a smile. “Trust me, Owen. You’re the very last person who I’ll ever tell. Now let’s go. I want to get us as far from this place as possible, just in case anyone tries to find us.” She touched the bracelet. “Moving slowly through time creates less of a disruption in the continuum, so it’s harder to track. For that reason, we won’t just jump to another time. We’ll coast for a bit, then speed up as we get farther away. As to where, here’s what I think we should do . . .”

  Kara trailed off, like she was waiting for something. Was Owen supposed to say something, or . . . wait. No. This was another reader choice, wasn’t it . . .

  KARA SUGGESTS THEY GO AS FAR INTO THE FUTURE AS THEY CAN.

  Turn to page 206.

  KARA SUGGESTS GOING BACK TO THE VERY BEGINNING OF TIME.

  Turn to page 341.

  Congratulations, readers. This is indeed the correct code. Give it to Owen and see what happens.

  200#. THAT’S THE CODE. PUT IT IN BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!

  Owen’s foot stopped in midair as he moved to help Kara. The thought couldn’t be ignored, but even so, he fought to keep going.

  “Go!” Kara shouted at him as prisoners began to surround her table.

  “Forget about her—that one’s trying to put in a code!” the Countess shouted, pointing at Owen.

  All of the prisoners surrounding Kara turned in Owen’s direction, and he took a step back, not needing any readers to tell him what to do. There wasn’t any choice anymore. The exit door was now his only chance.

  Owen leaped to the code box and quickly plugged in 200, hoping that the readers were right. He mashed the Enter button hard, then frantically pushed on the door.

  The door didn’t open.

  Glancing back over his shoulder, Owen saw the other prisoners just feet away, their arms reaching for him in eerie silence now. “C’mon!” he shouted, and threw himself against the door, his entire body shaking from the impact. Again and again, he crashed against the door, but it didn’t move.

  Finally, he gave up and turned around, his back to the wall, ready to fight.

  Except the prisoners weren’t any closer. In fact, they weren’t moving at all and were just standing frozen in place. What had happened? Had he accidentally turned on his time powers?

  Taking in a deep breath, Owen leaned against the wall, just glad to have a minute of relief. Unfortunately, he didn’t get it, as the exit door next to him opened and two people stepped out into the prison.

  A man and woman wearing gray one-piece suits looked around, each one wearing something that looked like a police badge, only with a clock in the center of it. They also seemed to have a sort of aura around them, a glowing light like the one that sometimes appeared around streetlights at night.

  “How did this happen?” the man yelled at the woman. “You assured me that they’d never guess the correct code!”

  “The whole prison is set up to keep them from doing so!” the woman said, rubbing her temples. “Ugh, look at all of them. I had no idea we were keeping so many of them in here now.”

  “They’ve been sending new ones for hundreds of years,” the man said, stepping past Owen, who stayed as still as possible. If he was using his powers, then how were they speeding up their own time? What was going on?

  “At least the exit door protocol still works,” the man said, looking around at all the frozen prisoners. “One of them gets the door open, and time slows almost to a stop in the entire prison. That should give us enough time to straighten everything up and remove the problem.”

  Wait. Exit protocols? So this wasn’t Owen speeding up his own time? But no, he would have to be, since the rest of the prison had slowed down. The agents’ suits must have the same sort of effect as his powers, if they let them walk around normally as well.

  “Since when did we start sending children?” the woman asked, gesturing at Owen. He kept still and held his breath as the agents approached him, trying not to think about how much he wanted t
o blink and scratch his nose at the same time. “What could he possibly have done?”

  The man clicked something on his wrist that Owen couldn’t see, then frowned. “The only child we’ve sent here . . . was Kara Dox.” His eyes widened as he said the name, and the woman next to him shuddered. “You know she had something to do with this. Why they thought she’d stay locked up is beyond me.”

  “If she’s supposed to be here, where is she?” the woman asked.

  They couldn’t see Kara? Last Owen had looked, she was standing pretty obviously on top of a table. Had she moved? The worst thing was, he couldn’t even turn his head to see, as they might notice he wasn’t frozen.

  “Find her,” the man said, and started going from prisoner to prisoner, examining their faces. “Hopefully she’s locked in one of the challenges, but we can’t take that chance. Time affects that one strangely, after the incident at her birth. I’m not sure we can trust her to stay slowed down.”

  The two moved out of his sight, and Owen gave them a few seconds before breathing and blinking his eyes. What did they mean, the incident at Kara’s birth? How did time have a weird effect on Kara? Was it that thing about paradoxes not affecting her?

  Once the two agents had moved past the Countess and headed toward the challenges, Owen dropped to his knees to hide, then looked around. He let out a sigh of relief as he spied Kara under the table she’d been standing on. She was grabbing a prisoner’s leg from there, looking like she was about to take a bite out of it. The idea made him almost smile as he quickly crawled over to her, wondering how he’d be able to get her out of here without the agents seeing.

  He touched her hand to try to pry her fingers off the prisoner, but as soon as he made contact, Kara’s mouth closed on the man’s leg, and she bit down hard, then released him in disgust.

  “Ugh,” she said, spitting out cloth fibers. “Guy needs to bathe more.”