Pick the Plot

by James Riley

  The Countess raised a glowing glove and slowly brought it close to his nonspikey cheek, stopping just an inch away as the man shook in terror. “No one touches this door,” the Countess said quietly, yet somehow Owen heard her clearly. “Not until I have the code. Anyone who tries to activate it will find themselves . . . out of time.” She made a fist with her glove, and it glowed even brighter. “Am I making myself clear?”

  The prisoner with the metal face nodded over and over, as did many of the rest of the prisoners in the room, even the ones deliberately not watching.

  The Countess smiled, then brought her glove to the man’s cheek. He screamed, but the glove stopped glowing a second before touching him, and the Countess laughed. The man screamed again, then leaped to his feet and sprinted off down a hall as the woman turned to the other assembled prisoners. “Now, the way I see it is this,” she said. “You can do what the guards want you to do, which is spend the rest of your pathetic lives here. Or you can each pick a door and bring me back the exit code. Anyone who helps me will be welcome to leave when I do. Anyone who doesn’t is going nowhere. Anyone who tries to stop me, however . . .” She held up her glowing glove.

  Someone coughed, breaking the silence, and several of the prisoners began to move toward the air locks, where groups began to form.

  “Come on,” Kara said, pulling Owen away. “Don’t worry about her.” She moved him to a table with food on it. “Seriously, eat something. You’ll need energy for the rest of the day.”

  She grabbed a pancake, poured syrup on it, rolled it up, and began eating it as she waited on Owen. He just watched her, feeling sick. “How can you eat after that?” he asked her.

  “Because pancakes,” she said, finishing it, then licking the syrup off her fingers. She rubbed her fingers on Owen’s arm and smiled when he pulled away with a yelp. “Seriously, we don’t know what these challenges are going to be. You’re going to get hungry.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he said, trying not to hear the spiked-faced prisoner’s shrieks in his head.

  Kara seemed doubtful, but nodded. “Then I guess it’s time to get started.” She pointed at the three air locks. “Ready?”

  YES, LET’S DO THIS.

  Turn to page 83.

  MAKE OWEN TRY THE EXIT CODE.

  Turn to page 132.

  FORGET ALL OF THIS. MAKE OWEN SPEND THE WHOLE DAY JUST EATING AND PLAYING VIDEO GAMES!

  Turn to page 326.

  AIR LOCK ONE.

  The thought banged around in Owen’s head so hard it echoed. That had to have been on purpose. He winced at the pain but kept his thoughts under control as best he could. Don’t blame the readers. This is Nobody’s fault.

  Besides, if this was the only way to save Bethany, then he didn’t really have any choice but to listen to them, did he? Assuming the readers hadn’t decided that for him too.

  “Might as well start with the first one,” he told Kara, pointing at the fast-forwarding clock. They walked over to where a small group of prisoners already stood, each one waiting for someone else to open the air lock.

  “You do it,” said a tall, thin man to a woman with bulging muscles.

  “So I get hit with this ‘challenge’ first?” the woman said with a sneer. “Not likely.”

  “Well, someone better open it,” the thin man hissed. “Otherwise, the Countess might decide to come with us, and we’ll probably all get turned into dust!”

  Owen glanced back at the prisoners who’d chosen to stay behind and just enjoy the food and entertainment. When this was all over, hopefully those prisoners wouldn’t turn out to be the smart ones. “See, I told you to eat,” Kara said, bumping him again with her shoulder. “Look at you, you’re practically drooling. Never miss breakfast, Owen. Most important meal of the day, I hear.” With that, she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the group of prisoners to the air lock. “Ready?” she asked, then turned the large circular handle on the door without waiting for a response.

  The air lock opened, and Kara led the group inside to what looked like every air lock Owen had ever seen in a science-fiction movie: basically a short room with large doors on either end, each one locked with a wheel. As soon as they were all inside, the door abruptly closed behind them, and red lights began flashing as a siren rang out in short bursts, like an alarm clock.

  “Hey, no one said we’d be stuck in here!” one of the prisoners yelled, frantically trying to open the door they came through. And then the lights and siren stopped completely, and the air lock door on the opposite side opened.

  A wave of humid air crashed over the group, bringing with it an assortment of odd odors—some typical jungle smells, others something like rotten meat. Owen swallowed hard, glad he hadn’t eaten now. Rotten meat smell was never a good sign.

  Loud, piercing noises buzzed by the open air lock door, almost too quick to hear. And the sunlight was so bright that Owen had to cover his eyes. When he could see again, he found himself looking at a pathway leading into the jungle. Was this a way out of the prison?

  “Are they letting us outside?” Kara asked him, mirroring his thoughts. “Would they actually do that?” She paused. “Though I have always wanted to meet a dinosaur.”

  “You don’t meet a dinosaur, girl,” one of the prisoners nearby told her. “If anything, they turn you into meat. They’re some of the most efficient predators that ever existed. Trust me, I’ve hunted a few.”

  Kara glared at him. “No wonder they threw you in here,” she said. “Does that make you feel like a big man, to take down an animal by using futuristic guns?”

  The prisoner rolled his eyes and moved toward the door, while Kara made rude gestures behind him. “I hope he gets eaten,” she whispered to Owen. At his shocked look, she shrugged. “Okay, not really. Maybe just a little. Besides, he’ll come back when the day is over . . . and then hopefully be eaten tomorrow, too.”

  In spite of himself, Owen shoved her with his shoulder, mimicking her move. “You’re in a good mood now.”

  “Horrible people bring it out in me,” Kara said as the group followed the dinosaur hunter.

  The prisoner strode up to the open door and glanced outside. A loud, high-pitched blip sounded just outside the door, then again, too fast for them make out what it was.

  “What is that?” Owen asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  “It almost sounds like a fast-forwarded noise, huh?” Kara said, stepping up next to the dinosaur hunter and peering outside. “I have a feeling these challenges aren’t going to be that easy.”

  The dinosaur hunter snorted. “Stay behind me, girl. I’ve got this.”

  Kara’s eyes narrowed and she stepped back, gesturing him forward. “Oh, be my guest.”

  The man nodded, then slowly stepped out of the air lock, looking all around him, ready for anything.

  He instantly disappeared.

  Owen gasped and yanked Kara away from the door. What had just happened? One second he’d been standing there, and then, without even a word, the man was gone. Two more high-pitched blips sounded one after the other, and then silence.

  “Whoa,” Kara said, and pointed at the ground. Owen looked over her shoulder, then felt queasy. Where the dinosaur hunter had stood, there was now an enormous three-toed footprint, almost as big as a person.

  One of the prisoners screamed and tried again to open the air lock door behind them, but didn’t have any better luck than the first prisoner. The rest of the group pushed back against the far wall, trying to give whatever was outside as much distance as possible.

  Kara, however, kept moving toward the open doorway, in spite of Owen trying to pull her back inside.

  “I thought this might be the case,” she said, glancing out of the air lock. “Remember how the clock inside was moving faster than normal? I think that was a hint. It looks like they sped up time, but just in this area. That’s pretty impressive, honestly.” She looked over at Owen. “Somehow they’d have to separate this section of the world f
rom everything else in the time line, then artificially run it ahead quicker than the rest.” She paused. “Unless this isn’t actually outside. That’d be easier by a little, I suppose.” She shrugged. “Either way, it makes for some pretty quick dinosaurs.”

  “He just got eaten,” Owen hissed, pulling on her arm again.

  “I know, I feel a little bad about that,” Kara said, frowning at the footprint outside. “But he’ll be back to his obnoxious self tomorrow morning. And maybe he won’t be so quick to jump outside if he’s not trying to intimidate a twelve-year-old girl next time.”

  “This is game over, man!” one of the prisoners shouted from the back. “What are we gonna do now, huh? What are we gonna do?”

  “Listen up!” Kara shouted, turning back to the other prisoners. “This air lock appears to be a safe zone. So if you want to stay alive, don’t leave. Time will reset at midnight, and tomorrow . . . well, don’t try this challenge again.”

  “We won’t remember what happened, though!” the scared prisoner shouted again. “We’ll just keep ending up trapped in this air lock over and over until—”

  Someone punched him, and the prisoner slid down the air lock wall to the floor, unconscious.

  “There’s no winning this challenge,” another prisoner said. “You saw what happened. There’s no outrunning that thing, whatever it was. They’re superhumanly fast!”

  Wait. Superhumanly? Owen’s eyes lit up, and he began tapping on Kara’s arm, trying to be subtle. She looked up at him, then grinned. “Fair enough,” she said, turning back to the prisoners. “Me and my friend here are going to get the code, though. I’d suggest the rest of you just stay put.”

  “What?” one of the prisoners shouted. “You’re only children!”

  “Shh, let them go,” another said. “That’s Kara Dox. Hopefully the monsters will tear her apart and get so full, they’ll leave us alone.”

  “And on that note,” Kara said to Owen. “Ready to do your thing?”

  His thing? How did she know about the fact that he could speed up his own personal time? He’d asked Charm to give him superpowers back in Jupiter City, hoping to run as fast as the Flash or other speedsters. But she came up with a way for him to move faster in time instead. But when did Kara find that out?

  That could wait, though. There were bigger questions right now.

  “I can speed myself up,” Owen said, beginning to vibrate his legs to get it started. “But what about you?”

  Kara looked confused. “Just hold my hand. You’ll speed up my time too. You’ve done it a bunch of times.”

  He . . . had? Sometime in her past (and his future, maybe?) he’d somehow sped her up alongside him? That was new. When had he learned to do that? And what if he only found out because Kara told him about it, and then his future self shared it with past Kara? In that case, no one would have actually figured it out, and instead, the information would just be stuck in a closed loop, and—

  His head began throbbing, so he dropped the whole line of thinking. “Worth a shot,” he told Kara.

  “Just make sure to hold on to my hand,” she told him. “If you let go, my time will instantly fall back to normal speed. And out there would be a bad place for that to happen.”

  She slid her hand into his, and immediately he began to sweat. He wasn’t sure if that was due to fear of the dinosaurs, using his time power, or just how close Kara was, but he really hoped it was the fear. Had to be fear.

  His entire body was buzzing now, and the vibrations moved from his arm into Kara’s hand and up to her elbow. She started to jump in place, clearly used to this, as the other prisoners began to slow down around them. Outside, instead of buzzing squeaks and short high-pitched blips, everything actually sounded like a real jungle now. The squeaks turned into the buzzing of insects, and the blips . . .

  The blips became low, deep roars, just like the ones he’d heard outside his prison cell window. And they were very, very close.

  “Ready to make some dinosaur friends?” Kara asked him.

  “Not even a little bit!” Owen said, shaking his head violently.

  She smiled and stepped outside, pulling him behind her.

  As soon as she set foot on the dirt path beyond the air lock, the ground began to shake all around them. Owen looked up in terror as a Tyrannosaurus rex emerged from the large leafy trees just to the side of the air lock.

  The giant Tyrannosaurs rex roared, huge drops of saliva splashing Owen in the face as the creature bent down to devour him in one bite. “No!” Owen shouted.

  THE DINOSAUR EATS OWEN.

  Turn to page 6.

  THE DINOSAUR MISSES, AND OWEN ESCAPES.

  Turn to page 117.

  Somersville in the year 2054,” Kara said, grabbing Owen’s hand and hitting the bracelet.

  They instantly jumped forward in time, and landed in what looked to be a very similar time to the present.

  The year 2054 wasn’t too far in the future, sure, but Owen was disappointed by how normal everything still looked. People’s cars seemed to be driving themselves, but that wasn’t anything new, and other than people chatting without any visible phone or earpiece, everything looked pretty much the same. A street sign saying HOUGH STREET was lit up in a fun electronic font, but that wasn’t a huge technological breakthrough or anything.

  More important than fun future changes, though, was that there was no sign of the Countess or her daughter.

  “It doesn’t look like we’re being captured, huh?” Owen asked. Don’t flip back just yet, readers. This might be the place!

  Kara glanced at her bracelet and gasped. “I don’t know how you did this, but . . . this might have actually worked, Owen! This place does seem to be out of sync with the Countess’s time line.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I just guessed the right moment randomly. It’s not even remotely possible!”

  “See?” Owen said, unable to hide his grin. “Sometimes it’s okay to let the universe be in control, I guess. I’m pretty sure it owed you one. Or a few hundred.” Inside, he couldn’t help but whoop with joy. Readers, you did it! Thank you! That was so amazing!

  For the first time since Nobody had caught him back in the comic pages, Owen felt surprisingly optimistic. “So!” he said. “How do you think we find this founder person?”

  Kara furrowed her brow. “This is the right time and place, but the founder could be anyone. There’s a reason the TSA kept it secret, so something like this couldn’t happen. I still would love to know how the Countess learned his or her identity.”

  Ah. Right. Owen’s shoulders deflated, and he decided that he must have just set a record for the shortest optimistic feeling in history. “Okay, fair enough. When was time travel invented, anyway?”

  “When I’m twenty-five,” Kara said. “So a few years in the past from here. Why?”

  “Just wondering if it’d been around by now long enough to start up an entire agency to police it,” Owen said.

  “Don’t forget, we’re talking about time travel. The founder could have started working on it this year, then jumped back to the year 10,000 BC and finished it there. Anything’s possible.”

  “So not only don’t we know what they look like, but there’s a possibility that they might not even have arrived yet?”

  Kara shrugged. “No, they must be here, or the time line would have changed to be under the Countess’s control. Still, you’d think she’d be here already. If she’s not, maybe I’m wrong about—”

  The Countess and her daughter blinked into existence across the street from them, and Kara yanked Owen to the ground, hiding behind some café chairs.

  “Okay, I’m not wrong,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Seriously, how did I ever pick this time and place? What are the odds?”

  Thank you again, readers! “Let’s not worry about the odds,” Owen said, glancing over the table carefully, trying to stay hidden as he watched the Countess scream at her daughter, then walk into a nearby building. “The
y’re going in. We need to follow them.”

  Kara, meanwhile, hadn’t bothered to wait, and was already halfway across the street, waving at him to hurry up. In spite of the dangerous situation, he grinned and ran after her.

  The building the Countess had entered didn’t look very special. Mostly, it looked like a generic office building where a dentist might work next to an insurance company. Boring, but it got the job done.

  Inside, the Countess and her glowing glove were halfway up a large set of stairs with her daughter behind her looking annoyed. Kara had hidden herself just inside the doors, waiting for the two women to move out of sight. She put her finger to her lips, then slowly followed them up the stairs, with Owen one step behind.

  At the top Kara peeked around the corner, then held up a hand for Owen to pause. “They’re stopping at a room just two doors down,” she whispered. “She’s using her glove to age the lock into rust. Okay, they’re in. Come on, we have to take them by surprise!”

  Owen quickly jumped up the last two stairs and followed, only to realize that they hadn’t brought any weapons, while the Countess had her glove of death and Dolores could freeze time in their veins. Maybe they should have thought this through a bit more, come up with a smarter way to handle things?

  But maybe it wasn’t too late.

  Readers? You can give me a hint about what to do here. Look ahead, and tell me if we should run in and surprise them or try to find some sort of weapon first.

  “Hold on one second,” he whispered to Kara, grabbing her arm. “I think I can help us out.”

  Something crashed in the room the Countess had gone into, and Kara shook her head. “No time!” She grabbed his hand and slammed the unlocked door open, smashing it against the wall.

  Inside the room was a scene that Owen wouldn’t have believed even a day before. Dolores held an unconscious elderly man in a lab coat against a wall, while her mother moved toward what looked like a robot strapped to a table. Weirdly, Owen recognized it as one of the prisoners from back in the Jules Verne Memorial Time Prison.