RUN!” JIA SHOUTED, THEN LEAPED upward, soaring into the ceiling.
Fort stared helplessly at Cyrus, who also started floating upward, though more slowly than Jia. “I can’t even sink through the floor. How am I supposed to float up?”
“I’ve got you,” Rachel said. “Hold on tight.” She grabbed his ethereal hands in hers and tried to float up with him, but their progress was even slower than Cyrus’s by two or three times.
Fort shook his head and pulled his hands out of hers, dropping back to the floor. “That’s not going to work. It’ll just get you caught too. Go. I’ll be fine. Just get out of here!”
Cyrus and Rachel both stared at him for a moment, looked at each other, then started floating toward the ceiling. “Try the elevator!” Cyrus called as he rose. “There might be time to—”
But whatever else he tried to say was muffled by his head disappearing into the floor.
“Good luck, Fort,” Rachel said, crossing her fingers for him as she too passed into the floor above.
Fort sighed, alone now in the room with the alarm still blaring. There was only one door out, and that probably led to the elevator, like Cyrus had suggested. But if he tried that, the guards or Dr. Opps would catch him for sure. They were probably coming down in the elevator at that very moment.
But maybe . . . that could work in his favor?
Fort took off at a sprint, leaping through the door to find a short hallway leading to the elevator. This elevator door didn’t have an up or down button next to it; instead, three keypads and two black badge boxes covered the wall. To call the elevator, he would have needed pass codes and probably Dr. Opps’s security badge, at a minimum.
At least there weren’t any cameras here. That was something. For once, Dr. Opps’s paranoia was actually helpful.
A blinking light caught his attention, and Fort glanced up to find the floors counting down above the elevator. He’d been right: The guards were on their way down. And that meant he had no choice.
Taking a breath, Fort dove through the elevator doors, hoping this was the bottom floor, so he wouldn’t fall to his death. Unfortunately it wasn’t, and he almost screamed as he sailed over what looked like a never-ending elevator shaft below him, but fortunately his momentum carried him over and halfway into the wall beyond.
Passing into the outer wall slowed him down to the point that he managed to stop completely just before he reached the dirt on the other side of the wall. He pulled himself back out enough to breathe, then looked up into the shaft, where he could just barely make out the descending elevator car.
This was not going to be easy. But if he could time it right, he could jump onto the roof of the elevator, then wait and take it all the way back up to the top. There’d still be guards and cameras and a million other things to deal with, but with his Ethereal Spirit spell, maybe—
NO. COME.
Fort gasped at the intensity of the call in his head. The command was so strong that he doubled over, grabbing his skull to keep it from bursting open.
More importantly, he recognized the voice.
“Sierra?” he whispered, one of his eyes twitching through the pain.
COME. NOW.
This time the thought was so powerful, he couldn’t even question it. Without a second thought, he leaped out from the wall just ahead of the elevator car. He soared across the shaft, falling as he went, and passed through the door one floor down. A small part of him realized he wasn’t in control, that Sierra had taken over his body again, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Just like when she’d forced him to run, back in D.C.
And to leave his father behind.
COME.
Without slowing, Fort’s ethereal feet reached floor level, and he sprinted down a long hallway. There were multiple doorways on this floor, some of which were open with lights on, oddly. As he passed them, he noticed a man and a woman in white lab coats with their backs to the door, going over some kind of paperwork. He wanted to stop, to see what they were doing down here where no one else was allowed to come, but he couldn’t even slow himself down. The command was just too strong.
COME.
The door at the end of the hallway was open and had what looked like a doctor’s chart hanging in a transparent plastic folder on the wall next to it. Fort slowed down to a fast walk as he neared the door, so he was just able to make out a bit of the chart as he passed.
Patient 1, Patient 2.
Week 27, Day 4: Patient 1, no change. Patient 2 frequent somniloquy.
Fort briefly wondered what that last word meant before he passed through the door and found himself in a darkened room, lit only by the red and green lights of several monitors and machines surrounding two beds. Both were occupied, but it was hard for Fort to see in the dark.
COME.
The pull in his mind took him to the side of the bed on the right, and as he neared, he saw that a girl lay on it, a girl around his age, or maybe a bit older. Her brown hair was long, down past her shoulders, while white plastic pads were attached to her head in various places beneath her hair, with wires running from them to a machine.
Sierra. He’d never actually seen her before, since he’d always been viewing her memories through her own eyes.
He reached out and touched the girl’s hand, not sure whether this was his doing, or her voice in his head.
As soon as he touched her finger, his mind exploded.
“Hi, I’m Jia Liang,” a girl said with an uneasy smile.
Sierra smiled back and shook her hand. “I’m Sierra Ramirez. Nice to meet you.”
Jia looked around. “Are you nervous? Or is it just me?”
Dr. Opps patted their shoulders. “No need to be anxious. We’ve got a lot to celebrate. Today is your birthday, both of you. How old are you again?”
“Ten,” both girls said together.
Fort screamed, dropping to his knees, but he couldn’t pull his hand away from hers. Image after image popped into his mind, too fast to understand, too intense to control.
“Damian, what are you doing?” Dr. Opps shouted, leading Sierra back into Damian’s room, where a green portal filled one wall. On the other side, three creatures waited, wearing dark, crystalline armor. All floated in midair, almost too horrible to even look at. One even appeared to have screaming human faces up and down its armor.
The closest one floated just on the other side, its relatively less horrific tentacles reaching toward them. “Close this portal now! I told you not to contact them again!” Dr. Opps told Damian.
“I didn’t,” Damian said, quickly throwing his arms out almost protectively to block them from the portal. “They came to me once again, Dr. Opps. But I did use my Summoning magic to open the doorway. It’s promised to show us where the last two books are. You know what the prophecy says.”
“Who cares about that?” Sierra shouted at him. “The world is fine, it doesn’t need saving! At least not unless you let those things back here!”
The Old One on the other side of the portal slowly turned to look at Fort/Sierra, and Fort felt a shudder go through him, though whether it was him or Sierra, he couldn’t be sure. And then, in his thoughts, he heard it speak.
CHILDREN OF HUMANITY, it said, the very “sound” of it making Fort’s head almost burst. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’VE UNEARTHED. THOSE BOOKS WILL DESTROY YOU WITHOUT GUIDANCE. LET US SHOW YOU HOW TO PROPERLY USE THE POWER WE CREATED.
“I’ve used my Telepathy spells on this Old One,” Damian said, smiling slightly, though he winced at the sound of the creature’s voice too, and a small trickle of blood drained from his nose. “It’s not lying, I can tell. They really only want to come home!”
“Shut it down, Damian,” Dr. Opps said, then raised his radio to his face. “I need guards down to room 826, right now.”
YOU HAVE BUT FIVE OF THE SEVEN, the creature said, and from the way Dr. Opps stiffened in surprise, Sierra/Fort knew that he could hear the voice now too. WE CAN LEAD YOU TO THE LAST TWO. THE POWER OF THE SEVEN ECLIPSES THE SUM OF THE INDIVIDUAL BOOKS. TOGETHER, THEY HAVE THE POWER TO RULE THE WORLD.
“Damian, close this portal!” Dr. Opps shouted, his voice pained.
Damian ignored him, taking a step closer to the creature. “This is the only way to find the last two books. What damage might whoever found them do in the meantime? We don’t even know what the other types of magic are. We need them here, just to keep ourselves safe. And the prophecy says that one of us has to learn from all seven if we’re going to save the world.” He raised his hand up to match the tentacles on the other side of the portal.
ONE WITH THE POWER OF THE SEVEN NEED FEAR NO OTHER BEING IN THE UNIVERSE, the creature said, slowly moving its hand toward Damian’s. WE CAN GIVE YOU THAT POWER.
Outside, Sierra heard the arrival of several soldiers, followed by a loud beating on the door that abruptly went silent. She reached out with her mind and gasped. Damian had put them to sleep using his Telepathy magic.
Are you insane? she thought into his mind. You’re going to get us all killed! Look into that thing’s head!
I’m not naive, Sierra, Damian said in her mind, using his own Telepathy spells. Of course the Old Ones have their own agenda. But between you, me, Michael, and Jia, we can handle them. We’ll learn everything they know, then send them back to their dimension when we’re done.
“Where are my guards?” Dr. Opps shouted into his radio, his eyes moving quickly between Damian and the creature.
YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOU REJECT THIS OPPORTUNITY, the creature said in all of their heads. It slowly pushed its tentacled hand into the portal, and Sierra gasped as it passed through into their world. WE OFFER PEACE, FOR NOW. IF YOU REJECT THAT, YOU WILL LEARN WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ANCESTORS WHEN THEY TRIED TO REBEL AGAINST US.
“Damian!” Dr. Opps shouted.
“I’ve got this, Dr. Opps—” Damian said, only to grab his head and scream in pain. He doubled over, then slowly lifted a hand toward the portal, mumbling several unintelligible words under his breath.
Immediately, the creature began to hiss, and Damian screamed again, this time in pure agony. But the monster retreated, pulling its tentacles back through the portal a moment before it disappeared entirely, leaving just a blank wall behind it.
Sierra slowly lowered her hand and released Damian from her control as he turned to her with anger and betrayal in his eyes. “I’m not going to apologize for that,” she told him. “There’s no way I was going to let that thing into our world.”
Damian stared at her for a moment, then stood up, shaking his head. “You don’t know what you’ve just—”
But his voice cut off as he went extremely still, and his eyes widened.
And then he whispered the words to a spell, and the portal on the wall started to reopen.
Fort screamed again and yanked his hand away from Sierra’s. Instantly the images disappeared, and he collapsed to the floor exhausted as the two lab-coated doctors he’d seen earlier rushed in.
They shouted something at him, but Fort couldn’t understand what they were saying. He slowly slipped into unconsciousness, unable to process most of what he’d just seen. But one thing rang clearly through his mind, and he latched onto it like a drowning person to a life preserver.
He finally knew who’d caused the attack on his father. And from what he had seen as he fell, the person to blame was lying just feet away on a hospital bed.