Page 19 of The Other World

He stared at me for a moment, then sniffed at me, before nodding.

“Thank you,” I said.

“His sister’s there,” said one of the others, an older man. “He can’t speak but she seems to know what he wants to say.”

“Althea?” I asked.

Tennyson’s eyes widened and he nodded.

“Take me to her,” I said, trying to stand up. I didn’t see any point wasting time, but as soon as I sat up, I felt dizzy and had to lie back down.

“You hit your head,” Nikolai told me. “Maybe you should take it easy for a minute.”

“Really?” I said. “You think we should just hang out here and wait for him to find us?” I gestured vaguely to the outside world and not-dad.

“Good point,” said Nikolai. “Someone help her up.”

Tennyson took me by the arm and helped me up, careful not to stab me with his claws. I wondered if he was half-transformed because of something not-dad had done, or if it was because he was in hyper-alert mode. It seemed kind of rude to ask though.

I thought Tennyson and I would go alone on the rescue mission, maybe Nikolai too, but all of the test subjects came with us. I wasn’t sure I could keep them safe, but I supposed they couldn’t be in any more danger staging a badly planned rescue than out there having inhumane tests run on them, so I didn’t protest. They deserved a chance to fight, if it came down to it. Something told me the tests I’d witnessed were only the tip of the iceberg of what not-dad had going on in this world.

My head throbbed as we crept through the forest, staying as low as we could. Every so often, drones flew over us, and when they did, we froze in place until they were gone. He obviously still had control over some of his systems, I wondered if that meant they were on a completely different server, and what that meant in terms of the dungeons.

Eventually, we came to a clearing in front of a sheer rock face. Tennyson led us around the rock face to the north, then motioned toward a concrete slab built into it.

“That’s the door to the dungeon?” I asked in dismay. There was a small sensor pad to the side of it, but nothing that was hackable. In terms of security, I knew it made sense, but it left me out of ideas. I pressed my thumb to the sensor, hoping maybe that would activate it somehow, but nothing.

“Great,” said Nikolai. “What now? If we wait around long enough, we won’t need to break in, we’ll be given an escort right through those doors and into some disgusting little cell.”

Even though Nikolai was annoying, something he said sparked my brain. Mrs Spencer. She’d been in that cell back at Wilde Manor, and had just blipped out of it as easy as anything.Surely, I could do that too. She’d implied it was something to do with having spirit powers, so theoretically, it should be possible for me.

I shushed Nikolai and rested my hands against the concrete door. Technically, I wasn’t even in this place at all, I was back in my own world. That meant that I wasn’t physically standing there at all, it was just my consciousness, and my consciousness wasn’t bound by the laws of physics. The door existed in physical space, but physical space wasn’t a barrier to something with no physical form. I just had to project my consciousness through that door, and my body should go with it.

Deciding it was better not to overthink it, I closed my eyes, and mentally took a step through the door.

I didn’t expect it to work, not really, but when I opened my eyes, I was looking down a dark, concrete corridor. I blinked. That was actually insane. I’d just brain-walked through a door.

There was a panel on the left side of the door, with a big green button below it, so I pressed it and the massive door began to rise. Some of the others seemed hesitant to come inside, which was understandable, if this was where they’d been locked up. Nikolai wasn’t one bit worried though, he marched inside, glaring at me the whole time.

“What exactlyareyou?” he demanded.

I shrugged. “I don’t even know.”

“You justwalkedthrough thedoor,” he continued. “The giant, very solid door.”

“Did it look awesome?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Of course it did. Youwalkedthrough adoor.”

I turned back toward the others. “You don’t have to come in, if you’re not comfortable with it.” I mostly addressed Tennyson, because he was Tennyson and I could read him best, but I made sure they knew I included them all. Some of them seemed traumatized, but aside from their own wellbeing, I didn’t wantany of them to freak out at the wrong moment either. It could be the reason we got caught.

But when I headed further into the building, they all followed me. It was better than staying out there and being hunted through the forest, I guessed.

The corridor was dim, and everyone else seemed to have trouble seeing where we were going as well, which I took to mean that the light there was somehow anti-paranormal vision, though I couldn’t even begin to fathom how that would work, or what other technology my evil not-dad might have developed.

I put it to the back of my mind and tried to focus on navigating the maze of tunnels. At the first T-junction, I started to turn left, thinking that would take us deeper into the mountain, so deeper into the structure, but other-Tennyson tugged on my elbow and gestured toward the other direction.

“You’re sure?” I asked him. “That’s where the other prisoners are kept?”

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