Page 39 of The Other World

“Oh, you’re sofunny,” she said, not laughing. “As I was saying, I had to get you here at just the right moment. Too soon, and I wouldn’t have been ready. Too late and Daddy might have missed the whole thing.”

She nodded toward a smaller tank at the end of the room. The liquid in that tank was much thicker and darker than in Althea’s, so it was hard to see that there was someone inside there too. Not-dad was crammed in, not floating gracefully like Althea, but stuffed, like an overpacked suitcase, so full that some of the liquid sloshed over the sides.

His eyes blinked open and I stifled a scream.

“As it is, he’s almost finished brewing,” she said. “That liquid has a good color on it, doesn’t it. I might even be able to squeeze a second vat out of him before he’s out of juice.”

I made a face. Even for evil not-dad, this seemed harsh. “So you’re, what, boiling all the magic out of him? Cooking up him into a dad soup?”

“Something like that,” she said with an annoying smirk.

I would have to start trying to make that face in the mirror so I could be sure never to do it by accident. It was the most annoying face I’d ever seen.

“Enough,” I said. “Look, do what you want with your father, but you need to let everyone else go. You’re wildly outnumbered here. You’re not going to beat us, so just free these people and let us be on our way.”

“Funny,” she said again.

I gave Tennyson a little nudge, and nodded toward the back of the room, past the other prisoners. There was a desk with a bunch of equipment piled on it. If the sword was anywhere, I’d bet it was there. I could keep her distracted while he went to look. He nodded to show that he understood, so I started walking toward the Althea tank, so Other-me was looking the other way.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, pointing up at Althea. “You can’t make Althea into soup.”

“Of course not,” she said, in a tone that implied I was stupid for even thinking it. Whenshewas the one making her father into magic stew. “But even if I explained, I doubt you’d understand.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not smarter than me. Obviously more evil, but not smarter.”

“Very well,” she said, moving away from other-Tennyson and toward the tank.

I gestured to Nikolai to go free other-Tennyson while she wasn’t looking, but didn’t want to risk looking to see if he understood.

“I’m attempting a transmorphic exchange of power,” she said. “This is a special type of liquid that I’ve been working on, a type of acid comprised of various extractions I’ve made from the creatures my father keeps.”

I tried to keep my face passive butew, she had Althea floating around in a bunch of bodily fluids.

“That’s what was in all those jars,” I said. “In the room where you knocked me out.”

She nodded. “I’ve been collecting them for years, ever since I realized what my father was doing.”

I mentally flicked through my evil guy catalog. “Creating a super solider?” I asked. “Stealing their powers to sell to the Department of Defence? Stealing their powers to become immortal?”

She rolled her eyes and started to turn away. Nikolai was halfway through unbuckling other-Tennyson.

I clapped my hands to get her attention back to me. “Stealing their powers to sell to aliens!”

“Honestly,” she said. “You arenotas smart as me. No, he thinks he cancurethem. Like they have some sort of disease. He planned to wipe all paranormal power from the world. And to do that, he needed to know what caused the powers in the first place. Once I realized that, I knew I had to gather as much data as possible. If he succeeded, so much valuable information would be lost. If he failed, I knew he’d decide to just wipe all non-human people from the world. He’d never suffer them to live. He thinks they’re abominations, crimes against nature. So, either way, I had to collect as many samples as I could.”

“You wouldn’t try to stop it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “If it wasn’t my father, it would have been someone else. And this way, I could continue my research.” She placed a hand on the glass and stared up at Althea. “I’m so close,” she whispered.

I wondered if this was who I’d have been, if my father had taken me with him when he’d left. Would I be all twisted and warped by his beliefs like she was? I hoped not.

“So, after you squeeze out all their powers, then what?” I said, making sure she kept her attention on me. The last thing I needed was for her to see Tennyson’s reflection in the glass of the tank or something. “You’ll make a magic power smoothie, drink it down and be the queen of the world? Because that doesnotsound tasty. It sounds pretty nasty, actually.”

“Your ambitions are so tiny,” she said, turning back to me. She smiled at me then, and her smile was terrifying. “There’s no point,” she said. She looked over to Tennyson, to Nikolai. “You’re not getting out of here.”

She held out a hand and my sword came flying into it. She pointed it at my throat. I put my hands up in surrender. Nikolai had other-Tennyson almost free. We could definitely overpower her, sword or not. We could win this.

But before any of us could do anything, the room exploded.

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