Page 40 of The Other World

CHAPTER NINETEEN

My first thoughtwas that I was definitely not getting out of this without a brain injury. My second was that I was soaking wet. And my third was that I was soaking wet with other people’s bodily fluids.

I jumped to my feet. Other-me was still knocked out but I could see her starting to stir. Nikolai was up and working on the last buckle that held other-Tennyson down. My Tennyson had hidden behind the desk. His head popped up when he heard me yell.

“Where’s Mrs Spencer?” I asked, my voice sounding muffled through the ringing in my ears. I’d been so focused on keeping Other-me’s attention that I had no clue what Mrs Spencer had been doing. I couldn’t see her on the ground anywhere. There was only rubble and bits of dad juice. Maybe she’d escaped before the explosion. That had to be it, because she definitely wasn’t there.

I grabbed my sword out of Other-me’s hand. Tennyson picked up Althea, swinging her over his shoulder.

“Come on!” someone yelled from the giant hole that had been blasted into the wall. It was other-Nikolai. “The guards will be coming in droves. We have to get back to the portal.”

Most of the other prisoners had been blown free of their chains but Katie was still trapped, and I couldn’t leave her there. I was too weak to be of much help, though, so I was grateful when Nikolai came over to help.

“Come on,” he said, once Katie was free. “We have to get out of here.”

I didn’t need telling twice. We had everything we’d come for. I had no desire to stick around with Other-me and whatever was left of not-dad. I helped Katie over the rubble, then we ran. The ringing was starting to fade from my ears, and already I could hear the guards yelling somewhere in the distance.

Even though I was exhausted, I ran as hard as I could. I wanted to catch up to other-Nikolai, who was leading us through the building.

“Is the portal still open?” I asked him, when I was close enough.

“It was when I left,” he said. “I locked all the doors in the compound, except for the way I opened up for us. We should be home free.”

I wished he hadn’t said that. Saying that was like saying you’d be right back in a horror movie. It was just asking for trouble.

Still, we didn’t see anyone as we ran through the compound. Which was fortunate, because I quickly began to flag. The burst of speed to catch up to Nikolai had been the last of my reserves, and it was all I could do to keep going. Tennyson ran beside me, carrying Althea.

By the time we got close to the office, my leg muscles were burning. I had to use the railing to pull myself up the last few flights of stairs, and my sword as a walking stick. It felt as if my legs would go out from under me at any moment.

I was surprised when we all piled into the office to find Mrs Spencer and Sam. That must have been why she’d vanished, to go back for him, though I had no clue why she’d bring him here.

“We have to go,” Mrs Spencer said.

“Yeah, no duh,” said Nikolai. I wasn’t sure which one.

The sound of the guards running up the stairs behind us was too close for comfort. I pushed everyone inside and locked the doors, and a few people helped me pile all the office furniture we could manage in front of it.

“No, we have to leave this world,” Mrs Spencer said. “To go home.”

As she said it, I realized there was no portal. And if there had been, it was in the doorway that we’d just barricaded.

“We can’t go home,” I told her. “We don’t have a portal and I have no powers.”

The guards were at the door now. I could hear them banging around out there. I doubted it would take them long to smash through.

“You have the sword,” said Mrs Spencer. “And the lodestone.”

I had absolutely forgotten the lodestone. I felt in my pocket and realized it was still in there. I must have taken it out when I changed clothes. I must have held it a dozen times, at least, but I’d never even thought about it. It seemed that I never thought about it, unless someone mentioned it to me first. Come to think of it, it was strange that Other-me hadn’t stolen it when she’d taken my sword.

Mrs Spencer noticed my astonishment and nodded. “The stone has many powers. Nobody understands them all.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I still don’t havemypowers.”

“Once you learn to use the sword and the stone, they’ll come back in a jiffy,” she said. “But right now, all they need to do istake that portal and redirect it from the school in this world, to the school back home. Easy peasy.”

“Is that possible?” I had to yell for her to hear me over the guards trying to knock down the door. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just go back to school and figure this out later?”

She shook her head. “We need this portal here to be fired up, and we can only do that from this end. This is our only chance. That’s why I left as soon as I realized, to go get my Sam.”

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