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  “The boxes are hot lava,” I said as I whirled around, driving my heel into his knee. His leg buckled, splitting like kindling under his weight and causing him to topple sideways into a bunch of boxes.

  Or what had been boxes only a moment before. Instead, he hit a giant vat of lava, and let me just say, it stunk. A lot.

  Ronnie’s screams brought me back to the present, and as I turned toward her, I used another command to break my handcuffs, causing them to fall to the ground in twisted metal chunks.

  “What just happened?” she asked, looked at me wide-eyed as I came toward her. “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.” I nodded to her as I reached for her hand. “And now we have to leave.”

  “I hadn’t seen you actually kill someone…” She took my hand, and I moved toward the far wall.

  “Yeah, I try not to do that.” I glanced back at the smoking corpse of Mr. T and frowned. “Especially because I’d much rather have used him for information.”

  “Oh.” Ronnie swallowed hard, trying to be brave. “What do we do?”

  “You get the M16 hidden in the cache of weapons behind the secret door on the far wall and shoot anyone else who tries to stop us.” The sound of it becoming true filled my ears as I moved to the far wall. “I can’t do it because I’ll be driving the YZF-R1.”

  “I don’t know how to use a gun…” Ronnie looked at me as I pressed my hand to the new door, causing it to open and reveal a small pile of weapons. “And I thought you left the YZF-R1 all the way back on the other side of the tunnel.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re a master of weaponry, a great shot, and fearless because you have the equivalent of a decade of special forces training.” Her demeanor shifted as the sound of truth pinged in my ears. Then she nodded.

  “Right. I’ll shoot. You drive?” She gestured at me as my pen slipped into my hand, and I used it to write a few things because, at least for me, it was a lot easier to write out what I wanted than speak it. “Where’s the bike?”

  “The YZF-R1 is in the tunnel that leads us straight back to the base.” I pulled the door open, revealing the bike and the tunnel. It was time to get out of here. Bait or not, this wasn’t the way to get information. Not when it put Ronnie in danger anyway. “Now let’s go.”

  15

  As Ronnie climbed on the back of the silver Yamaha YZF-R1, the sound of boots coming down the stairs filled my ears. There was a burst of heat behind me, and a quick glance over my shoulder revealed a bunch of thugs with flamethrowers burning their way through the ants.

  The crazy thing was, I’d have expected the walls to catch fire, but the fire seemed to roll harmlessly across it.

  “Shoot them.” I took off, twisting the throttle and tearing down the tunnel as quickly as I could.

  “On it,” Ronnie replied, unleashing a spray of bullets with her M16. The sound of the gunfire in the enclosed space nearly blew out my eardrums, but I ignored it, concentrating on getting as far away as possible.

  “Seal off the door to the tunnel,” I said under my breath, but unfortunately there was no ping in my ear to tell me it’d worked, and a look over my shoulder confirmed my suspicion. The tunnel remained open. Well, that was annoying, but also not a total loss. After all, where there were thugs, there would be people with information.

  Soldiers flooded into the entrance, already firing at us. I dodged and weaved as bullets ripped into the walls, floor, and ceiling around us, and while Ronnie was doing a good job returning fire, they didn’t seem particularly perturbed by it.

  “The automated defenses attack,” I said, wishing I’d made the tunnel wide enough for a tank.

  Again, there was no ping, nor did the automated defenses come to life. Dammit.

  That’s when I heard the sound of motorcycles behind me.

  “We’ve got incoming,” Ronnie growled, her M16 going empty as she finished off the magazine. Her other hand was already moving, sweeping a new one into place as she dropped the old one before firing again. “The bullets keep bouncing off them.”

  “What?” I asked, and I turned in time to see her shots bounce off the lead soldier’s facemask before ricocheting into the hallway. “Oh.”

  So, they had body armor. That was fine though. I could deal with that.

  “What do you want me to do?” Ronnie asked, leaning in close to me and trying to make herself as small as possible. “I’m almost out of ammo.”

  “Use the grenades we picked up earlier,” I replied, and as she reached into the satchel, she cursed.

  “Fuck. It’s empty.” She rummaged around a bit more. “Where did they go?”

  “Into the ether from whence they came,” I growled, and as the words left my lips, the bike we were riding on vanished. Which was bad for a number of reasons, least of which that we were going damned near a hundred miles an hour.

  “We survive the fall unharmed,” I cried and thanked the Lord above when it worked. Miraculously, I hit the ground in a roll, that sent me tumbling forward across the tunnel, and as I came to my feet completely unscathed, I saw Ronnie standing a couple feet in front of me, no worse for wear.

  “How the hell did we survive that,” she said as she dropped to one knee and took aim at the oncoming motorcycles with her M16.

  “Shoot the wheels,” I said, and she must have heard me because her next burst shredded the tires of the lead rider.

  As the wheel exploded into bits of rubber and twisted steel, the bike cartwheeled, flipping over and crushing the driver against the ground as it tumbled across the ground. A second later, the next rider slammed into it. The nose of his bike dropped as the back end rose violently off the ground, sending the guy spinning through the air. He hit the metal floor a few feet away with a resounding smack and lay there unmoving.

  Unfortunately, the other three riders avoided the wreckage, somehow managing to swerve around the debris.

  “Down,” I cried, grabbing Ronnie and throwing her to the side as a line of gunfire erupted from the leader. Bullets tore into the space we’d occupied only a second before as they rushed toward us.

  Ronnie tried to take aim once more, but as she did, her gun vanished, leaving her empty-handed as the three men came toward us.

  “What is going on?” she cried as I pulled myself to my feet.

  “He’s thwarting my magic somehow,” I snapped, one hand going for my holster and finding it no longer existed. “Everything I’ve created is vanishing. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but…”

  “Didn’t you make this tunnel?” Ronnie asked, swallowing hard as another burst of bullets ripped through the air. They’d missed but only because they were far away still. In another second or so, that wouldn’t be the case.

  “Yes,” I said, and while I was worried it might evaporate and leave me stranded in the Las Vegas soil, I decided not to focus on that. If it happened now, there’d be nothing I could do, but these guys? I could deal with them.

  “There’s a passageway under the floor that leads to my base,” I whispered.

  As I spoke, I grabbed hold of the handle beside my feet and pulled. The metal doorway slid up easily enough, revealing a small tunnel. Bullets pinged off the stretch of floor turned tunnel lid, but I ignored it as I shoved Ronnie inside and followed her.

  Only as I went to pull the lid down, it vanished.

  “Fuck!” I cried, dropping down as bullets zinged over my head.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Ronnie gave me a ‘please don’t get me killed’ look. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Head toward the base,” I said, pointing down the tunnel, immediately thankful it hadn’t vanished completely. “I’m gonna take care of these guys.”

  “How?” Ronnie asked, already moving to follow my orders.

  “With my pen.” Already I could hear the bikes approaching, but that was fine. I wasn’t sure how the person knew what things I’d created, but I had a theory, and it was time to test it out.

  My pen slid into one hand
while my trusty notepad filled the other.

  A steel door rises from the ground just ahead of this hidey hole, sealing off the tunnel.

  The words stayed on the page. Or at least they did until I heard the door spring into view. Then the line evaporated, and with it, so did the door. Still, as I heard the soldiers approaching, I had to smile.

  I wasn’t sure how he was cancelling my moves, but I was pretty sure about one thing. Whoever was after me had been listening to my voice commands and using them to thwart me. But when I wrote them, well, he had to wait until they happened to do that.

  The tunnel is filled with claymores.

  The moment I finished writing, the resulting explosion threw me from my feet, and even though my ears were ringing from the blast, I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d figured it out.

  “Are you okay?” Ronnie asked, coming toward me as I scribbled out the line that had created the original tunnel, causing it to turn back into earth and sealing us in the tiny passage.

  “Yeah,” I replied as she helped me to my feet. “But we need to get back to the base. Something tells me my people are in a lot of trouble.”

  16

  It only took a half hour or so to make our way down the tunnel back to my base, and while I could have used my pen to speed things up, I was wary of doing so because I didn’t want to give the other pen bearer a way to take me down.

  I wasn’t quite sure what his or her pen could do, but it definitely seemed like straight up negating my powers was on the table. It was weird because while Wayne had been able to counter my powers with his pen, he had needed to pre-emptively do it. This was the opposite, almost like once I did something it could be negated and that made me wary. Not scared, but wary.

  So, that’s why we had walked. That was also why I was unarmed. The last thing I wanted to do was charge in with a gun and have it vanish at a pivotal moment. Besides, it wasn’t like I really needed a weapon. I was a weapon.

  “We’re almost there,” I said, holding my hand out to stop Ronnie’s advance as she crept along behind me, covering my six. “Once we get out there, if there are any bad guys, let me take them down. Then I’ll get weapons from my cache and hand them to you to give me cover.”

  “I appreciate you going first.” She bit her lip as she approached the door that led to the throne room in my base. “But why are you doing that?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, putting my hand on the panel on the wall. I was glad Marty had thought to put a permanent door here. Since we didn’t know if I’d need to make a quick entrance or exit, we’d put an honest to god door in the throne room for me to connect to via pen created tunnels. That way everyone would know where to go to get back in or out.

  “I don’t have magic.” She gestured at me. “You obviously do …”

  “Chances are good that my people are behind that door and I don’t want them to shoot you.” I glanced at her. “Also, I’m a gentleman and wearing bulletproof armor.”

  “You should have just gone with gentleman.” She tried to smile at me, but her gaze was fixated on the door. “Um …” She pointed at it. “Is it supposed to be red?”

  “What?” I asked, turning back toward it and finding she was right. Only, it shouldn’t have been red. It should have been green. Why the hell wasn’t it turning green?

  “Fuck it,” I muttered, glaring at the door. Then, careful to keep my voice down, I mouthed a few words. “The door opens.”

  The door slid open, and I immediately realized why it hadn’t worked. The entire room was just fucking gone. Well, okay, that wasn’t quite true. Parts of the room were gone, but not all. For one, everything I hadn’t created with the pen was still there.

  Not much else remained though. Instead, there was just a massive fucking hole in the earth filled with various bits of machinery.

  I swallowed hard as I stared at it.

  Someone had negated my base.

  My eyes went wide as my notepad sprang into my hand. Flipping through the pages, I found what I was looking for. Several of the notes I used to create the base were covered in what looked like pink highlighter, and as I looked out at the room, I realized that it corresponded to what had been negated. How the fuck was that possible?

  Part of me wanted to freak out because I didn’t know how it had happened, but at the same time, I couldn’t. I had no idea what had happened to my people, and that thought made me pissed.

  Worse, if I wrote anything at all, it might give me away. No. I needed to do this calmly and carefully.

  Leaping down from the doorway, I landed hard on the muddy floor of what had once been my throne room. I wasn’t sure why the place still seemed to be excavated, probably because there were bits and pieces of real stuff everywhere, but I wasn’t going to argue with it. Instead, I focused on making my way across the room as quietly as possible. As I approached the far hallway, Ronnie jumped down and crept toward me.

  I ignored her as I moved to what had once been a doorway. Peeking my head out, I saw that like my throne room, the hallway had been reduced to a muddy tunnel in the dirt. There was also a corpse in the center dressed in body armor I didn’t recognize. Blood leaked from a hole in his head where his face should have been, and as I stared at him, I wondered if I was on to something about the negation.

  Maybe the other pen bearer couldn’t destroy things that weren’t expressly created by the pen? Maybe that was why the excavated dirt was still missing? Otherwise, why would this guy have come in here after the room had been erased? The whole room just shouldn’t have existed. Neither should the one to my left, but both were there. Sure, they were completely devoid of anything save dirt, but maybe that was the point.

  I knew what happened when I erased lines from the book, it took out everything I’d ever done, including replacing the dirt I’d removed. But maybe this new guy’s pen couldn’t create more dirt? Maybe it only destroyed pen-made constructs? If that was the case, it gave me an advantage in that he wouldn’t be able to collapse my base on top of me.

  Was that why he hadn’t collapsed the tunnel on me earlier? I’d assumed it was because I was inside it, but maybe he just couldn’t do it?

  Either way, it didn’t matter now. No. What mattered now was finding my friends and figuring out a way to put this douchebag in the ground.

  “Ronnie, search that guy for weapons.” I nodded toward him. “And if that vest fits, I suggest you wear it.”

  “Okay,” she said without argument, which was a touch surprising, but that was fine.

  As she moved to the corpse, I crept forward, glancing in the rooms as we passed and wishing we’d used real construction materials. If we had, I’d still have a base.

  Still, there was no use whining about that now. Besides, you live and learn, right? When this was over, I was going to reconstruct everything with real materials.

  “I’m good,” Ronnie said a few minutes later, and I turned to see her standing there in a bulletproof vest way too large for her. That was no good at all. Especially because she hadn’t fit in any of the other body armor.

  “There were no weapons?” I asked, looking at her.

  She shook her head. “He’s been picked clean.”

  “Great,” I grumbled, pausing to think. Then I used my pen to write a quick note on the pad.

  The vest Ronnie is wearing is clean and fits her.

  As I finished, the vest shrank to fit her perfectly, and as she stared down at it, she nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Put the rest on, and I’ll modify it.” Part of me was concerned that modifying it would bite me in the ass, but at worse all that would happen is that it’d return to normal size. The thing was, I was starting to think that maybe I’d given the guy too much credit because as I looked back at the throne room, I couldn’t help but wonder why the door was still there.

  Sure, it’d been a relatively normal security door when we’d installed it, but it had been modified by my pen as well. Normally, I’d have created the whole thing with
my pen, but Marty had wanted to surprise me with it, which meant it was real, and near as I could tell, all the modifications I’d done with the pen to it had remained.

  I wasn’t sure if it was because the other pen bearer had missed it or if it was a limit to his power, but I didn’t care because as I flipped back to the notes on the door, I found it curiously devoid of highlighter on a page that was a sea of pink.

  “Okay, I’ve got it on, but I feel like I’m playing dress up in my dad’s clothes,” Ronnie whispered, edging closer to me, and her voice brought me out of my own head.

  “Right.” I nodded to her as I wrote another line.

  The body armor Ronnie is wearing fits her.

  No sooner had I finished writing that the body armor shrank to fit her perfectly.

  “Man, your magic is awesome,” she whispered, looking down at herself. “I don’t think even the stuff at Le Château de Tissu Extraordinaire fit this well.”

  “I’m something of a tailor myself,” I said before taking a deep breath and nodding to her. “Now, let’s see what’s going on out there.”

  That’s when I heard the sound of gunfire.

  17

  As I darted toward the crack of gunfire with Ronnie hot on my heels, I turned the corner to find myself staring at a squadron of soldiers wearing body armor similar to the dead one in the hallway.

  While most of them had taken cover behind giant metallic shields they’d braced against the dirt floor, others were moving past them with their own set of shields, and while their advance was taking a ton of time, I immediately realized it’d be effective for two reasons.

  They’d either get past the automated Gatling guns on the far wall, or the guns would run out of bullets.

  Either way, I was glad Marty had purchased them instead of having me make them. Actually, as I stared at the room, I realized a lot of things were that way. There were crates of gear, broken tables, and an assortment of other things that had proved easier to buy than for me to make, mostly because it would have been a waste of my time to make it, while any of my people could buy stuff.