Story Thieves (28 page)

“WHERE IS THE LAST KEY?”

Owen took a deep breath, crossing his fingers, toes, and
everything else. “I know where it is. And I'll give it to you, under one condition.”

Dr. Verity grinned. “Look who wants to deal!” He took two steps closer until he hung over Owen like a gargoyle. Slowly, he raised a ray gun right at Owen's face. “You don't really seem to be in the greatest position to be negotiating, though, all things considered.”

Owen swallowed hard. “Go ahead. Shoot me—”

“As you command!” The ray gun began to power up, and the doctor grinned wider.

“But if I die, you'll never get the key!” Owen finished quickly.

“If you die, you won't have any say in what happens to the key,” Dr. Verity said. “That's starting to look like my preferred option at this point, honestly. At least I never have to look at you again.”

“THE KEY IS IN MY HEART,” Owen shouted, turning his head away from the ray gun. “If you shoot me and my heart stops, the key will never work!”

Dr. Verity stood back and gave Owen a careful look. “You aren't lying,” he said, tapping the still-powered-up ray gun against his glasses. “I can tell, no increase in heart rate. And if you're not lying, that presents a very annoying problem. You
can't live, you see. You've caused me far too many problems. But I
want
the Source, Kiel. I don't like loose ends, and this wipes up pretty much every single one. Including you, by the way. So what do I do?”

“Let me live!” Owen said. “There's got to be a way to make sure the bomb doesn't kill me too. Then you'll have your weapon, and I'll go away. You'll never see me again!”

“Pardon me for suggesting this, but if I take a key out of your heart, wouldn't that stop your heart from working? And wouldn't that therefore negate my end of this bargain?”

Owen nodded and took another deep breath. “But you can save me,” he said, going all in. “Charm gave me a robot heart, just like hers. Put it in, do whatever you need to do to keep me alive, and the Seventh Key is yours.”

Dr. Verity's eyes went wide, and he held up the robotic heart Charm had given Owen back in the Magister's tower. “Well, that explains why you had
this
on you.” He began to laugh, harder and harder until Owen wondered if he was going to have a heart attack himself. “You . . . want me to save you . . . with science?” the doctor finally gasped. “YOU, Kiel Gnomenfoot, will become a creature of technology? I don't even
need
a reason. I'd happily do that, just to make
everything you've fought for completely worthless!”

“You have to promise I'll be okay,” Owen said. “Otherwise there's no deal.”

“
Or
I could just take the key out of your heart myself while it still beats,” the doctor said, raising an eyebrow.

“That won't work. According to the zombie of the First Magician, the only way to form the Seventh Key is if I give my heart up freely.” And selflessly.

Dr. Verity started to swear. “I really,
really
hate magic.” He sighed. “I really did want to kill you too. This is turning out to be a very disappointing day, all things considered.”

“Trust me, things aren't going the way I hoped either.”

Dr. Verity snorted at that, then shrugged. “Okay, one robotic heart for one heart key. Deal. Shake.” He held out a hand, and Owen went to shake it, only to remember he was still tied down. The doctor grinned. “Gotcha!”

Owen sighed. “Just . . . just do it already.”

“Soldiers!” Dr. Verity snapped his fingers, and two Science Soldiers stepped up next to Owen. “We're going to need a little surgery. Take the boy's robot heart, and switch it with the one in his chest, will you?”

One of the Science Soldiers held Owen down while the
other's fingers folded in to be replaced by knives. “Wait,
they're
going to do it?” Owen shouted. “I want a real doctor!”

“They contain all the knowledge in our medical libraries,” Dr. Verity said absently, then gave him an evil look. “Or, if you prefer,
I
could do it.”

Owen shivered and shook his head.

“Your loss. Let's move, soldiers! Give our boy a new heart!”

The Science Soldier holding the robotic heart touched his arm, pricking it with some kind of needle, and suddenly the room began to get all wavy and foggy. Owen fought to stay awake, but whatever it was that the robot had injected him with was way too powerful.

“Don't forget, you promised to keep me alive,” he said as clearly as he could.

“We'll see!” Dr. Verity said.

“Bethany,” Owen said as everything turned to black. “I'm . . . I'm sorry. . . .”

And as Owen fell unconscious, Dr. Verity turned to the Science Soldiers. “Who's Bethany?” he asked.

O
wen sat at the front desk at the library, checking in books. Lots of Kiel Gnomenfoot books, for some reason. He flipped through one, and the fact that all the pages were empty seemed odd, but not odd enough to worry about.

Someone laid a book down on the desk to check out, and he looked up. It was Bethany, made out of chocolate.

“I can't believe you did all this,” she told him, for once not sounding like she was yelling at him. Actually, she sounded almost impressed. “You played out Kiel's story through the entire book, Owen. All the way to the end.”

It was a bit hard to talk for some reason, like his head was foggy in a non-truth-spell kind of way. “I'm
so
sorry, Bethany,” Owen told her. “I never should have done any of this. It's all my fault. I don't blame you for leaving me here to die. I deserve it.”

Bethany, who was now made of words instead of chocolate, almost laughed. “Leave you here to die? What are you talking about?”

“Kiel Gnomenfoot dies at the end of the book,” Owen told her sadly. “And right now, I'm Kiel Gnomenfoot. If I didn't go through with it, all kinds of other people in the book would have suffered for it. I couldn't do that to them. Because it was my fault Kiel wasn't there. All my fault. Fiction is too dangerous. I'm going to leave it to you from now on.” He frowned. “Except I can't, because I'm going to die.
Aww.
”

“Owen, where do you think you are?” Bethany started to say, then was interrupted by a boy wearing a sign that said
KIEL GNOMENFOOT
.

And he was wearing that sign because he
was
Kiel Gnomenfoot! Sometimes dreams were the best.

“I'm really proud of you,” dream Kiel said to Owen. “I don't know you that well, Bowmen—”

“Owen,” Bethany said.

“But look at you. You're a bigger hero than I am!”

“Keep it modest,” Bethany whispered to him.

“Never,” he whispered back with a wink.

She sighed, and turned from words into an almost normal-looking Bethany again. “Owen, it's all over. Kiel and I beat the Magister. Everything's okay out here.”

Owen looked at her blankly. “Why would you beat the Magister? At what, a game?”

Bethany looked at Kiel, who nodded. “That's right, Owen,” the boy magician said. “We beat him at a game. That's all it was. Maybe you should just go back to sleep.”

“Sleep?” Owen asked, looking around him at the library, which was now his bedroom. “Oooh, sleep would be nice. But when I wake up, I'm going to have a robot heart and then Dr. Verity is going to kill me, because my heart won't work as a key.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I tricked him, Kiel. I had to give up my heart selflessly if it was going to open the vault. But I didn't. I made him promise to save me with a new heart and then let me go. That was a selfish deal, since it saved me, so the heart key won't work!” He frowned. “Which means he's going to kill me when it doesn't work. But at least I saved everyone from blowing up.”

Kiel grinned. “Sounds complicated, but I like it. Almost as good as one of my plans.”

Bethany put her hand on Owen's chest. “Maybe we should have gotten him out
before
the whole robot heart thing?”

“I also got an input for computer chips, too,” Owen said, showing her the back of his neck.

Bethany's eyes widened, and she dropped her head into her hands. Kiel smiled wider and patted her on the back. “It'll be fine,” he told her. “We can cover that up with magic or something.”

“You don't
know
any magic!”

“I bet
he
does,” Kiel said, pointing to Owen, who giggled happily at being pointed at by Kiel Gnomenfoot. Even if he did have to go back to playing Kiel and therefore dying.

“Sleep time?” Owen asked.

“Just about,” Kiel said. “Tell me one thing. What happened to Charm? She wasn't in the hallway with you when we snuck you out.”

Owen's smile faded. “She got hurt. She saved me when the
Scientific Method
exploded. She thought I was you, though. I like her lots.” He sniffed loudly. “I hope she's okay after all of this.”

Kiel's face clouded over. “Hurt? Where is she now?”

“Dr. Verity has her,” Owen said sadly. “Maybe if I don't die
right away, I can try to magic her away or something? I don't know that spell, but I'll still try.”

“You do that,” Kiel said. “Sleep now, Owen. I'll take things from here.”

“Sleep now,” Owen said, and leaned back into his bed, a relaxed smile on his face.

As he started to close his eyes, Owen saw Kiel Gnomenfoot, Bethany, and some other random guy step away from his bed, which was now much bigger than it'd ever been, surrounded by curtains and marble and all kinds of rich things.

“Well, it's time,” Kiel said from a short distance away now. “Take me back.”

“You can't go back to just . . .
die
,” Bethany said, before turning to the random guy. “
You.
I rescued you from a truly insane horror book, which we will never speak of again, so you owe me. Do something about this!”

“I can't!” the random guy said. “I set all of this up back in book two. Kiel was always meant to . . . um . . .”

“I know,” Kiel said. “I knew it was coming. Take me back, Bethany. It's the only way to save everyone.”

Bethany paused, then nodded. She took Kiel's hand, gave him a look, then threw her arms around him and hugged him
close. Aww! Why did she get Kiel hugs? Then the two of them disappeared into a book.

A moment later, just as Owen started to fall asleep, Bethany came shooting out of the book and turned to the older man.

“I don't care what you've set up,” Bethany said to him. “This is
not
happening. I'm not letting anything happen to him. To either of them!”

“You can't change the story!” the older man said. “The books have already been published!”

“Doesn't matter,” Bethany said. “Get ready to rewrite it.”

Wait . . .
Bethany
said that? Even in his dreamlike state, Owen couldn't believe that.

“You and me,” Bethany said to the older man. “We're going to fix this. You're going to find a plot hole, and I'm going to use it.”

“But my book doesn't
have . . .
Okay, there are a bunch, but—”

“Where's the closest one to the end here?”

“Well, probably . . . this one.” He pointed to a page.

“Good. Watch over Owen. I'll be right back. Oh, and just a real quick note for later—there's a full-size version of the Magister's tower on your lawn, so I'd just tell everyone they're making a Kiel Gnomenfoot movie. Seems like the best excuse.”

“Wait, what?” the older man yelled.

But Bethany disappeared into a book, and Owen fell asleep. And thankfully, all he had were amazing dreams of Hogwarts letters telling him he'd just been named High King of Narnia, without a robot heart in sight.

K
iel's eyes opened to Science Soldiers standing on all sides of him, powerful robotic arms holding him down. “What . . . what happened?” he said, struggling against the robots.

“You're awake!” said a voice, and Dr. Verity leaped forward, his face stopping just inches from Kiel's. “Finally! I wanted to wait to actually open the vault until you'd be here to see it too.”

“Don't do this, Verity,” Kiel said, staring at the doctor with fury in his eyes. “You can't. Billions will die!”

“Say it, Kiel,” Dr. Verity said, turning his back to the boy magician. “SAY IT!”

“Say . . . what?”

“Tell me to HAVE A HEART!” Dr. Verity shouted, then broke into maniacal laughter.

“Yikes,”
Owen said to Bethany as they read the final Kiel Gnomenfoot book together. “That was awful. I wish you'd said something to Mr. Porterhouse about his puns.”

“Shh, I'm reading,” Bethany told him.

“
Listen
to me,” Kiel said. “They're innocent people who did nothing to you. I can't let you do this!”

“Actually, you can,” Dr. Verity said. “The bomb's prepared, and just needs a power source. Now, where did I put my Source again?” He grinned. “Ah, right. Behind this door!” He gestured behind him, as if pulling aside a curtain. “
Ta-da!
See? I can do magic too!”

Behind the doctor lay a door with seven locks, each a different size and connected to large glowing energy bands that spread over the entire door. It was almost impossible to tell from looking at them if they were made from electricity or magic, but either way, the energy looked deadly.

“Want to do the honors?” Dr. Verity asked. “Or are you all tied up?”

“Did he always make these crazy-person kinds of jokes?” Bethany asked Owen.