Chapter 105: THE BOY WITH THE CROWN

I hit the floor flat on my back. The wind rushed out of my lungs, and for a few seconds, I couldn't breathe at all. I just lay there, staring up at a flat gray ceiling that didn't have any lights.

"Sarah!" I gasped out, rolling over onto my knees.

My voice didn't echo. It just dropped dead, like the air was made of thick wool. I looked around, scrambling to my feet. Sarah wasn't here. The hole to the real world was gone. The giant conveyor belt and the recycling centre were gone too. I was inside a small box of a room with smooth gray walls. There were no doors. There were no windows.

"Looking for her?"

A voice came from right behind me. I spun around, my fists up and ready to hit something.

The boy with the crown was sitting on a plastic chair in the corner. He looked normal, like a kid you would see at a middle school basketball game, but the gold crown on his head looked heavy and sharp. He had a brand-new notebook on his lap, and his fingers were gripping a thick black marker.

"Where is she?" I asked. I took a step toward him, my boots clicking loudly. "What did you do to her?"

"She’s in the next folder," the boy said. He didn't look scared of me at all. He didn't even look up from his notebook. He just started drawing a long, jagged line across the page. "I had to separate you two. When you stay together, you keep finding ways to break the endings. My dad told me that characters who love each other always ruin the plot."

"Your dad?"

"The Author", the boy said, finally looking up. His eyes were totally black, with no white parts at all. "You ripped him to pieces in the last chapter. You thought you were being smart, but you just made me the boss. He was old and slow anyway. He kept writing the same old loops. I like things to go fast."

He tapped the marker against his chin. "I like revenge stories. They get more clicks."

I felt a hot rush of blood hit my face. My fists tightened until my skin felt thin. This little kid had been watching me suffer for a hundred chapters like I was a video game character. He had let the author torture me and let the system delete my life, and now he had Sarah.

"I am going to take that crown and throw it into the pit," I said, my voice dropping low. "Give her back to me right now."

The boy laughed. It was a high, annoying sound. "You can't touch me, Logan. I’m the user now. Look at your feet."

I looked down. The gray floor was turning into water, but it wasn't wet. It was black liquid ink, rising up over the toes of my boots. I tried to lift my left leg, but it wouldn't move. It was stuck, like I was standing in wet cement. The ink was crawling up my jeans, thick and heavy.

"If you don't play my game, I just close the book," the boy said, raising his marker. "I can start a new story with a new guy named Logan who actually does what I want."

"I am not playing," I said.

I didn't try to pull my legs out of the floor. Instead, I leaned forward with everything I had left. I reached out with both hands, aiming straight for the notebook on his lap. If I could rip the pages, maybe the ink would stop rising.

The boy’s eyes went wide. He hadn't expected me to move while stuck. He tried to slide his chair back, but the wall was right behind him.

I grabbed the edge of the notebook. The paper felt hot, like toast fresh out of the toaster.

"Let go!" the boy yelled. He dropped the marker and grabbed my wrists, trying to twist my arms back. For a kid, his hands felt like heavy blocks of wood. He was strong, way too strong.

"Give her back!" I shouted, pulling the notebook toward me.

Rip. The page tore right down the middle.

The gray walls around us immediately cracked open. The black ink on my legs vanished, dropping me back onto the solid floor. A loud, screaming noise filled the room, like a microphone getting too close to a speaker.

The boy stumbled back, clutching his crown as it started to slip. "You idiot! You tore the outline! Now the whole chapter is corrupt!"

"Good!" I yelled.

I didn't wait for him to fix it. I lunged at him again, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the gray wall. "Where is Sarah? Tell me!"

The boy didn't look angry anymore. He looked terrified. He pointed his finger at the floor beneath my feet.

I looked down. The floor wasn't gray anymore. It had turned completely see-through, like a giant sheet of glass. And right below us, only a few feet down, was a long conveyor belt.

Sarah was on it. But she wasn't alone.

The old Logan, the tired one from the living room who had tried to force me to write, was standing over her. He had the black pen in his hand, and the tip was hovering right over her chest. He looked up through the glass floor and stared directly into my eyes.

"If you come down here, I click the pen," the old Logan’s voice echoed straight through the floor. "I’ll write her out before you can even touch the ground."

The boy in my arms grinned, his black eyes shining. "See? I told you I like revenge. Now choose, Logan. Which version of you gets to kill the girl?"

The glass beneath my boots began to spiderweb with cracks. It was about to shatter, and I was going to fall right into the middle of the fight.