Chapter 95 THE BLANK PAGE

Chapter 95 THE BLANK PAGE
White. That’s all there was. Just bright, blinding white. I tried to move, but I had no body. I tried to yell, but I had no mouth. It was like I was just a thought floating in a jar.

Am I dead? I wondered.

Then, a shape appeared. It was Sarah. She looked perfectly normal, just like the Sarah from the school hallway. She was walking toward me, but she was walking on air.

"Logan," she said. Her voice wasn't a recording anymore. It was her own. It was warm. "You have to wake up."

"I can't," I told her. "I don't have a body. I don't have anything."

She reached out and touched my forehead. It felt like a spark of fire. "You do. You’re just looking in the wrong place. They didn't delete you, Logan. They just archived you."

Archived. The word made me angry. Like I was a file in a folder, waiting to be opened or tossed out.

"I'm not a file," I said. My voice sounded loud in the white space. "I'm me."

"Then prove it," she said.

She turned around and pointed behind me. I looked. There was a door. It wasn't made of wood or light. It was made of paper. Pages and pages of story, glued together to make a door. I recognized the words on the surface. Chapter 1. Chapter 5. Chapter 20. All the things I had lived through.

"If you go through that," Sarah said, "you go back into the machine. You’ll be in a story again. Maybe a better one, maybe worse. But you’ll be alive."

"And if I stay here?"

"You just float," she said. "Forever. Nothing happens. You never feel pain, but you never feel anything else, either."

I looked at the door. I thought about the knife. I thought about the faceless man. I thought about the Reader with those black-hole eyes. If I went back, I was just going to be a puppet again. But if I stayed... I’d never see Sarah again.

I didn't think about it. I ran toward the door.

I hit the paper, and it gave way like wet tissue. I tumbled through, but instead of hitting a room, I felt like I was falling into a pool of ink. It was cold and thick, and it stuck to my skin. I gasped and kicked, trying to surface.

I broke through the top and landed hard on a floor. It was stone. Cold, damp stone.

I looked around. I was in a hallway. It looked like the halls of a giant palace. The ceiling was so high I couldn't see the top. Torches lined the walls, but they didn't give off any heat. They just gave off a weak, flickering light.

"Welcome back," a voice said.

I stood up fast. Standing a few feet away was the man in the suit, the one I had seen on the screen. He looked bored. He was checking his watch.

"You were a pain to recover," he said, tapping his phone. "I had to dig through three years of backups just to find your file."

"Where is Sarah?" I demanded. I felt for the pen, but my pockets were empty.

"She's in the next draft," he said. He started walking down the hall, his shoes clicking on the stone. "You're in a new project now. A new genre. We’re moving away from the fantasy stuff. Too much work. We’re going with a prison break theme. It’s popular right now."

I followed him. I had to. I had no idea where I was, and he was the only one who knew the rules.

"I’m not doing it," I said. "I’m not your lead character."

He laughed. He stopped in front of a big metal door and put his hand on a keypad. "Logan, look at your arm."

I looked down. My skin was turning transparent. I could see the muscles underneath, and they weren't made of blood and bone. They were made of ink. Long, flowing lines of black text.

"You're a rough draft," he said. "If I don't give you a role, you’ll fade away in about ten minutes. I'm doing you a favor by putting you in this story."

"Why?" I asked. "Why me?"

He leaned in close. He didn't have a face like the faceless man, but his eyes were strange. They had numbers running across the pupils.

"Because," he said, "you’re the only character who ever figured out how to break the script. I want to see if you can do it twice."

He punched in a code, and the door groaned open. Inside, it wasn't a prison. It was a massive arena, filled with people. Thousands of them. They were all sitting in the stands, cheering.

And in the middle of the arena, tied to a wooden post, was Sarah.

"She's the prize," the man said. "The winner of the prison break gets to keep her. The loser gets deleted."

"This is a game," I said, my voice shaking.

"Everything is a game," he said. He pushed me into the arena and slammed the door shut.

The crowd went silent. The lights went down, and a giant spotlight hit me.

From the shadows across the arena, a cage rose up. It opened, and a creature stepped out. It was huge, covered in black armor, and it had a weapon that looked like a giant, glowing pen.

It looked at me and roared.

I felt my ink-muscles tensing. I didn't have a weapon. I didn't have a plan. All I had was the memory of the blue pen.

The creature charged. It moved so fast it was just a blur of black and blue. I dove to the side, my feet slipping on the dirt.

"Logan!" Sarah screamed from the post.

I looked up, and I saw something. The creature’s armor wasn't solid. It was made of words. Stab. Kill. Destroy.

If I could reach those words, I could change them.

The creature swung its weapon. I ducked, and the giant tip of the pen slammed into the ground, right where my head had been. I grabbed the tip with both hands. It was burning hot, but I held on.

I climbed up the weapon like a rope. I reached the creature's chest. I saw the word: Destroy.

I reached out to wipe it away, but the creature grabbed me by the neck. It lifted me high into the air. I looked down at the crowd. They were chanting one word, over and over.

Finish! Finish! Finish!

The creature pulled its arm back to throw me into the wall. I saw the man in the suit standing in the VIP box. He was holding a remote. He pressed a button.

My arm turned into a puddle of ink, and my hand fell off.