It had been a long summer—weeks of huddling under the burning lamp in his study, scouring the pages of every science magazine and journal to which he could possibly subscribe. He’d channeled his growing self-pity into an unprecedented thirst for knowledge, his brain soaking it up like a monstrous, alien sponge. Oh, how he’d enjoyed every single minute of his obsessive study binge. It kept him sane, helped him—

Mr. Chu faltered, almost stumbled, when he realized a man stood just outside the stone archway of the cemetery, arms folded across his chest, silhouetted against the pale light of a streetlamp in the distance. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere, as Mr. Chu had detected no movement prior to noticing the stranger. Like a black cardboard cutout, the figure didn’t move, staring with unseen eyes, sending a wave of prickly goose bumps down Mr. Chu’s arms.

He recovered his wits and continued walking, refusing to show fear. Why was he so jumpy tonight? He had no reason to think this man was a thug, despite Mrs. Tennison’s absurd warning. Even if the still figure, standing there like a statue, was a bad guy, it would do no good to act afraid. All the same, Mr. Chu slyly changed his course to cross the lane, knowing the small, wooded area between here and the town square would provide cover if he needed to run and hide.

Quit being ridiculous, he chided himself. However, he kept the mysterious shadow of a man in the corner of his vision.

Mr. Chu had just reached the gravel-strewn side of the road when his late-night visitor spoke—a slippery, soft-spoken whisper that nevertheless carried like clanging cowbells through the deep silence of the night.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Bitter mockery filled the voice, and Mr. Chu stopped walking, falling through the thin ice of apprehension straight into an abyss of outright terror, something he had never truly felt before. It turned his stomach, squeezed it, sending sour, rotten juices through his body; he wanted to bend over and throw up.

Another man stepped out of the woods to his right. At the same moment, a finger tapped him from behind on his right shoulder. Shrieking, Mr. Chu spun around, his fear igniting into panic.

This time, he saw a face—a shadowed mug of hard angles, rigid with anger. Mr. Chu saw a flicker of movement, then a flash of blue light. An explosion of heat and electricity came from everywhere at once, knocking him to the ground in a twitching heap. He cried out as pain lanced through his body, tendrils of lightning coursing along his skin. With a whimper, he looked up and saw the person holding out a long device which still crackled with static electricity.

“Wow, you look just like him,” the nameless face said.

Reginald Chu, founder and CEO of Chu Industries, stood within his massive laboratory, studying the latest test results from the ten-story-tall Darkin Project as he awaited word on the abduction of his Alterant from Reality Prime. It amused him to know the science teacher would be brought to the same building in which he himself stood—a dangerous prospect at best, certain death at worst. Mixing with alternate versions of yourself from other Realities was like playing dentist with a cobra.

Which is why his employees had been given strict instructions to never bring the other Reginald Chu within five hundred feet of the real Reginald Chu (the one who mattered most in the universe anyway). They’d lock the look-alike away in a maximum-security cell deep in the lower chambers of the artificial mountain of glass that was Chu Industries until they needed the captive to serve his dual purpose in being kidnapped.

Dual purpose. Reginald took a deep breath, loving the smells of electronics and burnt oil that assaulted his senses. He reflected on the plan he’d set into place once the information had poured in from his network of spies in the other Realities. They brought news of intriguing developments with massive potential consequences—especially the bit about the boy named Atticus Higginbottom.

If Reginald was not the most supreme example of rational intelligence ever embodied in a human being—and he most certainly was—he would have doubted the truth of what he’d heard and had verified by countless sources. It seemed impossible on the face of it—something from a

storybook told to dirty urchins in an orphanage before they went to bed. Tales of magic and power, of an unspeakable ability in the manipulation of the most central force in the universe: Chi’karda. A human Barrier Wand, perhaps.

But Reginald knew the mystery could be explained, all within the complex but perfectly understood realm of science. Still, the idea thrilled him. The boy had no idea what was at stake—he had something Reginald Chu wanted, and nothing in the world could be more dangerous than that.

Reginald walked over to the airlift which would ascend along the surface of the tall project device. He allowed his retina to be scanned, then stepped onto the small metal square of the hovervator. He pressed the button for the uppermost level. As the low whine of the lift kicked in, pushing him toward the false sky of the ridiculously large chamber, he heard the slightest beep from the nanophone nestled deep within the skin of his ear.

“Yes?” he said in a sharp clip, annoyed at being disturbed even though he’d told them to do so as soon as they returned. The microscopic particles of the device he’d invented took care of all communication needs with no effort on his part.

“We have him,” the soft voice of Benson replied, echoing in Reginald’s mind as though from a long-dead spirit. Benson had been the lead on the mission to Reality Prime.

“Good. Is he harmed? Did you raid his house, gather his . . . things?” The airlift came to a stop with a soft bump; Reginald stepped onto the metal-grid catwalk encircling his grandest scientific experiment to date. From here, all he could see was the shiny golden surface of the enormous cylinder, dozens of feet wide, reflecting back a distorted image of his face that made him look monstrous.

“Everything went exactly as planned,” Benson said. “No blips.”

Reginald stabbed a finger in the air even though he knew Benson couldn’t see him. “Don’t you dare bring that sorry excuse for a Chu near me—not even close. There’s no guarantee who’d flip into the Nonex. I want him locked away—”

“Done,” Benson barked.

Reginald frowned at his underling’s tone and interruption. He took note to watch Benson closely in case his lapse in judgment developed into something more akin to insubordination or treachery.

“Bring his belongings to me and ready him for the Darkin injection.”