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“Leave it to me,” Maggie grinned. “Unlike you, I happen to still love blowing shit up.”
The rest of us followed Maggie as she went shopping in the weapons room. With a manic grin on her face, she loaded us up, cheerily telling us how we were going to set charges around the building, and one under Cap’s bed for good measure. With my arms full, I stared at her, unsure of where to go from here.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she huffed. “Get to work!”
“I…I don’t know how to,” I stressed. “Giulia writes it and I do it. It’s not muscle memory.”
She frowned. “That does pose a problem. Interesting…I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff before…the transformation, but I’ve absorbed all the information and took it in stride. I wonder how many of the others have the same issue you do.”
“If they do have the same issue, then maybe that’s the way to disarm them. If we set off an explosive and Giulia’s not around to tell them what to do…that could solve all our problems.”
“Theoretically,” she pointed out. “This isn’t exactly something we’ve dealt with before.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll set the charges. Girls, you’re with me. Rob, your job is to wake everyone and draw them out on my signal.”
I nodded, then frowned at her. “How exactly?”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Do I have to do all the work for you? What exactly do you do?”
“I…exist in a book.”
“Right, but what are your interests?”
I shifted uncomfortably. With every minute that I was out of the book world and in this new altered state, things became more and more clear in my head. “Um…I like plants.”
The ladies all stared at me like I was crazy. “I think I want to…own a flower shop.”
Claire snorted. “Okay, now I understand why Giulia didn’t want us to realize our true selves.”
“Don’t be mean,” I grumbled. “I can’t help it that I’m not the man she would normally write about.”
“You know, the real question is where do we exist outside the book? When she’s asleep, are our characters dormant?” Kate questioned. “And if we are dormant, then…what happens if she stops writing about us? Does that mean we’re in some sort of stasis for all eternity?”
We all looked at each other in horror, but it was Cara who spoke up. “You mean…this is it? When she’s done writing her Reed Security series, we just…exist in her head? I’ll never get to figure out how the rest of my life turns out?”
“We’d be like those people in the hospital that never wake up,” Kate said in shock, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God. It’s happening.”
“What is?” I asked.
“People in…” She scrunched her brows in thought. “A vegetative state,” she said as if a light came on. “It’s happening. I’m remembering myself without the book world.”
“And?” I asked eagerly.
She shook her head. “Well, I’m definitely not a doctor.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Maggie rolled her eyes. “So, you’re not really a doctor. Are we gonna blow shit up or what?”
At least some things wouldn’t change. “I’ll start waking people up.”
“And draw them back to the main building. The last thing we need is a building that blows up but no one’s around to see it.”
“Right,” I nodded, turning to my next mission. I ran to the lobby and stopped, smiling at the pretty vase of flowers on the front table. “What a lovely arrangement.” Then my smile dropped. “Fuck, I like flowers and I’m gay.”
32
MAGGIE
“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Cara asked for the tenth time.
I set the final charge and grinned at my handiwork. Apparently, I was better at this in stasis than I was in the book world. “Damn, that is one beautiful explosive. Do you think I’m like a weapons expert or something?”
