“Ah,” George said through a sigh. “This is more like it. If you two are going at it with each other, then at least something is right in the world.”
“What about us?” Sofia asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since the meeting began, and her soft voice was sad but strong. These new Realitants had life in them yet. “Our families are fine—we’ve checked on them, visited them—so we can do whatever you need us to do now.”
“Yeah,” Paul added, a little more spirit in his face too. “I can’t sit around this place one more second, listening to Rutger brag about his cooking and telling stupid jokes.”
George looked at Sato. “And you?”
The boy folded his arms across his chest. “I said I’m ready. And my army is too.”
“Okay, then.” George thought a moment. There were countless things that needed to be done throughout the Realities. Where to start? “Sato, I want you to go back to the Thirteenth Reality and destroy the remaining creatures that Jane manufactured at the Factory. We need to make sure that world is safe and back to the way it was meant to be.”
“Done,” Sato said immediately, without the slightest hint of fear.
“And . . . us?” Paul asked.
George put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “You two are going to pay a visit to a very old friend of mine. She lives in the Third Reality, and we can only hope that she doesn’t eat you for supper when you arrive.”
Chapter 5
Squishy Grass
Lisa screamed when it happened, but she couldn’t hear her voice over the terrible sounds of thunder that pounded the air like detonating bombs. One second she’d been sitting in the forest, looking at her mom and the Barrier Wand, hearing a hum and feeling vibrations in her legs. The next, she’d been whipped into a tornado of swirling gray air, spinning, the world tilting all around her. The noises pounding her skull. She tried to find her mom—at least see her—but there was nothing. Only a gray whirlpool of smoke.
And then it ended. Abruptly.
Lisa’s body slammed onto soft, squishy ground. She immediately felt moisture seeping through her clothes and jumped to her feet—which was a bad idea. Her mind was still recovering from whatever she’d just been through and dizziness twirled inside of her until she fell right back down. She was lying on a huge field of grass, saturated with rain. Heavy clouds hung in the sky above her, making the day seem dark.
Her mom was close, the Barrier Wand in her lap. She sat up and stared at Lisa, dazed.
“What . . . ?” Lisa began.
“I have no idea,” her mom replied. “All I did was try to latch on to Atticus’s nanolocator and pull him in. It shouldn’t have sent us somewhere else.”
“Well, unless we went back in time to before trees grew in Deer Park, it sent us somewhere. We were sitting in the woods about three minutes ago.”
Lisa hated the feeling of the wet grass soaking her pants, so she tried standing again, this time much slower. Her legs wobbled a bit, and the endless sea of grass tilted a few times, but soon she was steady.
She turned in a slow circle, taking in the view of the place to which they’d been winked. Super green grass stretched in every direction, running down a slope toward a stream that splashed and sparkled as it cut across a rocky bed. On the other side of the stream, trees dotted the land, growing thicker and taller until they became a huge forest. There was no sign of civilization anywhere.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Where in the world are we?”
Three hours of searching didn’t answer that question.
They walked together to the stream, crossed over at a narrow spot where large rocks jutted out of the rushing waters, then explored the other side. They eventually made their way to where the trees thickened into a dark, ominous forest. They’d found no clues or signs of life—human, anyway—and when they stood at the wall of pines and oaks, it was almost as if they were stopped by an invisible barrier.
“Why can’t I get myself to go any farther?” Lisa asked.
Her mom’s answer didn’t help. “Because we’re in a strange land, and there might be hideous monsters in there.”
“Good point. Let’s just walk around the edge of it; maybe we’ll stumble across something eventually.”
“As good a plan as any.”
They set off, Lisa right behind her mom, who still hefted the golden rod of the Barrier Wand in her hands.
“Tell me more about the old days,” Lisa said. The clouds still churned above, dark and heavy, but it had yet to rain again. At least the air was nice and cool.
“The old days?” her mom repeated.
“Yeah. You used to be a Realitant. How’d you go from that to being a stay-at-home mom? Seems kind of lame.”
“Lame? You wish you had a different woman stomping around the house telling you what to do?”
Lisa snickered at the image. “No, you’re way too good at it. It’s just . . . being a Realitant seems so cool and adventurous. What happened to make you give it up?”
The land started to rise up, and the walk was getting a little harder. Lisa saw the crest of the rise a few hundred feet ahead. She hoped they’d see something there. Something helpful. Her mom still hadn’t answered.
“You awake up there?” she asked her.
“Oh, I’m awake. I’m just thinking about your question. It’s more complicated than you know. It’s making me remember a lot of things, and I’m not even sure where to start explaining.”
“How’d you join them? How’d they recruit you?”
Her mom laughed softly. “It wasn’t much different from how they recruited Atticus. Some letters, clues, and riddles. It was kind of easy, actually.”
“How long were you a member?”
“About four years, maybe a little longer. It wasn’t all the exciting adventure you think it was—and nothing like what our poor boy has gone through—except for . . .” She trailed off, and there was something dark in her words, like the storm that brewed far above them.
Lisa pushed her. “Except for what?”
“I wasn’t actually there, but I was still technically a Realitant when . . . when Sato’s parents were killed. Mistress Jane had been getting more and more suspicious. Acting weird. And it all came to a head that night, when she started using the powers she’d stolen from the Thirteenth. She crossed a line, and Sato’s mom and dad paid the price for standing up to it. Nearly all of them there that night did.”
“What happened?”
“Jane burned that poor boy’s parents to death.” She said it so simply, but the words were horrible enough. “I didn’t know the world could be so evil. I wanted out. I’m ashamed in many ways—for abandoning the Realitants, abandoning my friends—but I don’t regret it. There’s a difference, you know. I chose my family, and I’ve never once regretted that.”
Lisa felt guilty, like she’d stirred up feelings her mom didn’t deserve to have. “Well, Tick and I are glad you did. And think about it—if you hadn’t done such a good job of raising him, he would’ve been a stinky Realitant instead of a good Realitant, and he wouldn’t have saved the world. See? Makes perfect sense.”
“You’re a sweet little thing,” her mom replied.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve gotta have some way of making sure I stay your favorite.”
They reached a sudden rise in the slope that was steeper than before, which made Lisa feel even stronger that some kind of revelation waited on the other side.
She trotted ahead to pull even with her mom, who hadn’t slowed a bit. “We better be careful,” she whispered. “There might be something over this hill that we don’t want to see us.”
Her mom nodded. “You’ve got the caution of a Realitant. Maybe old George will make you one after we save Atticus and bring him home.”
“Maybe. Come on.”
Lisa dropped to her knees and started crawling up the steep rise. Her mom crawled right next to her, holding the Barrier Wand a
wkwardly on her shoulder.
“You want me to take a turn with that?” Lisa asked.
“No, thanks. I made this one, and I want to keep it nice and close right now.”
“When did you make it?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
They reached the top of the hill, where the land flattened for a couple of feet then dropped again, plummeting down another slope to the land beyond. When she saw what awaited them, Lisa forgot she was supposed to be careful, and she poked her head up, gawking so that anyone within miles could see her if they looked hard enough.
In the middle of a flat plain, there was a castle. Half of it had been destroyed, with stone and rock and wood collapsed in heaps around the edges of the destruction. Black figures crawled over the ruins like ants.
“What are those things?” Lisa whispered.
Her mom answered in a deadened voice. “Creatures of the Thirteenth Reality. Creatures of Mistress Jane. Just as Atticus described them.” She turned to Lisa, her face pale. “How did we end up here?”
Chapter 6
Poor Mr. Chu
Tick sat on a rock and stared at the ocean.
Though it wasn’t any normal ocean. The color of it changed about every three minutes, going from blackish-blue to red to orange, morphing in waves as though someone flew along the surface, spilling huge buckets of food coloring. Fish leaped out of the waters, but sometimes land animals did as well. Deer. Lions. Elephants.
The Nonex made no sense whatsoever. And things seemed to be growing even more unstable lately, sharp upticks in the madness. Like the thumping sound and earthquake attack of the day before. It was all a mixed soup for the senses, and it was beginning to make Tick want to hit somebody. Namely a grumpy, arrogant man named Reginald Chu.
Tick hated the man. Far more than he hated Mistress Jane, for whom he still felt an enormous amount of guilt—he’d scarred the woman for life, after all. And despite her evil ways, she’d shown moments where she doubted the path she’d chosen. If anything, Tick had driven her more toward the darkness.
But Chu was different. The man seemed crazy, and crazy wasn’t an excuse for being bad. Every single thing he said or did pointed to one thing for him—power. Dominating others. Ruling. Just the other night, the three of them had been sitting around a fire, talking about theories on how they could make it back to Reality Prime. The conversation hadn’t lasted ten minutes before Chu went off about how they needed to hurry, take some risks, because he might be losing his stranglehold on the Fourth Reality. With all the destruction and chaos happening, he feared someone else might be trying to take over what had once been his.
Tick had stared him in the eyes and told him to shut up. And Chu did. Which made Tick feel like king of the world, at least for a little while.
Jane and Chu were scared of him; Tick had no doubt about that. He’d shown them that he had more control of his powers over Reality and quantum physics—lifting firewood, igniting fires, making the sand leap into the air and swirl into shapes—than ever before. One time, as a joke, he levitated Chu, spinning him in a circle a few times. Even Jane had laughed, and when Chu came crashing back to the ground with a loud flump and a grunt, Tick had expected the man to be enraged. But instead, he simply stood up, brushed himself off, and told Tick he hoped the boy would come work for him some day, that a boy with such power was destined to do great things.
That was Chu, though. Always thinking about power. Always planning his next step to world domination. What a big, fat jerk. Tick didn’t like the feeling that such hatred gave him—like his insides were rotting—but he couldn’t help it.
There was the crack of a broken twig in the woods behind Tick. He turned to see Chu leaning out from behind a tree, staring at him.
“That’s kind of creepy,” Tick said. “Spying on a little boy like that.”
“Spying?” Chu replied. “What exactly am I spying on? You sitting like a frog on a log, staring at nothing? We’re wasting time. Jane agrees with me.”
Chu walked out of the woods and approached Tick, coming to stand next to him. Tick didn’t bother standing up or offering to slide over for the man to sit down.
“What exactly would you want me to be doing right now?” Tick asked him, returning his gaze to the ocean, which had turned a pinkish color. “Building us a log cabin so we’ll have a place to mope about while we’re stuck here?”
“We need your power, and you know it. Jane is willing to take some risks. You should be too. We’re all getting a little crazier with every passing day. We need to do something!” The man’s voice had risen with each word until he was shouting.
Tick stood up and faced him. “I know. We’ll do it when I’m ready. I trust my instincts a lot more than I do your mad desire to get back and stomp on people. Chill. Please.”
Chu looked utterly stunned, and it was a beautiful thing to see. Tick had to hold back the smile that wanted to leap across his face. He almost felt sorry for Chu, and decided to throw him a bone, out of guilt.
“Tomorrow,” he said, sitting back down. “We’ll try something tomorrow.”
Chapter 7
Tricks on the Beach
Things had changed for Tick when he battled Mistress Jane outside the Factory in the Thirteenth Reality. They’d changed drastically.
He’d been driven by pure and absolute desperation. He’d done what he needed to do for the Haunce, healing the damage done by Jane that would’ve ended Reality and the universe. And when he’d had to fight Jane afterwards, he’d known more than ever that death was his reward if he messed up. Though maybe he’d learned some things from the Haunce that he hadn’t realized.
When he and Mistress Jane were going at each other like two wizards settling a centuries-old spat, Tick’s mind had been focused on his Chi’karda like never before, channeling it, funneling it, understanding it. He didn’t really know how he knew—he could never sit down and write a book about it or explain it to someone—it was like walking or running or breathing. Things just clicked, and suddenly he knew how to do it. His body and instincts and mind all worked together to use the Chi’karda and manipulate the world of quantum physics. He felt like a magician. A magician of science.
And it was fun.
Now it was early the next day, when he’d promised Chu they’d try to get out of the Nonex, and Tick had spent the morning out on the beach, practicing his new abilities. He had stacked three logs vertically, end to end, pointing toward the sky. He used his mind and pushed out with his senses, touching the strings and pulleys of the unseen particles of science. Carefully, he moved one, and then another one. The tower stood thirty or forty feet in the air.
“Impressive,” Chu said. “Really. Can we get on with it and do something that actually matters now?”
Tick suddenly had an image pop in his head of Chu’s giant mountain palace, and how bad things had gone there. That was where Tick had hurt Jane, where he had almost died. Sofia had risked her life to save him. Remembering it again made Tick angry.
He shifted his thoughts and pushed his Chi’karda. The stacked logs flew through the air and shot toward Chu like spears. He cried out and started to run, but Tick was one step ahead of him, turning the logs vertical again and slamming them into the ground in a circle around Chu. He was in a prison, the logs thick enough and close enough together that he couldn’t squeeze between them.
“Stop acting like a child!” Chu screamed, facing Tick with rage burned into his expression. “Take these things down! Now!”
Tick looked over at Jane, whose red mask had tilted up slightly in a smile. Her yellow robe and hood stirred in the slight breeze of the day, and images of her past deeds popped into Tick’s mind as well. He almost used his Chi’karda to throw some things at her, too, but remembered that she could fight back.
Maybe it was time for Tick to quit acting like a brat. He didn’t feel like himself lately. They needed to get out of the Nonex. Not just for his own life, but so he could see what was go
ing on back at home. His family and friends could be in danger, maybe even dead. The thought made his heart sink. He’d already tried winking a message to them, but it didn’t work.
“Atticus,” Chu said, obviously trying to remain calm. “Please. I don’t want to interfere with your powers. I’m not an idiot. But I know you want to get out of this place just as much as I do. I can’t go back and change the past, but—”
“Shut up!” Tick yelled. He didn’t know where all this anger was coming from. “I don’t want to hear any lame apologies from you. We all know you’re planning to go right back to doing what you do if we get back to the Realities. Well, guess what? I’m not going to let you. So keep that in mind.”
Before Chu could respond, Tick exploded the logs, breaking down their substance into millions of tiny splinters and swirling them away in a cloud of wooden mist. He purposefully let a few splinters nick Chu in the face and arms. The man cried out again and gingerly touched the sore spots. Guilt immediately racked Tick, mixed with a little bit of satisfaction.
“Tick,” Mistress Jane began in her scratchy, painful voice. “Preach all you want about what we’ve done in our past. But look at yourself. You’re heading down the same road. Maybe you should have waited until you could control your power before you started judging others. Power is a . . . powerful thing. I don’t know how else to put it.”
Her words made Tick even angrier. “Don’t you dare say that. I would never—never—use my power to hurt other people like you have.”
Jane’s mask smiled broadly. “Then what did you just do to Reginald?”
Tick looked sharply at the man, who had several spots of blood on his face and arms. He wanted to get defensive, explain that he was just giving Chu some of his own medicine, but a small part of him knew that Jane was right. No one was born thinking they’d rule the world someday. It developed in baby steps, a slippery slope. He had to be careful.