Sato looked away from her and around at the crowd. Many had taken a seat—especially the ones closest to him. Those farther back stood, arms folded, staring at him expectantly. There had to be at least three or four hundred people packed all around him. He slowly turned in a circle, taking it all in as he tried to think of something to say. The whole lot of them grew quiet.
You can do this, he thought to himself.
“I know why you guys are so fascinated by me,” he said, wondering if he could’ve possibly started his speech with anything more stupid. He doubted it. “I know I look a lot like the kid who was your ruler until those crazy Bug soldiers assassinated him.”
This caused an uproar, people shouting and yelling things all at once, many of them throwing their arms up and shaking their clenched fists in anger.
“Boo to the Bugaboos!”
“Death for the Bugs!”
“Drown the clowns!”
“No rest till the pests’ death!”
Sato didn’t think it was possible, but he felt even more uncomfortable. He held his hands up, palms out, trying to shush them. Finally, they quieted. And he started talking; where the words came from, he had no idea.
“I’m not the same person as your leader who was killed. It’s really hard to explain, but I’m from a different world—one that’s a lot like yours but . . . different. Maybe it’s not so hard to believe if you just look around at this weird place. But none of that matters. I know why you want me to be your Grand Minister. Everyone wants a leader, someone to look up to. But I don’t know if I could ever really be that person.”
A surge of complaints started to explode from the crowd, but Sato cut the noise off by swiping his hands back and forth. “Just listen to me! We all need something here, and I think we can help each other.”
“What’s that then?” the old woman asked, her right eyebrow cocked high. “What can we do for ya, lad?”
Sato was thinking on the fly, caught up in the moment. He was feeling it. “I know Mothball. I know her family. I know that the people of your world are fighters. You’re warriors. Am I right?”
A hearty shout of cheers rang through the air, fists pumping toward the endless gray sky of nothingness above. A surge of heat and electric energy filled Sato’s veins.
“The first thing we have to do is get out of this place. I have a very good friend who’s in a lot of trouble, and if he dies, we all might die. I need your help to go after him, to help him, save him. We also need to stop something that a very evil person named Mistress Jane is doing—the sickest, most horrific thing I’ve ever heard of. We’ll give you all the details soon enough—I think we have a little time yet. But if you do this—if you’ll help me and . . . fight for me—I’ll make a promise to each and every one of you.”
Sato paused, scanning the crowd, in awe at how every eye was trained on him. Complete silence settled across the strange place. Even Mothball and Rutger stood rigid, mouths slightly agape, probably wondering who’d possessed Sato’s body.
“If you’ll go with me,” Sato said, the rush of adrenaline inside sounding like an ocean’s roar in his ears, “and fight to help my friend and stop Jane, then I promise to go back to your world with you and lead the war against the Bugs. The endgame of all endgames. We won’t stop until we wipe them from existence. All of them! We will fight. And I swear, we will win!”
The roar that filled that impossible place made Sato want to take a step backward and cover his ears. He did neither.
He stood tall and yelled right along with the warriors from the Fifth Reality.
Chapter
37
~
Shivers
The sounds of the night-darkened forest were starting to get to Tick as he and his friends slowly made their way eastward.
Besides the normal buzz of insects going about their business, a wind had picked up, something that seemed impossible based on how many trees crowded their pathway. Limbs and branches swayed and scratched against each other; leaves rustled; small animals jumped and ran through the bushy ground cover. Eerie mating calls moaned through the air, and every once in a while a cat-like thing screamed far in the distance. It all added up to give Tick a major case of the shivers.
He’d tried his best to show a brave face when telling the others about how the Haunce wanted them to be caught by the Sleeks. It had seemed a practical matter—the best way they could get into the Factory and possibly face-to-face with Jane. And the others had reluctantly agreed to the plan after wasting five minutes arguing about it. Master George had proven to be the voice of reason that cut through the obvious hesitancy to do something so scary.
But now, trampling their way through the spooky woods, his flashlight beam stabbing the darkness ahead, getting closer and closer to something that was created by and for evil, Tick felt a different kind of fear than he’d ever experienced before. A thick terror sprinkled his skin with chills and surged in his throat, like a balloon had been shoved down there. With every crick and crash of broken twigs and crushed leaves as his companions and he walked forward, he had to fight the urge to look around, searching for an enemy he knew was coming for him.
Instead he forced himself to look ahead, to keep walking and dodging his way through the tightly packed trees until the attack came. He held onto the fact that they wouldn’t have to fight or run this time—they just had to give up and be taken prisoner.
“Tick,” came a soft whisper from behind him. Sofia. “Have you seen or heard anything weird yet?”
Tick turned to look at her quickly before facing forward again, not missing a step. “We don’t really need to whisper,” he called out, louder than he needed to. “It kind of defeats the purpose of what we’re doing. And no, I haven’t really noticed anything too weird yet.”
“Nothing too weird?” Paul repeated. “Some demon cat is being eaten by Satan out in the woods, screaming its fool head off. I’d call that weird.”
Tick had to suppress a snicker, a fleeting break from the fear that had been suffocating him. “It’s probably just a deer or something that broke a leg.”
“A deer? Never heard anything sound like that on Bambi.”
Master George spoke up. “My guess would be that we’re getting quite close to the area where these guardian creatures roam and hunt. Based on what I’ve learned from Mothball’s, er, reports.”
George cleared his throat in an embarrassed sort of way, and Tick’s suspicions shot up enough to make him stop walking. He turned to face him. “You just said ‘er’ and cleared your throat. What aren’t you telling us?”
Paul and Sofia stopped as well and faced Master George. Tick held the flashlight so that the beam pointed at the ground, but the glow was enough to show a tight look of worry on the man’s face.
“Really should keep walking, don’t you think?” he said, trying to smile but somehow making himself look even more uneasy. He feebly pointed toward the direction they were heading.
“What’s wrong?” Sofia asked.
“Yeah,” Paul added. “You look constipated all of a sudden.”
Master George folded his hands together—they’d been twitching slightly at his sides. “Our Realitant spies have recently been providing Mothball with information on the Factory.”
“And you didn’t say anything?” Sofia shouted. The echo of her voice seemed to hang in the tops of the trees for a full five seconds.
“Calm yourself, goodness gracious me,” Master George snapped back, Sofia’s outburst having brought back some dignity to his face. “We need to go there no matter what I know, and I was merely waiting for the right time to speak on it. But, if you must hear it now, what I have to say will only make our reasons for going forward even stronger.”
“What?” Tick asked, not bothering to hide the impatience that came out in his voice.
Master George kicked a bush near his feet. “Oh, how it angers me. This, more than anything she’s ever done. Jane is stealing children from towns and c
ities across the Thirteenth Reality and keeping them in the Factory. We suspect she is planning to use them somehow to create her abominations at the Factory. She’s currently using her powers of Chi’karda to deconstruct various animals on a quantum level and put them back together again to serve whatever purposes she’s dreamed up with her evil mind. Horror is the only word I can think of to describe such a thing.”
The Haunce had told Tick about this when discussing the overall plan, but the reality of it hadn’t hit until he heard his boss explain it in such stark terms. An emptiness expanded inside Tick, a void that should’ve been filled with a long list of terrible emotions but instead felt numb.
“She can’t be that sick,” Paul said. “She can’t be.”
“I’m afraid our sources are very reliable,” Master George said. “I believe what happened to Jane in the Fourth Reality”—he shot a nervous and quick glance at Tick—“has driven her past a point from which I can’t imagine anyone could ever return. Her life has been consumed by hatred and evil, encompassed by a delusion that she can still find her utopian reality and bring an endless peace to the universe. Bah! She’ll have every last one of us dead. The woman’s insane, I tell you. Insane!”
Tick had a disturbing thought pop into his head. “Well, I guess if we can’t stop the Realities from going kaboom, at least Jane won’t be able to steal any more kids.”
“Don’t let your mind wander down that path,” Master George said, stepping closer to Tick. He put a hand on his shoulder. “Instead, let’s focus on accomplishing what the Haunce has sent you to do. Once done, we’ll stop Jane’s madness and free the children.”
Tick looked at Sofia, then Paul. Both of them had stern faces, made all the harsher by the sharp shadows from the flashlight. “What do you guys think?”
“What do you mean?” Sofia asked, an edge to her voice. “What do you think we think?”
“No,” Tick said. “I just . . . does this change anything? We knew we had to get in there and convince Jane to help us. After we do what the Haunce wants . . .” He didn’t know how to finish. Despite what George had said, every potential pathway that flickered inside Tick’s mind seemed to head for disaster.
“Dude,” Paul said in his gimme-a-break tone. “This only makes it clearer. Crazy Jane can do all the hokey-pokey stuff she wants, but if she’s messing with little kids now . . . we gotta get in there and stop it. Simple as that.”
Sofia was breathing as if this latest news had pumped up her adrenaline. “And Sato will come—just like you asked him to in your note. We can do it, Tick. You’ll save the universe with your fancy powers, then we’ll get the kids out, then we’ll burn the whole place to the ground. Let’s go!”
She didn’t wait for a response but marched off into the dark woods, toward the east. Paul stepped in line right behind her.
Tick looked at Master George. “Guess I’m not in the lead anymore.”
“Well, I think they could use your flashlight. Let’s go, Atticus. Lots to do.”
Tick nodded and started walking, shining his light up ahead so his friends could see. As they made their way forward for the next few minutes, the shadows leaping with every movement and the eerie sounds of the forest haunting the cool air, Tick realized his earlier choking fear had disappeared. It had transformed into impatience, an eagerness, even.
Sofia stopped, holding her hand up to signal them to do the same. Paul almost bumped into her, letting a branch loose as he caught his balance. It hit Tick square in the nose, but Sofia cut off his cry of complaint before it got started.
“Quiet!” she snapped in a harsh whisper, finally lowering her hand as she looked back at them. “Something just . . . whisked across our path. Up ahead.”
Ice began to fill Tick’s chest again. He stepped to the side so he could shine the light forward without his friends being in the way. He saw gloomy, towering trees and thick bushes and ivy, all the greenness muted and pale. The shadows stretched and retracted as he swept the area, but nothing out of the ordinary came into view.
“Hear the silence?” Master George whispered from behind Tick, startling him. His voice seemed louder than it should have, and Tick realized why. All those creepy sounds they’d been hearing earlier had cut off. Completely. The sudden quiet reminded Tick of being outside after a heavy snowstorm back home—all sound sucked in by the cold, white stuff.
Tick caught a glimpse of something flashing toward him from the right—a wispy trail of fog that he barely saw. He imagined he could see the faint image of a head and a long body, an outreaching hand, when sharp tingles pricked the skin along his forearm, making him suck in a breath.
There was a popping sound, and then the flashlight went out.
Chapter
38
~
Smoky Embrace
The needle pricks vanished. Tick instinctively held up the flashlight to take a look, but the darkness was too complete; black engulfed everything. He flicked the switch back and forth. Nothing. Then he shook it.
Shards of loose glass tinkled together and fell to the ground. The light bulb hadn’t burned out; something had smashed it, making it useless.
“Tick, dude, what happened?” Paul whispered, though it sounded like anyone within a hundred miles could’ve heard him.
“I don’t know.” Tick looked around but couldn’t see a thing. He remembered the ghostly image of what he’d seen from of the corner of his eye. Those long, smoky fingers of fog reaching out . . .
Leaves crunched a couple of times where Sofia had been standing.
“Sofia!” Tick shouted, a boom in the silence that echoed off the tree branches.
“I’m fine,” she whispered back harshly. “Sheesh. I’m just feeling my way toward you.” Another couple of steps, more twigs breaking. “I heard glass break—how did you smash your flashlight?”
Tick could see the shadow of her figure right in front of him now. He reached out and found her shoulder. “Okay. So, I was standing there, and then I saw something to the right. Something like a trail of fog. But it was kind of shaped like a . . . like a stretched-out human with really long arms and fingers. Then it felt like a hundred needles stabbed my arm, and something popped, and the light went out. It’s broken.”
“Wait a second,” Paul said as he also took a couple of tentative steps toward Tick and Sofia. “What did you see again?”
“I guess it must’ve been a Sleek. Kind of smoky and long, looked human-like. What do you think, Master George?”
Silence answered him. Chills swept over Tick. He looked in the direction where he’d last heard George’s voice. His eyes were already adjusting to the darkness, but he saw nothing except the tall, dark shadows of trees and more trees.
“Master George!” he called out, wincing at the loudness of his voice. Again, no answer.
“Those creepy things took him,” Paul said in a fierce whisper. “And we’re next!”
Sofia shushed him then spoke in a quiet voice. “That’s we want to happen, remember? We just have to—”
A twig snapped to Tick’s right, silencing Sofia. A few leaves rustled in the same spot. The swell of chilling panic crept up Tick’s chest as he looked in that direction, straining his eyes to see.
Something stood there, a dozen or so feet away, its shadow splitting the space between two huge, towering trees. Thin but man-shaped, the thing had to be as tall as a basketball standard. The edges of the shadowy figure wavered like a reflection on water, ripples of darkness running up and down. The slightest glint of silver shone where its eyes would be, and something about the light—maybe the hue, maybe the angle—made the creature look very angry.
“Who—” Tick’s voice caught in his throat. “Who are you? Are you a Sleek?”
The thing’s silver eyes flared brighter for just a moment, but it was long enough to reveal more of its features. Streamers of dark smoke were packed tight and swirling through and across each other, compressed together to form the tall body that sto
od before them. Tick thought they looked almost like worms being held back by some invisible force until they could be unleashed to seek out food.
But the face was different. It didn’t seem to be made of the smoky substance. It looked . . . human. Real skin, though misshapen and scarred. Every cell in Tick’s brain screamed at him to run.
The light of the creature’s eyes dulled again, throwing the tall figure back into shadow.
“Ask it again,” Paul whispered.
Tick didn’t know if he could bring himself to speak. Sofia saved him.
“What are you waiting for?” she yelled. “We know you’re a Sleek, so get it over with! Quit standing there all spooky, you haunted-house wannabe!”
Tick looked over at her, wishing he could see her face. Sometimes her bravery completely stunned him.
A noise from the creature pulled Tick’s attention away from Sofia. A whispery, raspy sound. Harsh and guttural. It continued on for several seconds, but if the thing was trying to communicate, Tick didn’t understand a word of it. The metallic glow of those silver eyes seemed pinpointed on him.
The Sleek quit talking, leaving them all in an eerie stillness. The sounds of the forest remained silent, as if every living creature had long since run away. Then everything changed in an instant.
A wind swept through the woods, sudden and violent. A torrent ripped at the trees, sending leaves shooting through the air like flaky bullets. Tick threw his arms up to protect his face, catching a glimpse of the Sleek’s silver eyes flaring again before they disappeared altogether. Darkness took over, leaving the world black and consumed by the rushing sound of wind.
Sofia screamed, the screech of it barely begun before it whisked away into the distance, fading and gone. Something had taken her. Paul yelled several terror-filled words, but Tick only caught his name. Then a scream even higher-pitched than Sofia’s rang out, followed by a thump and the crack of a broken tree branch. The sounds of a body being dragged quickly across the forest floor were soon swallowed by the overpowering wind.