The forest around him sucked away into blackness as once again he exploded into trillions of pieces.
Chapter
57
~
From Bad to Worse
Sofia followed Rutger into the main Control Room, where Master George was waving his arms like the conductor of the world’s largest symphony. Despite all their troubles crashing down at once, a small snicker escaped Sofia. She quickly coughed to cover it up, but Paul—sitting nearby with worry on his face—noticed and broke a half-smile that looked more like a wince.
“George!” Rutger barked. “Most of the earthquakes have stopped, but it’s too late for that wave. It’s gonna be here in fifteen minutes!”
Their leader shot them a quick glance then returned his gaze to the rapidly blinking screens in front of him. “My heart can barely stand this confounded predicament!”
“What’s the latest with Sato?” Rutger asked as he and Sofia moved closer.
Master George pointed to a series of purple lines that kept appearing then disappearing. Unlike the indicators for Sato and Mothball above them, these had no names attached. “They’re doing it. They’re doing it! We’ve already winked ten children to the Grand Canyon, where Priscilla and Sally have several doctors on hand.”
Rutger let out a sigh that sounded like he’d lost every ounce of hope. “We won’t survive it,” he said in a tight whisper.
“What’s that?” Master George asked, finally giving his full attention to his partner.
“The wave. There’s no way we can survive it. It’s too big. We . . .” Rutger looked at the floor.
“What? Spit it out, man!”
“We have to leave. This location—and us with it—has zero chance of making it through the wave’s power. It’ll rip our cabling technology to shreds, then pick us up and slam us into shore. We have to leave.”
Sofia felt that shrinking sensation in her gut again. She half-expected Master George to argue, to say it would be okay, maybe express disbelief or babble about how life’s unfair. Instead, he accepted the truth and immediately moved to what needed to be done. Sofia was impressed.
“Then we can only hope they reach every child in time—we don’t have things properly set up at the Grand Canyon to wink them in from that location. We’ll wait here, monitoring the situation and managing the nanolocator patches. At least we have a bit of good news—if the earthquakes have stopped, then Atticus and Jane must’ve done their job.”
Sofia’s heart lifted, but then she remembered their own problem. “What about the wave?” she asked, her eyes meeting Paul’s, sharing a look that said so much with no need for words.
Master George puffed his chest out and folded his hands on his belly. “The four of us will wink away the second before it hits. It’s time for us to be very brave.”
~
Tick found himself back in that outer-space-like void of lights and streaks and glowing, brilliant orbs. He couldn’t feel his body, didn’t understand what or where or anything else. But he knew they’d done it even before the Haunce spoke to them.
“Through your efforts and power, we have healed the Barriers of the Realities. We will send you back now. Your worlds are not destroyed, but they have still seen great, great devastation. The healing of such things does not rest in our hands. We say farewell.”
The universe spun. Everything changed, and Tick felt the pressure of crushing diamonds.
~
Sato put everything out of his mind. The fear. The soreness of his entire body. His hunger, his exhaustion. From somewhere deep in his cells and molecules and tissue, he sucked out the adrenaline he needed to keep moving.
From one inset compartment to the next, he jumped. They were about four feet apart side to side, a little less up and down. Each and every time, for one frightening second, he thought he wouldn’t make it and instead would plummet to the unseen depths far below. But so far he’d landed each and every time, gripping and pushing and pulling, squirming his way to the children without falling to his death. Mothball was doing the same, working the other side of the stony, rounded chamber.
He spared a glance for the latest kid he’d found—a shaky, pale girl whose eyes were open and focused on his. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re here to rescue you.” He’d always wanted to say that to someone.
He slapped a nanolocator patch on her arm, no longer waiting to watch as the kids vanished from sight, winked away by Master George. Already on the move, he crouched on the far end, ready to leap for the next hole, when he noticed two things at the same time that made him pause.
One, the shaking and quaking had stopped completely.
And two, he heard the distant sounds of flapping wings and a chattering, cackling chorus of grunts and squeals coming from below. He looked down.
Several fangen—those horrible creations of Jane’s they’d fought at her castle when George sent them to steal her Barrier Wand—were flying through the murky darkness, coming up toward him.
Sato jumped to the next compartment.
~
Tick blinked, dazzled by the light of the sun directly overhead. He stood in the mud just outside the broken and jumbled heap of wood that had once been the fence
surrounding the Factory. Mistress Jane stood right in front of him, her expressionless red mask only inches from his face.
For the briefest of moments, he forgot that she was his bitter, bitter enemy.
“I can’t believe we did it,” he said, not ashamed of the childlike wonder in his voice. They had, after all, just saved the entire universe. “All I had to do was solve a riddle—seems crazy. What did the Haunce make you do?”
Jane’s mask broke into a smile so full of genuine kindness that Tick wondered if the whole experience had maybe changed something inside her. “Isn’t it wonderful, Atticus? What does it say about our species that you and I could put aside our hatred for each other and work for the greater good? We should both feel very proud.”
Tick let out an uneasy laugh, not sure how he felt about the way she was acting. “It’s definitely pretty cool. So . . . you didn’t answer my question. What did you have to do? How did you do your part?”
Jane’s mask kept smiling. “Ah, yes. It was quite an amazing thing. The Haunce had me work through my master plan for how to achieve the Utopian Reality I’ve always wanted. What an invigorating experience it was to focus my mind and faculties in such a heightened, rushed state of anxiety.” She moved even closer to him, almost touching.
Tick didn’t know what to think. Maybe she—
A burst of pain exploded in his stomach, a wrenching, twisting stab of fire and needles. He stumbled back two steps and looked down. The hilt of a large knife jutted from his abdomen, a dark red bloodstain soaking his shirt, spreading.
Choking and sputtering a cough, he raised his eyes to Jane, whose now-angry mask matched the color of the growing stain around the knife.
“My plan started with something just like that,” she said.
Chapter
58
~
Family
Tick fell to his knees, both hands gripped around the hilt of the knife, his hands wet with warm blood. He didn’t dare pull it out. Clumpy fluid lodged in his throat, cutting off his breath along with the panic that choked him. He tried to suck down air through his nose, but it ended in a cough every time. Bugs of light swam in front of his eyes.
He couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what he’d say if he could.
Jane crouched down to the ground, the mud caking her robe. “Subtle. That’s what I told Frazier. I knew I had to wait until the right moment when you weren’t on guard and ready to strike back with your Chi’karda. A knife deep to the stomach—such a simple and beautiful thing. So old-fashioned. It’s almost impossible to find help in time. You’re dying, Atticus. Tick. Nothing can help you now.”
Tick collapsed to the side, and a fresh, striking burst of pain burrowed through his entire body, as if the knife h
ad sprouted steely vines that coursed through his insides. On the outer rim of his consciousness, he realized he’d never come close to understanding the fear of dying. Death had never truly seemed real. And now it was here, ready to drag him away like a stolen bag of gold.
Jane leaned over until the cool metal of her mask touched his ear. She whispered, “The rest of my plan is for the good of mankind and the Realities. Except for one thing, one item on the list—revenge, Atticus. Revenge. I want your last thought in life to be this: to know that I will hunt down each and every member of your family and kill them. Your friends as well. I’ll kill them just like I did you. Good-bye.”
She stood up, though Tick could barely see her. His vision blurred, dark specks swirling like a cloud of stinging gnats. He felt his life slipping away, a physical dwindling as if he were made of sand and it was slowly leaking out of a puncture in some outer skin. He thought of soulikens and how those small and permanent stamps of electric pulses and energy might be the very thing he felt seeping out of him into . . . wherever they went. His Alterants’ soulikens had come to him, according to the Haunce. Maybe now they would go to that odd, ghostly creature of eternity.
Jane was walking away, stabbing her Staff into the mud.
Tick hated her.
Life was running away from him. He closed his eyes, wondering if he would ever open them again. What he saw appear out of the patchy darkness was Kayla. And Lisa. His parents. Paul and Sofia and Sato. He saw them as if he looked at a TV screen.
The Chi’karda exploded within him.
No build-up this time. No slow burn that escalated like stoked flames. It was an absolute detonation of power. His whole body became a conflagration, a perfect and consuming inferno of force and might. He didn’t know he’d done it, but he was suddenly standing. A tornado of orange, fiery air swirled around him. He heard himself speak as if he were an outside observer.
“Jane, you’re not going anywhere.”
Chapter
59
~
Fists of Chi’karda
The fangen attacked Sato just as he landed on his twentieth compartment. Sharp claws dug into his shoulders and yanked him backward. Sato spun, swinging with a fist. He made contact, thumping the creature’s face. With a horrible shriek, it let go and fell away, its thin, translucent wings flapping weakly.
Sato knew there were more fangen, that this would be a tricky task indeed. He quickly stuck a nanolocator patch onto the tiny boy shivering on the stone then moved to jump to the next rectangular hole. He was in midflight when a fangen swooped in and grabbed him, pulling his body out to the middle of the chamber, its legs wrapped around him as it tried to bite his neck.
Sato clutched the top of the creature’s head by a tuft of diseased-looking hair and pushed its gaping mouth full of teeth away. Then he punched it, slipping around its body in that moment of weakness so he was on the thing’s back. They hovered over the abyss.
“Take me back to that hole!” Sato screamed in its ear, pointing to the place he’d been going. “Take me now, or I’ll snap your neck!” He wrapped his hands around the thin pole of the fangen’s neck and started squeezing.
The creature had to have some instinct to survive, some will to live. Making sounds like a strangled banshee, it flew toward the place indicated. Sato jumped off and into the inset compartment as soon as he was close enough. He pivoted and kicked out, connecting with the fangen’s stomach. It squawked and pulled back, choking and coughing.
Sato pulled out a patch and stuck it to the little girl next to him. He readied for the next one. Nothing about this was going to be very easy. He jumped.
~
Womp. Womp. Womp.
Surging throbs of Chi’karda sent waves of energy thumping away from Tick. He could feel its vibrations in the air, in the ground, in the forest behind him, shaking the deepest parts of the wood in the trees. His senses had heightened, almost unbearably so; the smells of mud and pine, the feel of the breeze, every sound amplified tenfold, the crisp clarity of his vision. It all felt wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Jane had stopped when he told her she wasn’t going anywhere, probably consumed by curiosity. And, Tick hoped, a little scared. She turned around to face him, standing about thirty yards away.
“You can’t handle that much Chi’karda,” she said; Tick heard each word as if she’d spoken it directly into his ear. “It’ll burn you to a crisp if you don’t let it go. Release it, Atticus. Or you’ll kill countless others along with . . .”
She faltered, her mask shifting downward just slightly, but enough to show she was looking at Tick’s stomach. His eyes fell to see what had caught her attention, and he almost cried out in shock.
The wooden hilt of the knife smoldered, slowly inching its way as if by magic out of his skin. The long blade followed, glowing a hot red. The whole area sizzled like a cooking steak, small wisps of smoke rising from the wound. The knife finally came all the way out and fell to the ground with a thump and another sizzle as it hit the wet mud. Tick watched in shock as the slice in his skin healed back together in a matter of seconds. He felt an intense burning where the wound had been, stronger even than the Chi’karda raging through his entire body.
His dad had once told him how he’d seemed to defy death several times as a kid. What it all meant, Tick didn’t know. Maybe his ability over Chi’karda went way further than he ever dreamed or hoped.
He looked back at Jane, quickly wiping the look of surprise from his face. “I’m getting control of it!” he shouted. “And you know I’m more powerful than you are! Give up. Now. Or I’ll blow you up along with everything else in the Factory.”
Jane’s fingers tightened around her Staff. “You’re an idiot child, Atticus. I wanted to kill you with subtle ease and avoid the destruction you might inflict if you let loose your chaotic abilities. But I’ll do it this way if I have to. I’ll never sleep in my bed again until I know the Realities are rid of Atticus Higginbottom. You’re about to die, boy. I hope you’ve enjoyed your short time alive.”
Tick’s anger built with every word she said, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He collected his power by thinking it, imagined what he wanted in his mind, like gathering a mental snowball with mental hands. The Chi’karda burned and roiled inside him, resisting as he compacted it tighter and tighter, compressing it into a dangerous and unstable sphere of pure energy. He saw the fiery orange cloud seeping back into his skin, like smoke in reverse.
Straining with the effort, he spoke through his trembling concentration. “I think I’ll keep living.” With a terrible scream, he threw his coiled power—all of it—at Jane.
A boom like a thousand strikes of lightning shook the world around him. Mud and dirt exploded from the ground in a straight path to Jane, as if it were a crowded minefield and every last mine went off at once. A visible wave of
orange-tinged air slammed against her body, throwing her twenty feet into the air. She flew backward until she landed far on the other side of the broken wooden fence, her Staff broken into several pieces.
Tick had no idea how he did what happened next. But he willed himself forward, wanting to be by her side instantly, faster than he could possibly run. He was out of patience and knew he had to finish her off. In a dizzying instant, he suddenly stood right next to her, looking down at her as she struggled to stand. With a distant thought, he realized that he’d just winked himself.
He reached down and grabbed Jane by the folds of her robe, communicating with his powers of Chi’karda without talking, almost without thinking. He easily lifted her up and held her over his head. Then he threw her at the forest. She sailed several hundred feet through the air, arms and legs flailing; a piercing shriek ripped from her lungs. Tick watched as she finally slammed into a large oak tree and crumpled to the ground below it. She didn’t move, a twisted heap of arms and legs.
Tick drew in deep, ragged breaths as he looked around him. He saw the hole in the ground that Jane ha
d created to pull them out of the underground Factory, as well as a much larger gap with broken and jagged edges that had probably been caused by the earthquakes. He winked to the edge of it and looked down to where people from the Fifth Reality were fighting Jane’s creatures. Tick saw and heard the sights and sounds of battle, the clashes and the blood and the screams. He wanted to destroy the Factory, level it, crush it, disintegrate it.
“Master George!” he yelled, knowing the man was listening in somehow. “Get them out! Get them all out!”
Chapter
60
~
Ten Kids
Tick wants us to wink them out!” Rutger yelled.
Sofia watched as Master George’s hands flew furiously to turn dials and flip switches, type on the keyboard, adjust his Barrier Wand. “How much time until the wave hits us?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Three minutes!”
“We’ll hold out until the last second. We must save every child we can!”
Sofia looked down to see that Paul had grabbed her hand. She squeezed back, terrified and hating how helpless she felt.
“Winking away the Fifth Army now,” Master George said, sweat flying off his ruddy, bald head as he worked. “But not Sato and Mothball. Not yet.”
“Two and half minutes,” Rutger said, his voice loud but sad.
~
Tick saw the tall people of the Fifth Reality suddenly disappear, winked away. The creatures they’d been fighting looked around in shock, growling and spitting.
Thankful that Master George had heard him, Tick had to assume that everyone was gone now. He hoped that George had also saved the kids Jane planned to use in her horrific experiments. He had to destroy the Factory now, before any of those monsters escaped. Then he’d finish off Jane and end this nightmare forever.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, mentally gathering the streams and coils of Chi’karda, pulling it all in.