Tick leaned back in his chair, staring at the stranger on the bed as if the man could read his thoughts, expecting him to answer everything.
The man nodded, seeming to understand the shocking news he’d brought. He scribbled a few sentences on another piece of paper then handed it to Sofia. Tick and Paul leaned over to see:
By the way, I thought you’d done recognized me.
It’s Sally—ain’t my shaved head a beaut?
Don’t worry, I’ll explain purtin’ near everything.
But you gotta trust me for a minute.
As soon as Tick read it, he knew it was true. The guy sitting on the bed was Sally, head and beard shaved, dressed in disguise. But the thing that made Tick’s mouth drop open was the realization that Sally was a Realitant.
“You’ve gotta be kidding—” Paul whispered. He stopped when Sally shook his head curtly, holding a finger to his lips again.
Sally stood, holding his hands out, palms forward as if to say, Hold on—give me a second. Then he reached into the inner pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a small white box—the type in which you’d expect to find a necklace or bracelet, laid out all nice and pretty on a piece of velvet. He knelt down on the floor, placing the box gingerly on the bed, eyeing it like a ticking bomb he needed to disarm.
Paul elbowed Tick, then raised his eyebrows. Tick shrugged and quickly looked back.
Sally reached over and pulled off the top of the box, scooting as far back as he could.
Something shot out of the box and into the air—Tick lost track of it before he could tell what it was. An odd thump filled the air, like the sound of a distant thunderclap. Tick reached up and rubbed his ears; they felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls in them. He heard a faint buzz, like static on the radio.
Sally stood up, folded his arms, then grinned with satisfaction.
“Finally! Dadgum thing actually worked,” he said. “George ain’t never failed before—I reckon one of these days I’ll quit doubtin’ the old feller. But I didn’t wanna whip that sucker out ’til you knew who I was. We can talk now.”
Tick didn’t say a word—neither did his friends. The last few minutes had been so strange, so . . . weird, what were they supposed to say?
Sally laughed, a deep rumble that Tick swore shook the building. “You three look as twitterpated as a coon done found itself fallen in the outhouse bucket. Right diddly-widdly, I ain’t never seen such a sight before. What ya’ll
a-feared of? I had to play dress-up so Chu wouldn’t get all suspicious-like. Spies and such about, ya know.”
Still, none of them responded. Tick blinked, then swallowed. Then he blinked again.
“Snap out of it!” Sally roared. “We ain’t got no time to sit here throwin’ peepeyes. I got to hurry and gets myself on outta here.”
Sofia was the first one to speak. “It’s just, well, we didn’t . . . we didn’t know you were a Realitant.”
“Not to mention the news you just dropped in our laps,” Paul added. “I think I’m gettin’ too old for this stuff.”
“Nonsense,” Sally said, sitting on the bed and crossing his legs. As soon as he did, he winced and put both feet back on the floor. “Never did get how dem fancy lads like George sit that way. Yipes.”
The static-laced buzzing sound still filled the air; Tick rubbed his ears again. “Why is it okay to talk now? What was in the box?”
Sally huffed. “Boy, you think I got da first nary a clue what dat dang thing was? Round dem Realitant parts, I’m known for my brawn and grits-cookin’, not much on da brains. Ol’ George said pop that sucker open—called it a dang ol’ airborne nano whatchamerbucket—and we can talk. I done did it, and here I sit, talkin’ my silly head off, and we ain’t got nowhere fast.”
Tick took a deep breath before he’d realized it—a sigh of relief. Maybe the world wasn’t over after all.
“Sounds like you have a lot to tell us,” Sofia said.
Sally nodded. “Reckon so. Good gravy on raw beef, I ain’t got a clue where to git to start yappin’ on.”
Tick felt like he understood about one-third of what came out of Sally’s mouth, but he liked him all the same. “Just start from the beginning. How’d you find us in that weird place with the metal spiders? And what’s going on with Reginald Chu?” Saying the name slammed a fist of reality back into Tick’s gut, and his temporary good mood soured.
“All right, den.” Sally shifted on the bed until his back was up against the wall. “Ya’ll git yerselves comfy, and I’ll
tell ya every last bit I got in dis here noggin. Ain’t much, mind ya, but listen up anyhow.”
Sally started talking.
Chapter
26
~
Needles
Sato didn’t know what else to do—he pounded on the huge metal door of the icy alcove with his fist. A deep, hollow boom echoed down the rocky mountainside. Sato shook his hand, needles of pain vibrating through his cold skin after the impact.
No one answered at first, though Sato hadn’t really expected them to. His theory that George might have made a mistake had taken root, entrenching itself deeper into his heart, sickening him. Freezing to death didn’t sound like the best way to go.
But it wasn’t long before something scraped on the other side of the door, followed by a loud clunk of metal against metal. Sato stepped back as the door slowly swung inward, the wind blowing wispy trails of snow into the dark interior of the mountain. He braced his feet, held his hands up in defense, not having any idea of what might lunge at him from the gloom.
“What’s that?” a raspy voice called out. A pale face appeared, ghoulish with sunken cheeks, like a ghost peeking from beyond the grave. “What’s that, I say?” The man’s whitish eyes darted about. Sato was surprised the light from outside wasn’t blinding him.
“I’m . . .” Then it hit Sato—he had absolutely no idea what to say. “I . . . my name is Sato, and I’m looking for someone.”
“What’s that?” the man repeated, stepping forward to reveal his whole body—rail-thin with tattered, filthy clothes hanging on by threads. His eyes still hadn’t settled on Sato. “Lookin’ for someone, are ya? What, you one of them Snarkies? Come to help, have you? No help for the Loons—too late for that, I can promise ya.”
The initial shock of seeing an insane asylum on top of a mountain having finally worn off, Sato’s hopes lifted. George had sent him to the perfect place to find people who’d gone crazy. Now, if he could just get inside, get a blood sample, and get out. But how would he know if his target patient was normal crazy or Reginald-Chu-plague-infected crazy?
Sato felt his courage building. “I’m looking for someone. I want to visit him. He’s one of the people who got sick recently—went insane from the new plague that’s been going around.”
“What’s that?” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth. “Plague? There’s a plague about?”
“Haven’t you had a lot of people brought in recently?” Sato asked, trying to fight off the shivers that racked his body.
“Don’t know ’bout brought in.” The man pointed to the treacherous stairs leading down the face of the mountain. “But an awful lot brought out, if ya catch my meanin’.”
Sato turned to look at the stone steps, thinking about the man’s words. The sign stated this door was for the execution of inmates—did that mean they threw them off the knife-edged cliff below? Sato felt his stomach twist.
He faced the man again. “May I please come in? I’m freezing to death out here.”
“Right, in ya go,” the poor excuse for a guard replied, stepping back and opening the door until it bumped against the stone wall inside. “Beats me how ya got here in the first place, but in ya go, nice and toasty. Lots of Loons in here—not much hope of findin’ your mate, I can tell ya that. Name’s Klink, by the way.”
Sato stepped through the doorway, trying not to show his eagerness too much. “Nice to meet you, uh, Klink.” Though to
asty wasn’t exactly the word Sato would use to describe the air inside, it sure beat the frigid bite of the outside.
Klink walked down the long, dark tunnel; Sato followed, listening, observing.
“Can’t say as I’ve ever had a stranger knock on that door before,” Klink said. “Only when the Cleaners come back after droppin’ some Loons, that’s all. Quite nice to have a visitor after all these years.”
“They throw crazy people off that cliff down there?” Sato asked. “When they do something bad or what?”
“If they’ve done somethin’ bad, or grown too old, or if they just need more room—whatever tickles them Cleaners’ fancy. They ain’t too particular when it comes to shovin’ off the Loons, ya know.”
They reached the end of the hallway where a small opening led through the stone to a sparsely decorated room: a floor rug, a chair, a filthy mattress. An old kerosene lamp flickered as it burned, somehow making the pathetic place look welcoming.
“Spend most of my days here,” Klink said, looking around with his hands on his hips, proud of his homestead. “Beats the socks off where I used to live, that’s for sure. If anyone ever offers ya to live in a cave full of flying rats, I recommend you say no thanks and move right along.”
“I’ll remember that,” Sato half-mumbled.
“Want to sit a spell? Take a blink or two?”
Sato shook his head. “No, I feel much better now that we’re inside. Could you take me to where they keep the inmates locked up? Maybe where they have the more recent ones?”
“Right, come on then,” Klink said, moving along the hall again. They reached a metal grid door, which he slid open, a horrible screech piercing Sato’s ears. On the other side, a boxy elevator awaited.
“This lift will take you all the way down to the Loons,” Klink said as he gestured for Sato to enter. “Down ya go, then.”
Sato, fighting his uneasiness, stepped inside and turned to face Klink just as the man slid the grid door shut. His pale eyes peeked through the slits.
“Best stay on your toes,” Klink said.
“What do you mean?” Sato replied.
Klink reached through a large space in the door—mangled and jagged like it had been ripped out with teeth—and slammed a lever inside the lift toward the floor. The elevator lurched and slowly started going down, the squeaks and squeals of chains and pulleys filling the air.
“Didn’t you know?” As Klink’s body seemed to move upward, he called down to Sato just before he was out of sight. “Ent no one locked up ’round here!”
~
The trip down the dark elevator shaft was long and cold—especially in light of Klink’s pronouncement that the crazies weren’t locked up at all. Sato’s stomach turned queasy from the jostling and bumping of the steel cage. He saw nothing outside the mesh of metal but black stone, heard nothing but the screech of the lift’s mechanics. Impossibly, the seconds stretched into minutes, and he thought Klink surely must have sent him to the middle of the Earth.
Without any hint of slowing down, the elevator jolted to a stop, making Sato’s knees buckle. He sprawled across the cold mesh floor, biting his tongue when his chin slammed into the hard surface. He quickly pushed himself back to his feet, rubbing his jaw as he stepped forward to look through the lift door.
Another dimly lit carved passageway led into the distance, no sign of anyone nearby. Having expected someone to greet him—crazy or not—he warily reached out to test the sliding door. It pushed aside easily, groaning as Sato slammed the metal mesh all the way open. The sound of the squeal echoed off the stone walls, and any doubt of his arrival was now wiped away. But still, no one came.
He stepped out of the lift, his eyes focused along the dark tunnel since that seemed to be the only place from which someone could appear. He took another step. Another.
And then he heard a scream.
It started low, an eerie moan that rose in pitch, escalating quickly on the creepy scale to a perfect ten. Sato stopped moving to listen, the hairs on his neck stiff as arrows. The sound was the wail of a lost child mixed with the terrified squeal of an animal in the butchering house. The effect of it bouncing off the walls made it seem like it was coming from every direction at once. Sato felt like getting back into the steel cage of the lift and going back up to safety.
The sound stopped, slicing silent as quickly as if someone had turned off a loud television. Shouts rang out, several voices yelling something incomprehensible—but Sato could clearly hear the anger and the lunacy in the voices. Sato’s wariness turned into downright terror.
He closed his eyes, breathed, worked to calm himself. His heartbeat slowed; the blood in his veins stopped acting like it was trying to find a way to escape. After a full minute, he opened his eyes and took off his backpack. He rummaged around its contents until he found the packet containing the blood sample kit. There were three syringes in case one of them broke, each with a very long and nasty-looking needle covered with a plastic sheath to prevent unwanted pokes. He’d never been fond of shots, and the sight of the needles made him thankful he’d not be the one getting stuck.
Sato set the syringes on the stone floor, then looked back at the elevator, checking to make sure he knew how it worked. Just inside the cage, the lever Klink had used jutted out of a dented box of rusty steel, slanted toward the ground.
Sato entered the elevator, gripped the lever with both hands, and lifted; he groaned and felt blood rush to his face until the lever finally gave way and snapped up. With a loud clunk the elevator started moving upward. Sato quickly slammed the switch back down. The steel cage jolted to the floor with a metallic boom.
Some escape route, he thought.
He stepped out of the elevator, slung the backpack onto his shoulders, then very carefully put two of the syringes in his left jeans pocket, making sure not to push down on them. The other he held in his right hand, gripped like a dagger, and removed the protective plastic covering. Having no idea what he was about to get into, he had to be ready for quick action. Stab, extract, run, he thought.
His only problem—other than perhaps being mauled to death by a bunch of crazy people—was knowing which of the asylum inmates were infected with Chu’s mysterious disease and which were simply crazy. They probably wouldn’t be too keen on chitchatting about it.
Blowing a breath through his lips, Sato walked forward.
Chapter
27
~
A Sample of Blood
All righty den,” Sally said after taking a long swallow from his water glass. He set it down on the nightstand, then turned his eyes toward Tick. “Your turn.”
Sally had made Paul and Sofia summarize in their own words what he’d come to tell them. He said it was to make sure the gist of it got “nailed up in dem there noggins
a’yorn.” As the weight of Sally’s information settled on their shoulders, Tick at least felt some ease in knowing more about what lay behind the craziness of the last few days.
He put his right foot up on his left knee. “Well, we were supposed to be winked to the Realitant Headquarters at the Grand Canyon for a meeting about the weird stuff Reginald Chu is up to. But before that could happen, Chu tricked us and put a device on our arms that hijacked our nanolocators.”
“Which means what, now?” Sally asked, his eyebrows raised.
“That Reginald Chu controls us now. He can track us and wink us wherever he wants to. And there’s not a thing anyone can do about it.”
Sally shook his head in disgust. “Purtin’ near one of da worst things I reckon a man can do. Matter-fact, breakin’ Rule Number 462 bans you from dem there Realitants ’til the day you is deader than a squirrel on a tire’s underbelly.”
“Hey, let Tick finish,” Sofia said. “We need to make sure we all understand everything you told us.”
“Fair ’nuff,” Sally said.
“Anyway,” Tick continued, “you said it looks like Chu is testing us and some other people to see who
’s most worthy to help him in a secret project he’s working on. And the project has something to do with a disease or plague that’s making people go crazy in some of the Realities.”
Tick paused, not really wanting to say the next part.
“Get on wid it,” Sally prodded.
“Master George wants us to keep going. He wants us to be the ones who make it. He wants us to win Chu’s contest. It’s the only way we can make sure the Realitants get there to stop it—whatever it is.”
After a long pause, Paul said, “You’re the man, Tick. Took Sofia about three hours to say what you just said.”
“Well,” Tick said, “that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? We have to keep going, even though it seems like Chu doesn’t care if we make it or die trying. Not that much fun to think about, let alone talk about.”
Sofia stood from her chair and walked to the window, where she parted the curtain just enough to peek out. “This is so creepy. It was bad enough knowing Master George tracked us last year. Now we’ve got some power-hungry mad scientist controlling our lives. There has to be a way to get rid of those nanolocators, right?”
“Then you’d be missing the point,” Paul said. “Which is shocking considering how long you took to talk about it.”
“I’m not missing the point,” Sofia said as she turned back toward the group. “Even if we could get rid of them, we wouldn’t because we need to keep pretending that we’re trying to win.”
“Not only that,” Tick said. “We need Chu to think we don’t know he’s behind it all.”
“Dang, you kids are plumb smart,” Sally said. “When I’s a youngun like you, I was happier than a crawdaddy at high tide if I could add up my own two feet.”