“Done with speeches, we are,” she said, fingering her Shurric. “Master George got us quite nice and inspired, he did. Are we ready for a bit of battle? Ready to go in there and stop the monster named Chu once and for all?”
Several Realitants shouted their agreement.
“We all know the plan,” Mothball continued. “Get inside and make our way to the studies. Third lower level, section eight. Seen the map, you ’ave.”
Sofia felt a cold pit in her gut, her nerves jittery. An emptiness floated somewhere inside her; she knew what she had to do. If she could actually find Tick.
“I ’spect Chu’ll be sendin’ nasties after us before long,” Mothball said. “Better get a move on.”
Her last word still hung in the air when a great boom rolled across the park, shaking the leaves on the trees. Mothball turned around sharply and Sofia rose on her tiptoes to see what had happened. Another boom shot out, then another. Several more in rapid-fire succession. Soon they were almost indistinguishable from each other.
Sofia saw holes had opened up along the front of the mountain building, big circles that were black on black, barely visible. Silvery balls shot out of them, one after the other. After a very short flight, the things landed on the grass and started . . . changing. They reformed and reshaped themselves, twitching as objects twirled and spun on their bodies, long appendages protruding out and reaching for the ground. There were dozens of them. No, hundreds.
“Uh-oh,” Paul said beside her.
As soon as he said it, Sofia realized what the things were.
Metaspides.
~
Tick had to keep reminding himself to breathe.
A long, long moment passed, he and Jane staring at each other. Her eyes flickered away now and then, as if turmoil raged inside her as she thought about what she should do. Tick tried to think of his own options. Run seemed like a good one, but he couldn’t move, as if his feet were riveted to the floor. Then Jane’s eyes refocused on him, like she’d departed her own body for a few minutes and had finally returned.
She slowly walked forward, arms coming up, outstretched and reaching for Tick, her fingers curved like claws. Tick was so baffled by her sudden change, and the almost laughable Frankenstein gait she’d chosen, that at first he didn’t react. When she came within a foot, though, he snapped out of it and dodged to his right, ready to run.
With shocking speed, Jane spun and kicked her right leg out, smacking him in both shins. Tick lost his balance and dove toward the ground, just getting his hands beneath him before he crunched his nose. He started scrambling, but Jane was on top of him, grabbing both his shoulders from behind. With a jerk of her surprisingly strong arms, she flopped him over and onto his back, gripping his torso with her legs like a vice.
She clutched his face with both hands and leaned forward, putting her mouth flush against his ear, her breath hot. She whispered so low Tick could barely hear her.
“Listen to me. I don’t think Chu can stop the Chi’karda in you—it’s too strong. But I need to draw it out. Listen to me. I’m going to strangle you, do you understand? I’m going to kill you unless you fight back. It’s the only way, Atticus. Do you hear me? I will not stop until you die or until you let the Chi’karda explode out of you and it saves us both. Listen to me. I . . . am . . . going . . . to . . . kill . . . you. For your own good.”
Jane pulled her face away, staring down at him with her green eyes aflame. She put both of her hands around his neck, squeezing. Panic flared inside Tick. He kicked out with his legs, beat on her arms with his fists, but she didn’t budge.
“Let go of me!” he tried to yell, a guttural croak that barely came out.
Jane squeezed tighter. “Look at me, Chu!” she bellowed out, lunacy glazing her eyes. “I obeyed! I will be your apprentice!”
As pain enveloped him, as his breath left his body—squeezed from him—Tick thought distantly that he couldn’t tell her intentions. Is she really going to kill me? Is she acting? Would she really kill me?
Her fingers closed tighter, gripping his skin, pinching the tendons and nerves. Tighter still. Tick struggled, kicking, beating her arms, thrashing beneath her. She squeezed even harder. Tick couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find air.
“He’s almost dead!” Jane yelled. “Chu! I’ve won your test!”
Tick’s eyes bulged and he felt his face puffing up. He heard the choking sounds torn from his own throat. Black stars formed above him, swirling in the air, growing bigger until they blackened his vision. Darkness fell upon him, complete.
Images flashed across his mind’s eye almost too fast to register: his family, Sofia, Paul, the library back home, Master George, snow, school, Mr. Chu at the chalkboard, the Barrier Wand, the Grand Canyon, Rutger, Mothball . . .
I don’t want to die!
Something snapped inside Tick’s mind. He felt it—he heard it, like a branch cracked by a bolt of lightning. Heat surged through him, first warm then hot, pulsing through his veins, as if his blood had combusted into lava, burning him.
A piercing scream rocked the air. He realized it had come from him just as the blackness swept away, replaced by Jane’s face, hovering above him as she kept trying to strangle him.
Tick screamed again.
Jane flew off him, catapulting across the hallway and slamming into the wall. An unseen force pinned her arms and legs flat as her head thrashed back and forth. The ground shook as Tick struggled for breath, gasping in air, fighting to get his arms and legs under him. Sounds of bending and breaking filled the air. He looked up to see the metal panels of the walls warping and cracking, bubbling and melting. Tremors rocked the floor, ripples surging back and forth like waves on water, crashing into each other as large cracks rent the hard material.
Jane hadn’t moved, still pinned to the wall. The chaotic sounds of destruction hurt Tick’s ears. Everything had gone crazy; he couldn’t take it. Somewhere inside him, he knew it was coming from him, that it was all his fault. I’m a freak. I’m a freak! Knowing he had this power only made it worse, panicked him further, sent his mind and thoughts reeling.
I’m going crazy, he thought. I can’t do this. I can’t control it! What have I done?
Chu. Reginald Chu. This was all his fault. Everything was his fault.
Tick glared at the massive double doors, the black square still blank. The world around him rocked back and forth, things breaking and crashing and melting. The heat within him intensified. He felt certain his organs were about to burn, fry to a crisp, leaving him dead.
Tick threw all of his anger and pain at the doors. At Chu.
With a terrible squeal, the doors wrenched to the sides, crunching into a mass of twisted steel, leaving a gaping, smoking hole behind. Tick caught movement out of the corner of his eye—Jane falling to the floor in a crumpled heap.
I can’t do this, Tick thought. I can’t do this!
Screaming, he got to his feet and ran through the twisted and broken doorway.
Chapter
45
~
The Shower of Gold
A sea of metaspides littered the park outside Chu’s artificial mountain, crawling along the ground with their creepy, jointed legs. Sofia found it hard to believe they were machines because they seemed so alive. They swarmed together in a tight pack, heading straight for the Realitants.
“Ready yourselves!” Mothball roared.
Sally stood a few people down from Sofia. He lifted his left hand into the air and shouted something completely unintelligible. But he looked ready to fight.
A small tremor abruptly shook the ground, making Sofia stumble backward a step. The Realitants looked around in confusion, Mothball in particular. Sofia looked up at the black mountain. It shook as well; in the distance, she heard the sounds of breaking glass and twisting metal.
“Need be keepin’ our focus!” Mothball shouted. “Master Tick must be goin’ about ’is business. On the count of three—we charge! One!”
Sofia nudged Paul in the arm with her elbow. “For Tick and Sato,” she said, not caring if her voice betrayed how scared she felt.
“Two!”
Paul nodded without breaking his focused stare. “For Tick and Sato.”
“Three!”
Sofia sprinted forward before anyone else, her body acting before her mind could talk her out of it. Pumping her fist in the air, she screamed out one word, louder than she’d ever shouted anything in her life, almost ripping her throat raw.
“REEEEAAAAALITAAAAAANTS!”
The thunder of footsteps and echoing calls of her rallying cry sounded from behind her.
Sofia ran straight for the closing pack of metaspides.
~
The world shook.
Tick felt as if his mind was detached from his body. He rotated in a circle, staring at the huge open chamber he’d run into. He saw a vast open space with an artificial sky above him, complete with stars and a moon. Half-completed machines and menacing structures covered the hundreds of square yards of floor space. Workers hung on for dear life as scaffolding fell apart beneath them. Large holograms of floor plans and complicated designs hung throughout the chamber like see-through kites, countless lifts constantly moving between them, hovering and flying as if by magic.
Tick saw it all, but still felt his mind slipping away from him, out of control, on the edge of insanity. He staggered back and forth, the ground shaking and cracking.
To his right stood a huge tower made of gold that rose at least ten stories into the air. Near the top, partially obscured by a metal-grid catwalk, two words were stamped into the shiny metal.
Dark Infinity.
At the bottom of the tower, a panel of gold slid to the side, revealing a bright interior. A man appeared, then ran straight for Tick.
Don’t come near me, Tick thought. Stay away!
But then he saw it was Chu, and the anger and fear that had subsided flared anew.
“How!” Chu screamed, still running for Tick. “How could you possibly have done this?”
His words were distant, as if spoken through a wall. Splitting pain hammered in Tick’s skull. He squeezed his hands into fists to stop them from trembling. Pressure mounted in his chest and it became difficult to breathe. He could feel heat scorching him from the inside out.
He felt that strange separation from his body. He knew he was losing control, completely—but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The chamber shook, the tremors increasing in magnitude. He stared at Chu and Dark Infinity and from the corner of his eye he saw things falling. Metallic crashes filled the air.
Chu stopped, his eyes darting around the complex. “How . . . what . . . stop this! Stop this right now!”
Tick could barely hear him. As if reaching through a bucket of mud, he grasped for and found a tiny glimmer of sanity in his mind. He’d been sent here for a purpose—to destroy Chu’s plague. He held on to that one thought, forced his hand to steady, and reached inside the leather satchel at his side for the silvery cylinder that held the antidote to Dark Infinity. All he found was something hard and jagged, dusty and rough. Confused, he pulled it out and held it up to his eyes, squinting to see it through the blur of the chaos swimming around him.
It was a big rock. Frantic, he dug in the satchel again. Nothing. The bag was empty.
The antidote was gone.
~
Sofia did as she’d been instructed and threw a Rager toward the army of metaspides, never stopping her sprint. The little ball hit the ground and spun forward, ripping along with increasing speed as the static electricity erupted from it, gathering massive amounts of grass and dirt and rock. The weapon quickly grew into an earth-made bomb, a gigantic bowling ball of nature ready to destroy something. Sofia watched with elation as it crashed into the front line of the spidery robots and smashed a dozen of them into metallic shards.
To her left and right, other Ragers hit the metaspides, wiping out the first wave of their enemy. As soon as the dust settled, Sofia started firing her Shurric, pushing the trigger repeatedly as she swept the nozzle back and forth, pointing it at anything shiny and silver. With each shot, a muted clap of thunder shook the air, rolling forward in an invisible tidal wave until it slammed into its target. Metaspides flew through the air as if ropes yanked them backward, dozens of them catapulting toward the black mountain as more and more shots thumped from the Realitants.
Sofia kept running, reaching into her bag and grabbing another Rager. She spotted a thick cluster of robots and threw it in that direction, then ran after it. As soon as the massive ball of dirt and rock smashed another line of metaspides, she went in, firing.
She was almost starting to have fun.
~
Despite the whole world shaking around them, Chu laughed—a bitter, empty chortle. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out the silvery cylinder containing the antidote. He held it up above his head.
“Looking for this?” he shouted. “How many times are you people going to mistake me for an idiot?”
Tick ignored him, focusing his eyes on the shiny object, his heart sinking. If only he—
The antidote suddenly shot out of Chu’s hand and flew through the air, turning end over end before it slammed into Tick’s palm and stuck there, even before he closed his fingers around it. His breath caught in his throat as he stared at his hand in disbelief.
Chu couldn’t hide the shock on his face, his eyes wide, his lower lip quivering. “How is this possible?” he whispered, too low to hear but his lips making the words obvious to Tick. The man’s eyes shifted from the antidote to Tick’s face.
“Listen to me!” Chu yelled, holding his hands palm out as if approaching someone about to jump from a bridge. “You don’t understand! Dark Infinity is a giant Barrier Wand. It’s powerful enough to control and shape the Realities. It’s the greatest achievement in history! All I need is your help—and we can use it for good. You have to trust me. Give me a chance. Stop this madness!”
Tick stumbled about as the earthquake got worse, things crashing everywhere, the massive golden cylinder of Dark Infinity pitching dangerously from side to side. The black specks returned, swimming in front of Tick’s eyes, but this time mixed with flashing colors, blinding lights. He felt as if his heart was a furnace, burning him from within.
“Atticus!” A female voice, barely audible, came from his right. “Atticus, you have to stop! You don’t understand what you’re doing!”
Jane. It was Mistress Jane. But he couldn’t see her. The chamber shook and spun.
Tick screamed and threw the silver antidote in the general direction of Dark Infinity, the cylinder blurry and bouncing in his vision. He heard an ear-splitting crack, then the bubbling sound of sizzling acid eating at metal. His vision darkened until he could barely see. He fell to his knees, screaming, and grabbed his head with both hands, squeezing his eyes shut.
Then, though he would have thought it impossible, everything got worse. The pain, the sounds, the shaking, the spinning, the flashing lights. Tick didn’t think he could survive another second.
A booming crack rocked the air, and his eyes snapped open. His vision cleared in time to see that Dark Infinity had exploded into countless tiny golden pieces, flying and swirling through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard. A sparkling tornado. It sounded like millions of killer bees swarming.
“Atticus!” Jane yelled again, somewhere closer to him. “You have to stop!”
Tick knew he wasn’t thinking straight. His mind was a chaotic soup of jumbled memories and thoughts. He glanced to his right and saw Jane running for him; Chu had disappeared. A small part of his brain knew she was coming to help him, but all his eyes saw at that moment was the woman who had tried to kill him, to choke him to death in the hallway. The horrendous fear and rage he’d felt when he’d been so close to death returned full force.
He didn’t know exactly what he did, but he knew he couldn’t stop it. The swarming specks of metal that h
ad been Dark Infinity flew at Mistress Jane, like flies descending on a feast, surrounding her in a blur of sparkling gold. The metallic tornado consumed her body, obscuring her from sight.
Somewhere deep inside of him, Tick knew he’d just done something terrible.
I didn’t mean to, he thought. I didn’t mean to!
In answer, Jane’s screams erupted through the air.
Chapter
46
~
The Drag Race
Paul threw a Rager at the only remaining metaspide close to him, watching with glee as it steamrolled into a massive ball of earth and wiped the machine out, sparks flying as pieces of crumpled metal flew in all directions.
“Yeah, ba—”
A hard claw grabbed his ankle from behind and lifted, slamming his body to the ground. Paul tried to scream but there was no breath left in his body. He looked up to see a metaspide staring down at him with glowing robotic eyes. He wanted to say something—spit, yell for help—but he could only open and close his mouth, fighting to get air back in his lungs.
Scissoring metal blades came out of a hidden compartment, snipping on its hinges as it moved toward Paul’s face. But then the spider paused; its body rotated upward, as if it had spotted something behind them. Paul heard the glorious shouts of Mothball charging in to save him, when the metaspide took off on its spindly legs in the other direction, dragging Paul with it.
Paul’s body finally let him suck in a huge gulp of fresh air. It was enough for him to shriek with pain as rocks and dirt scraped his back, ripping his clothes. He kicked with his free foot, tried to slow the metaspide down by clawing at the ground, but to no avail. A burst of pain exploded inside him when his casted arm smacked a stray piece of one of the creature’s destroyed buddies.
“Mothball!” he shouted, trying without success to turn his head back to see if she was close. He kicked at the metaspide’s body and legs, but it kept running, dragging him like a sack of trash.