The Hunt for Dark Infinity

  Rutger spoke in short bursts, sucking in gasps of air between words. “Tick . . . and the others . . . their nanolocators . . . everything seems normal . . . at the cemetery . . . but it won’t work . . .”

  George reached down and grasped Rutger by the shoulders. “Take a deep breath, man, then explain yourself.”

  Rutger did as he was told, closing his eyes briefly before opening them again. But when he spoke, it came out just like before. “I don’t understand . . . all their readings . . . normal . . . no malfunctions, no blips . . . but the Wand won’t wink them in. They’re standing there . . . waiting! It won’t work!”

  George tapped his lips, looking down at Sato then at the mingling Realitants gathered in the assembly hall. His eyes seemed afire with concern. “Oh, dear.”

  “What’s going on?” Sato asked.

  “Unfortunately, I think I know exactly what’s going on.” George started walking toward the stage, his steps brisk.

  Sato looked down at Rutger. “Do you?”

  Rutger shook his head, his face so lined and creased that Sato worried he’d drop dead of a heart attack. He was about to say something when George’s voice boomed across the room, echoing off the walls. Sato turned to see George standing at a microphone on the stage.

  “My fellow Realitants,” he announced. “This meeting must start immediately. Please, find anyone lingering in the halls, bring them here, and take your seats.”

  “What’s wrong?” someone yelled from the audience.

  George paused before answering. “We’ve had a violation of Rule Number 462.”

  ~

  Tick fidgeted, rocking back and forth on his feet, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants. Sofia stood to his left, Paul to his right. The sun made its way toward the top of the sky, beating down on the cemetery with a ruthless heat. Tick hoped Master George would wink them away to a nice, cool place; he couldn’t wait to tell him about the bizarre incident in the woods with Mr. Chu. They’d seen no sign of him since, and several calls to the school had only hit the answering machine.

  “Come on, already,” Paul muttered, looking up at the cloudless blue sky as if he expected Master George to float down in a balloon and pick them up. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the air, “Yo! We’re ready! Wink us, man!”

  “Maybe he will once you quit acting like an idiot,” Sofia said.

  “At least I’m acting,” Paul replied.

  Sofia pulled back to punch him for his troubles when the screeching sound of a car slamming on its brakes in front of the cemetery entrance made them look in that direction. Tick’s heart skipped a beat when he realized it was his mom. She was already out the door and past the stone archway, running at full speed.

  “Mom!” Tick yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “Atticus, don’t leave yet!” she said, looking ridiculous as her arms pumped back and forth. Tick realized that he’d never, not once, seen his mother run before.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice now that she’d almost reached them, only twenty feet away.

  “I have to tell you something—I have to tell you before you go.” She slowed, then stopped, sucking in air. “It’s very important.”

  Tick was so relieved she wasn’t going to prevent him from leaving, he failed to realize how odd it was that she’d raced here to tell him . . . what?

  “You okay?” he asked. “What is it?”

  Having regained her breath, she began talking. “I should’ve told you this years ago—at the least, I should’ve told you four months ago. I—”

  But Tick didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Instead, in that instant, he and his friends were winked away to a very strange place.

  Chapter

  10

  ~

  A Very Strange Place

  Tick got his wish in one regard—the place was cold. Beyond that, he couldn’t find one positive thing about it.

  They stood on a cracked stone road, small pools of stagnant water filling the gaps. The smoggy air reeked of things burnt—oil, rubber, tar. Metal structures lined the long street on both sides, towering over them, black and dirty. Tick first thought they were buildings of some kind, but that notion quickly evaporated. They were more like sculptures, the dark and twisted vision of some maniac artist.

  “Man,” Paul whispered, “it’s like Gotham City.”

  In some spots, wide, arching pieces rose fifty feet in the air, ending in a jagged, ripped edge as if some enormous monster had ripped the top off with its teeth. In other places, huge, towering cylinders—some taller than New York City skyscrapers—ascended to the sky until they disappeared into the menacing, storm-heavy clouds. Squat, deformed lumps sat in the nooks and crannies, like weathered statues of ancient Greek gods. Hideous carvings of animals, worse than the ugliest gargoyle Tick had ever seen balancing on the outer walls of a cathedral, lay strewn about like stray dogs, frozen in place by a rainstorm of molten metal. Random triangles and pentagons hung oddly from various structures, seeming to defy the laws of physics.

  All of it, everything in sight, was made out of a dark gray metal that dully reflected the scant light filtering through the clouds above. And there was no variation—the bizarre structures and sculptures lay everywhere, in every direction, as far as Tick could see.

  One word seemed to describe the place better than anything else: dreary.

  “Where are we?” Sofia asked, slowly turning in a circle, just as Tick and Paul were.

  Good question, Tick thought. He didn’t know if he was looking forward to any locals showing up to answer it.

  “What kind of people would live here?” he asked, trying to shake the worry of his mom and her undelivered message.

  “People who like to gouge their eyes out, obviously,” Paul said. “This has to be the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.”

  “They ever heard of flowers?” Sofia said. “Maybe a splash of color here and there?”

  “Do you think we’re in one of the Thirteen Realities?” Tick asked. “One we haven’t heard of yet?”

  “Where else could we be?” Paul answered. “Does this look like something in Reality Prime to you?”

  “I don’t know—maybe these are ruins or something.”

  Paul coughed. “Uh . . . don’t think so, big guy. Pretty sure we would’ve heard about a place this weird.”

  “What could’ve led to something like this?” Sofia asked, sliding her hand along the flat side of a large, boxy structure, big spheres bubbling out the side of it like pimples. “How could they be so different from us?”

  Tick stepped toward one of the cylindrical towers, following Sofia’s lead and touching the black metal. It was as cold and hard as it looked.

  A faint buzzing sound filled the air. At first, Tick panicked because it reminded him of the Gnat Rat and its mechanical hornets that had attacked him in his bedroom the previous fall. But an instant after the droning began, a burst of light to the left caught his attention.

  Near a large circle of metal, jutting up from the ground like a half-buried flying saucer, sparks of brilliant white light popped and flashed, igniting into existence only to disappear a second later, like the brief flames shooting off a welder. The sparks seemed random at first, exploding all over the place, high and low in the air, across an area dozens of feet wide, reflecting off the metal circle in dull smears of color. But then the strangest thing happened.

  The sparks began to form words.

  Tick thought his mind was playing tricks, the constant flashing of lights wreaking havoc on his vision. But soon it became obvious as large letters of bright, streaky light appeared, hanging in the air, flashing and dancing but remaining solid enough to read. In a matter of seconds, a wall of words flickered before them, as big as a movie screen.

  Tick swallowed his awe and confusion, reading the words as quickly as possible, scared they might disappear at any second:

  Inside the words of the words inside,

 
There lies a secret to unhide.

  A place there is where you must go,

  To meet the Seven, friend or foe.

  Of course, an order there must be,

  To hill and rock and stone and tree.

  Of worlds above and worlds below,

  Of worlds with water, fire, snow.

  Of worlds that live in fear and doubt,

  Of worlds within and worlds without.

  The Path begins where dark is clear,

  Where short is tall and far is near.

  All this you must ignore and hate,

  For you to find the wanted fate.

  There lies a secret to unhide,

  Inside the words of the words inside.

  Tick read it three times, his eyes wide. He had no clue what the words meant, but they mesmerized him, held him captivated. He felt just like when he’d first read the original invitation from Master George.

  Master George!

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Tick said, surprised at how loud his voice sounded, echoing off the world of metal around them. He looked over at his friends.

  “What?” Paul asked without returning the glance. He still stared at the poem, which shimmered as brightly as ever, his lips forming the strange words silently. Sofia was doing the same thing a couple feet from him.

  Tick returned to the poem, quickly rereading it. “I can’t believe Master George is messing around with riddles and clues again. I thought we’d proved ourselves already.”

  “How do you know it’s from Master George?” Paul asked.

  “Hmmm,” Sofia said. “Maybe because he told us to go to the cemetery then winked us here? I know it’s a little complicated for—”

  A loud, electric crack cut her off, followed by a series of hissing sizzles. The letters of the poem quickly sparkled and flashed before disappearing altogether, the wispy, streaming trails of smoke the only sign they’d ever been there. Without any wind, the smoke lingered, slowly coalescing and melding into one hazy glob.

  Just when everything seemed utterly silent, another loud crack of electricity made Tick jump, one last explosion of light igniting on the ground a few feet in front of Sofia. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and in its place stood a small metal box, a tiny latch on the front.

  Paul got there first, dropping to his knees and reaching out for the box.

  “Wait!” Sofia said.

  Paul’s hands froze in midair; he looked over his shoulder. “Why? This is obviously from Master George, right? You just said I was an idiot for doubting it.”

  “Well . . . yeah, I guess. Just . . . I don’t know, be careful.”

  “Open it,” Tick urged. “We’re lucky he didn’t wink it into one of our skulls.”

  Paul reached out again and flipped up the latch, then carefully lifted the lid open. He leaned forward and looked down into the small space of the container; Tick and Sofia stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  Inside, there lay only a small piece of paper. Stiff, white paper—cardstock.

  “Definitely M.G.’s MO,” Paul said as he picked up the message. He held it up in the scant light for everyone to see.

  In the same typed writing of the Twelve Clues from their first adventure with Master George, the paper contained the exact poem, word for word, they’d just seen floating in the air like the world’s most sophisticated fireworks. Paul flipped the paper over and read another mysterious clue:

  Miss Graham is the key. Repeat: you must find Anna.

  “Man, he’s getting all fancy on us,” Paul said, standing up. “Why use all the Christmas lights if he was gonna send us this anyway?”

  “Guess he wanted to show off,” Sofia said, taking the message from Paul. She sat down on the stone-paved road and read through the poem again.

  Tick folded his arms and shivered, looking up at the sky. There was no sign of the sun, but it seemed to have grown a little darker since they’d arrived. The temperature had dropped too, and for the first time in months, he felt justified wearing his scarf. He wrapped it a little tighter, then walked over to sit on a small metal cube next to the road.

  “Hurry up and figure it out, Sofia,” he said before letting out a huge yawn. “I don’t really wanna hang out here much longer.”

  “You could help, ya know,” she mumbled, still studying the paper.

  Actually Tick was doing just that, reviewing the poem in his mind’s eye; without meaning to, he’d memorized it. But he didn’t know what to look for or try to solve. The riddle seemed to have only one purpose—to confuse its reader.

  Paul yawned and stretched. “Man, I can’t just sit here. Let’s get moving.”

  “Where to?” Tick asked, looking down one length of the endless road, then the other. The heavy clouds had sunk to the ground, as if seeking warmth and companionship. The only things Tick could see were the countless heaps and angles of dark metal, covered in a mist that grew thicker by the minute. Tick shivered again.

  “I don’t know, dude,” Paul said. “That way.” He pointed to his left, then changed his mind, pointing the other direction. “Nah, that way.”

  Sofia stood, shaking her head; she seemed as frustrated as Tick about the riddle. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go.” Without waiting for a response, she started walking down the cracked and pitted road.

  ~

  Thirty minutes later, nothing had changed except for the air around them, which continued to grow thicker with wet, heavy mist. The world of metal was almost lost in darkness. Obscure, creepy shapes appeared and disappeared, all sharp angles and looming curves. The burnt smells intensified, as if the kids were approaching a huge factory or garbage dump.

  Tick officially hated the place, his panic growing at the thought that maybe they’d be stuck here, that they’d have to sleep here. If the stupid riddle was their only way out . . .

  He kept running through it in his mind, trying to recall the methods he’d used to solve the original Twelve Clues. Those had seemed so easy in comparison, almost childish. Magic words, thumping the ground with your foot, figuring out a day and a time. Compared to that, this new one seemed like advanced calculus.

  For some reason, the lines “All this you must ignore and hate, for you to find the wanted fate” kept returning to his mind. Something told him that was the key to figuring everything out.

  They approached a wide, thick span of metal arching across the road—rusty, linked chains of varying lengths hanging down every couple of feet. The chains swayed slightly despite the lack of wind. That gave Tick the creeps more than anything else, and he quickened his pace until the odd structure was way behind them.

  “Spooked?” Paul asked. His voice was muffled, swallowed up in the mist.

  “Yeah,” Tick answered. “You’re not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, please,” Sofia said. “If it weren’t for me being here, you two would be running around bawling your eyes out. Just keep moving.”

  “Miss Italy, you’re probably right, but do you have to be so annoying?”

  They walked for another couple of hours, but nothing changed. The path only led to more of the same—mounds of dark metal and looming, odd shapes. Tick finally couldn’t take it anymore; his feet hurt and his stomach rumbled with hunger.

  “We need to eat,” he said. “And sleep.”

  “Amen,” Paul agreed.

  Sofia didn’t say anything, but she almost collapsed to the ground, sighing as she leaned back against a black wall and pulled out a granola bar and a bottle of water from her backpack. Tick sat across the road from her, diving into his own food.

  “How can I possibly sleep here?” Paul asked as he bit into an energy bar. “I don’t have my feather pillow.”

  Tick half-laughed, but he already felt his eyes drooping, despite sitting up. Feeling like he’d been drugged, he leaned over and lay on his side, pulling his backpack under his head for a pillow. He fell asleep instantly.

  ~

  Two days passed, th
ough the only way Tick knew for sure was by looking at his watch and noticing the subtle changes in the darkness of the sky. Tick’s anxiety and panic faded into a dull indifference as they trudged along the endless path, finding nothing. For all he knew, they were walking in circles because everything looked so similar.

  They grew quiet as they walked, discouragement acting as a gag in their throats.

  On the morning of their third day in the miserable place, Tick finished off his measly breakfast of a candy bar, half a bottle of water, and a stale piece of bread—he was almost out of food. As he stood and put on his backpack, Paul gave him an ugly look.

  “Dude, where are you going?” he said through a yawn. “I’m barely awake—what’s the rush?”

  “There has to be something we’re missing,” Tick replied. “I think we need to get off this stupid road and climb up one of these structures. Try to get inside one of them.”

  “Tick’s right,” Sofia said, getting to her feet as well. “This road isn’t leading us anywhere except in a big circle—everything looks familiar.”

  “It all looks the same to me.” Paul stretched, then stood up. “Fine, whatever. It’s not like I wanna retire and live on this road someday. Maybe we could try to climb—”

  A loud, crashing sound to their right cut him off. All three of them froze, waiting, listening.

  A metallic clang rang out from behind a jutting rectangle of metal, followed by a scrape, then the grunt of a man. Tick heard the shuffling of feet, then a cough. Although he knew someone was approaching the road, about to appear at any second, he couldn’t move. After almost three days of complete boredom, hearing the presence of another human being was like finding an alien in his backyard.

  A man of medium height and enormous build stepped around the corner of the metal obstacle, limping slightly. He had tangled, red hair and a scruffy beard; he wore a plaid red flannel shirt, dirty denim overalls, and heavy work boots. Tick was half-surprised the guy didn’t have a huge axe slung over his shoulder.