The scream had barely escaped Sato’s mouth before the excruciating pain vanished, gone in an instant. It didn’t fade or slowly feel better. One second he felt like his entire body was on fire, horrible burns eating away at his skin, the next second he was perfectly fine. He collapsed to the rock-hard ground anyway, the mental shock of the pain bad enough. The air around him was gray and dull, twilight’s last moments before full night.
On his back, he held up his hands even though he dreaded what he might see. Blood and red blisters at best. Black, charred flesh at worse. But instead, in the faint glow of the light around him, he saw smooth, healthy skin, not a blemish or a scrape or a bruise.
What had happened? He remembered the earthquake, then bolts of lightning striking everywhere, and people disappearing when struck. Then the world had lit up, exploded in fire, as if he himself had been . . .
Sucking in a gasp, he sat up, then scrambled to his feet. He turned in a slow circle, looking all around him. With each second, with each revolution, his eyes grew wider and wider. He saw no sign of the homes and trees and stone walls of the Fifth Reality. He’d been taken to another place. Even though the light was dim, he had no doubt of it.
He stood on a vast, flat ground made of a hard substance and checkered with large squares of differing colors. It seemed to stretch in every direction as far as he could see, with no breaks of any kind. He knelt down and felt the floor. It was cool to the touch. Marble, maybe. The light wasn’t strong enough for him to see if the floor had the familiar pattern of that stone.
He stood back up and looked above him. Though the marble floor beneath him would suggest that he was inside a building of some sort, no other evidence supported it. No roof hung above him—just blank, unblemished air. No stars, no clouds, no planes in the sky. The perimeter around him was just as gray and lifeless. The floor went on forever, with no walls or fences or trees. No mountains in the distance. No furniture.
That was all; a marble floor with countless squares of color, stretching to infinity in every direction and a lifeless sky that seemed the definition of
nothing.
I’m dreaming,
he thought. Or maybe he was dead. Though he’d never learned much about religion and the afterlife, he couldn’t help but think of the possibility that he’d died and was in some sort of waiting room for souls. Certainly no place like this existed in the real world, no matter which Reality.
He heard a humming sound behind him and turned quickly to check it out.
Twenty or thirty feet away, a figure lay crumpled on the floor. It was a girl with curly blonde hair, her clothes filthy and torn. She had black smudges on her bare skin. She looked to be about his same age. She twitched a little and let out a low groan.
“Hey!” Sato yelled, cringing when it came out so harshly. “Are you okay? Do you know where we are?”
The girl glanced at him when she heard his voice, her eyes filled with fear. “Hello?” she called back weakly.
Sato ran to her, sure he must be in a dream after all. He approached her and knelt on the ground, putting a hand out to touch her shoulder softly.
“You okay?” he asked again. “I don’t know how we got here.”
He looked around again, scanning their surroundings to see if anything had changed. Still nothing but colored marble tiles going forever and a sky of dead air. He returned his attention to the girl.
“My name’s Sato,” he said, hoping the girl would snap out of her daze and help him understand what was going on. She looked up, and he saw tears streaking down her cheeks.
“I’m Lisa,” she said, stifling a sob. “Have you seen my sister?”
~
At first, Tick felt the slightest hint of hope at Frazier’s words, but it didn’t last long. He remembered the horrible images of destruction on the screens, recognizing that the man had said his sisters and parents had vanished
after
mentioning earthquakes and lightning.
There was nothing good about that. Maybe they’d been trapped under rubble. Maybe they’d been struck by lightning. Maybe no one could find them because they were dead.
No!
he shouted in his mind. His insides still boiled, the heat of his Chi’karda flaring up even stronger at the depressing thoughts of what might have happened. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt so scared and completely hopeless. Useless.
Jane had stayed quiet for a long moment after Frazier’s pronouncement, staring at the man with a blank expression. Then she turned to Tick.
“Then they’re probably dead already,” she said coolly. “How fitting it would be if it was
your
disobedience, Atticus, your arrogant, reckless use of Chi’karda that ended up killing your family. I hope you can live with that.”
Tick barely heard the words. He couldn’t hold back the Chi’karda anymore. He’d let it go too far, and now it was too late to stop it. His insides had become a roaring inferno.
Something seemed to rip deep inside of him, and he screamed from the pain. He fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself. Trying to escape it, he curled into a ball and screamed again, as loudly as he could.
Everything
changed.
The dusty desert around him vanished, replaced by trees.
The power and burning disappeared, as did the pain, and everything was perfectly silent, except for his quick and heavy breaths.
He was in the middle of a forest. And he was alone.
~
Tick didn’t move for a long time.
The forest was dark, only the slightest traces of moonlight seeping through the thick canopy of branches above him, dappled here and there on the ground. He heard nothing but a few insects and the very distant sound of a dog barking. The woods smelled fresh and pungent, the scent of the pine trees closest to him by far the strongest. It made him think of Christmas.
Which made him think of his family, which pulled at his heart like a huge rock had been tied to it and dropped to his stomach. He ached for them, and he didn’t know how he could survive if they’d been hurt or killed. For now, not knowing anything for certain, his mind only allowed him to hold onto hope. He didn’t let anything too dark settle on his thoughts. They
could
be alive. There were a million possibilities for such a thing, and he held onto that.
He had to get going. He had to figure out where he’d been sent. Had he actually winked himself? That seemed the only logical explanation, but the instant he’d arrived in the forest, the flames of Chi’karda had burned out, leaving him empty. He was cold, and not just because the air in the forest was cool and wetly crisp, as if a storm might be coming. He also felt the chill of fear.
He stood up and turned in a slow circle, scanning the woods. He saw only trees, some thin, some thick, all of them crowded one after the other until they faded into obscure shadows. He closed his eyes to focus, but again, he heard only the insects and that frantic dog, still in the distance. Unless some super spy was nearby, watching him in silence, he was alone.
What
had
happened? His experience with winking kept the situation from being completely bizarre, but had he really done it to himself? Or had it been Sally back at headquarters? He doubted that since no one else came with him; also, it would have made much more sense to wink him to Master George’s compound in the Bermuda Triangle, not to the middle of the woods.
A lot of questions, no answers, and it was cold. He shivered, rubbed his arms, and told himself once again that he needed to get going. But the worry that he’d go in the wrong direction kept his feet glued to the forest floor.
Go,
he thought.
Just go. That way.
He stepped forward, but stopped when the sound of crunching ground cover startled him. He took another quick look around him. Nothing.
Shaking off his childish worries, he walked forward resolutely, moving aside tree branches and stomping down weeds. The crick-crash with every step filled the air with echoes until it almost seemed like someone
was
following him. He realized he was acting a little ridiculous and feeling way too paranoid. Refusing to slow again for another look, he kept going through the trees.
He’d just squeezed through two big oaks when he definitely heard something behind him: a quick but loud moan, as if some giant had awakened with a stomachache. Sucking in a breath, Tick spun around, throwing his arms out to catch his balance on the thick trees. There’d been an odd glimmer of light behind him, he was certain. But it disappeared the instant he saw it.
Silence returned, thicker than before. The moan must have spooked the insects, because they’d quieted as well. Tick felt a sudden burst of claustrophobia, there in the darkness with the trees pressing in around him.
Childish or not, he was officially scared. That stifled groan had sounded otherworldly, like a . . .
Well, like a ghost.
He turned and ran, not taking the time to be careful anymore. Branches slapped his face, and twigs and leaves scratched his skin. He didn’t stop, dodging the obstacles as best he could.
Ooooooohhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn . . .
There it was again—the low moan. It was still behind him, but this time it lasted much longer. A flicker of terror, like icy water shooting up his throat, made him cough and wheeze. He wanted to look back. Every instinct
screamed
for him to look back, but he knew he’d have to slow down to do that, or he’d run right smack into a tree. Weaving, dodging, ducking, he ran on.
A flash of silvery light gleamed from behind him, illuminating the woods. Unable to fight the urge to look, Tick stopped, put his hand against a pine tree, and turned around. Once again the strange glow vanished as soon as he saw it, but he’d caught a glimpse of wispy brilliance, as if streamers of fog had magically transformed into a cloud of almost blue light.
Ooooooohhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn . . .
The sound came again, along with another few flashes of the silver, misty beams. There was something oddly
metallic
about the light, making Tick think of aluminum or steel. And then it was gone.
Tick turned and ran again, swearing to himself he wouldn’t stop again until he found a person, a building, something. A policeman or a ghost hunter would be great.
Because of the darkness, he had no idea he was at the edge of the forest until he broke through the last line of trees. A sharp but short hill sloped up, and he stumbled and fell before he could slow down. His face smacked into a clod of dirt. He spit the gritty stuff out of his mouth as he scrambled with his hands and feet to move up the hill.
He reached the top, pumping his legs and flailing his arms until he found his balance and could run again. His feet slapped pavement—a road. It took another few seconds for Tick to realize where he’d been sent. Or where he had sent himself. A mixture of relief and confusion consumed him, almost making him stop again.
But he didn’t stop; he didn’t even slow down. He knew exactly where to go, and a fresh surge of adrenaline lifted his energy and spirits.
He was in Deer Park, Washington, on the road leading to his neighborhood, a path he’d walked thousands of times in his life. The why and how ceased to matter in his mind. Something creepy was behind him, and his house was in front of him.
He ran for home.
~
As Tick rounded his mailbox and shot up the driveway, he couldn’t help but feel a trace of déjà vu. His thoughts went back to his very first wink, when he’d gone to the cemetery as instructed and performed the strange initiation ritual he’d had to figure out from the twelve clues sent to him by Master George.
When he’d winked that night and felt that cool tingle down the back of his neck, the first of many more to come, he thought it hadn’t worked. Sullen and heartbroken, he’d headed for home only to discover he’d been sent to an alternate Reality, one in which a strange, nasty old man lived in Tick’s house.
What if that old man was there again? Or another one?
What if Tick had been winked to another Reality, and his Alterant was in the house, sleeping or sitting at the computer or about to come outside? Though he’d been totally unconscious in the Fourth Reality, Sofia and Paul had told him about what happened when the two versions of Reginald Chu met. There had been an earthquake, a wave of air, and the Reginald from the Fourth had disappeared, gone to some place Master George called the Nonex.
What if that happened to Tick when he opened the door?
Then, despite the darkness, he noticed the crashed garage door from when the water creatures had attacked his parents. His doubts washed away, and he ran up to the bushes lining the house and dropped to his knees, searching for the fake rock that contained a spare key. The key had been missing before when he’d unknowingly been winked to an alternate reality. This time he found it, and, pulling the key from the rock, he ran up the porch steps and unlocked the front door. He went inside and flicked the light switch in the hallway. Nothing happened.
He walked into the kitchen, the moonlight seeping through the windows just enough to aid his way. The lights there didn’t work either. He paused and listened for a minute. Nothing, not even the sound of the fridge or the heater.
So the power was out. Maybe nearby areas had been hit by the same devastation he’d witnessed on the screens back in the Thirteenth.
Based on what little he could see, he no longer had any doubt this was Reality Prime, and that this was his very own house. Just to make absolutely sure, he made his way back to the stairs and went up them to his room, feeling carefully along the wall in the dark. Every bit of furniture, the blankets on the bed, the wall decorations—everything was exactly as he last remembered seeing them.
He felt a little disappointed. Deep down he’d been hoping to find his family here, even though he knew it was a long shot. Jane had taken them, but then Frazier had said they’d disappeared. Tick had hoped the same thing might have happened to them as what had happened to him. He’d hoped they had been sent back home too.