As he sloshed his way across the ground, he wished he had a companion with him. Grumbling alone was no fun. Why hadn’t George at least given him an umbrella? Maybe next time the red-faced geezer would send Sato to the middle of the ocean without a boat, or maybe to the desert without water, or skydiving without a parachute.
Sato shivered and kept walking, his socks soaked through from the rain. The squishy chill felt like he was smashing hundreds of iced shrimp below his feet. If no one answered at the building, he’d send the signal immediately for Rutger to wink him back. They might have found their first dead-end in Sato’s latest mission. A mission that creeped him out and left him in awe at the same time.
Oh, man, Tick,
he thought.
What in the world does this all mean?
As Sato got closer to the building, he noticed it had absolutely no markings of any kind—not a door, a window, or anything else he could see. It was made up of the same drab, no-color material of the ground, but smooth and unblemished. It was a perfect square, maybe ten feet in height and width.
He walked right up to the cube and put his hand out. Rain cascaded down the sides of the building in sheets, and when his hand made contact with the cool, hard wall, the water parted and washed across his skin, down his arm, and spilled onto the ground in tiny twin falls. Sato pulled his hand away and whipped it back and forth in a futile attempt to dry himself.
He was just about to call out the inevitable “Hello?” when he heard a loud thump and felt the ground tremble below his feet as if some giant beast from the underworld was trying to break free from its lair with a massive hammer. It happened only once, but Sato’s feet tingled from the vibration of the impact. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel afraid. Not yet, anyway.
There was a loud hiss, muted by the pounding rain, and then the wall directly in front of him began to move outward, toward him.
Sato felt anxiety grip his heart for the first time since arriving, and he stepped back, almost turned to run. But he quickly collected himself, reminding himself that George must have known where he’d been sending him after all. He had nothing to be afraid of.
He realized that it was only the bottom edge of the wall that was moving, swinging out and upward like an old-fashioned garage door. To his left and right, the side walls were doing the same, the groan of metallic hinges a faint squeal in the background. A soft light shone out from an unknown source, turning the thousands of raindrops into silvery sparkles. Sato could see through the cube to the other side where the fourth wall opposite him was opening up like its counterparts. Seconds later, the four walls locked into position parallel to the ground, and all movement stopped with a loud clank. Just a few feet above him, a wide shelter from the weather had formed, the doors and middle sections together now shaped like a square cross supported by four large metal pillars.
His fear gone, Sato stepped out of the rain toward the middle of what used to be a closed building and was now just a really fancy covered patio. He half-expected to see a picnic table or maybe a barbecue grill, but what he found instead surprised him greatly.
A hole.
A round hole, with a spiral set of stairs leading down into its depths and an iron handrail fastened to the wall. The light he’d noticed before was coming from somewhere at the bottom of the hole. Everything in sight was surprisingly dry. A small metal sign was bolted onto the floor right next to the first step, and several words had been stamped onto its surface:
Grace of Her Heart Cemetery
A prickle of fear raised bumps on Sato’s flesh, but reason calmed his nerves soon enough. In a place where rain was the norm, it made perfect sense for the dead to be buried in some kind of vault or tomb instead of within the spongy, soaked, muddy earth. Dead people would be floating all over the place if they’d made that mistake. It was a cemetery after all—a normal, peaceful, full-of-bodies graveyard.
And over the last few weeks, Sato had become very used to graveyards.
Blowing a breath through his lips, he squeezed as much water as possible out of his clothes and hair, then set off down the stairs. With each step, an audible squish sounded, inexplicably making him want to laugh. Step by step, round and round, he descended into the hole. With every full circle he made, he saw a square light set into the wall, casting a warm glow—literally. Things heated up quickly and considerably.
After what felt like ten or so floors, Sato reached the bottom the of stairs and stepped through an open doorway. Unable to hold back a gasp of wonder, he gaped at the massive chamber in front of him. Row upon row of metal containers stretched as far as he could see, fading away into a shadowy mist in the distance. Large pillars supported the roof thirty feet or so above him, standing like iron angels guarding the dead.
For that’s what filled the room. The dead. In metal caskets, stacked five high, with barely enough room between them for Sato to walk. Sato calculated there had to be thousands of deceased in the underground cemetery. Thousands upon thousands.
It took him four hours and forty-five minutes to find what he was looking for.
The casket looked like every other one in the vast tomb. Made from a dark steel, the slightest shade of silver prevented it from being utterly black. The final resting place of two other souls lay on top, two more beneath, with hundreds to either side. A dirty bronze plaque named the person whose body was inside the casket. Sato reached forward and wiped away the dust, more out of respect for the dead than anything else; he could read the words imprinted on the tarnished plaque just fine.
This was the seventh Reality in which he’d read such words.
It was the casket for Atticus Higginbottom.
~
Frazier Gunn had grown weary of prisons.
He’d now visited eleven of them, each one more foul than the one before it. Dirty. Grimy. Full of people with no self-control, no humanity. Full of thieves and murderers.
Now, walking down the dark, damp, smelly stone tunnel, escorted by two massively strong Brazilian guards with machine guns, he wondered how much more of this he could take. It didn’t help that Mistress Jane had refused to tell him the purpose of the mission he’d undertaken, only the whats and wheres. The hows. None of the whys.
He’d long since gotten over the shock of finding his prey in prison, each and every time. Without fail, his searches had ended at some sort of jail, penitentiary, detention center, or, in three memorable cases, a hospital for the criminally insane. Always in shady institutions run by shady men and women. Always in places where the right price could buy you anything. Were there places in the Realities where this was
not
the case? He doubted it.
They came to a wooden door, heavily bolted and re-
inforced with a thick chain and lock. The guard to his right grunted something in Portuguese, but Frazier understood him well enough. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash, obtained that morning at a local bank, in the local currency. He was amazed how easy it was to come up with money when you had someone as powerful as Mistress Jane backing the operation.
When the guard reached for the cash, Frazier pulled his hand away.
“The prisoner,” he said, keeping his voice as empty of emotion as possible. “Get me the prisoner.”
The man grunted again. Frazier was fully aware that these two brutes could simply take the money and leave him for dead. But he’d been sure to fill their heads with hopes of future deals, future bribes, future money-making opportunities. They’d be idiots to jeopardize such possibilities. It was, of course, a complete lie. Frazier would never, not in a million years, return to this country in this Reality, certainly not to this wretched cesspool of lowlifes. He needed one thing here, and one thing only.
After a long stare-off, the guard finally pulled out his jangly ring of keys and unlocked the chain and the three bolts of the door. He swung the door open, the hinges squealing like tortured rats, then disappeared inside, making it clear with a scowl that Frazier should wait for him to
return. Frazier was more than happy to wait, having seen more than enough prisoners and jail cells in the last few weeks.
He stood next to the other fellow, a sour-faced, bearded giant of a man, who looked at the floor and never spoke a word. Frazier could only imagine what darkness lurked inside the man’s brain, what memories haunted his dreams at night. For the slightest of moments, Frazier felt sorry for the man.
Several minutes passed, the only sounds that of breathing and a constant, echoing drip of water somewhere down the tunnel. Finally, the guard returned with the prisoner for which Frazier had paid handsomely. The eleventh such prisoner, the eleventh such bribe. And, according to his boss, worth every penny.
The woman stepped forward, still shackled at the wrist. Her black hair was a nest of greasy strings, her torn clothes were filthy, and her long fingernails were crusted with black dirt. For a moment, she refused to meet Frazier’s eyes. Irritated, he reached forward and put his hand under her chin, tilting her face up so he could get a good look.
Despite her pale complexion, the smudges of grime, the cracked lips, and the way her skin seemed to squeeze the sharp bones of her skull, he had no doubt, none whatsoever. She was still beautiful to him.
Frazier handed the money to the guard, who then passed over the key to the chains around the prisoner’s—the
former
prisoner’s—wrist. Frazier nodded once, curtly, then took hold of the woman’s arm.
Without saying a word, he turned and escorted the Alterant of Mistress Jane down the long and dark tunnel.
~
Okay,” Mr. Chu said, leaning both his elbows on his desk at school and staring down at the open physics book. “If you get this one right, you are The Man. That’s capital T, capital M.”
“Hit me,” Tick responded. Even he could hear the tiredness in his own voice. He’d been studying with Mr. Chu for more than an hour, question after question. Tick was schooled at home now since Master George had insisted that it was too dangerous for Tick to be out and about with classmates and the general public every day. But enough time had passed that Tick had finally convinced his parents and Master George to let him visit Mr. Chu three times a week in the afternoons. Any break from the house was welcome, even if it did involve his former teacher grilling him with questions about physics. Mr. Chu glanced up before continuing, a grin spreading across his face. Tick faltered a moment, hating how much the man looked like his Alterant from the Fourth Reality. Like Reginald Chu. The
evil
Reginald Chu, who was stuck—uncomfortably, Tick hoped—in a place called the Nonex. Too bad Master George didn’t have a clue as to where the Nonex was, or what it was, or anything else about it at all.
“Okay,” Mr. Chu said, speaking slowly. “How does the wave-particle property paradox contradict the theorems related to radiation damping and nonlinearity in the pilot wave interpretation of quantum mechanics?”
Tick slumped back in his chair. He barely understood the question, much less knew the answer. Figuring his brain had finally gone to sleep, he murmured, “I give up. My head’s not working right now.”
Mr. Chu laughed, and any remnant of his Alterant was wiped away in a flash. “I was just kidding. I’m not sure the question even made sense, actually.”
Tick couldn’t help but feel relieved. He needed to understand quantum physics and all the sciences in order to figure out what was wrong with him. He had an extremely dangerous influence over Chi’karda, the force that ruled the world of quantum physics—or QP, as Mr. Chu liked to call it—and Tick had very nearly killed himself and countless others when his Chi’karda had gotten out of control just a few months ago.
Since then, he’d been careful not to get too excited or too angry. So far nothing bad had happened—except for the time he’d sent his poor dad flying across the room and through an upstairs window. If it hadn’t been for that bush . . . Well, needless to say, the bush didn’t survive, but his dad—whose weight was classified somewhere between pudgy and ginormous—did. Though he had complained about a hurt back for weeks, sending Tick on countless runs to the kitchen to get him cookies and milk to enjoy during their videogame battles.
“Tick?” Mr. Chu asked, snapping his fingers.
Tick realized he’d been staring at the floor, completely lost in his thoughts. “Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”
Mr. Chu yawned, then closed the science book with a loud thump. “Well, you’ve got a lot to think about. Any problems lately?”
“No.” He looked into his teacher’s eyes, trying to see if he could read anything there. The man had been through just as much as Tick had, and Tick worried about him. “What about you? Have you . . . gotten over it?”
“Gotten over what? Being imprisoned by a bunch of thugs, forced to torment you and your friends, almost killed? What’s there to get over?”
Tick shook his head, trying not to look sad, but knowing he did. Thinking back to what had happened in the Fourth Reality, and everything that led up to it, always made him sad. He didn’t even really understand why—or at least he told himself that. After all, they’d escaped. They were safe. All seemed fine in the world.
But deep down, he knew why he felt sad. He knew all too well.
It was her. It was Mistress Jane. What he’d
done
to her.
“Tick,” Mr. Chu repeated, snapping his fingers again. “What’s buzzing in that brain of yours?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Tick said, almost whispering. His heart felt like a squishy pile of mud. “I don’t even know exactly what I did to her. For all we know, I killed her.”
Mr. Chu stood up, shaking his head. “Enough of that.” He picked up the book and slid it inside Tick’s backpack, then held the pack out toward him. “Seriously. You shouldn’t feel one ounce of guilt for something that happened completely out of your control.”