Sato raised his eyebrows. “Why’d you have to do that? Why couldn’t you stay friends?”
Lorena looked at the ground for a second, a flash of fear on her face. But then she returned her gaze to him and her eyes were filled with resolve. “Because Jane said she’d kill me if I ever contacted a Realitant again. She was scared I’d tell them about the Thirteenth Reality before she was ready.”
~
Tick spent a long minute simply staring at the shifting faces of the glowing Haunce. Their eyes stared back, full of scrutiny and concern, waiting to hear his reaction to the pronouncement that Tick was the only one who could save the Realities from ripping apart and ceasing to exist forever. No pressure, right?
He decided to show how much he’d grown up in the last year or so. “Okay. I’m not gonna sit here and waste time. It’s hard for me to believe I could do anything to stop or reverse what Jane’s done. But you obviously know what you’re talking about—I mean, you’re a billion ghosts crammed into the space of a water heater. That’s a lot of brains. So what am I supposed to do?”
The Haunce laughed just as its face morphed into that of a young woman with dark eyes. The sound was like electronic music. When the face changed to an old man with a mustache, the Haunce began speaking again. “No brains here, Atticus. At least not physically. But our combined knowledge is here all the same, stored on countless imprints of soulikens. But there will be time for school lessons later. You are correct that we should not waste any more time. We must get to the heart of the matter, and quickly.”
Tick nodded, half-fascinated and half-terrified of what he was about to hear.
The Haunce continued, the faces forever shifting. “Atticus, we have been observing the Realities for many years—living them, breathing them,
being
them. We exist in the boundaries and seams that keep the Realities together and apart, united but separate, all things balanced as they should be. At times, we have intervened, but only in extreme cases of need. Never before has the need been so great as it is now.
“The seams are splitting. Dark matter is consuming them, triggering chain reactions of heightened entropy and introducing fragmentation on a level never seen. We believe there is only one way to stop it.”
“How does it involve me?” Tick asked.
The Haunce’s current face—a boy, maybe only ten years old—frowned at the interruption, then the expression smoothed away like rippling water. “As we said, we have been observing the Realities for countless centuries. And in all that time, there have been only two people with a concentration of soulikens and Chi’karda levels similar to ours. You are one of those people, Atticus. And Mistress Jane is the other. We do not yet understand how the two of you came to possess this power or why you both came to exist in the same period of time. But it will take your combined powers to reverse what has happened today.”
Tick had to bite his lip. He wanted to shout a million questions, refute the Haunce’s words. If saving the Realities depended on him
and
Jane—depended on their cooperation—then the battle was over before it had begun.
The glowing orb of the Haunce flexed, as if taking a deep breath. “We must rebind the seams of the Realities and restore stability to the inner workings of quantum physics. To do so, we will need to harness an unprecedented amount of Chi’karda. And to do that, we will need four components.”
The Haunce paused, and Tick felt the agony of each passing second.
“In all of the Realities of the Multiverse there is a place where the Chi’karda levels are exponentially higher than at any other place. So concentrated, in fact, it makes the Realitant headquarters in the Bermuda Triangle look like a spark of static compared to a lightning storm. You and Mistress Jane must join us there.”
“Is it the place in the desert?” Tick asked. “Where Jane had that black tree? The dark matter, the Blade of Shattered Hope?”
The Haunce—now showing the face of an older, homely woman—slowly shook its head. “No. Jane chose that spot because it best fit her needs for linking the different elements of the Blade. Because she had an Alterant of herself in the same place in all thirteen Realities, it was more a matter of the substance of the Blade than it was of Chi’karda.”
“Then where do we have to go?” Tick was saving the biggest and most obvious question for last: How in the world would they get Jane to cooperate with them?
“There’s a place in the Thirteenth Reality where . . .” The Haunce faltered. The face of an Indian woman, the red dot on her forehead looking almost black against the blue glow of her skin, wore a look of complete sadness. “It is a place of atrocities and horror. We are sorry; it is hard for us to talk about it.” Another long pause.
Tick didn’t know if he wanted to hear the answer. After millennia of observing the world and all the things humans had done—both good and bad—the Haunce was having difficulty talking about a place to which Tick had to go. The thought was terrifying.
The Haunce finally continued, the look of sadness now draped across the face of a young Asian man. “We do not know why evil things have always been drawn to this
particular spot in the Thirteenth Reality. There have been thousands upon thousands of deaths there—perhaps millions. The Chi’karda levels created by those tragedies is unsurpassed.”
Tick swallowed a big lump, then took a guess. “It’s where Jane’s castle is, isn’t it?”
The eyes of a little girl met Tick’s. “No. Not there. Somewhere much, much worse.”
Tick waited.
“The place we must gather,” the Haunce said, seeming to have recovered its composure a little, “and where you must bring Jane, is . . . the Factory.”
“The Factory?” Tick repeated.
The Haunce nodded. “Yes. It is the place where Jane manufactures her creatures. Her abominations. It is a hideous, wretched place full of death and tortured souls. But also the site of massive amounts of Chi’karda.”
“And what do we do once we get there?” Tick asked. He was trying not to think too much about what a creepy and horrible place the Factory must be. “Assuming that we somehow convince Jane to come with us and do what we ask, I mean.”
The pulsing, silver-blue orb of the Haunce moved several feet across the floor and back again, as if pacing, deep in thought. “The task you and Jane must do is simple. Both of you need to concentrate and summon every ounce of Chi’karda you can. Gather as much as you can, and then you must channel to us. Our job will be to harness the power and combine it with the Chi’karda that already exists within the Factory.”
The Haunce quit pacing and took another one of those deep breaths. “Once we have gathered enough power, we will bleed the Chi’karda through the cracks of space and time, binding the seals of the Realities that are currently rupturing. Quite honestly, the task could destroy us, but we believe we can save the Multiverse before that happens. Before we ourselves cease to exist.”
Tick didn’t know what to think. The whys and hows didn’t matter so much at the moment, and he couldn’t pretend to feel a pang of potential loss at hearing that the Haunce might die in the act. Especially if the Haunce’s sacrifice would save thirteen entire worlds—and his family. But still, hearing it all poured out so short and sweet when so much was on the line was dizzying.
“Do you have anything to say?” the Haunce asked, now showing the face of a pretty girl about Tick’s age.
“Not a thing,” Tick responded. “I don’t know what else I can do but trust you. If you say we can do this, then let’s do it. I guess the first thing is to figure out how to get Jane to play along. I’m sure once we tell her what’s about to happen, she’ll have to. I mean, how could she want everything to disappear, including her? That’d be beyond stupid.”
“We can only hope.” The Haunce morphed into an old woman. “There is one final thing to say before we begin. You must know that a lull has occurred in the fragmentation of the Realities. For the moment, they are safe. And so is your family. But . . .”
Tick felt a thrilling rush of joy as he realized that somehow he’d known all along that his family was safe. The relief lasted only a second before being tempered. “But?” he repeated, thinking,
What now?
The face of a small boy responded. “But we have only thirty hours until the fragmentation begins again. And when it does, it will not stop until all that we know ceases to exist.”
The Fifth Army
~
Sofia lay on her back, staring at the twilight sky of the desert, the deep blue just beginning its fade to purple. No clouds. A throbbing pain pulsed somewhere inside her skull—something had knocked her out. Something had hit her in the head during the chaos right after Tick disappeared.
Tick disappeared!
She forced herself into a sitting position, groaning at the thunder of pain it ignited. She coughed, a dry rasp that hurt her throat. She needed water. Badly. The natural rock formations of Jane’s secret spot still surrounded them, though several chunks had broken off and tumbled to the dusty ground during the earthquake. The tables and screens and computers used by Jane’s people lay scattered and smashed, strewn about like abandoned toys. The air smelled burnt.
Twisting her head around, she searched for signs of her friends. She felt a fleeting moment of panic when she didn’t see them at first, but it quickly vanished when movement under a collapsed table caught her attention. Master George, his nice suit filthy and torn, was wiggling his way out from under the heavy slab of the table. Paul sat a few feet from him, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring into the distance with a blank expression.
“You guys okay?” Sofia asked.
“They all vanished,” Paul said, not bothering to look at her. “Jane first, and then everyone else right after. Zip, zip, zip. Zippity gone, just like that. Left us here to die, I guess.”
“I’m actually quite surprised.” Master George grunted. He finally freed himself from the confining rubble and stood up, dusting himself off. “She went to all that trouble to kidnap us, and then she simply ran away? Odd.”
Sofia disagreed. “I don’t think it’s that weird. Somehow Tick winked away, or someone took him, whatever. But without him, she didn’t have what she needed anymore. It’s
his
family she took after all.”
“It’s not even that,” Paul said in a subdued voice, still staring at the rock walls like he’d been hypnotized.
Sofia scooted a little closer to him. “What are you talking about?”
“Look at that.” Paul finally blinked and pointed to the middle of the depression where the black tree—the Blade of Shattered Hope—had been. It was gone, replaced by a small crater. The ground was blackened and charred, some of the desert sand actually glistening where the heat had transformed it to glass. “I think something went wrong with what that freak Jane was trying to do. Really, really wrong. She doesn’t care about us anymore. She ran away to try to fix whatever it is she messed up.”
Sofia stared at the dark scar of a hole and slowly nodded as she thought about what he’d said. Paul was right. The earthquake had been horrible, and all of Jane’s people had run around screaming, falling down, and crawling over each other as they looked for a way to escape. Things had obviously not gone according to plan.
“That certainly sounds reasonable,” Master George said. “What I wouldn’t give to know what exactly happened here today. All that nonsense about dark matter. Perhaps it wasn’t quite rubbish after all.”
“Dark matter,” Paul muttered in disgust; Sofia shared the sentiment. “I don’t give a patooty about any of that stuff right now. All I want is a chance to put my hands around Jane’s neck and squeeze.”
Sofia felt her eyebrows rise in surprise. “A little violent this evening, aren’t we?”
Paul looked at her for the first time since she’d come to, and she couldn’t help but lean back a couple of inches before stopping herself. His eyes were full of fury and hatred. There was no sign of the normally lighthearted, joking Paul.
Sofia felt a deep anger inside of her, too. “Just kidding. I’d like to do that myself.”
Master George walked over to Paul and offered a hand. “All in due time, Master Paul. All in due time. For now, we need to find water—or we won’t live long enough to put our hands around a sandwich, much less Mistress Jane.”
Paul ignored the offer of help, but did stand up, his face still tensed in anger. Sofia pushed herself up as well, and the three of them began searching through the debris. Jane’s people had to have brought plenty of food and water if they planned on being out here for any significant amount of time. It took only a few minutes to find the stash.
Several coolers with bread, meat, fruit, and big, glass bottles of water—most of which had been packed tightly enough that they hadn’t broken in the chaos—had been wedged between a toppled table and some large computer equipment.
Sofia drank half a bottle of water, trickles of the liquid splashing down her cheeks and onto her clothes. Even though the water was warm, she was sure she’d never tasted anything so refreshing in her life.
They didn’t dare eat the meat, but the bread and fruit seemed okay, and soon they were all sitting together in one of the few spots clear of wreckage, enjoying their odd little meal. The sun had sunk even further, the shadows from the towering rocks stretching all the way across the desert bowl. Full darkness would be upon them soon.
Sofia hated the thought of being in the middle of a desert in the Thirteenth Reality at nighttime. “Guys, this is great to eat and rest a little, but what’re we gonna do next? It’ll be totally dark soon.”
“We’ll probably get eaten alive by fangen,” Paul said, neither his voice nor his face revealing any sign that he was kidding. “Jane’s probably already sent some out here to hunt us.”
Sofia wanted the old Paul back. “You’re real great to have around when things get rough,” she said. “You really know how to look on the bright side.”