“Okay,” Sato began, his voice raised. “Seems like we’ve got no choice but to climb over that stupid fence. It’s probably about thirty feet high, but there are plenty of handholds and footholds, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I’m just worried about what might be waiting for us when we pop our heads over the edge. Once we have a good, solid group of twenty or so right at the top, we’ll throw volleys of Ragers and Squeezers to clear the way, and then we’ll send the first group over to cover with Shurric fire while the rest of us enter. Sound good?”
Rutger tapped Sato on the arm. “What about me? Don’t see myself rolling up the side of that fence very easily.”
Sato had to hold in a laugh—he didn’t want to embarrass his friend. “I think you, Sally, and Master George should use the Wand to go back to headquarters, monitor us, and wink us out when we’re ready.”
The look of relief that washed over Rutger before he quickly wiped it away made Sato like him more than ever. George stepped closer, pulling a yellow envelope from the inner pocket of his suit coat.
“Goodness gracious me,” he said, ripping the envelope open. “I almost forgot the most important part.” He pulled out a handful of square pieces of paper—no more than an inch on each side—then shook them on his flat palm for everyone to get a look.
“What are those?” Sato asked.
“Nanolocator patches.” George poured the square pieces back into the envelope, then pulled a single one out and held it between his thumb and forefinger. “There are hundreds here, and all you need to do is slap this against the skin of any person. The microscopic nanolocator will immediately slide off the patch and onto the subject, at which point we can wink them away. If we’re looking to rescue children from this miserable place, these patches will be our best shot.”
Sato was amazed and thrilled. Solutions to his two biggest concerns had been opened up for him—how they’d fight without weapons, and how they’d herd a bunch of potentially injured, suffering children safely away while fighting Jane’s monsters. Everything was in place.
“This is great,” Sato said, ignoring that small part in his brain that said it all seemed too easy. Meeting whatever waited inside the Factory would probably cure him of that, and quickly. “You guys wink back to headquarters now. We’ll take it from here.”
George handed him the envelope. “Best of luck, then. There are plenty of those patches, so be sure to put them on everyone here first—except you and Mothball, of course. We already have you pegged. We’ll have all the information we need back in the Control Room, and we’ll be watching closely, I assure you. Sally will be at the Grand Canyon HQ with Priscilla Persephone from the Seventh to help with the children—we’ll send them directly there.”
“Just call me Papa Sally,” the big man said. “Might even read dem squirts a story or two ’bout the old days on the chicken farm.”
“Sounds good,” Sato said. “Now you guys get out of here—time’s wasting. I mean . . . please, whatever.”
George hardly seemed to notice. He made a few adjustments to the Barrier Wand, had Rutger and Sally put their hands on it, and then the three of them disappeared. A few oohs and ahs escaped the Fifths.
Sato handed the envelope of nanolocator patches to Mothball. “Pass those out. We climb the wall in five minutes.”
~
After sending Sally off to the Grand Canyon, Master George got straight to work at the Bermuda Triangle headquarters, walking around the mesh metal walkways of the confined and claustrophobic structure, pointing left and right.
“Rutger, I want every computer in this building set up in the Control Room. I want the Big Board lined up and ready to go with monitoring all those nanolocators. Put a call out to all Realitants—if they can make it here to help, so be it. With all the destruction, they may be needed elsewhere, but make them aware of our plans, anyway.”
Rutger waddled to keep up, saying, “Okay,” after every instruction.
“We need to help Sally and Priscilla set up a refugee camp at the Grand Canyon. They’ll need beds and clothes and doctors and who knows what else! We also need to come up with a contingency plan—so many things could go wrong. And we—”
“Master George?” Rutger asked.
“Yes?”
“I got it.”
“Good, then. Let’s get moving!”
Rutger cleared his throat. “Could you, um, at least make me a sandwich while I’m doing all this work? I’m starving.”
~
The dark and smelly hallway, its walls made of black stone, wet and slimy, went about fifty feet before it came to its first window. Tick could see it just ahead of Mistress Jane when she stopped and turned to face them, but he couldn’t tell what was behind the window. A sick anticipation poisoned his veins. The firekelt was behind them now, throwing their giant shadows along the floor like flat creatures of the night.
“What we do here,” Jane began, “is the coordination of my lifetime’s work in the fields of science with the special characteristics of the mutated Chi’karda in the Thirteenth Reality. We use bio-engineering, genetic restructuring and manipulation, and chemistry. But without the special touch of . . . shall we say magic? No, that’s such a dirty word. It’s all semantics, I guess. But without the special power of the Thirteenth’s Chi’karda, all of this would suffer from a missing link.”
She raised her arms, the robe fanning out like a fallen angel’s wings. “But here, where I’ve put it all together to showcase the greatest scientific achievements of all human history—here is where the revolution of the Realities has begun. Here is where we begin our journey to a perfect place for all mankind. In a thousand years, they will look back and say it began with me. Now, watch and learn. Watch and let yourself feel wonder.”
The mask on her face showed something like ecstasy, the black holes of her eyes actually widening for the first time Tick could remember seeing. She looked completely crazy.
“Amazing how humble you are,” Sofia said. Tick was glad she spoke and not Paul, because he might not have survived the punishment a second time around. “If your intentions are so pure, then why do you care so much about taking all the credit? Sounds like a power trip to me.”
Jane lowered her arms, her look of rapture melting into a glare. “Don’t judge me, you spoiled, rich brat. Always had everything you wanted, always pampered, always safe. Always judging those less fortunate than you. Don’t . . . judge . . . me.” These last three words came out so enflamed that Sofia took a step backward and didn’t respond.
“Now,” Jane said in a much nicer voice, though laced with an icy insincerity. “The three of you will step up and look through the first observation window. You will say nothing, and you will not look away. You will not close your eyes. I, also, will remain silent, letting you get a good look before I explain what it is you’re witnessing.” She stepped to the far side, opposite the window, and gestured toward it with her Staff. “Now come.”
Tick and his friends exchanged quick glances, then stepped forward until they stood together in front of the large glass square. Tick felt the struggle of each and every breath as he leaned forward, the window mere inches from his nose.
He looked. His mind jumped to full capacity trying to take in and understand all that he saw.
The room he observed was about forty feet square and dimly lit, mainly from four pale yellow panels on the ceiling. Three beds occupied the middle of the floor, lined up to form the edges of a triangle, the closest bed empty and parallel to the window. In the center of the triangle stood a hunched over monster of a man at least eight feet tall with his back to them. He wore black clothes and had no hair on his head. His massive back was covered in a tattered shirt, and the skin beneath the ripped clothing was wet with bloody gashes. The man didn’t move anything but his arms, typing away at what Tick assumed was a computer on the other side of his gigantic body.
Tick turned his attention to the very different occupants of the other two beds, which lay at angles to either side of the workman. A large, odd-shaped tube, maybe ten inches in diameter, snaked from rafters in the ceiling and connected to the two bodies at the chest—right over the heart—linking them together. The left bed contained a large raven—black as oil and two feet tall. The bird barely moved; every few seconds its wings twitched, making Tick think it must be awake on some level and suffering horribly.
A good-sized black bear occupied the bed on the right side. It was bigger than the bed and looked underfed and abused, lying there as if asleep, its big paws occasionally twitching. The bear was also strapped down, that tube arching out of its chest to the rafter above before continuing across the ceiling and then back down to the bird.
Tick focused on that tube. It didn’t seem to be made out of artificial material—it looked . . . alive. Like skin. Blue veins ran throughout the long object, just underneath the pale, translucent material, pulsing and changing shades from dark to light to dark again. The ends connected to the raven and the bear looked as if they had grown there like a natural extension. There was no sign of stitches or staples.
Two beds with two bodies. A bird and a bear. Connected by some kind of bio-engineered, monstrous-looking tube. The third bed was empty.
What did it all mean? What horrific thing was Jane doing to these poor creatures? Tick’s hands shook; he reached out and pressed his fingers against the lower sill of the window to steady them. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Paul and Sofia had actually clasped their hands together.
The third bed. What was the third bed for?
Jane spoke from behind them, her voice soft and low. Never before had it sounded so evil as it did then.
“What you see here—and more important, what you are about to see—is a miracle of science and technology that today’s doctors and scientists can’t even imagine, or wish for, or dream about. It’s simply beyond their wildest spheres of possibility, beyond their capacity to comprehend. And even if they could, they’d never be able to make it happen. Not unless they were here and had a hundred years to figure it out.”
“I think what you really mean,” Tick said, throwing all the hatred he could into his voice, “is that they wouldn’t be evil enough to do something like this. You’re sick, Jane. Totally psycho. I don’t feel bad for what I did to you anymore.” He shouldn’t have said it; he knew that. Not yet. Not until things with the Haunce were worked out. But he couldn’t stop himself.
“I told you not to speak,” Jane said in a completely calm voice, as if she hadn’t heard his actual words. “Say one more word before I allow it, and I will hurt Paul. I promise.”
Tick looked back at her. She stared at him, waiting for his response, practically begging him to call her bluff. He fumed, his breathing stilted. Luckily Paul didn’t say anything. Finally, using all of his willpower to show restraint, Tick simply nodded. No more words. No more apologies.
“This first observation room is relatively early in the process,” Jane said, in her tour guide voice, as if she hadn’t just threatened bodily harm to Paul. “The genes and blood and cells haven’t been consumed yet, haven’t been . . . processed. The next room down the hall will show you what these two subjects will look like in about twenty-four hours. On we go.”
She set off walking, her Staff tap-tap-tapping on the stone floor.
Tick followed, hating how she’d called the animals “subjects.” Hating every single thing about this horrible woman.
When the next window came into view up ahead, Jane spoke again, over her shoulder. “I hope you haven’t eaten in awhile. What you’re about to see is amazing and wonderful, but might be a bit disturbing.”
~
Sato had wanted to climb the wall himself, but Mothball made it clear that wasn’t an option. She said they couldn’t risk having their leader shot in the eyeball with an arrow to start things off. Sato grumbled, of course, but in the end he sent up a crew of six Fifths to peek over the top edge. He got back at Mothball by not letting her go, telling her she had to stay by his side as his second in command. When she grumbled as well, he had to hold in a laugh.
“Ready the Ragers and Squeezers!” he yelled when the six tall soldiers—Sato had decided to start calling them that—reached the point where all they had to do was pop their heads up to see the other side.
“Gotcha, Boss,” Tollaseat said, his hands full of Ragers. His wife, Windasill, stood next to him, her hands full of the black, wire-filled grenades called Squeezers. Sato had told Mothball’s parents they were supposed to stay near him as well, to be used for long-range action like this.
“You guys ready up there?” Sato called out.
Instead of speaking, the three men and three women above simply gave him the thumbs-up, a sign that was evidently universal.
“Okay. Tollaseat and Windasill will throw the cover weapons on my count of three. As soon as you hear the first round of explosions, pop over and climb down as quickly as possible. Start firing those Shurrics, and the rest of us will be right behind you.”
Another round of thumbs-up.
“One. Two. Three!”
Mothball’s parents brought their hands low then flung them toward the sky, letting go at the right moment to send the weapons flying up and well over the top of the wooden fence and the waiting Fifths. A few seconds later, the clatter of the weapons raining down on the other side was immediately followed by the ripping static thumps of the Ragers exploding. Then came the Squeezers’ metallic clanging and sounds of wires whizzing through the air. All muted and distant, but loud enough to be heard clearly.
“Go!” Sato yelled. “Go now!”
The six soldiers were already on the move. They grabbed the very top of the fence and swung their legs over, the bulky Shurrics already gripped in one of their hands, ready to start firing. They disappeared from sight.
Sato started climbing the wall after them. “Go! Go! Come on!” He didn’t need to say it—every last Fifth was already scaling the clunky wood face of the fence.