“Then do it!” Tick called back. “How do—”
He cut off when she gripped the Barrier Staff in both hands and thrust it toward the cracked ceiling of the tunnel. Its upper tip slammed into the rock. A bright burst of white fire made Tick shut his eyes and look down. A new sound overwhelmed the cracking and splitting of rock around them: pounding ocean waves and the familiar shifting of sands. He’d heard that noise before—when his own powers had heightened entropy and dissolved matter.
When he sensed that the brilliant light had died down, he looked up. Jane had created a massive hole that led directly to open air and cloudy skies above them. The cavity was round and smooth, as if it had been carved by the strongest lasers in the world. Before he could fully process it, he saw her grip the Staff in both hands and hold it horizontally, like someone readying for a quarterstaff fight. Then all four of them suddenly shot up from the tunnel, an invisible force lifting them through the gaping hole and into the outside air.
Tick didn’t have the time or energy to wonder about how she did it. They flew like the fangen he’d seen at her castle, out of the collapsing rubble underground, across fields of dirt and mud which had pillars and jagged triangles of rock jutting through the surface. She found a safe spot just outside the large wooden fence they’d approached from the forest an hour or so ago. They landed with a soft bump, and the magic ride was over.
“Whoa,” Paul said. “We don’t even have wings.”
Tick thought it was a perfectly absurd thing to say at the moment.
~
Sato squirmed and kicked and twisted his body as the monstrous, furry thing dragged him across the rough stone floor. He couldn’t see a single thing, the darkness complete. Scratches and burns lit up his skin like biting flames. Even with the movement, he could tell the place around him still shook from the never-ending earthquake.
He decided to still himself and save up his energy for one concentrated effort to escape from the creature. He calmed his body and legs, trying to relax despite the pain. The thing continued to pull him through the black, cool air. After several seconds, Sato went for it.
He thrust up with his pelvis, at the same time planting both feet and pushing off. Tensing his arms, he twisted his body as violently as he could, trying to flip over onto his stomach. The last gasp effort worked—the creature lost its grip on him and Sato heard it trip and tumble across the stone.
Sato scrambled to his feet and ran toward the sound, knowing that he didn’t have time to pull out any weapons, that he’d have only one chance to surprise the monster and attack it. His foot hit a soft lump of something, and Sato pounced, falling on top of the creature. He felt around with his hands, squeezing the thing’s body between his legs as it thrashed around, trying to throw him off. Sato felt fur and sweat. Sharp claws grazed across his upper arm, his shoulder.
He found the neck, gripping it with both hands, and squeezed. Eventually, the thing slowed its attempts to escape. And then it stilled completely, one last gurgled gasp of a breath escaping, the smell of it awful and rotten.
Sato fell off the creature, scooting away frantically until his back found a hard wall. He pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees as the dark place continued to shake and rattle around him. Rocks and pebbles rained from the ceiling, pelting his head. A sudden urge to quit—to forget all about his army and his promises and all the horrible things that were happening—almost consumed him, almost made him decide to sit there and wait to die.
But he couldn’t give in. He pushed his fear away and slammed that door closed.
Trembling, terrified, and blind, deafened by the sounds of cracking rock, Sato somehow got to his feet and started running.
~
Master George had to stop every once in a while and force himself to take deep, pulling breaths. The Control Room was abuzz with alerts and flashing indicator lights. Sato and his army had somehow been scattered, seemingly running around—and, inexplicably, up and down—like hornets with a busted nest.
Rutger came running in from the other room where he was doing his best to monitor TV stations around the world. “It’s all started up again! Earthquakes everywhere. Lightning storms in some places. I don’t know how much longer the networks will be able to keep broadcasting.”
“Dear me, dear me. It’s begun, just like Atticus said it would. At least he and his friends are still together—though they just moved a great distance rather quickly. Not sure how that happened.”
“We’re going to have our own worries,” Rutger said, looking down at the clipboard in his hand, charts and graphs filling the first page.
Master George groaned, not needing yet another fly in his biscuit. “What is it, Rutger?”
“All these quakes are gonna send a tidal wave right down on top of us.”
~
The muddy ground rumbled and grumbled around Tick and his friends. The trees of the forest were only a hundred feet away and shook like grasses caught in a wind. Every few seconds a loud crack filled the air as the wooden fence split from the raging quake.
At least nothing was falling on them from above.
Tick got to his feet, wobbling back and forth. The deep mud around his shoes actually helped him keep an uneasy balance. Jane stood nearby, her face blank, swaying with the earth’s movements as she grasped her Staff with both hands. Tick decided to get it all out in a rush, leaving her no time to talk back until he was finished.
“Ja—” He stopped himself. “
Mistress
Jane. The Haunce is supposed to come here any moment. Then we all have to work together to somehow fix whatever it is you did to the Realities. If we don’t, everything’s gonna be destroyed, and every single person in every single Reality is going to die. So we need to make a deal—we need to put aside our fight and do what the Haunce wants us to do.”
She didn’t respond, only stared at him with those black holes she called eyes.
“Are you even listening to me?” he yelled, unable to restrain himself. “
You
did this! Now we have to make it better, make it go away. What good is it to you if we all—”
“Don’t insult me, you stupid child!” she screamed back at him, her face transforming to anger so quickly that Tick didn’t see the usual flow of red metal. “I’m fully aware of what’s going on. Of course I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix it. You think I’d be foolish enough to jeopardize my plans over something so . . . human as pride? Now stop your arrogant spouting, and let’s get on with it. Where is the Haunce? Where are we supposed to meet that big cloud of electrical waste?”
Her insults and tone didn’t faze Tick in the least. “I don’t know. It just said I needed to come here and convince you to help. We had to meet here because for some reason, the Chi’karda is stronger here than anywhere else.”
“Of course.” A particularly strong bounce in the ground made her stumble backward. “That’s why I built the Factory here. And why I’m able to do the miraculous things you just saw.”
Tick just happened to look at Sofia as she rolled her eyes, then literally bit her lip to keep from saying something smart. As for him, he didn’t know what to do. He’d come to the right place; he’d convinced Jane she needed to help. What now?
A few minutes passed. No one spoke, only observed the world shaking and cracking all around them. Tick didn’t know when exactly he’d dropped to his knees on the ground, but having the lower half of his legs firmly entrenched in mud sure helped his balance. His thoughts drifted to his family, to his Reality, to what horrible things must be happening there and the terror the people he cared about must be feeling.
Before his heart completely melted into a pool of pity and anguish, he snapped his mind away from it all. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered unless he got the job done right here, right now.
A stiff wind picked up out of nowhere, blowing swirls all around them, pulling at their clothes and hair. Tick squinted his eyes against the flying grit. A few jagged streaks of electricity abruptly knifed through the air in a spot just a few yards away from the group. The thin lightning bolts fired back and forth, collapsing in on each other as if they were trapped inside an invisible sphere. Then it all collapsed into a blinding ball of whiteness, hovering above the ground.
Tick looked away, a big bright spot in his vision. He heard a loud thrum of energy combined with the snaps of popping static. Surges of that now-familiar womping Chi’karda washed over his body in waves of tingles and vibrations. When he finally blinked his vision back to normal and returned his gaze to the spot, the glowing silver-blue orb of the Haunce floated there, its many faces alternating rapidly.
It spoke in a deep and resonating voice, its face changing from an old, wrinkled woman to a young boy as it did so. “It is far worse than we feared. Millions are dead already. Come, hurry. In thirty minutes, the universe will no longer exist.”
~
Screams up ahead. Some human, but most unnatural, almost demonic. Explosions. Thumps of sound more felt than heard. Ragers and Shurrics, most likely.
Encouraged, Sato moved toward it all, keeping his right shoulder close to the rock wall, doing his best not to fall down at every lurch of the earthquake. The air had brightened slightly, but he still could barely see. Here he was supposed to be leading a great army in their very first battle, and he’d somehow ended up all by himself, nowhere near the action. He would’ve felt guilty if he had the time or energy to worry about such things.
Rapid footsteps approached, accompanied by grunts and gurgly breathing. It sounded like a whole pack of Jane’s creations coming straight for him. Sato reached into his pockets and pulled out a Squeezer grenade in one hand, a Rager in the other. He crouched down and backed into a natural alcove in the stone, hoping not to have to use the weapons until the monsters were past him, hoping they wouldn’t notice him.
His wish came true—mostly. At least thirty creatures ran by in a storm of heavy footfalls and flying sweat. Sato could see only their outlines: hunchbacked wolves walking on their hind legs. He shuddered and had to fight not to close his eyes and act like a little kid wishing they were just nightmares that would go away.
The last one of the group stopped as its companions kept moving. Sato held his breath and tried to shrink into the stone at his back. The odd creature sniffed several times and pivoted its muzzled head back and forth. Sniffed again. And again.
Sato didn’t move, only tightened his fingers around the grenade, ready to throw it directly at the monster’s chest and run if it came to that. The creature took a step toward him, then another. Sniffed again. Made a low, wet, rattling sound somewhere deep in its throat. Another sniff. Sato could see its outline plainly; it was just a few feet away. He could only hope the thing had poor eyesight or wasn’t expecting something huddled near the ground.
It took another step toward him, sniffed, and let out its growl again.
A sharp barking sound rang out from where its companions had gone. The creature in front of Sato barked back—a horrible, horrible sound—before it turned in a slow circle, giving the area one last look, sniffing again and again. It took two slow steps away from Sato then turned and ran after the others.
When the monstrous thing had finally been swallowed by the inky gloom of the tunnel, Sato got back to his feet and threw the two projectiles as hard as he could after it. He didn’t wait to see the result, but sprinted in the near-darkness in the opposite direction, toward the still-clanging sounds of battle. A few seconds passed before he heard the Squeezer’s boom and the clatter of flying wires behind him, followed by the electric-tinged explosion of the Rager. Inhuman screams pierced the air, flying through the tunnel like a wind full of death.
Sato kept running.
~
The Haunce obviously didn’t think there was any time for manners.
“We need to get rid of the boy and girl. We do not need them.” Its eyes—set in the face of a middle-aged man with a huge nose—darted at Paul and Sofia. “And if they stand too close to us when we begin, they will explode.”
Nervous pangs, almost painful, bit and poked at Tick’s insides. Luckily, his friends didn’t seem to think they should argue the point.
“So what do we do?” Paul asked, kneeling on the ground on all fours struggling to keep his balance.
Tick had an idea. “Master George!” he yelled as loud as his sore throat would allow. “If you somehow made it back to headquarters, wink Paul and Sofia back!”
“Wait!” Sofia snapped. “We should stay here, go find Sato. Help him rescue all those—”
Too late. She and Paul disappeared.
~
“—kids!” Sofia barely got the word out before she collapsed to the hard metal floor of Master George’s headquarters in the Bermuda Triangle. Going from an earthquake to the steady surface totally threw her off-balance.
“Whoa! Hey!” This from Paul. “How’d you do that so fast?”
She looked at him kneeling next to her, mud caked all over his pants, then up at a grinning Rutger. “Yeah, how did you know what Tick was saying?”
Rutger looked like a proud parent. “You kids still have a lot to learn. I was monitoring your nanolocators more closely than anyone else’s, and we can pick up the vibrations in your larynx when you speak. How do you think we kept such good tabs on you when you were being recruited?”
“You guys seriously creep me out sometimes,” Paul said. He got to his feet and wiped at the mud on his clothes. He held out his hands, a disgusted look on his face. “Don’t you think we deserve some privacy?”
Rutger scoffed at him. “We only monitor in emergencies. Now quit your boo-hooing and come with me to see Master George in the Control Room. We have some serious problems.”
Why didn’t Sofia feel in the least bit surprised?
~