“Thank you for sharing, dear,” Windasill said, patting her husband on the arm. “’Eard it a thousand times, I ’ave, but I marvel at your courage every time. Never forget you saved your mum that day, dear. Never forget.”
“Wish I could’ve met Grandpa,” Mothball said, a choking clog in her voice. “But ’tweren’t for you, Daddy, I wouldn’t’ve spent me whole childhood with Grandma. Thanks be to ya, Daddy. Thanks be to ya very much.”
Sato was stunned. He’d expected a story more along the lines of a fairy tale, maybe a funny or an embarrassing moment. But Tollaseat had just shared probably the most terrifying, pivotal moment of his life. And Sato had absolutely no idea what to say. He stared at his plate, feeling the heavy weight of all the food he’d eaten.
“Right cheerful, don’t ya think?” Tollaseat said, a smile breaking through the gloom on his face. “Not quite sure why I told that story. Meant to tell somethin’ else, I did. But it just popped out of me mouth.”
“Important we remember,” Mothball offered, giving her mom an uncomfortable look.
“Yes, me sweet,” Tollaseat replied. “Reckon I wanted Master Sato ’ere to understand why them Bugs aren’t just a joke, even though they look it. Crazy, they are. Vicious little rats. But underestimate ’em, and you’ll be lookin’ up at ten feet of dirt soon, you will. Be wary while you’re about these parts, is all I’m sayin’.”
Sato merely nodded, still unable to speak. He didn’t know why, exactly, but that story had touched him, made his heart ache with sorrow. And then it hit him why.
Sato, too, had seen his father killed right in front of him. Burned to death by Mistress Jane’s flying flames. Maybe that was worse than seeing your dad stabbed by a sword. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. Something came over him in that moment.
He stood up. “Mister, um, Master… Tollaseat?”
Mothball’s dad lowered his pipe, looked at Sato with dark eyes, and Sato somehow knew the old man had already figured out what he was about to say.
“I want to help,” Sato said, trying to sound like an adult and hoping no one laughed. “I want to help your people fight the Bugs.”
Chapter 18
Towers of Red
Tick,” Master George whispered. “I need you to listen to me very carefully. And do me a favor.”
Jane had brought them to a room several levels above the prison cell in which they’d been held captive. She’d left a couple of guards at the door. The creatures in full armor were human in shape but all comparisons ended there. Tick hadn’t gotten a good look, but he swore he saw horns or tusks coming out of their shadow-hidden faces and large bulges on their backs.
“What?” Tick asked.
In response, Master George handed him a small, metal tube.
“What’s this?”
“What do you think? ”
Tick looked over at Paul and Sofia, hoping they were listening. But both of them were trying to look through a grime-covered window. “Is it a message for somebody?”
“Precisely,” George whispered.
“For who?” Tick asked. “And what do you want me to do?”
“It’s a message for Sally. It’s short, but he should get the point. I want him to gather the Realitants so they’ll be ready on a moment’s notice. For what, I have no idea-but he needs to get them to headquarters straightaway.”
That made perfect sense to Tick, but he had a bad feeling about this all the same. “And… what does that have to do with me?”
Master George looked at him, his eyes shifting slightly back and forth. “Well, er, well, I need you to… wink it to Sally.”
“What?” Tick rasped, way too loudly.
Sofia noticed. “What are you guys talking about over there?”
“Never you mind,” Master George answered, surprisingly harsh.
Sofia, of course, completely ignored him and walked over, dragging Paul with her. “No secrets, boss. What’s going on?”
Tick couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Master George look so perplexed. His face was red, eyes darting around the room, sweat trickling down his temples. “Someone’s going to hear us!” he exclaimed in a half-shout, half-whisper.
Tick didn’t like it that Master George had asked him to use his power in the first place. Only a half an hour ago, Jane had threatened to kill his family one by one if she sensed him using Chi’karda. “How am I supposed to wink the message? Even if I could, even if I had a clue how to do it, I can’t risk Jane finding out.”
“Yes, yes, I know, ” Master George said, throwing all the frustration he could into the last word. “But perhaps you can risk it when she’s… occupied with whatever she has planned. If we don’t gather the other Realitants to help us, it may all be quite moot anyway.”
Tick slid the message tube into his pocket. The old Brit was being coy, but Tick knew exactly what he was really trying to say. “So you think it’s okay to sacrifice my family for the greater good. Let them die if it’ll save the world. Worlds. Whatever.” Tick couldn’t believe how bitter he sounded. To make it worse, Master George had a point. But not one Tick could accept.
For the hundredth time, he felt an overwhelming, gloomy sorrow squeeze his chest and lungs. His sisters. His mom and dad. Jane had them. No matter what, he had to save them. No matter what.
But how?
“Tick?” Sofia asked, jolting him back to reality. “You okay? What does he want you to do?”
“We need to stop talking about this,” Master George said. “Right now!”
“Dude,” Paul said, “what are you two freaks talking about?”
Tick looked at him and shook his head. “It’s nothing-George just wants to get a message to Sally.” He turned his attention back to Master George. “Don’t you have a way of talking to him? Through your nanolocator or something?”
Master George shook his head. “I think she’s done something to us. Shielded us somehow. I’ve tried making contact several times. Nothing.”
“Since when is Sally in charge?” Paul asked. “Rutger finally explode or something?”
“Maybe he ate one of his own Ragers,” Sofia added.
By the looks of it, Master George was not amused. He turned his back to the three of them and walked over to a corner.
Sofia elbowed Paul in the arm. “Way to go, smarty.”
“You, too, Godzilla,” he replied. “Your comment was worse than mine.”
Tick couldn’t remember a time when he’d been less in the mood to listen to his friends fight. “Guys! You think this is all some kind of stupid joke?” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Especially when he saw the look on their faces-shock, mixed with a little hurt.
“What crawled up your pants and started biting?” Paul asked.
“Tick’s right,” Sofia said, her eyes never leaving Tick’s. “His family’s been taken. I can’t imagine… what that must be like. We need to take things more seriously.”
She looked away, and Tick saw an expression he couldn’t quite identify come over her face. Regret? Longing? Whatever it was, it was something to do with her, not him. He thought about all her comments in the past, the subtle remarks here and there about her family-none of them very nice. Maybe she was wishing she had parents and siblings whom, if taken, she’d worry about as much as he was worried about his. The twisted thought added to his sadness.
“Well, we still have to be ourselves,” Paul said. “Tick, dude, sorry, but if we get all mopey, then we might as well just give up and die. You know I don’t think this is all a joke, man. Give me a break.”
Tick looked at him, surprised at the angry tone of his voice. Paul was always laid back, taking what came at him. Even his sparring words with Sofia were always filled with obvious jest.
Tick shook his head. “Okay, whatever. This is all stupid anyway. We’re sitting here in a soap opera while Jane’s planning something diabolical. What are we gonna do?”
Master George was still in the corner, but he tu
rned around to face them. “We need to stay on our guard and look for the first opportunity that comes along. I’ve no idea what that may be, and I’ve no idea what we’ll do. But something will come along, and we must be ready.”
“What about Tick’s family?” Sofia asked.
Tick had been wondering the same thing, but reality hit him then. He didn’t know what it was-maybe it was the distressed look on Master George’s face, maybe it was something in what he’d said. Either way, Tick realized a heavy truth. This wasn’t just about him and his parents and his sisters. Jane was planning the single worst thing to ever happen to humans in the history of the universe. At least, that’s what it sounded like. Her plan involved destroying an entire world full of people.
Could he really put his family above that? If it really came down to choosing between them and dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives, what would he do? What should he do?
He wanted to scream. No one should have to make decisions like this, especially not a fourteen-year-old kid. In that instant, his hatred for Jane changed into something more powerful, more acute. Every single molecule in his body wanted her dead.
“Tick?” Paul asked. “What are you staring at?”
Tick realized his eyes were focused on a greasy, dark smear on the stone on the opposite wall. He shook his head, scrambling the thoughts in his mind. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
Master George walked back to him and the others. He held a hand out and squeezed Tick’s shoulder. “Master Atticus. I give you my word that I will do everything in my power to help save your family. I will give my life, if necessary. But in return, you must promise me that you’ll look at the bigger picture and do whatever it takes to stop Jane before she does something apocalyptic. I know her, my good man, and when she says she’ll destroy the Fifth Reality, she means it. She has no reason to boast with lies. We’re talking about billions of lives, Atticus. Billions.”
Tick couldn’t meet his gaze. He couldn’t promise himself or anyone else that he’d be able to make the right choice if it came down to that. All he could see in his mind were his parents, Lisa, and…
Kayla. Thinking of little Kayla just about shattered his heart.
Unable to do anything else, he nodded.
“Very well,” Master George said. “We can only take things step by-” tingle
“-step.”
In the small blip of time between his last two words, everything changed. As Tick was looking at their leader and listening to him speak, he felt the familiar tingle shoot down the back of his neck. The room around them disappeared, replaced by red rock.
He noticed the others spin around, just as he did, to see where Jane had brought them with her strange winking powers. They were in the middle of a desert, towering spires of stone standing all around them, jutting up from a natural rock wall that more or less encircled them. Tick couldn’t see one plant, not one weed, or anything close to the color green or even brown. Everything was reddish-orange, jagged and rough, all sharp corners and cracks and crevices. Desolation.
The sun was behind a massive tower of stone, but the heat was suffocating. Tick already felt himself sweating.
“I don’t see any tombstones,” Paul muttered, and Tick couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or making a very good point.
“Realities help us,” Master George said. “If she can wink people to anywhere she wants so easily… Let’s hope a lot of poor saps were killed here at some point in history.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Sofia said.
Just then, Mistress Jane appeared in front of them. As always with winking, there was no puff of smoke, no flash of light or sound. One second she wasn’t there, and the next second she was, dressed in her usual yellow garb and her shiny red mask. Her face was pulled into a genuine smile. It gave Tick the creeps.
“Looks like I miscalculated a bit,” she said. “Guess I’m not perfect after all. We need to be on the other side of that.”
She pointed at the stone face to their right. The wall was maybe forty feet high, with several spires of rock stretching toward the sky from its top edge. Though it had a menacing feel to it, the slope didn’t seem too steep, and Tick thought they could probably climb it pretty easily.
“Follow me,” Jane said as she headed in that direction, lifting up the bottom folds of her robe as she walked and carefully avoiding chunks of rock strewn about the desert floor. “And remember, Atticus-don’t try anything.”
When neither Tick nor anyone else made a move, Jane stopped. Her body stiffened, and some kind of unspoken warning seemed to flow from her, back at them like a misty spray of poison. She didn’t need to say a word.
As one, Tick and his friends stepped forward and followed her.
Chapter 19
The Black Tree
The heat was stifling, an invisible fire that suffused the air of the world, filling Tick’s lungs with every breath he took. Once they reached the slope of the red wall, he realized it was much steeper than it had originally looked. Amazed at how easily Jane scooted up its face, he determined to do just as well.
Grabbing rocks that blistered with heat and finding footholds aplenty in the cracked and creviced stone, he found climbing wasn’t so bad. About halfway up the wall, he looked down to see Paul and Sofia right below him. Master George was struggling a little, mainly because he was trying to keep his suit from getting dirty, but the darker patches of sweat under his arms revealed that his suit would need a good wash anyway-though Tick doubted they’d be seeing a Laundromat on the other side of this wall.
What am I thinking about? Tick asked himself as he continued to climb. Laundry? Sweaty armpits? He needed to stay focused.
Jane reached the top ridge above him and disappeared from sight, kicking a trickle of rocks down the slope with her last steps. Tick squeezed his eyes shut until the rocks passed; a couple of pebbles nicked his forehead. He pulled himself up the last few feet and stood on the top edge of the wall, taking in the sight before him. Sofia thumped the back of his leg.
“Scoot over, Tick,” she said. “Give us some room here.”
Tick stepped forward, too focused on the strange setting below him to respond to Sofia. The ground slowly sloped from where he stood, leading to a wide depression surrounded by squat, scraggly trees that barely clung to life, their sparse leaves more brown than green. Scattered across the dusty ground of the natural bowl formation were several groups of people, each group focusing and working on various stations that couldn’t possibly have looked more out of place.
Computers and monitors covered tables scattered around the ground. Other platforms held large, silver machines he’d never seen before, each one loaded with odd appendages and dials and switches. Several viewing screens had been set up, tall and square and white, perched precariously on metal stands. Tick feared the slightest wind would topple them over. In the middle of each screen, Tick saw something he recognized: a small metal rod attached with a suction cup.
Spinners. Devices from the Fourth Reality, spinners used some kind of laser technology to project pictures and video. Jane had said she wanted them to witness something, but Tick hadn’t thought they’d be watching it like that.
Sofia and Paul were standing next to him now, scanning the area as he was. Master George finally made it to the ridge as well. Tick heard him grunting and gasping for breath behind them.
“What’s that in the middle?” Paul asked, pointing.
Tick looked, and when he saw what Paul was pointing at, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it before.
It was a statue of a tree, maybe four feet tall, and made of the blackest material Tick had ever seen. There was no blemish to its darkness, no dust, no flash of light or reflection. Every inch of it was pure black. The trunk of the tree was about a foot thick, and its limbs shot off starting halfway up, branching out over and over until the outermost tips were as thin as toothpicks.
“That’s plain weird,” Sofia said.
&n
bsp; “What could she possibly be doing with all this junk?” Paul asked. “Especially a stupid sculpture of a tree?”
Master George had finally caught his breath. “Whatever that tree is, I suspect it’s the most important thing down there. It gives me a very bad feeling.”
“It’s so black it doesn’t seem real,” Sofia said.
Tick noticed Jane had walked all the way down to the outermost group of people next to a row of computers but was now coming back. Her red mask still had that creepy smile, like she was a kid at Disneyland and having the time of her life.
“Come down!” she called. “I’ve got chairs for you!”
Tick exchanged looks with Paul and Sofia. Jane sounded way too cheerful, way too nice. That scared Tick almost more than when she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Off we go,” Master George whispered, giving the three of them a gentle push from behind.
When they made it to the bottom, Jane gestured toward a man holding four folding chairs in his hands, two in each. He had black hair and unusually thin eyebrows, and he wore a faded red T-shirt and jeans. As he started setting up the chairs, Jane introduced him.
“This is Frazier Gunn, my most loyal servant. He’ll be in charge of ensuring you all witness today’s events. I’ll be too busy to see to it myself. But let me make this clear-if you cooperate, no harm will come to you or the Higginbottom family. However, one sign of trouble, and Frazier… has his orders.”
Tick’s hatred for her burned inside him, and he had to suppress a rising tide of Chi’karda. He pushed it away, feeling an icy chill settle in his gut. Completely dejected, he numbly walked to one of the chairs and sat down, saying nothing, ignoring everybody. All he could see in his mind were images of his family.
“That’s the spirit,” Jane said. “The rest of you sit down. The show will begin shortly.”
The Blade of Shattered Hope 1r-3 Page 10
