She stood up, though Tick could barely see her. His vision blurred, dark specks swirling like a cloud of stinging gnats. He felt his life slipping away, a physical dwindling as if he were made of sand and it was slowly leaking out of a puncture in some outer skin. He thought of soulikens and how those small and permanent stamps of electric pulses and energy might be the very thing he felt seeping out of him into… wherever they went. His Alterants’ soulikens had come to him, according to the Haunce. Maybe now they would go to that odd, ghostly creature of eternity.
Jane was walking away, stabbing her Staff into the mud.
Tick hated her.
Life was running away from him. He closed his eyes, wondering if he would ever open them again. What he saw appear out of the patchy darkness was Kayla. And Lisa. His parents. Paul and Sofia and Sato. He saw them as if he looked at a TV screen.
The Chi’karda exploded within him.
No build-up this time. No slow burn that escalated like stoked flames. It was an absolute detonation of power. His whole body became a conflagration, a perfect and consuming inferno of force and might. He didn’t know he’d done it, but he was suddenly standing. A tornado of orange, fiery air swirled around him. He heard himself speak as if he were an outside observer.
“Jane, you’re not going anywhere.”
Chapter 59
Fists of Chi’karda
The fangen attacked Sato just as he landed on his twentieth compartment. Sharp claws dug into his shoulders and yanked him backward. Sato spun, swinging with a fist. He made contact, thumping the creature’s face. With a horrible shriek, it let go and fell away, its thin, translucent wings flapping weakly.
Sato knew there were more fangen, that this would be a tricky task indeed. He quickly stuck a nanolocator patch onto the tiny boy shivering on the stone then moved to jump to the next rectangular hole. He was in midflight when a fangen swooped in and grabbed him, pulling his body out to the middle of the chamber, its legs wrapped around him as it tried to bite his neck.
Sato clutched the top of the creature’s head by a tuft of diseased-looking hair and pushed its gaping mouth full of teeth away. Then he punched it, slipping around its body in that moment of weakness so he was on the thing’s back. They hovered over the abyss.
“Take me back to that hole!” Sato screamed in its ear, pointing to the place he’d been going. “Take me now, or I’ll snap your neck!” He wrapped his hands around the thin pole of the fangen’s neck and started squeezing.
The creature had to have some instinct to survive, some will to live. Making sounds like a strangled banshee, it flew toward the place indicated. Sato jumped off and into the inset compartment as soon as he was close enough. He pivoted and kicked out, connecting with the fangen’s stomach. It squawked and pulled back, choking and coughing.
Sato pulled out a patch and stuck it to the little girl next to him. He readied for the next one. Nothing about this was going to be very easy. He jumped.
Womp. Womp. Womp.
Surging throbs of Chi’karda sent waves of energy thumping away from Tick. He could feel its vibrations in the air, in the ground, in the forest behind him, shaking the deepest parts of the wood in the trees. His senses had heightened, almost unbearably so; the smells of mud and pine, the feel of the breeze, every sound amplified tenfold, the crisp clarity of his vision. It all felt wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Jane had stopped when he told her she wasn’t going anywhere, probably consumed by curiosity. And, Tick hoped, a little scared. She turned around to face him, standing about thirty yards away.
“You can’t handle that much Chi’karda,” she said; Tick heard each word as if she’d spoken it directly into his ear. “It’ll burn you to a crisp if you don’t let it go. Release it, Atticus. Or you’ll kill countless others along with…”
She faltered, her mask shifting downward just slightly, but enough to show she was looking at Tick’s stomach. His eyes fell to see what had caught her attention, and he almost cried out in shock.
The wooden hilt of the knife smoldered, slowly inching its way as if by magic out of his skin. The long blade followed, glowing a hot red. The whole area sizzled like a cooking steak, small wisps of smoke rising from the wound. The knife finally came all the way out and fell to the ground with a thump and another sizzle as it hit the wet mud. Tick watched in shock as the slice in his skin healed back together in a matter of seconds. He felt an intense burning where the wound had been, stronger even than the Chi’karda raging through his entire body.
His dad had once told him how he’d seemed to defy death several times as a kid. What it all meant, Tick didn’t know. Maybe his ability over Chi’karda went way further than he ever dreamed or hoped.
He looked back at Jane, quickly wiping the look of surprise from his face. “I’m getting control of it!” he shouted. “And you know I’m more powerful than you are! Give up. Now. Or I’ll blow you up along with everything else in the Factory.”
Jane’s fingers tightened around her Staff. “You’re an idiot child, Atticus. I wanted to kill you with subtle ease and avoid the destruction you might inflict if you let loose your chaotic abilities. But I’ll do it this way if I have to. I’ll never sleep in my bed again until I know the Realities are rid of Atticus Higginbottom. You’re about to die, boy. I hope you’ve enjoyed your short time alive.”
Tick’s anger built with every word she said, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He collected his power by thinking it, imagined what he wanted in his mind, like gathering a mental snowball with mental hands. The Chi’karda burned and roiled inside him, resisting as he compacted it tighter and tighter, compressing it into a dangerous and unstable sphere of pure energy. He saw the fiery orange cloud seeping back into his skin, like smoke in reverse.
Straining with the effort, he spoke through his trembling concentration. “I think I’ll keep living.” With a terrible scream, he threw his coiled power-all of it-at Jane.
A boom like a thousand strikes of lightning shook the world around him. Mud and dirt exploded from the ground in a straight path to Jane, as if it were a crowded minefield and every last mine went off at once. A visible wave of orange-tinged air slammed against her body, throwing her twenty feet into the air. She flew backward until she landed far on the other side of the broken wooden fence, her Staff broken into several pieces.
Tick had no idea how he did what happened next. But he willed himself forward, wanting to be by her side instantly, faster than he could possibly run. He was out of patience and knew he had to finish her off. In a dizzying instant, he suddenly stood right next to her, looking down at her as she struggled to stand. With a distant thought, he realized that he’d just winked himself.
He reached down and grabbed Jane by the folds of her robe, communicating with his powers of Chi’karda without talking, almost without thinking. He easily lifted her up and held her over his head. Then he threw her at the forest. She sailed several hundred feet through the air, arms and legs flailing; a piercing shriek ripped from her lungs. Tick watched as she finally slammed into a large oak tree and crumpled to the ground below it. She didn’t move, a twisted heap of arms and legs.
Tick drew in deep, ragged breaths as he looked around him. He saw the hole in the ground that Jane had created to pull them out of the underground Factory, as well as a much larger gap with broken and jagged edges that had probably been caused by the earthquakes. He winked to the edge of it and looked down to where people from the Fifth Reality were fighting Jane’s creatures. Tick saw and heard the sights and sounds of battle, the clashes and the blood and the screams. He wanted to destroy the Factory, level it, crush it, disintegrate it.
“Master George!” he yelled, knowing the man was listening in somehow. “Get them out! Get them all out!”
Chapter 60
Ten Kids
Tick wants us to wink them out!” Rutger yelled.
Sofia watched as Master George’s hands flew furiously to turn dials and flip switc
hes, type on the keyboard, adjust his Barrier Wand. “How much time until the wave hits us?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Three minutes!”
“We’ll hold out until the last second. We must save every child we can!”
Sofia looked down to see that Paul had grabbed her hand. She squeezed back, terrified and hating how helpless she felt.
“Winking away the Fifth Army now,” Master George said, sweat flying off his ruddy, bald head as he worked. “But not Sato and Mothball. Not yet.”
“Two and half minutes,” Rutger said, his voice loud but sad.
Tick saw the tall people of the Fifth Reality suddenly disappear, winked away. The creatures they’d been fighting looked around in shock, growling and spitting.
Thankful that Master George had heard him, Tick had to assume that everyone was gone now. He hoped that George had also saved the kids Jane planned to use in her horrific experiments. He had to destroy the Factory now, before any of those monsters escaped. Then he’d finish off Jane and end this nightmare forever.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, mentally gathering the streams and coils of Chi’karda, pulling it all in.
Then he fell to his knees with a scream, throwing his arms forward as if he were flinging his powers at the scene below him. His Chi’karda unleashed itself on the Factory, destroying everything in its fiery, angry path.
Sato’s entire body ached like never before. Worse than when he’d gone through the agony of having Chu’s Dark Infinity plague and being bound with ropes by Master George. His arms and legs screamed with weariness and hurt, begging him to stop.
But he didn’t. He kept jumping from compartment to compartment, slapping the nanolocator patches on kid after kid, moving on before he even saw them be winked away. All the while, he’d fought off the relentless fangen with punches and kicks. He’d even poked one in the eyeball and sent it screeching away.
Mothball did her part on the other side of the vast, round chamber, leaping with more ease than Sato because of her height advantage. They were almost done. Sato could see the last row of inset rectangles just below him.
He landed in the latest cubbyhole, pulling out a patch before he even settled. A pretty girl with red hair lay curled in a ball, eyes lit with fear. He stuck the patch on her and turned to move on. Just as he did, a great explosion sounded from above, and the entire chamber started shaking again. Huge chunks of rock and metal fell through the air, cracking and clinging as they hit the sides along the way.
It had all started again. What went wrong! He dared not pause to think about it.
He punched a fangen just as it appeared, kicking it and punching again. The hideous thing backed off.
Sato jumped, ignoring the increased danger of debris and quaking. He landed in the next compartment and reached for a nanolocator patch.
The Bermuda Triangle headquarters building trembled and groaned.
“Thirty seconds!” Rutger yelled. Despite the terror and worry she felt herself, Sofia couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor little man. With his face flushed and sweat pouring off his skin, he looked like he might drop dead any second. “It’s already straining the cables to the max-they’re going to snap! We have to go! We have to go!”
Master George continued his frantic, feverish work. “Blasted! They’re still working hard. It must mean they haven’t reached everyone yet.”
“Time’s up!” Rutger said, pounding his fist on the desk. “Or we’ll all die with them!”
Sofia felt a storm of different feelings and emotions rip through her heart: fear for her life, fear for Sato’s life, sorrow for the kids. She squeezed Paul’s hand even tighter and waited, holding her breath. The building shook even harder now, groans of twisting metal hurting her ears.
Master George swore, something Sofia never thought she’d hear him do. Then, “Fine. Let’s finish this thing.”
He started tapping buttons.
~
The entire chamber was about to fall down around Sato. The shattering cracks and thunderous rumbles of crumbling stone had risen to a deafening roar. Just after placing a patch on the latest kid, he looked across the way at Mothball and saw her staring back at him through the rain of debris. Her eyes said it all.
They could die here if they didn’t get winked out immediately-who knew when the shaking would stop, when things would settle. But then, almost at the exact same time, they both slowly nodded. They wouldn’t leave-not until they’d saved every last prisoner.
Sato broke eye contact first and scooted to the edge of his current cubbyhole. He did a quick scan and counted. Ten kids. There were ten kids left. Five for him, five for Mothball.
He coiled for the jump, but just as he pushed off, he felt a quick and cold tingle shoot across his neck and down his spine.
“No!” he screamed. But it was too late. The chamber vanished around him.
Sofia barely had time to notice they’d winked into the Grand Canyon sitting room, barely had time to feel the relief of solid ground under her feet, when Sato and Mothball appeared right in front of her. The two of them looked like zombies, filthy and scratched and worn.
“No!” Sato yelled, twisting around on his feet, as if looking for something. “Send me back! There were ten more! Ten more!”
Master George appeared through a doorway, his face cramped with a tight smile. “The children should be down in the valley. Ah, Sato, Mothball, thank goodness you’re-”
Sato ran to the man and grabbed him by the shirt. “Send me back! The whole place is falling down-they could die! There were ten more of them!”
Master George shook his head back and forth. “I’m… I’m terribly sorry, Sato. It’s far too late-everything was set up back in the Bermuda Triangle station. I simply can’t send you back from here. I’m very sorry.”
“You have to!” Sato’s arms shook with fury or exhaustion. Probably both. “You have to send me back! We didn’t get them all!”
“It’s impossible,” Master George whispered sadly. “Quite impossible.”
Sato slumped to the floor. Sofia looked over and saw Mothball had collapsed on a couch, her eyes closed, tears leaking out from beneath their lids. Paul moved to crouch beside Sato and put a hand on his back.
Sato shook it off. “We left ten kids! Ten!”
Sofia joined them, sitting on the other side of Sato. “But think of how many you saved. And the others might escape in all the chaos.”
She and Paul pulled Sato into an awkward three person hug. He resisted at first, but then finally collapsed into Sofia’s arms, sobbing.
“Think of how many you saved,” she repeated.
Chapter 61
Collision
Tick stumbled away from the collapsing Factory, sucking the power of Chi’karda back inside him. He felt the flaming heat of it burn his insides. It had taken only three waves of it to destroy the complex. The sounds of crunching and cracking and splintering filled the air as the ground sank, swirling like a whirlpool of mud. He’d begun the chain reactions of destructive entropy that would leave the place as nothing but sand within minutes.
The earth began to give beneath Tick. There was no way he could outrun the collapse. With a thought, he quickly winked back to the forest where he’d thrown Jane’s body just minutes ago.
She still lay in a heap at the bottom of the oak tree, but her arms were moving, and Tick heard her groan. His heart sank. He’d hoped she would be dead from the collision, because he dreaded the prospect of having to do anything more to her. His initial anger and adrenaline had subsided, and the reality of the situation was hitting home. If he finished what he’d set out to do, it meant he would have to end it, right here, right now.
He had to do it, no matter what. Unchecked, she could and would murder millions and billions of people. She’d already proven that. Tick had to finish it.
He stepped toward her.
The ground exploded under Tick, a wave of invisible force lifting him off his feet an
d throwing him backward. Before he could gather his wits, his back slammed into the soft ground, knocking the air out of him. He pushed himself up onto his knees, gasping for breath. If the mud had been dried and hard, he could very well have broken his spine.
When a rush of air finally filled his lungs, he jumped to his feet. Jane stood a few yards away, both of her hands outstretched, palms facing him. Tick reached for the Chi’karda that still churned within him.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait. If we keep at this something really bad will happen.”
Tick didn’t waste time with words. He pushed a surge of Chi’karda straight at her, hurling it like a volley of sun flares. The power hit her, twisting her body up into the air and back down to the mud where she slid thirty feet and smacked into the base of a tall pine.
Tick switched gears, concentrating on the trees around her. Using his mind as commander, willing what he wanted to happen, he made a dozen trees around her dissolve, the wood bursting into a swirl of tiny particles. They flew around her in a brown tornado, encircling her like a swarm of muddy bees. Then he made them collapse, sealing the wood back together like he’d done before several times now, though unconsciously.
With a loud smacking sound, followed by cracks and groans, a large mass of twisted wood formed around Jane, trapping her inside. Crushing her.
Tick doubled over, his hands on his knees, pulling in rapid breaths. The mental effort of doing such a thing made him feel as though he’d run ten miles in a sprint. He glanced back up at the hideous structure of coiled tree parts. No way she survived that. No way.
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