“Guess we were supposed to push the button,” Paul said.
Tick fell to his knees and scooted around until the words were right side up. It was another poem-a pretty long one. He started reading.
You pushed the button; it called the beast.
It moves real fast; it likes to feast.
You can stop it once, but cannot twice,
It’s the only way to save your life.
How to do it, you may ask;
This will not be an easy task.
Your mind will beg of you to quit,
But if you do, your mind will split.
On this very spot you’ll stand;
You will die if I see you’ve ran.
I’m testing strength and will and trust.
Move one inch, and die you must.
Do not step outside the square.
No matter what-don’t you dare.
When this is over, you will see
A grand reward for trusting me.
“Dude,” Paul breathed. “There’s no way Master George is behind all this.”
Sofia sat down next to the poem. “For the first time in my life, I think I agree with you. He said in the letter we were going to a gathering, not do more tests.”
Tick read through the poem again, feeling very uneasy. Paul and Sofia were right-this was getting weird. Even though Master George had sent the Gnat Rat and the Tingle Wraith after them during their initial recruiting test, this seemed too sinister for the jolly old man. It felt dark and threatening.
“This isn’t even a riddle,” Tick said, standing up.
“What do you mean?” Sofia asked.
Tick pointed down the long tunnel in the direction from which he thought the train thing had come the first time they’d seen it blur past. “There’s nothing to solve. We have to stand inside this square no matter what happens. No matter what… comes. ”
He couldn’t get over the sick feeling in his gut. Something felt wrong, like he’d left a fat wallet full of money on a city park bench. Or probably how his mom would feel if she realized she’d left the oven on, right after taking off in the airplane to go visit Grandma. The world seemed twisted, off balance.
After a long pause, Sofia spoke up in a confident voice. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?” Tick and Paul said at the same time.
Sofia shrugged. “If it’s Master George-which I doubt-we need to do what the poem says. If it’s not him, we still need to do what it says. We’ll be really tempted to leave the square, but we can’t. Then, at the last second, whoever it is will wink us away. Poof, nice and easy-just like the chair thing.”
“How do we know for sure we’ll get winked?” Tick asked, even though the answer had just clicked in his head.
“If somebody else is doing this,” Sofia said, “they could obviously just kill us if they wanted to. Why would they go through this whole ordeal to get rid of us? If anything, now we have even more pressure to pass these tests.” She shook her fists and screamed in frustration. “This is so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
“Way to sum it up intelligently,” Paul muttered. When she gave him a cold stare, he threw his hands up. “Hey, I agree with you!”
“Wait,” Tick said, shushing them, holding a hand out. He felt a slight tremor beneath his feet, a small vibration with no sound.
“It’s coming, dude,” Paul said. “It’s coming!”
The shaking grew stronger, almost visible now; Paul and Sofia seemed to jiggle up and down. Tick had never been in an earthquake, but he knew this must be what it felt like.
“What do we do, man, what do we do?” Paul was looking left and right as if trying to decide which direction to run.
Sofia reached out and grabbed Paul by the shirt, jerking him toward her until their faces were only inches apart. “We stand in this square, Rogers, you hear me? We stand in this square!”
At once, they all looked down at their feet. Tick had to shuffle a foot closer to the others to be inside the red-lined boundary.
“She’s right,” he said as Sofia let go of Paul. “No matter what, we have to stay in the square.”
The tunnel trembled violently; Tick had to spread his feet a little and hold out his arms to maintain his balance. A sound grew in the distance, a low rumble of thunder. Whatever it was-the poem had called it a beast-was coming from the direction Tick had thought it would. He narrowed his eyes and stared that way, though nothing had appeared yet in the distance.
“This is crazy, man,” Paul said. “Are you guys sure about this?”
“Yes,” Tick said, not breaking his concentration. He thought he could see something dark, far down the tunnel.
“My brain wants me to run,” Paul insisted.
This time, Tick did turn, pointing at the poem still printed on the ground. “The message said we’d think that. Don’t move.” He looked back down the tunnel. There was definitely something dark way down there, growing larger, bit by bit.
“I’m watching you, Rogers,” Sofia said, almost shouting as the rumbling and shaking increased. “We’re going to wink away. No one’s going to kill us!”
“Fine! Quit treating me like a baby.”
Tick strained his eyes as the dark shape grew bigger. Something about its movement made him think it was twisting — corkscrewing through the tunnel like a roller coaster.
“What is that thing?” he said, though the roar had grown so loud he knew no one could hear him. He braced himself, knowing it would be easier if he didn’t look, didn’t see it coming. But his curiosity was too strong.
Then the air around them suddenly brightened, flashing a blinding white.
“Look!” Paul shouted from behind him.
Tick turned to see sand dunes and sunlight through a gaping hole in the side of the tunnel.
The door had opened.
Chapter 19
The Train Thing
A shot of elation and relief surged through Tick’s nerves, like he’d been rescued from a burning building. There it was, their escape! He even took a step toward it before reason pulled his thoughts back to reality. Sofia grabbed his arm.
“No!” she screamed.
“I know!” he answered, looking down at his feet. His toes were within inches of the red line. The world around them shook and roared, as if they were in a small building pummeled by a tornado. The wind had picked up, rustling their hair and clothes.
Paul stared at the open door, his eyes glazed over.
“Don’t even think about it!” Sofia shouted at him. “No matter what, remember? If we run, we die!”
Paul snapped out of his daze, looked at Tick. “Dude, it’s right there!”
“Whoever it is, they’re just tempting us!” Tick yelled.
He moved as close to Paul as he could, then pulled Sofia in. “Link arms!” He could barely hear his own voice.
Sofia obeyed immediately, but Paul hesitated, the wind ripping at his shirt.
“Do it!” Tick yelled.
Paul’s face sank into a frown as he wrapped his arm around Sofia’s elbow, then his other around Tick’s. All this time, the door remained open, staying open far longer than it ever had before. This was all planned out, Tick thought. But by who?
From the way they stood, only Sofia faced the onrushing nightmare, her face set in cold fear, eyes wide, mouth in a tight line. The air swirled around them, making them sway dangerously close to the line. Tick thought Sofia’s hair might simply fly off at any second. And the noise. The noise. Like screaming brakes and revved jet engines and pounding hammers and hissing steam-a chorus of terrible sounds that pierced Tick’s ears with sharp pain.
Finally, as if giving in to some inevitable fate, he twisted his neck to look behind him.
The thing was very close now, dark and hideous, spinning upside down and right side up again, corkscrewing as it sped toward them, faster and faster. Tick squinted, thinking the panic must have scrambled his brain-what he was looking at di
dn’t make any sense.
The poem had been more accurate than he’d thought. The train was not a train at all. It wasn’t a car, truck, or plane. It wasn’t even a spaceship. The thing thundering toward them at unbelievable speeds was an animal. The biggest, strangest, ugliest beast Tick had ever seen.
“What…” he said, trailing off, knowing his friends couldn’t hear him. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing.
As the beast got closer, Tick felt the fear in him swell, burning like fire, surging through his veins, hurting him. The animal had at least a dozen sets of thick, muscled legs, almost a blur as they churned back and forth to move the creature in its twisting pattern. Its huge head spun but, impossibly, didn’t turn as quickly as the rest of its body, as if the legs were on springs or gears. Dark, scaly skin covered a hideous head, spikes and stunted bones sticking out in random places, enormous teeth jutting from its mouth.
As it approached within a half-mile, then a quarter-mile, Tick felt more scared than ever before, despite the things he’d been through. His mind couldn’t come up with any possible explanation why a gigantic glass tube would exist in the middle of the desert, made for a terrible beast to run through at ridiculous speeds. Confusion and fear mingled together inside his brain, squeezing his thoughts until his head pounded with a drumming pain.
Wink us away, he thought. Time’s almost up, wink us away. Wink us away. WINK US AWAY! The wind, the noise-the horrible noise. What is making that stupid noise? He thought he heard a scream, maybe two. Maybe it was him.
When the beast was only fifty feet away, growling and snapping its jaws and twisting and pumping its powerful legs, bulleting toward them, everything went crazy.
For the slightest of moments, a hush swallowed the area, the noise ending in an abrupt clap of empty silence. Then a booming, deep toll, like millions of huge bells and French horns playing at once, rang out, drowning out all other sound. Tick let go of Paul and Sofia and clapped his hands over his ears. The volume became unbearable; the ache in his head became a splitting pain behind his eyes.
The entire tunnel rocked upward and crashed back to the ground, sending a web of cracks shooting in all directions, spreading like a branching tree with the sound of ice breaking over a frozen lake. Tick crashed to the ground, his knees buckling from the impact; Paul fell on top of him, then Sofia.
Somehow Tick got out the words, “Stay in the box!”
In both directions, the tunnel started warping — impossible waves rippling in the glass up and down its length. The massive beast had stopped a few feet away, its many legs coming to a rest on the bottom of the tube. Its head swiveled around at the chaos as if it were as frightened as the humans. The deep, vibrating horn-like sound continued to boom through the air.
Tick and the others scrambled to the center of the square and clasped arms around each other, huddled on top of the still-glowing words of the poem. Everything shook, much worse than before. The glass rippled and cracked; the tunnel bounced in places like a writhing worm. The beast let out a roar, its huge mouth opening to show dozens of teeth; saliva flew everywhere. Still, the sound of it was nothing compared to the clanging, ear-piercing toll of the mysterious bells.
“What’s happening?” Sofia shouted. Tick barely heard her and had no answer.
The creature moved toward them, anger ignited in its black eyes that looked through a hooded brow of horns and scales. Almost on top of them, it roared again, this time louder. The air reeked of something foul and rotten.
“Stay in the box!” Tick shouted again. Wink us away. Wink us away.
WINK US AWAY!
The beast lunged at them, its legs catapulting it into the air. Its outermost horn came within inches of Tick’s face when something suddenly slammed the whole creature away from them and against the wall of the tunnel to their right, where the door still stood open-though it was way too small for the beast. The glass exploded outward, the huge animal crashing through and into a steep desert dune.
As it landed, sending up a massive spray of sand, large sections of the tunnel began melting into liquid, forming huge flying globs that looked like molten silver as they moved through the air. More and more of them appeared, completely destroying the tunnel except for the small spot on which Tick and the others stood. All at once, the melted glass hurtled toward the monster, engulfing the beast completely. The liquid hardened back into glass, tinkling and crackling.
As quickly as it had started, everything stopped. Tick sat next to Paul and Sofia, all of them squeezing each other, gasping to catch their breath. Only a few dozen feet away stood a horrific sculpture of glass, twisted and bent, parts of the poor animal’s body sticking out here and there. One large horn jutted from the front, pointing at them as if it had all been their fault.
No one said a word. They had stayed in the square. They had done what they were supposed to, despite everything.
A few seconds later, someone winked them away to another Reality.
Chapter 20
An Invitation
Mistress Jane walked through the darkening woods, enjoying the smells of the forest and fresh air more than she thought she would. She’d rarely ventured out of the Lemon Fortress since losing her Barrier Wand to the Realitants, too busy working and planning. Too busy thinking.
A bird cawed in the distance, a shriek that sounded like someone being tortured. She faltered a moment, then stepped over a log and continued walking. There you go again, she thought. You can take anything and see the worst in it. Why couldn’t she just hear the sound of a bird and appreciate the beauty in it-the joy of nature? When had she become so dark and morbid? How had it gotten this bad?
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, loving the strong scent of pine. Such simple things used to please her, make her happy. Until her mission to find the Utopian Reality consumed her and turned her into what she’d become. Someone feared and hated. When it came down to it, Jane didn’t like herself very much. Not one bit.
She reached a sudden break in the trees, the place Frazier had described to her. He’d wanted to come with her, insisted on it with more bravery than usual. Jane had finally ordered him to clean the kitchens for being obstinate. If anyone could take care of themselves in the Thirteenth Reality, it was Mistress Jane.
The sun had fallen behind the line of trees on the other side of the huge clearing, a random twinkle shining through the leaves as she kept walking. She’d believed Frazier’s report, but she still felt a thrill of shock at seeing it for herself.
The gap in the forest was at least a quarter-mile in diameter, almost perfectly circular. She saw no signs or tracks of heavy machinery that had mowed down hundreds of trees overnight. She saw only a few footprints, and they looked to be those of the hunters and Frazier’s investigating party.
Who did this? And how?
As she neared the center of the clearing, she tried to come up with possibilities. It certainly wasn’t a natural phenomenon-especially considering the felled tree trunks spelled out words in massive letters. From this low vantage point, she couldn’t make out the words, of course, only a general sense of the individual letters-even though they were almost too big to recognize. But she had no doubt as to what it said, trusting Frazier implicitly.
Mistress Jane, you are a coward. Come and find me.
She continued on, knowing exactly where she wanted to end up. The message had a hidden meaning, a literal clue. Come and find me. That’s exactly what she was doing, counting on her budding powers to help her if she ran into any trouble.
She made it to the other side of the clearing, her arms and legs weary from crossing over-and sometimes climbing over-the many logs. She could have levitated herself, flown to her destination without another thought, but she was enjoying the nostalgic effort of physical exertion. Finally, in the center of where she estimated the word “me” was spelled out, she stopped.
“Here I am,” she said, not stooping so low as to shout; she had her dignity to preserve. “We’re
near enough to the old battleground and its thick Chi’karda. Wink in and be done with it.”
A few minutes passed in silence. Jane grew restless far quicker than she expected, and stilled herself to be sure her emotions didn’t show. She would not utter another word or move another muscle, no matter how long the mystery person made her wait.
Ten more minutes went by, the cloudless sky growing ever darker, a deep blue slowly bleeding to purple. Then, with no fanfare or smoke, a man appeared ten feet in front of her. Dressed in a pinstripe suit, he had dark hair and olive skin. He was tall and almost handsome, but not quite. His arms were clasped behind his back, perhaps holding something, hiding it from her. Though she’d never met him, she knew his name immediately. After all, just a few months ago she’d tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting with him.
Reginald Chu, perhaps the most dangerous man in the Realities.
But surely he couldn’t possibly know her powers in the Chi’karda were growing enough to match his technological gadgetry. Why is he here?
“Hello, Mistress Jane,” Chu said, mocking her title. “We finally meet, several months later than you had hoped.”
“You got my note, then?” she asked.
“I did.” He paused, not moving, staring at her. “I waited for you in the park, but you never showed up. You wasted time that was not yours to waste.”
It took every ounce of willpower for Jane to remain calm, to not lash out and whip this man with one of the fallen logs. She could do it, and the man spoke to her as if she were inferior. No, she told herself. He’s here for a reason.
“My apologies, Mister-”
“Call me Reginald,” he snapped. “Never call me Mr. Chu. Never.”
Jane bowed her head ever so slightly. “My apologies… Reginald. I had a proposition for you, a good one, but the Realitants stole my Wand, trapping me here. I’ll soon have another one built.”
Chu moved his arms from behind his back to reveal what he’d been hiding-a brand new Barrier Wand, its golden surface sparkling despite the diminishing light, seven dials and switches running along its length.
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