Don’t come near me, Tick thought. Stay away!
But then he saw it was Chu, and the anger and fear that had subsided flared anew.
“How!” Chu screamed, still running for Tick. “How could you possibly have done this?”
His words were distant, as if spoken through a wall. Splitting pain hammered in Tick’s skull. He squeezed his hands into fists to stop them from trembling. Pressure mounted in his chest and it became difficult to breathe. He could feel heat scorching him from the inside out.
He felt that strange separation from his body. He knew he was losing control, completely-but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The chamber shook, the tremors increasing in magnitude. He stared at Chu and Dark Infinity and from the corner of his eye he saw things falling. Metallic crashes filled the air.
Chu stopped, his eyes darting around the complex. “How… what
… stop this! Stop this right now!”
Tick could barely hear him. As if reaching through a bucket of mud, he grasped for and found a tiny glimmer of sanity in his mind. He’d been sent here for a purpose-to destroy Chu’s plague. He held on to that one thought, forced his hand to steady, and reached inside the leather satchel at his side for the silvery cylinder that held the antidote to Dark Infinity. All he found was something hard and jagged, dusty and rough. Confused, he pulled it out and held it up to his eyes, squinting to see it through the blur of the chaos swimming around him.
It was a big rock. Frantic, he dug in the satchel again. Nothing. The bag was empty.
The antidote was gone.
~
Sofia did as she’d been instructed and threw a Rager toward the army of metaspides, never stopping her sprint. The little ball hit the ground and spun forward, ripping along with increasing speed as the static electricity erupted from it, gathering massive amounts of grass and dirt and rock. The weapon quickly grew into an earth-made bomb, a gigantic bowling ball of nature ready to destroy something. Sofia watched with elation as it crashed into the front line of the spidery robots and smashed a dozen of them into metallic shards.
To her left and right, other Ragers hit the metaspides, wiping out the first wave of their enemy. As soon as the dust settled, Sofia started firing her Shurric, pushing the trigger repeatedly as she swept the nozzle back and forth, pointing it at anything shiny and silver. With each shot, a muted clap of thunder shook the air, rolling forward in an invisible tidal wave until it slammed into its target. Metaspides flew through the air as if ropes yanked them backward, dozens of them catapulting toward the black mountain as more and more shots thumped from the Realitants.
Sofia kept running, reaching into her bag and grabbing another Rager. She spotted a thick cluster of robots and threw it in that direction, then ran after it. As soon as the massive ball of dirt and rock smashed another line of metaspides, she went in, firing.
She was almost starting to have fun.
~
Despite the whole world shaking around them, Chu laughed-a bitter, empty chortle. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out the silvery cylinder containing the antidote. He held it up above his head.
“Looking for this?” he shouted. “How many times are you people going to mistake me for an idiot?”
Tick ignored him, focusing his eyes on the shiny object, his heart sinking. If only he-
The antidote suddenly shot out of Chu’s hand and flew through the air, turning end over end before it slammed into Tick’s palm and stuck there, even before he closed his fingers around it. His breath caught in his throat as he stared at his hand in disbelief.
Chu couldn’t hide the shock on his face, his eyes wide, his lower lip quivering. “How is this possible?” he whispered, too low to hear but his lips making the words obvious to Tick. The man’s eyes shifted from the antidote to Tick’s face.
“Listen to me!” Chu yelled, holding his hands palm out as if approaching someone about to jump from a bridge. “You don’t understand! Dark Infinity is a giant Barrier Wand. It’s powerful enough to control and shape the Realities. It’s the greatest achievement in history! All I need is your help-and we can use it for good. You have to trust me. Give me a chance. Stop this madness!”
Tick stumbled about as the earthquake got worse, things crashing everywhere, the massive golden cylinder of Dark Infinity pitching dangerously from side to side. The black specks returned, swimming in front of Tick’s eyes, but this time mixed with flashing colors, blinding lights. He felt as if his heart was a furnace, burning him from within.
“Atticus!” A female voice, barely audible, came from his right. “Atticus, you have to stop! You don’t understand what you’re doing!”
Jane. It was Mistress Jane. But he couldn’t see her. The chamber shook and spun.
Tick screamed and threw the silver antidote in the general direction of Dark Infinity, the cylinder blurry and bouncing in his vision. He heard an ear-splitting crack, then the bubbling sound of sizzling acid eating at metal. His vision darkened until he could barely see. He fell to his knees, screaming, and grabbed his head with both hands, squeezing his eyes shut.
Then, though he would have thought it impossible, everything got worse. The pain, the sounds, the shaking, the spinning, the flashing lights. Tick didn’t think he could survive another second.
A booming crack rocked the air, and his eyes snapped open. His vision cleared in time to see that Dark Infinity had exploded into countless tiny golden pieces, flying and swirling through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard. A sparkling tornado. It sounded like millions of killer bees swarming.
“Atticus!” Jane yelled again, somewhere closer to him. “You have to stop! ”
Tick knew he wasn’t thinking straight. His mind was a chaotic soup of jumbled memories and thoughts. He glanced to his right and saw Jane running for him; Chu had disappeared. A small part of his brain knew she was coming to help him, but all his eyes saw at that moment was the woman who had tried to kill him, to choke him to death in the hallway. The horrendous fear and rage he’d felt when he’d been so close to death returned full force.
He didn’t know exactly what he did, but he knew he couldn’t stop it. The swarming specks of metal that had been Dark Infinity flew at Mistress Jane, like flies descending on a feast, surrounding her in a blur of sparkling gold. The metallic tornado consumed her body, obscuring her from sight.
Somewhere deep inside of him, Tick knew he’d just done something terrible.
I didn’t mean to, he thought. I didn’t mean to!
In answer, Jane’s screams erupted through the air.
Chapter 46
The Drag Race
Paul threw a Rager at the only remaining metaspide close to him, watching with glee as it steamrolled into a massive ball of earth and wiped the machine out, sparks flying as pieces of crumpled metal flew in all directions.
“Yeah, ba-”
A hard claw grabbed his ankle from behind and lifted, slamming his body to the ground. Paul tried to scream but there was no breath left in his body. He looked up to see a metaspide staring down at him with glowing robotic eyes. He wanted to say something-spit, yell for help-but he could only open and close his mouth, fighting to get air back in his lungs.
Scissoring metal blades came out of a hidden compartment, snipping on its hinges as it moved toward Paul’s face. But then the spider paused; its body rotated upward, as if it had spotted something behind them. Paul heard the glorious shouts of Mothball charging in to save him, when the metaspide took off on its spindly legs in the other direction, dragging Paul with it.
Paul’s body finally let him suck in a huge gulp of fresh air. It was enough for him to shriek with pain as rocks and dirt scraped his back, ripping his clothes. He kicked with his free foot, tried to slow the metaspide down by clawing at the ground, but to no avail. A burst of pain exploded inside him when his casted arm smacked a stray piece of one of the creature’s destroyed buddies.
“Mothball!” he shouted, trying without success t
o turn his head back to see if she was close. He kicked at the metaspide’s body and legs, but it kept running, dragging him like a sack of trash.
Enough of this ruddy nonsense, Mothball thought as she ran after Paul.
She lifted her Shurric, aiming more carefully than she’d ever done in her fighting life.
“Keep your legs down!” she shouted, still running, still aiming.
She pulled the trigger.
Paul came to a sudden stop, watching in disbelief as the body of the metaspide catapulted away from him and landed fifty feet away with a mechanical spurt of buzzes and sparks.
The thing’s claw was still attached to Paul’s ankle, the arm of it ending in a shredded clump of coppery wires. Paul reached down and easily separated the clawed metal fingers, then threw it far as he could.
Mothball ran up, towering over him as she sucked in gasps of air. “Ain’t the first time I saved your life,” she said.
Paul stood, wincing at the stings on his back from the cuts and scrapes. He didn’t want to think about what his skin must look like. “You used your Shurric! ”
“That I did,” Mothball replied, calmly.
“You could’ve smashed me, too, ya know.”
“Reckon you’re right.”
“Or the spider could’ve ripped my leg off when it went bye-bye.”
“Reckon you’re right.”
Paul shook his head. “Well, thanks for saving me.”
He scanned the dusty area around them. Not a single working metaspide was in sight, and he heard the muted thump of a Shurric in the distance and a couple of Ragers wreaking their havoc somewhere.
It’s almost over, he thought. We wiped them clean out!
The ground shook worse than before, swiping away his extremely brief elation.
“Need to gather the others, we do,” Mothball said. “Meet me at the entrance to Chu’s mountain.” She took off running without waiting for a reply.
Paul thought of Sofia. He turned in a circle, searching for her.
He ran in a stumble toward the dark shape of the mountain, the haze making it look even more sinister than before. The quaking ground was making him sick. He shouted Sofia’s name, mad at himself for getting separated. As the dust settled, he finally caught a glimpse of her near the huge glass doors marking the entrance to Chu’s palace. From the looks of it, the doors had been mostly obliterated by a full Rager, jagged shards of glass littering the ground.
“Sofia!” he shouted again, running toward her.
She spotted him and stared for a long moment, then turned her back to him. The earthquake made it appear as if she were jumping up and down.
“Sofia!” he called, but she ignored him, her attention focused on the gaping hole leading to Chu’s palace.
What is she doing?
Without so much as a glance back at him, Sofia sprinted for the destroyed glass doors, disappearing into the darkness beyond.
What…
“Follow her!” he heard Mothball roar from a distance. “Everyone! We gotta get to Tick!”
Paul ran forward, but only made it two steps when the earthquake doubled in intensity, knocking him to the ground. He looked up just in time to see a huge section of the mountainous building crack and fall, exploding when it hit the ground, the sound of its crash splintering through the air.
“No!” he shouted.
The entrance was completely blocked off.
Chapter 47
Pacini
Sofia ran, her Shurric at the ready for anything that jumped out at her.
The building shook horribly around her; she heard a crash of breaking glass far behind. Around her, the walls and floor bent and rippled; chunks fell from the ceiling. Every step took her full concentration and balance to make sure she didn’t fall down.
Tick is doing this, she thought. I don’t know how or why, but Tick is doing this.
She pictured in her mind the map Master George had shown them-third lower level, section eight. Her legs already exhausted, she somehow kept going, winding her way through hall after hall, down staircases, through more halls. With every turn, she saw people running, heading in the opposite direction, fleeing the destruction.
She kept going forward.
Tick was lost.
The blackness killing his vision was complete now, which only escalated the sheer panic that surged through him, competing with the intense heat that still burned. He stumbled about, waving his arms, calling for help. Jane’s screams still rocked the air, though they’d grown deeper, guttural, filled with gurgles and raw shrieks.
What did I do? he thought. What did I do to her?
And where had Chu gone?
All around him, the sounds of destruction penetrated the darkness of his sight, scaring him. Huge things crashed nearby; it was a wonder he hadn’t been crushed yet by a falling object. He wanted to shrink to the ground and curl into a ball until it was all over. But he couldn’t. He had to run. He had to get away.
He kept stumbling forward, searching for something, someone, anything.
When Sofia saw the big metal doors, she knew she’d arrived. Without pausing, she threw a Rager forward, then readied her Shurric. The Rager pulled the metal and plastic from the floor and ceiling as it rolled along, growing bigger and bigger. It crashed into the doors, bending them with a metallic squeal, but not breaking them open. Sofia fired repeatedly with the Shurric, its invisible thumps of sonic energy enough to finish the job. The doors parted to let her through.
She scrambled into a chamber as big as a football stadium, chaos reigning as things crashed and burned all around her. Most of the people had already fled, but she heard the skin-crawling screams of a woman in the distance.
“Tick!” Sofia shouted, getting no answer.
She ran forward, scanning her eyes left and right. Tick-where are you?
“Tick!” she yelled when she spotted him, sprinting toward her friend.
He looked terrible, sweaty and cut up, wandering around like a drunk man, feeling at the air with shaking hands, staring with blank eyes. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Every step he took sent a ripple surging through the floor away from him, like a stone dropped in water. Chunks of the ceiling fell and were whipped away just before crushing his body, as if a host of guardian angels hovered above him, protecting him.
“Tick!” she yelled again, but he didn’t respond. He looked so awful, so… crazy, she could hardly believe it was the same boy she knew.
Sofia kept running, looking above to dodge falling objects, winding her way back and forth toward Tick. A few remaining workers pushed past her in the opposite direction, fleeing. A thick man with a spotty beard crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. Sofia screamed something rude in Italian as she scrambled to get back up.
She caught a flash out of the corner of her eye, looking up just in time to see a spinning rod of metal right before it slammed into her shoulder. She fell again, and a boxy contraption plummeted from the sky, landed on its corner, then fell over to pin her legs to the floor. She pushed at the smashed box with both hands, but couldn’t move it off her feet.
The sounds of destruction intensified-crashing, banging, exploding, breaking. Objects of all sizes fell from the false sky like the world’s worst hailstorm, smashing to pieces all around her. The volume of noise pierced her ears, threatening to break her ear drums.
Sofia saw the long rod of metal that had smacked her shoulder nearby. She squirmed awkwardly until she could reach it; she grabbed it, pulled it close. The rod was twisted and curved like a crowbar. Wedging one end under the clunky, destroyed box that used to be part of who-knew-what awful invention of Chu’s empire, she pushed on the other end of the lever with both arms, gathering every ounce of strength left inside her. At first nothing moved, but she let out a scream of effort, throwing every part of her into getting that stupid thing off-
The metal box toppled over with a sound lost in the symphony of destruction filling the
gigantic chamber.
Sofia got to her feet, ignoring the throbs of pain lancing through her legs. Half-limping, half-running, she went after Tick. He was so close, still spinning in circles, stumbling, shouting things Sofia didn’t understand. He looked like a man who’d lost his mind. Falling objects from the ceiling were deflected at the last minute as though a shield protected him from harm. Sofia ran on, zigzagging and stumbling herself.
She reached Tick, tackling him to the ground. “Tick, what’s wrong with you?”
“It burns!” he screamed. “Someone help me! I can’t control it! Someone help me! ”
Sofia didn’t think he even knew she was there. She fumbled in her pocket, panic making her hands shake. She felt around, grasped the silver pen, pulled it out.
“My brain is splitting!” Tick screamed, thrashing around, hitting her.
Sofia didn’t know exactly what the pen would do to him, or if it would hurt, or how long it would affect him. She didn’t know anything for sure. But she had to do it.
“Tick, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She jabbed the end of the pen into Tick’s neck and pushed the button. A quick hiss sounded as Tick’s head jerked and hit the floor. His body went limp.
Everything went still-the shaking, the crashing, the ripping, the bending.
Everything stopped.
The only sound was a woman still screaming in the distance.
Chapter 48
Out of the Rubble
Paul grunted as he moved another chunk of black glass off the pile.
“Isn’t there another way in?” he asked.
“Ain’t nary a one that ain’t blocked!” Sally shouted, lifting a piece the size of a large suitcase. He threw it and Paul watched it split into several pieces upon landing.
Then Paul noticed the silence.
“Hey… hey!” he shouted.
Everyone else quit working, looking about.
The Hunt for Dark Infinity 1r-2 Page 28
