“I’m going to explain everything to you,” she said, her voice tight. Strained. “And this isn’t some example of the bad guys telling the good guys the whole diabolical plan just in time for them to escape and save the day. No, I want you to know. Every last detail. Once you do, and once you witness the extent of my power, I’ll set you free so you can tell the other Realitants and spread the word throughout each world. Everyone must know what I’m capable of, and the reasons why it must happen.”
She paused, and the eyes of her mask, dark and deep, never wavered from Tick. “Correction. I’m going to set most of you free to spread the word. Atticus stays with me.”
Tick stood up, not sure where the courage came from. “What? Why? You promised you’d let me and my family go if I didn’t try to stop you.”
Jane’s scarred hand shot out from beneath the folds of her robe, her palm outward. At the same instant, Tick flew backward, hit by an unseen force that thumped him in the chest. He fell into his chair and toppled over, banging his head against the dusty, hard ground. Shaking it off, he scrambled to his feet and picked up his chair. Glaring at Jane, he took a seat, hating himself for being such a wimp. Not an ounce of Chi’karda flickered inside him.
Jane’s mask was a sneer. “I never made any such promise of letting you free, Atticus. Only your family. Now stay silent, or I’ll get rid of one of your sisters.”
Tick gripped the sides of his chair to stop his hands from shaking. He had to do something. This wasn’t right, letting this woman treat them this way. He had to do something!
Jane continued with her speech as if nothing had happened. “What you’ll be witnessing today is the first fully functional use of the most mysterious substance in the universe. Most scientists throughout the Realities don’t even know what it is, much less how to use it.”
“What are you talking about?” Master George said.
Jane didn’t take her eyes off Tick, answering her former boss without so much as the courtesy of a glance. “George, as usual, you speak to me with your condescending, I-know-more-than-you-do arrogance. Now shut up.”
Tick looked over at Master George, shocked at how childishly rude Jane’s command had been. The old man glowered, his face redder than ever, his lips quivering despite being pressed together so hard they were almost white. But he didn’t say anything.
“The Blade Tree before you,” Jane continued, her expression still angry, “is made from the substance I was trying to tell you about before being so rudely interrupted. No tool of modern science could’ve accomplished such a thing as creating this object, I assure you. It took my ever-growing skills—fostered from my connection with the Thirteenth Reality—along with the additional powers granted to me by being unified with Chu’s Dark Infinity, and an understanding of physics only my innate brilliance combined with a lifetime of study could accomplish.”
She leaned closer to Tick. “Think on this, Atticus. As great as my gifts over Chi’karda have become, I could not have done this without the catalyst and boosting power of Chu’s failed mechanism. In many ways, you are my partner. Think on that as you see what’s about to happen.”
She knelt down before him, reached out her disgusting right hand, and placed it on Tick’s knee. Even through his jeans, he could feel the roughness of her palm, the tiny pricks of metal jutting out from her skin. Though every instinct told him to get up, scream, and run as far away as possible, he refused to cower away from her.
Jane’s mask melted and flowed into an evil grin.
“Yes, Atticus,” she said in a mockingly gentle voice. “Think on what you did to me as you watch billions of people in the Fifth Reality die.”
Tick had hoped deep down that she hadn’t meant it when she’d said her plan was to destroy an entire planet. But the demented tone of her next statement erased all doubt—and hope.
“Billions, Atticus. Billions.”
Chapter
21
~
The Unleashing
The constant, terrible, pulsing waves of sound increased in volume, rattling Sato’s skull as the earthquake’s intensity slowly escalated.
He crawled toward Windasill, unable to get back to his feet. The house shook like a ship at sea, thrown about by massive waves and wind. Things crashed all around them: lamps, dishes, picture frames, decorative trinkets of glass. Their remains littered the floor, sharp and vicious. Sato picked through the wreckage, ignoring the pricks of pain, the feel of moistness on his palms. He refused to look down, hoping it was sweat, not blood.
He’d seen Windasill fall but hadn’t heard a peep from her since. With no idea where Mothball, Rutger, and Tollaseat had gone off to, Sato could only think to try to help where he could. Windasill.
He rounded an overturned cabinet, the large wooden drawers spilling out. Windasill was on the floor, lying on her side, a trickle of blood running from her mouth. Her eyes were closed, but her chest rose and fell with deep breaths.
“Windasill!” he yelled. When she didn’t respond, he lurched forward. He felt like he was trying to move with three extra arms and legs. Thumping to the floor next to her, he smashed his nose against the ground. Somehow, despite the world shaking all around him, he got his arms around her and lifted her head into his lap as he sat up.
“Windasill!” he shouted again.
A moan escaped her, and her eyes flickered open. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
Sato wouldn’t have understood if he hadn’t been able to see her lips mouth the words. “I don’t know!” he shouted back. “I—”
“Sato!”
Mothball’s voice. He turned his head to see her and Rutger at the front door, the two of them clutching the doorframe as their bodies swayed back and forth, constantly bumping into each other. He could see past them to the trees whipping in the wind. The sky was dark, only a few stars barely bright enough to flicker.
How had he gotten here? He thought he’d been moving toward the kitchen, toward the back of the house. “Where’s your dad?” he yelled, completely disoriented.
“Out in the yard! Come on!” Mothball let go of the doorframe and stumbled toward him, her tall body losing the balance battle as she toppled to the floor, almost on top of her mom. She quickly got her hands and feet under her and began helping him with Windasill.
Like three drunken sailors, they got up, shuffled to the door, glass crunching under their feet with every heavy step. Rutger did what he could, reaching out and holding onto clothes, pulling, pushing. Soon they were all outside, where at least the danger of a house falling down on top of them was eliminated.
Sato drew in ragged breaths, his chest heaving as he released Windasill into Mothball’s care. He spread his feet in the grass of the front yard, putting his hands on his knees to keep his balance as best he could. The earthquake rumbled on, distant sounds of destruction wafting through the night: crunching wood and breaking glass, alarms blaring and people screaming.
Sato couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The trees seemed to be jumping up and down. The yard looked like a bed of thin grass growing on a lake, rippling in waves that made him queasy. The road and driveway did the same, cracking and crumpling.
Through it all, suffusing it all, was that sound, thrumming and humming and buzzing, like horns and bees and gongs amplified a thousand fold. Sato’s head felt split in two, pain lancing into his eyeballs. He’d lived in Japan most of his life and endured a dozen or so earthquakes. But nothing like this. Not even close.
All he could think was that the world was coming to an end.
~
“Dark Matter,” Jane said after letting her statement about killing billions of people sink in. She was acting as though she’d merely announced she was having layoffs at the fangen factory. Tick realized he was more scared of Jane’s insanity than he was of her powers over Chi’karda.
“What do you mean, dark matter?” Master George asked. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe your fancy tree statue is mad
e of dark matter. Impossible. Utterly impossible, and you’ve now proven yourself quite mad. As if we needed any further proof on the matter.”
“Dark matter,” Jane repeated, as if she hadn’t heard Master George. “It makes up more than seventy percent of the universe and yet, until recently, no one could determine its nature. I’ll spare you hours of lecture and say this—by combining the powers of Chi’karda with the non-baryonic dark energy, I can eliminate the electromagnetic forces holding the Fifth Reality together. I can ignite extreme entropy. In other words, I can dissolve it into floating atomic gunk.”
Tick knew a little about dark matter, mostly from a couple of books he’d read. But they had been science fiction stories that didn’t really explain what it was exactly, just made up some cool uses for it. Destructive uses. Cataclysmic destruction. If Jane was serious about what she could do with it . . .
“The connections between my dark matter components are already strengthening, channeling through the hub of the black tree, magnified by my Alterants, each one of whom is set up in her own Reality, in these same coordinates. The soulikens are strong in these Alterants of mine, just as I knew they would be. Our genetic makeup is almost perfectly compatible. Any one of them could have done what I have done in the Thirteenth, if only they’d been given the opportunity.”
Her voice grew quiet. “The Chi’karda is flowing, my friends, flowing on a scale I doubt you could scarcely comprehend. Soon the dark matter will be linked, and the Blade will do its slicing.”
Dark matter. Alterants. Soulikens. Chi’karda. Blade. Jane’s words bounced around inside Tick’s mind, trying to sort themselves into something that made sense. But it wasn’t working. He felt completely confused and out of his league. Jane was up to something monstrous.
Mistress Jane finally looked away from Tick, taking in each of his friends one by one with her mad gaze. Then she settled back on him. “I don’t expect you to comprehend the workings of the Blade of Shattered Hope. Just know this, and know it well so you can spread the word: the Blade is a series of dark matter components, linked by my Alterants to create the greatest flow of Chi’karda since the beginning of time and space. And when I tap into that power and give the order to sever the Fifth Reality, the dark matter will consume the Fifth like a black hole. The Fifth will cease to exist—along with every man, woman, child, beast, insect, and plant living there. That is what you are about to witness.”
Tick couldn’t hold back anymore. “How can you do something like this? You’re always spewing this garbage about wanting to do good, but now you suddenly think it’s okay to kill billions of people?”
“Yes, Atticus, you’re absolutely correct.”
She turned and motioned to the closest screen, where moving images had now appeared in the spinner’s projected circle. A woman sat huddled on another odd black sculpture—this one had a solid top and bottom connected by dozens of curved, twisty rods. The lady was dirty and appeared to be terrified and hungry, but Tick could tell she was an Alterant of Jane. He remembered his time with the “real” Jane at Chu’s mountainous palace. This lady had the same black hair, the same eyes, the same face.
Tick looked at the other screens and saw similar video feeds. More Alterants, more black sculptures. Each woman had her own unique attributes, but there was enough there to see that all of them were Jane’s inter-Reality twins. In one of the video feeds, the image shook, as if the person holding the camera was doing some kind of jig. The Alterant was screaming uncontrollably, trying to free herself from the chains binding her to the dark black object below her. Then the other video feeds started to shake as well, one by one, worsening every time Tick looked at a new screen.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Jane said, “about walking softly and kindly as I try to achieve my dream of a Utopian Reality. I’ll tread lightly no longer. The people of the Fifth will die, yes, but it is for the good of mankind. In the long run, we will all be eternally grateful for their sacrifice.”
Master George’s whole body trembled with rage. “How could even your twisted, sickened mind stretch a tragedy of such proportions to something that will achieve good? You’ve lost your soul, Jane.”
Jane’s hand whipped out again, her palm facing George. But she paused, then slowly withdrew it back into her robe. “Yes, you may be right. But if I’m willing to sacrifice billions of lives, wouldn’t it be logical for me to also be willing to sacrifice my soul? I don’t care what guilt I must endure, what internal torment I must suffer for the rest of my life. Only one thing matters, and I will see it achieved.”
“Why are those places shaking?” Paul blurted out, pointing to the screens. Every image now showed a world that seemed to be suffering from massive earthquakes. The Jane Alterants jerked about, still chained to the black sculptures that had toppled over on their sides.
“The Chi’karda is building, that’s why,” Jane answered, her voice so calm it made Tick mad. “Each Reality will see its own effects from the Blade’s purge of the Fifth, but in the end, they’ll suffer minimal damage. And all of my Alterants will survive to move on to the next phase of my plan. All except for the one in the Fifth, of course.”
Tick was filled with turmoil. Though he didn’t entirely understand what was going on, he felt an overwhelming responsibility to do something, to at least try something. He looked down into his lap, where his hands were clasped, squeezing them together so hard his fingers drained of blood. Maybe, if he could just reach for a trickle of Chi’karda . . . experiment a little . . .
“It’s time for me to bend the Blade to my will,” Jane announced. “Move from your chairs and die, as will Atticus’s family. Frazier’s watching. Remember to keep your eyes on the spinners. If your abilities to spread the message of what you witness today aren’t sufficient, there’ll be no reason for me to keep you alive.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned sharply and walked away, back to a spot before the black tree.
Tick barely saw her go. He was still looking down, concentrating on his hands. He didn’t know exactly why, but it helped to have a spot for his eyes to focus on as he mentally probed his mind and heart and body, searching for a spark of Chi’karda. Something small, he told himself, something Jane won’t be able to sense . . .
“This can’t be for real,” Sofia said next to him, though he barely heard her over the sounds of the humming tree and through his efforts to think. “She can’t possibly do something like this.”
“She’s doing it,” Paul said. “Look at her. She’s a nut job.”
Tick finally closed his eyes, squeezing his mind as he tried to latch onto that mysterious something within him. He pictured Jane, focusing on his hatred of her. He pictured his family. He tried to think about what his heart must look like, pumping blood to his veins. It always started there, the warmth—
There. He could feel it. A spark. A little surge of heat. Like a flickering flame.
Just as he’d done before in his basement, Tick reached for the warmth, mentally grasping it with unseen hands. He didn’t fully comprehend how he was doing it, but he threw all his energy into doing it anyway.
But then Master George said something, and even though Tick heard it only from a distance, as though it had been spoken through a thick wall, the words sliced through his concentration. The flame of Chi’karda, small to begin with, went out completely.
Tick opened his eyes and looked at Master George. “What did you say?” he asked, practically shouting to be heard over the thrumming of the tree.
The old man hung his head sadly. “It’s true, I’m afraid. I believe Sato, Mothball, and Rutger are in the Fifth Reality even as we speak.”
Chapter
22
~
Lightning and Flame
Terror. Panic. Fear.
Those were words Lisa associated with disaster movies and scary books. News stories of dangerous lands thousands of miles away. History lessons of wars past. In her sixteen-and-a-half years of life, sh
e’d never considered that one day those words might describe part of her own life, her own experience. Though she tried to be brave for her sister, she couldn’t keep herself from crying every few minutes. Kayla’s tears were a constant.
They’d been in the small room for at least a full day, maybe longer. Sparsely decorated, it held only two hard wooden chairs and a small bed with a table and lamp next to it. Drab wallpaper covered the walls, and ugly brown carpet covered the floor. There were no windows.
She had no idea how they’d gotten there. She’d been sleeping in her bed, dreaming about something icy crawling down her back, and then she woke up in this room, lying on the floor with Kayla right next to her. Since then, food had been brought to them by cruel ladies who refused to answer any of her questions and who glared at the two girls as if she and Kayla were hardened criminals.
Kidnapped, imprisoned, hated for no reason. It was all terrifying. The worst part was not knowing anything. She and Kayla mostly huddled together on the bed, hugging and consoling, sharing their tears. Lisa had no idea how many times she’d said the words, “It’ll be okay,” but it had to be at least one hundred.
She knew this had something to do with her brother. No one had told Lisa anything directly, but she knew about the Realitants and how Tick was special to them, helping them in some way. And somehow it had all led to this.
Come save us, Tick, she thought. I know you got us into this mess. Now come get us out!
Someone knocked hard on the door, just once, then opened it. Lisa had already started scooting as far away from the door as possible, dragging Kayla with her to the other side of the bed.
It was the older of the two ladies, her gray hair pulled into a tight bun, her pale face full of hard-lined wrinkles. “Might wanna see this,” she said gruffly. Then she opened the door wider and stepped to the side, nodding toward the hallway.