~
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 fil
ling 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.
“It’s ruddy well stopped, it ’as,” Mothball said, a crooked-toothed grin breaking across her face.
Paul ran away from the pile, craning his neck to look up at the mountain as he got farther away. Though full of cracks and missing pieces, the building wasn’t shaking or falling apart anymore. The ground wasn’t trembling. The air had grown still and silent, the dust already settling to the ground.
“Sofia did it,” Mothball said, waving Paul back over to help. “Come on, gotta clear this pile. Gotta find ’er and Master Tick.”
Encouraged for the first time in awhile, Paul sprinted back and started sorting through the rubble with renewed vigor, knowing his hurt arm would be some kind of sore tomorrow. Piece after piece, chunk after chunk, the Realitants worked together until a shaft of light escaped from within. They’d found a way through.
“We did it!” Paul shouted, grabbing more pieces. Soon they had a hole big enough for them to enter the damaged building.
Mothball went first, then Sally, then Paul and the other Realitants. They regrouped inside, sweeping their weapons back and forth in case of an attack. There wasn’t a sign of anyone or anything dangerous, only dust and debris.
“Come on, let’s—” Paul started to say, then stopped when he saw movement up ahead in the hallway. He couldn’t make it out at first—it looked like an injured animal crawling along, slide-and-stop, slide-and-stop.
But then the dust settled and the figures came into the light. Everything became clear.
It was Sofia, her back to them, dragging Tick’s battered body down the broken hallway.
~
Somehow, Jane finally quit screaming.
She lay on the floor, her mind trying to shut down in order to avoid the sheer agony of her pain. It filled every inch of her, every organ, every cell, every molecule. Her nerves bristled with it. The slightest movement of her ragged breathing sent fresh pinpricks shooting across her skin, through her skin, into her blood and muscles and bone. She hurt, she ached, she stung. The pain consumed her. The only thing that kept her from weeping was the promise of even more pain.
I tried to help him, she thought. I was only trying to help him. How? How could he have done this to me?
Her eyes had been closed for a long time, the prospect of seeing the damage to her body too horrific. But finally, she allowed her eyelids to slide up. The movement sent a new wave of agony across her face and through her head, as if needles had pierced her skull. But she kept her eyes open.
She did not, however, have the courage to move anything else. She saw only what she could from her current position, crumpled like a rag doll. But it was enough to let her know her life was over.
Shards of gold, small but jagged, covered every inch of her body, jutting from the skin at all kinds of angles. Blood was everywhere, seeping from the wounds. Her body was like a sea of red, a million tiny golden icebergs breaking the surface. Most of the shards appeared to be fused to her skin, impossible to remove. She could only imagine what her face must look like. A beast. A hideous beast.
A bit of the old Jane returned to her then. The one who’d been courageous and strong, unwilling to break under any task or trial. The one who’d fought on, no matter what.
Realities help me, I can do this. I will do this.
Bracing herself, Jane counted silently to three, readying her mind and soul for what she was about to do. Then, as quickly and as efficiently as she could, she pushed her arms below her and stood up.
The blood-curdling scream that erupted from her was inhuman—the terrified shriek of tortured demons. The sound tore through the air, filled the world around her, pierced her own ears until they bled. It seemed impossible that she didn’t faint from the pain that had ruptured inside of her like the detonation of a nuclear bomb.
She stood still, enduring. Eventually, the pain lessened. Barely, but enough so that she had the awkward sensation of bliss, a warm calm.
All things are relative, she thought.
Then, a very strange thing occurred to her. She didn’t understand it, didn’t know how the thought formed in her mind or where it came from. Perhaps it had been something Reginald had said in the moments before he ran away, something he’d told the boy about Dark Infinity. No matter—she’d figure it out later. But regardless of how she knew, she did know.
She had changed forever. In the midst of all the horror, perhaps there was a silver lining after all. Yes, she knew. She knew.
Mistress Jane had no Barrier Wand within her reach. No one in her Reality had a Wand to pull her away from this place. No one, anywhere, had a lock on her nanolocator besides those who could do nothing about it. Yet, despite all that, Jane winked herself away, away from the Fourth Reality and back to the Thirteenth.
She did it by thinking it.
Yes, she had changed forever.
Chapter
49
~
An Unfortunate Meeting
Tick looked dead.
He lay flat on his back, his head cradled in Sofia’s lap as every last Realitant stood in a group around them, staring down solemnly as if it were a funeral. Tick’s face was pale, scratches and welts marring almost every inch of him. His clothes were ripped, bloodied, even melted in some places, attached to the skin. But he was breathing, marked by the slight rise and fall of his chest.
Man, Paul thought. When that dude wakes up, he’s gonna hurt something awful.
They were gathered in an open grassy area of the ruined park, ignoring the hundreds of people who had evacuated Chu’s mountain building. Most of them stood in silent huddles, staring back at the black structure, probably in shock at how close they’d come to dying.
“Gonna be just fine, he will,” Mothball announced, kneeling next to Tick. “Sofia ’ere may ruddy well win a medal from the old man for this.”
The crowd of Realitants broke into applause as Sally bellowed a long-winded cheer that echoed across the park but made absolutely no sense. Paul thought he caught the words “rabbit” and “coon
dog.” Sofia showed no reaction to anything, staring at a blank spot in front of her.
Mothball reached across Tick and grabbed him around the torso, lifting him up with a heavy grunt. His body flopped over her shoulder with no sign of life, his arms and legs dangling.
“Come on,” she said. “Chi’karda spot’s only a ’undred yards up yonder.” She nodded her head in the direction away from the destruction.
As the others started following Mothball, Paul reached down and offered Sofia a hand. “Let’s go, Miss Italy. Tick’s gonna be fine, thanks to you. You can beg me for forgiveness later.”
Sofia took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. “Forgiveness for what? Killing more spiders than you did?”
“No. For not telling me you had a super-secret mission to put Tick in a coma.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry that Master George thinks I’m better than you.”
Paul sighed. “You’re forgiven.”
A shout from behind turned both their heads. A dark-haired man, his clothes ripped to shreds, his body battered and bloody, was limping along as fast as he could, yelling something unintelligible. Sofia recognized him before Paul did.
“It’s Chu!” she yelled. “Mothball! That’s Reginald Chu!”
Mothball turned and ran back toward them, Tick still slung over her shoulder. “Right, you are. Reginald Chu! Sally! Grab the monster!”
Sally had barely taken a step before an even louder shout came from a cluster of trees to their right. Another dark-haired man bolted from the shadows, his fist raised in the air, screaming obscenities that made Paul wince. Then, in disbelief, he saw who it was. Paul looked back at the other man.
Two Reginald Chus were running straight for them.
“Whoa,” he whispered.
“Oh, no,” Mothball said, standing right next to Paul. “Oh, no!” she said louder. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Run! Everyone run!”