The Hunt for Dark Infinity (The 13th Reality #2) (41 page)

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 to 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.

~

Pacini

S
ofia 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.

~

Out of the Rubble

P
aul 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.