The Hunt for Dark Infinity (The 13th Reality #2) (8 page)

“I’m tired of coming up with names for these people,” Jane grumbled to herself.

She stood up, took one last look at the beauty of her fortress grounds, then went back to work. There was much to be done.

~

A Major Rule Violation

O
n the morning of August 22, Tick and his friends barely said a word during breakfast with his family, scared to death that somehow they’d slip up and say something about the incident in the forest. They were having enough trouble already with his mom—she kept insisting Dad should go with them, that they should demand Master George allow Edgar to be a Realitant or they would all quit.

Tick hated seeing how much his mom worried. She’d never looked so distressed and unhappy. Seeing his mom sobbing uncontrollably was just about enough to rip Tick’s heart into two pieces. But he knew they had no choice, and he also knew his dad would figure out a way to console her after they were gone.

Luckily, Dad was firmly on their side, though he, too, often failed to hide the worries and concerns inflicted on his own heart.

After stuffing food and clothes into their backpacks, and after a terribly tearful good-bye with Tick’s family, the three Realitants set off for the cemetery near the town square of Deer Park. Tick thought it was a little surreal, like his parents had packed him off to summer camp instead of to another reality.

“Man, your mom
really
loves you, dude,” Paul said, adjusting his backpack.

“Yeah, I guess,” Tick replied.

“You
guess?
” Sofia said. “My parents are just glad to get me out of the house. ‘Yes, sweetie, run along to your adventures. Don’t forget to brush your teeth!’”

Paul kicked a loose rock on the road. “You know my strategy—ask for forgiveness when I get back.”

Tick didn’t respond, unable to get the look on his mom’s face out of his head.

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the cemetery.

~

“So good to see you!” George said for the hundredth time that morning. He reached out to shake the hand of William Schmidt, an old man from the Third Reality who Sato thought looked like someone three steps from death’s door. Sato stifled a yawn, wondering why George always made him do stuff like this with him.

They stood at the entrance to the large assembly hall, a wide auditorium cut into the stone with a stage in the front and a tinted window at the back overlooking the Grand Canyon. Sato knew they’d somehow camouflaged the windows in the complex, but it still seemed like a foolish thing. He could only imagine the news explosion that would happen if they were discovered.

The Big Meeting wasn’t scheduled to begin for another ninety minutes, but the Realitants had been pouring in for hours, wanting to meet and greet and speculate. Sato had never met such strange and diverse people in all his life, and couldn’t help but feel amazed at the sheer effort of maintaining such an organization.

A slender woman with flaming red hair entered the assembly hall next, enough makeup on her face to hide a dozen boils. She smiled as George shook her hand, then focused on Sato, nodding her head.

“Is this one of the new recruits?” she asked, her high voice filled with a creepy sweetness.

“Why, yes, yes, he is,” George replied, his voice loud and prideful. “Young Sato here has proven himself quite valuable in the last few months. A real worker, eh, Sato?”

Sato shook the lady’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” He wanted to add,
Would you mind killing me, please? I’m bored.

“My name is Priscilla Persephone,” the redhead replied in her slightly disturbing, shrill voice. “I’ve heard great things about your mission to obtain Mistress Jane’s Barrier Wand. Good to know Master George can trust such . . . important duties to someone so young, instead of depending on veterans like myself.”

Priscilla gave George a hard stare, then walked off to grab a glass of orange juice and a pastry.

George mumbled something under his breath; it sounded like he’d used the words
ugly hag
and
yapping dog.

“What did you say?” Sato asked.

George waved at the air. “Oh, nothing, Master Sato, nothing at all.”

The next person George greeted was a younger, much prettier woman named Nancy Zeppelin. Her golden hair and brilliant blue eyes made her look like she’d just stepped off a Paris fashion runway. Sato didn’t realize he was staring until George nudged him with an elbow.

“Oh, um, my name is Sato,” he said, feeling his face grow warm.

“Nice to meet you. Congratulations on joining the—”

Before she could finish, Rutger rushed into the auditorium, yelling George’s name, waddling like a fat duck trying to catch its ducklings before they crossed a busy road.

“Goodness gracious me,” George said, trying to calm the short man. “What is it, Rutger?”

Rutger spoke in short bursts, sucking in gasps of air between words. “Tick . . . and the others . . . their nanolocators . . . everything seems normal . . . at the cemetery . . . but it won’t work . . .”

George reached down and grasped Rutger by the shoulders. “Take a deep breath, man, then explain yourself.”

Rutger did as he was told, closing his eyes briefly before opening them again. But when he spoke, it came out just like before. “I don’t understand . . . all their readings . . . normal . . . no malfunctions, no blips . . . but the Wand won’t wink them in. They’re standing there . . . waiting! It won’t work!”

George tapped his lips, looking down at Sato then at the mingling Realitants gathered in the assembly hall. His eyes seemed afire with concern. “Oh, dear.”

“What’s going on?” Sato asked.

“Unfortunately, I think I know
exactly
what’s going on.” George started walking toward the stage, his steps brisk.

Sato looked down at Rutger. “Do you?”

Rutger shook his head, his face so lined and creased that Sato worried he’d drop dead of a heart attack. He was about to say something when George’s voice boomed across the room, echoing off the walls. Sato turned to see George standing at a microphone on the stage.

“My fellow Realitants,” he announced. “This meeting must start immediately. Please, find anyone lingering in the halls, bring them here, and take your seats.”

“What’s wrong?” someone yelled from the audience.

George paused before answering. “We’ve had a violation of Rule Number 462.”

~

Tick fidgeted, rocking back and forth on his feet, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants. Sofia stood to his left, Paul to his right. The sun made its way toward the top of the sky, beating down on the cemetery with a ruthless heat. Tick hoped Master George would wink them away to a nice, cool place; he couldn’t wait to tell him about the bizarre incident in the woods with Mr. Chu. They’d seen no sign of him since, and several calls to the school had only hit the answering machine.

“Come on, already,” Paul muttered, looking up at the cloudless blue sky as if he expected Master George to float down in a balloon and pick them up. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the air, “Yo! We’re ready! Wink us, man!”

“Maybe he will once you quit acting like an idiot,” Sofia said.

“At least I’m
acting,
” Paul replied.

Sofia pulled back to punch him for his troubles when the screeching sound of a car slamming on its brakes in front of the cemetery entrance made them look in that direction. Tick’s heart skipped a beat when he realized it was his mom. She was already out the door and past the stone archway, running at full speed.

“Mom!” Tick yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Atticus, don’t leave yet!” she said, looking ridiculous as her arms pumped back and forth. Tick realized that he’d never, not once, seen his mother run before.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice now that she’d almost reached them, only twenty feet away.

“I have to tell you something—I have to tell you before you go.” She slowed, then stopped, sucking in air. “It’s very important.”

Tick was so relieved she wasn’t going to prevent him from leaving, he failed to realize how odd it was that she’d raced here to tell him . . . what?

“You okay?” he asked. “What is it?”

Having regained her breath, she began talking. “I should’ve told you this years ago—at the least, I should’ve told you four months ago. I—”

But Tick didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Instead, in that instant, he and his friends were winked away to a very strange place.

~

A Very Strange Place

T
ick got his wish in one regard—the place was cold. Beyond that, he couldn’t find one positive thing about it.

They stood on a cracked stone road, small pools of stagnant water filling the gaps. The smoggy air reeked of things burnt—oil, rubber, tar. Metal structures lined the long street on both sides, towering over them, black and dirty. Tick first thought they were buildings of some kind, but that notion quickly evaporated. They were more like sculptures, the dark and twisted vision of some maniac artist.

“Man,” Paul whispered, “it’s like Gotham City.”

In some spots, wide, arching pieces rose fifty feet in the air, ending in a jagged, ripped edge as if some enormous monster had ripped the top off with its teeth. In other places, huge, towering cylinders—some taller than New York City skyscrapers—ascended to the sky until they disappeared into the menacing, storm-heavy clouds. Squat, deformed lumps sat in the nooks and crannies, like weathered statues of ancient Greek gods. Hideous carvings of animals, worse than the ugliest gargoyle Tick had ever seen balancing on the outer walls of a cathedral, lay strewn about like stray dogs, frozen in place by a rainstorm of molten metal. Random triangles and pentagons hung oddly from various structures, seeming to defy the laws of physics.

All of it, everything in sight, was made out of a dark gray metal that dully reflected the scant light filtering through the clouds above. And there was no variation—the bizarre structures and sculptures lay everywhere, in every direction, as far as Tick could see.

One word seemed to describe the place better than anything else: dreary.

“Where are we?” Sofia asked, slowly turning in a circle, just as Tick and Paul were.

Good question,
Tick thought. He didn’t know if he was looking forward to any locals showing up to answer it.

“What kind of people would
live
here?” he asked, trying to shake the worry of his mom and her undelivered message.

“People who like to gouge their eyes out, obviously,” Paul said. “This has to be the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.”

“They ever heard of flowers?” Sofia said. “Maybe a splash of color here and there?”

“Do you think we’re in one of the Thirteen Realities?” Tick asked. “One we haven’t heard of yet?”

“Where else could we be?” Paul answered. “Does this look like something in Reality Prime to you?”

“I don’t know—maybe these are ruins or something.”

Paul coughed. “Uh . . . don’t think so, big guy. Pretty sure we would’ve heard about a place this weird.”

“What could’ve led to something like this?” Sofia asked, sliding her hand along the flat side of a large, boxy structure, big spheres bubbling out the side of it like pimples. “How could they be so different from us?”

Tick stepped toward one of the cylindrical towers, following Sofia’s lead and touching the black metal. It was as cold and hard as it looked.

A faint buzzing sound filled the air. At first, Tick panicked because it reminded him of the Gnat Rat and its mechanical hornets that had attacked him in his bedroom the previous fall. But an instant after the droning began, a burst of light to the left caught his attention.

Near a large circle of metal, jutting up from the ground like a half-buried flying saucer, sparks of brilliant white light popped and flashed, igniting into existence only to disappear a second later, like the brief flames shooting off a welder. The sparks seemed random at first, exploding all over the place, high and low in the air, across an area dozens of feet wide, reflecting off the metal circle in dull smears of color. But then the strangest thing happened.

The sparks began to form words.

Tick thought his mind was playing tricks, the constant flashing of lights wreaking havoc on his vision. But soon it became obvious as large letters of bright, streaky light appeared, hanging in the air, flashing and dancing but remaining solid enough to read. In a matter of seconds, a wall of words flickered before them, as big as a movie screen.

Tick swallowed his awe and confusion, reading the words as quickly as possible, scared they might disappear at any second: