The Void of Mist and Thunder (The 13th Reality #4) (26 page)

Now it was early morning, and the world was full of that purple, chill air that comes right before the sun begins to show its light. Sato had slept soundly and peacefully, and when he woke up, he’d felt refreshed and filled with strength. As he sat and stared out at the distant horizon, determined to catch the moment when the sun
did
pop over the edge, he thought about what Master George had said. The old man thought there was something to the fact that all the creatures of Mistress Jane had disappeared somewhere, then reappeared in some altered state out of the Void.

Sato hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but there
was
something weird about it. When he’d first caught sight of the castle, hordes of fangen and other nasty creatures had been crawling all over the surface of the structure and its grounds. And Sato had also seen some of them fleeing when the weird breach in Reality had first split the air. But there should’ve been more creatures. Many, many more. Where had they all gone? And why weren’t their bodies strewn all over the place if they’d been killed? There’d been some bodies inside the passageway by the stream, but none anywhere else. Had they been . . . cloned? Transformed? What?

The more Sato thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Well, it was his job to find out the truth, and he meant to do it. He was glad to have a specific task to keep himself occupied.

He stood up and stretched, allowing a big, loud yawn to escape that sounded like a demented ghost.

“Get your bones all nice and rested, you did, I ’spect?”

Sato turned to see Tollaseat, who was stretching and yawning himself. “Slept great, actually. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re supposed to be doing for Master George. About the creatures and how they all disappeared.”

“Been thinkin’ myself, I ’ave,” the giant man said. “Remembered you tellin’ us all about how them nasty little buggers were runnin’ toward the middle of the castle when the mess started and all. Well, mayhaps we should be lookin’ there? Only checked the roundabout yesterday night, we did.”

Tollaseat was right. Yes, they’d walked around the entire ruins of the castle, but Tick had told everyone that the fangen and all their ugly cousins had been screaming and sprinting deeper
into
the building. Why would they have done that with the whole thing about to come down?

“You might be on to something,” Sato said. “Why don’t you and I go take a look before everyone else wakes up?”

“Could use a nice mornin’ stroll, I could.”

The two of them set off again for the destroyed home of Mistress Jane. Sato tried to ignore the huge, churning cloud of gray fog and lightning in the middle of it, but that was one task that proved impossible.

Tick stepped out of the woods near his home just as the sun tipped over the horizon and spilled bright morning light across the old, cracked road that he’d walked down a million times before. He was still disturbed by the long swath of broken, mangled trees he’d seen in the forest. They were leftover from the time he’d let loose his powers without even realizing it. Dissolving and reconstructing mass in his panic. He’d wanted to forget those episodes, but maybe it was a good reminder that he had a vast amount of power inside him. He needed to make sure he kept learning how to control it.

As he set off down the road toward his neighborhood, he started feeling the inevitable guilt. Master George had been very stern in ordering him to return to headquarters with the other Realitants and to save this reunion for another time. But it made Tick mad. His family was the most important thing to him right now, and he needed to make sure they were safe. He’d tried to wink directly to his house, but the pull of the deep Chi’karda pool in the forest had brought him there instead—exactly where he’d first seen Mothball disappear so long ago. It felt like a lifetime ago.

So this wouldn’t quite be as quick of a trip as he’d hoped. He imagined his leader and his friends sitting in the conference room, waxing on about what a poor example Tick had shown. What a bad Realitant he was. How selfish he was. But a few hours wouldn’t matter. Plus, he was pretty sure Paul and Sofia would defend him no matter what.

Tick suddenly filled up with cheer at the thought of seeing his family again. He broke into a run down the long, straight road.

Reginald Chu was scanning through a few more of the data reports Benson had wired to his reading tablet when there was an abrupt pounding on the wooden slab he called a door in his makeshift office. He almost dropped the device from the shock of the interruption, and half of him was angry, the other half relieved no one had seen his embarrassing reaction.

It took him another second to realize that the number of knocks—as hard and frantic as they were—matched the first part of his secret code. After a pause, the knocks started again. Chu quickly reached down and deactivated the lazbots.

“Oh, come on in, already!” he shouted.

Benson slipped through the door, looking as nervous as ever; trickles of sweat ran down both sides of his face.

“What, pray tell, could be so urgent?” Chu asked sternly.

“The boy. Atticus. For some reason, he left the Realitant headquarters and is all alone. I know it’s earlier than you expected, sir, but this is too golden of an opportunity. We have him tracked and know exactly where he is! With no one around him to fight off!”

Chu stood up. “Amazing—what a fool that kid can be. But let’s not forget, he doesn’t really need an army with all that Chi’karda boiling inside his body. We’ll have to tread carefully.”

“He’s heading toward his house, sir. He might be alone for only a few more minutes.”

“Oh, please,” Chu said with a laugh. “It’ll be even easier if he’s surrounded by his family. He’ll be . . . more distracted.”

“Whatever you say, boss. I mean, sir.”

Chu hardly noticed the slip. “But maybe haste is best. Ready the Bagger. We leave immediately.”

Chapter 38

A Tense Conversation

The conference room had been silent for at least five minutes.

Paul kept fidgeting in his seat, worried about Tick and wishing he hadn’t left. All his friend wanted to do was check on his family—they all did. How could anyone blame him? Just because Tick was a freak and could actually travel on his own without a Barrier Wand didn’t make him a monster. If Paul could do that fancy trick, he’d be on a beach in the Bahamas sipping lemonade and waiting for the world to end.

Oh, forget this,
he thought. Time to speak up.

“Hey, Tick will be back soon. Quit looking so sad.” Everyone in the room was staring at the table or the floor like hypnotized zombies. Sofia seemed distraught, and Mothball looked even more sullen than usual. Rutger was eating, the little stinker, but that was probably just how he dealt with things.

“You don’t understand, Master Paul,” George said. “I could see the rebellion in your friend’s eyes, and I knew he was tempted to do things that he wasn’t even thinking about yet except on a subconscious level. I knew he’d see his family, remember the horrors he’s been through, and begin to think selfish thoughts. Feel tempted to stay with them, run away, keep them safe. How can we have our Realitants run off willy-nilly when we need them the most? He shouldn’t have gone. I’m terribly sorry to say it.”

Paul understood but didn’t want to admit it. “How can you blame him for winking away really quick just to check on his family? I’m sure he’ll be back any second. You’re making too much of it!”

George slammed his hand down on the table. “I will not have you speak to me this way! I am your leader and I demand respect! We’re on the cusp of something that could kill every single living person in every Reality! Each of us have higher callings than running off to check on mums and dads!”

He stopped, and the entire room fell dead silent. Even Rutger had frozen with a piece of steak halfway to his mouth. Paul’s anger had vanished, replaced by pure shock. He’d never seen
this
before.

“I know I sound harsh,” George finally said in a much calmer voice, “but I feel as if our organization has slowly gone down the pits, so to say, since Jane embraced her evil ways and Lorena Higginbottom decided to leave our ranks. We used to be disciplined and strong and willing to sacrifice all for the greater good. But now I can’t even convince any of our members to leave their homes and come to help us. We’ve fallen apart, I swear it.”

The old man suddenly slumped down in his chair and buried his head in his hands. Paul half-expected him to sob, but he just sat there, perfectly quiet and still, for a long minute. Then he looked up, and his face was as determined as Paul had ever seen it.

“Never mind all that,” George said. “We have a job to do, and I expect us to do it. If I have to go it alone, I will. And if . . .
when
I defeat the Void of the Fourth Dimension, I’ll build the Realitants from the ground up. I stake my life on this promise to all of you.”

Paul blinked, not sure what to say.

“Ya won’t be alone s’long as
my
heart’s still tickin’, you won’t,” Mothball said. “I’ll be by your side to the bitter end, warts and all.”

“Me too,” Rutger added. Then he finally finished off his bite of juicy steak.

Sally wasn’t about to be upstaged. “Ya’ll ain’t havin’ all da fun, I can promise you
that.
”

“Paul and I—we’re in too.” Sofia said. She shot Paul a look that said he better shape up. But something in her eyes let him know that she understood his frustrations about George’s reaction to Tick leaving.

Paul groaned. “You guys know very well that I’m not quitting. But after all that Tick has done, I think it’s really lame to just snap your fingers and accuse him of being a traitor. It’s about the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It wasn’t a snap of my fingers,” George said sadly. “Master Atticus chose to go against my direct order. If my words were harsh, I apologize. But I don’t want someone by my side in the very last battle of these worlds who might turn his back on me.”

“Tick would never do that,” Paul said in a low growl. “You know it. He just went for a quick trip to check on his
family.
”

“Sorry to be the one to point this out,” Rutger said, “but he hasn’t come back yet, now has he?” His eyes darted around the room as though worried he’d said something wrong. “But no one likes the boy more than me. I hope you’ll be a little forgiving, Master George.”

The leader of the Realitants nodded slowly. “We will deal with him how we must, I assure you. However, I already have a very bad feeling that we may not see him for a while. A very bad feeling indeed.”