The sixth of candles burned my eyes.
Horrors even among us.
Leigh tries to eat a stone.
The canine or the cat, it spat.
Pay attention to the ghoul that weeps.
Your number’s up, and it is missing. Wary the word second. Shout out your answer.
0:10
0:09
The second word of each sentence contained at least part of the numbers he was supposed to look for. To count. And yes, a number was missing.
0:04
0:03
Tick sucked in a quick breath of air then screamed as loudly as possible.
“Five! The answer is five!”
The forest around him sucked away into blackness as once again he exploded into trillions of pieces.
Chapter
57
~
From Bad to Worse
Sofia followed Rutger into the main Control Room, where Master George was waving his arms like the conductor of the world’s largest symphony. Despite all their troubles crashing down at once, a small snicker escaped Sofia. She quickly coughed to cover it up, but Paul—sitting nearby with worry on his face—noticed and broke a half-smile that looked more like a wince.
“George!” Rutger barked. “Most of the earthquakes have stopped, but it’s too late for that wave. It’s gonna be here in fifteen minutes!”
Their leader shot them a quick glance then returned his gaze to the rapidly blinking screens in front of him. “My heart can barely stand this confounded predicament!”
“What’s the latest with Sato?” Rutger asked as he and Sofia moved closer.
Master George pointed to a series of purple lines that kept appearing then disappearing. Unlike the indicators for Sato and Mothball above them, these had no names attached. “They’re doing it. They’re doing it! We’ve already winked ten children to the Grand Canyon, where Priscilla and Sally have several doctors on hand.”
Rutger let out a sigh that sounded like he’d lost every ounce of hope. “We won’t survive it,” he said in a tight whisper.
“What’s that?” Master George asked, finally giving his full attention to his partner.
“The wave. There’s no way we can survive it. It’s too big. We . . .” Rutger looked at the floor.
“What? Spit it out, man!”
“We have to leave. This location—and us with it—has zero chance of making it through the wave’s power. It’ll rip our cabling technology to shreds, then pick us up and slam us into shore. We have to leave.”
Sofia felt that shrinking sensation in her gut again. She half-expected Master George to argue, to say it would be okay, maybe express disbelief or babble about how life’s unfair. Instead, he accepted the truth and immediately moved to what needed to be done. Sofia was impressed.
“Then we can only hope they reach every child in time—we don’t have things properly set up at the Grand Canyon to wink them in from that location. We’ll wait here, monitoring the situation and managing the nanolocator patches. At least we have a bit of good news—if the earthquakes have stopped, then Atticus and Jane must’ve done their job.”
Sofia’s heart lifted, but then she remembered their own problem. “What about the wave?” she asked, her eyes meeting Paul’s, sharing a look that said so much with no need for words.
Master George puffed his chest out and folded his hands on his belly. “The four of us will wink away the second before it hits. It’s time for us to be very brave.”
~
Tick found himself back in that outer-space-like void of lights and streaks and glowing, brilliant orbs. He couldn’t feel his body, didn’t understand what or where or anything else. But he knew they’d done it even before the Haunce spoke to them.
“Through your efforts and power, we have healed the Barriers of the Realities. We will send you back now. Your worlds are not destroyed, but they have still seen great, great devastation. The healing of such things does not rest in our hands. We say farewell.”
The universe spun. Everything changed, and Tick felt the pressure of crushing diamonds.
~
Sato put everything out of his mind. The fear. The soreness of his entire body. His hunger, his exhaustion. From somewhere deep in his cells and molecules and tissue, he sucked out the adrenaline he needed to keep moving.
From one inset compartment to the next, he jumped. They were about four feet apart side to side, a little less up and down. Each and every time, for one frightening second, he thought he wouldn’t make it and instead would plummet to the unseen depths far below. But so far he’d landed each and every time, gripping and pushing and pulling, squirming his way to the children without falling to his death. Mothball was doing the same, working the other side of the stony, rounded chamber.