“If you’ll go with me,” Sato said, the rush of adrenaline inside sounding like an ocean’s roar in his ears, “and fight to help my friend and stop Jane, then I promise to go back to your world with you and lead the war against the Bugs. The endgame of all endgames. We won’t stop until we wipe them from existence. All of them! We will fight. And I swear, we will win!”
The roar that filled that impossible place made Sato want to take a step backward and cover his ears. He did neither.
He stood tall and yelled right along with the warriors from the Fifth Reality.
Chapter
37
~
Shivers
The sounds of the night-darkened forest were starting to get to Tick as he and his friends slowly made their way eastward.
Besides the normal buzz of insects going about their business, a wind had picked up, something that seemed impossible based on how many trees crowded their pathway. Limbs and branches swayed and scratched against each other; leaves rustled; small animals jumped and ran through the bushy ground cover. Eerie mating calls moaned through the air, and every once in a while a cat-like thing screamed far in the distance. It all added up to give Tick a major case of the shivers.
He’d tried his best to show a brave face when telling the others about how the Haunce wanted them to be caught by the Sleeks. It had seemed a practical matter—the best way they could get into the Factory and possibly face-to-face with Jane. And the others had reluctantly agreed to the plan after wasting five minutes arguing about it. Master George had proven to be the voice of reason that cut through the obvious hesitancy to do something so scary.
But now, trampling their way through the spooky woods, his flashlight beam stabbing the darkness ahead, getting closer and closer to something that was created by and for evil, Tick felt a different kind of fear than he’d ever experienced before. A thick terror sprinkled his skin with chills and surged in his throat, like a balloon had been shoved down there. With every crick and crash of broken twigs and crushed leaves as his companions and he walked forward, he had to fight the urge to look around, searching for an enemy he knew was coming for him.
Instead he forced himself to look ahead, to keep walking and dodging his way through the tightly packed trees until the attack came. He held onto the fact that they wouldn’t have to fight or run this time—they just had to give up and be taken prisoner.
“Tick,” came a soft whisper from behind him. Sofia. “Have you seen or heard anything weird yet?”
Tick turned to look at her quickly before facing forward again, not missing a step. “We don’t really need to whisper,” he called out, louder than he needed to. “It kind of defeats the purpose of what we’re doing. And no, I haven’t really noticed anything too weird yet.”
“Nothing too weird?” Paul repeated. “Some demon cat is being eaten by Satan out in the woods, screaming its fool head off. I’d call that weird.”
Tick had to suppress a snicker, a fleeting break from the fear that had been suffocating him. “It’s probably just a deer or something that broke a leg.”
“A deer? Never heard anything sound like that on Bambi.”
Master George spoke up. “My guess would be that we’re getting quite close to the area where these guardian creatures roam and hunt. Based on what I’ve learned from Mothball’s, er, reports.”
George cleared his throat in an embarrassed sort of way, and Tick’s suspicions shot up enough to make him stop walking. He turned to face him. “You just said ‘er’ and cleared your throat. What aren’t you telling us?”
Paul and Sofia stopped as well and faced Master George. Tick held the flashlight so that the beam pointed at the ground, but the glow was enough to show a tight look of worry on the man’s face.
“Really should keep walking, don’t you think?” he said, trying to smile but somehow making himself look even more uneasy. He feebly pointed toward the direction they were heading.
“What’s wrong?” Sofia asked.
“Yeah,” Paul added. “You look constipated all of a sudden.”
Master George folded his hands together—they’d been twitching slightly at his sides. “Our Realitant spies have recently been providing Mothball with information on the Factory.”
“And you didn’t say anything?” Sofia shouted. The echo of her voice seemed to hang in the tops of the trees for a full five seconds.
“Calm yourself, goodness gracious me,” Master George snapped back, Sofia’s outburst having brought back some dignity to his face. “We need to go there no matter what I know, and I was merely waiting for the right time to speak on it. But, if you must hear it now, what I have to say will only make our reasons for going forward even stronger.”