Then, though he would have thought it impossible, everything got worse. The pain, the sounds, the shaking, the spinning, the flashing lights. Tick didn’t think he could survive another second.
A booming crack rocked the air, and his eyes snapped open. His vision cleared in time to see that Dark Infinity had exploded into countless tiny golden pieces, flying and swirling through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard. A sparkling tornado. It sounded like millions of killer bees swarming.
“Atticus!” Jane yelled again, somewhere closer to him. “You have to stop!”
Tick knew he wasn’t thinking straight. His mind was a chaotic soup of jumbled memories and thoughts. He glanced to his right and saw Jane running for him; Chu had disappeared. A small part of his brain knew she was coming to help him, but all his eyes saw at that moment was the woman who had tried to kill him, to choke him to death in the hallway. The horrendous fear and rage he’d felt when he’d been so close to death returned full force.
He didn’t know exactly what he did, but he knew he couldn’t stop it. The swarming specks of metal that had been Dark Infinity flew at Mistress Jane, like flies descending on a feast, surrounding her in a blur of sparkling gold. The metallic tornado consumed her body, obscuring her from sight.
Somewhere deep inside of him, Tick knew he’d just done something terrible.
I didn’t mean to, he thought. I didn’t mean to!
In answer, Jane’s screams erupted through the air.
Chapter
46
~
The Drag Race
Paul threw a Rager at the only remaining metaspide close to him, watching with glee as it steamrolled into a massive ball of earth and wiped the machine out, sparks flying as pieces of crumpled metal flew in all directions.
“Yeah, ba—”
A hard claw grabbed his ankle from behind and lifted, slamming his body to the ground. Paul tried to scream but there was no breath left in his body. He looked up to see a metaspide staring down at him with glowing robotic eyes. He wanted to say something—spit, yell for help—but he could only open and close his mouth, fighting to get air back in his lungs.
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.