“I know the feeling,” Mothball muttered under her breath.
They reached a dusty old mailbox on the side of the road with the word “Tanner” printed on the side in faded black letters. A long, gravel driveway cut through a cornfield before disappearing into a grove of trees about a half a mile away.
“Here we are,” Mothball said. “He’s waiting for us I ’spect.”
Thankfully Sally didn’t say another word as they started walking down the long driveway.
Rutger sat in front of his huge screen, reviewing all the data he’d gathered from the instruments spread throughout the Realities. The ones that had survived the destruction, anyway.
He missed Mothball.
Yes, she was a tall sack of bones who took every chance she got to make fun of him. But she was also his best friend, and he hated thinking of her out there without him, especially considering how dangerous things had become. A world suffering from chaos that you can’t help breeds chaos that you can. The thieves and looters and murderers would be out in full force now that the police, firemen, and other authorities were occupied with search and rescue.
Of course, Mothball was a tough old bear. She’d be fine.
He began scrolling through the data—everything from weather reports to measurements of quantum anomalies in atmosphere particle waves. The data was haywire, still settling from the massive disruptions caused by that red-faced Mistress Jane and her attempt to sever the Fifth Reality from existence. What a disaster that had been, saved only by the inexplicable powers of Master Tick. However, it seemed as if saving the universe from one final and all-ending catastrophe had created lots of smaller ones.
Something caught his eye.
He zoomed in to take a look at one of the measuring stations located in an old forest in the Third Reality; a box of instruments had been left there almost a decade ago. There’d been an absolute flurry of activity there just a couple of days earlier, spiking the Chi’karda levels through the roof. And then it had ended abruptly, going from immeasurably high to zero in an instant. Rutger read through it all, trying his best to interpret what it could mean.
He noticed that the information had an attachment: a photograph. Many of the instrument boxes had cameras installed nearby, but Rutger was surprised to see that something had been taken and sent before whatever had happened to end the data flow. The box had to have been destroyed eventually.
He was so anxious that his fat fingers hit the wrong key twice, but he finally opened up the attached picture.
There were trees—lots of them. And down the middle of the photo, a gash, as if someone had painted over the forest scene with an image of a beach. And on that beach was Mistress Jane, looking toward the camera with her menacing red mask. Over her shoulder, standing a ways behind her in the sand, was another figure.
Rutger quickly zoomed in, leaning forward to get a better look. His gasp echoed throughout the entire Realitant headquarters.
It was Tick.
Chapter 10
Probing
The air around Tick hummed.
He, Chu, and Mistress Jane had been holding hands for more than an hour, eyes closed, the campfire slowly dying. Tick could barely hear the last flickers of its flames over the thrumming sound that came from the Chi’karda that burned between the three linked humans. Anyone who might have observed the group from afar would have seen a massive cloud of tiny orange lights, a fiery mist that churned and boiled around them.
Chu, of course, had no power whatsoever over the realm of quantum physics. He had never known any kind of power unless it was manufactured with technology. But Tick and Jane were a different story. They both had control over the mysterious force that ruled all existence—Jane, because she’d been forever melded with the largest Barrier Wand ever created, and Tick, because of reasons no one had quite figured out yet. Master George had merely said he was on to something that might explain it and that it involved soulikens.
But they’d never really had a chance to talk about it, had they?
Tick couldn’t allow his mind to wander. He pushed away the thoughts trying to barrel their way in and focused on the task at hand. Escaping the Nonex.
Jane and Chu had agreed to his plan without argument. It seemed they both had grown desperate to get out and were willing to rely on Tick’s idea. He had, after all, worked directly with the Haunce and saved the entire universe.
And that’s what Tick was banking on. Mistress Jane had channeled her Chi’karda—every last drop that she could muster—into Tick for him to use as he needed. Tick had gathered it in, mixing it with his own until he had more of the natural force around him—and within him—than any human should be able to endure. A few weeks ago it would’ve killed him instantly.