Paul’s eyes hurt from looking at so many screens in the operations center, and his stomach was queasy from the shaking—though he was getting used to it—but his heart had swelled about three sizes. They were making progress. Real progress. And he could feel the power of Karma working inside of him. His mind was filled with images that he knew didn’t originate from his own thoughts.
Sofia had worked the hardest of the three of them, searching and reading every last line of Gretel’s notes. She looked exhausted and had finally taken a seat across from Rutger and Paul.
“Karma,” Sofia said, almost reverently. She held the gray box with the pressed green button in her hands. “I thought Chi’karda was like magic. Karma’s even beyond how we thought the world worked.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Paul agreed. “I think you’re right that it’s the cause of all the weirdness around us. For some reason, Karma wants things escalated. Like maybe our window of opportunity is going to be short. Whatever it is.”
Rutger slapped his thighs. “Are we all agreed on the findings, then? Our theories about what’s happened so far, and where we think it’s leading us?”
Instead of answering, Sofia looked at Paul. “What do you see in your mind, right now?”
“The place where Jane’s castle used to be,” Paul said with a smile. They’d had this conversation a dozen times already, and the answer was always the same.
“The Thirteenth Reality,” Sofia responded. “Me too.”
“Me too,” Rutger added.
They all kept seeing the same vision in their heads. Karma was communicating with them. And they knew what it meant.
“Let’s run through our data one last time,” Sofia ordered.
Tick had jogged or walked at least a couple of miles when everything changed again. At first, it was just an odd feeling, his ears popping, the drop of his stomach. But then a sound like bells and twisting metal filled the air and everything went dead silent for a few seconds; the quiet almost made him fall down, he’d grown so used to his eardrums being pounded. But then a new noise started up, and he and Mistress Jane and Reginald Chu stopped moving and looked back toward the gaping canyon they’d left behind. There was something incredibly mesmerizing about the . . . music that floated along the wind.
“What’s going on back there?” Chu asked, his voice full of irritation as if all the crazy stuff was putting a chink in his plans. Which was true, Tick admitted.
“It’s changing,” Jane announced.
Chu scoffed. “Thank you for that scientific assessment.”
Tick ignored them both, staring at the massive disk of clouds that spun above the canyon in the distance. Lightning flashed, but no thunder rumbled away from it. The bluish light that shone out of the strange floating river—which was not visible from where he stood—reflected off the bottom of the brewing storm. A buzzy, relaxed tingling went through his body and across his skin. A part of him wanted to lie down and take a nap.
“Atticus,” Chu said, his words muffled slightly as if he were outside a bubble. As if they weren’t worthy enough to overcome the sweet sounds wafting from the canyon. “What’s that look in your eyes? What do you know about what’s happening over there?”
“Nothing,” Tick said softly, though he doubted they heard him. “Nothing.”
Things changed then, so abruptly that Tick stumbled backward, falling to the ground as his eyes widened in astonishment. The slowly spinning mass of clouds instantly transformed into countless towering funnels, the roar of the twisting tornadoes wiping out the peaceful sounds from before. The clouds dropped then, falling like arrows toward the valley floor below. Quick bursts of lightning arced through the gray mist of the funnels, and this time, the thunder was loud and cracking. When the tornadoes vanished from sight beneath the upper lips of the canyon walls, Tick readied himself to stand and pull himself together.
But another sight in the sky made him stop cold. Gashes in Reality ripped open all over the place, streaks of dark and light that tore across the air. Some were a few feet long, others in the hundreds. The ground shook, and the sounds of breaking and cracking rocked the land.