“Get out of our way!” Tick yelled back at him.
“Atticus,” Jane said. “We need him, remember?”
“No!” Tick was done being told how things would be done. “Chu, we don’t need you; I don’t care what Jane says. Get out of my way.”
“I have an entire army about to wink in!” Chu responded, shouting his every word. “With all my greatest creations at their disposal! They have orders to annihilate anyone and everyone in the fields behind us unless you do as I say! Don’t let their deaths, and the end of the Realities as we know it, be on your shoulders! My plan is the only way!”
“What is that thing?” Tick yelled, nodding toward the silver cube.
Jane didn’t let Chu answer. “It doesn’t matter!”
“It does! I want to know!” Tick replied. And he did. He wanted to know. Something told him it was important.
Chu lifted the cube up a couple of feet, and then he screamed out his words to be heard over the storm of the Void. “It’s made of the same matter that binds the universe together. A science that only a precious few understand. We need simply to utilize the almost infinite energy of the Void to break it apart, dissolve it—and me—into trillions of atoms. Then, with the power of your Chi’karda—both of yours—we can meld and bind myself to the very fabric of Reality. And Jane, too, if she still wishes. We can do this!”
Tick had been leaning forward, focusing with all his concentration to hear and compute every sentence as it came out of Chu’s mouth. It sounded like the ranting of a mad scientist, but Tick knew better. He couldn’t underestimate Reginald Chu. There was something here, something unprecedented in human history. And it scared Tick.
He’d have none of it. “Get out of my way!”
“Please, boy!” Chu shouted, sincere pleading in his eyes. “I swear to you, this is real. This can work. My intentions are noble! I can make the Realities better with a human side! We can finally create Jane’s Utopia!”
Tick thought the man had gone too far—losing every ounce of the scant credibility he was shooting for—when he claimed he was trying to be noble. Did Chu really expect him to believe that?
Tick looked over at Jane, and he saw the most human expression he’d ever seen on her mask. She was torn, through and through. He felt pity for her, then, shocking himself. He could see that the promise of her elusive Utopia had gotten to her.
“Mistress Jane,” Tick said, but not too loudly. Working with Chu was the worst idea possible. And yet he had no doubt the threat that the man had made was real. And something—some feeling deep within him—told him what to do.
He lurched forward and grabbed Jane by the arm, pulling her along as he walked toward Chu. Tick grabbed him by the arm with his other hand, letting Sofia’s bag dangle from his wrist. Then he broke into a run, dragging the other two along with him, fighting the monstrous winds.
A few seconds later, they slipped through the outer wall of the Void, swallowed by the gray, angry mist.
Chapter 65
Enlisted in the Army
The noise was unreal. A level that Tick had never experienced before. Loud, pounding, relentless. Gray darkness surrounded the three of them as they walked through the outskirts of the Void. Each flash of lightning was followed immediately by a brutal crack of thunder. Tick figured he’d be deaf within a half hour, if not dead.
At least the wind had stopped. Jane had used her Chi’karda to put a bubble of protection around them, more to prevent being struck by lightning than anything else. It was invisible, but had an orange sheen to it that mixed oddly with the gray, boiling mist that seethed along its edges. It was all so strange, so surreal. But Tick knew they probably hadn’t seen anything yet; it was about to get a lot weirder and a lot scarier.
Chu walked alongside him, hefting that large silver cube. Tick wanted to ask him more questions but didn’t have the heart to attempt it. He’d have to scream at the top of his lungs, and who knew if even that would work.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Chu balance the cube in one arm and reach his other hand into his pocket. He opened his mouth to say something—exactly what he’d done earlier when he’d communicated with someone in his own Reality—but an odd expression came over his face, and he seemed to reconsider his decision. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and gripped the cube firmly once again. Was it because of the noise? Or had he changed his mind on something? Decided not to do what he’d planned after all? Maybe the device didn’t work in the middle of the storm.
The three of them kept moving, protected by a bubble of clear orange, going deeper into the depths of the gray storm.
The heart of the Void waited.