Jane’s fingers tightened around her Staff. “You’re an idiot child, Atticus. I wanted to kill you with subtle ease and avoid the destruction you might inflict if you let loose your chaotic abilities. But I’ll do it this way if I have to. I’ll never sleep in my bed again until I know the Realities are rid of Atticus Higginbottom. You’re about to die, boy. I hope you’ve enjoyed your short time alive.”
Tick’s anger built with every word she said, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He collected his power by thinking it, imagined what he wanted in his mind, like gathering a mental snowball with mental hands. The Chi’karda burned and roiled inside him, resisting as he compacted it tighter and tighter, compressing it into a dangerous and unstable sphere of pure energy. He saw the fiery orange cloud seeping back into his skin, like smoke in reverse.
Straining with the effort, he spoke through his trembling concentration. “I think I’ll keep living.” With a terrible scream, he threw his coiled power—all of it—at Jane.
A boom like a thousand strikes of lightning shook the world around him. Mud and dirt exploded from the ground in a straight path to Jane, as if it were a crowded minefield and every last mine went off at once. A visible wave of
orange-tinged air slammed against her body, throwing her twenty feet into the air. She flew backward until she landed far on the other side of the broken wooden fence, her Staff broken into several pieces.
Tick had no idea how he did what happened next. But he willed himself forward, wanting to be by her side instantly, faster than he could possibly run. He was out of patience and knew he had to finish her off. In a dizzying instant, he suddenly stood right next to her, looking down at her as she struggled to stand. With a distant thought, he realized that he’d just winked himself.
He reached down and grabbed Jane by the folds of her robe, communicating with his powers of Chi’karda without talking, almost without thinking. He easily lifted her up and held her over his head. Then he threw her at the forest. She sailed several hundred feet through the air, arms and legs flailing; a piercing shriek ripped from her lungs. Tick watched as she finally slammed into a large oak tree and crumpled to the ground below it. She didn’t move, a twisted heap of arms and legs.
Tick drew in deep, ragged breaths as he looked around him. He saw the hole in the ground that Jane had created to pull them out of the underground Factory, as well as a much larger gap with broken and jagged edges that had probably been caused by the earthquakes. He winked to the edge of it and looked down to where people from the Fifth Reality were fighting Jane’s creatures. Tick saw and heard the sights and sounds of battle, the clashes and the blood and the screams. He wanted to destroy the Factory, level it, crush it, disintegrate it.
“Master George!” he yelled, knowing the man was listening in somehow. “Get them out! Get them all out!”
Chapter
60
~
Ten Kids
Tick wants us to wink them out!” Rutger yelled.
Sofia watched as Master George’s hands flew furiously to turn dials and flip switches, type on the keyboard, adjust his Barrier Wand. “How much time until the wave hits us?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Three minutes!”
“We’ll hold out until the last second. We must save every child we can!”
Sofia looked down to see that Paul had grabbed her hand. She squeezed back, terrified and hating how helpless she felt.
“Winking away the Fifth Army now,” Master George said, sweat flying off his ruddy, bald head as he worked. “But not Sato and Mothball. Not yet.”
“Two and half minutes,” Rutger said, his voice loud but sad.
~
Tick saw the tall people of the Fifth Reality suddenly disappear, winked away. The creatures they’d been fighting looked around in shock, growling and spitting.
Thankful that Master George had heard him, Tick had to assume that everyone was gone now. He hoped that George had also saved the kids Jane planned to use in her horrific experiments. He had to destroy the Factory now, before any of those monsters escaped. Then he’d finish off Jane and end this nightmare forever.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, mentally gathering the streams and coils of Chi’karda, pulling it all in.
Then he fell to his knees with a scream, throwing his arms forward as if he were flinging his powers at the scene below him. His Chi’karda unleashed itself on the Factory, destroying everything in its fiery, angry path.
~
Sato’s entire body ached like never before. Worse than when he’d gone through the agony of having Chu’s Dark Infinity plague and being bound with ropes by Master George. His arms and legs screamed with weariness and hurt, begging him to stop.
But he didn’t. He kept jumping from compartment to compartment, slapping the nanolocator patches on kid after kid, moving on before he even saw them be winked away. All the while, he’d fought off the relentless fangen with punches and kicks. He’d even poked one in the eyeball and sent it screeching away.