Master George smiled at the camera for a few seconds, saying nothing. His eyes flickered to the side, as if he looked uncomfortable. Finally, he mumbled something out of the side of his mouth. “Turn the camera off, Rutger.”
The screen went black, then red, then silver. The hum of the Spinner died out as the metal rod slowly came to a standstill. All the while, no one said anything.
“What was that?” Sofia finally asked.
Tick ignored her, pushing past and walking out of the dining room. The spaghetti churned inside his stomach, and he didn’t know how much longer he could last before throwing up. A throbbing ache raged behind his eyeballs.
“Tick?” Paul asked from behind.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” was all Tick could get out.
He barely said a word the rest of the evening, ignoring his friends and family equally. The image of that boy on the screen—of himself—screaming and then dissolving . . .
How could he ever get that out of his head?
He went to bed early that night while everyone else watched a movie downstairs.
The next morning, Tick, Paul, and Sofia decided to get out of the house and talk over things—maybe do some research at the library. Tick felt a little better on waking up; every time the disturbing image of his fragmenting Alterant popped in his head, he tried to picture Muffintops. After another excellent Lorena Higginbottom breakfast of eggs and fried potatoes, the three of them headed out.
They stayed mostly silent until they reached the long road that led from Tick’s neighborhood to the town square of Deer Park. The rising sun kept the east side of the street in shade, the towering evergreens and oak trees of the forest providing relief from the late summer heat. The humidity had dipped considerably in the last couple of days, giving the air a hot but pleasant feel. Birds and crickets sang their songs in the woods; somewhere in the distance a lawn mower cranked up.
“Man, feels good out here,” Paul said, bending over to pick up a rock. He threw it deep into the woods; it cracked against a tree.
“You guys need to come to Italy sometime,” Sofia said. “In the summer, we can go up to the Alps and cool off. Best place in the world.”
“No argument here,” Paul replied. “Florida downright stinks this time of year. You go outside for two seconds and presto—sweaty armpits.”
“Lovely,” Sofia said.
Tick only half-listened to the conversation, staring into the woods as they walked. They neared the spot where so much had happened a few months ago—meeting Mothball, the sign from Rutger about the midnight meeting on the porch, getting clues from the two of them, screaming in desperation after Kayla had burned his original letter from Master George. It all seemed like a dream now.
“—to Tick, Earth to Tick.” Paul had stopped, snapping his fingers in the air.
“Oh, sorry,” Tick said. “Just daydreaming.”
Sofia sighed. “Better than listening to Paul drone on, trust me.”
“Miss Italy, be nice to me. I might have to save you on our next mission.”
“I better update my will.”
“Hilarious.”
“I know.”
The Muffintops distraction trick wasn’t working so well for Tick as they walked. That kid. That poor kid. The whole concept of Alterants was confusing—especially when you threw in the whole thing about fragmented Realities. What was the difference between the Tick they’d seen in Rutger’s film, Tick himself, and the Ticks that existed in the stabilized Thirteen Realities? It made his head hurt thinking about it.
“What do you guys think of all that entropy stuff?” he asked, kicking at a pebble on the road and watching it skitter across the pavement.
“I remember studying it in science,” Sofia said. “Seems crazy that it could be accelerated like that and just . . . eat away at the world.”
“It’s freaky, dude,” Paul said. “I mean, if I decide to turn left instead of right up here, am I gonna create a nasty Reality where I get eaten alive by monster air? That ain’t right.”
“It’s weird that—”
Sofia never finished her sentence, cut off by a loud yelp in the woods to their right, followed by the sudden, rushing sound of crunching leaves and breaking twigs. Someone, or some thing, was running toward them through the trees.
Tick and the others froze, staring toward the sounds, which grew louder as the whatever-it-was came closer. Crick-crash, crick-crash. Another yelp, this time more of a short scream, echoed off the towering trunks and leafy canopy.
“What is that?” Paul asked.
“Maybe we shouldn’t stick around to find out,” Tick offered. Every nerve in his body had just lit up with warning flames.
Before anyone could respond, a man burst through a wall of thick foliage fronting two large trees, hurtling himself forward until he lost his balance and fell onto the steep slope that led up to the road. As soon as the skinny, dark-haired man hit the ground, he scrambled to his hands and feet and started clawing his way toward them. With growing dread, Tick stared at the stranger’s tattered clothes and bloody splotches on his shirt.
Just a few feet away, the man finally reached the road and stood up, lifting his head enough to be seen clearly for the first time. Disheveled, dirty hair framed an olive-skinned face covered with terrible scratches and terror alive in his eyes.
Tick sucked in a huge gulp of air, half-relieved and half-shocked.
It was Mr. Chu, his science teacher.
Chapter
6
Intense Pain
Mr. Chu!” Tick yelled, running forward to help his favorite teacher, who looked ready to collapse. Sofia moved to assist, both of them grabbing an arm of Mr. Chu and lowering him to the shoulder of the road. The poor man crumpled into a ball, great heaves of breath making his chest rise and fall as his eyes darted between Tick, Sofia, and Paul. A leather satchel was slung over Mr. Chu’s shoulders with a thin strap, its bulky, sharp-angled contents clanking when it hit the ground.
“What happened?” Tick asked, fighting the panic he felt. What if he’s dying? Did someone out there attack him? He couldn’t help but look up at the trees, which suddenly seemed dark and ominous.
“Atticus . . .” Mr. Chu said with a dry rasp.
Tick knelt on one knee, lowering his head until he was close to Mr. Chu’s face. “What happened to you, Mr. Chu?”
“Atticus . . . I barely escaped . . .” A racking cough exploded from his lungs, shaking his entire body.
“Escaped?” Tick repeated. “From what?”
Sofia and Paul knelt right behind the teacher, both of them looking at Tick with wide, confused eyes. So far, a car had yet to pass by the woods, and Tick hoped one did soon so they could ask for help.
“From . . .” Mr. Chu whispered, starting to gain control of his breath. “From . . . a very bad man. Looks like me. Is me.”
Tick exchanged a puzzled look with his friends. He’d never seen his teacher like this, or heard him say such crazy things. He’d never seen anyone act like this. An idea hit him. “Do either one of you have a cell phone?”
Mr. Chu’s hand shot out and grabbed Tick’s shirt, pulling him closer with surprising force. “No!” he yelled, a sharpness narrowing his eyes with a clarity that hadn’t been there moments earlier. “Help me back into the woods—we need to hide.”
“Mr. Chu, I don’t—”
“Just help me!”
With a grunt and another dry, loud cough, Mr. Chu pushed himself back into a sitting position, then held up his hands. Tick and Paul lifted the miserable man to his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. Then, half-carrying, half-dragging Mr. Chu, the three of them stumbled down the small slope and entered the woods, Sofia right behind.
They made their way past a few smaller trees and then rounded a massive, towering oak, finally finding a secluded patch of ivy-strewn forest floor with enough room for all of them to sit. Specks of sunlight littered the ground, the call of birds in the air far too cheerful for the situation. The smells of pine and earth and wood were strong—scents that Tick loved but for some reason made him uneasy at the moment.
They settled into a circle, facing each other. Mr. Chu appeared to be gaining his strength back with every passing minute, though his hands shook with apparent fear; a small drip of drool crawled down his chin. No one said a word, a silent understanding hanging in the air that Mr. Chu would tell them what was going on when he was good and ready.
“It was terrible,” he finally whispered, barely audible.
“What was?” Sofia asked. Tick cringed; it seemed like a really bad time for her usual impatience.
Mr. Chu continued to stare at the ground in front of him. “These men . . . with some kind of electricity weapon, kidnapped me and took me to a place that was like the barracks of a battleship—metallic and cold. They . . . did things to me. . . . Unspeakable things.” He quit talking.
“Who were they?” Tick asked. His mind couldn’t settle on any possible reason someone might want to take Mr. Chu, who was one of the nicest people Tick knew.
“It was . . . him.” Mr. Chu squeezed his eyes closed as if in pain.
“Him?” Paul asked. “Who’s him?”
“The other me. The bad me.”
Tick felt his breath catch in his throat. An Alterant Mr. Chu?
Tick looked at Sofia; she mouthed the word psycho. A storm of anger surged inside Tick. His face flushed hot, and for the first time since he’d known her, he wanted to scream in fury at Sofia. This was one of his favorite people she was talking about. He was just about to say something nasty when Mr. Chu unexpectedly shot up from the ground to his feet.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered, twisting and turning, searching the surrounding forest.
Tick stood, as did Paul and Sofia, the three of them looking for any sign of what had alarmed the teacher.
“Did you hear that?” Mr. Chu repeated.
“No,” Tick answered. “What was it?”
“Something’s out there. What was I thinking? What was I thinking!” Yelling the last word, Mr. Chu knelt down beside his leather satchel and opened it up, rummaging inside before pulling out three strange objects. “They followed me here. How could I be such an idiot?”
As Mr. Chu got back to his feet, Tick finally heard it. Coming from deeper in the woods, it sounded like hundreds of spinning circular saws, sharp and shrill, accompanied by the horrible crunching and breaking of trees, as if King Kong himself were trampling through the forest with the world’s largest electric razor buzzing at full speed.
“What the heck is that?” Paul asked, a look of alarm spreading across his face that Tick thought must surely mirror his own.
Sofia took a few steps toward the sound, rising onto her tiptoes and tilting her head as if that would help her hear better. “That doesn’t sound good,” she finally said.
Paul rolled his eyes and stomped his foot, clearly impatient to be away from this place. Tick felt a thick veil of creepiness hanging over him.
“They let me go; they let me go,” Mr. Chu murmured, handling the objects he’d pulled from his bag. Tick got a good look at them for the first time, but had no clue what they were. All he could see were a bunch of cloth straps and pieces of dull metal.