On his back, he held up his hands even though he dreaded what he might see. Blood and red blisters at best. Black, charred flesh at worse. But instead, in the faint glow of the light around him, he saw smooth, healthy skin, not a blemish or a scrape or a bruise.
What had happened? He remembered the earthquake, then bolts of lightning striking everywhere, and people disappearing when struck. Then the world had lit up, exploded in fire, as if he himself had been . . .
Sucking in a gasp, he sat up, then scrambled to his feet. He turned in a slow circle, looking all around him. With each second, with each revolution, his eyes grew wider and wider. He saw no sign of the homes and trees and stone walls of the Fifth Reality. He’d been taken to another place. Even though the light was dim, he had no doubt of it.
He stood on a vast, flat ground made of a hard substance and checkered with large squares of differing colors. It seemed to stretch in every direction as far as he could see, with no breaks of any kind. He knelt down and felt the floor. It was cool to the touch. Marble, maybe. The light wasn’t strong enough for him to see if the floor had the familiar pattern of that stone.
He stood back up and looked above him. Though the marble floor beneath him would suggest that he was inside a building of some sort, no other evidence supported it. No roof hung above him—just blank, unblemished air. No stars, no clouds, no planes in the sky. The perimeter around him was just as gray and lifeless. The floor went on forever, with no walls or fences or trees. No mountains in the distance. No furniture.
That was all; a marble floor with countless squares of color, stretching to infinity in every direction and a lifeless sky that seemed the definition of nothing.
I’m dreaming, he thought. Or maybe he was dead. Though he’d never learned much about religion and the afterlife, he couldn’t help but think of the possibility that he’d died and was in some sort of waiting room for souls. Certainly no place like this existed in the real world, no matter which Reality.
He heard a humming sound behind him and turned quickly to check it out.
Twenty or thirty feet away, a figure lay crumpled on the floor. It was a girl with curly blonde hair, her clothes filthy and torn. She had black smudges on her bare skin. She looked to be about his same age. She twitched a little and let out a low groan.
“Hey!” Sato yelled, cringing when it came out so harshly. “Are you okay? Do you know where we are?”
The girl glanced at him when she heard his voice, her eyes filled with fear. “Hello?” she called back weakly.
Sato ran to her, sure he must be in a dream after all. He approached her and knelt on the ground, putting a hand out to touch her shoulder softly.
“You okay?” he asked again. “I don’t know how we got here.”
He looked around again, scanning their surroundings to see if anything had changed. Still nothing but colored marble tiles going forever and a sky of dead air. He returned his attention to the girl.
“My name’s Sato,” he said, hoping the girl would snap out of her daze and help him understand what was going on. She looked up, and he saw tears streaking down her cheeks.
“I’m Lisa,” she said, stifling a sob. “Have you seen my sister?”
At first, Tick felt the slightest hint of hope at Frazier’s words, but it didn’t last long. He remembered the horrible images of destruction on the screens, recognizing that the man had said his sisters and parents had vanished after mentioning earthquakes and lightning.
There was nothing good about that. Maybe they’d been trapped under rubble. Maybe they’d been struck by lightning. Maybe no one could find them because they were dead.
No! he shouted in his mind. His insides still boiled, the heat of his Chi’karda flaring up even stronger at the depressing thoughts of what might have happened. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt so scared and completely hopeless. Useless.
Jane had stayed quiet for a long moment after Frazier’s pronouncement, staring at the man with a blank expression. Then she turned to Tick.
“Then they’re probably dead already,” she said coolly. “How fitting it would be if it was your disobedience, Atticus, your arrogant, reckless use of Chi’karda that ended up killing your family. I hope you can live with that.”
Tick barely heard the words. He couldn’t hold back the Chi’karda anymore. He’d let it go too far, and now it was too late to stop it. His insides had become a roaring inferno.
Something seemed to rip deep inside of him, and he screamed from the pain. He fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself. Trying to escape it, he curled into a ball and screamed again, as loudly as he could.
Everything changed.
The dusty desert around him vanished, replaced by trees.
The power and burning disappeared, as did the pain, and everything was perfectly silent, except for his quick and heavy breaths.
He was in the middle of a forest. And he was alone.
Chapter 25
Silver-Blue Light
Tick didn’t move for a long time.
The forest was dark, only the slightest traces of moonlight seeping through the thick canopy of branches above him, dappled here and there on the ground. He heard nothing but a few insects and the very distant sound of a dog barking. The woods smelled fresh and pungent, the scent of the pine trees closest to him by far the strongest. It made him think of Christmas.
Which made him think of his family, which pulled at his heart like a huge rock had been tied to it and dropped to his stomach. He ached for them, and he didn’t know how he could survive if they’d been hurt or killed. For now, not knowing anything for certain, his mind only allowed him to hold onto hope. He didn’t let anything too dark settle on his thoughts. They could be alive. There were a million possibilities for such a thing, and he held onto that.
He had to get going. He had to figure out where he’d been sent. Had he actually winked himself? That seemed the only logical explanation, but the instant he’d arrived in the forest, the flames of Chi’karda had burned out, leaving him empty. He was cold, and not just because the air in the forest was cool and wetly crisp, as if a storm might be coming. He also felt the chill of fear.
He stood up and turned in a slow circle, scanning the woods. He saw only trees, some thin, some thick, all of them crowded one after the other until they faded into obscure shadows. He closed his eyes to focus, but again, he heard only the insects and that frantic dog, still in the distance. Unless some super spy was nearby, watching him in silence, he was alone.