The Blade of Shattered Hope

Chapter 57

Sofia followed Rutger into the main Control Room, where Master George was waving his arms like the conductor of the world’s largest symphony. Despite all their troubles crashing down at once, a small snicker escaped Sofia. She quickly coughed to cover it up, but Paul-sitting nearby with worry on his face-noticed and broke a half-smile that looked more like a wince.

“George!” Rutger barked. “Most of the earthquakes have stopped, but it’s too late for that wave. It’s gonna be here in fifteen minutes!”

Their leader shot them a quick glance then returned his gaze to the rapidly blinking screens in front of him. “My heart can barely stand this confounded predicament!”

“What’s the latest with Sato?” Rutger asked as he and Sofia moved closer.

Master George pointed to a series of purple lines that kept appearing then disappearing. Unlike the indicators for Sato and Mothball above them, these had no names attached. “They’re doing it. They’re doing it! We’ve already winked ten children to the Grand Canyon, where Priscilla and Sally have several doctors on hand.”

Rutger let out a sigh that sounded like he’d lost every ounce of hope. “We won’t survive it,” he said in a tight whisper.

“What’s that?” Master George asked, finally giving his full attention to his partner.

“The wave. There’s no way we can survive it. It’s too big. We.. ” Rutger looked at the floor.

“What? Spit it out, man!”

“We have to leave. This location-and us with it-has zero chance of making it through the wave’s power. It’ll rip our cabling technology to shreds, then pick us up and slam us into shore. We have to leave.”

Sofia felt that shrinking sensation in her gut again. She half-expected Master George to argue, to say it would be okay, maybe express disbelief or babble about how life’s unfair. Instead, he accepted the truth and immediately moved to what needed to be done. Sofia was impressed.

“Then we can only hope they reach every child in time-we don’t have things properly set up at the Grand Canyon to wink them in from that location. We’ll wait here, monitoring the situation and managing the nanolocator patches. At least we have a bit of good news-if the earthquakes have stopped, then Atticus and Jane must’ve done their job.”

Sofia’s heart lifted, but then she remembered their own problem. “What about the wave?” she asked, her eyes meeting Paul’s, sharing a look that said so much with no need for words.

Master George puffed his chest out and folded his hands on his belly. “The four of us will wink away the second before it hits. It’s time for us to be very brave.”

Tick found himself back in that outer-space-like void of lights and streaks and glowing, brilliant orbs. He couldn’t feel his body, didn’t understand what or where or anything else. But he knew they’d done it even before the Haunce spoke to them.

“Through your efforts and power, we have healed the Barriers of the Realities. We will send you back now. Your worlds are not destroyed, but they have still seen great, great devastation. The healing of such things does not rest in our hands. We say farewell.”

The universe spun. Everything changed, and Tick felt the pressure of crushing diamonds.

Sato put everything out of his mind. The fear. The soreness of his entire body. His hunger, his exhaustion. From somewhere deep in his cells and molecules and tissue, he sucked out the adrenaline he needed to keep moving.

From one inset compartment to the next, he jumped. They were about four feet apart side to side, a little less up and down. Each and every time, for one frightening second, he thought he wouldn’t make it and instead would plummet to the unseen depths far below. But so far he’d landed each and every time, gripping and pushing and pulling, squirming his way to the children without falling to his death. Mothball was doing the same, working the other side of the stony, rounded chamber.

He spared a glance for the latest kid he’d found-a shaky, pale girl whose eyes were open and focused on his. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re here to rescue you.” He’d always wanted to say that to someone.

He slapped a nanolocator patch on her arm, no longer waiting to watch as the kids vanished from sight, winked away by Master George. Already on the move, he crouched on the far end, ready to leap for the next hole, when he noticed two things at the same time that made him pause.

One, the shaking and quaking had stopped completely.

And two, he heard the distant sounds of flapping wings and a chattering, cackling chorus of grunts and squeals coming from below. He looked down.

Several fangen-those horrible creations of Jane’s they’d fought at her castle when George sent them to steal her Barrier Wand-were flying through the murky darkness, coming up toward him.

Sato jumped to the next compartment.

Tick blinked, dazzled by the light of the sun directly overhead. He stood in the mud just outside the broken and jumbled heap of wood that had once been the fence surrounding the Factory. Mistress Jane stood right in front of him, her expressionless red mask only inches from his face.

For the briefest of moments, he forgot that she was his bitter, bitter enemy.

“I can’t believe we did it,” he said, not ashamed of the childlike wonder in his voice. They had, after all, just saved the entire universe. “All I had to do was solve a riddle-seems crazy. What did the Haunce make you do?”

Jane’s mask broke into a smile so full of genuine kindness that Tick wondered if the whole experience had maybe changed something inside her. “Isn’t it wonderful, Atticus? What does it say about our species that you and I could put aside our hatred for each other and work for the greater good? We should both feel very proud.”

Tick let out an uneasy laugh, not sure how he felt about the way she was acting. “It’s definitely pretty cool. So… you didn’t answer my question. What did you have to do? How did you do your part?”

Jane’s mask kept smiling. “Ah, yes. It was quite an amazing thing. The Haunce had me work through my master plan for how to achieve the Utopian Reality I’ve always wanted. What an invigorating experience it was to focus my mind and faculties in such a heightened, rushed state of anxiety.” She moved even closer to him, almost touching.

Tick didn’t know what to think. Maybe she A burst of pain exploded in his stomach, a wrenching, twisting stab of fire and needles. He stumbled back two steps and looked down. The hilt of a large knife jutted from his abdomen, a dark red bloodstain soaking his shirt, spreading.

Choking and sputtering a cough, he raised his eyes to Jane, whose now-angry mask matched the color of the growing stain around the knife.

“My plan started with something just like that,” she said.