The Hunt for Dark Infinity

Chapter 6

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.

“They let me go… They knew I’d come to you. I’m such an idiot! Atticus, I’m so sorry.”

Something was wrong about the whole situation, and Tick knew it wasn’t just the rush of ominous sounds that were growing louder by the second, filling the air with horrible screeches of metal and the splintering crack of wood. Nor was it just the overall strangeness of Mr. Chu’s sudden appearance. Something was wrong, out of place-but Tick couldn’t pinpoint it exactly.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Paul said.

“Won’t do any good,” Mr. Chu replied, stepping close to Tick. He stretched out one of the things in his hands, two strips of cloth attached to a circular ring of metal in the middle. “Until we get these on you, they’ll follow you wherever you go, until you’re dead.”

Mr. Chu grabbed Tick’s right arm and started wrapping the cloth strips around his bicep. Tick was so stunned by the odd situation that he didn’t move or resist. In a matter of seconds, Mr. Chu had snapped the metal ring around Tick’s elbow, and wrapped the attached strips of cloth, like sticky gauze, in candy-cane fashion down the length of his entire arm.

“What… what are you doing? What is this thing?” A sick, uneasy feeling spread through Tick and he started to sweat.

“Yeah, what is that?” Sofia asked.

“You all have to put them on,” Mr. Chu answered.

But when he stepped toward Sofia, she swiped his arms away and held up her fists. “You aren’t touching me, you crazy old man.”

The sounds-the spinning saws, the crunching and crashing of trees, a mechanical roar that sounded like something out of an old sci-fi movie-it was all coming very close, very fast. Though Tick couldn’t see anything yet, he could feel whatever was approaching, as if it were pushing the very air away as it rushed through the woods.

Mr. Chu tried again to wrap his gadget around Sofia’s arm, but she swatted him away, then actually swung a fist at his face, barely missing. “I said, stay away!” she screamed at him.

Mr. Chu turned toward Tick, his face intense. “Atticus, I’ve known you and your family for a long time. I taught your sister, I taught you. We’re friends, are we not?”

“Yeah.” Tick looked at Sofia, then Paul. His head swam in confusion. How could this be happening? Why did he feel so… wrong? Was this a dream?

“They’ll be here in seconds. If we put these devices on our arms, they won’t see us. Do you hear me?”

Tick didn’t say anything.

“Just wink us away again!” Paul said. “You can do it, Tick. Concentrate and wink us away. Forget this dude.”

“Give me a break,” Tick said. “I have no clue how I did that.”

“Just try,” Sofia said in a calm voice, as if she were trying to talk someone out of jumping off a skyscraper. Tick barely heard her over the mechanical chorus of horrible sounds.

“Atticus!” Mr. Chu yelled. “We have only seconds left! They… are going… to eat us… alive!” He pointed toward the sounds with every pause, his voice filled with fire.

“Just do it!” Tick finally said. “Sofia, just let him do it!”

“Tick, you expect me to trust this nut-”

“Just do it!”

Completely surprising Tick, she obeyed with a huff, sticking her arm out to Mr. Chu. He quickly wrapped the second device on her arm, just as he’d done with Tick. Nearby, a thunderous, ear-splitting crack of wood was followed by the sound of a tree crashing to the forest floor. The mechanical sounds whirred and buzzed, roaring like monstrous robots.

Mr. Chu worked feverishly, wrapping the third and final… whatever it was… on Paul’s right arm, who protested the entire time that this was crazy and stupid and that they should run.

“What about you?” Tick asked Mr. Chu.

His teacher pulled out a small, rectangular object from his pocket that looked like a TV remote control. He looked down at it as his finger searched for one of the many buttons scattered in rows across its front side. Then he looked up at Tick.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. He held up the small remote device and pushed the button.

In that instant, a pain like nothing Tick had ever experienced or thought possible lanced through his body from head to toe, and the world spun away, leaving him in darkness and agony.