From where he perched on the fence, looking left and right and forward all the way to the other side of the fence—barely visible in the distance—he saw nothing but dirt and mud and a few trees. Not one building, not one creature, not one person other than the soldiers he’d sent over.

Dirt and mud and trees.

Sato turned to Mothball, who was right next to him and looking as bewildered as he felt. “Are we sure we came to the right place?”

Tick wanted to look away. Every single cell in his body wanted him to look away. Every notion of normalcy and human decency and right-and-wrong screamed at him to look away—that this wasn’t something a boy like him should witness.

But he stared through the window in disbelief that Jane could really be this evil.

The room was identical to the first one—three beds lined up in a triangle, the odd, skin-like bio-tube, and a creepy man in the middle, his back turned, typing away at a computer. As before, the closest bed was empty and the left and right beds had occupants. But that’s where the similarities ended and the true horrors began.

Another raven lay on the bed to the left—or what used to be a raven. The poor thing that lay there now barely resembled a living being. It looked like a corpse, its emaciated body sucked dry of fat and water, the feathers gone, yellowed skin clinging to its bones. The bio-tube still grew out of its dead chest toward the ceiling.

Tick turned his attention to the right bed, where a panting wolf lay clinging to life, the other end of the tube shaking with each desperate breath. Most of its black-gray fur had fallen out, littering the bed and the surrounding floor like some kind of haunted barber shop. Diseased skin stretched taut over the dying thing’s bones.

And then there was that third bed. Empty. Waiting. For what?

When Jane spoke, Tick flinched, startled. “The needed materials have been fully exhumed from the subjects at this stage. They’ve been collected, filtered, sorted out, and reconfigured. All done with an intense heightening of the scientific process made possible by our special version of Chi’karda. The sweet sacrifice of these two noble creatures is about to conclude in an even greater achievement than their separate lives could ever have accomplished. And one day we’ll be ready to use human subjects. I’ve already gathered many worthy candidates—children with the spark of Chi’karda strongly within them. Soon the possibilities will be endless.”

Tick’s hands compacted into tight fists. He felt like the skin might burst, he squeezed them so tightly. Trickles of Chi’karda burned within him. It took every bit of his willpower not to explode, do whatever it took to kill this insane, evil woman.

“Ah,” she said with an intake of breath, a sick burst full of joy. “It’s just about to happen. Keep watching, keep watching!”

Tick didn’t want to. He wanted to run and hide. But some sense of duty made him stay where he stood, eyes focused, ready. He needed to know the truth—all of it—if he was ever going to stop Jane.

Movement at the top of the room caught his attention. He looked up to see a huge growth blossoming out of what he’d thought was a normal ceiling, but could now see was made up of the same material as the bio-tube. Bulky and bulbous, an orb grew out and downward, swelling until it was only a few feet above the tables, centered around the empty bed closest to Tick. Another growth shot out of the first one, a thick, squat tube that pulsed with life.

This second growth lowered down until it was directly above the empty mattress, then its end split open, pieces of material curling out and away like the petals of a flower. Gooey slime dripped out and sloshed across the white sheet, followed by a dark lump of a thing, squirming and kicking out its long legs. Before Tick could get a good look, the monster bounded off the bed and skittered across the floor, disappearing behind a large, boxy computer in the corner.

The man monitoring the situation from the middle of the room moved to chase the creature down, a nasty-looking instrument in his hands with metal rods and sparks of electricity shooting into the air.

Tick couldn’t take it anymore. He turned around and leaned his back against the warm glass window, folding his arms. He pushed away the bubbling flames of Chi’karda in his chest.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jane said, her mask set to something that looked like a teacher speaking to a student. “That I’m horrible. That I’m evil. That I’m a monster myself.”

“Yeah, you witch,” Paul said. “That’s exactly what we’re thinking.”

Tick tensed, worried Jane would retaliate. But she kept talking. “However, you aren’t blessed with the same perspective that I am blessed with. You don’t share the vision of what the Realities will become. I need these creatures to carry out my orders, to help me defeat my enemies, to help me achieve my purposes. In the end, no one will disagree that it was worth the bumps along the road. That, as they say, the ends justify the means.”

“Bumps along the road?” Tick asked, surprised at how tight his throat felt, how hard it was to get the words out. For now, he had to put aside the shock and disgust of what he’d just seen. “You’re not even worth arguing with anymore. But you promised to hear me out about something. We need to talk, and we need to talk now. Things are gonna get really bad any second.”

“Yes, I know,” Jane said back in a whisper. “I’ve started to sense it. Something is wrong—”

She didn’t finish because the entire tunnel seemed to jump three feet into the air then drop again, throwing the four of them to the ground. The whole place continued to shake, the groans and cracks of shifting rock thundering in the air. The glass of the window shattered, raining pieces down upon Tick, who knew in his gut what was happening.

The Haunce had predicted it: the final devastation and destruction before the Realities ripped apart and ceased to exist forever.

The end had begun.

Chapter 50

Holes in the Ground

Sato and the Fifths walked around the flat, muddy ground of the wooden fence’s interior, kicking at occasional rocks and looking for anything that might give them a clue as to the purpose of the place.

“Why would they build a huge fence around dirt fields?” Sato asked Mothball, who walked beside him, mumbling about how time was a-wasting.

“Has to be a reason,” she answered. “Whoever it is been winkin’ us ’round like pinballs must know what they’re doin’. We’re in the right place, we are. I feel it in me bones. Just need to use them brains of ours.”