He looked around at the tightly packed trees that went on in every direction as far as he could see. He slowly turned in a circle, taking it all in. The place was beautiful and reminded him of the woods near his home in Washington, though this forest seemed even larger and more widespread.

He’d turned about ninety degrees when he noticed a piece of paper stapled to a thick oak tree just a few feet away. The paper didn’t seem wet at all, which meant someone had to have put it there recently, and several lines had been written on its surface. Curious, he stepped forward, slogging through the snow until he reached the mysterious note, now only inches from his eyes.

He began to read but didn’t get very far before he knew exactly what it was.

A riddle.

Mothball’s flashlight unfurled a spooky path in front of them.

Sato felt like he’d been soldiering with her for years. They slunk their way through the still-shaking tunnels and hallways of the Factory like old pros, anticipating each other’s movements as they tried to use their four eyeballs to look in every direction for potential enemies. So far it seemed as if all of Jane’s creatures had congregated at the main battle.

Shurrics cocked and gripped in their hands, they searched and searched. They had to find where these monsters kept the kids.

When they reached a T, Mothball shone her flashlight both directions.

Sato asked, “Left or right?”

She didn’t answer, but instead held a finger up to her lips to shush him.

Sato nodded slightly and listened. The faintest sound floated through the cracking and roaring of shifting stone around them. He strained his ears to hear it, even closed his eyes for a second. A whimper. A cry. Moaning. Sobbing. After a few seconds, the sound cut off abruptly with a terror-filled shriek. Then silence.

Sato met Mothball’s dark gaze. “That way for sure.”

They went to the left.

Sofia sat next to Rutger, fascinated by all the blips and numbers and graphs and charts and squiggly lines on the computer screens. She didn’t know what all of it meant yet, and Rutger didn’t seem too keen on teaching her with everything that was going on.

“Okay,” he said. “I hope this doesn’t offend you, Sofia, but what I really need most from you is to run messages back and forth between me and Master George in the Control Room.”

It took all of her power not to growl at him like a wolf. No time for wounded pride. “Why don’t you have all this junk in the same place?”

Rutger snickered like she’d told a joke. “It used to fit,” was all he said.

“At least tell me what you’re doing and what he’s doing.”

Rutger waved his chubby little hand in the air; Sofia had no idea why.

“He’s in charge of organizing the rescue of the kids at the Factory. The Barrier Wand’s hooked in and set up to wink the nanolocators from the patches we gave Sato and his army. Sally, Priscilla, and a few other Realitants have set up shop in the Grand Canyon. That’s where the kids will be winked to. Not enough room here.”

“And your job?” she asked.

“Two main things. We’re tracking Tick and Mothball and Sato and his army. I’m also tapped into the meteorological reports and ocean monitoring stations. I don’t think there’s any doubt—we’re going to get hit by a massive tidal wave from one of these earthquakes. Not if, when.”

Sofia had been studying the screens as he spoke, and her eyes finally focused in on something she should’ve noticed from the very first. Sato and Mothball and the others had lots of information scrolling and blinking beneath their names. But not Tick.

His screen was blank from top to bottom. Nothing but black space.

She pointed at it. “What’s up with Tick?”

Rutger let out a long and dramatic sigh. “Well, Master George says he expected something like this, but it still makes my feet all itchy.”

Sofia felt something shrivel inside her. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“According to this, Tick’s nanolocator is dead.”

Tick couldn’t believe it. A riddle.

Now he understood what the Haunce had meant when it said that somehow the healing of the Barriers would be presented to each of them in a form that would seem familiar. Symbolically. Tick thought it was almost like a video game—solving the riddle would be like maneuvering the joystick and pushing buttons on the controller, the complex processes and codes and circuits translating those movements into what he saw on the TV screen.

A riddle.

If anything had defined his journey so far as a Realitant, it had to be riddles.

And here he had another one. A doozy.

Concentrating, he read through it one more time:

Look at the following most carefully, as every line counts:

Be gone in times of death’s long passing.

Henry Atwood sliced his neck.

Hath reeds knocked against thee?

If our fathers knew, then winds, they blew.

The sixth of candles burned my eyes.

Horrors even among us.

Leigh tries to eat a stone.

The canine or the cat, it spat.

Pay attention to the ghoul that weeps.

Your number’s up, and it is missing. Wary the word second.

Shout out your answer.

A new line suddenly appeared at the very bottom of the page, the space blank one second, then filled with several words the next:

The universe ends in 11:58

And then, as impossible at it seemed, the written time at the end of the sentence started changing, ticking down like a digital clock.

11:57

11:56

11:55

11:54

Tick already had the riddle memorized. He closed his eyes and started thinking.

Chapter 55

An Unearthly Shriek

Sato heard more of the chilling sound bites over the now all-too-present quaking noises as he and Mothball stumbled their way down the tunnel and closer to a light source up ahead. Sato heard whimpers and cries for help—all of them the high-pitched voices of children. Anger stirred within him, almost completely obliterating the fear and trepidation he’d been feeling. And all the while, the threat of the entire Factory collapsing on top of them loomed over their heads—literally.

They came to a stony bend where the light grew stronger. Mothball stopped and crouched on the shaky ground right at the edge, her head just a few inches below Sato’s. He leaned against the wall beside her, his gut telling him they were on the cusp now of discovering the true horror of this place. He sensed the fear around the corner, as if the kids’ tears and sweat evaporated into a noxious cloud that poured through the opening he couldn’t see.