“A bomb or something,” Tick said. “It’s probably just another part of Chu’s game. To see if we’d give up or not make it back on time.”

Paul pushed past an outreaching limb with his shoulder, then let it fly backward to smack Sofia in the face.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“Sorry,” Paul said, his pain-racked face somehow showing the slightest hint of amusement to Tick. “No arms, ya know—not much control.”

“How’d you like to have two broken arms?” Sofia replied.

“Wouldn’t be much worse than now.”

They entered a short break in the trees and found a clearing about twenty feet across, covered in bright green ivy. Rays of sunlight broke through, glistening on the dew-blanketed leaves, still damp hours after dawn. Without discussion, all three of them sat down to take a short rest, each finding a fallen tree or rock on which to sit.

“This is kind of cool,” Paul said, looking around at the border of trees, the green ivy, the cascading sun.

“Looks like something out of a fantasy book,” Tick said.

Paul nodded, then winced as if the small movement had hurt his arm somehow. “Yeah,” he said through a tight grin. “Maybe we’ll see some elves.”

“Or vicious, man-eating monkeys that glow in the dark,” Sofia added.

Tick sniffed. “Way to look on the bright side of things.”

“I just thought of something,” Sofia said, ignoring his remark.

“What?” Tick asked.

“Chu wouldn’t have any way of knowing we’d take that train today. How could this be part of his plan?”

Tick shrugged. “We know he’s following us, spying on us. With all his freaky techno gadgets, I’m sure he could make a train crash whenever he wanted.”

“I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced at all.

Paul stood after a few minutes of silence, his face wrinkling up like an old man’s. “I can’t take this much longer. We need to get back.”

“Come on,” Tick said, standing and pointing across the clearing. “I’m pretty sure we need to go that way.” He walked in that direction, Paul and Sofia right behind him.

~

“We’re getting close on the antidote.” Master George leaned forward, resting his folded hands on the kitchen table. Mothball sat to his left, Rutger to his right, Sally across from him. Muffintops curled on his lap, sound asleep. “Rutger, why don’t you give us a full report?”

The robust little man sat back in his chair, somehow resting one pudgy foot on his other knee—a feat that seemed impossible at first glance. “This plague is just about as fascinating a thing as I’ve ever seen. It’s completely nanotechnology based, yet it shows qualities of an airborne virus, as well as some bacterial characteristics. It’s basically an unprecedented mixture of biological manipulation, microarchitectural nanotech computer processing, and cellular airwave transmissions the likes of which we’ve never seen.”