Tick saw it all, but still felt his mind slipping away from him, out of control, on the edge of insanity. He staggered back and forth, the ground shaking and cracking.

To his right stood a huge tower made of gold that rose at least ten stories into the air. Near the top, partially obscured by a metal-grid catwalk, two words were stamped into the shiny metal.

Dark Infinity.

At the bottom of the tower, a panel of gold slid to the side, revealing a bright interior. A man appeared, then ran straight for Tick.

Don’t come near me, Tick thought. Stay away!

But then he saw it was Chu, and the anger and fear that had subsided flared anew.

“How!” Chu screamed, still running for Tick. “How could you possibly have done this?”

His words were distant, as if spoken through a wall. Splitting pain hammered in Tick’s skull. He squeezed his hands into fists to stop them from trembling. Pressure mounted in his chest and it became difficult to breathe. He could feel heat scorching him from the inside out.

He felt that strange separation from his body. He knew he was losing control, completely—but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The chamber shook, the tremors increasing in magnitude. He stared at Chu and Dark Infinity and from the corner of his eye he saw things falling. Metallic crashes filled the air.

Chu stopped, his eyes darting around the complex. “How . . . what . . . stop this! Stop this right now!”

Tick could barely hear him. As if reaching through a bucket of mud, he grasped for and found a tiny glimmer of sanity in his mind. He’d been sent here for a purpose—to destroy Chu’s plague. He held on to that one thought, forced his hand to steady, and reached inside the leather satchel at his side for the silvery cylinder that held the antidote to Dark Infinity. All he found was something hard and jagged, dusty and rough. Confused, he pulled it out and held it up to his eyes, squinting to see it through the blur of the chaos swimming around him.

It was a big rock. Frantic, he dug in the satchel again. Nothing. The bag was empty.

The antidote was gone.

~

Sofia did as she’d been instructed and threw a Rager toward the army of metaspides, never stopping her sprint. The little ball hit the ground and spun forward, ripping along with increasing speed as the static electricity erupted from it, gathering massive amounts of grass and dirt and rock. The weapon quickly grew into an earth-made bomb, a gigantic bowling ball of nature ready to destroy something. Sofia watched with elation as it crashed into the front line of the spidery robots and smashed a dozen of them into metallic shards.