“Phlix!” I’m almost too surprised to move.
“No one is making us their prisoners again,” she says. “I will hurt them all if they try.”
I grab Phlix’s hand. “Let’s go. That shock doesn’t last long.”
Phlix tugs back on my hand, saying, “Wait! We have to get our packs!” We put them on, and then run up the stairs to the balcony level of Foundation. We scurry through countless corridors to the tower called Kingdom. We take the tree pillar elevators down to the garden level of the creepy art gallery. “All we have to do is make it to the Hallafast in the topiary maze outside. It’s not very far,” I whisper. Clutching her hand, I lead the way to the giant doors. I open one and pause. Outside, the courtyard glows with fire. The Hallafast that we need to make our escape is a raging ball of orange light and choking black smoke. My heart crashes in my chest.
I sink to my knees on the ground. “I’m dead. I’m so dead.”
“What’s wrong?” Phlix asks. She looks past me to the aircraft. Her soft gasp is a crushing weight on me. She pulls the door closed, slamming it. She looks around us.
“We’re not giving up,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “We’re leaving.”
She tugs on my upper arm and pulls me up. We scramble back toward the pillars, and Giffen suddenly appears at the top of the gallery. He looks pissed.
“Shadow land!” I yell.
Phlix pulls us into her secret world. She grasps my hand and we back up from Giffen as he descends the pillar onto the garden level with us. “He can probably sense us, Phlix. He’s creepy like that,” I whisper.
Giffen picks up a chair telepathically and spins it around as if it’s caught in a tornado. It whirls around the room, coming so close to us that we both have to drop on the floor to avoid it. “We have to go,” Phlix whimpers, grasping my hand.
“I know!”
We both back up, coming up against the Naren Falls landscape. We turn around and stare at the dark, canvaslike opening that now has a view of the two Etharian moons visible in the night sky. “We have to try,” Phlix whispers.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“It’s worth the risk. On the count of two,” Phlix breathes. “One—”
“—two!” we say in unison. With our hands clasped, I scrunch my eyes as I jump with Phlix into the portal.
I feel the impact of the grassy lawn beneath me. My hand is torn away from Phlix’s. I roll away and I lay on the ground, looking up at Inium and Sinter in the sky. I spit out the dirt in my mouth.
“Phlix,” I call, not seeing her anywhere.
“Here,” she calls back.
“Where,” I scream, panicking. I wiggle out of my backpack getting to my feet. I don’t even see a shadow of her anywhere.
She suddenly appears a few yards away still attached to her backpack. “Sorry. You rolled out of my shadow land,” she explains.
I rush to her and hug her. “Holy shit! You did it! Your shadow saved us!” I laugh and start jumping up and down with her in my arms. She squeezes me back, jumping up and down too.
“We did it! We did it!” she squeals. I don’t know when we stop jumping and stand there crying in each other’s arms, but I eventually wipe my eyes on my sleeve and pull away from her.
“We have to go.”
“Put on the terrain outfit,” she orders. “It’s made from that same fabric as the camouflage blankets you asked me to get.” As I locate them among my gear, she adds, “You can change the setting on the clothing. See, just press these buttons and it can make different patterns.” She demonstrates the settings. “The camouflage setting is probably the best here. I packed you terrain shoes, and night-vision glasses.”
We change quickly. I braid my hair while Phlix locates the compass. With our night-vision glasses, we pore over the laminated terrain map. “We can’t waste time. We have to get as far away from here tonight as possible. They’re going to figure out where we’re going.”
Phlix goes to my backpack and pulls out a dark cap. “Here, wear this. Your hair is like a beacon,” she says. “And don’t worry so much. We have me. I can hide us.”
“You can hide us for about a part and a half,” I reply.
“That is plenty of time to lose anyone.”
Not Cavars, I think, but I don’t say it out loud.
We mount up on our flipcarts, and I lead the way through a path that takes us by incredible views of the valley below. I try not to think about the fact that New Amster is down there somewhere in the darkness. I hope for our sakes that they’re not thinking about us either.