Kingdom Keepers VI(82)
“RUN!”
They sparked in and out of DHI shadow on their way to the third station. More in than out, giving the man behind them a hard target. A rock the size of a fist flew past Charlene’s face.
Flew far too fast to have been thrown by a mortal.
Overtakers? she wondered.
She stole a look behind her. A slingshot. Not the kind boys played with—surgical rubber strung between an aluminum Y—but the cloth-and-string variety that reminded her of Hercules and Bible stories and the Roman Colosseum. The man slung another. It came at them as fast as a rocket and passed through Amanda’s head. Had she not been a DHI, she’d have been dead.
They talked as they ran at a full sprint, bounding over clumps of roots, skidding at turns in the trail.
“He’s trying to kill us.” Charlene was an Olympic runner.
“I noticed,” Amanda said.
“You need to push him!”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“You’ve got to try.”
“When?” Amanda asked.
“When I say! Once you do, head down through the woods. The way we came up.”
“But the—”
“I’ll take care of the zip line,” Charlene said.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Mattie needs you. I’ll be right behind you. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Amanda shouted.
“Listen to me, Amanda. Push the slingshot dude and go down on this side of the trail. No more zip lines. We need to reach Mattie. She’s ahead of us.” They took two turns, like an S. “If they get her… She’s the only one who knows what’s going on with Dillard. I’m a hologram. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“They want you,” Amanda said, reminding her of Jess’s drawing.
“You and I…they can’t touch us! I’m fine!”
They reached the platform sooner than expected. Charlene slowed. She glanced back at Amanda, trying to say with her eyes: Now or never.
Amanda turned, waited, and then threw out both palms. The approaching guard lifted like a kite and flew away, crashing deep into the jungle.
“Now, go!” Charlene scaled the platform. Amanda staggered off into the dark forest. Charlene slipped the harness off, clipped it to the pulley, and rocked the pulley back and forth, releasing it with all her strength. The pulley and dangling harness sailed out across the bottomless ravine.
A crunching behind her told her the pushed guard was returning. No time to get off the platform by the stairs; she’d be seen.
She looked off the edge of the platform that faced the ravine. It was straight down. About thirty feet below was a rocky outcropping. If she missed that…
Charlene took a deep breath.
She jumped.
The last thought before her feet left the platform, a thought that should have come a beat earlier, was: One of you will die.
* * *
Amanda’s hologram was fully resolved by the time she caught up to Mattie near the bottom of the trail. She looked perfectly human; her voice was clear and capable of expression.
“Stop!” she called. Pulling Mattie off the trail she whispered, “They will have told the guard down here about us. He’ll be waiting.”
“But the gate. It’s right there.” Indeed, the way out was only twenty yards away.
“He’s hiding. He’s waiting.”
“You don’t know that! He could be in there watching TV.”
“He’s not.”
Mattie was pale and trembling. In a state of shock. “What am I going to do?”
The ship had sailed. The reality of her situation registered: Dillard had been smuggled back aboard the Dream. Once Amanda and Charlene were returned by Philby, Mattie would be on her own.
“We’re going to work this out.”
“You are, sure! But what about me?”
“I need you to calm down, Mattie. These things… One step at a time. You get ahead of yourself and you get in trouble.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re going back to the ship.”
“Right now, I’m getting out of this place. That’s all that matters. That’s the next step.”
“What about Charlene?”
Amanda looked back up the trail. “No one followed us, so she pulled off, tricking them. She’s a DHI. She’s safe.” Amanda didn’t sound convinced. “By now they’re working their way down the zip lines. It’ll take them a while. A lot longer than it took us to get down, that’s for sure.”
“But where is she?”
“She’ll be here any minute.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“She can’t be more than two or three minutes behind. We’ve already spent most of that talking. We go, whether she catches up or not.”