Chess looked down at Finn and Emma, both of them so little and so brave. He looked over at the Gustanos, weeping and wailing and reeling about blindly and helplessly, just like the guards.
He grabbed Emma’s arm and Finn’s hand and took off running.
Fifty-Five
Finn
Finn was having so much fun.
The more smoke bombs he threw, the more he felt like himself again. What had they all been so worried about? They could ward off these guards with toys.
So when Mom yelled, “Go!” and Chess grabbed Finn’s hand and pulled him along, Finn raced directly toward the guards.
“Finn, Emma, and Rocky Gustano!” he shouted. “Come with us! We’ll save you!”
The guard beside Other-Finn was staring down at his hands as though he couldn’t quite understand why he was clutching a little boy’s arm. So it was easy for Finn to shove the man away and yank Other-Finn forward.
“W-what? Why . . . ? Rocky, what’s going on?” Other- Finn screamed. His eyes were wide and terrified as the crazily rolling beam of light struck his face; the handcuffs slid back and forth on his wrists as he reached back for his older brother.
“We’re getting you out of here,” Chess was telling Rocky. Rocky squinted at Chess, then yanked on Other-Finn’s arm the same way Chess was tugging on Finn.
Behind them, the crowd screamed and Judge Morales’s voice boomed uselessly, “Silence, everyone! Guards, follow the protocol!” So Finn couldn’t hear what Emma or Natalie told Other-Emma to get her to run. Maybe they didn’t need to tell her anything; maybe she was like Emma: smart enough to figure out everything on her own. But the three Greystone kids, the three Gustanos, and Natalie began moving as a pack through the darkness, jumping past guards who did little but stare helplessly into the smoke.
“This way!” Natalie called, running ahead. “Away from the judge! There should be a door at the side—”
“Good idea!” Emma hollered back.
Finn threw his last smoke bomb over his shoulder, just in case any guards tried to follow.
“And don’t kidnap anyone ever again!” he yelled.
He wanted to see if Mom and Joe were running yet, too, but the rolling light pointed the other way now; the rising smoke stung his eyes. He started to trip, and Chess yanked him up.
“Keep going!” Emma yelled.
Or maybe it was Other-Emma; it was hard to know.
They crashed through a curtain at the side of the stage and kept going, into more darkness.
And then Finn’s shoulder hit a door, the kind that opened with a bar across the middle. He shoved hard, and there was light on the other side.
Light, and a new set of double doors.
These doors were surrounded by two rows of guards. They were still in formation, looking strict and tall and mean in their crisp, dark uniforms.
“Somebody throw more smoke bombs!” Finn called back over his shoulder. “I’m out!”
Behind him, Emma let go of Other-Emma’s arm and held up both of her hands.
They were empty.
Finn whipped his gaze over to Natalie and Chess, who had their palms out, too.
Their empty palms.
Everybody was out of smoke bombs. They had nothing left to fight these guards.
The first guard stepped forward, reaching out to grab Finn.
Fifty-Six
Emma
“Natalie!” Emma yelled. “Help!”
It was impossible to say in front of the guards what Natalie needed to do. Not when the guards could hear everything.
And not when one guard already had his hands around Finn’s arm; not when a second guard was already reaching for Emma.
Emma stopped and pulled back and put her hands on her hips. It was time to speak in code.
“Don’t you know who her mother is?” Emma demanded, pointing back at Natalie.
Behind her, Chess and the three Gustano kids were jumbled together. Chess’s face was red and sweaty as he struggled to keep a grip on the chain that linked the Gustanos’ handcuffs. The three Gustanos were screaming and scrambling away from these new guards in a panic. Other-Finn’s mouth was open so wide Emma could see his tonsils; Other-Emma shoved Chess away while Rocky yanked back on his handcuffs.
Rocky crashed back into Natalie, almost knocking her over. She threw her arms up helplessly and struggled to stay on her feet.
She did not look powerful.
But then Chess said, “That’s Natalie Mayhew,” pronouncing her name the same awed way he’d spoken it back in the basement the afternoon after Mom left, when he’d told Emma that Natalie and her friends practically ran the elementary school.
And that was all it took. A second later, Natalie whipped her hair back over her shoulder and thrust her chin high in the air and shoved past the Gustanos and Chess. She marched straight to the guard who was reaching for Emma and looked him square in the eye.
“My mother said for me to take these children out this door,” she said, her voice ringing with bossiness. “All of them. The prisoners in chains and my helpers.”
Emma suddenly understood what Chess had meant about Natalie running the school. Now Natalie sounded like she could run the world.
“Er, miss, we don’t have authorization for that,” the guard replied. He sounded apologetic, though. And maybe a little uncertain. “Our orders were to let no one in or—”
Natalie made her back very straight. She was probably six inches shorter than the guard, but Emma suddenly felt as though Natalie was taller than everyone.
“Maybe it’s too dark for you to see very well,” Natalie said.
Sarcasm, Emma thought, because the emergency backup lights here were brighter than the ones on the stage. But she’s making it seem like the guard can’t see well enough to do his job. Like he’s not even capable of doing his job.
“Oh no, miss, we—we—” one of the other guards started to stammer.
“I am Natalie Mayhew, and in an emergency situation like this, that is all the authorization you need,” Natalie finished.
The guards looked at each other. They weren’t bumbling like the ones on the stage. They still stood stiff and proud and stern. Emma wanted to blurt out, Natalie, can’t you say something else? Can’t you do something to prove who you are?
But that would be like a code, too. Emma couldn’t make it look like she was telling Natalie what to do.
Natalie only tapped her foot impatiently. Like she was just waiting, and she knew the guards would obey. Eventually. If they knew what was good for them. And then . . .
The guards stepped aside. The one who’d been reaching for Emma let his hands drop. So did the one who’d been holding on to Finn.
“Do you need a detail of guards to accompany—” the first guard began.
Natalie whirled on him.
“Don’t you think I have my own security force waiting outside?” she snarled. “My own superior guards?”
“Yes, miss. Of course, miss,” the guard rushed to reply.
How did she do that? Emma wondered. How was she so . . . perfect?
The funny thing was, Natalie had sounded a little like she was just arguing with her mom. Like all that yelling at her mother had only been practice.
Now Natalie was making the Gustano kids and Chess, Emma, and Finn march through the door. She stood beside them like she was their guard.
The first door led to a dark, empty hallway and another set of doors.
And then they were all outside the building, blinking at their escape from darkness. The air out here was only slightly less murky than it had been in the auditorium, and it made Emma feel almost as strange. But at least there was enough light to see by. For a moment, she just wanted to take in everything: the puzzled, terrified expressions on the Gustano kids’ faces; the strange, ugly buildings around them; the emptiness of the street before them. And, most of all, the determination on Natalie’s face.
Has anybody ever told you that you look
a lot like your mom? Emma wanted to ask her. That you act a lot like her, too, trying to fix everybody else’s problems?
But Natalie was still giving orders.
“Now run!”
Fifty-Seven
Chess
Chess ran.
It was amazing that his legs and feet worked, because his brain didn’t seem to be functioning.
Maybe we should . . . If . . .
For a few blocks, none of them did anything but run, pell-mell, straight down the middle of the deserted street. Then it occurred to Chess that eventually someone was going to start chasing them, and they should probably try harder to hide. Just as he started to pull back to tell the others that, Rocky yanked his brother and sister away from the group.
“This is . . . crazy,” the oldest Gustano gasped, slowing to a trot. Other-Finn and Other-Emma huddled beside him, their chains and handcuffs clanking. “We just need to find a phone. Was that . . . was that some sort of cult? And we’re away from it now, so . . .” He appealed mostly to Chess and Natalie. “I guess you’re trying to help, but . . . can we borrow a phone? To call the police?”
“The phone we have doesn’t work here,” Emma said. “And we think the police are bad guys, too.”
The three Gustano kids just gaped at her.
Of course, Chess thought. We’re confused, and we’ve been working on figuring out everything for the past week. The Gustano kids don’t know anything.
“Are we in some foreign country?” Other-Emma asked. Her “I’ve got to make sense of this” squint looked awfully familiar. “With a corrupt government?”
“That’s probably the best way to think of it,” Chess said, trying to make his voice gentle. “We’re taking you to safety. We promise. Then we’ll explain.”
The thin wail of a police siren rose behind them.
“Keep running!” Natalie screamed. “Faster!”
They took off again, full speed—or, at least, full speed for Finn and Other-Finn. The two little boys seemed to be struggling valiantly to keep up, and Chess saw that Rocky and Other-Emma kept having to force themselves to slow down to their little brother’s pace. Of course, they were handcuffed to their brother, but Chess stayed by Finn, too. Natalie and Emma ran slightly ahead, in the lead.
So if the police come, Emma’s going to be safer than Finn or me, but . . .
As the police siren seemed to draw nearer—was it just one siren? Two? Three?—Chess got an image in his head of a whole row of police cars pulling up behind them, maybe picking off Finn. . . .
None of us can outrun police cars, Chess told himself. We have to find a route the cars can’t follow.
They were still blocks and blocks away from the abandoned house. Nothing around him looked familiar, though at least they’d gotten past all the towering buildings with their horrid blue-and-orange banners. Chess was pretty sure that the only landmark he’d recognized before—the retaining pond—was just ahead on the right.
Oh, the retaining pond . . . And behind it . . .
“Listen!” Chess screamed. “When we get to the pond, we run off the road and take the bike path behind it!”
“Is there a bike path in this world?” Emma shouted back at him.
“I don’t know!” The police sirens were getting closer and closer. The walls of fences and unpassable hedges rose around him. “It has to be! Or else—”
He couldn’t say it, but the words rang in his head.
Or else we don’t have a chance.
Fifty-Eight
Finn
This is just like running home from the school bus after school, Finn kept telling himself. It’s just a slightly longer route. Keep running.
Except, running home from the school bus always meant running home to see Mom, who would be waiting with chocolate-chip cookies or apples and Goldfish crackers or . . . or just a hug.
Finn was always hungry, and he liked food a lot. But sometimes what he wanted most was the hug.
But Mom said she’d meet us at the house today, Finn told himself. So, see? It isn’t different! She’ll hug us all when we get there!
“This way!” Chess shouted, veering off the street. He pulled on Finn’s arm, then Other-Finn’s arm, too, tugging them both along with him.
“No confined spaces!” Rocky growled at Chess. “You can’t take us anywhere we—”
“Just a bike path!” Chess shouted back at him. “Where we’ll be out of sight!”
Rocky glared at Chess, but he threw a quick glance over his shoulder and followed along.
“Please let it be there. Please let it be there,” Finn heard Chess repeat again and again.
Finn surged ahead, catching up with Emma and Natalie.
“It is!” he yelled back to Chess. “Just a little overgrown!”
The bike path was a lot overgrown. Branches whipped out at them, slashing at their arms and legs and faces and catching at their hair. A clearing appeared ahead, but Natalie held them back.
“Wait, just wait, shh, don’t let anyone hear us . . . ,” she whispered. She peeked past a thorny bush. “Okay, it’s clear. Come on! Hurry!”
All seven of them dashed across a street and then back onto the rest of the overgrown path.
Why isn’t anybody out? Finn wondered. Why isn’t anyone calling to us, “Oh, is something wrong, kids? Can we do anything to help?”
Was it possible that every single person in this town had been in that awful Public Hall?
The roar of police sirens behind them reminded Finn that even if that had been true before, it wasn’t true now. The police were coming. And the police here were bad guys, too.
The sirens seemed to multiply and echo. Now it sounded like the police cars weren’t just behind the kids, but ahead as well.
Can’t be, Finn told himself. Just keep running. . . .
Beside him, Other-Finn kept glancing up at Rocky and Other-Emma. Finn wanted to say something encouraging: You’re doing great! or We’re almost there! But he found he didn’t have enough air in his lungs. It was hard to breathe when the air smelled this bad. And when the air itself seemed to whisper, You’re not going to make it. You should just give up now.
Emma fell back to run alongside Chess and Finn and ask, “Isn’t it going to be hard to see the house from the path?”
Chess faltered, almost tripping.
“Oh, right, nothing looks the same, and there are all those fences . . . ,” he murmured. “What if we miss it?”
“Should we go out to the street at the last block? At Chestnut?” Emma asked. “Or whatever they call Chestnut Street here?”
Finn didn’t know all the street names in his neighborhood—it was just “the street where Tyrell lives” or “where that one old lady lets us pick raspberries” or “where they have that house that I’m going to buy someday, because it has a swimming pool.”
When this is all over, I’m never going to any of those places again, he thought. Maybe I won’t even go to school. I’m just staying home with Mom.
They burst out into the open again, and Chess and Emma screamed together, “This way!”
The broken-down street before them seemed a million miles wide and a million miles long. It should have been a relief not to have branches tearing at his clothes and hair constantly, but now Finn felt too exposed. Unless he could scale an eight-foot-high fence on one side or another of the street, there was nowhere to hide if someone showed up. The police sirens seemed to have faded in the distance, but maybe that was because Finn’s ears had gotten used to them. Or maybe his ears weren’t working right at all. The street before them seemed, if anything, too silent. The handcuffs on the Gustano kids’ wrists clanked as they ran, and that suddenly seemed too loud.
And then someone stepped out from a gap in the fences. A woman.
Ms. Morales. The real Ms. Morales. He could tell, because she was wearing the same neon green exercise shirt she’d had on when she’d dropped them off at their house earlier that morning.
&nbs
p; Finn decided neon green was his new favorite color. Definitely better than dark blue or orange.
“Natalie? Finn? Emma? Chess?” Ms. Morales called, her face a mask of concern. “I finally found you! But—”
It didn’t matter that the concern on her face was almost immediately replaced by anger. Or maybe fear. It almost didn’t matter for that moment that she wasn’t his mom. She was a mom, and she’d always been nice to him, and right now he just needed a grown-up who would hug him and tell him everything was going to be okay.
He put on a burst of speed and took off running toward her.
In the next instant, he heard Ms. Morales scream, “Watch out!”
Fifty-Nine
Emma
Everything happened at once.
Emma had just turned her head to ask Chess, “That is our Ms. Morales, isn’t it?” and Chess had replied, panting, “Neon green shirt, so, yes, I think so. It has to be.”
At the same time, Rocky, Other-Emma, and Other-Finn had whipped around in the broken-up gravel of the street, as if they were about to run in the other direction.
And then, as Finn raced faster than ever toward Ms. Morales, she suddenly screamed, “Watch out!” and police officers appeared at the tops of every fence and started dropping toward the street below.
Finn skidded to a halt. All the other kids froze.
We’re so stupid, Emma thought. Those boys told us that first day there were SWAT teams everywhere on this street who captured Mom. We’re going to be captured the exact same way. . . .
Then Ms. Morales screamed, “Stay away from those kids!” and all the police officers froze.
“Ma’am?” One of the men gulped. He was a tall man with imposing muscles, but in that instant he sounded cowed and confused. “Did you say . . .”
“Mom! We’ve got to get out of here!” Natalie yelled. “I’ll explain later!”
“Mom?” One of the police officers nearest Emma muttered under his breath. He seemed to be trying to peer past the tangled, twig-strewn hair hiding Natalie’s face. “Is that the daughter? Or an impostor? And the orders we received, are they . . .”
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