Our plan would have been risky even if Enu, Edwy, and Rosi had been able to walk. Even if I’d had enough energy left for running.
But what else can we do except try?
I swayed walking back to our prison cell. I wasn’t even carrying anybody now, and I was still having trouble moving forward instead of reeling into the walls. Or collapsing.
“Let’s take Edwy next,” I told Cana. “That way we can build our muscles and work our way up to dealing with heavy old Enu.”
Didn’t she see how that was totally backward—how we really should have taken Enu first, while we still had energy?
Cana squared her shoulders and walked faster. And there was nothing I could do but speed up behind her.
Edwy was no harder to carry/drag than Rosi had been, but I felt like crawling might be too much for me afterward. The weight of my phone in my back pocket felt like a huge burden. I could stay upright only because Cana was with me; I could keep walking only because she walked beside me. I hoped she couldn’t tell how wiped out I was, but just as we got back to our prison cell, she slipped her hand into mine.
“I bet we could roll Enu if we had to,” she said. “The hallway’s wide enough.”
“Roll . . . ,” I repeated dimly.
“You know,” she said. “Like how we all used to roll down the little hill back in Fredtown, and our Fred-mommies and Fred-daddies used to give us a push to get us started . . . and everyone would laugh and laugh and laugh. . . . Oh, sorry. You don’t know what it was like in Fredtown, do you?”
“No,” I grunted.
I tried to imagine a place where kids laughed that much about silly stuff like rolling in the grass. Most of the laughter I remembered from back in Refuge City was from kids making fun of other kids, trying to make them feel bad.
And I remembered Enu laughing at me sometimes when I wanted to play with him and his friends, and he didn’t want me to.
And now I’m saving your life, dude. You’d better be alert enough to notice and appreciate it!
I wanted that thought to make me fierce and strong. I wanted to be fury-powered. But I was doing well to put one foot in front of the other. I was doing well not to just fall over myself.
Cana was already bending down beside Enu, shoving on his shoulders. He flopped forward, his head lolling side to side.
Oh, Enu, please stay unconscious, I thought. Because this is going to hurt. . . .
It seemed to take a thousand years to roll Enu out of the cell and down the hall. We left him beside Rosi and Edwy, a good distance back from the door.
“You stand behind the other kids, to be safe,” I told Cana as I stepped closer to the door.
“Shouldn’t you be safe too?” Cana asked in a wobbly voice.
“I have to be close to the door to throw the Zacadi pearl,” I said. “I have to put one on the floor and hit it by throwing a second one. But Alcibiades says it’s almost like the pearls have their own brains—they’ll know not to send the blast zone out farther than I’m standing when I throw the pearl.”
I hoped Alcibiades was right.
I hoped a lot of things.
Cana stood back. I wedged one of the Zacadi pearls against the bottom of the door, then straightened up. I took two steps away, which was about as far as I could go and still be sure of my throwing accuracy.
“If this doesn’t work . . . ,” I began, pulling a second pearl out into my hand.
“Don’t say that. It’s going to work,” Cana said behind me, as patiently as if she were the older one.
I lifted my arm and threw the Zacadi pearl to the floor. It seemed to arc to the side, but it still landed on the other pearl. I caught my breath. Nothing happened for a minute; then the door fell over backward, and the wall beside it crumbled down to nothing. Bits and pieces of concrete and metal soared toward me.
I scrambled backward, but the dodge was unnecessary: All the concrete and metal landed in a pile right before my feet.
“Okay, that was really impressive,” I muttered.
“You did it!” Cana cried behind me.
I glanced back. The noise had roused Edwy and Rosi enough that they squirmed and moaned, but Enu remained deathly still.
That was definitely a bad sign.
“Hurry,” I began, “let’s get Enu to—”
But before I could move, I was hit with a second wave of sound, roaring into the shocked silence that had followed the explosion. This wasn’t the rumble of more concrete and metal crumbling and falling. It was voices. Human voices. Screaming from the other side of the fallen door.
“What was that?”
“Who’s there?”
“Has somebody come to save us? Help us! Please!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Quickly I scrambled past the rubble. At first I could see only darkness beyond the fallen door.
“Cana, the light—” I called over my shoulder.
The little girl was already climbing toward me, bringing her glowing Zacadi pearl with her. Once she reached the spot where the door had stood, the boundaries of the glow leaped forward, illuminating the hallway ahead, which was lined with rows of cages that had been completely empty the day before.
They weren’t empty now. Each cage was packed with people. Humans. My first glance seemed to take in hundreds of shocked, upturned faces—men, women, and children all pleading with Cana and me, “Help! Set us free! Let us go! Do you know how we can get back to Earth?”
No—they weren’t all pleading. Some were already moving through a destroyed corner of the cage nearest the fallen door. I’d evidently blown up the bars on that cage at the same time that I’d blown up the door.
I thought two things at once: Just look, you ungrateful people! I already set you free! Or, now that you have light, figure it out the same way we did! And There are too many of them, and they’re too panicked. They’re just going to block the hallway, so Cana and I will never be able to get Enu, Edwy, and Rosi down to Alcibiades before the Enforcers get here. Enu’s going to die! Maybe Edwy and Rosi, too!
Beside me, Cana scrambled toward the top of the rubble. She held the glowing Zacadi pearl up to her mouth. Evidently she’d discovered a secret about the pearl that she hadn’t told me: The pearl could also work like a megaphone. Her little-girl voice soared over all the screams, booming out louder than everyone.
“We know how to escape!” she cried. “You can follow us! But we need your help too! We need three strong people to carry our friends!”
Oh, right, I thought. Good idea, Cana. Almost.
I grabbed the pearl from her hands and held it by my own mouth.
“Unless someone helps us, we can’t help you!” I cried. “Three strong people! Now! Before the guards come and stop us all!”
The people starting to trickle out of the broken corner of the cage seemed to be fighting one another. I saw one man punch another in the mouth. But moments later, two men and a particularly muscular woman stood before Cana and me.
“Pick up those kids,” I told them, pointing back toward Enu, Edwy, and Rosi. “Carry them! And stay right behind us, or else, I swear, I’ll let the Enforcers capture you again. . . .”
I saw the three people scoop my brothers and Rosi into strong, powerful arms. In that moment I couldn’t have told you what any of those people looked like—whether they had green eyes or brown, whether they had curly hair or straight, whether they had dark skin or light. I wasn’t even entirely sure they were two men and a woman. All I cared about was that they held my brothers and Rosi in their arms—easily, effortlessly—and that they were ready to run.
“This way!” I screamed.
Miraculously, we were able to dodge the other people spilling out of the broken cage wall. We had a clear shot to Alcibiades’s cage—and to the cure for Enu, Edwy, and Rosi. And there was no sign of any Enforcer guards showing up to investigate the explosion. Not yet, anyway.
Cana tugged on my arm.
“Those people are still trapped
,” she told me, pointing to the opposite side of the prison. I saw that some of the rubble from the explosion had blocked the gap in their bars. “They need help too.”
I touched the remaining Zacadi pearls in my pocket. I’d used two to blow up the door. I still needed to blast Alcibiades out of his cage, and to blast a route from the prison to the spaceship that Alcibiades claimed was parked nearby. Then we needed pearls to fuel our flight to the intergalactic court. I’d already started with fewer Zacadi pearls than Alcibiades had told me to bring.
“We’ll help those people later,” I lied to Cana. “After we get help for Enu, Edwy, and Rosi.”
Cana shot one more glance toward the cages on our left. People shoved their arms out through the bars to reach for us; they begged, “Help us! Help us! We’re innocent humans like you. . . .”
“We’re coming back!” Cana called to them. “I promise!”
I just made a little girl lie . . . , I thought.
But there was no time to feel guilty. Panic and fear carried me along. We passed the last cage full of humans, turned the corner, and reached the edge of the cage full of the dying Zacadians. All I could see were lumps of bodies.
Cana grabbed the translator from the wall, but I didn’t wait to make sure she’d turned it on.
“Alcibiades! Hurry! Please—”
I couldn’t put the right words together, couldn’t explain how desperately Enu, Edwy, and Rosi needed help right now.
One of the lumps rose toward us. My eyes made out tentacles. Behind me, the calls for rescue turned into screams of terror. People fell to the ground in a panic.
“These aliens are on our side,” I snapped. “Now—everyone—stand back!”
I didn’t have time to make sure that anyone obeyed. I put a Zacadi pearl on the floor beside the door of Alcibiades’s cage. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the men—the one carrying Edwy?—reach for it.
“You fool! I said, stand back!” I screamed.
With one hand I shoved back against that man’s chest. With the other, I hurled a second Zacadi pearl at the one on the floor.
I missed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Zacadi pearl I’d thrown hit the floor with a burst of light and a pop that sounded like a dud firecracker sizzling out without exploding. It was a good five centimeters away from the Zacadi pearl it was supposed to hit.
“Will it work if I throw it again?” I screamed at Alcibiades.
I couldn’t hear his answer; I couldn’t even tell if he tried to answer. My ears had started working strangely, going long moments without hearing anything, even as humans screamed behind me and the cageful of Zacadians grunted and moaned.
Maybe I was about to pass out.
Someone tugged on my arm.
Cana.
“ . . . enough that we can shove Rosi, Edwy, and Enu through,” she said.
She let go of my arm and began yanking on one bar of the Zacadians’ cage. Strangely, it seemed to bend. Cana was practically swinging on it. My eyes tracked her motion, and I understood: She was saying that the force of the one Zacadi pearl hitting the floor had at least cracked that one prison bar, making just enough room for us to push my brothers and Rosi into the Zacadians’ cage to be cured.
“Do it!” I screamed. “What she said!”
Maybe nobody could tell that I was about to faint. Maybe they actually believed that I knew what I was saying.
Or maybe they all just trusted Cana. The three strong human escapees holding Edwy, Enu, and Rosi began shoving the flopping, unconscious bodies of my brothers and friend into the Zacadians’ cage. I saw the broken, jagged edge of the bar scrape Enu’s arm. Blood dripped to the floor.
What if I’m wrong about everything? I thought. What if the Zacadians don’t want to help us, but, but . . .
Enu, Edwy, and Rosi seemed to be swallowed up in the vast, slimy, tentacled mass of Zacadians.
“What’s happening?” I cried. “What are you doing?”
A tentacle reached through the bars and pulled me toward the cage as well. I heard groans and grunts and slurps. I dug my heel into the floor.
And then Cana waved the translator toward my ear. I heard Alcibiades’s voice—or, rather, the mechanical voice translating Alcibiades’s Zacadian language into something I could understand: “Hurry! We need the other Zacadi pearls!”
I reached for the unexploded Zacadi pearl I’d placed on the floor. But a tentacle swiped it away before I could get my fingers around it.
“Let me—” I began.
“Don’t you see the Enforcers coming? We have to go now!” Alcibiades screamed at me. Or, at least, the translator did.
I glanced back over my shoulder. There was an unearthly glow behind me, back where I’d exploded the door. I heard a mechanical voice repeat again and again, “Return to your prison cells and nobody will be hurt. Return to your prison cells and nobody will be hurt. Otherwise, we will start crowd-control retaliation in five minutes . . . in four minutes and fifty seconds . . . in four minutes and forty seconds . . .”
The crowd of escapees screamed. Some began scurrying back toward their cells. Other ran in the opposite direction.
Alcibiades yanked Cana and me through the bars of his prison cell. I felt a searing pain in my side. I looked down and saw my own blood dripping toward the floor.
I slammed my hand over the pocketful of Zacadi pearls, protecting them.
“Enu, Edwy, and Rosi have to be ready to go with us,” I cried.
I saw Edwy and Rosi sit up dazedly from the mass of lumpy, slimy Zacadians.
“What—what’s going on?” Edwy sputtered.
I grabbed his arm, pulling him toward me.
“No time to explain,” I called. “Just—”
I felt a tentacle knock my arm to the side and slither into my pocket. No—a hand. Cana’s hand.
“Don’t worry, Alcibiades,” she cried. “I remember where you said to put it.”
Cana pulled one of the Zacadi pearls from my pocket and began running toward the wall at the opposite side of the cell. She stood on tiptoes and wedged the pearl into a little hollow that seemed about as high as she could possibly reach. All the Zacadians began rolling away from that wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alcibiades rear back one of his tentacles, as if he was about to throw the pearl at the wall.
As fast as I could, I grabbed his tentacles.
“You wait until that little girl gets back here with us!” I screamed at him.
He shook his tentacle out of my grasp just as Cana turned and ran back toward us. Cana dove for the lumpy pile of Zacadians. Alcibiades’s tentacle flapped back and forward. I couldn’t tell whether he released the pearl or not.
But a second later the whole world seemed to explode.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The force of the blast threw me backward. I’d worried about Cana, but I was actually closer to the wall and the explosion than she was when the pearls collided.
I landed hard, my limbs sprawled in all directions. I heard an unintelligible roar and then a muffled “Run!” coming from the translator that Cana still held as she crawled from the pile of Zacadians.
“Where? Wait—are we all—”
I wanted a moment to think, to assess the situation and plan ahead. But the floor was moving beneath me. No—it was waves of Zacadians moving beneath me, struggling toward a broken place that appeared in the wall as the dust began to settle.
I righted myself, pulled myself to my feet.
“Enu? Edwy? Rosi?” I called.
“Right here,” Edwy answered, from just behind me.
I turned my head and saw he was holding up a fist—or, not quite a fist. It was just his hand, with his fingers entwined with Rosi’s. He and Rosi were holding hands.
My mind thought there was actually time to sputter out, Aw, how sweet, before my mouth took over, barking out, “Can you walk? Or run? We’ve got to get out of here!”
“I could run a marath
on,” Edwy boasted, scrambling to his feet. He swayed unsteadily, and his face still had a sickly tint to it—he looked more likely to vomit than to run. But if he had his bravado back, then he was good to go. At least as ready as I was, anyway.
We were true Watanabonesets. Which reminded me . . .
“Enu? Enu? Where are you?”
Somehow in the din of all the Zacadian groans and the human screams and the Enforcer shouts growing closer and closer, I could still make out one particular grunt coming from a pile of Zacadians. Frantically, I shoved away tentacles, and there was Enu, blinking slowly up at me.
“S-sis?” he managed to whisper.
I grabbed him by the arms, but of course I wasn’t strong enough to lift him. I nudged his torso toward Alcibiades.
“You have to carry Enu,” I screamed. “He’s too weak to run right now, and you’re the only one with muscles—or, well, whatever Zacadians have instead of muscles!”
Alcibiades scooped up Enu, but the motion seemed like an afterthought—just a way to get Enu’s body out of his way.
“Unless Enu ends up on that spaceship with us, I’m throwing all the Zacadi pearls out the window!” I threatened.
I don’t know if Alcibiades heard me—there were still too many screams and shouts and moans and grunts echoing all around us. And the walls still might have been reverberating with the aftershocks from the explosion. But Alcibiades tightened his grip on Enu’s body and brought a second tentacle forward to draw him close. I decided Enu was safe enough—for now—and I grabbed Edwy’s available hand and pulled him and Rosi along with me. Rosi, I saw, clutched Cana’s hand as well.
The six of us surged forward, struggling toward the opening in the wall. Pale light shone in through the hole—was it moonlight? Had Alcibiades really blasted a new exit to the outside?
Would it be worth anything if we immediately met a cluster of Enforcers once we surfaced?
“Hurry!” I screamed at the others. “We have to be fast. . . .”
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