had any friends in this place. Still, every fiber of my being told me to follow its lead, so we raced down the path and right into a small clearing.
“Left,” I said, my breath ragged.
We took a sharp left turn into the dark woods, the thundering footsteps of our pursuers never too far behind. Sudden silence fell over our group as we came to a sudden halt in front of a cave, nicely hidden between sprawling bushes and thick layers of mossy stones.
“In here,” I added, then ran right inside, slipping through the nook that served as an entrance.
One by one, just like through the shimmering portal, Thayen, Jericho, Dafne, and Soph came in, and we bumbled through the darkness with only the pink of my glowing hands to guide us. We couldn’t make any noise or use too much light, since the purpose was to hide from our enemies and those ghastly clawed creatures.
The silence was pressing, yet I didn’t dare fool myself into hoping we’d lost them. I kept moving through the low and uneven corridors, losing track of where we’d come from. I only had this feeling that we needed to go deep, as deep as possible, for a sliver of safety. We ended up in a small round chamber with a domed ceiling.
Panting, we listened carefully for every possible sound. With the exception of water dripping somewhere nearby, there was nothing to hear. Thayen took deep breaths, analyzing the cold and thin air for any scent that might trigger danger. He shook his head as he looked at me. “I think the coast is clear. I think we lost them.”
The robotic voice couldn’t be heard down here, but I did wonder if the horn that had sounded in this fake Shade had echoed into the real one. The signals we’d heard back home could’ve been echoes of the signals from here. It was only a theory, however, and the absolute least of our concerns.
“Is everybody okay?” Thayen asked, measuring each of us from head to toe.
“For the most part, yeah,” Jericho replied. “Though I prefer flying to running.”
“You would’ve been a… well, a flying duck out there,” Thayen said, holding back a chuckle. “We made do just fine. We’re alive. It’s cool.”
“Claudia’s clone is gone, along with whatever that die thing was. The so-called object, I mean,” Soph muttered, settling on the stony ground with her legs crossed. Sweat dripped from her temples as she worked on her breathing.
It had been a crazy ride so far. “It’s only going to get worse from here,” I said. “But at least we’re at the source of this trouble. The best thing we can do right now is keep investigating. We can’t stay in this cave forever.”
For a second, I wondered about the person who’d guided us here. I wondered who they were. It couldn’t have been anyone from the enemy’s ranks; otherwise, this whole place would’ve been crawling with clawed shadow monsters and killer clones. No, it wanted us safe… maybe I’d imagined it. No one else had seen it, after all. But that, too, was at the bottom of our list of problems. Briefly, I thought of my dad and the rest of our family. They had to be worried sick, not knowing where we’d gone. Mom was nowhere to be found, but maybe the other GASP officers had gotten to her. I only had hopes—the most dangerous thing for me right now, considering how little I knew about this strange dimension.
“Well, Astra, you are officially the fake Shade’s most wanted,” Jericho said. He was trying to be humorous, but the strained smirk on his face told me he was just as troubled about this as the rest of us.
“We’re going to have to find out why,” I replied.
Perhaps that was our best starting point. Studying this alternative island and its clones, figuring out the administrative and military patterns. Understanding their goals and, most importantly, finding their leader. Somebody was pulling all the strings in this place. That somebody had put out a hit on me days ago. That somebody had the answer to every question.
I just had to survive long enough to get to them. Easier said than done, I realized as I looked around. We were worn out and terrified and utterly confused. Nevertheless, our war had only just begun, and we had enough anger in us to keep the engines burning.
Tristan
After some work, Unending found the runes that had kept the Mixer stuck in