Read The Illusion Page 4

  Next to the surveillance room was another door. Ax moved quickly toward it. He pushed on it. Just as I noticed the arrow taped to the wall above. BREAK ROOM, the arrow read.

  The door opened. And there, directly in front of us, were four Hork-Bajir. Seated around a card table. Elbow blades hanging casually off the chairs. Tails slung back across the floor. Each held a hand of cards tightly in his claws. A single, unshaded lightbulb dangled from the ceiling.

 

  Ax backed out instantly. The Hork-Bajir ­hadn’t noticed us.

  I could feel the vibrations of Ax’s hearts hammering. My own heart was a machine gun.

  The footsteps were now just yards away.

  No choice. Back, into the security room. Hope the guard on duty there was still watching his screens. Hope we didn’t make a sound.

  Ax spun, leaped; I slipped my hold, opened my wings, caught just enough air to keep from hitting the floor and followed Ax as he dived awkwardly beneath a steel table.

  Too much noise! The guard had to hear us. Had to!

  But no. Nothing. He still watched his screens. The enemy was out there, out somewhere in camera range. Not right here, in the same room.

  The footsteps from the hallway followed us. Stopped. Four black boots, inches away. One pair was crusted with dried mud.

  “See anything?” Muddy Boots asked the TV man.

  “Nah. Thought I saw some kid heading round the back. Then I lost him.”

  An acknowledging grunt from Clean Boots.

  I wasn’t too worried these guys would get us. Ax’s tail was cocked and ready. The table would go flying and these two would be counting in base five before they could draw their weapons.

  But that would cause an uproar. The Hork-­Bajir would come running, and it wasn’t time for me to be captured. Not yet. Not till we knew where the secret entrance was.

  Funny I should think that particular thing. The next words out of the guard’s mouth were, “Just left the entrance. Passed off my shift to Lacsar-Four-Fifty-Four.”

  I was further forward than Ax. I could, by shifting ever so slightly, see the men. Two guys who looked like regular security guards. Except for the Dracon beams holstered in their belts.

  “Any animals?” the TV man asked, never glancing away from the screens. He wasn’t mesmerized by the screens, I realized. He’d been ordered not to look away. On pain of death.

  “We kicked a few dogs. Sprayed some bugs. Waste of time, you can’t keep every possible animal morph out of an open-air celebration. Could have told Visser Three that.”

  “Yeah, you could have,” his partner, Clean Boots, said dryly. “And about three seconds later you’d be begging for your life.”

  A rueful laugh. “Got that right. Anyway, I do have to see the sub-visser about … Ouch!”

  “What is it?”

  “Something stuck in my shoe …” He knelt down to unlace it. His profile suddenly so close we could see the stubble on his chin. The pores on his nose. There was no way! No way he ­wouldn’t notice us!

  “Darn wood chips drive me crazy! Sharp like pins! I hate that lousy entrance shift,” he muttered. “Tromping around like I’m some human eight-year-old.”

  The guard stood up, slipped off the shoe, and knocked it against the table leg, showering Ax with topsoil. And a wood chip. I breathed. Ax breathed.

  They walked on. Past us and toward the wall of cameras, where a man sat, his back to us, monitoring the pictures.

  “Hello, Chief,” they addressed him. “Come to give our reports.”

  I said tersely.

  He turned.

  Of the fifty or so screens, nearly half pictured the same spot. All from different angles, so it wasn’t immediately obvious. But the more I focused the more I realized …

 

 

 

  It took an hour for Ax and me to extricate ourselves and round up the others.

  The big Yeerk-a-Thon was winding up. They were making closing speeches. The six of us were above and around the playground. While we’d watched, three people had crawled in through the kiddie tunnel. None had crawled out the far side.

  It was a pretty elaborate structure, really. Two stories. Built of large posts maybe half the height of telephone poles. With a mesh net for climbing, a fireman’s pole, a wide metal slide. And intricate covered catwalks. Far cooler than anything I’d ever played on.

  The playground itself was surrounded on two sides by trees, with an open playing field at the far end, and the community center wall defining the left side.

  We’d spotted guards atop the community center, guards in the woods, guards pretending to sit idly on the bleachers behind the batting cage.

  A least eight human-Controllers were watching the playground. A lot of security for a jungle gym at night.

  A person was approaching, a man, feet crunching across the wood chips.

  Jake said. He was in owl morph, with eyes that saw through the night like it was noon on a cloudless day. Jake whispered.

  Cassie said.

 

  Marco, Cassie, and Rachel had stayed in fly morph. They would try and enter the tunnel. And come back out again.

  Ax was out of camera range behind some trees. He was standing between two guards, not twenty feet from either of them. Needless to say, he was standing very still.

  Jake directed. His owl morph was better for this kind of night work. I could see the flies. Jake could SEE them.

  I landed soundlessly on one of the jungle gym poles and perched still as a statue. I had seen the camera angles and knew where to be to stay out of view.

  Tasset stooped and disappeared under the slide.

  said Cassie.

  Cassie and Marco flew behind Tasset. The cameras would never pick them up. But there might be other dangers. There were always other dangers.

  Marco called.