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volley. Coughing explosions left fresh craters in the field, but the tendrilless were overreacting.

Jommy continued to dodge, spinning the wheels right and then left.

Petty, who had not properly strapped himself in, was thrown sideways into Kier Gray. The

deposed President shoved him away in a tangle of arms and legs.

As the woods loomed in front of them and the tendrilless ships closed in, Jommy knew he

would have to crash and dodge his way through the trunks, grind underbrush with his wheels,

and hope the armor could withstand any impacts.

One of the dropped bombs exploded right behind the vehicle, and the concussion threw

the car several feet in the air. After they crashed to the ground, Jommy spun and swerved, still

accelerating toward the forest.

Flying low, the first enemy bomber streaked past the car, its pilot furious at having missed.

He skimmed just above the speeding vehicle, as if he meant to smash the car’s roof with his

landing wheels.

Tall trees loomed up like a wall directly in front of the attacking craft. The tendrilless pilot

pulled up frantically, but too late. Unable to clear the treetops, the attack craft scraped the high

branches, which ripped out the underbelly. Hurtling out of control, the tendrilless fighter

reeled, arced around, and plunged like a missile into the ground.

While the others in the car cheered, Jommy couldn’t let his attention waver for a second.

He drove headlong through the small marker fence and into the line of trees. Once in the

forest, he was forced to slow, threading his way through the randomly spaced trunks. Branches

crashed and crunched beneath him. He caromed off a thick spruce, ripping away a great

chunk of bark, then he lumbered through a gully, spraying dry leaves. Ahead, the forest was

even thicker.

The two remaining tendrilless bombers soared over the treetops, still searching. Now that

their comrade was dead, Jommy knew they would never give up. The canopy was dense

enough that they could not easily see the car, but they must have some kind of technological

scanners that could pick up the heat of his engine or the ten-point steel of the vehicle’s armor.

He knocked down a small tree, which did not even damage the reinforced fender. The

gauges showed the engines overheating. He crunched along, plowing a path through the

woods, all the while knowing he couldn’t hide.

The two invader ships came back over the treetops in a methodical search pattern. When

they spotted the car and homed in on it, they dropped another volley of aerial bombs. They

meant to destroy the whole forest if they needed to.

Jommy saw them coming. “Hold on! We can’t get away from this.” Despite himself, he

closed his eyes, hoping the armor would be sufficient against the destruction.

Like fireworks, a dozen explosions erupted through the woods. Fireballs knocked down

trees; blast waves snapped trunks like toothpicks. All around the car, tall pines and oaks

toppled. Boughs smashed across the car’s roof and hood. A towering pine crashed immediately

to their left, scraping and scratching with its needle-filled branches. A thick, shattered trunk

fell on top of them like a sledge hammer, burying them.

But the car’s armor held.

As the fire continued to swell and trees fell all around, the car was trapped under the

avalanche of broken wood. Completely trapped. Even when the trees stopped falling, the blaze

increased in intensity, rapidly becoming an inferno that spread through the forest. The car was

immobilized, caught in the heart of a furnace.

Jommy shut down the systems. “There. We’re completely safe.”

«
^
»

As the librarian stared at her baby’s exposed tendrils, Anthea’s own thrill of fear was echoed

and doubled in her mind. The newborn somehow knew that he had been discovered—and

instinctively understood the danger to both of them.

“Oh, my!” Mr. Reynolds took a half step backward. He raised his hands in a warding

gesture, as if afraid he had touched something that might contaminate him.

Anthea tried to come closer. “Please, Mr. Reynolds! It’s not what you think.”

His eyes wide and round, the librarian jumped, as if he wanted to bolt out into the streets,

regardless of the danger. “Not what I
think
? I think it’s a slan baby!” He blinked several times,

gaping at the child. “Yes, indeed, I’m sure it’s a slan baby.”

“Believe me, we’re no threat to you—”

Outside, thunderous explosions made the walls shudder. The candles threw uncertain light

and strange shadows.

The librarian made a quick move and dashed around the table. “Help!”

Anthea bounded in front of him, drawing strength from what she had been through, from

what she knew might happen. She picked up one of the heavy tomes on the table. Without

thinking, she swung it hard and bashed him on the back of the head. The hardcover hit his

skull with a loud thump. Reynolds let out a heavy “oof,” then sprawled face first on the

polished floor. His round glasses bounced off his face and clattered to one side.

Anthea knelt beside him, her heart pounding. “I didn’t mean that! I’m so sorry, but you

didn’t give me any choice.”

The librarian groaned, though he remained unconscious. Anthea touched his head, then

the pulse at his neck. “I think you’ll be all right.” She looked at the book with which she had

hit him, noted the irony. The title was
The Hidden Slan Threat
.

On the table, the baby had turned his head so he could see her. She felt the continued

strange connection with him. Her infant son seemed very aware of what was happening, and

she felt a wash of secondhand relief coming from him, confident that his mother had taken

care of the threat.

Anthea hated herself for hurting Mr. Reynolds. She had never been a violent person. She

worked in a bank! Before today, she had never struck another person. But she had seen the

doctor try to kill her newborn baby, and her own husband had been gunned down trying to

protect them. When she’d fled, more people had tried to kill her. The city had been bombed,

and now Earth itself was in the middle of a war. Anthea was fighting not only for her life, but

for their child’s as well. A slan child—a slan born from two apparently normal people.

She had been driven to do many extraordinary things this day, and she feared she would

be forced to do many more.

In order to stay safe, she had to keep the librarian out of her way. Finding strength, she

rolled Mr. Reynolds over, picked up his hands, and began to drag him down the slippery hall.

Either through adrenaline or newfound physical strength, Anthea pulled the heavyset man

along without difficulty. Conscientiously, she picked up his eyeglasses, folded down the bows,

and tucked them into his pocket. She didn’t want to inconvenience the man any more than

she had to. Knocking him unconscious was bad enough.

The librarian’s office was just outside of the archives wing. She could tie him up there, and

she needed him safely out of the way before he regained consciousness. She hated to leave her

baby alone even if the room was not far away, but she could sense that the child was in no

immediate danger.

Inside the librarian’s office, stacks of books and periodicals were on Reynolds’s desk, on the

floor, on top of filing cabinets. Neatly lettered labels on colored index cards identified each

stack. Plastic wrappers and open cardboard boxes indicated that the man did much

cataloguing of his new acquisitions here. For a large city library, Reynolds didn’t seem to have

very much staff. At the moment, she was glad that no one else was in the large building.

On a special table were five old books, dog-eared, their spines cracked and dust jackets

torn. But they had been lovingly taped and bandaged, the bindings reglued. She could picture

Reynolds spending hours under his bright desk lamp, like a surgeon performing an operation

on these beloved and well-read tomes.

She wrestled Mr. Reynolds into the chair behind his desk, then looked around for

something to tie him with. When nothing obvious presented itself other than cellophane tape

on the desk dispenser, she removed the librarian’s blue striped necktie and quickly lashed his

wrists to the chair arms. Then she unthreaded the laces from his black Oxford shoes and used

those to tie his ankles in place. When that didn’t seem terribly secure, she also used the full roll

of tape.

When he groaned, she felt sorry again for what she’d been forced to do. It seemed so unfair.

Reynolds had been kind to her. She didn’t want to hurt him. She had never wanted to hurt

anybody—but the slan hunters had certainly changed that. With herself and her baby at stake,

she couldn’t trust anyone. But Anthea loved her baby far more than Reynolds could ever love

his books. The man would be safe enough here until someone else rescued him.

Anthea took a sheet of paper from the desk and quickly scrawled a note. “I’m very sorry.

We didn’t mean to hurt you. I did not ask for this, but I had to protect my child. I hope

someday you’ll forgive us.”

Rummaging in his desk drawer, she found a set of keys in a red envelope with a

hand-written word.
Archives
. For the padlock that secured the combination wheels? She took

the keys. Even without thinking, she knew she would have to open the vault and discover

what secret information the government had hidden from the public. Why didn’t they want

anybody to know the truth about the slans?

She ran back to the thick vault door and its heavy combination wheels. The padlock itself

couldn’t have been more than a minor deterrent for anyone determined to break in, but it was

one extra time-consuming step. She removed the key from the red envelope, inserted then

twisted it. When the padlock popped open, she removed it with one hand and set it aside.

The large combination wheels that locked the heavy vault were ready for her. In her mind

she remembered the combination Mr. Reynolds had so vividly recalled, the numbers that her

baby had detected with his slan tendrils. 4 - 26 - 19 - 12.

The baby’s bright eyes watched as Anthea turned the first wheel, felt it clicking through

numbers. She stopped at the mark for 4, ratcheted the next wheel into its appropriate position,

then the third, and finally the fourth. She heard a humming inside. It wasn’t just a simple gear

lock: She had activated an entire mechanism. Pistons and deadbolts rose up and down, pulling

aside, clicking into place, and with a hiss like a tired sigh, the vault door moved out of its

frame.

She bunched the soft blanket to prop the infant’s small head as she picked him up from

the table. Holding the baby, Anthea stepped back as the thick barrier groaned open. The

hinges and heavy hydraulics seemed well-lubricated and maintained.

She wondered how often anyone ever studied these archives. Considering the security

Mr. Reynolds had mentioned and how few curiosity seekers the government allowed, she

doubted very many had read the information contained within.

But now she intended to.

«
^
»

With Jommy’s car buried under the inferno of collapsed trees, he had sealed off the vehicle’s

environment systems, opaqued the windows, and switched on the air scrubbers and recyclers.

Then he sat back to wait.

He reassured his companions. “This may look like a normal car, but it’s practically a

battleship on wheels. The armor is sufficient against any temperatures a mere forest fire can

generate. The self-contained air systems can last for a day underwater, so they’ll easily filter out

a little smoke. It might get a little warm in here, but I prefer to call it cozy.”

“Have you ever tested it under those conditions?” Petty asked, clearly uneasy.

“Not exactly, but you can trust my calculations.”

While the forest fire burned for the next three hours, the car was buried in a furnace of

coals. Though the interior temperature became uncomfortably warm, the four occupants were

never in real danger. By the time night had fallen, the blaze had begun to die down. The

barricade of fallen trees and branches that had buried them was now little more than a rubble