“Really?” I said disbelievingly. The story Aurora was telling the rest of us seemed insane. An air bubble in space? A random pole on a moon? And, craziest of all, someone living in an underground bunker yelling at someone on the phone?

  “Really!” Aurora insisted. “She said, ‘we must find a way to neutralize them’ in a creepy voice!”

  “Who’s “them?”” Sawyer said, using air quotes.

  “How am I supposed to know? They could have been talking about me and Snow, or the four people, I don’t know!”

  The ground under our feet shook. Orca, the dragon that bonded to me, squawked in alarm. I picked him up then turned my face towards the direction of the sound and see a plume of smoke rising from over a red hill. My eyes widen in surprise and I start running towards the sound. Mostly to see what it is, but partly to get away from Aurora’s weird stories.

  Pretty soon, Storm and Aurora overtook me, riding on their huge dragons. Orca snuggled closer to me. I could tell that he was scared half to death. I slowly pet his fuzzy scales, which is pretty hard to do when you’re running. We came upon the site of our old facility. Well, what it used to be. There was a smoking crater in place of where it used to be. I stared at it in horror.

  Then, I noticed the bright white rectangle in the middle of it, dwarfed by the magnitude of the crater. I ran towards it anyway, after putting Orca down. The smoke burned my eyes, and I could feel my feet heating up through my shoes. I reached the paper; it wasn’t as bright white as I thought it was- it was a little charred around the edges. There were words on it too.

  I Know.

  Oh, no.

  “Emerald!” Aurora yelled. “What are you doing?” I barely heard her over the thumping of my heart. I raced back up to Aurora, barely noticing when I tripped and scraped my knees.

  “Looks like you weren’t so sneaky after all.” I said a little accusingly, waving the paper in front of her face.

  She sighed. “I knew it. I knew she saw us leave.” She shook her head. “Hey- I didn’t think it would be important to tell you!”

  I narrowed my eyes. Storm came over on Willows. “What’s up?” He asked, eying my angry expression.

  “I found this in the middle of the crater. Aurora was seen by the person she spied on.” I showed him the paper. He sighed.

  “Great.”

  Rin and Sawer arrived.

  “Oh.” They said in unison and inched away from each other. I showed them the note. I was kind of proud that I found it, to be honest.

  “What happened to Director?” Aurora blurted. That stopped us all short. Was she in the building when the explosion happened? Did she die? I hope not. I mean, she kidnapped us, sure, but once you know someone for four years, you start to like them…

  “Did the same thing happen to our facility?” Sawyer asked.

  “How are we supposed to know? We just found out about this too?” Rin exploded. “And besides, if Director died, I say good riddance. I never really liked her anyways. It’s hard to like the person that kidnapped you.” I sighed.

  “So… what should we do?” I asked.

  “Well, if this happened to one facility, it could have happened to another?” Storm said quietly.

  “But what about all the dragons?” Sawyer said. “Would they have really killed all those dragons? There must have been at least ten there.”

  “Well, only one way to know for sure,” Rin snapped.

  “Our facilities are pretty far away.” Storm warned. “But we can go, if that’s what you really want.” I got the feeling that he really didn’t want to.

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  “What if some of us stay here, and some of us go?” Sawyer said. “And- and some of us could look for a place to stay, you know, since your facility got, well, bombed. And each one of us should have an adult dragon because it could be helpful.”

  “Great idea!” Storm said meaningfully. “I’ll stay with the base-finder people, and Aurora can go with the facility-checker people!”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if you went to the facility?” Aurora asked. “Because you would know where it is. You could lead the way!”

  “That’s a good point.” Storm said.

  I knew that Storm didn’t want to go back to his facility for some reason and decided to help him. “Sawyer also knows the way. He could ride with you and point you to where to go.”

  “True.” She sounded disappointed. It confused me because she wouldn’t get to go with him either way.

  “Okay,” Storm said, taking charge. “So. Me and Emerald and Rin will look for somewhere else to stay, and Sawyer and Aurora will check the other facility. Any objections?” He looked around. “No? All right, let’s go.” Aurora and Sawyer swung onto Snow’s back.

  “You go that way,” I said, pointing at Storm than at the opposite direction that Aurora and Sawyer went. “I’ll go that way,” I said, pointing to the left, “and Rin you go that way. Meet me back here soon.”

  I took off in the direction I appointed myself and started running. I was never the fastest out of me, Rin, and Aurora, but I’m pretty sure that I could beat most eleven year olds in a race. I hope.

  We didn’t specify what would make a good place to be, but I have a general idea. Hidden, shady, big enough, the works. I walked until the facility was out of sight. I didn’t think that anything that close would be a good place to stay.

  After a few more minutes of walking, I came across some trees. It startled me to realize that this was the first time in four years I had seen a real tree in the wild. The leaves were wide and light pink. The trunk was the color of a redwood tree. It was the most beautiful piece of nature I’d ever seen in my life. Not that I’ve seen much, to be honest.

  I walked through them and saw the first wild life besides dragons I’d seen since leaving the facility. There was a lot of it, actually. I saw things that resembled bugs, but their wings and thoraxs were all shaped differently. There seemed to be a lot of red and pink. I also saw a mouse looking thing, but it had a really long tail. blue color. I saw that when the leaves fell from the trees, they turned pretty much the same color as the mice. She’d heard it described in nonfiction Earth textbooks, but had never seen an animal actually do it.

  . I looked down. Instead of leaves and branches, my foot fell on something squishy, probably what made the sound. I saw that it was like a ferret but it was the exact same color and texture of the ground.

  “Oh, my, I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed, even though it couldn’t understand me. It hissed and scampered away. I gulped. I really hoped that they wouldn’t go tell all their friends and a blue ferret army wearing full armor would come charging out and start stabbing me with hundreds of little spears. I smiled at the thought. Then my smile fell as I realized I didn’t know how advanced all the species were here. For all I know, the ferrets could be the humans of Hekate.

  After a few minutes of walking, I came across a clearing. I had spotted it a few minutes earlier and had spent the time making my way to it. Spying through some trees, I saw a gathering of a group of things that looked similar to bears but were the color of a tree trunk. They were also a lot taller and they had bright orange teeth sticking out of their mouths.

  They communicated through grunts. The smaller ones, the cubs, maybe, had much higher pitched grunts, almost like a squeal.

  They seemed to come to a consensus and they all walked off in different directions. I thought about how this would be a good place to stay but if those bear things came back, I didn’t want to find out the hard way how sharp those teeth were. I kept wandering for long enough to wonder if I should turn around, but I came upon another clearing similar to the first one.

  I realized sheepishly that I hadn’t tried at all to remember where I was going. Ah, oh well. There seemed to be plenty of these clearings throughout the forest. It probably wouldn’t take long to find another one. Then I realized I wasn’t sure how to get out.

  I really hoped that Rin and Storm hadn’t returned and were worried about me. What if they came and also got lost? That wouldn’t be good. I tried to remember which way I had come from. When I couldn’t, I figured that my best guess would be right behind me, so I turned around and quickly walked in that direction. I realized with satisfaction that the gnarled tree I just passed was the same one I sat on before entering the clearing.

  After taking random guesses for forks in the road, I went into yet another clearing. One of the ferret things ran up to me and bit my shoe. It didn’t break through my shoe, but the impact hurt like crazy. I tried to kick it off, but the thing stayed on.

  I sat down, trying another approach. I gently peeled the ferret’s mouth open and off of my shoe. As it left, it shot me an angry look. After some wandering, I finally made it out of the forest. I realized my mistake in walking so far away that I couldn’t see the facility. I was as good as lost. After sitting on the floor and feeling sorry for myself, I decided to go towards the sun, as I remembered walking away from it before. Actually, it's probably called something else since we aren’t on Earth.

  Before too long, I saw a dragon flying towards me. It was a off-white color and one of the horns was missing. Willows! I was saved.