"Find her!" The speakers mounted in the plaza start vibrating with The One's irate voice. "There's another conspirator in the crowd! She has flaming-red hair! Close the courtyard exits. Capture her now!"

Whit grabs a gray hat off a passing businessman and plunks it down on my head.

"Tuck your hair in, quick," he says.

I'm doing just that when a policeman spots me. He's a couple of dozen yards away.

Now he's grabbing for the whistle at the end of a cord around his neck… and he'll soon have the attention of every soldier in the plaza. Not to mention that of The One, whom I hate to mention.

But then a small black figure leaps up and knocks the policeman down flat on his rear.

Whit and I exchange looks of surprise. He says, "Did you just -?"

But before Whit can finish, the black figure-an old woman-is at our side. She presses into my hand a crumpled, gritty piece of paper. "Take it, take it!"

I swear she's the weirdest-looking creature I've ever seen in my life, and yet I know her from somewhere.

"Who are -?"

She cuts me off. "Follow this. Go! I'm a friend. Run. Run. Don't stop for a single breath, or it's over. For all of us. Go!"

Somehow she gets behind us, and then she delivers a kick to both of our butts. That sends us staggering into the surging crowd.

I immediately turn back… but there's no sign of her.

"You heard her," says Whit. "Go! Now! Go!"

Chapter 6

Wisty

The crumpled, quintuple-folded paper the old woman had forced into my hand is a map. She said she was a friend, right? Besides, what better plan do we have? So Whit and I follow the map.

The dotted line on the dirty, handwritten piece of parchment leads us through the south side of the city. So far, so safe and alive.

"I can't place her," I muse as we hike outside the city's perimeter toward a set of railroad tracks. "Was she… maybe one of Mom and Dad's friends?"