‘This is delightful,’ Diana said with a mouth full of food. ‘What do you call it?’
‘Some like to call it breakfast,’ Steve chuckled. ‘But most of us call it garbage. There’s enough sugar in that cereal to keep a kid hyperactive all day.’
‘But it’s as close to ambrosia as we could get,’ Joel added.
‘It is very good,’ Diana agreed. ‘Different from ambrosia or nectar, but it will do nicely.’
After the cereal, Diana and Pegasus finished off two boxes of honey-glazed doughnuts.
Emily watched Diana wolfing down the food and thought she was going to be sick. Her father had brought a bagel for her, but she couldn’t eat it. She caught him watching her, but was grateful when he didn’t nag her to eat.
‘Your world has changed a great deal since I was last here,’ Diana said as she reached for the last doughnut. ‘It is not all bad after all.’
‘Well, we do have our good points,’ Steve said as he began cleaning Emily’s wounds and changing the bandages. Though he didn’t press Emily to eat her bagel, he made sure she took the painkillers. When he finished bandaging her leg, he sat back and shook his head. ‘We’ve got to get that looked at soon. It’s getting worse.’
Emily didn’t need her father to tell her that. She already knew it. And she suspected that Pegasus knew as well. The stallion kept looking back to check on her, whinnying softly.
‘Well, it’s almost seven,’ said Steve, checking his watch. ‘We’d better start making a move. The contractors will be back to work any minute. I don’t want them to find us here and see what we’ve done to their fence.’
‘Isn’t it too early for the other carriages to be out?’ Emily asked.
‘We don’t have much choice,’ said her father. ‘If we take our time heading uptown, maybe no one will notice.’
As the food was packed away and the stallion’s wings thoroughly covered, Emily’s father sat in the driver’s seat again. ‘You ready to go, Pegasus?’ Pegasus whinnied and started to move. ‘We’ve got to make it to the 59th Street Bridge.’
‘59th Street?’ Diana repeated. ‘Excuse me, Steve, but is that not where the CRU are concentrating their efforts to find us? You wish to go there?’
‘We don’t have much choice,’ he explained. ‘The bridge is the closest above-ground route off Manhattan,’ said Steve. He took up the reins. ‘We can’t take the tunnels or the ferries. Besides, with the Nirads rampaging through the city, I’m sure the CRU and military have their hands full. Hopefully, we can stay under their radar.’
He looked at the stallion. ‘All right, Pegasus, let’s get going,’ he said. ‘But nice and easy. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.’
Pegasus nickered once and started to move.
20
Paelen was once again handcuffed to the bed. This time, there were cuffs on his ankles as well as his wrists.
The blow to the head had only stunned him for a few moments. But when he awoke and begged the men to help Pegasus, his pleas were ignored.
Agent J stood beside his bed, glaring at him. ‘I would suggest you reconsider speaking to us,’ he said. ‘I am authorized to use full force to get what I need from you. You have until dawn to decide. You will either tell me the truth, or I will use methods infinitely more unpleasant than you have ever known. The choice is yours.’
But Paelen already knew what he planned to do. He had no intentions of cooperating. His only thoughts now were to get to Pegasus and warn him.
When Agent J and his men had gone, Paelen concentrated on the problem at hand. Getting the cuffs off wouldn’t be difficult. The big problem was getting out of the facility. Agent J had claimed they had serpents’ eyes watching him. The fact that they caught him on the lower level proved Agent J’s words to be true. But was there anything watching him in here?
Paelen strained his eyes carefully studying every wall and every area of his room, searching for anything that might look like a serpent’s eye. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
He was convinced the serpents’ eyes were only in the corridors. With that route blocked to him, he would have to find a different way out of the facility. Once again, he looked up to the air vent above his bed. That would be his escape. He felt certain there wouldn’t be any serpents’ eyes in there. Decision made, Paelen turned his attention to the handcuffs and reluctantly used his one Olympian skill.
It was incredibly painful. Starting with his right wrist, he folded his thumb in tightly and started to pull. Just like all the other times he had been chained in Olympus, Paelen was able to stretch out the bones in his hand until the metal of the cuff slid off. He repeated the process with his left hand.