“This is going to be your room until Emil gets back,” said Arnold Whitehouse, the Door. He pushed Wyndham away before she could do anything to him. Then he vanished out of the cell.

Wyndham picked herself up and brushed off her clothes. She had picked them up in a thrift shop to help her blend in with her new environment. She had still drawn the odd stare, but for the most part had succeeded with her disguise.

She looked around her cell. She had to get out of there before Grandview returned. She knew the gesture was futile, but she would rather be caught after escaping than waiting for the axe to drop.

She had no doubt the axe would drop. Fleeing from Grandview's service could only be seen as a betrayal. He would not have taken it well in her experience.

She shouldn't have asked Shanahan to help her. He had been invaluable with her job, but she hadn't needed his presence. She could have hired a regular security guard to help her. A regular security guard wouldn't have killed Gaunt so easily in the alley, but he wouldn't have tried to follow either.

She turned her attention to him. He had to be dead after falling out of the tube. If she got free, she could head to where he had fallen and put up a marker.

She found him moving. She shut off her power. He had survived. How had he done that? Where was he?

She kept her relief buried down inside. She couldn't let the others know Mister Shanahan was alive. They would try to kill him, or take him so they could take the horse and give it to someone more loyal. She was looking at the same thing for her own power.

How long did she have before Grandview returned? She turned her eye toward him. He was in the capital of the Woo Chi. He could return in ten steps using the door power.

If she ran again, he would be able track her across the Twelve Kingdoms. The door would let him close on her more rapidly than she could run. She didn't have the physical power to stop him from bringing her back to the tower.

If she escaped from her cell and hid in the tower, that would make it a game of her power versus his. She might be able to stall him with something like that.

She opened her power again. Mister Shanahan was closer. He was coming directly to the tower.

Wyndham wondered how he knew where to go. She thought about the flight to the tower through the tube. He must have figured out which way to go from what he had seen. She hadn't expected that.

She definitely didn't expect him to doggedly follow her, but she realized she should have. He had nowhere else to go, and no one to help him on this side of things. Coming for her was the only move he had.

He didn't know anything about the Weapons, or what they could do. He would get hurt trying to rescue her. She had to get out of her cell so she could get out of the tower, and try to meet him before he arrived at the tower.

Wyndham thought about what she could do. If she waited, then the both of them would be stuck in the tower, or worse, until they found some way to escape. If she escaped, Grandview would be able to follow her to Mister Shanahan.

And she knew he had no way of tracking her without getting some other faction involved, or making a deal with Grandview.

Once Grandview was done with the paper people, he would be back. She had to escape before that happened. Then she had to get to Mister Shanahan before they were both caught.

There were a lot of problems with that idea from her point of view.

She had to get out of the cell to start her escape. The only tool she had was a small pocket knife she had picked up. She couldn't cut anything with it. The blade would break before she could really stab someone.

If she did get out of the cell, she would have to improvise a weapon and use her power to pick a safe path through the other Weapons and the auxiliary soldiers that patrolled the tower between missions for Grandview.

And once at the base of the tower, she would have to get past the soldiers on guard and head out to where Shanahan was coming at the tower. They wouldn't be able to track her easily without her power, or Grandview.

The real problem was getting Mister Shanahan to turn around and head back to Earth with her. She knew he would want to deal with her former friends in the same manner he dealt with people he dealt with in the city.

She didn't want to risk losing him now that she knew he was alive.

Grandview would not let Shanahan live if he had the horse power. The Weapons were his personal army. There was no room for an outsider to walk away with the power, or her either.

Wyndham wondered how they had tracked her down in New York. She saw a bright spot in the distance. She grimaced. They had gone to the Shapers to get the artifact she had used to cross, and another to track her down. She could see the twin glows in her mind's eye.

If she could get out of her cell, get out of the tower, and meet Shanahan on the road before they were caught, they would still have to deal with the Shapers to get the door opener back. They might as well take the tracker too if they could.

She should have known the Shaper in question had built some way to track her down. He had wanted her to leave the door opener behind. Now she knew why.

She had paid a high price for a chance to start over. She planned to get some of what she paid back for what he had done.

She didn't want Mister Shanahan to know what she had done for Grandview, or what she had done to get away from him. She didn't see any way to keep it secret from him. She needed his help. He was bound to find out when they talked to the Shaper about the door opener.

She hoped he wouldn't think less of her when he found out the truth.

She decided that she had to do something. She couldn't wait on Grandview to come back and decide her fate. She had to be gone before then.

She pulled her knife. Her power pointed out weak points in the door it thought she could use to open it. Once she was free to move, she would have more options.

Avoiding the others was the best plan. If she couldn't do that, she should plan to stab any of them that got in her way and break the knife blade off in their body. That would create a lasting injury she could exploit.

She wished she had her pistol. She had left it in the rental car because she hadn't expected to need it. That was a big mistake on her part. If she had it when they had confronted her on the street, she could have tried to shoot them to get away.

She hadn't seen Mister Shanahan with a firearm. He seemed to prefer that knife he carried in his pocket. She had no doubt that if he had known about the pistol, and had time, more of her abductors would be dead.

She inspected the door again. She smiled at the hinges. They were on the inside with her. A little work should get them loose. Then she could rescue herself from the trouble she was in.

She wondered if she had spent too much time on Earth to try to foil Grandview's plan.

She decided that she had tried to get away from all this. That had nothing to do with New York City, or any other city in any other universe. She had grown to hate Grandview, and getting away from him had seemed the most important thing when she left.

If she had known she would be dragged back, she would have added a cup of poison to dinner to prevent that from happening.

They would also have to do something about the Shaper with the door opener. He couldn't be allowed to point the Weapons back at them again. She didn't want to deal with the past while trying to make a future for herself.

She really wished she had her gun now. Surprising him with a bullet would be great in her opinion.

Wyndham worked on the hinges with the blade of her knife. She pulled them free from the interlocking teeth and caught the door on her shoulder. She folded up her knife and put it away before she moved the door out of the way. She looked out in the hall before she started walking toward the stairs.

She had until they found her gone before she had to worry about a search. She supposed they were content that she couldn't go anywhere, and couldn't get by them if she did.

She wanted to be well on her way before they got their act together. It would be nice to get out into the surrounding countryside before she had to worry about a chase.

The fact that Whitehouse could get the tracking artifact with a small amount of mental effort bothered her. She would have to worry about him showing up out of the blue.

If she could take him out of the picture, that would cut their movement significantly.

Maybe she could arrange an ambush to catch anyone chasing her as she headed toward Mister Shanahan.

Hurting them with a trap would be good. She doubted she could do anything with the night coming on. They would wait for daylight so she could escape if she was comfortable walking around at night.

Wyndham checked the tower for a clear path. It took her down a set of hidden stairs, and allowed her to cross one of the floors filled with barracks before letting her get to the other set of stairs facing east.

Once she was down that set of stairs, she still had to cross the courtyard to the main gate. Then she had to get outside and start her long walk to meet Mister Shanahan. She knew the others would start looking for her as soon as they discovered she was gone. All she could do was try to put as much distance as she could between her and the tower.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs. Her talent searched for a route across the courtyard where she didn't raise an alarm. She spotted guards loitering in the space, but they didn't look alert.

She crept around the edge of the open space. Stables for horses was on her right. She stepped inside and waited for her chance. Then she went down to the portcullis frame . It was up, and the main gate was open to the outside. She slipped across to the outside when her talent told her to do that.

She used her talent to give herself cover as she fled the edifice.