Moonflower- A Lunar Chronicles Fanfiction

Chapter 28

Cynthia woke to loud pounding on the door. When she opened her eyes Leo was already leaning against the door begging the locks to hold.
"Open up princess! We've found you! You've got nowhere to run," came growling voices from outside.
"How did they find us?" Cynthia asked Leo as she tried to slide the desk in the room toward the door as a barricade.
"There's cameras everywhere in here. I thought I knocked them all out in this room, but they could have tracked you down the hall," he told her. The pounding grew louder.
"I sure hope there aren't any thaumaturges out there," he said after they had moved the bed in front of the door too. "They've been experimenting on me for the past few days. I can't go back."
There was legitimate fear in the young pilot's eyes, and Cynthia couldn't imagine what they had done to him. She would have to find out later.
"How are we going to get out of here?" She asked. Her eyes kept catching on the window, but they were several stories up over solid ground. There would be no jumping.
The last lock clicked open, and all that stood between Leo and Cynthia and angry wolfen soldiers were a semi-heavy desk and a mattress.
Leo pointed to his left as he held the bed in place. "See that closet over there?" It was hard to miss. It was the only thing left in the room. "The wall between this room's closet and the next room is very thin, but I haven't had anything to break it open with.
"The next room?" Cynthia questioned even as she rushed to slide open the doors. "The hall ends. There are no more rooms."
The pounding paused for a moment. Then there was a loud CRACK as the door splintered at the bottom and a furry foot peeked though.
Cynthia felt around the closet, then she knocked. Instead of the sound of knuckles hitting a solid wall, it sounded hollow. She tried kicking it with her heel, but the wall was just thick enough she couldn't break through.
"There's definitely something back there!" Cynthia called. "But I can't break through."
"Well, it's our only way out, and we're about to be stampeded by angry wolves who are going to take us to an evil scientist thaumaturge. Can you find any motivation in that?"
The prickly spiders of her bioelectricity responded, and Cynthia had a desperate idea. She took a deep breath, willing the crackling to her finger tips. It was a physical light, maybe just maybe...
There was a bright flash, and then the closet felt like it was a hundred degrees. Cynthia gasped and let go, rushing out of the closet.
Leo looked bewildered as she emerged. He must have been under a trance when she had first used her newfound powers, but to her surprise there was a neat hole at the foot of the closet. Leo was right, there was a room behind it.
"Alright, let's go," he said, knowing there was no time for questions. Cynthia dashed toward the passage and he followed right behind. She didn't look, but she heard the desk fall on top of the mattress as the door was beginning to swing open. Leo slid the closet door closed behind them as the door banged open against metal frame of the bed. They had disappeared through the hole before the soldiers even had a chance to completely open the door.
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Cynthia emerged after just a moment on the other side. This room was brightly lit, and inhabited by only a metal chair facing the door on the other end of the room.
"They're going to look in the closet for us Leo, and they're going to find the giant hole." Cynthia said, not even taking a moment to relax. There was no safe while they and her mother were still of Luna.
"I might be able to help with that," came a voice from the direction of the metal chair. Cynthia and Leo turned toward the sound, but they still couldn't see anyone there. Cynthia, however, would recognize that voice anywhere.
"Mom?" She said, rushing around to the other side of the room's only furnishing. She was right. There was the Empress Selene, bound by clamps at her wrists and ankles to her chair. She was dressed in an opulent black and red dress embroidered with gold designs, but she was drowning beneath it. She looked so frail that it looked like the dress was eating her whole.
"Turn me around," she said, not even taking much time to greet her daughter. They could hear the soldiers flipping over the bed and table in the other room. It was only a matter time before the opened the closet.
"Look out Leo, I need a clear view." The empress squinted her eyes and sucked in a breath. Cynthia turned to look at the hole, but it was gone, and then it flickered back in. She watched in horror as the wolfen soldiers yanked open the closet door and scoured the closet... and then turned around grumbling about them "disappearing out of thin air." 
"What just happened?" Leo whispered when the footsteps of the soldiers faded away.
"Yeah, how did they miss that hole? We were looking right at them," Cynthia commented.
"I glamoured it," Cinder stated, clearly confused. "You couldn't see it?"
"Something flickered," Cynthia admitted. "But then the hole came back."
"It's part of us being half Lunar Thia. It's why they've been experimenting on me. They tried to stick an altered Linh device in me, but it only worked as far as getting me into the ship. Then the whole mind control just kind of faded away. I almost took the controls before they knocked me out," Leo explained.
"Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever really seen any glamours." Cynthia said, her words coming slow in disbelief. Just another part of herself coming out in this strange and terrifying couple of days.
"Both of you need to leave now," said the empress. "I doubt there's much time before Nyx comes back."
"By much, of course," came the venomous voice from the door, "our dear queen means none."