When Holly had been contacted by the new order to bring her son Leo to the clinic, she ignored it at first.

She simply pretended like she did not get the request. What else was she to do?

An agonizing week went by.

A week of cute smiles from Leo. His first steps. Walks in the park, just the three of him. Owen had been so proud. He adored his new son.

The messages from the clinic had become more persistent after the week was over. The new order knew Holly was ignoring them, and it made them angry to say the least.

The last message had said:

If you don’t bring your son Leo here tomorrow, then we will just come out to take him in for his appointment.

They couldn’t do that could they?

But she knew that they could.

Anything was fair game now with the new order.

Holly and Owen decided to make a run for it. And they left in the middle of the night and just drove. They took only the back roads.

It was tricky because the roads were already becoming clogged with cars, which was a sign of a larger problem that would inevitably rock their world. But that was still years away in the cosmic workings.

Holly did not know where they would go, and neither had Owen. How could they have known, with such a spur of the moment decision that had dropped upon them. Like a tsunami with a split second to make the move away from peril. If one could be so lucky.

And so they had packed all the baby clothes and Leo’s favorite blanket. The first aid kit. The crystals she had inherited were placed in an inconspicuous bag. Her brother’s necklace.

She was surprised the new order had not ripped the necklace from his neck before he was sent to prison, but somehow they had overlooked it. It was him they had wanted.

Him and his mind.

Somehow her brother’s necklace had appeared on the windshield of her car two weeks later. Holly thought that maybe a benevolent guard at the prison had brought it to her. Maybe her brother had known who he could trust and who would actually deliver it.

But Holly would never be sure about who brought it to her, only that it had been her brother’s for all the years that she could remember.

When they had a box of food and water jugs snugly in the car, they headed out into the dark unknown. The stops had been nerve racking. And they disguised themselves with sunglasses and big floppy hats.

It had worked.

And when they arrived, they were relieved. They were on the other side of Rillarok by the next night.

A friend of Owen’s had taken them in. He was rarely at home as his job dealt with exploration of the three new stars that had been recently detected. Some could see the stars as light. And there had been a team set up to see if they were any different from other stars that they might be able to harness energy from.

Life settled into being relatively peaceful. And they watched their dear boy Leo get smarter and smarter.

He was an Elion, of course.

They watched him play innocently. They laughed with him. They told him stories and made him toys. And they kept a low profile, only going out when they could not stand being at home any longer, or when they could not clear their minds within the confines of the house.

No one on the other side of the planet, where Leo had been born, where the request had been generated for Leo to go to the clinic knew they were there. But Holly knew that the new order could possibly find them at any moment.