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- My distraction is being chopped down, thought Artemis. Time for an exit.
- He spied a set of hooves stomping toward him, and steadied himself for a jump.
- It’s a quagga, he realized. Half horse, half zebra, and there hasn’t been one in captivity for a hundred years. Not exactly a thoroughbred stallion, but it will have to do.
- The ride was a little rougher than Artemis was accustomed to on the Fowl Arabians. No steadying stirrups, no creaking saddle, no snapping reins. Not to mention the fact that the quagga was unbroken and scared out of its wits.
- Artemis patted its neck.
- Ludicrous, he thought. This entire affair. A dead boy escaping on an extinct animal.
- Artemis grabbed tufts of the quagga’s mane and tried to direct it toward the open doorway. It bucked and kicked, whipping its striped head around to nip at Artemis with strong, square teeth. He dug in his heels and held on.
- ...
- Artemis hauled back on the quagga’s spiked mane, jumping it onto an operating table. The beast snorted and complained but did as it was bid, skittering the length of one table and leaping across to the next.
- Opal loosed a shot in their direction, but it was absorbed by a brace of condors.
- The door was directly before them, and Artemis feared the quagga would falter. But no, it butted through to the corridor connecting the lab to the holographic flame chamber.
- Artemis quickly opened the control panel in his stolen network goggles and chose the ramp setting.
- It took maddening moments for the platform to extend itself, and for those seconds Artemis rode the quagga around in circles to take its mind off dislodging the unwelcome rider on its back and to make them both a more difficult target if Opal followed them through the corridor.
- An eagle swooped by, its feathers raking Artemis’s cheek. A muskrat clambered along his torso, hopping to the rising platform.
- There was light above. The sickly wavering beams of a faulty strip light. But light nevertheless.
- “Come on, girl,” said Artemis, feeling very much the cowboy. “Yee-haw.”
- ...
- Not one of the Extinctionists noticed a small, dark craft rising silently from behind one of the chalets. It flew across the central park and scooped up a long-haired youth from the back of what looked like a small striped donkey.
- -The Time Paradox, Chapter 13
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