Jules didn’t say anything for long minutes. Ava, hypervigilant to disaster, wondered if they were about to yank the FINNA out of her hands and run for it. What would she do? Could she fight them off?

Thankfully, she didn’t have to find out. Jules cleared their throat and said, “Which way are we supposed to go?”

Ava relaxed a bit. The arrow on the FINNA’s screen had shifted, was pointing them left, toward a large showroom with kitchen tables, astroturf, and fake plants. But when they turned into it, the showroom stretched out into a dizzying, impossibly long room, its end obscured by plants. A warm, humid wind pressed against them. It felt like walking into a gaping mouth.

“Nice,” Jules said. Their excitement was faint but palpable. “This is more along the lines of what I was thinking.”

Jules stepped into the showroom, and Ava told herself that she had no choice but to follow.

As they walked, the plants grew thicker and distinctly less plastic. The astroturf gave way to real grass, ankle high, dotted with ferns. The ceiling receded, until they couldn’t see it past the canopy of plants stretching overhead. The two of them pushed their way through, following the insistent beeps of the FINNA. Ava’s shirt stuck to her chest with sweat, her thighs chafing inside her uniform khakis. Eventually, they broke through the thicket of wild plants and into a clearing—they had, at some unknown point, made their way outside. Ava wiped sweat from her forehead as she looked around.

The FINNA led them into what looked like a wild, overgrown orchard planted high up on a hillside. The sun peeked out from behind fat, fast-moving clouds that seemed to race just above the tops of the trees. The trees themselves sprawled low and wide across the grass, with branches that twined into the shapes of chairs and tables. Cookware sprouted up from the ground like sharp, metallic flowers. Two massive butterflies chased each other, each wing the size of a paperback, and with a pattern that looked weirdly like fabric swatches.

“This is amazing,” Jules whispered next to Ava. Their voice was hushed, awed. They weren’t even out of breath. Ava waved away a cloud of gnats that suddenly descended on her.

“This is weird,” she said. “Where is everyone?”

“Who cares? It’s gorgeous out here.”

It was pretty enough, but Ava was too distracted by the miserable heat to appreciate it. She’d always hated summer. “Can we rest for a second? I feel like I’m going to die.”

Ava plopped down in the grass, feeling a vague wave of annoyance toward Ursula Nouri. Why the hell hadn’t Ursula turned back once she’d realized she was lost? Then again, maybe she had tried, but gotten increasingly turned around. LitenVärld was disorienting enough without adding in multiple universes.