Gideon gasped.
“It’s not a choice,” he said. “You’re selected to go, you go. Or else—”
“Or else you cease to exist,” Dek finished for him. “So I ceased to exist. In the official records.”
Tessa supposed she should feel good that both of the people on the plane with her were such geniuses that they’d been selected for the military academy. But it just made her feel even more dull and witless than usual.
And then she forgot all her inadequacies, because her body felt so weird. The plane rocked with the force of speeding faster, soaring higher, fighting the pull of gravity. Maybe Dek wasn’t using the standard, approved method for taking off. Even more than the night before, Tessa felt plastered to the floor, tugged backward and down.
“Yes!” Dek shrieked. “The cameras are coming back on … right … now! So we’ll see …” Suddenly she gasped. “What’s that?”
CHAPTER
18
Gideon and Tessa both struggled toward the front of the plane, toward Dek and the computer screen. Gideon got there first, but Tessa wasn’t far behind.
Tessa pulled herself up on the side of the pilot’s seat and squinted at the screen. It took her a moment to figure out what she was seeing. She was braced for a view of squadron after squadron of fighter planes circling them, firing off one shot after the other. But she saw no other planes around them at all.
Instead Dek was pointing to something on the ground, a huge U-shaped arc of metal that curved across a mighty river and had somehow cut a swath through a vast forest on the other side.
Now Gideon was gasping, too.
“It’s the Santl Arch,” he said. “It’s … down?”
“Yes, down,” Dek repeated. “Of course it’s down! We’re up, it’s down—but what is it?”
Gideon seemed a little dazed.
“It was one of the enemy’s most impressive feats of architecture,” he said. “This must have just happened, that it fell. Last night before we got here or … I don’t know. That was always a goal for fighter pilots, that if you did something great, you were allowed to fly through the arch….”
“You mean, that thing used to be up in the air?” Tessa asked, because surely she wasn’t understanding right.
“It was,” Gideon said. “I flew through the center of it twice, as my victory lap, the night I ki—well, you know what I did.”
Tessa was staring at the metal arch that looped below them with such awe that she almost missed noticing the way Gideon had said that. He’d stopped himself from saying the word “killed.” Was he too ashamed? Or was he just trying not to remind Dek what he was capable of?
“You mean you flew through it twice by remote,” Dek said scornfully. “You personally were hundreds of miles away. It was like you were flying a toy.”
“Not a toy,” Gideon said softly.
He was staring down at the computer screen with an expression Tessa couldn’t read.
“So what’s the military significance of knocking down that arch?” Dek said. “I’m guessing you think it was some of your fellow flyboys who did that.”
“Yeah …,” Gideon said vaguely. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “Destruction of an enemy’s beloved landmarks can have an intense psychological impact,” he said, as if quoting. He kind of looked like the Santl Arch had been one of his beloved landmarks too. “And I’m sure there was a significant loss of life when it fell on … wait a minute! There wasn’t a forest across the river from the arch! It was houses, factories, offices—buildings. Lots of buildings.”
He reached down and enlarged the scene across the river, zooming in close.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
He began flipping through images all across the screen, zooming in, zooming out. Dek started to reach forward to stop him, but then she seemed to change her mind.
“Doesn’t look right … No, not that …,” Gideon mumbled. “But the river’s right! That is the Mighty Mysip! It’s got to be! And the arch, only down …”
“Things look different when you’re flying over them for real,” Dek said smugly.
“But—,” Gideon began.
Tessa didn’t want the two of them getting into an argument.
“Um, could we maybe just focus on making sure no one’s going to be shooting us?” Tessa asked nervously. “Could we plan how we’re going to get out of here safely?”
“Oh, the shields are up,” Dek said, almost sounding carefree.
“And no one from the enemy’s forces is flying anywhere near us,” Gideon said. He zoomed out even more than before, revealing a blue sky as far as the eye could see, above the ribbon of river winding through miles and miles of forest. “Now, how can that be?” he mumbled. “How is it that they didn’t see us? That we can’t see any of them? Where are they?”
“Maybe the enemy has replaced all its planes with hundreds of animatronic, robotic trees,” Dek said. She giggled.
Gideon ignored her.
“This is all wrong,” he murmured. “Really, really wrong.” He furrowed his brows. “Let’s fly to the north.”
“Why?” Dek challenged.
“Well, for one thing, if you don’t, we’re going to run into the flight paths for our military’s planes and spy satellites,” Gideon said. “And, right now, in this aircraft, they wouldn’t take to us any more kindly than the enemy would.”
“Good point,” Dek said. She made a couple adjustments, and the plane veered to the left.
Tessa felt the surge in speed in the pit of her stomach. For that matter her stomach also seemed sensitive to the sudden turn, to the tension between Gideon and Dek, and to the strain of thinking they were going to be shot any minute.
Dek began digging under the pilot’s seat. She brought up a plastic-wrapped brown square and handed it to Tessa.
“Eat,” Dek said. “It’s never a good idea to fly on an empty stomach, though I bet fake-flyboy over there didn’t know enough to tell you that.” She tossed one toward Gideon as well, as if to soften the insult. “They’re nutri-squares. Mass produced. They kind of taste like cardboard, but it’s better than throwing up.”
Tessa watched Gideon to see if he thought it was safe to take food from Dek. He absentmindedly peeled back the plastic and began chewing, so Tessa did the same. But Gideon was staring so fixedly at the computer screen that maybe he’d eat cardboard and never notice.
“Can’t be,” he murmured. “No … where’s S-fiel? Pee-ore? Where are the houses? The farms? The people?”
“Can’t see people when you’re this high up,” Dek told him.
“I know, I just …” Gideon scrunched up his face and went back to staring at the screen.
An alarm started buzzing from the instrument panel.
“Fuel supplies at critical levels,” a mechanical voice spoke. “Locking in route toward nearest fueling source.”
“No!” both Gideon and Dek screamed together. For a moment it almost seemed like they were working as a team, each of them stabbing at the controls and crying out, “Try the auto—”
“No, won’t work. What about—”
“Still disabled—”
“Then—”
“That won’t work either!”
It was like neither one of them needed to finish a sentence for the other to understand.
Tessa stood off to the side, feeling useless.
Then Dek let out a shriek, and Gideon moaned, and Tessa understood too.
They were going down.
CHAPTER
19
“We’re going to crash!” Tessa screamed.
“Emergency non-pilot-controlled landing,” Dek said, still with just a bit of swagger in her voice. “Not quite the same thing.” She hit Gideon’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you check the fuel gauge when I told you to?”
“Because you insisted on taking off without going through any preflight check!” Gideon snarled back at her. “Remember?”
He was still
stabbing at the controls, trying to get the plane to do something different.
“Hello? We were under attack!” Dek spat back. “If you hadn’t turned off the external cameras—”
“Yeah, well, I would have thought you would have checked the computerized fuel gauge once we were in the air—”
“You disabled that, too, remember?”
“Would you two just shut up?” Tessa screamed. “What can we do now to get ready?”
Dek looked back at her and seemed to realize that Tessa was just holding on to the pilot’s seat with her bare hands, even as the plane dipped and bucked.
“Strap in,” Dek said. She shoved Gideon’s backpack out of the copilot’s seat and jerked Tessa down into position. Tessa heard the seat belt click together before she fully understood what was going on.
“What about—Gideon?” Tessa asked.
“That’s up to him,” Dek said, shrugging. “Seems like he wanted to die before, so …”
Tessa was glad to see that Gideon had pulled a rope from somewhere and was tying himself to the column behind the seats. He was still watching the computer screen too.
“No!” he suddenly screamed. “No! The autopilot’s putting us down in Shargo!”
“What’s Shargo?” Tessa shouted.
Gideon didn’t answer her. Now he was yanking the rope back off again, and diving toward the control panel.
“Override!” he screamed. “Override!”
“It won’t override now!” Dek screamed back at him.
“What’s Shargo?” Tessa yelled again.
Gideon slumped to the floor. He wasn’t even trying to protect himself now.
“It’s the largest city in the war zone,” he said. “There are nine million people there who hate us. And—it’s the enemy’s military headquarters.”
CHAPTER
20
Tessa didn’t know what a normal landing was supposed to feel like. But she was pretty sure this wasn’t right. The plane rocked violently, side to side. More than once it seemed to be on the verge of completely rolling over. And then when it righted itself, just when Tessa was thinking, Okay, survived that, it would jump suddenly, as if hit by a brutal gust of wind.
Dek patted Tessa’s hand.
“Sorry!” she yelled, over the noise that sounded like the whole plane was being torn apart. “This old tub wasn’t meant to carry passengers. When my bosses retrofitted it for human transport, they weren’t exactly trying for comfort, you know?”
She took a close look at Tessa’s face, then dug down under the pilot’s seat and produced a paper sack.
“Airsickness bag, okay?” Dek said, handing it to Tessa. “Use it if you need to.”
Tessa shook her head. She didn’t think she was in danger of throwing up. It felt more like her throat had closed over, like she wouldn’t even be able to squeeze out the words to ask, Are we all going to die? Please … I don’t want to die.
Gideon leaned over Tessa’s seat from behind and yanked the bag from her grasp.
“Give her—another—,” he choked out.
And then he was gagging and retching into the bag.
Dek laughed.
“Still think you’re so high and mighty, Mr. Military Pilot?” she taunted, even as she reached for another bag for Tessa.
The plane jerked and lurched and rolled. Tessa closed her eyes and bent her head down.
“No, no—look at something!” Dek yelled at her. “Watch the movement! It’ll fend off the airsickness!”
Tessa wanted to say, Leave me alone! Let me die in peace! But just in the short time she’d spent with Dek, she could tell: Dek wouldn’t stop bugging her. Dek wasn’t the type to ever leave someone in peace.
Tessa opened her eyes and stared at the computer screen. Surprisingly, this did make her stomach feel more settled. But were they supposed to be dropping toward the ground so rapidly?
Gasping and still gagging, Gideon struggled up behind her.
“Trees … nothing but trees … not supposed to be trees here,” he murmured, lunging toward the computer screen again.
Tessa tried to focus on the shapes and colors on the screen, rather than the sensation that the ground was rushing toward them too quickly. The ground did seem to be full of hillocks and mounds of green—she guessed those might be trees.
Gideon dropped the airsickness bag from his face long enough to punch in commands to open a new window down in the corner of the computer screen. Then he called up something recorded—maybe more of the spy satellite video Tessa had seen before. This time Tessa noticed both the geographical coordinates and a date stamped at the bottom of the screen: yesterday’s date. Tessa blinked and focused on the scenes: rows and rows of houses and streets and apartment buildings. They looked like they might once have been quite nice, with neatly mowed yards and flowers growing along the sidewalks. But now the yards and flower beds were pitted with craters; facades were ripped from the buildings. In one house lacy curtains fluttered out a window, a portrait of some cozy normalcy Tessa had always longed for. But those curtains, that window, the wall that held it—that was the only part of the house that hadn’t been turned into rubble.
Gideon moaned.
“There was a bombing raid here yesterday morning,” he murmured. “Why aren’t our cameras showing this? This is all right below us. Why can’t we see it from the air?”
He minimized the scenes of destruction, so the trees rushing toward them filled the whole screen.
“Did the enemy just this morning unveil some incredibly advanced masking technology?” he asked. “I’ve got to tell—”
He reached toward the controls again, but Dek slapped his hands away.
“You are not sending any message out to our military, from this plane, right now,” she ordered, in a tone that would have been perfect for a general if it hadn’t carried just the slightest hint of little-girl squeakiness. “Are you trying to make our chances of being killed go over one hundred percent?”
Gideon paused to retch into his airsickness bag.
“It’s just—,” he said, when he could speak again.
“Unless the enemy shot down all our spy satellites, our military’s seeing the same thing we are,” Dek snapped. “Let’s focus on doing things that keep us alive, shall we?”
Gideon probably would have kept protesting, but they hit a pocket of air just then that made the whole plane buck wildly. He had one hand on the airsickness bag and one hand stretched out toward the controls—he wasn’t holding on to anything solid. He tumbled over backward.
Tessa grabbed for his arm.
She caught his sleeve; he curled his fingers around her wrist.
“Are you trying to pull her arm out of its socket?” Dek shrieked at him. “Do you hurt or kill everything you touch?”
Gideon let go.
“No!” Tessa screamed.
But when she looked back, Gideon had only shifted to clutching the back of her seat.
Tessa wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the landing got even rougher after that. Maybe the wind currents were more dangerous closer to the Earth’s surface; maybe even the autopilot had lost power, and gravity was taking over. The plane shimmied and shook, rolled and throbbed, slammed down toward the ground. This seemed to go on for hours. Tessa’s teeth pounded together; her spine jolted against the seat; the belt bit into her hips. And then, even when Tessa was certain they had to be on the ground, they bounced.
When they finally stopped moving, Tessa didn’t dare to breathe for a full minute.
“Is … everyone … okay?” she asked in a small voice that sounded tinny and panicked even to her own ears. She had a sudden fear of looking around: What if Dek or Gideon was dead? She kept her eyes focused forward, staring straight at the computer screen, which had gone completely dark.
Suddenly a hand slapped against the screen.
“On! Come! Back! On!”
It was Dek. She’d sprung out of her seat and was alternately hitting the
computer screen and slamming her hands against the controls.
“Who designs a computer system to shut down just when you need it most?” she hollered. “Where’s the backup power?”
“It … serves the … military’s purposes, not to have a drone plane loaded with all our coding … fall into enemy hands,” Gideon said in a creaky voice from behind Tessa. He was alive! “So … blame your bosses … for not … retrofitting … enough.”
Tessa spun around, to see if Gideon looked as pained as he sounded. But the jerky movement was too much for her after the wild landing. Her stomach lurched; her head throbbed; her vision receded and then surged again.
By the time Tessa could see straight once more, Dek had already launched herself from the pilot’s seat and was running toward Gideon. He was huddled in a broken-looking way against the padded column.
Okay, Tessa thought. Dek will take care of him. She’s not as heartless as she tries to sound. She’s all bark, no bite.
Dek bent down beside Gideon. But instead of checking for broken bones or dabbing at the cut over his cheek, she immediately began tugging at his shirt.
“We’ve got to get that uniform off you and hide it!” she cried, her voice brimming with fear. “Tessa, help! If the enemy shows up and sees him wearing that, they’ll kill us all!”
Gideon twisted around and shoved her away. She hit the wall hard.
Maybe Gideon wasn’t hurt as badly as he looked.
“This uniform may be the only thing that saves us,” he insisted. “If I can say, ‘I surrender’ before they shoot me, they have to treat me like a prisoner of war. There are rules for that. Policies they have to follow.”
Dek snorted.
“Only way that uniform is going to protect you is if it’s bulletproof,” she muttered. She rubbed the back of her neck, where she’d hit the wall. “And what’s going to protect Tessa and me?”
“I will,” Gideon said.
Tessa expected the other two to ask what she thought, to give her a chance to weigh in with her own opinion. Would she have to cast the tie-breaking vote?
But Gideon was already lunging to his feet, already slamming his hand against the release for the door. The door slid open, and instantly he had his hands raised in the air.