Vaughn hoisted me onto a ramp at the back of the plane, and I climbed through the hatch into the small space. There were only four seats in the plane; it wasn’t much larger than the back of the van. If the interior had ever had paneling, it looked like it had been ripped off, exposing cables and wires. I sat down on a leather seat and Jax sat a few feet away. We were separated by a few cables hanging from the ceiling. Vaughn’s guard buckled us both in, fumbling with the straps.
I glanced out a small, circular window across from me and looked for a car in the distance. I willed my eyes to see something, but the only movement I saw was dust swirling on the runway.
I looked over at Jax, but he didn’t catch my eye. His eyes were roaming around the plane, absorbing the inside, like he was analyzing its design. Vaughn sat down across from me and studied me with icy blue eyes.
“I wanted to be your personal escort this time,” Vaughn said. “Make sure you don’t slip through my fingers.”
“I’m honored,” I mumbled back.
Jax watched quietly as the ramp slowly ascended and the latch closed behind us. He clocked every movement of the guard and Vaughn, memorizing their actions like he was filing them away. I wondered what he was seeing. All I could see was a trap.
The guard picked up a tan phone in the wall next to him. “We’re clear,” he said, and hung up.
The plane accelerated down the runway. Vaughn crossed his legs and rested his long fingers over his knees. A broad smile stretched across his face. The friction of the tires speeding along the runway gave way to a smooth air stream as we lifted off the ground. I looked out the window one last time at a barren airport below. No one was going to rescue us.
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted over the engine. “You lost, Vaughn, don’t you get it? You lost three months ago when we discovered you’re drugging students. Now we know you’re running trash labs.”
“It’s not over yet, Ms. Freeman,” he said.
I smirked. “You’re going to be arrested the second this plane touches the ground.”
He smiled, ignoring my threat. “I’ve signed you up for a new study. I’ve been working on a new drug for years. If I can crack your impenetrable mind, it should work on anyone.”
I glanced at Jax and his eyes were staring at Vaughn. His mouth was set in a straight line.
“It seems plugging memories into kids’ minds can go only so far. But now I can also erase thoughts. I can reprogram your mind.”
“Have you ever heard of the term ‘unethical’?” Jax cut in.
Vaughn narrowed his eyes. “Ethics is the enemy of discovery. What you call ethics, I call the rape of science.”
“How is this drug going to keep you out of jail?” I asked.
“Once I get it inside all the DCs, I’ll have about twelve thousand kids testifying in my favor. It won’t stack up to what one detention center is claiming, whose students were freed and obviously corrupted by DS Dropout radicals. No one trusts your side, Ms. Freeman. Everyone trusts mine.”
“It will never work,” I said.
Vaughn laughed. “It’s no matter. In a couple of days, both of you will be testifying in my favor.”
“If you’re not caught sooner,” Jax warned him.
“That’s not going to happen,” Vaughn said confidently. “The government is on my side. Not yours.”
“Unless Justin tracks you down first,” I said.
“What makes you think there won’t be fifty people waiting for us the second this plane touches down?” Jax said.
Vaughn glanced at the guard.
“You did scan them?” he asked.
The guard’s mouth fell open. “You said to scan the girl. I just searched him,” he said. “We were a little rushed back there. You think they’re all being tracked?”
I narrowed my eyes and pretended to be irritated with Jax. “Why are you telling them now?” I asked him.
Vaughn looked back and forth between us, trying to call our bluff. “Scan him,” Vaughn said. “If we do find a skin tracker, he’s easy to dispose of.” He rested his hand on the lever that opened the plane hatch.
The guard reached up and pressed a red button over his head, to unlock his seat buckle. He pulled a gun from his holster, holding it in one hand and a scanner in the other. He straightened up to walk over to us, and his head nearly grazed the ceiling of the plane. His head knocked into a cable, and when he looked away for a second, Jax swung his arms above his head and punched the red security lock over his seat.
I sucked in a deep breath. If his aim wasn’t perfect, we were both dead.
Jax’s seat belt snapped off with a click, and he slipped out of the straps in one fluid motion. He stretched his legs out, knocking the guard off his feet onto the floor. The gun flew out of his hand and Jax caught it and aimed it at Vaughn, just as Vaughn was fumbling for his own. The shot reached Vaughn’s neck, and the engine noise muffled the sound of the tranquilizer bullet. Before the guard could catch his footing, Jax shot the gun into his back. He slumped to the floor at our feet.
I blinked down at the guard and over at Vaughn. Jax was already on the floor, searching the guard, and unclipped a silver tube from his hip. He pressed the laser over my handcuffs, and they released. He handed it to me and I released his handcuffs. He slammed his hand into the red button over my seat to unfasten my belt, and I slid off the straps. He reached into the guard’s front pocket and pulled out a phone, as well as his knife the guard had stolen. Jax pocketed the knife and turned on the guard’s phone and started to type a message. Then he stalled.
“Crap almighty. I don’t know anyone’s phone number,” he said. He looked at me and managed a pathetic laugh.
“Send a message to my mom,” I offered. “She’ll know how to contact my dad.” I gave Jax her number, and he typed in a message and slid the phone behind a mess of cables. He looked at a digital screen in the wall that showed our altitude. We were at 11,000 feet.
“Help me move these guys,” he said.
Jax grabbed the guard’s arms and I picked up his legs, and we lifted his heavy mass into a seat; Jax buckled him in, his hands moving easily, as if he had done this a thousand times. We did the same with Vaughn.
“Why bother buckling them in?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Without hesitating, he grabbed a harness off the wall, where it hung close to the hatch entrance. He slipped it over his back and fastened straps around his legs, shoulders, and chest. He looked over at me. A small smile grew on his face.
“Oh, no,” I mumbled. I instantly knew where he got his painting inspiration from.
“You wanted me to have a brilliant plan,” he said, and motioned for me to come over. I stepped closer so that I stood a few inches away from him. Dried blood was smeared around his nose and mouth.
“We contacted my mom,” I said, stalling. “And my dad can still track me. I’m sure they’ll send help.”
“Do you really want to wait around and find out?”
I looked over at Vaughn. He managed to snarl even in his sleep.
I pressed my lips together.
Jax set his hands on my hips to turn me around. He slipped black straps around my shoulders and clipped straps across my chest. His hands worked fast. He buckled me in and tightened the straps until I could feel his chest rising and sinking against my back.
“Trust me,” he said. “I’ve done this a hundred times.” He handed me a pair of goggles from a hook on the wall where the holster had been, and I pulled them on.
“It’s going to get windy,” he warned me. “And cold.”
I swallowed. “We don’t need oxygen this high up?” I really wasn’t in the mood to be oxygen-deprived twice in one hour.
“We’ll be okay,” Jax said.
He pressed an emergency latch in the door ramp, and a light indicated that it was locked. Jax opened his switchblade and fumbled with a few wires behind the latch. He wrapped his hand around a tight bundle of green
cords and slit the knife through. The hatch cracked open and a rush of wind would have blown us over if Jax hadn’t been holding on to a metal handrail in the ceiling.
I leaned forward and looked over the edge of the hatch. All I could see was sky.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Don’t look down!” Jax shouted. The wind pressed against my goggles and whipped my hair across my face.
“But—”
“Keep your arms at your sides when we jump.”
I clenched my shaking fists. The plane turned sharply and shoved us closer to the open hatch. I screamed and clung to a cable.
“Ready?” he shouted, and we scooted closer to the edge.
“No,” I said honestly, and pulled at the straps around my chest, praying they would hold. My mind told me this was nuts. My heart, surprisingly, coaxed me forward.
“Jump like Superman. Now!” We rolled forward off the side of the plane and fell into the blowing sky.
“Oh, shi—”
My voice was cut off by the tunnel of wind rushing into my mouth—about 150-mph wind, blowing straight down my throat. I looked back at the door of the white plane, quickly growing distant behind us. I tried to hold my hands out and pull it back.
My body rotated in the air and we sailed down, our heads pointed at the ground. My arms instinctively flew out to my sides as I embraced the sky. She was enormous. She was heavy and forceful and whipped around me. She roared in my ears like a lion, but she tasted sweet.
I opened my eyes and could see a soft green expanse underneath me.
“You’ll feel a jolt,” Jax warned me, and I was disappointed. It felt like we’d been falling only a few seconds. “Get ready!” he yelled, and the parachute opened with a loud snap as it caught the air. My body jerked back, and for an instant we were suspended in the air, our bodies caught in a still point. I could feel my blood pumping, I could feel the oxygen exploding through my lungs. I felt like I had sprouted wings, like for the first time in my life there were no limitations, no cages. I could understand how atoms must feel when they divide. The world was spread out for miles in every direction, and I was in the center. Everything inside that moment was completely perfect.
We started to fall again, and the chute above us was crinkled as it fought against the wind.
“Crap,” Jax mumbled behind me. He was trying to adjust the straps suspended above us. “Seriously?” he said.
“Now what?”
I glanced above us and saw that the parachute was caving in at the nose.
“The chute didn’t open right,” he said. We gained speed again as the neon orange parachute twisted around cords.
I looked down at the ground, and in that moment, for some reason, I wasn’t scared. Seeing the world so calm and peaceful, instead of the chaotic mess it was at the surface, wouldn’t be the worst way to die.
“I’m cutting off this chute,” he said. “We have a reserve. We’re going to free fall for a couple more seconds, but we’ll be fine, okay?”
I nodded. Like I had a say in this?
He cut off the twisted chute, and immediately our arms reached out to catch the air. Humans have a flying instinct. I blinked down at the ground, rushing toward us. It was no longer a soft, velvet green blanket. It was jagged with the sharp edges of buildings and hard lines of cement.
It was taking too long. I felt Jax fumbling behind me. I looked down, past the tips of my shoes, and realized there was nothing between my body and the ground but skin. Just as I was about to scream, I was jolted back again, and caught in a slow grasp, as if a giant hand were pulling me back.
The ground was coming fast.
“It’s going to be a hard landing,” he said.
He maneuvered the parachute back and forth, trying to buy us time, and our progress slowed. The mosaic chips of houses and dots of trains and miniature trees looked like a plastic model of a city. Jax aimed our landing at a turf field.
I kicked my legs out when we hit the ground and tried to stay on my feet, but the solid earth, so hard and unforgiving compared with the air, tripped me and knocked me over and I managed to take both of us down. We rolled to a stop, kicking up chunks of plastic turf and tangling the chute around us.
I tried to tug off the chute holding us hostage. Jax’s arm was pinned under my shoulder, and he wriggled it free. My leg was trapped underneath his. We formed an odd human pretzel. He rolled off me so we could both sit up. His long legs straddled my hips, and he unclipped our harnesses. He backed away and I looked up at the translucent sky, amazed I had just fallen through her cold arms. I lay on my back, waiting for my heart to steady and my breathing to settle.
“Nice landing,” I said.
“More like nice collision,” he said. “Not bad for your first jump,” he added, critiquing me as if I knew what I was doing.
“‘Jump like Superman’?” I looked over at Jax. “That was my training?”
He laughed. Then he started to really laugh, deep from his stomach, so his shoulders shook, and I was laughing so hard that tears seeped through the corners of my eyes. It was a well-earned laugh of relief.
“You could have at least used a modern-day reference,” I said. “Superman’s ancient. Didn’t they kill him off a long time ago?”
Jax creased his forehead. He looked insulted. “He always comes back. He’s invincible. He’s the greatest superhero ever created,” he said. He stood up and unclipped the chute, which was splayed out around us, its neon orange as obvious as a smoke signal in indicating our location. He balled it up and stuffed it inside the pack. The tattered remains of his T-shirt blew in the wind.
I pulled off the harness and rubbed my shoulders where the straps had dug into my skin. “Superman’s all right,” I said.
“All right?” Jax repeated. He swung the pack over his shoulder and stared at me.
“He wears knee-high red boots and blue tights,” I said. “It’s not my idea of a warrior.”
“He doesn’t wear tights. He wears spandex. It reduces drag so he’s more aerodynamic.”
“Do you think he shaves his legs, too?” I asked.
Jax shook his head with disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re cutting him down.” He raised his fingers as he listed traits. “He could emit solar heat from his eyes. He could topple buildings with his breath.” He threw up his arms. “The man could break the time barrier,” he said.
“Yeah, but he’s too perfect,” I argued. “It’s boring. His only weakness is a rare piece of rock? Give me a break. Even superheroes need flaws.”
“Like who?”
“Like Miss Martian,” I said.
Jax looked at me with a small, crooked smile on his face.
“You know who Miss Martian is?”
“Yes, because she’s the most amazing, most overlooked superhero,” I said. I picked myself up and dusted flakes of plastic grass off my clothes. I listed her amazing feats.
“She can read minds. She can turn invisible. She can fly. She can change her density and move through walls.”
“She’s green,” he informed me, as if I didn’t already know that fact. “And she’s a Martian. They’re easy to destroy. All you need is fire.”
I looked over at him. “Like I said, everyone needs a flaw.” I examined the barren remains of an old schoolyard ahead of us. A faded sign in the front said RIVERVIEW ELEMENTARY, even though there was no river in sight, just a dry open field. Our feet crunched over old, faded turf grass that looked like it hadn’t been sprayed in years. Blades of real grass poked through, like determined pioneers fighting for land rights. The playground next to the school was fenced in. Two sets of swings swayed lazily in the wind, and the metal chains clanked with a bored drawl.
I squinted up at the expansive blue sky, impressed by the feeling of falling and being held at the same time. I couldn’t see the white airplane.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked.
He shrugged. “They should be able to track the phone signal I sent t
o your mom,” Jax said. “I think we did the best we could, under the circumstances.”
“How long have you been flying?” I asked.
“Since forever,” Jax said. “My dad has a pilot license. I grew up in planes.”
I followed him across the field full of dry, spiky grass, amazed at how soft it had looked from the sky. I could see why people got a high from diving. The sky is an amazing teacher. You learn that joy can overcome fear. You learn that falling is only one motion, that you can propel yourself in any direction you want.
“How did you know the chute would open?” I asked Jax.
“It’s law for any of those cargo hatchbacks to have parachutes,” he said simply.
“You don’t worry about much, do you?”
He shook his head. “No. Biggest waste of time, with nothing to show for it.”
I nodded. I wished I had his discipline.
“Diving’s never scared me,” he said, and looked at the street ahead of us. I watched his profile. “Being on solid ground makes me more nervous half the time. If I die, falling like that, seeing everything so perfect for one last time, it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked away. I felt like our personalities were joined at some kind of an invisible seam.
We headed down a residential street, past silent houses that were eventually replaced by tall apartment buildings. The sun was setting behind a wall of rolling purple-gray clouds climbing over the western hills like thick smoke. Rain was coming.
I studied Jax, becoming more intrigued by him every minute we spent together. He was like a book, where each chapter picks up pace until you can’t put it down. That’s when you know you’ve made a friend—when you want to read more of his story.
“You know where we are,” I noted.
“I know it’s Eugene,” he said. “I recognized a few of the buildings from the air.”
I ran my tongue over my dry, chapped lips. I was dehydrated and starving. We needed to contact Justin. And find a shower. At least my clothes had managed to dry in the 150-mph blow dryer I had just experienced.
He pointed down the street. “I know somebody here who might be able to help us out.”
Still Point Page 17
