Nathan just stood there smiling.
“Perhaps you’d like me to show you how it works,” he said jovially.
He walked around the place where the ship had been and stood on the other side. But there was no ship between him and us. We could still see him as perfectly, just as we had before he moved.
He waved. “There are dozens of high-resolution cameras pointed at me right now, aligned along the side of the ship. You’re not actually seeing me, although you might be seeing my real feet. But the rest of me is an incredibly lifelike video that is being played for you on the other side of the ship. You see, the entire ship is a video screen as well as a camera. It is projecting a perfect image of the other side of the ship to you, and thus…”
The ship suddenly reappeared between us. Only Nathan’s feet were visible from the other side.
“It looks invisible,” Nathan concluded as he walked around to our side of the ship again.
“It’s like magic,” I said in awe.
“All good tech is,” Nathan replied with a smile. “Now get in and let me show you how to turn it on and off.”
The inside of the airship looked much the same as it had over the past few days during the course of our flight training. The only difference was a large, latched trunk in the back of the cabin.
Nathan walked inside and flipped a familiar switch. It was next to the ignition, and I had seen it but not asked about it before. I smiled. Nathan really must’ve wanted to surprise us.
“This switch controls the stealth mode for when you’re in the ship. But when you’re out of the ship, you’ll need this,” Nathan said as he brandished the small controller in his hand. He passed it to Jace. “I recommend leaving the airship in stealth mode any time you’re on the ground, unless you’re getting in or out. I also recommend leaving the airship in stealth mode any time you’re in the air. Basically, try not to be seen,” Nathan added with a wink.
“This might make the work of the surveillance teams easier,” Jace postulated as he considered the small remote in his hand. “Since they won’t have to provide us flight paths that are completely devoid of other air traffic. Or eyes on the ground that might see us.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll still be plenty busy,” Nathan replied. Then he opened the latched trunk and pulled out two GPS watches. He handed one to me and the other to Jace.
“Thank you,” I said. The watches were a matte black, with large touchscreens, and I was grateful to have access to a map on my wrist. But I still wasn’t exactly sold on the safety of the mission so far. We’d still be walking targets if we were spotted by the Authority in any of the factory towns. And it didn’t matter if the airship was invisible or not once we got on the ground; we wouldn’t be invisible, after all.
Jace turned on his GPS watch, and I leaned over to watch as it homed in quickly on our location.
I looked more closely at his watch, wondering what exactly it was capable of. It looked like it was using standard satellite imagery, and Jace was able to use his fingers to zoom in and out on the map. Edgewood was unmarked, as it would have been on any public map, but a few coordinates had been preloaded. He scrolled over and zoomed in on Millville.
“What are those?” I asked. Smaller red coordinate dots were showing up on the map now. There were a few in and around Millville.
“Bad guys,” Nathan replied. “Authority soldiers or Enforcers. That’s what our surveillance team will be busy doing: tracking enemies to prevent you guys from accidentally bumping into them. You’ll be getting real-time updates with our sightings.”
“But how will you guys sight agents from here in Edgewood?” Jace asked.
“We have access to the street cameras, in places where there are street cameras. And only live feeds since the government has been scrubbing archived footage,” Nathan replied. “But we also have information from any scouts that will be in your area.”
I smiled at the prospect. We were going into the wilderness on our own, but we wouldn’t be completely isolated. Little John would be working hard behind the scenes to provide us with support.
“I have something else back here that you need to see,” Nathan said. He dug through the trunk, pulling out labeled bags, and tossed one to me and one to Jace.
I opened my bag to find a second-skin suit.
“Pull it out,” Nathan said.
I was pretty familiar with the suits by this point, and so I found his request odd, but I obliged. The suit came out of the bag, and three other items fell out from beneath it. I bent down to pick them up… and furrowed my brow.
One of the items was an alternate, extended hood. Its function was immediately obvious—it looked like it zipped onto the suits—but its necessity was not obvious. Why would Jace and I need additional hoods on our suits? We already had the ones attached to the suits themselves. Then I fingered the cloth. It certainly didn’t feel like it was bulletproof or anything.
“Put them on,” Nathan said, watching as Jace and I puzzled over the hoods. “Just the hoods for now; don’t bother with the suits.”
I looked at Jace, but he shrugged and put the hood over his head. I did the same. It wasn’t a very comfortable garment. Unlike the usual suit hoods, it stretched down our foreheads and up over our chins, creating a small circle that only our noses, mouths, and eyes showed through. I giggled at Jace’s appearance in the hood before realizing that I probably didn’t look any less ridiculous.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Instead of answering, Nathan pointed at the other two items that had fallen out of each bag.
I held one up to get a better look at it and saw a white, malleable disk of latex-like fabric. It was circular, maybe a few inches in diameter, and didn’t have any buttons or switches or anything else on it. Just a floppy, concave latex disk.
I looked up at Nathan and shrugged. “What do they do?” I asked.
“Place it against your face,” he said.
I realized suddenly that the latex disks were exactly the same size as the uncovered portion of our faces through the hood. I held the disk up to my face and fitted it to the opening.
“All the way against the skin,” Nathan added.
I pressed the cool latex against the bridge of my nose and then allowed it to flatten itself over my forehead, cheeks, and mouth. To my shock, it seemed to grab hold. A moment later, my vision went dark. I started to panic, feeling both scared and suffocated, but then everything went back to normal. The whole scary experience only lasted one or two seconds.
When my vision came back into focus, I saw Jace staring at me with his mouth wide open.
“What?” I asked. Nathan handed me a mirror.
Whoa. The latex disk and the hood were gone. Instead, a full-faced woman in her early to mid-thirties was staring back at me, wearing a perplexed expression. Even the hair that fell around my face was new and different—coarse and slightly graying.
“The printed masks,” Jace said in awe. “They’re portable now?”
Nathan shook his head. “No, that technology has unfortunately not been perfected yet. These masks are the beta version of the printed masks that we take on larger missions. They’re certainly not of the same quality, so you need to be careful about being seen under bright or unforgiving lights.”
I stared closely at my new face and saw that he was right. The mask looked more like prosthetics and thick makeup than natural skin. The effect probably worked if you were just seen in passing. But if you were closely examined or seated under bright lights (in, say, an interrogation room) the mask wouldn’t be effective.
“They also aren’t time-degradable. The latex will stay in this shape until you remove the disk by pulling at its corners. However, they’re vulnerable to everything else, and very susceptible to damage. Even water damage,” Nathan said.
That was certainly enough to make me nervous.
“So they won’t work at all if it’s raining?” I asked. That was very bad news.
&nb
sp; “If it begins to rain and you’re around anyone other than each other,” Nathan said in a dark tone, “then run—don’t walk—back to the airship.”
I swallowed hard.
“But how does it just appear out of the latex?” I asked.
Jace smiled. “Oh, I forgot you couldn’t see it. Just watch.” Then he placed a disk to his face.
I watched in horror as features began to seemingly crawl out of the disk. They were being 3-D printed in front of my very eyes. Even hair and ears came stretching out of the putty-like disk. Suddenly Jace was a beady-eyed man with a hooknose.
“It’s memory material,” Nathan said. “Each disk is preprogrammed with a face. The printing is designed to exist two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally, so it can return back to this flat shape. If the mask becomes damaged by water, heat, or injury, however, the disk will no longer be usable. Which is why you each got two. But as long as they don’t get damaged, they can be removed and reused an indefinite number of times.”
I sucked in my cheeks while I thought.
“I’d send you with the printer if I could,” Nathan said, seeming to read my thoughts. “But, second to Corona, it’s the most important thing in Edgewood. We just can’t risk losing it.”
I understood. These disguises would have to do. Even if they were much more delicate and susceptible to the elements than we were used to. We’d just have to be careful.
“So we’re looking for information on Helping Hands,” I said. There was an uncertainty in my tone that Nathan picked up on. We’d had so little direction for this mission so far, and though I wanted to ask why that was, I didn’t know if he’d actually give me a reason for it. But I hoped he could give us a goal, at the very least.
“We’re looking for anything. Helping Hands, a government presence, or people who were left behind,” Nathan said.
I nodded. I wanted him to continue. I wanted to hear any semblance of a plan.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that I didn’t put my usual level of effort into planning this,” Nathan slowly continued. “And that’s because I didn’t really have the choice. I don’t know what you’re going to find or who you’re going to encounter out there. All we have is a connection between the government and Helping Hands, and Helping Hands and these disappearances. We need to know more, and the only way to get that knowledge is to get to the places where they’ve been active and look for anything they left behind.”
The lack of planning started to make more sense. We didn’t know what we were getting into yet, and he couldn’t plan for the unknown. He was counting on us to figure out what we needed once we were out there.
And that was scary.
“But I trust you two. You can handle this,” Nathan added.
Nathan was trusting us to go out and do this on our own. This was the only clue we had through the Artemis virus so far, and so a lot was riding on us. As far as I was concerned, that made it all pretty simple: we had to figure it out and get it done. No excuses.
“Well, I think that’s it, then,” Nathan said, heading toward the hatch door.
I suddenly realized just how important the flight training had been. After three days of training, Jace and I were going to be in control of this thing by ourselves.
“Oh, and I hope the training went well. Because these mini-airships are about the same cost as their big brothers due to the added stealth tech. So… try not to crash it.” Nathan winked and then exited the ship.
Before the hatch closed, Nathan turned to wave goodbye and offer his parting words.
“Good luck, team. We’ll be right by your side.”
14
It was the first time Jace and I had been alone in the airship, and we stood still and quiet for a while after Nathan said his goodbyes and the hatch of the airship closed.
“Well,” Jace said finally, moving toward the control panel, “guess it’s now or never.”
I followed him and sat down in one of the pilot chairs. We pulled up a map on the dash screen and entered the coordinates for Millville. A flight path was projected for us, three and a half hours of flight time, and the airship began to hum in anticipation as we prepared it for takeoff.
We were preparing for takeoff to my hometown, and the city of my parents. Or, at least, the city that had once been theirs, before something had compelled them to leave.
Something had driven those people out. Something had either taken them or forced them to leave. And if Helping Hands was connected, the government might have been, too. We needed to get into the abandoned towns to look for clues as to what had happened, where everyone had gone, and why.
And I had my own reasons for exploring Millville. I wanted to find my parents. I wanted to understand what had happened to them.
Jace reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. He always seemed to know when something was troubling me. Though maybe that was because recently things had been troubling me nonstop.
“We can take off whenever you’re ready,” he said.
It was a strange thing to consider. Would I ever truly be ready to find out what had happened to Juno and Culver? Was I ready to find out more about them, or about what life had once been like for me in Millville? Or would the truth be so horrible that I would’ve preferred to never have known?
I also wasn’t sure about returning to the real world, the world of enemies and wanted posters with my face on them and putting myself at risk of capture again.
But I had come this far. I needed to find out more about my parents and about my daughter. And this mission felt like the first step in doing that.
“I’m ready,” I said. And it was at least a half-truth.
“Good.” Jace smiled. “Because you’ll be flying us there.”
“Me? But you’re the virtuoso!” I said incredulously. What was the point of Jace being such a great pilot if I was going to have to fly us anyway?
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” he replied coolly. “But frankly, I think you could use the extra training.”
I smiled. He wasn’t wrong. But then he continued in a more somber tone.
“Besides, if anything happens to me… I want you to get home safe.”
I stopped smiling. I couldn’t imagine leaving Edgewood with Jace and coming home alone. And I would do anything to prevent that from happening. But Jace was right. We needed to be ready for anything.
So I put my hands over the controls and exhaled deeply.
Ready or not.
I worked the controls, and the airship began to jerkily rise through the air.
“Gently, gently,” Jace coached. “Keep her steady. That’s it.”
His bright smile and his encouraging nature made me feel more at ease. If there was anything that made the prospect of learning more about my birth less scary, it was definitely his easygoing and protective personality.
“All right, we’re at elevation. Show me what you’ve got,” Jace said mischievously.
I pressed the controls forward, and we shot through the air.
The GPS coordinates provided a path that we could follow through the map on the dash. When I veered slightly from it, the path began to glow red. But when I was on the path, it glowed green. It was hard to stay on the green path, but Jace corrected my tight grip on the controls and showed me how to steer the airship in a much smoother fashion by using a lighter touch. I had been so used to using a firm hand while flying the bulky airship from my Operation Hood days, but I quickly realized this ship responded to controls much better. Jace placed his large hands over mine, and we flew together as I figured out how best to orient the ship on the projected flight path. Flying had been one thing. But flying on an imaginary route in the sky was slightly harder.
After an hour or so, I felt comfortable in the cockpit, and Jace had begun to explore the cabin.
“Hey, look!” he yelled from behind me.
I made sure that we were at the right elevation and pointed in the right direction, and then turned around
.
Jace had pulled the two rows of passenger seats down to form a bed. So that was where we would be sleeping.
“Do you think it’ll be safe to sleep while we’re on the ground?” I asked, pondering. “Or should we sleep in shifts so one of us can keep watch at all times?”
“That stealth tech is pretty advanced,” Jace replied casually. “I think as long as we’re grounded away from any inhabited areas we should be fine.”
“It’s basically just… one bed,” I noticed nervously.
“Well, I am happy to sleep on the floor if it’d make you more comfortable,” he said.
“No, that’s okay,” I said quickly. I wasn’t sure if it was okay or not, actually, but I didn’t like the thought of Jace sleeping on the cold, hard floor of the cabin when there was a perfectly good bed available to us.
I turned back to the sky. The airship was making good time, and the sky was calm and blue. We were at a high enough elevation that all we could see was a field of fluffy clouds beneath us, the sun reflected brightly off their dimpled surfaces. I felt more confident flying now than I had throughout training. We had a trunk full of disguises, some exciting new tech, and a bushel of fresh fruit and bread and enough Nurmeal to last the trip. We wouldn’t really want for anything. But it felt like there was a void inside of me for some reason anyway. I had been trying to ignore it all morning, but there was definitely a nagging feeling of uncertainty clouding my thoughts.
I hadn’t been able to come to terms with the lack of a birth name in my personal records. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. How had Juno and Culver spent nine months waiting for me and then been unable to even write down a name? I wanted it to be any other way. I had begun making excuses for their behavior. Perhaps the thought of losing their child was so painful that they didn’t want to get too attached to me. Maybe they were sick or tired when I was born and didn’t have enough time to come up with anything. Maybe the Ministry had taken me before they had decided on one.
I knew it was just a name, but to me it was symbolic of so much more. If they hadn’t named me, did that mean they weren’t excited to be parents? Did it mean they didn’t want me? Would they be indifferent to my presence if and when I did find them?
The Child Thief 5: Ghost Towns Page 14
