The sound of the explosive decompression of the cabin was, in fact, explosive. It felt like my eardrums blew up with the sudden change in air pressure, and I only just got a hand on the chair next to me before the wind ripped me toward the back of the cabin where the Hercules had made a hole in the fuselage. I couldn’t hear the straining of his muscles over the horrendous noise of the wind, but I watched as he broke the seat into three pieces with his strength; one hung by the handcuff chain from each of his massive paws; the last clung to his feet in one great chunk.
I held on as the hole in the cabin widened, the fractures the Hercules had created shearing as the wind tore at them. Someone screamed over the speaker above me about an emergency landing. My total focus was on the Hercules, though, as he stood, unmoved by the wind, his feet planted and one hand on the chair of the telepath who had been chained next to him. He flashed that smug, nasty smile at me as he turned loose his free hand in a long wind up and swipe. I knew what was about to happen but I couldn’t stop it.
The telepath who had been seated next to him got hit by the remnant of the seat chained to his hand; the results were like a watermelon getting splattered by a sledgehammer. I held on, my fingers clutching Foreman’s chair as the Hercules wound up for his next swipe, moving back in the line and taking the head off the next telepath, this one the woman from Orlando. Her scream was lost in the sound of the roaring gusts around me as air rushed out of the plane through the hole.
He got one more swipe in unchecked before the tempest began to die down. I was holding my breath, something we metas could do for longer than a human without passing out, but I reached out and grabbed the nearest oxygen mask and took three hits in rapid succession. Then I tossed aside the mask and launched myself at the Hercules as he took a long step toward the back of the plane and brought down the chair pieces on two more screaming telepaths.
I hit him in the center of his mass as he tried for the last telepath. My shoulder hit his ribs and I couldn’t tell whether I broke something of his or he broke something of mine, or both. It hurt like hell, though, and stunned me long enough to prevent me from following up in a timely manner. It gave him just enough time to throw an arm at the last telepath, though, and he buried the remnants of his seat in the man’s chest, destroying his heart, lungs, and anything else in his upper chest. The man’s head lolled forward, and I knew I’d lost.
“You failed!” the Hercules said with a wide grin. “You won’t learn anything from them,” he said over the howling of the wind.
“They’re not the only ones I can learn from,” I said, matching his grin with one of my own, one I didn’t remotely feel. I threw my ungloved hands at him and he tried to bring his hands together, to catch my head between the two chair pieces. It would likely have killed me if I hadn’t dragged him down before he could complete the maneuver.
I saw his eyes widen as my power began to work, the cumulative drain restarting at virtually the same point I’d left off. I could hear his howls over those of the wind, and he fell atop me, jerking with great muscle spasms as I started to pull the last of him free of his body. He screamed in my head and through his mouth and I heard both, combining with the blast of air that thundered around me, and the sound of blood rushing and pounding in my head from my exertion and what I was about to get, to reach—the climax.
He swung his arm wildly one last time as I felt the finale build. It was so close, within the touch of my fingers. It was almost mine, that sweet release, when something exploded and he flew from my grasp. It took the split second before I flew out of the plane to realize that he’d struck the hole in the side of the cabin with one of his cudgels and broken it wide, wide open. The wind reached out and plucked him from atop me, ripping him from my grasp before I could take the last of his soul. I had not even a moment to think about it before I felt the deck of the cabin that had been so tight on my back disappear from beneath me as I, too, went flying out of the side of the plane and found myself falling, freely, my jacket whipping as I saw the ground, tens of thousands of feet below, but rushing up so very, very fast.
Chapter 20
Free-falling without a parachute was without a doubt the most frightening sensation I had ever felt. The wind blasted at my face, drying my eyes even as I tried to keep them open. Why? I don’t know. It was like I wanted to look death in the face or something as I plummeted through the rapidly diminishing space between me and the ground. The chill wind caused my jacket to flap wildly around me. I wasn’t screaming, but it was only because I was still too stunned to realize that I’d fallen out of a plane. I quelled my panic with a thought, reaching inside for desperate answers. My skin had gone numb from the cold, and I couldn’t force my brain to think, no matter how much I wanted it to. I could see the Hercules a few hundred feet below me, his hands pinwheeling wildly, and I wondered if I was doing the same.
I hoped in flash for Reed to come save me. Then I remembered his stomach wound, how he coughed and blood came out, his semi-conscious state, and knew that if he came after me, we would both die instead of just me. My breathing was wild, my lungs trying to sift oxygen out of the thin air so high up. I tried to remember a lesson, long ago, from Glen Parks about combat drops. I moved my body into a more wind-resistant position, my arms and legs extended, my body flat against the upward pressure of the wind. I had no idea why I bothered, but I was desperate enough to try anything to prolong my life by even a few seconds.
My metahuman abilities wouldn’t solve this problem, and I doubted there’d be enough left of me to heal after impact. I remembered reading something once about how someone had survived a skydive gone wrong, landing in a swamp after a parachute failure, but that had to be a one in a million shot. There was no hope of that for me; I saw nothing but flat green fields in every direction.
I was about to reach in and beg for help, for anything, when something hit me in the back, hard, and I felt arms wrap around my midsection. The little oxygen in my lungs was knocked out, and I gasped for breath even harder. I threw up my head to look at who had struck me, hoping against all hope and logic that it was Reed.
It wasn’t.
“You idiot!” I gasped between frantic breaths. “You’ve killed yourself, too!”
Scott Byerly’s face was redder than normal, and I could tell he was trying hard not to pass out. He was holding his breath, and a quick look down confirmed that we were not going to be in the air much longer. “Hold on to me!” he shouted, then took another long breath, a look of deep concentration on his face.
What else could I do? I turned in his grasp, pushing around so that my chest was against his, my arms wrapped around his neck. Once I had a good hold, he unlocked his hands from around my midsection and extended them. His eyes closed and his face got deep with concentration. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything or not, and I waited, in silence, for what felt like minutes before I finally spoke. “What are you doing?”
He opened one eye and grinned. “Just enjoying the feel of a woman pressed against me before I die.”
“You ass!” I screamed, and looked down again. It wasn’t far now, a thousand feet at most, and it was coming up ridiculously fast.
“HOLD ON!” he shouted and I felt something rush past my legs, something strong and powerful, something that stirred the air around us. Scott’s face went red again in spite of the fact that we were now low enough to breathe without difficulty. I clenched my arms around his neck as if he were a life vest and I was a drowning woman. I thought about kissing him on the lips for the hell of it and decided against it, but only because his face was veiled in utter and complete concentration.
The jets of water coming out of his hands were so intense that I could feel the power of them. My arms snugged tight around him, I could feel us start to fight back against gravity’s pull, a little at a time. We began to slow and I held on, the centrifugal force on my brain causing me to see spots. Just when I thought I couldn’t handle another moment of the force, my feet hit the ground,
hard enough that I knew I’d dropped but not hard enough to break anything. I didn’t let go of him, though, and we ended up in a tangle in the middle of a cornfield, the foot-high stalks and a puddle of mud cushioning my landing. Scott’s chest thudded against mine, knocking the wind out of me. I felt his arms take up his weight for only a second before he collapsed on me, his head buried on my breastbone, the smell of wet dirt filling my nose. It was warm against my back, oozing into my clothing, seeping down my neck.
I looked left, then right, and all I saw was spring corn, barely out of the ground. I was breathing slowly but steadily, long breaths reassuring me that I hadn’t died and entered some afterlife that began with endless fields.
“Are we dead?” Scott asked, his voice muffled from where his head lay buried in my chest. “Is this Elysium or something?”
“I think it’s Iowa,” I said, “which means we’re probably closer to hell.” I glanced down and realized his head was pretty much right between my breasts. “You ... uh ... you can get up anytime now.”
“Huh?” His head came up and his chin rested right on my sternum, his face completely drained of color. His brow was coated in sweat, his eyes almost closed, and he looked like he’d just run a five-hundred mile race.
I felt a little stiff, my back feeling the corn stalks underneath it. It was a little awkward because he was right between my legs, too. I had a very embarrassed flash as I remembered the last time I’d been in this position. It had been about six months. “You should probably get up,” I said, feeling the flush of red on my cheeks.
“I don’t know if I can move right now,” he said, and his head bobbed to the side, his blond, curly head lying against my chest. “I may actually fall asleep like this.”
“Um.” I clumsily rolled him to the side, as gently as I could, pitching him off me. “Sorry,” I said when he looked at me reproachfully. “I don’t like to feel trapped.”
“How about splattered?” he said as his head lolled back into the muddy field. “How does squished work for you?”
I pulled myself to my feet and looked around us. Warm mud rolled down my hands in beads and dripped to the puddle beneath me with a plop. The field was a wide expanse of open ground. The only thing disturbing the perfect flatness of the scene before me was a road in the distance, at least a mile away, and, a couple hundred feet away, an impact crater caused by something hitting the ground. “Hercules,” I said. “Guess you weren’t so damned invincible after all.” I twitched my fingers, one after another, as though I could somehow compel the last of his soul to come to me, to finish what we had started.
I looked over the fields, found the road again in the distance. It was getting close to summer and the days were longer, but I could see the sun hanging low in the sky. We could be at the road in a few minutes at normal speed. I looked back down at Scott lying in the mud and knew we’d be going far slower than normal speed. I took a deep breath, sighing once more. Scott was spent, I was sure of that. I lifted him up onto my back with as much gentleness as I could manage and started carrying him, fireman-style, across the field toward the distant road. Every pain and ache from my fights and the landing seemed to shout at me every step of the way, but that was all right. I was alive. And in Iowa. That part of creation where even God got bored enough to nod off for a while.
I surveyed the flat ground around me, judged the distance to the road, and wondered how long I’d have to walk down it before I found any sign of civilization. I sighed. Could be a while.
“Iowa,” I said, breathing the word like a curse. Because it kind of was.
Chapter 21
Scott and I managed to get a ride from a trucker who was passing through on the way to Decorah, a mid-sized town in northwest Iowa. I should say I managed to get a ride from the trucker. Scott remained passed out and still reeked of mud and champagne, like a pig farmer who’d had a good night, I guess. Probably not out of place in Iowa.
I took a shower and bought some new clothes at a truck stop then rented a car in Decorah. We pulled into the Directorate campus a few hours later, long after nightfall. Ariadne was waiting outside HQ with my mother, her face dark and sullen. I pulled up and got out of the car, stretching my legs as I did so, tilting my arms up in the air. “Hey, guys,” I said from where I’d stopped on the loop just in front of our HQ building, a square, modern-looking structure that rose about four stories above us and two below the ground.
My mother wore a small smile. “I was a little worried until we got your call.”
“A little worried?” Ariadne’s arms were folded and she shot an astounded look at my mother. “She fell out of an airplane.”
My mother’s face didn’t change much, but I saw a hint of something more. “Okay. Maybe more than a little.”
“Senator Foreman caught a flight back to D.C.,” Ariadne said without preamble as I crossed behind the car and opened the passenger door. Scott was still passed out and I hefted him onto my shoulder. He didn’t stir. “He didn’t seem too happy about the outcome of the mission.”
“Did you have to make an emergency landing?” I asked my mother as I walked by her, toting Scott on my shoulder as I headed toward the dorm building. I heard Ariadne’s heels clopping behind us to keep up.
“In Des Moines,” she said. “We caught the next flight back. What about you?”
“Splashed down in a cornfield,” I said. “Managed to hitch to a city where we caught the car rental place just before closing.”
“You lost every single one of the telepaths,” Ariadne said, her voice strained.
“We did,” I agreed. “And the two escorts.”
Her face was grim. “How is this in any way not a catastrophe?”
I kept walking, Scott’s body bobbing lightly on my shoulder. It had been a long day, but he still didn’t seem too heavy. I stopped, realizing we were about halfway across the lawn to the dormitory building. “I should probably take him to medical to be checked out, huh?”
I turned and saw Ariadne looking at me with cool disbelief. “Seeing as you don’t care that your captives were killed in a glorious bloodbath that culminated in you being thrown out of a plane in flight, I might recommend you get yourself examined as well.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “And I suspect he’s just hungover and worn out.” I altered course and started heading back to medical.
“About the telepaths—” Ariadne started.
“No use crying over splattered pawns,” I said, “especially when they didn’t know much.”
“They were mind-readers,” Ariadne said dully. “They had access to Century. You can’t tell me they didn’t—”
“Oh, they knew some stuff,” I agreed as we reached the front of the HQ building and my mother opened the outer door for me. I nodded at her and slipped inside before opening the inner door myself and stepping into the lobby. It wasn’t as grand as the last one, but close, with tile floors leading up to the entry desk, and an open second-floor atrium that had a balcony around it. The concierge desk had only one person manning it, but I knew there were armed security waiting just behind the doors to my left, watching the monitors and paid to fire first and ask questions later if someone who seemed even the least bit hostile came in. “The Hercules I drained nearly to empty was their escort, and he was in on all their briefings, saw what they saw, and had even asked a couple of them individually if they knew what was going on, what the endgame of the bigger plan was.”
“They didn’t, I assume by your tone,” Ariadne said as we navigated into a hallway, the white plaster walls looking a little plain in the low light. Decoration wasn’t high on the priorities list at the moment.
“They knew only the basics,” I said. “That Century was going to overturn the old order, was going to kick over the secretive hierarchy of meta organizations, that the members doing the work would get wealthy or whatever else they wanted in the process.” I suspected my eyes gleamed. “They did know one thing that’s a little more than what we’ve gotte
n before, though not much.”
“And it is?” Ariadne asked.
“That what we suspected about phase two is true,” I said. “The plan was always to subjugate humanity somehow. Eliminating the metas who could oppose them is stage one, but the rest is being kept really close to the vest. The telepaths—and this Hercules—were motivated by two things. The first was the promise of gain, which is to say that they thought they were going to be on the top of the pyramid once everything shook out.”
“And the second?” my mother chimed in, listening intently.
“Intimidation,” I said. “They got visits from more powerful metas and were each promised—well, threatened—that should they fail or betray Century, they were going to be entering a world of pain. Sort of how Zollers was warned, it sounds like.” I shrugged. “I’ve got a face for the guy who paid the visit to the Hercules. It was Weissman.”
Ariadne started to ask me something but stopped as we passed through a set of double doors that opened automatically with an electronic hiss. A row of hospital beds lay along the far wall, empty save for two of them, and the lights started to snap on automatically as we came in. One of the occupants of a bed stirred; the other didn’t.
“Can I just say I’m a little surprised to see you alive?” Reed asked weakly from the bed nearest the door. “Most people don’t survive jumping out of a plane without a parachute.”
“You could have survived it,” I said as I put Scott into a bed. He made a slight snoring noise but otherwise seemed to take no note of his change in position.
“As a Windkeeper, I’m a little different than the average meta,” Reed said, turning onto his side to look at me. His color had returned, and he grimaced only a little as he moved, the white sheet pulled up to mid-chest. He looked like he had a bandage wrapped around his abdomen, and his long hair was loose against the pillows that were stacked behind him.
Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 Page 13
