The Countdown (The Taking #3)(66)

I wasn’t sure it was real at first, the slight, barely unnoticeable shift. It was so very, very subtle.

Except somewhere, deep inside me, I knew the truth because my heart picked up speed, every muscle in my body went still, every synapse started igniting.

Things just got real.

I waited an eternity, then, when I trusted myself enough, when I could actually breathe again, I squeezed my fingers around the grips again . . . just the tiniest bit. Testing it.

This time when the ship moved, it was more than just noticeable, it was staggering. I wanted to be blown away by what I’d just done, because that’s what I should be, that’s what a normal girl would be, blown freaking away. It was the normal response, to be overwhelmed . . . frightened . . . horrified by the fact I’d just managed to move this thing.

“Kyra?” Molly’s voice was demanding in my ear. “Kyra, what’s happening? Is everything okay? Was that you?”

I couldn’t answer because my mouth was stuck in a giant, stupid grin. That was normal, right?

The display in front of me had stopped showing the blobs that made it look like the Weather Channel, and a new series of images were rotating past in rapid succession. They were too fast for me to take in, except here’s the weird thing: they weren’t going too fast for me.

I understood each and every one of them.

This whole thing . . . all of it was getting more and more bizarre. But I stayed where I was . . . mesmerized.

There were strange patterns, of stars and landmarks with lines of longitude and latitude that crisscrossed them to create maps; similar to the one Tyler had drawn out in the desert. But now I somehow knew where all of these places were. I wasn’t afraid or even shocked at how easily the information came to me.

Many of them were places I’d been before—Thom’s camp at Silent Creek, Griffin’s at Blackwater Ranch, the old Hanford site where Simon and his people had been hiding out when he’d first introduced me to them. There was even a map of the abandoned asylum in Wyoming where Natty and Eddie Ray had been holding me. There were other things in those images as well, not just maps, but information that shouldn’t have made any sense at all, that I shouldn’t have had the first clue how to comprehend, but that my mind somehow just . . . absorbed. I was a sponge, sucking in all the knowledge being thrown my way.

I was a computer, and this was my download.

By the time it was finished, I knew this ship inside and out. Its schematics were etched in my mind as if I’d engineered the thing myself. I knew which alloys had been used and where they’d been mined. I had a working knowledge of the components—of the spectrometers, nodules, shields, and trusses.

I knew exactly what I needed to do, just like Molly had hoped I would.

I knew how to fly this thing.

“Kyra . . . ,” Molly’s voice rasped. “Are you seeing this? Are you receiving these transmissions?”

It was the first time I realized that what I was seeing wasn’t coming from Molly or the ISA . . . these charts and graphs and diagrams. Maybe, like everything else, that awareness should have freaked me out too, but it didn’t. Whoever was out there transmitting signals wanted me to have this information.

“Hell yeah, I am,” I answered as I settled back, gearing up for something remarkable. A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And why not, wasn’t that exactly what this was?

“What do you think it means—?” she started to ask, but I cut her off as I reached forward and gripped the joystick. When I did, a harness dropped over my shoulders and locked me in place.

Adrenaline rushed through me.

“Open the bay doors,” I said into my mouthpiece.

“The bay . . . what? You can’t . . . ,” she sputtered, and their voices buzzed and blurred, as whoever was on the other end conferenced about what I’d just commanded them to do.

I tuned them out. They could do like I said or straight up ignore me, but one way or another I was getting this thing outta here.

I concentrated, because that’s what this required—I knew because of all the information I’d just absorbed. So I did, just like I had before when I’d moved things with my mind, only this time I wasn’t angry or agitated or panicked, I was just . . . focused.

“Kyra, are you listening to me?” Molly was yelling into the headset now.

All around me the spaceship rumbled to life. It wasn’t loud but I could feel it, its energy vibrating in every muscle and nerve fiber, every cell and every molecule of my body until we were one . . . me and this mind-blowing machine.

“I got this,” I responded, infinitely calmer than she had sounded, which was somewhere in the range of: her head might explode. And then I repeated, “Open the bay doors.”

Even though she’d never confirmed there actually were bay doors, she knew what I meant, and she knew I knew it. When the aircraft lifted again, it raised up so smoothly you would’ve thought I’d been flying this thing my entire life. It hovered evenly . . . perfectly beneath me.

I didn’t wait for her to agree, I just went for it, and the spaceship did exactly what I wanted it to, gliding the way I meant it to, the way I told it to . . . with my mind! I didn’t pretend it wasn’t the coolest thing ever, because it one thousand percent was.

I was doing this. I had total control. This thing was responding to something inside me. I could think—just think!—a command and the spaceship did what I wanted it to.