The Countdown (The Taking #3)(67)

Up, I’d thought, and it had risen, just the right amount, exactly as I’d imagined.

The area inside the hangar was massive, and the ship navigated smoothly, with room to spare. I couldn’t see where I was going, not like in a car or truck, where you watched out the window. But I wasn’t flying blind either. I knew from the screen exactly how far off the ground I was, and how much distance there was to the ceiling and to the walls on either side.

Ahead, there was a tunnel carved through the mountain, and even without being told it was the right way to go, that was where I headed.

With a simple: Forward. And then Faster.

I grinned again as the ship slipped inside the wide channel.

Toward the bay doors, I thought, and stifled the follow-up words: The ones that are still closed.

But I couldn’t let myself care because that wasn’t the point. That was their problem.

“Open them,” I said again, this time out loud, more insistently.

“Kyra . . .” There was hesitation in Molly’s voice.

“Do it,” I demanded, forcing myself not to think about slowing. I refused to give them the satisfaction. This was their baby . . . Molly’s baby, this project. I was only the pilot. Hadn’t Dr. Clarke said as much? If it crashed, odds were I’d heal.

The truth was, though, I didn’t believe they’d let that happen.

On the screen I saw the end of the tunnel fast approaching, and realized I was coming toward them—the bay doors.

They were still sealed shut, and if she didn’t open them soon, I’d find out just how resilient my body really was. The first flash of doubt filled me, but I didn’t waver.

Faster, I thought again, this time clutching the handles, and the ship did as I commanded, plunging ahead.

The display in front of me showed that we were within one hundred kilometers and closing.

Seventy-five.

The gap was narrowing with each heartbeat.

Fifty.

Just when I thought they’d decided to dismiss my order, I saw the doors begin to part.

Too late, I thought. They’ll never open in time. Not all the way.

Twenty-five . . .

The crash was inevitable, I was certain. I sucked in my breath and held it.

Just as the nose of the ship edged through and I waited for the wings to collide with the doors on either side, the entire ship flipped to the left, doing a ninety-degree rotation onto its side. The harness at my shoulders tightened as the frame of the craft skimmed through the way-too-narrow opening, and I jolted forward as the underside scraped along the door.

I let out an audible gasp as the ship leveled out again. Open skies stretched before me on the screen. We’d somehow not only cleared the bay doors, but the ISA and the mountain entirely.

“Kyra? Kyra, can you hear me?” It wasn’t Molly now, but Dr. Clarke, insistent. I smiled, guessing she was angry too.

“I hear you,” I answered, but only because even though the signal wasn’t nearly as strong now, Dr. Clarke still intimidated me. But that didn’t change the fact that I was flying a freaking spaceship . . . not exactly the kind of thing that happens every day.

“We need you to come back now . . .” I could hear her but she was definitely breaking up. Crackly.

I looked at the screen, and reveled in the weightless feel of the spacecraft beneath and around me. I’d come back . . . I mean, of course I’d come back. “Five minutes,” I finally answered. “Just give me five more minutes.” And then I tipped forward and did something I knew they wouldn’t want me doing—I disabled the ship’s tracking device.

She said something back to me, but I couldn’t make it out; it was too static-y. And then there was only white noise. Real white noise.

I had no plan, no coordinates or destination in mind, so I leaned back and thought only, Go. Plain and simple.

As if on a course of its own, the ship went, ascending higher and higher. My ears were congested, similar to the sensation when we’d plunged underground in the elevator, or the one time I’d flown across the country—to Florida—when my parents had taken me to Disney World when I was in the fourth grade. And like that time, I reached up to plug my nose so I could unblock them.

Then, all at once, before my fingers even reached my nose, there was an explosion of lights—flashes that blinked in and out and all around my periphery. For a moment I thought I was seeing fireflies, that’s what my brain told me, how I processed them. But that wasn’t what they were at all.

They were small bursts happening inside the ship, like miniature stars that formed and exploded and re-formed, all within a matter of milliseconds. All close enough that if I reached out, I might actually be able to touch them.

The air is too thin, I thought fleetingly. I’ve gone too high. I’m not getting enough oxygen.

But I was. Somehow I knew that what I was witnessing wasn’t an optical illusion caused by an oxygen-deprived brain.

When the ship suddenly lurched forward, the shoulder harness locked in place. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn my entire body had just been turned inside out. My organs exposed, my heart beating right there in the open, my lungs slippery and raw. Everything else, my skin and hair and eyeballs felt like they’d been turned inward, while the force of the journey thrust me so hard against the back of the chair I was immobile.

The whole thing lasted only moments . . . a breath . . . a heartbeat, maybe. And then the ship came to a sudden and complete stop, and everything went still and freakishly silent. My body, this body of mine went back to feeling . . . normal.