Departure(31)

We rush toward them, waving at them to come with us. When I turn around, about half the survivors are converging on us, shouting, staring.

“Run!” I yell, flinging my arms out. “Spread out. Go, you hear me? Go!” I grab Harper’s hand and sprint through the woods. She’s right behind me. In fact, I think I’m slowing her down. Incredible. They healed her. Or maybe Sabrina did—but that’s not possible; she’s in better shape than when we crashed. Even her skin glows.

I glance back. Yul’s gone.

I stop and grab Sabrina’s arm. “Where’s Yul?”

Thankfully my hearing’s returning some, but I still have to strain to hear Sabrina say, “He had to go back for his computer.”

“Why?” I ask.

“He needs it,” Sabrina says.

“He needs it, or they need it?” Harper’s voice is hard, surprising both Sabrina and me.

Sabrina looks down. “I don’t know. . . . I think . . . I think they both need it.”

I take the gun out, slip my watch off, and hand it to Harper. A smile curls at the corners of her mouth, and I can tell she’s trying with everything she has to suppress it. She turns the watch over, reading the inscription: For a lifetime of service. —The US Department of State.

Her eyebrows lift. “You . . . worked for the State Department?”

“My dad did. Listen to me, Harper. If I’m not back in ten minutes, keep going. Promise me.”

Harper keeps staring at the watch.

“Promise me, Harper.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I take off, pushing my still shaky legs as hard as I can toward the nose section. The rows of beds that the tents rested on lie empty now, and so does the camp. The trees are still shedding debris. It drifts down like falling snow, covering the stacks of white body bags with a fine coat of green and brown. It’s quiet, creepy. I can only hear the airships in the distance, their firing now intermittent.

I don’t see Yul as I approach the camp, but I don’t stop. I bound up the staircase of luggage and plane parts into the nose section and barge through the first-class cabin. He’s pulling bags out of the overhead, ransacking them, searching—

Behind me I hear footsteps. I turn to see a suited figure, camouflaged even here, bearing down on the two of us. I raise my gun, but I’m too late. His arm is outstretched. I expect to hear the soft pop of air next, but a gunshot rings out, a piercing noise in the small space. The figure topples forward, colliding with a first-class seat and landing hard, his suit shimmering and flashing, crackling with electrical sounds.

Grayson stands in the first-class galley, a handgun held out.

I turn to Yul. “You have it?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go,” I say, my eyes locking on both of them.

They follow me out of the plane, and we take off into the woods.

The suited figures will hunt us down now. They brought us here for a reason, and we have what they need.





PART II:

TITANS





18





I’m a new woman. Literally. My head is clear, my skin is smooth, and my muscles feel supple and strong. There’s no hint that I was on my deathbed twelve hours ago. (I guess it was technically my death lie-flat seat—in first class, no less—but never mind that.) The bottom line is, those suited things that invaded the crash site healed me. And did a bang-up job. It’s quite a mystery, given how the meet-and-greet started.

I don’t remember anything after the shimmering monster stormed into the cabin and shot Sabrina, Yul, and me with what must have been a sedating device. I awoke the next morning on a narrow bed. My eyes focused just in time to watch the steel hoops above me retract, letting the plastic roof take flight, drifting into the woods. I thought it was snowing at first, but I soon realized that tiny bits of leaves and limbs were falling, as if a grinder were shredding the treetops. The sound of explosions in the air assaulted me next. Two ships hung unmoving in the sky, firing relentlessly, the booms of their guns like thunder in my chest.

And then Nick was there, rescuing me once again, though this time I was in far better shape than he was. He looked a fright, his face covered in dirt, grime, and caked blood, his eyes sunken, his cheeks gaunt. Scared me worse than the bombs bursting in the air.

He and Yul returned from the nose section a few hours ago with Yul’s carry-on, and in my opinion, a far less valuable piece of baggage: Grayson Shaw.

“He’s coming with us,” Nick said when the three of them rejoined Sabrina and me, and no one’s said a word since. The five of us have simply marched through one forest after another, avoiding the fields, our pace steady but not quite brisk, for Nick’s sake. He’s in the worst shape of all of us. He’s been holding his right side, his ribs, and breathing hard almost the entire way.

When we finally stop for water, I beg him to rest for a bit, but he insists we go on.

“They’re hunting us.” He motions to Yul’s bag. “And whatever’s in there.”

Yul stiffens.

“We’ll talk about it when we get to the farmhouse we saw on our way to the glass structure.”

“The structure?” Sabrina asks.

“It was . . . nothing,” Nick says, still trying to catch his breath between sips of water. “We’ll talk about everything at the farmhouse, when we’re not out in the open.”