Departure(48)

They’ve cut the grass on one long runway. They expected Flight 305 to land here. I count that as a positive sign at first, but then the optimism that has been rising steadily since I saw the light and the tents fades. Beside the tents, at the end of the mowed runway, loom three airships, their silver skin hatched with long, dark marks—the scars of the two previous battles I’ve witnessed, and who knows how many others. Each is about a hundred feet long, I would guess, and maybe twenty feet tall. I wonder how they fly. More importantly, I wonder if the things inside are friend or foe. Here in the darkness, across the sea of grass and the crumbling ruins of Heathrow, there’s not a single clue.

For a long moment Grayson and I just stand here, the rusted remnants of a barbed-wire-topped fence collapsed on the ground at our feet. Finally we step carefully across it toward the tents, committing to our course.

“What do you want to do?” Grayson’s voice is low.

Though there’s little chance they can hear us from here, I answer quietly and quickly. “Find cover and wait. Watch for clues.”

Ten minutes later we’ve taken up position on the other side of a broken-down, wide-body aircraft of a make unfamiliar to me. Time is slowly dragging it—like the airport, and London itself—into the ground. Grayson and I take turns peering over the mangled hulk at the camp, our bodies huddled close together, trying to trap any warmth between us.

I’d love to catch some sleep, but it won’t come. I’m too nervous, too cold, too sore.

Sitting with my back against the metal of the aircraft, I look up as it starts to rain. It’s just a drizzle, not near as bad as the frigid, pounding downpour we endured on the ride here. But still, I could do without it.





An hour later we’ve seen nothing, not a single clue as to how to infiltrate this place. Two hours to sunrise. We’ll have to decide soon: go back or make a move. Neither option appeals.

We’ve made a little shelter under an overhang in the wrecked plane to keep out the cold and the rain. If I live through this ordeal, I’m moving to Arizona and never going out after sunset again.





Movement. A figure in a glass-tiled suit just came out of an airship. It walks quickly to the closest tent, slipping through flaps I hadn’t been able to make out before. I watch intently, waiting for it to emerge again. I wave Grayson off when he reaches for the binoculars, ready for his shift. I need to see this.

Thirty minutes later my arms are cramped, my eyes are tired, and there hasn’t been another movement. Time to roll the dice.





The jog to the glowing white tents seems endless. Through the haze and drizzle, the three round-topped structures loom above the grass horizon like rising suns.

This is a crazy move. Desperate. But it comes down to this: try to find help elsewhere, and maybe starve to death on our way, or see what’s behind the curtain—or tent flaps, literally. I’m freezing, waterlogged, and hungry, and the flaps are a hundred feet away now. Turning back, going for help elsewhere doesn’t seem like an option. I’m not even sure anybody is out there. I know someone is here. And the odds are good that the passengers are too, one in particular, if the battered airship extracted her from the Titan Hall battlefield. As Grayson and I reach the flaps, guns drawn, I tell myself this is our only play.

Neither of us hesitates at the threshold. He pulls the flap back and stands aside, allowing me to enter.

The room is small and empty, its walls made of white sheet-plastic.

Warm, misty air engulfs us from above and the sides.

Must be a decontamination chamber of some sort.

A glass door dead ahead clicks. I pull the metal handle.

Another room. White walls again, hard plastic this time. Glass-tiled suits hang on the right side, white suits made of a rubbery material on the left. Helmets with only a horizontal slit for the eyes sit on a shelf above.

Without a word, Grayson and I begin pulling the rubber suits on over our wet clothes. Leaving those here would quickly give us away.

The suit has a small tank on the back, on the interior. I assume it’s oxygen because the air inside is breathable. Interesting.

The transparent eye slit is the only thing that might give us away. Speed is the key now.

With my eyes, I try to communicate that to Grayson.

We leave the suit room via a sliding glass door. Unlike the hinged door behind us, it makes a tight seal. Another chamber, another spray of mist from all sides, and a metal door ahead slides open, revealing a long corridor with ten doors on each side. Wide windows are set into the wall between the doors, stretching from waist height to the ceiling, about twelve feet above us, giving us a glimpse into each room. They’re . . . labs. Ten labs on each side, each containing a long metal table, open shelving on one wall, and some kind of platform at the back, which I can’t make out from here.

From our vantage point in the chamber I can see movement in the closest few labs, figures wearing containment suits like ours. No one has looked up at us yet. They’re hunched over their work, which I can’t quite make out.

Grayson turns awkwardly in the suit. Through the slit in the helmet, I see fear in his eyes. We’re like two turkeys in a shooting gallery: ten firing stalls, shooters on each side, any one of whom could recognize us. The labs are each about twenty feet wide. Two hundred feet to the sliding glass doors at the end. Might as well be two hundred miles. We’ll never make it without someone recognizing us, but we can’t turn back—that could draw even more attention.