Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)(22)

Last night during rehearsal, he’d been calm. Everything had been calm. But now, rain pelted the windshield of the cockpit. Outside, in the gray early morning, the trees tossed back and forth and the wind howled through the bay doors.

It wasn’t an Aether storm, but it was enough to make Aria’s stomach buzz with nerves.

“Let’s get this going,” Perry said.

Roar and Brooke had taken their positions outside, waiting for the mission to begin.

They weren’t altering their plan because of the storm. Aria had really never understood rain until she’d come to the outside. In the Realms, it was poetic. Ambience for a night with friends in a mountain cabin. For a day studying in a café. But in the real, it streamed into your eyes and chilled your muscles to the bone. It had a biting side, and they hoped the Guardians who came in the Dragonwing would be thrown off because of it.

“I’m ready,” Soren said. “It’s all set. I did this in Reverie once. Remember, Jup?”

In the other pilot seat, Jupiter sat up, almost straightening out of his usual slouch. “Yeah, I remember. You got us out of history exams that one time.”

Soren’s lip curled. “Right . . . exams.”

Aria wondered if he was thinking what she was: how terribly far they had come from school. From hours in the lounges of Reverie, studying and fractioning in the Realms.

“Once I hack into their system,” Soren said, “I’ll be traceable. I’ll throw every obstacle I can at them, but that’s when the clock starts running.”

He had already told them this. There were three components to the mission. First, a breach of the Komodo’s security system, which he’d handle alone. This would bring the patrol to them, setting up the takeover of the Dragonwing—the second step. Last, disguised as Guardians, they would enter the Komodo itself.

In the worst-case scenario, the security system breach would be discovered while they were inside extracting Cinder, but Soren predicted they would have two hours before that happened. If they followed the plan, they’d have plenty of time.

“We know, Soren,” Aria said. “If we’re going to intercept this patrol, we have to start now.”

He nodded, the color leaving his face. Aria watched his grip on the Smarteye ease. He brought the device to his face with visible effort and placed the clear patch over his left eye.

One second passed. Two. Three.

Soren tensed, his fingers digging into the armrests. “I’m in.” He sat up, his shoulders rolling with a small shudder, his knee still bouncing up and down. “Here we go. Where are you? Where am I? Where are you? Where am I?”

Soren’s chant stopped when an image appeared, floating in the air before the front windshield.

It was an avatar of him from the waist up, the image three-dimensional but translucent, the likeness complete down to the thin scar on his chin. Down, even, to an almost exact replica of the clothes he wore—the clothes they all wore: a pale gray Guardian flight suit with blue reflective stripes along the sleeves.

There was no context to the image. No room or cockpit. Soren’s avatar floated in midair like a ghost.

“Oh, come on,” Soren said, running a hand over his head. “My hair looks better than that. The approximation algorithms the military uses are really substandard,” he muttered as he entered a series of commands into the Belswan control panel.

Aria had never seen anyone so focused and manic at the same time. Perry watched in silence, but she wondered what he scented in Soren’s temper.

“Sorry you can’t stay, Soren,” said Soren, “but I’ll see you later, handsome.”

The three-dimensional avatar blurred and flattened like it had been pressed between glass. Another figure expanded and sharpened before them: Hess, lifeless, staring straight ahead.

Hess was fuller in build than Soren, with a chiseled face and sleek, combed-back hair. Only his eyes, dull and sunken, revealed the decades between him and his son.

Soren sat motionless in the pilot’s seat, staring at his father’s avatar. Hess had left him behind in Reverie. He had to be thinking about that now.

Aria licked her lips. Her stomach was already in knots and they’d just gotten started.

Perry caught her eye and gave her a slight nod, like he knew the words on the tip of her tongue.

“Keep going, Soren,” Aria said quietly. “You’re doing fine.”

Soren seemed to collect himself. “I know I am,” he said, though his voice lacked its usual bravado.

Hess’s avatar came to life. His shoulders lifted—the same small shiver Soren had done moments ago. Soren controlled it now. He would use the avatar like a puppet, directing it through the Smarteye.

“Always wanted to be just like you, Dad,” he said under his breath. “I’m linking into the Komodo’s system.”

His fingers glided over the Belswan’s controls, effortlessly controlling the avatar and the Hover’s instrumentation. This was his language, Aria thought, as surely as singing was hers.

In front of the windshield, a transparent screen flickered up, divided into three segments. Hess occupied the center. The screen on the right contained a combination of maps, coordinates, and scrolling flight plans, all lit in neon blue. The left-hand screen showed a cockpit like the Belswan’s, but smaller. It was the inside of the patrolling Dragonwing—the ship they intended to commandeer.