Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(4)

“My gods, you’re the worst liar in the history of lies. Oh, here they come!” Kay throttled up while the rearview filled with Mercer pursuit cruisers, sirens blazing. “And the first thing they’re going to do is hack the hard drive…” Kay’s voice took on a sarcastic lyricism when he was riled, and now he was nearly singing. “I’ve got to drop her offline or we’re going to be Mercer’s ugliest new puppet ship!”

He thrust the steering console to the side—in front of Ari—and began digging in the wires under the panel. Ari reached for the controls, watching the Mercer vessels grow ever closer in the rearview. Too close. They’d overtake Error. Imprison Kay. Lock Ari away for merely existing in their galaxy without their permission.

No way.

She stopped staring at the rearview and looked ahead—at the blue-and-white marbled planet. Ari throttled all the way, beyond the red zone, leaning into the burst of speed.

Grunting, Kay slammed into his seat. “What are you doing? We can’t outrun them!”

“We’re not going to outrun them. We’re going to hide.”

“Where?” he yelled. Ari pointed through the windshield, where the blue planet grew larger with swift brilliance. “Earth? Even if we survive landing, Mercer will kill us!”

“Mercer won’t follow. They can’t. It’s completely out of their jurisdiction. Earth is a protected nature preserve, predating Mercer’s existence.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it on the freakin’ observation deck!” Ari had to grit her teeth against the speed as their ship passed into the upper atmosphere and began reciting its own name.

“ERROR! ERROR!”

Kay hammered at the controls, yelling over the stilted voice of the ship’s mainframe. Ari tried to slow them down with every trick, but they were hurtling through the cloudy atmosphere of the retired planet, rattling from the strain on the ship’s joints. The view from the cockpit was all crystal-blue ocean and green, white-capped mountains.

Until they passed through a gray cloud, a digital smokescreen, and were suddenly looking at the rusted, burnt-out shell of a wasteland. The whole planet was a garbage heap forgotten about long ago—apart from the dark strips where the land had been cleared to the bedrock.

“What the…” Ari mouthed, just as Error moved on to a new warning complete with flaring lights.

“ILLEGAL TRESPASS! ILLEGAL TRESPASS!”

“Sweet girl, gimme a break!” Kay yelled. He pounded the silencer, but the red alarm lights continued to wash the cockpit with chilling incandescence. Ari tightened her chest restraint as the smog gave way to a jungle mass of crumbling cities.

Kay took the controls back. “If I hit the emergency parachute, they’ll know exactly where we land. If I don’t, we have a tiny chance.”

“Don’t hit it,” she said.

“We could die.”

Ari gripped her brother’s arm so tightly she wondered if their bones would fuse like melted plastic when the ship turned into a ball of flames. It made her feel better. There were worse ways to go than side-by-side with Kay.

He steered them toward a feral forest. The trees grew closer, and Kay managed to level out the ship, skipping across the canopy. Every single bash nailed Ari’s teeth together, and yet they were slowing—sort of—until Error nose-dived into a break in the trees, plummeted through branches, and slammed into the ground. The viewscreen was filled with smashed earth until the ship’s back end succumbed to gravity, falling with metal shrieks.

In the new quiet, Kay looked at Ari. “Hey, cheers. We’re alive!”

Ari couldn’t help herself. “They’re alive.”

“Who?”

“Our parents. I used some Mercer couple’s watch to look up their status. They’re alive, Kay. I don’t know where, but they’re still out there.”

Kay unstrapped, shaking his head while his face turned a red shade of punched. His gray hair flopped in his face and he had to pull it away with both hands to stare at her. Ari needed him to say something. Instead he closed his eyes. “Okay, I’m not mad.”

“Really? ’Cause you look mad.”

“That’s because I am mad. I told you not to do anything, so you leaped into Mercer’s files. Then you crashed us on the birth planet of all humanity, and you damn near killed us.”

“But you’re also… not mad?”

“Let me have two feelings right now.”

“No problem.”

“They’re both alive?” His eyes were still closed tight. “Are they together?”

“I don’t know.”

Kay’s painful sigh ached through Ari. He shouldn’t have to go through this. There had to be some way to make a stand against Mercer. To find their parents. To free them. To have hope.

“Thank the celestial gods.” Her brother turned his glare at her, his voice rising sharply. “But the next time you want to wave your renegade flag and yell ‘na-na-na-boo-boo,’ could you please wait until after I’ve picked up supplies? Even if Error is in good enough shape to get off this rock, where are we going to go? We don’t have food, Ari. Do you know what happens to people in the void without food? They eat each other.”