Breaking Sky(13)

Despite her exhaustion, Chase spent the night after her encounter with Phoenix trudging in and out of sleep. Blasted by explosions, the black sky of her dreams lit up with gunfire.

In the morning, she struggled free from her reoccurring nightmare. It felt like belly crawling beneath barbed wire, which was in fact what she’d done all those years ago. The back of her right arm stung, and she kneaded the scar tissue with her fingers. Chase had long since given up hope that it would someday cease to feel like a wound.

She hopped down from her bunk and stretched. On her way to class, she took the hallway corner too fast and smacked into Dr. Ritz, the academy’s pocket-sized psychiatrist.

The woman grabbed Chase by both arms to steady herself. “Chase Harcourt. Just the person I was hoping to run into. Although, not literally. You could have knocked me down.”

“I’ll try harder next time.”

Dr. Ritz narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean you’ll try harder to knock me down next time or harder not to, Chase Harcourt?”

Chase maneuvered around the psychiatrist. The woman’s braided bun on top of her head was nearly as large as her head itself. “Why do you always use my whole name? It isn’t natural. You don’t see me yelling out, ‘Hey, Eugenia Ritz Crackers’ every five seconds.”

“I’ve asked you repeatedly not to call me ‘Crackers.’”

“Force of habit.” Chase popped her knuckles while Ritz adjusted her glasses.

A good, old-fashioned standoff.

Freshman year, Chase had been duped into thinking that Ritz cared. She’d opened up about Janice and her solitary childhood—until the psychiatrist started to report that Chase was “emotionally unstable.” There were talks about putting Nyx on the Down List, and Chase vowed not to give the woman another ounce of truth. Which pretty much meant she’d been dodging Crackers ever since.

“Well, Chase…” Ritz looked pained in having to use half her name. “You’re ignoring my summons, so I’ll have to tell you right here. I’ve been asked to speak to you by Brigadier General Kale. He believes you are seeing imaginary jets in the sky.”

Chase, who had been trying to sneak away, stopped. It was a full-bodied brake that she felt in her chest like her harness had been pulled too tight. “Kale did not say that.”

He wouldn’t. She had flown side by side with Phoenix. Kale could command her not to talk about what she saw, but he could not expect her to pretend it didn’t exist.

To say that she had imagined it…

Chase was frozen from her eyes to her knees, and she was sure the shock showed on her face. She trusted Kale. He trusted her. Would he really sell her out like that? Was Chase about to get kicked off the Streaker project? The blood rushed to her face in a way that brought way too much breathing and a sudden headache.

Before Ritz could pipe back in, the bell rang and the hallway swarmed with cadets. “If the pressures of this arrangement are getting to you, Chase Harcourt,” Ritz yelled over the crowd, “there are options that—”

“Option this.” Chase turned her back. She blended into the uniformed crowd, a sudden firestorm in her veins. There was a jet up there. A friendly that was as fast as Dragon. Maybe faster. “And when I catch it,” she muttered to herself, “I’ll drop it off in Crackers’s office.”





7


    MAYDAY


   Dear God, Help Me


Chase sat in Dragon’s cockpit. She shoved her leather gloves between each finger and spun with thoughts. It should have gotten better. It all should have been cleared up by now, but it wasn’t. She’d skipped her classes and gone after Kale, and what had he done?

Walked off into a cadet-restricted section of the base, calling out “Things happen the way they need to happen.”

Well, Chase couldn’t let things happen in a way that would drag her down. Pippin had brought up Crowley’s story as a warning to keep her mouth shut. Crowley had “imagined” spotting red drones over Florida, so they took his wings. He washed out. But Chase had made out with that boy a few times—enough encounters to know he wasn’t creative enough to fabricate such a sighting. He’d seen something, and the Air Force had sold him out. That would not happen to her. She wouldn’t say a word—she would show them. Somehow.

Pippin dropped into his seat behind Chase and fastened in. “Where’ve you been?”

“Thinking.” Chase closed Dragon’s canopy.

“Sounds ominous.”

Pegasus left the hangar slowly, and Dragon was stuck behind her, rolling toward the runway a foot at a time.

Chase muttered a few choice curses. “God, Sylph makes flying look like a job.”

“Hey there, Bad Mood,” Pippin said with slight care. “Want to vent a little before you launch us into the death grip of the sky?”

The shortwave radio popped, and Chase opened the channel. “Get in the air, Sylph!”

Sylph’s voice jabbed through. “Better stay with me, Nyx. I hear you’ve been seeing things.”

Chase snapped. “Yeah, well, how are we ever going to get up there if you take five years to get to the runway?” She punched the radio link off. “How does she know?”


“Small community. Big gossip. And to think the boys’ locker room isn’t such a discreet place…” Pippin sighed. “We could park Dragon in Riot’s mouth if he held it still long enough.”