Breaking Sky(60)

“Leave,” Chase said, rubbing her smarting face. “I have to think.”

Sylph and Riot left, and Chase sat on Pippin’s bed. Sylph was right. There was no way they could survive the trials if they couldn’t be in the same room, let alone the same cockpit. She picked up the piece of paper and smoothed it out. It was the picture of Pippin’s mother.

“Mirrored souls,” she muttered. She remembered the spiderweb smash across the glass in the boys’ locker room after Riot took his fist to it. The shards crunching on the tile underfoot, glittery and knifelike…

Chase collapsed on the bed. If they were mirrored souls, one of them was broken. But which one? Or were they a complementing pair of cracks?

Maybe they always had been.

? ? ?

Chase didn’t last long on her own. Her thoughts ran heavy and sluggish, and she soon found herself racing for the rec room, hoping to run into Tristan. Pippin’s crush be damned; she needed to talk with the one person at the Star who wasn’t currently driving her mad.

A Ping-Pong tournament was the main event. Cadets surrounded the game, hollering at the two fairly advanced players. Chase envied their laid-back enjoyment. They had no idea that over the next few days the whole Star was going to be secretly overrun with officers and government officials.

She found Tristan on the far side of the room, flying the jet simulator game. Wonder of all, he was alone.

The flight simulator consoles were wedged into the darkest corner of the rec room, complete with oversized pilot chairs and a massive view screen. Chase stood behind him, enjoying the zip of his flying. It made little sense, but just being near him made this whole crazed situation a little straighter in her thoughts.

“I can feel you watching me,” he said after a minute.

She sat in the adjacent chair and picked up a controller. She talked fast and messy. “So. Giving Sylph a taste of what she deals out? That’s gutsy. She won’t put up with it for long. This is her academy.”


Chase logged on to the simulator to avoid the sudden awkwardness, and her fake jet dipped through a ruined city. She steered toward the coastline, firing a missile at a large dock. It plopped into the ocean, and she swore. “Would you please show me why I can’t figure this out?”

“You’re flying too fast to aim straight on,” Tristan said. She dropped a second line of missiles, all of them creating rings along the computer-generated ocean. “Unless of course you’re aiming for submarines.” He reached for her controller, and she could feel his attention like heat coming off an engine.

“I’m figuring it out,” she said coolly, pulling her hands farther away.

“Let me help you.”

“Are you supposed to?” She locked her eyes on the screen and flew her fake jet even farther over the ocean. “Aren’t we supposed to be opponents?”

“A little bird told me that we’ll have new offenses to face during the trials.”

“Is that bird white-haired and lab-coated?”

“She is.” He touched Chase’s arm and she crashed. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” The tenseness of his voice directed her toward his meaning.

“The drone?” she asked. He nodded. “I’m fine. We’re all fine.” She ground her teeth on the word, trying not to remember Pippin’s cruel snap.

A glimmer of his anger from earlier returned. “Sylph should have lost her wings.”

“If that were true, then you should have lost your wings for leading me back to JAFA all those weeks ago. And I should have lost my wings about sixty times.” She stared at the spot where his hand held her elbow and remembered the way their jets had glided across each other when they passed too close. Her skin tingled, and she wanted his palm against hers, fingers laced, in a uniquely brilliant way.

It made her heart rev like an engine…and then wonder what she was doing. Was she getting back at Pippin by getting close to his crush? No. In fact, however much she wanted to give her RIO a taste of her fist right now, she did not want to sweep in and steal his crush.

Tristan returned to his controller, firing a string of missiles to take out a structure similar to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“See, that! How did you do that?” she asked.

“Here.” He moved to the edge of his seat. She slid next to him, her hip and leg against his while the light from the simulator danced over his eyes. He handed Chase his controller and pointed to a trio of battleships. “Swing back around and try to hit the middle one.”

Chase did, and he folded his hand over hers on the controls. “You have to aim before you get there. The missile has a trajectory like a jet.” Tristan’s finger twitched over hers, and she fired, hitting the middle ship. It tipped and burned, sinking fast. “There you go.”

She swung the jet back around and shot at the first battleship. It hit straight on, and Chase couldn’t help letting out a whoop. The fake boat split and sank like the Titanic, butt up. When she turned, she found Tristan too close.

He bumped her leg with his. “We work well together.” His smile held a fair amount of swagger, like he loved how much tension bounced between them. She eyed his lips. All she could think about was that kiss, and she couldn’t help wondering if he was thinking about it too.

“Should we talk about what happened in the infirmary?” Apparently, he was.