Audacious

Chapter 6: Plan

I keep on trying to process everything that is happening in my mind. It is a lot harder than I thought. I feel like my brain is spinning out of control and my body is so hot it feels like one million suns burning away every last part of me. I run my sweaty palms together and breathe a lot louder than I expected. My body can't decide whether or not it is going to freeze in its tracks and just have really awkward, weird, uncomfortable chills, or shake and sweat like it's in a sauna. Finally, it decides neither.
I stand up (quite more smoothly than I thought was possible for my scrawny body) and grab Lance by the collar of his leather jacket.
"No," I say, as I stare, seriously but scarily into his concerned eyes.
"Excuse me?" he answers, still looking extremely worried about whether or not I've eaten some bad cuisine that was placed as a welcoming gift on the tables in the Fortitude room.
"I don't know about you, but I am certainly not going down without a fight. So if you would like to accompany me, I suggest you stop thinking and start doing," I answer in a firm tone. I soon remember that he is the person who helps decide my fate as life or death and I briskly let go of his collar. As I reposition myself in a presentable fashion, his concern has seemed to obviously disappear and then reappear but with a lot less concern and a whole load more of impressiveness. I smile, hopefully invitingly, as I listen to his low voiced answer.
"My goodness, your etiquette needs some work but I definitely see Fortitude potential. Although, I have brought myself to agreeing with your strong words, I must question how you suppose we are going to 'fight' back, as in we are a very difficult situation."
Oh. Yes. I must've forgotten the very crucial part in which there must be a successful plan involved in this war, if we are in anyway wishing to receive a victory. This is a battle. The competition is strong, but we are stronger. Sector 3 might have the agility. Sector 1 might have knowledge. Sector 7 might have the utility. But Sector 5, well Sector 5 has the most important skill of all. The power to fight back. With some training, everyone in this beaten up jet could easily do anything they wanted. Fortitudes were born to cope with pain challenges. But we don't have time for training. All we have is now.
I see a small boy sitting in a corner, whimpering a bit, and in his pocket, is one of those "all in one" pocket knive things. I grab it from his pocket and open to an oddly shaped metal figure that is quite large and looks like a slightly smaller version of a pick. I sprint back into Arianna's "office" and grab the pile of rope in my left hand, still holding the weird pocket knife in my right. When I reach the latch door on the jet, I swing it open and air gushes through the entire jet, disorienting my hair. I jam the abnormal pic into a lifted piece of metal near the opening of the door. I tie the rope onto the head of the pic and throw the other half down, off the jet.
"Jump," I say to Lance.
"Excuse me?" He says, confused.
"You heard me. I said jump. Grab onto the rope and slide down. When you reach the bottom, wait where you are for everyone else to reach you, unless you land in water. In that case, swim to nearest land and wait there."
He stands there, clueless, and I grab his collar once again and hold him above the doorway, air gushing towards his back. "Jump."
"Yes ma'am," he shakily says and hops off the dying jet.
"Who's next?" Everyone backs away. "Do you want to die with the thought that if you actually tried you could've lived? Now someone man up and jump for crying out loud or I'll do the same to you as I did to Lance." Lacey steps forward.
"Let's just get this over with," she mutters and hops off the jet.
"Finally someone who's worthy of being in Fortitude." As I finish that statement, about twenty people step forward. "Okay. Go on then," I say to a slender, short girl in a green tight shirt, showing her ribs. Her eyes widen and she nervously steps forward. When she reaches the opening, she throws up her arms and leaps out of the jet, roaring in laughter. "Okay then," I mutter. "Who's next?"
People now fight each other to jump off the jet. When everyone but me has jumped off the crashing jet, I walk to the edge and stare down at the zipping world beneath me. As my legs grew numb and fall forward, air surges into my discombobulated face and I remember a fourth of the way down that I need to grab the rope in order to live.
I look to my left and see a long, rough rope, zooming down past me. Becoming shorter, and shorter as my body falls, loosely. I reach my tiny hand out towards the rope, about five inches away from me. My arm stretches to its limits, and my cold fingers tightly grasp the harsh rope. My hands slide down, fingers burning more and more as I pull my body tightly onto the swinging cord that is still dangling from a dead jet - which is also falling. I reluctantly look down and see the deceased, yellow grass becoming closer and closer to my rushing body. My feet fly down ten more feet and finally land. When my feet smash onto the hard cold hard ground, my nerves go crazy and I feel dead everywhere. I push through it and look around at the exhausted kids all around me. "Well there you go," I mutter. "I can cross that off my bucket list." I laugh a little and try to raise my strained voice so that everyone can hear. "Did everyone make it down okay?" Before anyone can say yes or no, Lance cuts me off.
"What does it matter?"
"Pardon me, Lance?" I ask him, aggravated that I need get in an argument with him after we both were recently ejected out of a flying vehicle.
"We don't know where we are, and we have no way of getting to a place we do know. There's no water near here from what I can see, and none of us are eligible to hunt." He answers. He says this with his knees bent, hands on top of them, head bowed, and as he finishes his statement, he slowly raises his head, revealing a large slice down his face, starting at the top of his left eyebrow, continuing down to his the corner of his mouth.
"Lance?...What...what uh happened...to your face?" My eyebrows curve inward, worried.
He lifts his hand to the cut and grimaces as his dirty fingers meet the crimson blood sliding down his head. "Oh, yeah that. On my way down, a bird and I had a slight collision..." Everyone snickers and I shoot them a dirty look.
"Inappropriate. Seriously." I say, walking over to Arianna. I hold my hand out and she hands me her brown satchel. "Thank you."
I reach inside and grab what looks like aloe gel and a weird textured band aid. It felt almost like the fur of a dog or cat, but much shorter. I pour water onto my dirt covered fingers out of Arianna's thermos.
"No!" Lance exclaims. "You're wasting valuable water!"
"Lance would you rather have an infection or lose a little bit of water." I say, rhetorically.
"I-," Lance starts.
"You don't have a choice." I stick my middle and index finger into the aloe-looking-gel and gently rub it onto Lances wound. He grits his teeth and closes his hard as tight as possible. After applying that, I peel and stick the bandage over his gash. "There." I step away.
He looks up at me, and instead of granting a simple 'thank you', the words, "Now what?" spill out of his mouth. I roll my eyes and start walking. "Where do you think you're going?" He says, starting to slowly jog after me.
"Anywhere." I answer, irritated.
"What? Do you even know where we are? If you walk in the wrong direction it could so much as cost you your life, you know."
"Yes. Yes, Lance," I say turning around to face his confused expression across his face. "I do know that. But I also know that if I spend one more minute with you, that could cost me my life as well."
"What? All I did was ask a quest-," he starts.
"That's it! That's all you did. No 'Thank you, Kiera', no 'Kiera, you're brilliant'. You don't appreciate anything that I just did for you Lance. You are ungrateful and I'm leaving. Lead your own Sector and I'll just be stranded."
"I...I'm sorry...", he says, bowing his head once again.
"What? I didn't hear that?" I say holding my hand to my ear, playfully.
"I said I'm sorry okay! I didn't realize how much that meant to someone from Sector 10. I really do care about everything you've done for us," he answers, raising his head. His big eyes catch me again and then I fall, all over again.
"Really, Lance?" I ask, pulling the corner of my mouth up slightly, grinning.
"No," he says laughing, dimples going crazy. "Anyone could do what you just did Kiera,"
"Then how come no one else did?" I say turning and walking away one more, final time.
"You see that's the thing. Because you, Kiera, you are audacious."