SAFE . . . reyna ramirez-arellano

13 - zoomin'

BRIAR TUMBLED IN the sky. Far below she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.

Her body shot down, down, down, and she saw Leo briefly reach for the clouds in the sky. That should've been her priority, to touch the clouds, but it was too late for that now.

She instinctively extended her arms and legs, looking like a bird as she plummeted down. This severely reminded her of just yesterday when she'd fallen into the lake at camp, and down the Grand Canyon. Man, she had a serious track record for falling.

"I'm a bird!" Briar grinned. "Wee!"

Thump! Someone — or someones — collided with her.

"Ow, that fucking hurt!" Briar yelled. "I was a bird! And now I'm a dead bird!"

"Shut up!" Jason said to her. "You're not dead yet!"

"Oh, fuckin' wonderful," she muttered.

Then, she heard an explosion below them. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and she heard Leo sob, "Festus!"

Jason's face reddened with strain as he tried to maintain an air cushion beneath them, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage. Rather than free-falling, it felt like they were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time, which wasn't doing Briar's stomach any favors.

As they wobbled and zigzagged, she could make out details of the factory complex below — warehouses, smokestacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lined with snow-covered vehicles. They were still high enough so that hitting the ground would flatten them into roadkill — or skykill — when Jason groaned, "I can't—"

And they dropped like stones.

They hit the roof of the largest warehouse and crashed through into darkness.

Briar tried to roll but was too late, mostly because she was thinking about birds. Her feet didn't like that. Pain flared in her left ankle as she crumpled against a cold metal surface.

For a few seconds she wasn't conscious of anything but pain — pain so bad that her ears rang and her vision went red.

Then she heard Jason's voice somewhere below, echoing through the building. "Briar! Where's Briar?"

"Ow, Jas!" Leo groaned. "That's my back! I'm not a sofa! Briar, where'd you go?"

"That's what you get for fucking crashing into me in the fucking air!" Briar called, then she let out a whimper of pain. "Fucking hell."

She heard shuffling and grunting, then feet pounding on metal steps.

Her vision began to clear. She was on a metal catwalk that ringed the warehouse interior. Leo and Jason had landed on ground level, and were now coming up the stairs toward her. She looked at her foot, and wave of nausea swept over her. Her toes weren't supposed to point that way, were they?

Oh, god. She forced herself to look away before she threw up. Focus on something else. Anything else.

The hole they'd made in the roof was a ragged starburst twenty feet above. How they'd even survived that drop, she had no idea. Hanging from the ceiling, a few electric bulbs flickered dimly, but they didn't do much to light the enormous space. Next to Briar, the corrugated metal wall was emblazoned with a company logo, but it was almost completely spray-painted over with graffiti. Down in the shadowy warehouse, she could make out huge machines, robotic arms, half-finished trucks on an assembly line. The place looked like it had been abandoned for years.