Zenn
Next to me, Vi flew silently, her left hand held out to her side as if she was letting her fingers trail along a wall. In essence, she was. Vi can feel tech and the barrier created a wall she could “see” with her hands. She’d been careful not to make contact as she guided us.
In front of her, Jag rode his hoverboard as expertly as ever. Whatever had happened to him during his eight-month disappearance hadn’t affected his flying ability.
Part of me admired that; another part wished he’d come back more broken. He remained as mysterious as ever, keeping people out and fortifying his barricades.
We’d been soaring over open water for fifteen minutes. Gunn rode in tight next to Saffediene, his face pinched with worry. I couldn’t decide if it was because of the thirty-foot drop, the mission, or the fact that Raine was in danger.
But hey, she knew the risks of running missions with the Resistance. He did too.
I switched my thoughts to the insane half plan we’d concocted. Our mission: Fly to Rise One, bust in, take Thane and Raine, and hightail it back to the ocean.
Not stellar. Especially considering the length of the flight, and the fact that just because the sky had settled into ashy evening didn’t mean there wouldn’t be EOs out in abundance.
“Here,” Vi said, her voice whipping away with the wind. “Jag! The tech is gone.”
I slowed my board to a stop, as did everyone else. All eyes rested on Vi.
Jag inhaled, exhaled, before launching the rock he’d brought with him. Gunner cringed, expecting it to hit the techtric barrier and spark into jets of light.
Instead, the rock arced through the air, landing in the water a good thirty feet away.
Jag urged his board forward, almost at a crawl. He didn’t fry to a crisp, much to my partial disappointment. The other half of me felt nothing but relief, especially when Vi glared at me with knowledge in her eyes.
“What?” I asked, though I knew exactly what.
We began the twenty-minute flight back to land, now with Vi’s right hand fondling the techtricity from the barrier. I watched the half-smile form on her face, and it scared me. I didn’t know what Jag had said to her, but that smile—that was Vi’s way of sticking it to him.
I’d seen her direct it at her mother enough to know.
She caught me looking at her. “What?” she asked.
I shook my head even as I heard her think, You can’t put me in the middle of the pack, Mr. Leader-of-the-cracking-Resistance.
I wanted to fly closer and hug her. Tell her I’d never force her to do anything she didn’t want to. Prove to her that everything I’d done was for her and only her. Instead, I turned my face toward Freedom and quelled the roiling in my gut.
Freedom suffocated me, stealing the oxygen in the air and turning it into cement. The city lay still, as if holding its breath—as if it knew we were coming.
“Enforcement Officers,” Saffediene said, pointing toward the Rises. Sure enough, the ultra-white light of tech haloed the Officers as they swarmed through the streets.
More than fifty, maybe more than one hundred, all heading straight for us as we lapped over the last of the waves and flew above the sandy beach below.
“This is bad,” I said to no one in particular.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Jag called. “Find a spot to hide. Reconvene on the roof of Rise Twelve, midnight.”
