Incognito

Chapter 4

"This feels so wrong."

"Why? It's not like they'll care. They're frozen."

"Still, what if they wake up?"

Kim laughs and grabs my hand to help me over the barbed wire fence surrounding the old Panamerican airbase, which has long since been occupied by the E.A. Air Corps. "Right. If it hasn't happened yet, after all this time, I don't think it's going to happen now."

Even so, I crouch down out of instinct and follow Kim across the tarmac, past the groups of mechanics and airfield managers gathered together in clumps around the fighter aircraft organized neatly into several long rows.

"What are we doing here?" I ask nervously. I don't know why I'm so anxious; I was at the barracks not too long ago, and I wasn't bothered then. Maybe it's because back then I was at a point where I didn't really care about living or dying. Ever since meeting Kim, though...I guess things have changed.

"Jeez, you ask a lot of questions. You'll see!"

I chuckle nervously and look out across the airfield, as if expecting someone to notice us at any moment. No one does, as far as I know.

Soon, we reach one of the dozens of hangars spread out across the airfield, and Kim leads us through a side entrance, maneuvering us through the facility as if she's been here a thousand times before. We end up near the back of the hangar at a set of lockers along the wall, and she proceeds to open one of them like it was her own. After pulling out a flight suit and a helmet, she continues to rummage around the other lockers until she finds a suit in my size, which she tosses in my direction and instructs me to put on.

"What, are we doing some sort of role play?"

"Just put the damn thing on," she chides with a grin.

Once the two of us are dressed, Kim tosses me a helmet like the one she has on, then leads us out of the hangar and over to one of the fighter jets nearby. It's a magnificent piece of machinery, with sleek, silver sides and a pair of hypersonic engines, both of which are almost entirely hidden by the gracefully angled edges of the wings. There are four bays along its underbelly, each with the potential to carry dozens of missiles or a wide variety of miniature anti-personnel, anti-aircraft, and anti-armor drones. The Europeans may be a savage crew, but they certainly have an eye for quality engineering, a trait that has propelled them to conquer nearly half the world.

Kim pulls over a moveable ladder and hops lightly up the rungs two at a time, gesturing for me to follow her. I fight the instinct to question her again and instead follow her instructions, lifting myself carefully up the ramp into the two-seated cockpit. She takes the pilot's position, while I move myself over to the Drone System Operator's seat in the back.

"Alright, it's a bit of a kick at first, but just make sure to clench your thighs and butt when you feel the G's, okay?"

"You mean we're actually going up in this thing?" I ask incredulously as she ignites the main engine. It whines, increasing in volume and pitch until she lowers the canopy above us, effectively blocking out the sound.

"Mmhmm!"

I can hear the grin in her tone.

"You know how to fly?"

"Sure do!"

She can't be serious, can she? This must all be some sort of joke. There's no way she knows how to fly—a European jet, no less—not at her age. I feel like at any moment she'll open up the canopy, say "Just kidding!" and then tell me what we're really doing. But then we jerk forward, and my hands rush to grab ahold of the headrest in front of me as we pull away from the other aircraft lined up beside us, taxiing toward the runway. My fear of pretty much everything has been blown to bits this past week after numerous failed attempts to jump off buildings, leap into fire, drive off cliffs, you know. If anything in this strange reality could kill me, though, a fiery crash at thousand miles per hour would definitely do it. Also, I've never been all that fond of flying anyways.