Trey squeezes me tighter. “See? Trouble.” He smiles. “You’re the navigator for my next thrill . . . and every thrill after that.”
CHAPTER 13
WORLD TURNS TO STONE
Only the wind whispers as we move along dry riverbeds and over lush fields that go on for miles in every direction. As we come to a small knoll, I chance a glance back at the Isle of Skye behind us. The horizon is on fire. Smoke rises into the air as if the city is the chimney stack of Ethar. Soft thumps sound in the distance. Whatever is happening back there is horrific. I look to the faces of the Cavars with me. None of them looks back.
Not too long after we leave, an Alameeda ship approaches us. Hearing the rotorless engine makes me dig my nails into my thighs. My legs tense on the spix’s flanks, causing it to dance sideways. Trey has to work hard to control it with the reins. “Relax, Kricket,” Trey whispers in my ear, “they can’t see us.”
I think he forgot for a second that I know when he’s lying. As soon as he notices my stark-white face, he amends, “They can see us, but they won’t. They’re using infrared. The blanket hides us from them because they can’t see our heat signature; they can only see the heat of what looks like riderless spixes. Since they’re not looking for spixes, they’re looking for other modes of transport. We’re invisible to them. Trust me.”
I relax my legs enough to make the spix less anxious. The other Cavars have let their reins go slack on their spixes, allowing them to wander haphazardly, giving them a staggered, unpurposeful gait. When the ship doesn’t notice us and slips away over the horizon, I sag back against Trey.
But, a few minutes later, humming vibrates the ground. Trey whistles softly, waving his hand toward a small copse of trees. We just make it to them when twenty or more low-flying E-Ones move in formation over the horizon line. They’re spread out at the same velocity so that they’re aligned for miles. What’s most disturbing is that they’re so low they resemble crop dusters working the fields.
I stare up at the canopy of leaves above my head, grateful that the trees haven’t shed them yet. For some reason, I find myself holding my breath. It’s silly, I know that, but I do it nonetheless. I don’t look at the E-Ones as they grow ever closer; it’s as if they’ll know that I’m here if I do. With the camouflage blanket draped over our heads, Trey pulls it tighter to me so that our eyes hardly show.
The black sinkhole in my stomach eases a bit as the rotorless heli-vehicles move away, but the goose bumps covering my body don’t recede. Even when the E-Ones disappear over the far hill, no one and nothing moves for several minutes, least of all, my goose bumps.
Trey begins to guide the spix out from the safety of the trees. I put out my hand, covering his on the reins. “Wait!” I plead. Wiggling out from under the blanket, I try to gulp in deep breaths of air, but it’s no good, I’m going to be sick. Swinging my leg over the side of our spix, I jump down from its back. Falling to my knees, I get up and stagger a few steps to the trunk of a tree where I lean my hand against it and vomit again and again.
We’re never going to make it, I think, retching violently. Kyon is going to find us and he’s going to kill Trey and make me watch. I’m not panicking now. This isn’t panic; this is different. This is me finally grasping the reality of what’s happening. When you have nothing to lose, failing doesn’t come with the same kind of consequences. Now I have Trey. Failure in this means his death. I can’t fail.
I think it’s the soldier in Trey who knows better than to crowd me. He allows me a little space. Dismounting from Honey Badger, he doesn’t rush over to hold my hair back for me. I prefer that. His attention is unwanted at this moment.
When there’s nothing left in my stomach, I finally stop retching. I straighten up, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. I glance over my shoulder; Trey is facing away from me with his back leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree. Jax is next to me, handing me a canteen of water. I take it, pouring some in my mouth. I swish it around, and then spit it out. I hand it back to Jax, and he gives me a mintlike leaf that they use to refortify enamel. I take it and put it in my mouth.
Wayra has been leaning against the trunk of the tree adjacent to mine. He pushes off it, saying, “Finally. I was starting to think you were some kind of heartless android.”
“Huh?” I ask.
“You finally did something normal,” Wayra replies.
I laugh humorlessly. “Puking my guts out is normal?”
He nods stoically. “It is. Some soldiers do it before their first battle. But the courageous ones don’t.”
“Are you calling me a coward?” I ask him in confusion.
He frowns. “Is this your first fight?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Wayra agrees, “No, it’s not. It’s only the soldiers with courage that puke later on—the ones who’ve been through something brutal, like being captured and tortured. They know what it means to be recaptured. It’s not the same as not knowing, is it?”
I shake my head no again.
“No, it’s not. But they go on anyway. They find a way to thwart the enemy. I puked my guts out before a battle; I had just returned to active duty after being shredded by a sanctum amp. I knew what it meant to be wounded. I wasn’t looking to repeat it.”
“What did you do to get over the fear?”
“I lived through it,” he says. “I got good at what I do. I made sure that I was the best at my job. You’re a time-traveling polar vortex, Kricket. You can make the future the shape of heartache for those knob knockers if you want to. Do you want to?”
I nod.
He scowls. “Was that a yes?” he barks out militantly.
“Yes!”
“Well, all right then! Puke and rally!” He raises his index finger and moves it in a circle in the air. “Let’s go kill something.” He turns and strides away, back to his spix. Jax follows him, shaking his head. The Cavars remount their spixes once more. Trey waits for me to join him.
“How hard was it not to hover right then?” I ask him, as he leads me back to our spix.
“You have no idea,” he replies. He lifts me up onto our spix before climbing on it to sit behind me. After the blanket covers me once more, Trey pulls me against his chest. He kisses my temple. “This is going to be a long night, but it will end. I’ll keep you safe.”
He believes that.
The night is filled with near misses and hard riding. After many long hours, I forget to be scared, because my body aches too much to worry about something that might happen. Being on a spix like this is its own special torture. I find myself praying for dawn just so we can stop. A few hours before the sun rises, we come to a wooded area. Entering between the trees, the Cavars find a decent tree-shrouded clearing in which to halt the spixes.