“Well, it doesn’t,” said Pru mulishly.
“Just try,” snapped a new voice. This one sounded nothing at all like Cat. Alex, Pru realized, stomach flipping. “For god’s sake, Pru,” he said, like he was one of their stupid prep school teachers, already disappointed before he even finished marking up one of Pru’s more half-assed final exams.
“It’s not that easy!” Pru massaged her temples, and tried to ignore the vaguely mortifying prick of tears behind her eyes. “I didn’t train for this like you did—”
“You have the imprint,” said Alex.
“Well, if you think you can do so much better, why don’t you come here and get in the cockpit yourself!” Pru’s mouth snapped shut. Silence in her earpiece.
“I would,” said Alex, without any particular vehemence, voice cold and calm. “But I don’t have the imprint.”
The accusation sat unspoken in the crackling wireless space between them. Pru squeezed her eyes shut, jaw tight. Resentment churned like a miserable hurricane in her belly. “All right, Robo Reptile, you heard him, move your damn tail.”
Too quickly, the ground exploded out from under her. With a shout, she tried to fling her arms out for balance, only to remember that they were wings now, wings slicing the howl of air as they fanned out before her. The world tilted, as Pru fought the mech for control of their melded bodies. “Slow down, slow down!”
Rebelwing was not interested in slowing down. Probably, she was mad that Pru had cursed her out so many times in the span of one hour, and was exacting her robot retribution.
“Pru!” Static in her ear. She couldn’t tell who’d yelled her name. Maybe Alex, maybe Cat. Probably both of them at once, wondering why they’d ever entrusted this gazillion-dollar tantrum lizard into the hands of a mopey teenage felon.
“Slow it down!” yelled Alex-slash-Cat in her earpiece, only it came out sounding more like “Slow,” a very noisy clatter, followed by a hiss, “it,” clatter clatter, long buzz, oh, listen to that, a lovely high-pitched microphone shriek, “DOWN!”
“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Pru yelled back, which was kind of an impressive feat, considering how she was pretty much spinning ass over heels through airspace. The yelling only seemed to encourage Rebelwing, who—with a rebellious, mechanical hum—hurtled even faster across the field. Sunlight screamed through the lenses of its eyes, straight into Pru’s.
“Slow down, slow down, slow down,” she babbled through rattling teeth, thinking the orders as hard as she possibly could at the beast. Faith. She needed to have faith in this alleged neural connection she shared with the giant metal monstrosity currently trying its cheerful best to kill her. Easy enough. Faith.
The dragon roared, and began plummeting toward earth.
“No, no, no!” Chrome tiles zoomed in on Pru’s eyeballs. All meditative thoughts of faith and oneness with machinery fled her brain. “Pull up, pull up, oh my god, pull up!”
Rebelwing flew faster.
The great silver field grew deadly against Pru’s sight line. If someone was speaking into the earpiece, Pru couldn’t tell. The voice had dissolved into an incomprehensible hum.
Pru shut her eyes. Her final, absurd thought was that it really was for nothing—meeting the Head Representative, getting Mama to sign off on the internship, all of it—since smashed-up corpses couldn’t get thrown out of school or attend university anyway.
The dragon slowed.
Pru cracked open one mistrustful eye. She wasn’t imagining it. Like that broken elevator in the Incorporated pachinko parlor weeks ago, the mech really was slowing her descent. At this rate, Pru would develop a crippling fear of heights before she got anywhere with the whole piloting thing.
With one final rattle of her gears, Rebelwing screeched to a halt just above the floor, then collapsed in a heap. Through the lenses of her eyes, Pru spotted the mech floating opposite them, a small, oblong transport aircraft. Leaning halfway out the mech’s popped top was Alex Lamarque, earpiece still in, one hand raised high and clutching a remote emergency break. Wind breaking over the tops of those great chrome walls peeled his dark hair back from an uncharacteristically chalk-pale face. He looked pissed.
Pru flexed her fingers first, then her toes. When she found that both sets of joints still worked, she unbuckled herself from the manual restraints inside the dragon’s cockpit. Grunting, she yanked on her arms until Rebelwing reluctantly freed her limbs from her metal body. Girl and dragon went from one to two. Pru ground one newly freed elbow against the top of the mech until one of the exits popped with a hiss. She pulled herself out of the opening, swearing under her breath as the metal edges caught along the pleats of her uniform skirt.
“What the hell was that?” yelled a voice in the distance, half drowned by the wind.
It took Pru three blinks to recognize Alex balanced astride the oblong mech opposite Rebelwing. Without the zoom-in features behind the dragon’s eyes, he cut a distant shape on the peripheries of Pru’s straining sight line. She gave her earpiece a good clap, flipping its mic function back on.
“—half-assed and suicidal!” Alex was yelling, his voice now magnified against Pru’s eardrum. “If you weren’t going to take this seriously, my uncle should have just let you get expelled from school and have done with it!”
“Yeah, I got it,” Pru said loudly over the wireless, to cover the panicked thump of her heart. It was jarring, hearing Alex so openly angry, fury turned hot and kinetic, instead of cool and taciturn. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way. Sorry to have taken you out of your way.”
“I wasn’t going to let you crash our best anti-wyvern weapon to your death.”
Pru’s nails pinched her palms. “Good! I’m glad my death didn’t inconvenience any of you!”
The figure in the distance made what looked like a suspiciously rude gesture. “You know that’s not what I meant!”
“Whatever.” Before Alex could retort, Pru yanked the earpiece from her head and tossed it back into the depths of the dragon’s cockpit. She could still hear him shouting faintly in the distance. Ignoring him, she turned and slid down the dragon’s back to the grass. She landed shaky-legged, heart still racing, took one unwieldy step, and nearly collided with a very bemused Jay Park.
Anabel’s cousin glanced at Pru as though appraising an expensive automated car that might have a defunct motor or two. “Well,” he said, crisp voweled, “that could have gone better, wouldn’t you say?” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Lucky thing I got to observe most of it from a distance, or it would have been two lives poor Alex would have to save this afternoon.”
Well, screw you too, Male Knockoff Version of Anabel, thought Pru. Aloud she mumbled, “Hell of an understatement,” and tried to shoulder her way past him.