by Budgett, Jay
As we fell, Mila’s eyes finally flew open. A look of fear flashed in them before she promptly passed out again. Bertha rolled her eyes so loudly I could practically hear her muttering, Sissy.
We plummeted through the cloud cover and past the remaining Federal copters. We fell so quickly, we probably didn’t even hit their radar. I hoped.
But we weren’t so lucky. One of the Federal copters plunged downward, and two dots launched themselves from the metal body of it as it fell—pilots abandoning ship, coming after us. The chase was far from over, I realized. I tried to tell the others, but the words caught in my throat as the air rushed by—we were falling far too fast.
Phoenix and the others angled their bodies to steer us over open water. At last, Phoenix nodded and put a hand to his mouth—the signal he was about to cut the cord. We prepared ourselves to open our chutes. He sliced the cord several times with his laser pen, and we pushed ourselves apart in the sky.
The plan was for Phoenix to pull his chute first, as Mila’s weight would cause them both to drop faster, so they’d need the extra time. His aim was also best—he was the only one with a reasonable chance of landing where he wanted, and thus if he came down last, he could join up with those who had already landed.
He yanked his cord, flying back into the sky above us as his chute—created using a special cloth invented by Bertha to be invisible to the untrained eye—caught air. Dove went next, and then it was Bertha’s turn.
She yanked her cord.
And yanked her cord.
Her chute was dead.
She was still plummeting toward the water. I swam toward her in the sky, a drunken frog in the air. She wrapped her arms around my chest.
“Just pull the damn chute,” she muttered.
There’d be a time for gloating, I was sure.
I pulled my cord, and my neck jerked back. My shoulder screamed where it had been stabbed by Churchill’s hook, and whiplash knocked me forward.
We floated in a pocket of air caught by my parachute. Not falling, just floating. Held by the breeze’s warm floating hands.
Gunshots sounded overhead. A round whizzed down past my ear, and my parachute hissed—shot. My heart pounded with fear and my limbs tightened from shock. Bertha slipped out of my arms, and dropped toward the ocean like a rock.
Air pressed through the bullet holes in the parachute, driving its ruthless tendrils through and stretching the holes wide. In seconds, the chute’s fabric was completely torn to shreds.
I was free-falling now. Fast and hard.
Like our copter, like Bertha, like Club 49, I plunged from the sky.
Chapter 17
Miranda could still remember the night Hackner was elected to the council and appointed chancellor. She always remembered the appointment nights.
He’d been forty-five—the traditional age of one’s election to the Council. He would serve his five-year term, like the other council members, then receive his euthanization at its completion. There were no re-elections. The dead couldn’t run.
His had been a particularly boring election season, Miranda remembered. He’d won his island’s seat in a landslide victory by charming the hearts of the people of Newla, the city that carried most of HQ’s vote due to its massive population.
It’d come easily to him, too—he was a natural manipulator. The press sat like puppies in the palm of his hand, their pens scribbling, tails wagging, eager—always eager—to please. He was handsome, charming, persuasive, and—most importantly to Miranda—stupid.
It took the other council members two whole minutes of deliberation to select him, among themselves, as the next chancellor. It would’ve happened even faster, but Councilman Birch was struck by a coughing fit that lasted nearly a minute.
Of course, the deliberation was merely a formality. In the history of the Federation, there’d never been a single chancellor appointed from any island other than HQ. Sure, several fools had tried over the years, but the zealous bastards always disappeared or died mysteriously during the deliberation—and in the end, HQ’s councilman reigned supreme once again.
Miranda remembered watching Hackner enter the chancellor’s chambers for the first time, the night he’d been appointed. He’d dropped his boxes in the room’s center and plopped himself proudly on the chaise lounge like a fat boy who’d discovered a lolly.
This is it, he likely thought. This is my moment. I have arrived. I am the most powerful man in the world.
The fool.
Like every man before him, he’d had no idea that the chancellor was merely a puppet—a doll to be used for Miranda’s own entertainment. Though, in his defense, the rest of the council never learned of this.
It had taken Hackner longer than the others to notice the glass of champagne resting on the corner of his new desk. He lifted it in the air, sniffed, and swirled it before returning it to the mahogany without a sip.
Then he reached for the ConSynth’s cool, glowing glass and rubbed its side, the oils from his fingertips leaving a thick, filmy residue. Disgusting. It was, however, an improvement over the previous chancellor—that one had shaken the ConSynth like a snow globe.
She appeared to Hackner then, in the doorway, with a glass of champagne in her hand. Cheers, she said.
She wore a fitted red dress that wrapped her body like cellophane and had a wicked neckline that plunged far past her breasts. She had a feeling Hackner was a man of insatiable desires. The way he plopped himself on the lounge. The smug smile. The touch of his fingers on the ConSynth’s glass.
A man starved for power and control. He was about to lose both. All it took was a glass of champagne.
He grabbed his glass. How did you get in here?
She smiled coyly. The better question would be how you’re going to get me out. This dress is too tight—stifling. You look like a strong man. She winked. A man with power.
Power. The word danced on her tongue. One of the few lovers she’d ever known. She smiled and raised her glass again. To your continued success.
He nodded eagerly and slid the champagne down his throat.
Poison. A slow-acting variety, of course. Harmless at first, but the compounds contained within it multiplied over time in vicious fashion. Without an antidote, he’d be dead in a month. And only Miranda, with the help of her blind assistant, knew how to create the antidote. It had never been written down. There was no recipe in any book. Just the one she kept in her head. Even the blind girls didn’t know what they were mixing.
And so she maintained her power with each new chancellor.
They fell for it every time.
The mysterious woman in red. The plunging neckline. The not-so-subtle ego stroke she gave through her toast.
And thus, the men who craved power were, without exception, ruined by it. This was the way of things in the Federation, as had it been in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, even the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Power corrupted all.
But not Miranda. Perhaps—she often mused—because she’d been corrupt in the first place.
Miranda shook her head free of nostalgia. This was not the night of Hackner’s appointment. It was not night at all. It was the first of the month—the day Sage came to visit.
She ran her fingers along the desk’s mahogany edge. Her fingers never really touched the wood—seeing as they weren’t really there—but she liked to imagine they did. Her form was nothing more than a holographic projection of her own consciousness. But it was a damn good one.
A small hand rapped against the door to the chancellor’s chambers.
“Come in, Sage,” called Miranda.
The door cracked open and Sage slid in, pushing it shut behind her.
Miranda stepped toward her. “How are you, my darling?” she asked.
She was always careful around the girl. She needed to be close, but not too close. The girl wanted to hear her voice nearby—the general echo of the ConSynth disturbed her—but Miranda couldn’t get
too close, lest the girl reach out and try to touch her. Then the game would be up. Because Sage would realize she wasn’t really there—that she was only a projection.
The ConSynth couldn’t reproduce a body. It could only sustain a person’s consciousness, their mind, their soul, and even this small task required the machine to use energy from a very particular source.
Miranda called them “batteries.”
It sounded nicer that way. A silly euphemism. Less sinister for everyone involved. Made them forget the screams of the victims as they were strapped down, as the ConSynth’s cord was jabbed into their veins, as their eyes went blank.
It was a real shame the batteries only lasted a month. A pity the human body contained such a small amount of usable energy.
“I’m all right,” Sage said finally. Her eyes were blind, glazed over, but they still bore directly into Miranda.
Miranda hated when the girl stared. Like she knew what had happened to her. What Miranda had ordered done to her—the blindness, her mother’s death, all of that silly stuff. The girl had no way of knowing, of course. And she was too dim to make her own accusations.
Miranda smiled. “I’m so happy to hear that, sweetie.” The last word stuck to her tongue like an expired cough drop. She faked a yawn. “I’m quite tired, darling—you know where the materials are. Today, I’d like you to start with the beaker farthest to the right.”
Sage nodded and moved behind the desk. A lab table there had been set up with nine beakers. Hackner needed his monthly antidote for the poison, and Miranda was the only one who could give it to him. But she couldn’t touch anything, of course, so she used Sage to mix it. And since the girl couldn’t even see what she was doing, the antidote would remain known to only Miranda. And subsequently, she would remain forever safe and in power.
Miranda had to stifle a laugh at the thought. She, the most powerful leader in the world, needed the help of a blind girl. It was almost too rich.
She’d tried using sighted girls in the past, but it had repeatedly ended in disaster. One girl had revealed the antidote’s mixing formula to the man who was chancellor at the time. He’d threatened to pull the ConSynth’s plug and free himself from Miranda’s curse. Fortunately, Miranda had been able to have them both killed. But the incident had made her all the more cautious—paranoid.
Yes, it was better for everyone if her assistant was blind. The current system worked like oiled clockwork.
First, Miranda would have the chancellor lay out nine different ingredients in nine different beakers and vials, in nine different sequences. Then, he would leave, and the mixing girl—Sage, currently—would come in. Miranda would tell the girl the precise vials to pour into the precise beakers in the precise order. The ingredients and the compounds used to create the antidote were highly unstable. Failure to follow her instructions exactly resulted in the girl creating poison, rather than antidote.
And without his monthly antidote, the chancellor would die a slow, horrible death. It would begin as a cramp in his toes, then move to his calves, his hamstrings, thighs, on and on…
Eventually the cramp would make its way all the way up to his brain, and then it would hit his heart, which would relax, sending him into cardiac arrest. Then the cramps would begin again. His muscles would cramp without end before, finally, he died—not from physical injury, but from insanity that brought him to a fit of seizures.
Miranda knew the poison well—she’d designed it to work this way. If any chancellor attempted to create a new antidote, his muscles would cramp almost instantly from the toxic compounds’ double dosage. Miranda had learned that people who craved power didn’t like to die. She used this fact to her advantage.
Through this method—the poison and the antidote—Miranda had assured her own existence for the rest of time. She was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. So long as the ConSynth had a battery, she had a life. The chancellors would die, one after another, every five years—but not Miranda. Miranda was forever. A ghost. Not living, but certainly not dead. Every bit herself, every bit as powerful.
This was enough for her. The power was always enough.
Sage held up a beaker; she was done. She’d followed Miranda’s instructions. The solution was complete.
“Show it here, sweetie.” Miranda peered into the beaker and frowned. “That’s wrong. I’m sorry, darling, but that’s not right at all. The mixture is still blue.” She turned to the lab station. A vial of gold liquid sat unused in the corner. It wasn’t like Sage to make mistakes. Miranda clenched her jaw. “You forgot the third vial to the right,” she said. “I told you to pour it in after the vial farthest left.”
Sage immediately grabbed the vial and poured it into the mixture, which changed to a dark blue.
Miranda flared her nostrils. “You can’t just add it at the last second! Have I taught you nothing? The solution must be mixed in the proper order. What’s gotten into your head?”
Sage tucked her arms in close and started shaking. Miranda reminded herself to make sure the next one was less easily frightened.
Miranda smoothed her pants. It was important she maintained control—she must always have control. “It’s all right, sweetie,” she said. “You can come back tomorrow and mix a new one. The chancellor will survive another day without his antidote.”
At least Miranda hoped.
Chapter 18
The wind thundered in my ears as I plummeted toward the ocean below. Behind me, strips of parachute fluttered, only slightly slowing my descent.
In ten seconds, I’d hit the surface. I pointed my toes, clenched my stomach, and plugged my nose. Years of cliff jumping in Moku Lani had prepared me well.
My body hit the water with a sharp sting. It felt like shards of glass buried themselves into the arches of my feet and dug deep into my veins. My legs burned as I plunged farther into the ocean’s depths, slowed only by the tattered remains of my parachute.
I cracked open my eyes, and the salt water offered its customary burn. In the distance, I made out a blurred figure.
Bertha?
I tore off my parachute and swam toward the shadow. It spun gracefully in the water like a sparrow in the sky. It froze as I approached, widening its mouth and showing the teeth embedded in its jaws. Small and rounded, they were unlike the shark teeth I knew so well.
They belonged to a dolphin. A dolphin. The creature before me was an actual, living dolphin. I opened my mouth in a silent scream. Bubbles flew from the corners of my lips.
In school, we were taught that dolphins were extinct, like most other large marine mammals. Killed by the nuclear fallout that settled in the ocean, and by the radioactive beasts that had emerged as a result.
The dolphin before me was, in short, a real miracle.
My parents had told me stories about them as a kid. Sailors would fall overboard during ocean storms, and dolphins would appear out of nowhere to save them. The angels of the sea.
As the dolphin teetered in the water, I realized why it had appeared: to save my life. It was going to be my angel.
I kicked softly in the water. There was no need to worry anymore—the dolphin would swim me to the surface like it had done for the sailors in the tales I’d heard growing up. I would wrap my arms around its neck, and it would kick its flippers hard against the salt water, launching us to the surface. I imagined the look on Phoenix’s face when the dolphin leapt from the water, my arms wrapped around its neck.
I reached for the dolphin, my fingers tingling. Already feeling the mystical bond between us that would surely form when it carried me to the surface.
It gave me one look with its big blue eyes and hurried away.
It will come back, I told myself. The dolphins in the stories always came back.
Thirty seconds passed. It didn’t come back.
I swam toward the surface on my own. If I saw a mermaid, I’d keep swimming.
I sucked in a breath when I broke the surface. Two hundred feet away, a par
achute drifted down to the water—Dove or Phoenix, I guessed.
Where was Bertha? She had to be nearby. I hadn’t been shot down long after she’d slipped from my arms. She’d fallen fast—too fast to land safely, even with perfect form.
Something plastic floated past my arm—one of Bertha’s guns.
Where was she? Had she survived the impact? Had she drowned? Was she hurt? I didn’t see any blood in the water. I had to keep searching. I stuck my face back underwater and started to paddle.
My head slammed into the side of something hard. “Oww,” a voice moaned.
I lifted my head from the water. It was a body—Bertha. Her eyes were closed. I shook her hard. “Bertha!” I said. “Bertha! Can you hear me? Please, wake up!”
She coughed but kept her eyes shut. “I think I hit a dolphin.”
“You hit a dolphin?”
She pursed her lips. “Landed on it—BAM!” She started laughing.
She was delirious. She must’ve hit her head. Her impact with the water had likely been tremendous.
“I was flapping my arms,” she said, moving her elbows. She held a waterlogged gun in each hand. “And then finally my parachute flew out of my pack, slowing me briefly ’til good ol’ Wet Willy saved me.”
“Wet Willy?”
She stuck a hand on her head like a fin. “Wet Willy.”
“You mean Free Willy? Like the whale in that really old movie?”
She moistened a finger in her mouth and reached for my ear. “Wet Willy’s comin’ for ya.” She moved her arm and winced. “Oww,” she said, holding her elbow in one hand. “I think I broke it. Or maybe my whole body.”
She’d lost it. The impact had given her a concussion.
“Take me home,” she shouted. “TO NEW TEXAS, BABY!”
I grabbed her feet and pulled her in the direction of the fallen parachuter. We had to find the others. And soon, or the Feds would be on us.
Fifty feet away a green flare shot into the sky. Phoenix was sending us a signal. I swam hard in its direction, dragging Bertha behind me.