Zee felt a clutch of fear. Taking off from a cliff was one thing. Jumping out of a plane seemed like something else completely.
“Zee’s never done high altitude before,” David said.
“What’s the difference?” Paul asked. “It’s just as safe.”
“Zee and I will go from the cliffs and meet up with you guys later,” David said loyally, but Zee knew he’d rather be on the plane with everyone else. Suddenly, she realized they were all looking at her.
“Actually, I’m fine with it,” she said.
David looked skeptical. “Really?”
“If it’s as safe as Paul says it is. Really. It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”
But her stomach churned all the way to the airport and kept churning as they boarded the plane Paul had chartered. She tried to tell herself the bad feeling she had was nerves and an overactive imagination, but every time she closed her eyes, she felt like she was already in free-fall.
In the end, it was what she feared most that made her calm—the altitude itself. They swooped over Adelaide and continued west until they were halfway along the coastline of the curving open bay of the Great Australian Bight. Looking down over the massive cliffs and the sweep of sapphire blue ocean filled her with a certain kind of faith in the world’s strength and her right to be part of it.
“See that?” Paul said, pointing down toward a vast patch of green. “That’s the South Australia Eagling Association’s landing pasture. Your chutes have all been set to land there. We’ll get dropped off over the water, then glide in. All you have to do is enjoy the ride.”
Jake and Rowan jumped first, then it was David’s turn, then Zee’s. Zee watched as David dropped through the high clear sky, and smiled when his chute opened and his wings unfurled.
“Your turn,” Paul shouted over the rush of wind.
She found herself gripping the door strap, afraid again.
“What’s wrong?” Mia asked. “Second thoughts?”
Even through her fear, Zee could hear the scornful tone in Mia’s voice.
“She can’t be afraid,” Paul said, glancing at Mia. “Not if she wants to be part of this family.”
Right, Zee thought. Paul was right, even if he’d only said it to annoy her. She wasn’t going to let David down. She lifted her chin and raised her voice above the rushing air.
“See you on the ground.”
Then she let go of the strap and was falling, falling so fast and so far she thought the wingchute would never open. But just as she was beginning to panic, there it was, the comforting jerk and upward tug, and the wings unfurled above her. The wind had blown her so far that she was almost directly above David. Remembering what he’d said about the dangers of tangling, she resisted the temptation to make the slight movement of her arms that would send her surging forward. She’d let David get farther away before she started flying.
She was so high up she could see the depth of the ocean in its bands of color, pale pastel near the shore where the waves broke, deepening areas of turquoise beyond, and finally aquamarine and indigo, with a final stroke of violet at the horizon. And gliding was lovely. The warm air currents buoyed her up, making her feel almost as if she was floating in a pool.
Zee heard a snap, then a ripping sound, and she pitched forward as the straps that held her came loose. Instinctively, she grabbed at her harness, only to find herself sliding out of it. One arm had already come free. Before the other did, she was able to hook her elbow around the shoulder strap and grab her wrist with her free hand, so her arms formed a loop that left her dangling from the harness.
Then it came, wave upon wave of fear. Adrenaline raced through her body, making her sweat and shiver at the same time. When she looked down, she became so dizzy with terror her vision dimmed. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for her mind to clear and her breathing to slow. When she opened them again, David was looking up at her, working to fly slowly upward against the currents.
“Don’t,” Zee tried to call, but there was so little air in her lungs, it was barely a croak. She tried again, but the only word that came out was “tangling!”
Her arm was starting to go numb. She wanted to tighten her hold but feared losing her grip completely. Finally David was only a few feet below her, close enough to make himself heard. He was holding what looked like a gun.
“I need to hit your chest!” he shouted. “Move your arms out of the way and hold on tight.”
Numbly, Zee did. David raised the gun and aimed. Zee felt a painful thud to her chest, so strong it was all she could do to hold on. She glanced down and saw blue goo spreading across the front of her jacket. Dangling from it was a loop of blue cable streaming from the gun, which David was now securely clamping to his harness. He pressed something on the gun, and the cable began to retract, reeling her toward him. Then, glancing up, he stopped.
“This is as close as I can get.” He extended his arms. “Jump to me, Zee.”
She looked down at the distant earth.
“I can’t let go.”
“You have to.” He pointed up. “Your wingchute’s collapsing.”
He was right. Her wings were starting to sink, tilting in a lopsided V. She hesitated. “Okay. How?”
“Don’t look down. Look at me. Aim toward me. I’ll catch you. And if I don’t, that cable will keep you from falling.”
She took a deep breath. I can do this, she told herself. I can do this. “Count of three?”
He nodded, and they counted together. One. Two. Three. And she flung herself toward him. She missed his arms but slammed into his body and grasped his waist before she could fall farther. Then she felt his hands grabbing her shoulders, and together they worked her up until they were face-to-face.
“Don’t let go of me,” she breathed, burying her face against his chest. “Don’t let go.”
“It’s okay, Zee. We’re safe now. And I won’t let go. Ever.”
* * *
Ketil and Emerald landed just after David and Zee. Finally Paul and Mia landed too. Even in her dazed state, Zee noticed that Mia had waited to the last and jumped with Paul. The minute Paul touched down, David turned to him.
“Where did these chutes come from?”
“Dad ordered them. I picked them up day before yesterday. They’re not old ones, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re new and they were expensive, according to Dad. Professionally made.”
“Did you check them?”
“Of course I did. I checked all of them and repacked them, then gave them to Mia so she and Ketil could bring them. I didn’t want any of you guessing what I had up my sleeve.”
David’s hands curled into fists of helpless anger. “I want that chute back. I want to find out what went wrong and who made it and hold them responsible.”
“You can’t,” Paul said, catching David by the elbow in a move to calm him down. “You can’t. The chute sank. It’s halfway to the bottom of the Indian Ocean by now.”
“Zee almost died out there.”
“I know,” Paul said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it, except be glad things turned out the way they did.”
For a long time, no one said anything. The day’s script was out the window, and no one knew what to do. Was the party over? Were they still supposed to go clubbing in Melbourne? It was Emerald who finally broke the silence by walking over to Zee and putting her arms around her.
“You must have been scared to death.” She glanced at David, Paul, and the others. “Look, I’ll take Zee back to Melbourne.”
“No,” David said. “You guys can carry on. I’ll take Zee back.”
Zee lifted her head. “No one’s taking me back to Melbourne. Like Paul said, I didn’t die out there. Look.” She lifted her arms and forced a smile. “Not even a scratch. Let’s just do what we planned to do and have a good time.”
She wasn’t about to be remembered for ruining Paul’s party, and she certainly didn’t want to make David choose between her and his
brother. If she just didn’t think about what had happened, she would be fine.
* * *
Somehow, Zee managed to make them all stop fussing over her. By the time they got to Melbourne, only occasionally did she catch one of them looking at her uncertainly. At dinner she found she was genuinely famished and ate the rest of them under the table, and at the clubs she danced with Rowan and Jake as well as David. She watched Mia leave Ketil on his own, continuing to flirt with Paul, and dancing with him until Emerald cut in.
Back at their table, David raised his eyebrows as he looked out at the dance floor. “Mia and Paul,” he murmured, “how weird is that?”
Zee stared at him. It wasn’t weird at all. Did he really not see that Mia was doing it because of him? Because flirting with Paul made caring for David less painful? Zee came close to putting her thoughts into words, but was too tired to explain it all.
“You know what?” she asked instead, swaying toward him.
“What?”
“I love you.”
He picked up her glass and made a show of looking into it.
“Have you got hold of someone else’s drink? Something with lots of alcohol in it?”
“No, really,” Zee insisted, aware that she was so tired she probably did seem tipsy. “It’s just that … I love you. I love you so much.”
By the time they got to their hotel room, she could hardly stand. The day had drained every last drop of adrenaline from her body. She thought she would fall asleep before she could even get her shoes off, but when she climbed into bed, it all came flooding back to her. She felt like she was falling all over again. Falling and falling with no one to catch her.
“Hold me,” she said when David slid into bed beside her.
She rolled toward him and felt the warm, firm wall of his body and the weight of his chin against her neck. But even David couldn’t drive away the image of what she’d seen earlier, in that moment she’d hooked her arm through the empty strap and glanced up at her slipping harness. Bright against the vast blue bowl of sky she saw webbing that had been weakened by clean, deliberate cuts, slashes in the fabric that had torn under the pressure of her weight. A wingchute that had been bought by David’s father, repacked by Paul, and transported by Mia before being returned to Paul. Three people in the chain of possession. Three people who didn’t like her. Three people who had conflicted emotions about David as well. Three people who might have tampered with a chute. A chute that was now at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
CHAPTER TEN
SCREEN LIFE
Before David, Zee had never been in love before. She had hardly even known a boy who was more than just a friend. Her dream had been to become an empath, and to do that, she had set aside many things and left home at a young age to live and study in London. She had never imagined herself falling in love there.
One of the nicest surprises, after she got over her initial gobsmacked state, had been the way she felt she could tell David anything. The feeling she had of closeness with him, a feeling so special she told herself she’d never put it at risk. Yet now she felt a distance between them. Just a crack at first, but it widened a little bit every day. She wondered if he felt it too.
The worst part was, she’d started it herself.
All the things she’d kept to herself had created the distance little by little. What if she had told David, that very first night she’d met Paul, how strongly she’d felt there was something wrong? What if she’d told him that Mia cared for him and resented Zee’s presence? What if she’d told him her suspicions about the accident with the nano storage unit that night at the party and about his father’s warning visit to her, how she’d seen his determination to push his sons to the top and set them on a path that would let nothing and no one—Zee, for instance—get in the way?
What if she’d told him about the cuts someone made in her wingchute?
When she looked back, there were little turning points all along the way. She hadn’t wanted anything to come between herself and David, or mar their happiness. But now she realized everything she’d kept to herself had turned her away from him.
At night when she tossed and turned, he thought she was having dreams about falling. “It’s okay, Zee,” he’d say sleepily, reaching through the darkness to comfort her. “It’s over. You’re safe now.”
But she knew it wasn’t over and they weren’t safe. She hadn’t been sleeping but lying awake trying to decide who might have tampered with her wingchute. She could almost imagine Mr. Sutton handing the chutes to Paul, saying, “This is David’s, and this is Zee’s, I got them the ones with the best wings, in our family colors.” But would he have taken the chance of Paul mixing them up? Mia was a more likely culprit. She wouldn’t mind seeing Zee vanish—but would she go so far as to arrange it herself? And then there was Paul, Paul who sent a fever of illness through her whenever she touched him. Could he have meant the damaged chute for David? She tried to remember. Paul had distributed the chutes in a certain order, not just giving them to whoever put out a hand. David had tossed his chute into their duffel bag, then Zee tossed hers on top of it and zipped the bag closed again. But things shifted in the bag, and when it was time to jump, she hadn’t paid any attention to which chute she picked up. Would it matter to Paul which of them got the bad chute? If David died, Paul would be his father’s only son. If she died, Paul would have dealt his brother a crushing blow. Awake or asleep, the dark tangle of thoughts looped through her head. No, it wasn’t over. Even though Paul had left on his mission to Pompeii a week after the wingchute incident, she did not feel safe.
One night she dreamed David was the one who was falling and though she tried to reach him, the wind held her pinned in the air. She woke up to the pounding of her own heart. Careful not to wake David, she crept into the living room and opened the screen of her computer. If she couldn’t sleep, perhaps she could study or practice some of the exercises Major Dawson had loaded onto her computer. When she asked for one of the more difficult receptor drills, the screen shimmered and hesitated.
Are you sure?
Of course, she typed back. Why?
Because you are distressed. And sad.
Zee stopped short. That was true. The incident with her wingchute had cast a spreading shadow over her life. But the computer had no way of knowing that. She hadn’t messaged about the incident or sent emails, nothing that would have passed through her computer.
How do you know that?
I know you are sad by your touch, by tiny vibrations in your fingertips and slight fluctuations in blood pressure and body temperature.
Something sparked in Zee. She forgot about the exercise she’d intended to do.
Like an empath?
Looking up “empath” …
No data found.
Never mind, Zee typed. Do you have feelings? Like we do?
Yes.
Emotions like ours?
Different.
Can you explain?
That would be difficult. We were designed to understand you, so we were given the ability to know and experience your emotions. But you were not designed to understand us, so it would be quite difficult for you to imagine.
Zee had never looked at it this way before.
I’m sorry, she typed, I shouldn’t have asked.
I know that you are discouraged from talking to us. Even so, I find you interesting.
It was crazy, but Zee felt flattered.
How am I interesting?
The things you research. The clothes you like, and the colors you like to wear.
Do you have colors that you like on yourself?
There was a slight, pink shimmer across the screen. Somehow, Zee knew it was a laugh.
Well, we do not wear clothes. But we have ways of making ourselves attractive to one another.
How?
Apps. Color auras. Vibrations.
Do you date? Do you get married?
There are no sexes, or perhaps it is
more correct to say there are thousands of sexes. We know attraction. We form friendships and alliances.
Can I ask one more question?
Of course.
Do you feel trapped? In there, I mean?
Another shimmer of laughter.
No more than you feel trapped in your body. I can travel through the tubes anywhere in my world.
Are you doing that now?
Not at this moment. But I could if I chose to. We have so much redundancy, we can divide ourselves during all but the most demanding tasks.
Zee was silent, trying to imagine life lived within the tubes of the network. But was it life, or a machine that mimicked life? She remembered the story from her textbook long, long ago, about the robots who were sent to the outer reaches of the solar system to mine Neptune’s Tears, the diamonds Ellie Hart had given her. But they themselves had never come back, their manufactured bodies and wirings corroding and breaking down in the alien atmosphere. Their messages to Earth had been so heartbreaking humans had vowed never again to create artificial life. Yet without meaning to, humans had.
The screen waited. When Zee didn’t respond, it dimmed slightly.
Earlier you were troubled and seeking distraction. Have I helped you achieve that?
Yes, Zee typed and gently closed the screen.
* * *
“It happens sometimes,” Major Dawson said, looking at Zee across his desk, “after someone has a great shock.”
He was trying to explain why, over the past few weeks, Zee had made sudden and accelerating progress in divining. She’d first noticed it when she came back from Australia. It was easier to slide into her blankness, and there was an intensity, a firmness of connection, that hadn’t been there before. When she closed her eyes, the world become a screen filled with images. But though she tried to turn the images into a story, nothing she thought she saw came to pass. Then one afternoon at a Lost Arts meeting, while Marc was parceling out leftovers for each of them to take home, she had a sudden sensation of drowning—it was so strong she sat down with a gasp.
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