Breaking Sky

by Cori McCarthy

  Was Adrien teasing Sylph? The woman tightened her lips against a smirk, and Chase suddenly loved the old lady.

  “You will control your blood flow with muscle tension in your extremities. It won’t be easy, but unlike astronauts who can come in and out of consciousness under autopilot, we cannot have you blacking out up there.”

  “Graying out,” Pippin corrected. Romeo and Tristan smirked, and Chase was a little surprised to see her RIO smile back at Tristan.

  Adrien turned the centrifuge on. “I need a few moments to get it up to speed.” It hummed to life slowly with increasing sound and vibration.

  Romeo leaned over the aisle, staring a little too obviously at Sylph’s chest. “I have a question for the U.S. Streaker jocks. Why two females? Shouldn’t there be a girl and a boy to be more balanced?”

  Chase put a hand over her laugh, readying for Sylph’s response.

  Sylph’s eyebrow rose sharply. “Penises aside, Romeo, we competed for the Streaker project. Nyx and I are the best pilots at the academy. That’s why females.”

  “You’re not better than Arrow,” Romeo countered. “Not faster anyway.”

  Before Sylph could bite back, Adrien asked for a volunteer. When Tristan was the first to stand, Sylph shot to her feet. “Like hell you will,” she said to Tristan. She looked at Chase. “Nyx. This is your sort of thing. Snap to.”

  Adrien took Tristan’s arm. “Mr. Router will do for starters. You’ll all have your turn.”

  Sylph sat down hard enough to make her chair curse. The woman helped Tristan strap into the pilot’s seat, peering through a small window at him once she shut the door. The centrifuge hummed loud enough to drown out the whole room. Adrien handed around the noise-canceling headphones that the ground crew wore. A projector lit up the large view screen on the wall, showing a digitalized sky with a woodsy horizon.

  The simulation began.

  Chase was mesmerized by the view from Tristan’s cockpit. He turned fast and kept one wing a hint lower than the other. There was a state of ease in the way he flew, and she could sense her own brand of urgency…always wanting to go faster. She wondered if Tristan felt it like she did: an itch. A need.

  Tristan was a fine pilot, and Chase watched Sylph realize it out of the corner of her eye. The girl looked bored at first, then skeptical, then stubbornly resigned.

  Adrien notched nine-g before Tristan’s flying began to show the strain. She gave advice through a small mic that must have propelled her voice into the roaring centrifuge. “Breath in short bursts,” Chase thought she heard Adrien say. “Pull higher and throttle forward all the way.”

  Chase chewed her bottom lip. It was a rush to watch Tristan lift under the digital clouds and drive forward. It reminded her of their time together in the sky, and she wanted that again more than anything else in the world. His direction was tight and beautiful and so fast.

  “That is Mach 5,” Adrien said, powering down the centrifuge. “Nine times the weight of gravity.”

  Chase peeled her headphones off as Adrien opened the door. Tristan was slumped in his seat, his head hanging forward and his hair a mess. He was so deflated from his usual confident self that Chase felt an urge to help him. She didn’t.

  Romeo took Tristan’s arm over his shoulder. Pippin got Tristan’s other side, and the two RIOs lead Tristan to a seat on the floor against the wall.

  Adrien was pleased. “If you have been in the air, you would have broken the manned airspeed record.”

  “Pippin,” Sylph commanded. “Don’t help him.”

  “Don’t bark at my RIO, Sylph,” Chase warned. Although it did feel slightly strange to watch Pippin pull Tristan’s hair back from his neck and check his pulse. Pippin glanced at Tristan’s pupils, and Tristan gave him a dazed grin.

  “He’s all right,” Pippin said.

  “Just tired,” Tristan added.

  Adrien hauled Sylph into the centrifuge next. Riot talked down about her the minute she was sealed inside, pointing out that she’d never broken Mach 3, let alone 5. He wasn’t wrong; the centrifuge was barely revved up completely when she stopped flying and screamed to be released.

  When Sylph got out, swearing and pushing the sweat into her hairline, she took Chase’s arm. “Beat him.” Her dark brown eyes were like staring down a missile. Chase suspected that something deeper was going on behind Sylph’s rampant rivalry, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

  Chase nodded, but she didn’t need Sylph’s anger to propel her. She was already fueled by her own competitive streak. She strapped herself into the pilot’s chair. The machine smelled like grease and metal.

  Adrien leaned her head inside. “The best for last? You are the one who loves speed?” Chase liked the way Adrien said speed. Her accent hurried the word, made it taut and urgent.

  She nodded ready.

  Adrien shut the door with a rolling lock sound. Chase took in the metal circular coffin. It wasn’t like piloting Dragon. The centrifuge was not slim and fitting like her cockpit, and the throttle and stick jabbed up through the floor beside her feet. But the view screen before her held a stretch of blue with a treed horizon…she could fly through that any day.

  Chase dipped into it, taking off faster than the others. Her muscles went tight against the mounting pressure, and she leaned into it, breathing through her teeth. Her path was so fast that the woods blurred into an emerald scream.

  Tristan had broken Mach 5. Chase was going to make it to six. He had to know she was just as tough and capable. That she would push herself until she passed out if she had to—flying was everything.

  The pressure shrink-wrapped her skin to her bones, squeezed all the blood out of her fingers, her legs. The digital sky paled, a baby blue and then a hardly blue, while the trees lost all their green.

  Chase heard Adrien’s voice from far away. “Time to step down.”

  “More,” Chase murmured. She pressed harder, and her thoughts about beating Tristan melted into her true motivation. Dragon would only be as fast as she could be, and she wouldn’t let her bird down. She wouldn’t let down Kale. Or the trials. Or her impossible-to-please father.

  She’d prove she deserved to be here. To fly a Streaker.

  The gray of her vision fuzzed at the edges, right before it washed completely white.

  • • •

  The Arctic wind blew, but Chase wasn’t cold. She stood outside the Star on the runway, the ice world bright despite the dark. The dry air sunk into her skin and made her feel more awake than she’d ever been.

  Tristan appeared beside her, eyes on the horizon. He pointed. In the near distance, a snowstorm stirred up a deep purple before the whole sky yawned with fluorescent light. Tourn appeared where Tristan had been standing and shook his head.

  “She’s coming to,” Romeo said, his accent stronger than usual. “Move back.”

  “You move back,” Riot snapped. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Of course she is, Riot,” Pippin said, “just like she moonlights as a Ri Xiong Di spy.”

  “Not. Funny,” Chase said. “Pippin?”

  Her RIO’s face appeared through the whitewash of her vision. “Did you G-LOC dream?” he asked. “Adrien said it could be vivid and bizarre, like tripping. You were laughing when you started to wake up. Kind of maniacally.”

  “It was creepy,” Sylph said, looking down at Chase from what felt like a great height.

  “I didn’t dream,” Chase lied. She tried to sit up, but hands held her shoulders. She realized her head was resting on folded legs, and she tilted back to see Tristan, upside down.

  “You broke Mach 6.” Tristan was steady, tuned in—and very close. His hair dangled over her face, and she resisted a catlike urge to bat at it.

  “Let me up,” she said.

  “Not until you can see colors again.” Adrien’s voice floated down from
a little ways away. She held out her hand. “What color is my ring?”

  “Silver.”

  Tristan shook his head, his hair waving. “It’s gold, Chase.”

  “Gold then. Let go.” She tried to sit up, and his hands pushed back on her shoulders.

  “Take ten good breaths,” Adrien said.

  Chase felt the way her stomach sank with each long exhale. She retreated to a deep place, remembering her dream. The storm opened like its violet sky full of crystal stars. And Tristan was there, standing next to her, his gaze sketched with sparks.

  “Are you ready, Ms. Harcourt?” Adrien asked through her haze. “What color are Mr. Router’s eyes?”

  “Sapphire.”

  “With your eyes open please,” Adrien said amid an explosion of snickers. Chase looked up fast enough to see Tristan’s lips twist with amusement.

  “Blue.” She sat up, pushing everyone back. “They’re goddamn blue.” The world tipped this way and that as she fought to stay on her feet.

  The view screen on the wall was blindingly orange, depicting fire. The smoking hole from her crashed jet. Chase went tight. Tighter than she’d been in the centrifuge. The digitalized wreckage mocked her—pointed out her huge error. She’d been willing to fly until she passed out, but she wasn’t the only one who would take the brunt of stubbornness if this happened in the sky.

  Sylph shook her head, while Romeo and Riot watched the floor.

  Pippin gazed at the screen, the orange lighting up his cheeks. He gave a hopeless sort of shrug. “You killed us, Chase.”

  19

  HOTAS

  Hands-On Throttle and Stick

  Chase was burning up and still a little sightless as she mumbled a bathroom excuse and fled the scene of her latest crime. She pushed into the locker room, and the bench wavered beneath her as she sat hard. Crashed was more like it.

  Her breath came short and sharp as she relived the pressure of the centrifuge. How she’d wanted more, more. Wanted every pound of it until her body turned off like it had been unplugged. Not good enough, Tourn’s voice barked through her thoughts, and not for the first time, she wondered whose spot she’d stolen in coming to the Star.

  Maybe that cadet wouldn’t have failed…

  And sapphire? Christ. She wasn’t going to live that one down anytime soon.

  Her body felt about as hot as if she had been in a real fire. She yanked her shirt over her head. Her dog tags clinked, and she ran the metal links over the balled chain, holding on to the grating sound in the echo-tiled room. She didn’t hear anyone come in.

  “That’s some scar.”

  Chase grabbed her shirt and held it over her bra. “What are you doing in here?”

  “This is the boys’ locker room.” Tristan looked back at the entrance. “At least, there is a little man on the door.”

  Chase flashed hotter than ever. “My mistake.” He wasn’t turning away, and she didn’t feel like bringing her shirt down so she could get it back on. She should have walked out, but she was too beat to even consider standing.

  Tristan seemed to understand. He sat on the bench. “Can I ask you a question, Chase?”

  She let her head fall forward, and sweat tingled as it slid down her neck. She didn’t want his questions. “No.”

  He didn’t accept that. “Why are you so hot and cold with me?”

  She considered him for a moment. He was real right now, not overly pleasing or polite. Perhaps that’s why she broke her standard evasive tactics. “Because you’re two people. And I only like one of them.”

  “So you do like me, at least fifty percent of me.” He was trying to make her smile. It was almost working. “I might have to tell Sylph on you.”

  “But then who would stop her from killing both of us the next time we hit the runway?”

  “Come now,” he said, his confidence peaking. “I haven’t gotten up there with her yet, but I’ve seen enough tapes to know she can’t keep up with us.”

  Chase was enjoying this a little too much. They hadn’t been in the sky for a week now—the terror level was still too high—and the way Tristan said us made Chase flash to the way they’d flown together. Wing under wing and all that teasing.

  “So.” He pinched her arm softly. “Tell me about that scar.”

  She was in weird headspace. Warm and fuzzy and not herself. “I told Pippin it was from falling off my bike when I was a kid. I tell my hookups I got mugged.”

  “But those are lies?”

  “Necessary alterations of the truth.” It was a phrase she’d stolen from her dad’s lexicon.

  “You sound like a politician.”

  Chase ran her finger up the raised line that marred her from elbow to shoulder. The doctor who took the stitches out promised it would fade and settle with time. He was the real liar. The scar was as red and angry now as it had been five years ago.

  The truth came slowly, dredged up from somewhere deep. She didn’t want to give it voice, but Tristan already knew about her dad, so that made it so much easier. Too easy maybe.

  “I had a run-in with some barbed wire,” she said. “A long time ago.”

  “A long time ago? What’re you, fifty-seven?”

  “I was twelve.” She folded her arms over her chest, a little more aware of what was under them than usual.

  “Not too many twelve-year-olds have run-ins with barbed wire.”

  “Maybe in your family.”

  And there it was. Chase had brought Tourn into this. Would Tristan push to know more? He gave her a dark look that proved he was thinking about Lance Harold Tourn. Although she’d walked into this, she already regretted it. She reached for the first available distraction.

  “Do you blame me for what happened to JAFA?”

  He looked at her like she’d started to speak Chinese. “What?”

  “If I hadn’t gone after Phoenix, we wouldn’t have been found out. JAFA would still exist.”

  He shook his head. “Adrien told me we were being watched all along. Our interaction might have sped things up, but we were already marked. It was a matter of time.”

  “Yeah, but if I hadn’t gone after you—”

  “Stop.” He hadn’t yelled, but he might as well have. She could see him fighting with dark thoughts. She knew that battle intimately. Maybe he wanted to fight; it always helped her.

  “Well, I feel guilty,” she baited.

  His face was red. “Like your dad feels guilty about the Philippines?”

  She stood up. “Should he? He was doing his job. He had to do it!” Her words snagged on her conversation with Pippin. Apparently “had to” moments were genetic. She sat as suddenly as she had stood, but Tristan wasn’t done.

  He jingled her dog tags. “Why do you wear these all the time? I bet you sleep in them. At JAFA we only had to wear them in the air.”

  Chase elbowed his hand away. “We wear them because we’re a few heartbeats from enemy territory. Any day the drones could show up with a thousand missiles. I don’t know about you, but I’d like for Kale to be able to ID my body when it’s a blackened brick.”

  She’d gone too far.

  Tristan fell into that damned place. Shock slid over him like cement. Sweat spotted his temples. He didn’t seem like he was breathing. Maybe he saw JAFA burning. The explosions. The screams. Whatever it was, it had him by the soul and was twisting…

  Chase shook his shoulder and tried his name. Nothing.

  She wasn’t good with boys, not in any real sense, but she knew what worked on Tanner and Riot. On all their predecessors. Chase turned Tristan’s face and pressed her lips to his.

  He pulled away instantly, stood, and pushed his forehead into a locker, making the metal wobble and bend. His breath was a mess, but he was moving. He was back. She called it a win.

  Chase stood, swingi
ng her shirt over her shoulder and trying to act cooler than she felt. In truth, she felt warm and crazy, like crying and kissing—which was an unsettling combo. It brought more feelings to her surface, and she let them out.

  “I don’t know how my dad feels about the Philippines. I never had the guts to ask.” Tristan looked at her for too long. Pain seemed to puddle in both of them, between them. Then it lapsed into a sort of relief that was so strange that it made her want to lean on him.

  He dug his hands into his pocket, but his sudden smile reached for her.

  Voices skipped around the tiled room as Riot and Romeo entered.

  “Nyx!” Riot took in Chase’s shirtlessness.

  “Relax. I was just getting some things straight.”

  Riot’s face pinched with about six different emotions before he charged toward the back of the locker room. Romeo’s eyes dove from her neck to her belly button. Chase winked and headed out, but not before seeing Tristan touch his lips with the back of his hand.

  “I love this school,” Romeo said. “Girls. Girls everywhere.”

  Chase stopped short of the door. The sound of smashing glass filled the tiled room, along with the howl of pain that couldn’t be coming from anyone other than Riot.

  • • •

  The plastic pterodactyl was perched on the soap dish, judging her. Chase turned the faucet on hot. It scalded her knuckles and stole Riot’s blood down the drain in a muddy-pink swirl.

  “I could’ve used your help, Pip. It was nuts,” Chase called through the bathroom door. “Riot kept yelling, and there was a piece of glass stuck in his middle finger. Romeo and Tristan had to hold him down so I could rip it out. He’s getting stitches now.” She dried her hands and stepped back into their room. “Sylph is going to murder me.”

  “You know I don’t like the locker room,” Pippin said. “Too much testosterone.” He didn’t look up from his notebook. “Only you could inspire a boy to punch a mirror, Chase.”

  “Yeah. That’s hilarious.”

  “I’m not laughing.” Pippin was in a weird mood, but what else was new?