• • •
Chase found the Star eerily deserted. Cadets were shut up in their barracks, and classes had been canceled. She shot through the Green, glancing into the rec room. It was empty and shockingly smelled of old laundry.
A bold, red alert light pulsed overhead. Despite the pall it threw on the scene, the alarm hue was relieving. If red drones were inbound, if the whole Star were about to be blown to smithereens, the lights would go out completely. The dark of the Arctic could only protect them if they didn’t cast a single beam—and if the missile defense software worked.
Chase’s mouth went dry as she remembered JAFA’s blaze, realizing for the tenth time that day how little of a chance they all stood against Ri Xiong Di. Tourn had been an idiot to wish for war. What could possibly stop the New Eastern Bloc from absorbing them into their empire? The only reason the Second Cold War had started in the first place was because of Tourn’s bold nuclear strike on the Philippines. Ri Xiong Di did not think America would escalate so swiftly, and we’d scared them back a bit. But now? What could warn off the red drones before this turned into a last-man-standing kind of war?
Chase swallowed her doubt and misgivings and headed into the hangar. First things first, she had to get into the sky and clear her head…and her heart. But MPs stopped her inside the door.
“Cadets don’t have permission to be in the hangar,” they said together.
“I’m going to see Kale,” she lied. They exchanged looks. “He’s in the tower,” she invented. “He sent for me.”
“Let me see your pass,” the smaller MP said.
“I might have forgotten it.” She grabbed around in her pockets just to kill time, and that’s when she caught sight of Sylph’s boyfriend a few yards off. “Staff Sergeant Masters!” she called out. He stopped and eyed her cautiously, his arms stacked with paperwork. “Tell them Kale sent for me.”
She could see the calculation in his expression. Masters knew Chase wanted this and that she knew about his big secret. “Kale wants her,” he finally said. He turned briskly and took off through the cold concrete building.
“See?” Chase said. The MPs let her through, although one of them followed her until she ducked out of sight behind one of the older jets. She slid under the tarp and leaned against the cool metal of an F-14 Tomcat.
What was she doing? Was she really going to jump in Pegasus without permission?
“It was easier to break the rules when you were here, Pip,” she admitted aloud. “Not so much fun without you pointing out all the ways in which things could go wrong.”
Her hands spread over the Tomcat as her thoughts spun out of control. In truth, everything was wrong without Pippin. Wrong in the simulators. Wrong when Tristan tried to talk to her. Wrong when Kale looked at her like she was a shattered figurine. Wrong when she’d asked to meet with her father after the crash.
Wrong when Tourn had refused.
Chase’s fingers snagged on a hole in the jet. Several of them. She pushed back the tarp and looked over a spray of bullet holes across the metal. They were rusted and leaning in. Crumbling with age—a mark of the nationwide fear of war that spectacularly outdated her own. She had to do something.
Tears prickled, but she shoved them down, running for Pegasus instead. She waited until she could move unseen, climbed up the wing, and sunk into the cockpit. It smelled of Sylph, and the pilot’s chair was too far back. “Bird legs.” Chase used the lever she’d found while in Tristan’s cockpit to adjust the angle. “The girl has bird legs.” She rubbed her cheeks, trying to get past the sudden rush of remembering how she and Tristan had somehow fit in one seat.
That felt like years ago, but it was only six days. Six.
She’d kept her distance from Tristan since the accident, and he’d given her that much, not that he had much time because he was in the air half of the day. Her face burned on those thoughts as she imagined him exhausted and flying the d-line. She should be the one up there toiling away. Not him.
She had been the one to screw up in the face of that drone.
Chase flipped the switch to close the canopy, and a ground crew member saw. “Hey!” the woman yelled. “Get out of there!”
Chaos erupted around her as people yelled. She ignored them.
“I can do this.”
Getting skyward would fix everything. Just a hop up and back again. Nothing dangerous. It would prove to Kale and Ritz that she should be in action—and silence her scream of fear that she’d never get skyward again.
As she powered up the jet, the whirl and swirl of crashing against the lake came back. In the endless sessions Chase had been subjected to over the last few days, Crackers had said this would happen. She set her teeth and steered out of the hangar and onto the snowy runway.
But that was it.
The jet coasted to a stop.
Chase’s body was coated with sweat and her breath was a mess. I will get in the air, she told herself. Her body remembered how; she just had to get her mind onboard. She looked out at the blue runway lights lining her path.
She drove the throttle and tightened her hand on the stick.
The first time she’d taken off on this runway, Pippin had been arguing with her. She’d done three passes without getting Dragon’s nose off the ground, and her RIO had started to mock her. It had worked. The next pass, she had been so busy swearing at him that her nerves had stayed in check. And they had flown…
Now all Chase could remember was a very different sort of argument. Fighting with Pippin over whether or not he was dying. She remembered his strange smile and bulging eyes. She started to shake as she recalled the empty trust circle she’d doodled in the sand with fingers stained in his blood.
Chase pushed herself harder, faster, and the jet rose off the runway a few inches before her mind overflowed with painful images. Pippin was dead, and that meant Chase had no one. She was utterly alone in ways that finding a boy to kiss would never, ever fix.
Pegasus slammed down. Skidded out.
Chase was shaking so hard that she couldn’t even steer back to the hangar. She opened the canopy, and a slapping wind filled the cockpit with shocking cold.
Everything hurt. Her joints, her legs, her head. But the worst pain was the gravity bearing down on her heart. She knew this pain beyond Pippin; it had always been with her. It was the loneliness that lived in her bones. It whispered that she was no good at loving. No good at being a friend or a daughter or a person. She was no good.
The sort of person who broke hearts because she didn’t know what do with her own.
Snow touched down on her cheek, clung to her lashes, and melted into her tears.
“Harcourt.” Kale’s voice came over the shortwave like a whip crack.
Chase was finished now…expulsion for sure. She waited for it.
“Come home.” His words hiccupped through her aching. She closed the canopy, turned the jet around, and followed orders.
37
WINGMEN
Those Who Stay with You
Listening to Kale had felt right. A little. So when he told her to go to her room and get some rest, she walked back through the barracks to the room she had shared with Pippin.
Chase couldn’t keep her mind from rewinding. This time she went back to before the trials, to the conversation she and Pippin had about love. About each other. She hit pause there, letting Pippin stay alive in her mind.
She was so good at this that she’d nearly convinced herself that her RIO wasn’t dead by the time she opened the door. After all, Pippin’s headphones were still on his desk and his sheets were tucked in with tight corners, per regulation. His family pictures were on the bottom of the bunk overhead and his oily hair smell was on his pillow.
The bathroom door was closed, and the ugly fluorescent light reached beneath it. Pippin could be in there. She almost heard th
e toilet flush.
Wait a minute. She had heard it.
The sink was running—someone was in there. Chase jumped up and pushed the door open, suddenly flooded with happiness that felt equal parts desperate and dreamlike.
Sylph was rinsing her hands. “You always bust in on someone when they’re in the can?”
Chase’s hope evaporated. She slumped against the doorjamb. “What are you doing here?”
“Your door was unlocked.” She held up a small plastic pterodactyl. “Why is there a dinosaur in your soap dish?”
Chase stole it from Sylph and held it tightly between both hands. “It’s a pterosaur. Dinosaurs didn’t have wings.” Her heart felt strangled by the words.
“You’re so weird.” The tall blonde roughed up Chase’s hair and sat on Pippin’s bunk. “I’m not going to lie, Nyx. It smells like boy feet in here.”
“Don’t call me Nyx.” Chase slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She squeezed her knees to her chest, trying to hold herself together. “I’m not a pilot anymore.”
“For now,” Sylph said as though this information meant little to nothing.
“I just tried to fly, and I couldn’t even lift off the apron. I’m on the Down List.”
“That could be temporary, so let’s not assemble the pity parade just yet.” Sylph lay back on the bed. “Do you sleep on the top or the bottom bunk?”
“What are you doing?”
“I figured you needed a new roomie.”
“I want to be alone,” Chase lied.
“You never like being alone. I figure that’s what all those boys are about. Thought I’d hustle in here before they find you hanging by your bootlaces.” Sylph kicked her feet up. “I’m taking the bottom because I’m a bottom sort of person. You strike me as being a top person. Wink, wink.”
“Did you just make a sex joke?”
“No.”
Chase didn’t know what to do. Sylph was in her room. Being sociable. Joking and talking about Chase like she actually knew her. Dragon had crashed, Pippin was dead, and yet this was suddenly the hardest reality to stomach. “We aren’t friends, Sylph. You do remember that, right?”
“I don’t have friends.” Sylph’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Liam says I am too imperious.”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“Right, so, I’m imperious and you’re unstable. But we got into the Streaker project together, and we’ll get through the rest together.” Sylph tugged her boots off and smoothed her shirt over her flat belly. “You are the closest thing I have to a ‘girlfriend’ and vice versa. There’s no point arguing.”
Chase stood and climbed the bunk, all the while looking over the edge at Sylph. “So let me get this straight. You’re threatening to be my friend?”
“My plan is that you’ll do this grieving thing, then—”
“Don’t piss me off right now, Sylph. I’ve already corrected your RIO’s face.”
“Anger is good for you. It’s one of the stages of grief,” Sylph continued, as commanding as ever. “We’ll get you back in the air soon. I’ll let you fly Pegasus until Dragon is running again, but you’ll have to be careful with my baby. Not. A. Scratch.”
Chase couldn’t help picturing the crash. Black smoke rising over that lake. Dragon in pieces. Pippin losing his words in fistfuls. The image was like a searing flare through her mind.
“I can’t fly without him,” she said lowly. And the truth of her words made her withdraw inside and shake like her whole body had been burned.
“Sure you can,” Sylph dismissed. “Liam agrees with me that you’ll be able to get your wings back. It’ll mean practically living in the shrink’s office. Kale has the final say—and Tourn—but you have some pull there. What are you thinking?”
“That I’ve phased into some parallel universe.”
“That’s also good. Denial and whatnot,” Sylph said. “Another stage.”
Denial? Was that what kept her mind rewinding, trying desperately to rewrite what had happened?
“I went through something similar when my grandmother died,” Sylph continued.
Chase felt a pattern emerging. Kale had shared his backstory trauma earlier—about the wife he’d lost a few decades ago in childbirth—and now Sylph was throwing in hers. Apparently that’s what people did when something terrible happened; they told you about something terrible that had happened to them. And while Chase could see why people would want to commiserate, it felt to her like tallying tragedy. No thanks.
“Grandmothers always die, Sylph. Old age is kind of a given.”
“Do they always die from malnutrition, Nyx? From secretly starving themselves to save money for their granddaughter’s training so that she might make it into her dream academy?” Sylph waited. The silence was so saturated with shame that Chase had to answer the rhetorical question.
“No, they don’t.”
“That’s what I thought,” Sylph said. “You wounded asshole.”
“No wonder you’re so serious all the time,” Chase murmured.
Someone knocked loud and hard on the door. Chase had no clue who it could be. She and Pippin never had visitors.
The knock sounded again.
“Answer that,” Sylph said. “This isn’t my room.”
Chase shimmied down from the bunk and opened the door. Riot stood in the hall. He shifted on his feet and rubbed his elbows. His nose was swollen and red. “Are you here for Sylph?” Chase asked.
He frowned. “Sylph’s in there? I thought…well, I have to tell you something. Get it off my chest.” They stared at each other for a long moment. Chase wondered if he had come to give his condolences. Or share his sob story. She was wrong on both accounts.
Riot spoke in a rush. “I told a few people about Tourn being your dad. The night before the trials. I was still mad at you.” He waved his bandaged hand as though it gave him a pass.
Chase rested her forehead on the door. Closed her eyes. “So?”
“So I’m sorry. I wanted you to know that. I thought maybe that was why you hit me.”
“Forget it. None of that matters now,” Chase said, and she believed it.
“Trying to sleep here, Riot!” Sylph yelled. “You should be resting. We have to be airborne again in five hours.”
Riot leaned against the door and whispered, “Are you all right?”
Chase wanted to lie, but she didn’t have the fuel. That, and Riot looked like he really cared. It was as strange as Sylph lying across Pippin’s bunk.
“No, I’m not all right,” Chase admitted, feeling oddly relieved by the truth. “But I’m still here. Although I’m a little worried Sylph has decided to become my bosom buddy.” Chase hadn’t expected herself to joke, and it brought a goofy grin to Riot’s face.
She said good-bye to him and shut the door, a little bit stunned.
“I know my RIO.” Sylph put her feet on the bunk above and stretched her calves. “He doesn’t really love you. He just gets crazy jealous of you and Arrow.”
“Whatever you say, Sylph. I don’t make a whole lot of sense out of love to begin with. You’re the expert, with your airman boyfriend.”
Sylph smiled a rare, secretive look. “You are the only one who knows about Liam. It actually makes me like you a little. I keep thinking that—” Another loud knock cut Sylph off. “Who is it now?”
Chase opened the door. It was Tanner. His eyes were centered on her as though he was getting ready to fire, but he pulled her into a hug first. Then he held her shoulders in both hands.
“Tell me it’s not true. Tell me you don’t know General Tourn.”
“I don’t know him.” The truth came easily. “Not really. But he is my father. He made me take a DNA test twice just to be sure.”
Chase’s overshare caused Tanner to pause and star
e her down even harder.
Sylph sat up in bed, making the springs creak. “Shove off, Arctic. We need sleep. I have a hop in a few hours.”
Chase stepped into the quiet, red-lit hall and shut the door. “Apparently I’m bunking with Staff Sergeant Sylph.”
Tanner scowled. “How’d that happen?”
“Luck of the Irish.”
He almost smiled, and she almost felt like herself.
“Riot told me about your father,” Tanner said.
For the second time, Chase felt herself trying to be cold and dismissive. But it didn’t work. In fact, it was so much more work than just being true.
“It’s as terrible as it seems,” she owned up. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me, and that’s harder to swallow than it should be.”
She watched Tanner weigh his next words.
“My grandfather was Filipino, Chase.”
“I know.” The minute he had told her that, she’d run so far that she was pretty sure something inside was still trekking. “I can’t apologize for him. I’m not responsible for what he did. He isn’t even responsible to be honest.”
Tanner shook his head. “I would never have dropped that bomb. I would have said no, lost my commission, and been discharged.”
Chase looked away. “I could have guessed that much about you.”
“I’m telling you because you need to know what I think about him. And you need to know the truth about your dad doesn’t change what I think about you.”
“Oh, right. I’m a love vampire.” Her hurt came with more energy than she thought she had left.
Tanner did that overly serious squint that made him look solemnly cute. “I wasn’t mad you broke up with me, Chase. I was mad because I could tell you liked me—even while you were trying to get away from me. It made no sense, and I like things to make sense.” He leveled his shoulders. “You were afraid of getting involved. Once I sorted that out, I wasn’t so angry. I hoped you’d work it out. Preferably with someone other than Riot.”
She surprised herself by feeling relieved. “You and me both.”
When Tanner left, Chase returned to her room feeling stranger than ever. Both Tanner and Riot had seemed genuinely concerned for her. Why? She’d been terrible to them.
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