Freefly (28 page)

Jiminy bursts forward and tackles Lederman.  I suck in a gigantic breath.  The two men wrestle to the ground, though, from the looks of it, Jiminy is going to come out on top.  Then there’s a
bang! 
Lederman rolls off Jiminy.  Blood gushes from Jiminy’s chest, as he lies flat on the ground.

“Jiminy!” I shout. 

The elevator door glides open again, and several men rush out.

“Go already!” Jiminy shouts, coughing.  “
Go!
”

I barrel out the door and leap into the sky.  When I glance back at the shrinking Tower, I can just make out the boss standing outside, his arms crossed over his chest.

Damien

It takes me a long time to open my eyes, or even to recover the sensation of having a body.  Thorne injected me with something that knocked me out, and that has also made my limbs feel like they’ve been pumped full of quicksand.  I do not know what happened while I was asleep, though there is a sharp pain at the base of my skull, as if something has poked through it.  Slowly, as I regain feeling in my arm, I reach behind me and touch that spot.  The rough padding of a bandage meets my fingers. 

I am in the small white room, lying on the strip of foam in the corner.  My legs don’t move when I want them to.  It’s frightening.  The sun is still shining through the window, which at first makes me feel relieved, until I realize that it could easily be the next day, or the next week, for all I know.

Steadily, sensation seeps back into my legs, and I am able to swing them off the foam padding and sit up.  I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut.  I do not feel good.  What has been done to me?

An hour passes.  I drag myself to my feet and walk to the window.  Occasionally, a car pulls up in front of the building, and a person in a black suit gets out and charges inside.  A black dot appears in the sky at one point, and my heart leaps, but it turns out to be a turkey vulture.  I tap my toe against the wall.  How did Sammie do this for eleven years? 

The door slides open.  I whip around.  Michael Thorne walks inside, alone this time.

“That wore off fast,” he murmurs, stopping to jot something in a small notepad.  I marvel at the fact that spending an hour unable to feel your legs is considered a fast recovery.

“Where is Sammie?” I say.

“Not back yet.”  He gestures at the metal chair.  “Sit down.”

“No.”

“Relax.  I just want to take a look at the bandages.”

Cautiously, I walk to the chair and lower myself onto it.  Thorne limps behind me, and soon his cool fingers probe the back of my neck, causing a shiver to run up my spine.

“What did you do to me?” I say.

Thorne rips off the bandage in one quick movement.  I flinch. 

“Just took a look at your brain, that’s all,” he says.

He’s silent for several seconds, fiddling with the wound at the back of my neck.  He splashes some sort of cool liquid against it, and what remains of the pain dulls into nothing.  I exhale, stretching my hands over my knees.

“What did you find?” I say.

“Nothing.  You are...how do I put this?  Painfully normal.  It’s clear that the flying was Sammie’s doing alone.”

I exhale.  This is a relief, but it is also, strangely, a bit disappointing.  Part of me was hoping that I had something to do with double-fly, that there was something special about me.  But it’s as it seemed all along:  I am a nobody. 

“That’s good news for you,” Thorne says, stepping out from behind me.  “We’re not going to waste any more resources running tests on you, that’s for sure.”

“Are you going to let me go?”

Thorne snorts.  “Of course not.  You’re the bait, remember?”  He limps toward the door, humming under his breath.  Then he turns back.  “Looks like all that’s left for you to do is sit here and think, huh?  Unless, of course, you feel like doing some work around here
—
”

“
Never.
”

He shrugs and heads out the door.  “Let me know when you change your mind.”

The door slams shut.  Huffing, I drift to my foam mat and plop down.  What
am
I going to do with all of my time?  I wish I had something to read.  I haven’t learned anything new in what feels like forever, a fact that makes my brain feel itchy.

There’s a strange noise.  I leap to my feet and listen closely.  There’s a yell, then a bang.  I press my ear against the door.  What is going on out there? 

I yelp as my feet lift off the floor.  A cool breeze shoots up the back of my neck.  Double-fly?  I flail wildly as my body floats higher.  The only logical explanation is that Sammie is nearby, but where?

The door slides open.  Sammie stands outside, clutching an unconscious Thorne by the collar.  Her T-shirt is speckled with blood, and the look in her eyes is deadly. 

“Sammie?” I say.  I’m in a bit of an awkward position, with my upper body pressed against the ceiling and my legs hanging down. 

She drops Thorne, who lands with a thud on his face, and looks at me.  Her expression softens.

“I was using double-fly to sense where you were,” she says.  Her voice is weirdly robotic.

“Great,” I say, because nothing really could surprise me at this point.  “Could I come down?”

I drift to the floor.  We take off out the door and sprint down the long, white hallway.  Within seconds, an alarm sounds:  it’s like a fire truck siren, so loud it hurts my ears.  Red lights begin to flash, making the hallway seem bathed in blood.  I glance at Sammie.  Her face contains no fear, only determination that borders on ruthlessness. 

We bust through a metal door and emerge into a stairwell.  Sammie clutches my hand as we fly (not literally) down the stairs side by side.  I count the number of flights we descend:  three, four, five.  The place is even larger than it seemed from the outside. 

A door blasts open, and six or seven black-suits pour into the landing below us.  Sammie yanks me back in the other direction, but the door above us flies open, too, unleashing another troop of black-suits.  Sammie and I freeze in the landing between them.  There’s the sound of many guns clicking.

“Get on the ground!” somebody yells.  The men crowd around us, pointing their guns.

I drop to my knees.  Sammie remains still, her body rigid. 

“
Sammie
,” I hiss, really not wanting to see her get shocked again.
“Get
down!
” the man yells.

Sammie only now seems to register that I’ve spoken:  she twitches her head in my direction and stares at me with confusion.  What is wrong with her?

“Get down,” I say softly.

She sinks to her knees.  Instantly, the men converge upon us.  My arms are yanked behind me, and I’m dragged to my feet.  Sammie cries out in pain. 

“Don’t hurt her!” I say.

Smack! 
A male voice cries out.  I strain to see what is happening, but there are too many black-suits in the way.  My captors pull me up the stairs, my feet dragging. 
Clap!  Bang! 
Two of the black-suits hit the floor.  Sammie is revealed behind them, kicking the gun out of a scientist’s hand.  Then she barrels into him and knocks him to the floor.  The men release me and rush to help their fallen comrades.  I watch in awe as Sammie takes down all of them, one by one, extremely efficiently.  When the last guy takes a kick to the chest and falls to the floor, Sammie jumps on top of him and continues to pummel him.

I rush over and grasp her shoulder.  “Sammie,
stop.
”

She freezes, holding her bloodied fists above his mangled face.  Her breath is coming in gasps.  All around us, the scientists are sprawled and moaning. 

“You’re not a killer,” I say.

Her breathing slows, and her fists sink to her sides.  Very slowly, as if there is a thousand-pound weight on her shoulders, she rises to her feet.  Her eyes don’t leave the man’s face as she says, “I am.  But let’s go.”

She snatches my hand and we clamber over the fallen scientists, descending the stairs once more.  The alarm continues to blare, an undulating wail that seems to coincide with our circling down the stairs.  The air smells weirdly metallic, as if somewhere in the building someone is boiling a vat of iron.  I wonder what sorts of things go on in here. 

Sammie pushes us through a door and we emerge into another long hallway.  The alarm is even louder in here, and the flashing red lights make Sammie’s fierce expression almost terrifying.

“Where are we going?” I croak, breathing heavily.  “Are we going to try to get out the front door?”

Sammie only pulls me faster, keeping her eyes straight ahead. 

“Are you okay?” I say. 

No answer again.  Several men appear at the end of the hall, and they kick into a sprint when they spot us.  I skid to a stop, but Sammie jerks on my arm, lurching me into motion once again.

“What are you doing?” I say.  “They’re coming!”

Sammie’s voice is low and robotic.  “This is the direction we need to go.”

She finally stops in front of a door.  The men are barreling toward us.

“Freeze!” one of them screams. 

Sammie reaches into the pocket of her shorts and pulls out a thin strip of metal, the shape and size of a credit card.  She presses it against the black panel beside the door.

“Stole if off Thorne,” she says. 

The panel flashes green, and the door slides open.  We rush inside, and it slams shut behind us.  A gigantic metallic cylinder lies in the center of the room, steam rolling out the top.  The smell of boiling iron, weak in the staircase, is pungent in here.

Sammie pulls me toward the cylinder.  Except for it, the room is wide, white, and empty, with a high ceiling and very bright lights.  There does not appear to be any way out, other than the way in which we came.

“What are we doing in here?” I say, eyeing the shiny cylinder.  With Sammie acting so strangely, I can’t help but worry that she wants us to climb inside. 

“This is the way out.”  She stops in front of it, tilting her head upward.  I follow her gaze.  Above the cylinder, the steam escapes into a vent covered in metal grating. 

“I think it goes to the roof,” Sammie says.

“Yeah, but how are we going to
—
”

We lurch off the ground to the top of the cylinder.  A choppy, bubbling sea of metal boils within, churned round and round by a turbine.  The steam licks at my face, clinging to my skin like a layer of sweat.

“...get off the grating?” I continue.

“Hadn’t thought of that yet.”

The door of the room bursts open.  Thorne limps inside, his forehead bleeding, followed by a troop of men.  I turn my attention back to the grating.  The metal is thick and solid.  Four screws, one in each corner, secure it to the ceiling.  The screws are small, probably able to be swirled out by hand, but we don’t have a screwdriver.