Freefly (29 page)

“Come on down, kids,” Thorne says, standing at the bottom of the cylinder.  “You’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Sammie,” I say.  “Let me see your hair.”

She cocks her head.  Her hair is still in the bun Mom did for the Spring Shake, though it hangs down in many places, several bobby pins sticking out from the sides.  I snatch one of them. 

“Use this.”

She understands me and grabs it, and is on the first of the screws in an instant.  I glance down at Thorne.  His men are huddled together and whispering, seemingly deciding what to do.  Thorne glares at me. 

“That’s not going to work,” he says.

The first of the screws falls into the cylinder with a hiss. 

“Shoot them!” Thorne yells at the men. 

“Wouldn’t do that!” Sammie screams.  “I might fall into the boiling metal.  That’d probably ruin your plans.”

Macabre as this sounds, I’m glad to hear Sammie say this:  it’s the most life she’s shown since she got here.  What happened at the Tower?  She clearly been traumatized in some way.  Thorne scowls, then turns to his men. 

“Don’t shoot,” he says.

The second screw falls into the cylinder.  Thorne mutters something to his men, and they bolt from the room.  He himself remains, his arms crossed over his chest.  I glance back and forth between him and Sammie, glad to see the third screw go plummeting into the boiling metal.  The grating slumps down, hanging on by one screw. 

“Don’t think this is it,” Thorne says.  “Anywhere you go, I’ll find you.  There’s nowhere in the world you can hide, not for long.”

The final screw drops, and with it the whole grate.  Sammie yanks me out of the way as it plunges into the metal, sending sizzling droplets flying in all directions.  Thorne cries out and scurries away.  Sammie moves back toward the vent and slips inside.  I stick my head in, then grunt when I realize my shoulders don’t fit.

“Sammie!” I call, peering upwards into the darkness.  “I’m too big!”

“Turn around and go in feet first!” she screams, her voice echoing. 

I pull my head out of the vent and turn upside-down, sticking my head right into the steam.  It scalds my face and pushes into my nostrils, making me choke.  I stick my feet into the vent and slide upwards, but, once again, jam when I reach my shoulders.  My head sticks out of the vent awkwardly.  The steam seems to be turning to liquid in my mouth.

“Sammie!” I gargle. 

Her hands close around my ankles and jerk me a little further into the vent.  My shoulder blades cramp together painfully.

“I can’t wait for the day we take Sammie in for good,” Thorne says, his tone menacing.  “I’m not going to kill you, you know.”

There’s another jerk on my ankles, and I budge
almost
all the way in. 

“I’m going to keep you alive,” Thorne continues.  “I’m going to make you watch, every day, for the rest of your life.  There will be nothing you can do.  You can’t protect her.”

Anger and revulsion surge up inside of me, at this twisted excuse for a person, this walking, talking body that has lost all trace of its soul.  “I can love her.” 
Sammie yanks me all the way into the vent, and I shoot up the small passageway. 

“That’s not going to be enough!” Thorne yells.

I spit liquid metal and gasp for air.  The vent is tiny, hot, humid, and smells awful.  My throat and nose feel like they are on fire. 

“How much further?” I groan. 

No response from Sammie, though suddenly the vent grows wider and brighter.  I scrunch up my body and turn right-side-up, relieved to see a small, bright patch of light at the end of the tunnel.  Sammie shoots toward it, many feet ahead of me. 

“Let’s go!” she calls. 

She reaches the top of the vent before me, and I slide up beside her, nearly bashing my face against the same metal grating we encountered at the vent’s entrance.  I twine my fingers through the bars and press my mouth up against them, gasping at the fresh air.  Sammie does the same. 

“I’m not feeling too good,” I say. 

She continues gasping, then pulls her head down and looks at me, her eyes roving over my face.  In an instant, her hand lands on my cheek, her palm soft and slightly cool.  She gazes at me very seriously, almost angrily, before running her hand down the side of my face, as if she is trying to memorize its shape with her fingers. 

“I don’t know how to get the grating off from in here,” she says.

I look up at the grating.  The screws are on the other side. 

“So we’re stuck in the vent?” I say.

“Yep.” 

I take a deep breath, my face tingling where Sammie touched it, as if her hand has left a trail of sparks.  Her eyes are bright, but in a fierce way.  I swallow hard, and it feels like I’m gulping metal slime. 

“What happened at the Tower?” I say. 

Pain fractures her expression.  I’m certain she’s not going to answer my question until she says, unexpectedly, “Jiminy got shot.  I think he was going to die.”  Her voice is low and even, as if she is trying very carefully to control it.

I take a sharp breath.  “Oh, no.  I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”

I shake my head and can’t think of anything to say.  We are so close to escape.  Sammie’s hair captures the sunlight, a slight breeze making a wisp of it flutter against her forehead.  All at once, I feel extraordinary anger.  We can see our freedom but cannot reach it, all because of four flimsy screws on the other side of a vent. 

We lurch downwards, and I scream.  Sammie clutches at her temples.  I put my hand on her shoulder, as if this can steady her. 

“You alright?”

“Double-fly.”

I breathe heavily, remembering the night on the beach, when Sammie spent hours unconscious and in pain.  Even worse than having to relive that experience, what if we plummet?  We’ll drop a hundred feet into a vat of molten metal. 

“You really need to hold it together,” I say.

“Trying.”

I fly up to the grating again and clutch the bars, pressing against them with all my might.  The grating arches outward ever so slightly, but remains in place.  I look down at the dark tunnel.  It stretches straight and empty for as far as I can see. 

“Wait up here,” I say.  “Please don’t let us fall.” 

I flip around and fly back down the vent, the smell of metal growing stronger with each foot I descend.  When I’ve covered a good distance, I stop and hang suspended, upside-down.  Then I shoot back up the vent with all the speed I can muster, drawing on the cool breeze at the back of my neck for power.  I whip past Sammie and smash into the grating with my feet.  It pops free and flops out of the way. 

“Yes!” I cry. 

The cool breeze completely evaporates.

In a miracle moment half fueled by adrenaline and half by terror, I manage to grab Sammie’s hand and the edge of the vent at the same time.  We hang there, holding on by the flimsy grasp of my fingers. 

“Sammie!” I cry.  Her eyes are half-open, her breathing labored, and her free hand paws at her forehead.  Realizing I’m going to have to do this myself, I squeeze my eyes shut and pull upwards with everything I have.  We rise slowly, inch by inch, but then drop again, my fingers nearly slipping from the ledge.

“
Sammie!
”

The muscles in my arms feel strung out and molten, as if they themselves are turning to liquid metal.  Why did I never lift weights?  Why did I have to devote my entire life to the singular task of studying?  The myopic facts of my life are going to get us killed. 

Sammie’s eyes shoot open, then bulge. 

“Double-fly, now!” I scream.

The cool breeze floods back in.  I groan as all of the weight is lifted from my arm.  Sammie rises to my side, and we float in place, our breathing thunderous. 

“Sorry,” she says, the mask of ferocity breaking to reveal...something else.  Fear?  Something darker than that, something sad and final. 

“Are you okay?”

She nods, and the ferocity returns.  The cool breeze balloons at the back of my neck and we shoot out of the vent at hyperspeed, rising hundreds of feet into the air so quickly that the men flooding onto the roof don’t even have time to lift their stun-guns. 

CHAPTER 11

Damien

I can’t help but feel immense joy as Sammie and I whip across the sky, a sea of dense trees rolling beneath us.  We did it:  we escaped the white place.  This means...well, I’m not really sure what it means.  The scientists will continue to hunt us, so we will still have to hide
—
but this is better.  Much better.

Sammie looks less relieved.  Her face still contains the same ferocity as in the white place, but is breaking more often to reveal that strange expression I noted in the vent:  the look of sad finality, her lips pressing together while her eyes stare off into the distance.  Is she thinking about Jiminy?  I glide closer to her and touch her wrist.

“He was a good guy,” I say.  “I could tell, just from talking to him.”

Sammie says nothing, only lifting the corners of her mouth ever so slightly, like the ghost of a smile.  After several seconds pass, she says, with a hint of anger, “He shouldn’t have died.”

I nod.

“You’re not getting it.  Too many people have given up their lives for me.”

I process this new information:  Jiminy gave up his life for Sammie.  What happened?  Was he defending her?  Though I have never met him, I am grateful to him.  “It was his decision to make, not yours
—
”

“Well, I’m sick of people deciding that.  He should be alive right now.  You should be...getting into GLOBE and going on to be a famous scientist.”

I exhale in frustration.  Sammie will still not accept that I have chosen
her
over that path, even if this new path has been forced upon me.  My only regret is that I never had the chance to become someone great, someone worthy, though even that was worth giving up.  “I love you more than becoming someone great.”

Sammie stops short, and I whoosh past her.  When I turn back around, she is glaring at me, her hands on her hips.  “Get over here.”

I float toward her, glancing around, uncertain of what is going on.  She grasps my shoulders and stares into my eyes.  Her own are fiery and blue. 

“You’re...already...great,” she says, pronouncing the words so slowly and deliberately it’s like she is carving them from stone. 

My gaze breaks from hers. 

“Look at me!” she says.

I snap my eyes up.

“It was your idea to try and use the bus station to escape from Thorne.  It was your idea to fly out of the skylight. 
You
thought up holding yourself ransom so Thorne would let me go back to the Tower.  You thought up that whole thing with the bobby pin.  And you’re the one who got us out of the vent and kept us from dropping into boiling metal when my double-fly conked out.  So quit saying you’re not great.  Look at me, Damien!  Quit thinking you’re anything less than brilliant and worth it.  I love you exactly the way you are.”