Her body felt heavy, impossibly awkward as she tried to hold the position Jason had described. Jason. She saw the wind grab him, hurl him from the jet. It had happened so fast. A hard fist of despair pressed at her chest, fear and sorrow and disbelief tangling together inside her.
The wind and the pounding of her heart filled her ears. All of that tough talk about Diana killing her for the sake of peace and the only thought in her head: I do not want to die. She grabbed hold of the toggle at her hip and yanked hard. A whirring sound. She’d pulled the wrong cord—for a moment she was sure of it, certain she’d made some horrible blunder. Then her body was yanked upward with a hard jolt. A choked sound between a sob and a bleat escaped her lips as the harness dug into her thighs and her momentum slowed. She was pretty sure she’d left her shoulders and pelvis somewhere above.
She forced herself to scan the terrain. She knew she needed to try to find somewhere flat and treeless and steer into the wind. She pulled gently at the toggles, testing them. The world looked alien and mysterious beneath her. Her mind registered barns, houses, cultivated land. She needed a field, someplace flat. She tugged gently at the toggles, turning left, then right, trying to slow her descent.
One moment she was gliding over the shine of a river, and in the next, the earth was too close, speeding by beneath her. She lifted her feet and hit the ground with a painful thud, then tumbled forward, unable to control her momentum. She felt her ankle twist, felt rock scrape along her back and sides. She tucked her knees and rolled. The canopy caught the wind, dragging her along, then finally collapsed. She skidded to a halt.
Alia lay on her side, trying to catch her breath, trying to make her rational mind catch up to the adrenaline coursing through her body. She batted at the latches and straps of her harness and wriggled free. Her left ankle throbbed. She could only hope it wasn’t broken. She forced herself to sit up, but every part of her felt like a Jell-O mold that hadn’t quite set. She was at the base of a terraced hillside covered in tarps and netting to prevent erosion.
She heard a shrill whir and peered up into the sky, saw a trail of smoke—the jet spiraling downward. It disappeared behind a rise of hills, and Alia heard a loud boom that shook the earth beneath her. A scream rose in her throat as a plume of black smoke blossomed from the horizon.
She glimpsed a shape moving through the sky, the translucent bowl of a parachute trailing behind it. Could it be Diana? Ben? One of their attackers?
Alia struggled to her feet. Jason had said there were trackers in the packs. Jason.
“Alia!” Nim’s voice. Alia had never heard a more beautiful sound. She turned, saw Nim stumbling toward her, and forced herself to stand. They staggered the rest of the distance to each other, and Alia threw her arms around Nim, wishing she could hold her close and keep her safe forever.
“Did you see where Theo came down?” Alia asked.
“No,” said Nim. “It all happened so fast.”
Alia felt panic swelling up to choke her breath. “Let’s get to the top of the hill,” she said. “Maybe we can see more.”
Alia leaned on Nim, and they scrambled past the tarps and netting as fast as their wobbly legs would carry them. When Alia looked west she could make out a sapphire strip of sea. To the east she saw only farmland.
“There!” she said, pointing to where the parachute was sailing toward the earth near what might be a grain field. It had to be Ben and Diana. It had to be. They stumbled down the other side of the hill, Alia limping slightly, trying to walk the pain out of her ankle as Nim rolled the sleeves of her Keralis T-shirt up over her shoulders. It was late afternoon, but the sun above was strong.
Alia wanted to slump down right there, cover her head with her hands, and just scream. She couldn’t stop seeing Jason’s face as he vanished through the jet door. Keep going, she told herself. Just keep moving. If you stop, you’ll have to think.
They rounded an overgrown hedge, and she thought she heard voices.
Nim’s head snapped up. “That sounds like—”
“It can’t be,” said Alia, but she would have known her brother’s voice anywhere. Especially when he sounded angry.
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Jason spat. “You’ve been lying and dodging my questions since the moment we met.”
“No ordinary man could do what you did,” came Diana’s reply.
Alia stepped around the hedge and saw Diana pacing back and forth in a field spotted with poppies, as Jason lay on the ground, trying to untangle himself from a mess of parachute cords. He was alive. He was okay. She didn’t care how or why, just that it was so.
“Help me out of this thing,” he said to Diana.
“Help yourself,” Diana shot back.
Alia exchanged a glance with Nim. “We interrupting?” she asked.
Jason and Diana turned and saw her at the same time. “Alia!” they shouted.
Diana loped toward her and swept Alia up in her arms, swinging her around like a little kid. “You made it!” She threw an arm around Nim’s shoulders and pulled them both into a hug. “You made it.”
Jason gave a frustrated growl and said, “Would someone please help me out of this thing so I can hug my damn sister?”
Alia limped over to him, tears in her eyes, and said, “Yes, I’ll help, you big grump.”
He dragged her down and hugged her tight. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Same here.”
“Are you getting snot all over my shirt?”
“Probably,” she said, but she didn’t let go. “How the hell did you get down here?”
Jason sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all of it, but we need to go. Whoever shot us down will have people on the ground, searching.”
“Did Ben get out before the plane went down?” Nim asked.
Jason shook his head. “No.”
“He died bravely,” said Diana.
“But he died just the same,” Alia replied. Another death on her conscience, and all the more reason to make it to the spring.
After a few minutes of fiddling, they managed to get Jason free, though Diana kept her distance, arms crossed, jaw set. He pulled a Velcro patch free from one of the straps of the parachute pack, revealing some kind of screen. His fingers moved over it, entering a code, and a cluster of green dots appeared beside an electronic compass rose.
“That’s us,” said Jason, using his fingertips to zoom out. Another green dot appeared to the southeast.
“And that’s Theo,” said Alia.
“Or his parachute at least.”
She punched Jason hard in the arm. “Don’t say that.”
They followed the signal through the poppy field into an olive grove, through row after row of gnarled trees. In the late-afternoon light, their gray-green leaves took on a silvery cast, like boughs clustered with clouds of sea foam.
Nim stopped short. “Oh God,” she said, and when Alia followed her horrified gaze, she saw Theo’s limp body hanging from the twisted branches of an olive tree, like a puppet gone slack on its strings.
“No,” said Alia. “No.” She had done this. She might as well have snapped his neck herself.
Then one of Theo’s pointy shoes wiggled, his knee, his thigh, up to his wrist. Alia grabbed Nim’s arm, relief gusting through her. “He’s alive!” she said on a happy gasp.
“I should have known I couldn’t get rid of him that easily,” said Nim, but she was smiling.
Diana peered at Theo’s wiggling form. “What exactly is he doing?”
Jason sighed. “I’m pretty sure he’s doing the wave.”
Alia cocked her head to one side. “Maybe the robot?”
Diana frowned. “Is this the way your people celebrate cheating death?”
“What exactly are you doing, Theo?” Alia called.
He tried to twist against the strings, to no avail. “Alia?” he shouted. “Guys?” His feet bicycled futilely through the air. He was only a few feet off the ground, but it was a crucial few feet.
“He looks like a manic Christmas ornament,” said Nim. “And God, who told him those pants were a good idea?”