PART II:
TITANS
18
I’m a new woman. Literally. My head is clear, my skin is smooth, and my muscles feel supple and strong. There’s no hint that I was on my deathbed twelve hours ago. (I guess it was technically my death lie-flat seat—in first class, no less—but never mind that.) The bottom line is, those suited things that invaded the crash site healed me. And did a bang-up job. It’s quite a mystery, given how the meet-and-greet started.
I don’t remember anything after the shimmering monster stormed into the cabin and shot Sabrina, Yul, and me with what must have been a sedating device. I awoke the next morning on a narrow bed. My eyes focused just in time to watch the steel hoops above me retract, letting the plastic roof take flight, drifting into the woods. I thought it was snowing at first, but I soon realized that tiny bits of leaves and limbs were falling, as if a grinder were shredding the treetops. The sound of explosions in the air assaulted me next. Two ships hung unmoving in the sky, firing relentlessly, the booms of their guns like thunder in my chest.
And then Nick was there, rescuing me once again, though this time I was in far better shape than he was. He looked a fright, his face covered in dirt, grime, and caked blood, his eyes sunken, his cheeks gaunt. Scared me worse than the bombs bursting in the air.
He and Yul returned from the nose section a few hours ago with Yul’s carry-on, and in my opinion, a far less valuable piece of baggage: Grayson Shaw.
“He’s coming with us,” Nick said when the three of them rejoined Sabrina and me, and no one’s said a word since. The five of us have simply marched through one forest after another, avoiding the fields, our pace steady but not quite brisk, for Nick’s sake. He’s in the worst shape of all of us. He’s been holding his right side, his ribs, and breathing hard almost the entire way.
When we finally stop for water, I beg him to rest for a bit, but he insists we go on.
“They’re hunting us.” He motions to Yul’s bag. “And whatever’s in there.”
Yul stiffens.
“We’ll talk about it when we get to the farmhouse we saw on our way to the glass structure.”
“The structure?” Sabrina asks.
“It was . . . nothing,” Nick says, still trying to catch his breath between sips of water. “We’ll talk about everything at the farmhouse, when we’re not out in the open.”
A few hours later the five of us stand at the edge of a forest, eyeing an old stone farmhouse in the middle of a rolling green field. It looks deserted. There are no cars, no road or drive of any kind, for that matter, just three small stone buildings.
Nick instructs us to stay under the cover of the trees as he and Grayson set out to search the house. I want to ask whether Grayson Shaw, who’s apparently come away from the crash site with a handgun, is the ideal partner with whom to storm our only potential place of refuge, but they’re halfway across the field before I can object.
I wait anxiously as they slip through the wooden door, guns drawn, crouched like the Metropolitan Police raiding a terror suspect’s apartment block.
Beside me Sabrina and Yul stand in tense, awkward silence.
No one says a word about what I heard back at the plane. The two of them know what’s going on here. They’re part of it—they’ve known since the beginning. I wonder if they’re dangerous. What a fix to be in: Grayson on one side, Sabrina and Yul on the other, and some mysterious army hunting us.
Nick and Grayson trudge back through the green field, handguns stowed.
“It’s empty,” Nick calls. “Come on, quick.” The second the wood door closes behind us, he says, “Stay inside and away from the windows.”
He lays the last bits of food on a simple wooden table. “We split it five ways.”
Nick doesn’t eat his share, though. He just staggers away, exhaustion finally overtaking him. I follow him into the bedroom, where he climbs into the narrow bed and lies facedown, not bothering to remove any of his soiled clothes.
I close the door, walk around the bed, and squat down, facing him.
“We’re in the future, aren’t we?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmurs, eyes closed.
“What year?”
“Don’t know.”
“What was in the glass structure?”
“Stonehenge.”
So we are in England. “Stonehenge?” I whisper, half to myself.
Nick’s drifting off. I touch his shoulder. “Sabrina and Yul—I think they may be involved in whatever happened to the plane.”
“Yeah. Gotta rest, Harper. Rough night. Don’t let them leave. Get me up at sunset.”
And he’s gone, out cold.
I settle onto the floor, looking at him, thinking. Then I rise, roll him onto his back on the bed, and take his shoes off. His socks are soaked through. I peel them off, revealing his waterlogged, swollen, blistered feet. The rest of him hasn’t fared much better: bruises cover his arms, chest, and ribs, as if he rolled down a mountain. What happened to him?
We need real help. Rescue. But for now, I’ll do what I can for him.