To his credit, Grayson just nods after hearing my plan. Skepticism and worry are clear on his face, but his only question is, “How do we get there?”
We agree that the Podway would be unsafe. I have an idea, but I wonder if this particular transportation technology is still in use, over three hundred years after it was invented. It requires no fuel, has no electronics, and can do about thirty miles an hour, depending on the operator and terrain. It can operate in urban, rural, or off-road environments with no preexisting infrastructure, which Planet Earth happens to be fresh out of at the moment. It’s perfect . . . if we can find it.
It’s still dark when we make our way out of the narrow chemist’s. We hurry down the street, away from the charred, smoldering remains of Titan Hall.
We don’t spot what we seek on the next street, nor the one after that. Finally I see a shop that might suffice. Grayson and I climb in through a shattered plate glass window. The technology has changed a bit, but it’s still basically the same. And there’s no learning curve.
Once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget.
We rode until the first rays of sunrise, stopping only to duck out of cover when we heard an airship in the distance and to gather food. We spotted an apple orchard a short ways outside London, and now we sit in an interior office of a large, dilapidated warehouse, eating apples and trying to stay warm.
Our plan is to rest the entire day and strike during the cover of night. It’s about our only chance.
The cramped room is dark save for a narrow sliver of light that seeps in between the bottom of the closed door and the floor. Grayson and I lean against opposite walls, an old oak desk between us. I can just make out half of his bruised, haggard face, one of his exhausted eyes staring at the floor.
“In the video, you said your dad was a diplomat.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I say between bites of apple, wishing we had something more.
“You didn’t follow in his footsteps?”
“Nah.”
“You’re what, an investor?”
“Venture capitalist. Early-stage companies, technology, mostly IT.”
“I’ve had ideas for companies. Tons of them. Figured, what’s the use, though? It’s not like I needed the money. And any company I started would be measured against my father’s empire. I’d always come up short. No-win situation. Plus, once you’ve been to a few parties and heard the way the gossip machine feeds on the failures of the rich and famous, once you’ve . . . joined in on the feeding, it becomes nearly impossible to put yourself through the grinder. Who wants to try and fail, when you can drink and laugh with no consequences?” He takes a bite of apple. “I bet that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not. Not even close. I grew up with people just like you, Grayson, in boarding schools all over the world. It sounds crazy from the outside, but everybody’s scared of failure and being seen as a disappointment. The longer the shadow is, the farther you have to walk.”
“You made it out, though. You did all right for yourself.”
“I guess.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Changed the scorecard. I opted for a career different from my father’s. No comparisons that way. After college, I got on a plane to San Francisco, got lucky, won the IPO lottery, been placing calculated bets ever since. Still getting lucky.”
“Being in a plane crash wasn’t lucky. And it wasn’t luck that got the people out of the lake or kept the camp out of chaos. That was skill: strategy, leadership, real-life action-hero stuff.”
“Yeah? You want to hear the crazy part?”
Grayson waits.
“Until four days ago, I had no idea I had it in me.”
Just after sunset, we set out again, pedaling harder this time. If we can’t make it there tonight, we’ll lose a lot of the element of surprise.
People who’ve never been to this place don’t realize how far outside of London it is. It’s our only play, the only place I have reason to believe there may be people—verified humans—who actually want to help the passengers of Flight 305.
The second day at camp, after Bob and Mike got the cockpit door open, the pilot said something I didn’t realize was so important until now. After the first bout of turbulence, the plane lost all outside connectivity: satellites, Internet, communications. The pilots were flying blind on their preprogrammed course. When they got closer to Heathrow, however, they received radio contact again. The controllers at Heathrow said a global event had affected communications. They told the pilots to maintain their course, and that the controllers would guide them in.
My working theory is that the device Yul created in 2014 allowed the plane to travel into the future—that the turbulence and radio blackout happened when the plane jumped forward in time. Whoever brought us here must have intended for us to land as planned at Heathrow. But something went wrong. Maybe the suited figures intervened. Or maybe there was a technical problem with the device Yul built, or an issue on their end.
Either way, someone was at Heathrow, a human voice at least, and it was trying to get us there six days ago. That’s really the only clue I have. In fact, it’s the only place on the planet where I have reason to believe there are still any people left.
But as Grayson and I pedal past the road signs for London Heathrow, I feel my nerves winding up. We’ve expended the better part of twenty-four hours on this little adventure. What if I’m wrong?
I draw the binoculars and scan the sprawling airport, looking for a sign, a literal light in the darkness that proves someone’s there, waiting for us. The view isn’t promising. The side closest to us is dark. But on the other side of the sprawling airport, a dim glow lightens the night sky.
Someone or something is here.