“That wasn’t the deal,” Miranda said. “I’ve put everything in motion and there’s no going back now.”
“Then I suggest you hope that your arrangements for Sebastian are sufficient,” Adrien said. “What about the plane? Are you certain they won’t detect anything?”
“The explosives are completely conventional,” Miranda said. “They can sense all the magic they like and they’ll get nothing. Are your people in place?”
“The EOA’s people are on the water right now,” Adrien confirmed. “So long as the flight path you gave us was accurate, they’re where they need to be.”
“I gave you everything you need to track the transponder,” Miranda said. “In case they somehow mess up and don’t detonate, I also had a timer placed. Even if your people don’t come through, the Indian Ocean will do the job for us.”
“While I appreciate the inclusion of a contingency, Ms Ellis, that attitude does not fill me with confidence,” he said with rising scorn. “Trying to kill someone and walking away, assuming everything went to plan is the quality control of a Bond villain. I suggest you either learn to embrace thoroughness or find yourself a visually distinctive henchman and start building a death ray.”
“Coming from the guy whose category-three assassin couldn’t kidnap one category two, even when he got the drop on him.”
“I chose discretion,” Adrien said. “There were only so many resources I could deploy unnoticed.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Miranda said. “You just worry about your end of the plan and make sure that portal is ready.”
High above the Indian Ocean, the occupants of the Network’s plane were relaxing into the twenty-two-hour flight.
“And the waterfall just started up again?” Ketevan asked.
“Blasted me right out of the mountain,” Jason said. “It felt like being shot from a cannon. It wasn’t just water spewing out either. A bunch more of those monsters came out, but most died on impact with the ground.”
“But you were fine,” Asya said.
“Slow fall was the one power I’d actually used enough to have a decent handle on,” Jason said. “Good thing too, because I was all tangled up in arms and legs with the other guy, plus I’d just been fired out the side of a mountain. It’s quite disorienting. Only a handful of the monsters survived by landing in the water, and they still took some bad hits from that height, so we managed to finish them off.”
“And they were shark crabs?” Ketevan asked.
“It’s not a great monster,” Jason said. “Tough carapace, and rough if it gets a hold of you with that mouth, but it’s slow and clumsy. There’s a sand variant that’s even bigger and buries itself in sand. I fought one of those later, once I knew what I was doing.”
“What’s the biggest monster you ever saw?” Asya asked.
“Oh, this is a good one,” Jason said. “I came across this one thing. It wasn’t actually a monster but a magical, carnivorous plant. I never actually saw the whole thing because it was a giant root system. Shade, what was that thing called?”
“A blood root vine,” Shade said.
“That’s it, yeah. Blood root vine. It had been growing for centuries and was the size of a small town, but completely underground. You didn’t realise you were over it until its tentacles burrowed up for you.”
“That big?” Ketevan asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Jason said. “You hadn’t signed on at that point, had you, Shade? You were still running the contest.”
“The trials were not a contest,” Shade said. “The contest was Mr Bahadir’s contribution to the proceedings.”
“True,” Jason said. “I should explain from the start; it’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
Suddenly, an explosion ripped through the plane.
47
OF COURSE IT WAS HIM
Jason came to his senses, which were an incoherent storm of sensations as he tumbled wildly through the air. His head was ringing, wind roaring over his body and through his ears. All he could see was a spinning blur of sky.
His starlight cloak manifested, and he righted himself with a jolt as he moved from a tumble to a controlled glide, the cloak spreading out to either side like wings of night. Getting control of his descent was far from a smooth process; he was so far above the clouds that the very concept of up and down was elusive in the blue expanse and the chaos of the disintegrating plane.
He could only have been out for a few seconds, since the plane was still falling out of the sky around him. It had broken into two main pieces but was also a cloud of loose debris. The cloak intercepted stray shards of metal, but his body was already a roadmap of cuts and bruises, along with two more significant injuries.
One of those injuries was from a scrap of twisted fuselage impaled into his abdomen. He was largely unconcerned, no longer having internal organs there. The scar the metal was digging into was proof he’d suffered worse, and he paid it no more mind than the time it took to yank the chunk free of his body.
The other major injury was a deep slash to the side of his neck. If not for the combination of his exotic physique, bronze-rank power attribute, and Colin’s healing, it would certainly have killed him. The confluence of those factors made what would otherwise have been lethal an inconvenience at most. The magic imbued into the plane had already allowed it to inflict damage like an iron-rank weapon, and without his bronze-rank damage reduction, it may have taken his head clean off.
The remaining bruises, abrasions and lacerations were inconsequential to him, although not to his suit. It did not self-repair anywhere near as quickly as his armour and would be out of rotation for a while. His injuries would heal much faster, Colin’s regenerative power already hard at work. That was most likely the reason he regained consciousness so fast after being knocked senseless by the blast.
Dark mist appeared around his body, clinging tenaciously to him even through his downward glide. When it vanished a few moments later, Jason was garbed in his full battle attire. Rather than the loose outfit dragging, the magic shifted it to act almost like a wing suit as it recognised the conditions and adapted. Once more, he was delighted by the care Gilbert had put into the bespoke garb.
Grabbing a healing potion vial from his belt, he shoved the whole thing in his mouth and crunched down, the healing potion trickling down his throat. He didn’t want to spill it and his bronze-rank damage reduction prevented the glass from cutting the inside of his mouth. He felt the healing power flood his system, supplementing Colin’s efforts as the two major wounds started closing.