“Could have,” Jack said, smiling.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs beyond the door, and Jack was about to shout a warning when he heard a scream. Someone had grasped the handle. They wouldn't do so again anytime soon. Jack felt a twinge of guilt, but then he pointed again and concentrated some more. It was a strange feeling, as if heat formed in his mind and left him untouched, flowing across the space between his hand and the door and super-heating the metal. He had the idea that he could melt the door if he really wanted. He could turn it to gas. The power was startling and frightening, but he felt fully in control of it. He could have melted the bollocks off Sparky…but he'd chosen not to.
“Yeah,” Jack breathed, flushed with the power.
“Come on!” Sparky whispered. “Jenna was right. You're gonna love this.”
“Sorry!” Jack shouted through the door, and then the banging began.
Up the ladder and out onto the rooftop, Jack slammed the hatch shut again before standing and joining his friends.
“You've gotta be kidding,” he said.
“Nope,” Jenna said.
Sparky seemed delighted. “Cool. Cool!”
There were three hang gliders on the roof. Two were folded and dismantled, but one appeared to be fully assembled, its wheels and wings tied down to prevent any errant breezes from stealing it away. A single seat was suspended beneath it. Twenty feet from its front wheel, a section of railing had been cut away to allow launch.
“Have you ever…?” Jack asked, but he didn't need to finish. He knew that neither of his friends had ever done anything like this. That didn't stop Sparky. He delved into Jenna's jeans pocket, blowing her a kiss as he probed for her penknife.
“Come on!” he said. “Got seconds. Come on!”
“Maybe we should…” Jenna said.
“Wait?” Jack asked. He could still hear banging from the plant room beneath them as they tried to break through the door and its super-heated catch. “There won't be another chance. They catch us, and Breezer will make sure we won't get away again.”
“Yeah, but this?” Jenna pointed at the aircraft Sparky was freeing. Four cuts from the sharp knife and he was wheeling it towards the roof's edge, looking back at them expectantly.
“Breezer wants me,” Jack said. “Jenna, I'm afraid what he might do to you two.”
“He's no monster. Not like…”
“Reaper? Dunno. We just don't know.”
Something changed below them. The banging ceased, and then a different sound came—the metal door swinging open and impacting the wall.
“Come on!” Sparky shouted. He was already jumping into the seat.
“For Mum,” Jack said. “For Emily.” He grabbed Jenna's arm and ran across the rooftop to the hang glider.
He'd once taken a trip to South Wales to visit relatives with his parents. It was soon after Emily was born, and he remembered eating an ice cream in a car park in Abergavenny and watching dark specks drifting down from a hilltop in the distance. They'd waited in that car park long enough to see the first giant winged shape grow larger and pass almost overhead, heading for a field by the river which was their favoured landing point. There had been one person strapped into the seat. Only one.
“This isn't a bloody passenger aircraft,” Jack said, but Jenna was already pushing. Sparky was braced in the seat, lifting himself up so that the straps that should have held him in splayed to either side.
“Close enough,” he said. He was breathing fast, excitement and fear, and Jack closed his eyes for a moment. Just a second, to gather himself.