The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

“Always,” replied Thomas, clearly missing Amber’s joke. “And I ran it through a few computer programs to check it again. It’s right.”

“Everyone in the cargo bay needs to get up here now!” Ms. Dale shouted loudly.

A moment later, Owen and Solomon appeared from the bay. “We strapped everything down as best as possible,” Owen reported. “And the nets are secured.”

“Good. Secure the door and sit down. And for the love of everything, buckle your damned seatbelts.” Amber cleared her throat. “Start reading me those numbers, Thomas.”

Thomas began giving her numbers, and she used the keypad on the arm of her chair to input them while Solomon and Owen got into their seats, one on either side of Morgan. Morgan looked up at Owen as he sat down, and then immediately cast her gaze back into her lap, looking everywhere but at the blonde man.

I had a moment to smile, distracted from my nerves by their awkwardness, and I found myself wondering what had happened after Viggo and I left the party that night. And then the heloship began to move, the entire thing rattling.

“In position in five, four, three, two, stop.” Amber clicked something, and we went still again, hovering in place. “I’m ready when you are, Tom-Tom.”

Thomas sighed at the nickname, but said nothing as he produced a roll of electrical tape. His handheld had been resting on his thigh, and within moments he had it secured there, wrapped up absurdly with the black tape running around his leg. After a few moments, he ripped off the edge of the tape, setting the final piece down, and nodded. “All right, everyone. This is where things get a bit dicey.”

“What are the odds on this, Thomas?” Owen asked, and Thomas blinked and looked up at him.

“The mission or the landing?”

“The landing.”

“Good, surprisingly. Sixty-one percent.”

“Numbers aren’t everything, Thomas,” Ms. Dale said sharply. “Are you ready?”

He blinked over at her, and then nodded, his cheeks jiggling slightly. “We’re ready. On my mark. Amber?”

Amber exhaled softly, rubbing the tips of her fingers together, and nodded. “Go.”

“On my mark—three… two… one… Go!”

I squeezed Viggo’s hand hard as Amber leaned forward and flipped a switch.

Immediately the vibrations of the heloship stilled as the engine cut off. There was a moment in which it seemed like nothing was happening… and then we began to fall out of the sky.

Everything seemed horribly weightless, and my stomach plunged with the ship. My grip on Viggo’s hand grew tighter, and through the bubble I could see the flat, paper-thin land below start to get closer as we plummeted. The sensation of weightlessness was a lie: we were strapped into the side of a falling ship, and gravity was bringing us down, faster and faster each second.

The cockpit began to shake and shudder, and I was tossed against my harness. “It’s wind,” Amber shouted. “Just hold on!”

A whimper escaped me as a whistling sound began, all around us, and I heard someone—Solomon—ask, “What’s that sound?”

“It’s us!” Amber shouted over the growing whistling noise. I looked back at her and saw a wide grin on her face, her eyes narrowed in intense focus while her fingers hovered over a button—presumably the one that would turn the engines back on. She seemed utterly exhilarated, and the glee on her face was almost as nauseating to me as the descent.

“It’s okay!” Viggo yelled to me in assurance, but I could barely hear him over the sound of the wind rattling by outside, the whistling growing and distorting until it became a violent roar.

I shut my eyes and tried to keep my breathing under control, but I was panting. We were going to hit—any minute—and that would be that. I remembered the sensation of falling in The Green, the way I had tumbled through the air with no control, unable to stop myself. My breathing hitched until I was hyperventilating, and every rattle of metal made me cringe, certain this was the last sound I would hear before we died.

“Thomas?” I heard Amber ask, her voice barely discernable over the screeching noise.

“Not yet,” he bellowed.

The roaring grew louder, and tears began to leak out from under my eyelids onto my cheeks.

Then Thomas roared, “THREE, TWO, NOW!”

I grunted as gravity returned with a roar, my body still trying to go down while the heloship rocked us up. My breathing was heavy and loud in my ears, and I couldn’t open my eyes. My complete belief that we had hit the earth was conflicting with the sudden hum of engines filling the room. I had never noticed before how comforting that sound could be.

There was silence, and then a voice, softly whispering in my ear. “We’re fine, Violet. We’re okay.”

I cracked open my eyes, my heart still pounding in my ribcage, and confirmed Viggo’s assertion. We were alive. Although, given that even Ms. Dale looked a little rattled around the edges, I wasn’t certain everyone was confident about that.

“I’m setting her down,” Amber announced, clicking some buttons. “Seems a shame to leave her abandoned out here, but—”

There was a rattle of the doorknob in the cargo bay, and alarm coursed through me, although Viggo was the first to react by standing up, his gun coming out of the holster on his belt. The door pushed open, and I gaped as Logan strode in, bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow, his hair mussed. “I wish I had known what your plan was coming down,” he said, looking around. “Then I could’ve made a better entrance. Seriously, did we just fall all the way down to Matrus?”

“Logan?” Amber said, whipping around in her seat. “What the hell are you doing here? You were supposed to stay behind to help Henrik.”

“I know. I left my orders with my second in command. I didn’t want you coming here without me.”

“So you snuck onboard?” Ms. Dale asked dryly.

“How’d we miss you?” Owen added. “We were back there securing the cargo bay for at least twenty minutes.”

Logan looked over at us, and then down at his suit, and I realized he was wearing one of the Liberator uniforms. We all were, but we didn’t have that many, which meant he must have had to sneak into the inventory room to steal one. And he’d had to keep the suit on for at least twenty minutes—a feat that was impressive, even for somebody like Owen who’d had much more experience. I was impressed, at least; Amber didn’t look so thrilled.

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered, clearly embarrassed, turning back to the controls and flipping a few switches, then beginning to lower us down. I took a cautious peek out the window, and it looked like we were already on the ground—but we descended another ten or fifteen feet before the thump that announced we’d touched down.