The Exodus Towers #2

Sam half-turned without breaking stride.

“Wait at the house. Surgery Center is off-limits.”

She waved. “Surgery Center. Got it.”

Once she was inside the compound, the presence of guards dropped to almost nothing. Sam walked past two brick buildings that once probably served some administrative purpose. Two nuns walked past her with their eyes downcast. She studied each of them, but neither was Kelly.

The road forked. To her right, at the end of a long drive, was a residential enclave of five or six impressive mansions, all tucked within a manicured forest of palm trees. Two of the homes were lit. Which one Grillo occupied she didn’t know or care. The fork of the road that went left led around a slow curve that passed in front of the hospital complex. Sam went that way, walking as fast as her legs would carry her, determined to reach the entrance before anyone could question her.

A tingle danced across her shoulder blades. The thrill of malfeasance mixed with the fear of being caught, the combination as welcome to her as cold water on a hot, dry day. She felt the craving deep within her begin to come alive at the prospect of being sated. The mission to fetch the book, which carried all the potential for danger, had been a dull letdown. She’d walked into the revered woman’s home, found the book in a desk drawer, nabbed it, and walked out. No subs, no action. Boring. Any jackass in an environment suit could have done it, but Grillo insisted she go. He wanted the best, and he wanted no mistakes.

Sam just wanted to shoot something.

There were no guards at the entrance to the hospital. The thought that this might be a bad sign flitted through her mind like a fly batted away. No guards meant she had options.

The lobby was dark and sparsely furnished. Some fading sunlight just managed to illuminate the first few meters of the space through floor-to-ceiling glass panels that fronted the building. The panels were caked with dust and grime, giving the light that made it through a greasy red hue. Sam guessed there had once been rows of seats here, to provide someplace to sit for the families of patients. None remained, though, giving the room an empty-dance-hall feel.

She tucked the supposed holy book into a large pocket inside her combat vest, then tugged a flashlight from a pocket on her pants and flipped it on. It was a tiny thing, Special Forces issue, with eight small LEDs driven to blinding intensity by a Zigg ultracap the size of a penny. The beam made a white cone of illuminated dust that spread from her to an even disk on the far wall. A hallway, wide enough to fit two buses side by side, left the back of the room and receded into darkness. To her left, a long reception counter ran the width of the room, save for a small gap to allow staff through. There were two doors on the wall behind the desk, both closed. Between these was a directory, too coated in dust to be read. Sam walked to it, her boots grinding noisily on the dirty tile floor.

Somewhere above her came a deep thud, then the distinct sound of people walking and muffled voices. One voice, above the others, caught her attention. Stifled screams, the shrieks of intense pain. The footfalls changed their cadence. On stairs now, and getting louder.

Sam acted on pure instinct. She leapt up onto the counter and swung her legs over to the other side in one smooth motion, landing behind the barrier in a coiled stance. She clicked the flashlight off and stuffed it back in its pocket with her right hand, simultaneously drawing a hidden knife with her left hand from a sheath tucked inside her boot. Gripping the hilt in both hands to stifle the sound, she thumbed the switch and felt a brief flicker of satisfaction as the blade sprang out and clicked into position. Only then did it occur to her how ridiculous it was to hide and draw a weapon inside her own employer’s facility.

Somewhere down that long dark hallway a door was flung open. The sound of it echoed through the lobby, followed instantly by those gagged, anguished cries. Sam guessed by the number of footfalls that there were eight to ten people in the party. Beneath those sounds she could hear the scrape of feet being dragged across the floor.

That dragging sound transformed into a flurry of noises that Sam pictured as wild flailing. A few different people cursed and a lot of commotion followed, including what sounded like a barrage of punches and kicks. The struggle ended as quickly as it had started.

“You disappoint me,” a voice said. Grillo, she recognized immediately. “Lift him up.”

More sounds of struggle, though the spirit had gone out of it.

Grillo spoke again, his voice quiet, almost tender. “Tsk, tsk. This is behavior most unbecoming for a man of your stature.”

Against her better judgment, Samantha turned and slowly raised her head enough to peer over the top of the counter.

In the center of the lobby, a squad of guards was crowded around two men. One was Grillo, and he knelt in front of the captive. The man being held was unrecognizable in the weak light. The guards had him by his arms, so that his torso was lifted from the floor enough that he was eye level with the kneeling Grillo. His legs were splayed out on the floor behind him, lifeless. One foot lay at an unnatural angle, turned opposite the way of the knee.

“Will you not even consider my—” Grillo’s words were cut off when the captive man spit in his face.

A guard slugged the man with one meaty fist, and was coiled to strike again when Grillo stopped him with a simple upheld hand.

The punch had been a solid blow. Sam knew that sound well enough, but the captive hardly reacted. He just slumped and hung his head low. Blood trickled from his mouth.

Grillo took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the spit from his face. In the process he paused and plucked something from his hair.

“A tooth?” Grillo asked. “That’s a nice touch. If you don’t want them we could remove the rest for you. Gratis, of course.”

A few of the guards chuckled. The captive groaned. A sick, wet sound that made Samantha’s stomach churn.

“I really don’t understand your resistance,” Grillo said then, his tone light and conversational. “But your tolerance for pain is impressive, I must say. Enviable, even. So what we’d like to do now, if you have no objections, is retire to my home. I have your family waiting there.”

This produced a feeble cry.

“Oh yes, that’s right, I forgot to tell you that I invited them for a visit. A meal, a prayer, perhaps a happy reunion   with Papa. Would you like that? To see your family again with the one eye you have remaining?”

The broken man, to Sam’s amazement, tried again to lash out at Grillo. His arms were held fast by the guards, however.

Grillo leaned in close to the man, looked his face up and down. Sam recognized the point of decision before perhaps anyone else, and felt herself go cold. She held her breath as the knife emerged from Grillo’s pocket.

“Perhaps your ability to see is what clouds your mind,” Grillo said flatly. He took a handful of the man’s sweaty hair and jerked his head back so that they were staring at each other.

Sam lowered herself behind the counter and tried not to hear the sound of the blade puncturing flesh, or the guttural, inhuman cry of pain that followed. She heard liquid splash on the tile floor. Someone gagged. Sam wanted to, and fought to keep herself under control. She set her own knife on the floor and clasped both hands over her mouth, focused on keeping her breathing even and silent.

She heard the knife plunge again, then a third time, neither of which produced a reaction from the prisoner that she heard.

A vile silence descended over the lobby then. Sam closed her eyes and took a long breath through her nose.

“Well,” Grillo said. “Disappointing after all that work, gentlemen, but I’ve had another thought. A revelation, you might say.”

One of the guards chuckled.

“Toss him into the ocean,” Grillo said, his tone still light. “The knife, too. It’s soiled now.”

Sam heard the guards heave the body from the floor.

“Come up to the house after,” Grillo said. “Supper is on, and I do truly want his family to enjoy a fine meal when I break the news that beloved Papa has … well, I suppose we can say he’s ascended up the ladder for some important work above. That’s not too far from the truth, when you think about it.”

A few more stifled laughs. Then the party was on the move again. She heard the double doors at the lobby entrance open and close, and she was alone again.

Sam waited a full five minutes, partly to give Grillo and his entourage plenty of time to distance themselves from the hospital, and partly to allow the crippling tightness within her to unclench.

Sam had seen horrible things in her time as a scavenger. She’d done horrible things, never thinking twice. But that had been in battle, faced with subhuman foes that fought with relentless insanity fueled by the disease. She’d never seen or done anything like this. Even the fingers she’d once severed to fulfill a mission had been from a corpse, the corpse of what amounted to an animal.

Had she missed every hint of this side of him? She’d certainly ignored, willfully perhaps, every story and rumor of his ruthlessness in running the Maze. He’d tried to bribe her and the rest of the crew away from Skyler, years ago, too. Offered to pay Jake to let a little accident occur. Piety apparently only ran so deep, if it was even truly there at all.

If Grillo’s growing stance as some kind of spiritual leader was just a fa?ade, what would happen to Darwin when it broke? Hell, what would happen to her? She was a critical part of this machine.

The sound of Grillo’s knife sliding into the captive’s … Sam shuddered. She felt sick, her skin clammy. I’ve got to get out of here.

All thought of trying to contact Kelly left her mind. Sam sheathed her knife and slipped back over the counter. She crept across the lobby floor, avoiding the smeared trail of blood that now marred the surface, and went through the doors. Nobody was about, and Sam took off at a run for the main gate, sucking in deep, rapid breaths of fresh air as she went. She slowed when the gate and its guards came into view, and forced herself to walk calmly toward them.

The guard who’d let her in raised an eyebrow when he saw her approach. “Well? What did he think?”

“About what?” Sam growled.

“The book, of course. He must be overjoyed to finally have it.”

She’d forgotten all about the damn thing. Sam fished it out of her inner pocket and held it out in front of her. She’d never seen Grillo so excited, or anxious, about a mission into the Clear. Sister Haley’s legendary notebook, the original handwritten version she’d been famously forced to leave behind in her own flight to Darwin, left to burn as her house crumbled in a vandal’s flames. Even those who didn’t follow the religion knew the story. Grillo had apparently learned a bit more, somehow. The house hadn’t burned. The book might still be sitting there. “Sam, you have to recover it.”

So he could bask in the glorious words, or so he could trap Sister Haley in her little fabrication? Seeing Grillo through this new lens, Sam could see the angle. One way or another, he would use this to continue his rise within the cult. And she’d stupidly shown it to this guard, who’d probably told everyone he’d seen since about it. Her chance to ditch the thing had long passed. She handed it to him. “He wasn’t available. You give it to him, with my, um, regards.”

The man stared at the tome with such reverence that Sam wanted to slap him. “I don’t think I have to tell you,” Sam said, “to leave that bag sealed, to not lay even the tip of your fingernail on that thing. I’m trusting you here.”

“I’ll keep it safe,” he assured her.

“Good. Run it up to the house, and tell him I dropped it off.”

He nodded, and Sam walked away, toward home, toward sanity.
Belém, Brazil

5.DEC.2283

NO FUNCTIONAL POWER source served the building. There would be no shortcut via an elevator this time. The windowless stairwell was shrouded in pure blackness. Every step echoed along the huge vertical shaft. After thirty flights of stairs with a collapsible dolly cart in tow, Skyler’s thighs burned.

On three occasions Vanessa called a halt to the climb. Faint, phantom noises came from within the darkened floors of the office building. Rats, more than likely. Subhumans rarely sheltered themselves so far above street level. Dark stairs and strange sounds reminded Skyler of a dozen previous missions, most prominently the foray to Japan that changed his life forever, though he didn’t know it at the time.

At the end of each flight of steps they passed a door on the wall, labeled with the floor number and whatever business once occupied the space beyond. Most indicated various multinational banks, or local Brazilian financial institutions. At the fiftieth floor the sign brought a laugh to Skyler’s lips, one he quickly stifled. PLATZ GLOBAL FINANCE, it said. Each floor after that repeated the same name. The PGF logo on the outside of the building now made sense.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Skyler rounded a flight of the switchback stairs to see Vanessa waiting at one last door. The placard was in Portuguese, but it required no translation. They’d reached the roof access door.

A pictogram sign warned of high winds beyond, and as if to hammer home the point the door rattled slightly in its frame. With each gust, rain spattered against the other side of the barricade. Vanessa waited for Ana to join them, nodded to the group, and pushed open the door.

Outside the wind was stiff but not unmanageable, and anyway a thick guardrail ringed the entire roof. Rain sprayed around them in seemingly random directions, stirred by invisible vortices that roiled up the sides of all tall buildings.

Skyler’s boots crunched into thick gravel, soaked from the downpour but free of any standing pools. Drains hidden beneath the covering of white pebbles were functional, then, which implied the rooftop was likely stable. He scanned the roof, squinting as a spray of rainwater lashed his face. The surface he stood on ran around the outer edge, like a walkway almost, with that thick metal rail around the perimeter. Inset closer to the center of the roof was a raised square area, one meter high and twenty on a side, with a slightly angled roof of corrugated metal painted in bright white and slick with rain. There were ventilation ducts and electrical boxes along the low sidewall of the square, indicating that the space likely housed air-conditioning and elevator maintenance access.

The antenna assembly loomed diagonally across from the stairwell doorway’s position. Skyler studied the city as he walked around the edge of the roof, and quickly came to realize the fantastic vantage point this tower provided. Unlike the luxury hotel where they’d celebrated Ana’s birthday, which was boxed in on three sides and provided only a western view, this skyscraper had almost clear views in all directions. On a clear day, if Colton and the rest of his team brought their camera here, they could image a good part of the city without moving much at all.

Skyler saw the flaw in the plan immediately. Although the aura towers allowed the other scavenger teams to move about freely, no one yet knew how high their auras went. The assumption was, at least as high as the tower itself, but no one had yet seen the need to test it. So any such mission by the Eden crew would require environment suits. Not a deal breaker by any stretch, but perhaps a better plan would be for Skyler’s crew to borrow the camera for a day. He made a mental note to talk to Karl about testing the vertical height of the aura provided by the towers.

He and Pablo set to work on the comm antenna while Vanessa stood guard at the door. Ana, bored, began to wander the rest of the roof, studying the city below. As Skyler readied his gear, he watched her out of the corner of his eye until she returned to the stairwell door, said something to Vanessa, and reentered the stairwell.

Skyler was midway through cutting through the third of eight bolts when Ana emerged again. She shouted something. He cut power to the plasma torch and flipped protective goggles up from his eyes. Pablo already had his rifle in hand and was crouched defensively.

Ana was smiling, however. The largest smile Skyler had ever seen on her face. She raced over and grabbed his arm. “Forget that for a second—you have to see something!”

“See what? We’re halfway done.”

“Trust me,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument. Her eyes had that reckless look in them that gave Skyler cause for worry.

Intrigued, he set the torch down and removed the heavy protective gloves that went with it. Ana bounced back to the stairwell door, forced to wait, once she reached it, for Skyler and Pablo to catch up.

“Come on,” she urged.

Next to her, Vanessa shrugged to indicate her lack of knowledge and followed Ana into the darkness.

Skyler bounded down the steps only to find the door on the landing open. Ana stood there, her grin too wide to dismiss as simple mischief. She waved him inside, behind Vanessa.

“First door on the left,” Ana said.

Vanessa went through first, her flashlight on at full brightness now, and Skyler could hear a sharp gasp escape her lips. He turned the corner and added his own light to the room beyond.

Not just a mere room, he realized instantly, but an aircraft hangar.

The raised square on the rooftop above them was not a housing for machinery; it was a door. A massive, retractable door big enough to allow a VTOL aircraft in and out. The space reminded him of the cargo hangar on Gateway Station.

Like a child in a museum, Skyler stared in pure delight at the sleek vehicle that dominated the floor of the room. Even in the wan illumination their flashlights offered, he could tell the plane was brand-new. Or had been, before the fall. If it had been flown ten times he’d have been shocked to hear it.

The sharp nose cone tapered back from a needlepoint to form a narrow fuselage. Unlike the Melville, which had four engines dangling at the ends of as many wings, this bird had its vertical thrusters tucked up against the main body, below a pair of folded-back wings that would extend during normal flight. Two huge thrusters were mounted atop the craft, near the back by the rear fin.

“Oh,” Pablo said from behind, “nice.”

“Nice doesn’t begin to describe it,” Vanessa said. “It’s gorgeous.” She strolled along the length of the hangar, her flashlight dancing across the white body of the plane.

Skyler cleared his throat. “Workman Aeronautics Silver Flute,” he said to no one in particular. “A Mark 5, I think. Executive class.”

“Is it a good plane?” Ana asked from the doorway.

He turned to her and motioned with one hand for her to join him. When she did, he put an arm around her and squeezed. “Phenomenal. Very fast, and all latest flight systems and gadgets.”

Ana beamed, and though Skyler studied the plane intently, he could tell out of the corner of his eye that the girl was looking at him, not the aircraft.

“Mind you it’s not military spec. It’ll have a luxury passenger cabin, I suspect,” Skyler noted. “Minimal cargo space for luggage and whatnot. And no suborbital capability.”

“So it won’t work for us?” Ana asked.

Skyler squeezed her shoulder again to reassure her. “We can strip out most of the cabin, maybe even knock through to the cargo floor to expand the space. The lack of thermal plating means we can’t drop from space, but that’s really just a range-extending feature. Besides, the only planes built with that feature were for use in Darwin. It wouldn’t have been a big selling point here.” Absently he wondered what the craft’s maximum range was, his thoughts already on the three missing groups of towers.

“How will we get it out?” Vanessa asked, completing her circuit of the room. “I don’t see a manual override for the doors, and there’s no power.”

“Portable cap?” Pablo offered.

“That would get the doors open,” Skyler agreed, “but the bird is likely dry, too, and we’ll need a lot more juice to spool it.”

“So we run a line,” Ana said. “Find the nearest building with a reactor and run a cable up here.”

Skyler cringed. Sixty floors with a spool of high-gauge cable. The effort would take days of backbreaking work. Still, this was the first aircraft they’d found in operable shape. In the early, chaotic days of SUBS, if there was one thing the rumor of a safe Darwin caused, it was that anyone with access to an aircraft took flight for the city. Thousands of planes crashed either in the chaos of takeoff, or when their caps ran dry on the long flight. Still more reached Darwin only to find crowded skies and a protective local population that swarmed many of the vehicles on landing. Most of those who did make it became scavengers, the airport being the only place they could find refuge.

“Skyler?”

He glanced at her and saw a hope in her eyes he’d not noticed before. He knew then she relished the idea of getting away from Belém. Whatever travel she’d experienced as a child was long gone, and the journey she and her brother had undertaken was nothing short of a nightmare. The city of Belém was home for her now, and home was something to flee for a girl of twenty-two years.

“Yes. Hell yes, let’s do it,” Skyler said. “The least we can do is see if it will power up.”

Two technicians, formerly stationed on Anchor, were enlisted to help with the project. A good thing, too, since they devised a solution much simpler than Skyler’s: Restore power to the building.

Still, the job was complicated and difficult. They had to decouple a nearby shopping mall from its thor, snake heavy cable through Belém’s mottled streets, and find out where to make the necessary couplings in the electrical room three floors below the tower’s lobby. All of this had to be done with one loaned aura tower and occasional backup from the Tombstones scavenger crew. After four long days the techs were finally ready to flip the switch.

Skyler sat on the bumper of the APC, a half-eaten mango in his hand, the cabin’s small red LED providing the only light, since night had fallen an hour earlier. His radio crackled and one of the techs said, “Here we go!”

When the switch was thrown, Skyler thought the lights could probably be seen from space. Every other powered building in Belém was mostly dark, their bulbs burned out or systems simply switched off. Not this one.

As power coursed through its sixty floors, it seemed every single light in the building came on. The place glowed compared to the ghost town around it, and Skyler squinted in the sudden brightness pouring from the lobby.

“Wow,” Ana said from her perch on the bumper next to him. Pablo, seated on the ground a few meters away, let out an uncharacteristic hoot and raised one arm in celebration.

“Skyler.” Vanessa’s voice, on the radio.

He snatched it up and spoke into it. “Are you seeing this? It’s amazing.”

“You all better get inside,” she said. Vanessa had ventured into a building across the street, to relieve herself.

“Why?” he asked. The answer came to him before the word even left his lips. “Oh … subs. Yes, you’re right.”

“They’ll come like moths to a flame.”

“We’ll wait for you,” he said. “Hurry.”

She did. The woman emerged from the gray building behind a few seconds later. Skyler covered her while Ana and Pablo jogged to the bright lobby. The two of them stopped at the door and took up positions on either side, scanning the avenue in both directions with their rifles.

Within seconds Skyler heard the grunts, the strangely human howls. Then shadows were moving at the edge of the illumination the building provided.

Skyler fired a few warning shots into the murky darkness as he followed Vanessa to the door. The crackle of gunfire echoed off the vacant buildings around them and rolled along the downtown streets like thunder.

Pablo began to fire, and Ana followed suit. Their rifles chattered as if in an argument. Skyler urged Vanessa forward, content to let the others handle any of the creatures that advanced.

He reached the door and immediately took a knee behind Pablo. Between short, rapid breaths he steadied himself and brought his rifle to the ready.

The street outside grew quiet.

Skyler counted three fresh subhuman corpses among the skeletons that already littered the streets. At the edge of his vision, he saw shadows recede into the blackness beyond. However many diseased were out there, they seemed as mesmerized by the lights as Skyler had been, and in no mood to join their pack mates in the dirt.

Ana fired once more. A single, startling round, and when Skyler looked he saw another subhuman, loping on all fours, stagger and crumple into the ragged asphalt wasteland beneath its feet.

Silence followed. Skyler put the radio to his lips and held down the transmit button. “Guys,” he said, “see if you can find a master switch for the lighting. A breaker or something, I don’t care. Just kill these lights.”

“Copy that,” the response came.

Almost five minutes passed before the building suddenly plunged back into darkness. Other than a few emergency exit signs, and some accent lighting in the ceiling, the effect was complete.

They waited another ten before relaxing. Pablo agreed to escort the two techs and the aura tower back to camp, and would return at dawn if the others failed to get the aircraft out of the hangar bay.

“Clear us a place to land,” Skyler said with a hopeful grin. “Southeast corner is best, I think.”

Pablo nodded and they clasped hands. “Adios.”

“Adios,” Skyler answered.

Neither Ana nor Vanessa wanted to rest, so Skyler led them back to the fifty-ninth floor.

Inside the hangar, the Workman company aircraft looked like it had been staged there for some advertisement photo shoot. Dim red lights inset into the floor lit the plane from beneath, while bright white LEDs along the edge of the ceiling cast the top in a contrasting hue.

A control mechanism for the roof rested inside a metal box on the wall by the door. Skyler popped it open. Inside, a yellow button the size of an orange sat under a clear protective cover. He flipped the cover up and pressed the button once with his palm.

Gnashing of gears and the strains of atrophied equipment followed, died down, and then became a smooth hum as the segmented ceiling panels retracted along rails that were disguised as simple grooves in the wall.

A star-filled sky waited above, the moon hanging directly overhead. On the roof outside, red warning lights lit the edges of the portal in pulses of ruby.

“What now?” Ana asked, unable to keep the anticipation from her voice.

“Preflight,” Skyler said, his eyes on the aircraft. “This will take awhile. The bird’s been sitting here for almost six years. More, maybe. I want to be doubly sure she’s okay to fly.”

The two women nodded. He decided now was as good a time as any to walk them through the preparation process. A walk around the vehicle went first, but he’d done that previously and saw nothing to be concerned about. Then he moved in closer and ran a hand over the fuselage. Other than a healthy coat of dust, he found no sign of wear in the panels, no sign of rust or deterioration in the rivets. Indeed, he saw no indication at all that the bird had ever flown. It had, of course, since otherwise it wouldn’t be here.

After inspecting the thrust ducts and joints where the flaps attached to the wings, he went to the cabin door and opened it. It took some muscle to overcome the slight pressure difference, and then the interior came into view.

Smells hit him first. Leather and new carpet and industrial adhesives, like a new car. He inhaled a second time and tried to find any hint of rot or mold. Or worse, death. But he came up empty and exhaled with relief.

The inside of the craft was dark, save for light coming in the tinted windows. He fumbled around for a time before finding the stewards panel, and on that a master control for the cabin lights. He flipped it, and warm light filled the cabin.

“Power!” Ana chirped. “After all this time!”

“Indeed,” Skyler said. Ultracapacitors drained slowly when unused, and it didn’t surprise him that there would be enough residual spool to run the lights. If the cockpit computers worked, though, he’d be shocked.

“I could live here,” Vanessa said, strolling down the aisle toward the back of the plane.

Skyler studied the cabin closely for the first time. “Luxury” didn’t begin to describe it. There were only six seats, huge cushioned things done in black leather and accented with silver-gray ultrasuede, thick white stitching along every seam. Each seat had a retractable desk of beech wood, a terminal slate, and sensory goggles. A widescreen monitor covered the top half of the back wall. Below it was a recessed wet bar.

Impressive. Skyler couldn’t deny it. But his mind shifted quickly to the practical implications. The space was small, smaller than he would have thought. It would not hold much cargo, unless there was more to it than they could see. None of that mattered, though, if the flight systems were shot.

“Who wants to see the cockpit?” he asked.

Ana nodded eagerly. Vanessa ran a hand along the arm of one luxury chair before she finally turned and came to join them. A lawyer, and a senator’s daughter, she must have grown up with luxury of this sort, and she still had an affinity for it.

A modest restroom and small serving area separated the cabin from the cockpit. Their contents could be searched later.

Even though he expected it, Skyler swore under his breath when the computers and controls in the cockpit failed to initialize. Not enough power. A systems check would have been preferred before attaching a line to the cap spooler. He shrugged, decided the risk was worth it, and led his crew outside to show them how to open the port and attach the cable. Charging a civilian aircraft like this was only marginally more complicated than spooling a ground car.

Back inside, he tried the computers again and smiled as the screens came to life. The cockpit had few traditional instruments. Instead, shaped displays covered every surface. When off, they looked like part of the walls, ceiling, and dash. One display ran from knee level up to the base of the canopy and clearly contained the most important information: cap levels, range, and a flight planner. Understandably, the ultracapacitor levels were at zero percent, but at least it indicated “charging.” The estimated time to completion showed three question marks, so Skyler studied the other screens while he waited.

One display on the wall left of the pilot’s seat flashed an overall diagnostic readout, and various entries on it were turning from gray to green even as he watched. Only one line deviated: capacitor levels, which flashed yellow.

“Well?” Vanessa asked.

“Everything looks good. We’ll be able to fire up the motors in”—he glanced back at the charging estimate—“two hours.” The craft would be at 10 percent charge then, plenty to take it for a test flight and move it to Camp Exodus.

“What do we do in the meantime?” Ana asked.

Skyler turned to her. “We …”

She had her hands clasped just in front of her chin, almost as if in prayer, and she bounced gently on her tiptoes. Vanessa leaned against the doorway behind her, exhaustion plain on her face.

“Next,” Skyler said, “next we see if there’s anything to drink back there.”