And water, it seemed.
Kale kept explaining that one concrete military advantage could upset the standoff and make the New Eastern Bloc back down. That was the hope of the Streakers. The only things standing in the way were the government trials—and Chase’s famed recklessness.
She dialed her mother’s number. The screen lit up with the pale purple wall in Janice’s living room, ringing and ringing. The color matched Janice’s always-polished nails, and Chase remembered being tiny and trying to hold her mother’s hand to cross the street. Trying and failing.
The machine asked if she wanted to leave a message.
“Sure.” After the beep, Chase sat taller. “What’s up, Janice? You’re probably out. Want to hear a laugh? I got Tourn’s attention the other day by being an idiot.” It wasn’t funny, not even in the jovial way she was trying to say it. Chase had screwed up big-time. Enough to jeopardize the cold war ceasefire, but what felt so much worse was she didn’t know how to stop herself from doing the same thing again. Maybe she should lose her wings…
Her focus blurred. Why was she reaching out to Janice anyway?
Because Janice knew that Tourn was her father, and that made her one of three people who knew the truth. That’s why.
Kale and Pippin were the other two. Dr. Ritz knew as well, but Chase easily discounted the woman—she’d simply read it in Chase’s file. Pippin had gotten the secret out of her one night during freshman year after she’d beat the snot out of two of her classmates. She had caught them discussing “Tourn the Mass Murderer” and had turned feral until Pippin pulled her off. He’d proven his best friend–hood that moment by taking a solemn oath to act like he didn’t know for the rest of eternity.
Chase swallowed, her throat sticky. That memory never made sense. Her father had killed people. Admittedly. Why in the world would she defend him? And the academy was her home now. Pippin was her family. She should just forget about Michigan and Janice. And Tourn.
Easier said than done. Her parents were a gray cloud she couldn’t shirk.
Chase deleted the message like all the others, feeling as unanswered as her mother’s line.
? ? ?
The hangar filled with screams. Shouts. Cries.
Chase dropped her tools. She’d been helping the engineers rebuild Dragon’s landing gear, but all that was forgotten as the red alarm light blared.
Something had happened.
Chase rushed into action, gasping. It was only now with everyone yelling that she realized she’d been holding her breath since Pippin explained what her landing in Canada could mean: Ri Xiong Di retaliation.
She waited before the hangar doors with the rest of the airmen while her father’s words shook her thoughts. The Second Cold War was heating up. Tourn would be so pleased. She pictured him lording over some base. Kale had mentioned Texas once, but Chase only wanted to know where it was so she didn’t fly over it.
The hangar doors peeled open, blasting Arctic wind and spitting ice flecks. Chase buried her face in her sleeve and pushed toward the action. An older fighter jet, an Eagle, taxied in. Hoses dumped white foam on its smoking engines.
Below the cockpit, a jagged hole bled greasy liquid and a streak of red that could be nothing other than blood.
“Get that canopy open!” someone yelled. “Get Erricks out! Get him out!”
Ramp stairs were pushed up to the cockpit, and ground crew pressed in. They hammered at the canopy joint with crowbars, but it was wedged shut from the damage to the body. An engineer called for a welding torch, and Chase ran back to retrieve the one they had been using on Dragon. She handed it to the airman, and he cast a cold look at her. “Get out of here, cadet! You’re in the way.”
Chase stumbled back, a little too blown by the situation to register the insult. They finally wrenched the canopy open and strapped the pilot to a stretcher. He was making terrible animal sounds and grabbing at his leg, which had gotten splintered into the wreckage. It didn’t look like a leg anymore. More like meat smashed up with a zoom bag.
They ran him toward the infirmary.
Chase choked on the smoke still pouring from the Eagle. A cadet tugged on the back of Chase’s uniform, pulling her away from the scene of destruction. She went with him, too overwhelmed to register anything outside of what she had just witnessed.
“What happened?” she asked blindly. A familiar voice answered, but not the kind of familiar that eased her nerves.
“That’s red drone damage,” Tanner said. “The Eagle was running surveillance over the North Pole. Trying to spy from the backyard. Can’t believe they thought that’d work.”
A greenish bruise still highlighted his eye, reminding Chase of the pummeling he took from Sylph two weeks ago. “We should get out of here before they suspend our flight privileges.” His voice was matter of fact, in a tone that always felt like a personality trait.
They walked together, which felt as strange as it should. Chase bridged the gap from the smoke of the real war to the internal fight she felt when she looked at Tanner. Last semester, he had tutored her in history when she couldn’t get her head around which country Ri Xiong Di bought first. And when his cute Asian-American features stirred up some cultural curiosity, she’d started doing the same things with him that she now did with Riot.
“Will it mean war?” Chase asked. “Put us over the edge?”
“No. The bastards knew what they were doing. They didn’t kill the pilot, did they? They let him limp back here to show us a taste of what they’re capable of. It’s probably just retaliation. They’re flexing their muscles at us.”
Retaliation for Chase’s landing in Canada?
Her breath went tight. This had to be her fault. Had Ri Xiong Di attacked the Canadian base too? Did Ri Xiong Di find a way to knock Phoenix out of the sky? All of a sudden, the long-haired image of Arrow didn’t make her want to roll her eyes.