Lies (Gone 3)

The sound grew louder, as the helicopter roared across the ocean.

Loud.

Louder.

Loud enough.

Sam tried to move and found that he could.

“No!” Nerezza cried.

Sam fired once. The beams hit Nerezza in the chest. It was enough to kill anyone. To burn a hole through any living thing.

But Nerezza did not burn. She simply looked at Sam with a look of cold hatred. Her eyes glowed green, a light so bright it almost rivaled Sam’s fire for brightness. And then, she was gone.

Drake watched as his feet grew back. But not quickly enough.

“Now, Drake,” Sam said. “Where were we?”

He felt Astrid at his side. “Do it,” she said grimly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

Sanjit had mastered the art of flying straight ahead.

He had almost mastered the art of aiming in one particular direction. You could do it with the pedals. So long as you were very, very gentle and very, very careful.

But he wasn’t exactly sure he knew how to stop.

Now he was rushing toward land at amazing speed. And he supposed he might as well keep going a while longer. Especially since he didn’t quite know how to stop. Exactly.

But then Virtue yelled, “Stop!”

“What?”

Virtue reached over, grabbed the cyclic, and pushed it hard to the left.

The helicopter banked suddenly, wildly, just as Sanjit noticed the fact that the sky directly ahead of them wasn’t exactly sky. In fact, when you looked at it from the right angle it looked an awful lot like a wall.

The helicopter screamed over the heads of a bunch of kids who looked like they were watching the sunset from the cliff.

The helicopter went fully sideways and the skids screeched along something that was very definitely not sky.

Then it was free again but still sideways and sinking fast toward the ground. An empty pool, tennis courts, rooftops flashed by in a split second.

Sanjit eased the cyclic back to the right but completely forgot about the pedals. The helicopter spun a 360 in the air, slowed, fought its way up, and then hovered in midair.

“I think I’m going to land,” Sanjit said.

The helicopter came down with a crash. The plastic of the canopy cracked and starred. Sanjit felt as if his spine had been jackhammered.

He switched off the engine.

Virtue was staring and shaking and maybe mumbling something.

Sanjit twisted in his seat.

“You guys okay? Bowie? Pixie? Peace?”