Freefly (30 page)

She says all of this in a hurry, the words quick and sharp, leaving me blinking and stunned.  Before I know it I’m kissing her, twining my fingers in her hair, feeling a rush of energy in my stomach as we whoosh up several feet.  Then it dawns on me that her words contained the same essence as her strange expression:  finality.  I pull away. 

“You’re still in trouble,” I say, breathing heavily. 

She says nothing.

“What happened at the Tower?” I say again.

She gazes at the trees blurring beneath us, then pulls her eyes up.  “I told them I wasn’t coming back.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning...”  She draws her hand to the back of her neck.  “I don’t have much time left.”

“
What?
”

She stares at me, looking both scared and resolved. 

“Sammie, no.  You’ve got to go back to the Tower!”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?  You’re going to die!”

“That’s kind of the whole idea.”

This time, it’s me who grasps
her
shoulders.  “Are you telling me you did this on purpose?”

She shrugs slightly, the movement so casual it infuriates me.  “It seemed like the only way,” she says.

“The only way to
what? 
Ruin my life?”

“Get you your life
back
.  Without me, no one chases you.  No one holds you hostage and uses you as bait.”

“I don’t want a life without you.”

“I’m a
killer
.”

I fling my hands off of her shoulders and turn away.  When I speak again, I cannot keep the anger from my voice.  “So that’s what this is about.” 

“I kill.  I get people killed.  I ruin people’s lives.  I’m no better than the people back at the Tower, or the people at the white place.”

“Do you think any of them would even
consider
your current plan?” I say.  “The very fact that you want to get yourself
blown up
for me proves you’re not like that.  Jiminy wouldn’t have died for someone like that.  I wouldn’t have abandoned my microbiology textbook for someone like that.”

She laughs, though her eyes fill with tears.  “Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.  Didn’t you just call me brilliant?”

She laughs again.  Then her expression grows fearful.  “It’s too late.  I only have a half an hour left
—
”

She clutches at her temples.  We plummet. 

Sammie

I know I shouldn’t be unconscious even as I am.  Damien and I were high up, a good hundred feet off the ground.  Falling would mean death for the both of us.  Am I already dead?  No.  Pain spreads between my shoulder blades and pulses in one of my arms.  Death would be painless.  Wouldn’t it? 

I think of Damien:  the hard line of his cheek, the way his black hair flops in front of his eyes, the studious furrow of his brow.  He’s right:  I’m not like Thorne, or the boss.  For some reason, I can see this clearly now.  Maybe it’s because I’m willing to sacrifice myself, like Damien said.  Maybe it’s because I can feel my love for him tangibly, the way you can feel someone drape a blanket over you, and don’t think that that sort of love can coexist with the need to succeed at all costs. 

I want to see Damien again. 
One last time.  I need to know he’s okay. 

I force my eyelids open.  Sunlight shines through the tiny gaps in the ceiling of trees above us, striking my eyes and making me blink.  The pain in my head is thunderous.  I glance to my right.  Damien is there, sprawled on his back.  A long cut slashes across the side of his face, probably from our fall through the trees.  The trees that likely saved our lives. 

My life, anyway.  Is he alive?  The idea that he might not be makes me panic.

“Damien.”  My voice is scratchy and low.  “
Damien
.”

He inhales sharply, lifting one hand to the cut on his face.  I exhale.  The device at the back of my neck begins to vibrate, like a cell phone receiving a call.  Knowing that Damien is alive, knowing, once I’m gone, that the scientists will no longer chase him, I shut my eyes. 
 

Damien

I wake up gasping, certain that I’ve died, summoned out of slumber by Sammie’s voice calling my name.  A sharp pain sears my forehead.  I reach up and touch it with my fingers, only to feel moisture.  Have I actually survived the fall?  I jerk upright, causing pain to cascade down my neck.  Sammie is near me, but I must have been imagining her voice:  her eyes are closed.  Is she alive?  I flip onto my hands and knees and crawl to her side, my entire body aching.  She breathes shallowly, with many small cuts on her face, and one large one running down the length of her right arm.  A strange noise, like a purr, vibrates in the air over and over.  I listen carefully.  Is it coming from Sammie?  Confused, I lay one hand on her forearm.  A vibration thrums beneath my fingers.  I slide my fingers up her arm, and the vibration grows stronger.  When I reach beneath her head and touch the back of her neck, it is positively a rumble. 

The device is going to go off. 

I leap to my feet.  Instantly, a wave of nausea washes over me.  I vomit metallic liquid onto the leaf-covered ground.  Wiping my mouth, I look at my surroundings.  Trees crowd around us, their branches thick with leaves.  Somewhere nearby, a stream flows, quietly gurgling.  We are alone.

I stumble toward Sammie.  In the slanting sunlight, her hair looks almost white, fanned out behind her head.  Her skin is so pale and fragile-looking that it’s a wonder she did not emerge from the fall with more gashes.  I crouch beside her and pick her up, slinging one hand beneath her knees and the other behind her shoulder blades.  Breathing hard, I stand up straight and look around again, as if in the intervening seconds something helpful might have appeared.  Nothing has. 

I take off at a jog.  Sammie is limp in my arms, her body slumping against my chest.  The vibrations of the device shiver through me.  How long do I have?  How will I stop the explosion?  I take comfort in the fact that, if the device goes off right at this moment, it will probably take me with it. 

Up ahead, the trees seem to thin.  Light pours into the woods, like a shrine.  I launch forward with renewed energy.  Maybe it’s a house, or a building. 

I emerge into the clearing to find a house under construction.  It’s nearly complete, with one story and a porch, but white plastic covers the walls instead of siding, and the doors and windows yawn open, without glass.  The area surrounding the house has a floor of tightly packed orange dirt.  A red pickup truck sits outside, as well as a long blue trailer.  As carefully as I can, I set Sammie down in the dirt and rush toward the trailer.  My heart scampers within me.  Any second, Sammie could die.

I bash into the trailer’s door, finding it locked.  I take a few steps back and bash into it again, and this time burst inside.  A desk sits in the center of the room, surrounded by filing cabinets and a few exhausted-looking armchairs.  For a moment, despair sings through me:  there is nothing in here that can help me.  Then I see it, latched onto a wall:  a bright red AED
—
automatic external defibrillator
—
which is used to administer electric shocks to a person having a heart attack.  My mind races with possibilities.  I snatch the AED off the wall and rush back outside.

Sammie lies where I left her.  I collapse onto my knees and place the AED on the ground.  Trying hard to be gentle in spite of my panic, I grasp her shoulder and flip her onto her stomach, causing her to groan.  I push her hair off of the back of her neck.  The device is barely noticeable, a small gray rectangle beneath her skin.  I will need something to conduct electricity between it and the AED.  Perhaps, if I do this right, the shock will kill the device. 

I clamber to my feet and sprint toward the nearly finished house.  Sure enough, many nails and screws litter the dirt that surrounds it.  I snatch a nail and rush back to Sammie.  My stomach is already lurching as I drop to my knees:  I am about to stick a nail into the neck of the person I love.  The idea makes me cringe, but how else will I conduct electricity directly from the AED to the explosive?  I polish the nail with the hem of my T-shirt, then hold it between my thumb and forefinger to examine it.  It is roughly three inches long, with a sharp tip and a flat head.  I am certain I read somewhere that nails are made of steel, and steel is made of mostly iron, which is a highly conductive metal.  Silver would be better, but I have to make do with what I have. 

Clenching my jaw, I align the tip of the nail with the device in Sammie’s neck.  The device is slightly off center, to the left of her spine, in the bit of fleshy tissue above her shoulder blade.  I plunge the nail into her neck until the tip strikes the device.  My hand is shaking as I let go of the nail, which sticks out of her skin, embedded.  The edges of my vision darken.  I bite on my lower lip, using the pain to draw myself back into focus.

I reach for the AED and rip open its red exterior.  Inside, two round, white pads sit atop a device that looks a little like an answering machine, with a small screen and two buttons.  One of them displays a power sign.  I punch it. 

“PLACE ONE PAD ONTO PATIENT’S CHEST,” reads the screen. 

I grab one of the pads and pull it away from the machine, to which it is connected by a spiraling black wire.  A sheet of wax paper sticks to the pad, and I rip it off, revealing a layer of glue underneath it.  Instead of placing the pad on Sammie’s chest, I set it on top of the nail head.

“PLACE THE SECOND PAD ONTO THE PATIENT’S SIDE,” reads the screen. 

I remove the second pad and toss it to the ground.  Finally, the AED reads, “PRESS SHOCK BUTTON.”  I reach for the button, which contains a small lightning bolt that unnerves me.  What if this goes wrong?  What if the shock simply causes the device to detonate?  I put my fingers on the button, feeling the cool plastic.  If I do not try this, Sammie will die anyway. 

“Please stay alive.”

I push.  The AED lurches, and Sammie jolts.  Then she is perfectly still, her hair covering part of her face.  It is too quiet.  Then I realize:  the vibrations have stopped.  I rip the nail from Sammie’s neck and place the tips of my fingers onto her skin.  The device does not rumble.  I’ve done it. 

“Sammie!” I say, my heart jumping.  “I deactivated it!” 

There is no response from her.  I place my hand under her shoulder and flip her onto her back, her hair falling away from her face.  She is impossibly pale.  The cuts on her face seem a blazing shade of red.  Her eyelids don’t flutter, and her chest doesn’t move. 

“
Sammie
.”

I place my hand over her chest.  No heartbeat thumps beneath it.  My breath whooshes from my lungs, as if I have been punched in the gut. 
There is no heartbeat.

In the distance, there is a rumbling, like the crush of tires over a gravel road.  A blue pickup drifts into the clearing and stops.  Four men in construction uniforms tumble out, first slowly, with the lethargy of late afternoon, then quickly, as they spot Sammie and me.  They run toward us, their boots thudding against the dirt.  The first of them to reach us, a man with a brown beard, hurls himself onto his knees beside me. 

“What happened?” he says, clutching at Sammie’s wrist.