Into the Still Blue (8 page)

“A Dragonwing is built to do two things,” Soren continued. “One, catch anything it wants, and two, destroy it. If they’re running patrols, then they’re ready for us. At the very least it means they haven’t forgotten we’re out here. There’s no way we can get close without drawing them into a fight. If that happens, we’re done for. We’d be annihilated. Wouldn’t we, Jup?”

Jupiter startled, surprised to hear his name. Then he nodded. “Definitely. Very annihilated.”

“Twig and I got close,” Roar said. He stood away from the group, alone by the open bay door, his dark clothes blending into the darkness. “It’s not hard to do on foot.”

A gust of cool air blew into the Hover. It smelled more like rain by the hour.

“You want to go on foot?” Soren said. “All right, we could try that. We could run up and throw spears at the Komodo’s steel walls. Wait. Do you guys have any of those catapult things? Those are champ.”

Roar shrugged—he couldn’t care less about Soren’s comment—but Aria winced.

Perry remembered her making similar biting comments when they’d first met. That felt like a long while ago, though it’d only been half a year.

“What do you recommend, Soren?” he said tightly. He had far less tolerance for Soren than Aria did.

“I recommend we get a Hover. There’s no way we’re breaking into the Komodo without one. And I mean a Dragonwing, not this flying heap. But I hate to break the news to all of you: there’s
no way
we’re getting one.”

“There are a bunch of Dragonwings outside the Komodo, aren’t there?” Brooke said. “We could divide up. Some of us could distract the patrol and give the rest of you a chance to get close to the fleet on foot.”

Soren snorted. “You can’t just walk up and take a Hovercraft. And a distraction would never work. Any disturbance on a routine patrol would get reported back to the command leader at the Komodo. If you create a diversion, you’re basically putting everyone on high alert.”

“What if we contact them first?” Aria said.

“And say what? Our feelings were hurt when you tried to kill us?”

Perry leaned forward, forcing himself to ignore Soren. “What are you thinking?” he asked Aria.

“That we’re approaching this the wrong way,” she said. “We have to get way ahead of them.” She looked at Soren. “Can you hack into their communications from this ship?”

“Honestly, Aria, sometimes I feel like you don’t even know me.”

“Answer,”
Perry snapped.

“
Yes
. I can.” Soren looked at her. “For the last time, hopefully: I can hack
anything
.”

Aria smiled. “Perfect.”

9

H
er plan was this: they would transmit a false message to the Dragonwing, sending the patrol on a mission to assist a downed Belswan—which they would pretend to be.

If the order came from a Dweller commander, Aria reasoned, the pilots would have no reason to check it. When the patrol unit came to assist, they’d walk into an ambush. Aria and Perry would have their team waiting, ready to overpower the crew. They’d take over the patrol ship and then return to the Komodo disguised as the regular team.

It was the same way she’d entered Bliss when she’d been searching for her mother. She’d put on a Guardian uniform and walked right in.

Why fight the enemy when you could fool them?

“I like it,” Roar said, when she’d finished explaining. “It’s a damn good plan.”

Aria caught his eye and smiled in thanks.

“It would get us close,” Perry said, nodding. “Closer than any other option we have.”

Aria looked at Soren, who stared into space, lost in thought. She wondered what he thought of the plan most of all.

“It all depends on you,” she said. “The only way it’ll work is if you break into the Komodo’s communications system.”

Soren looked at her and nodded. “I can do it. No problem.”

She never doubted it. For all the trouble he was, Soren had one skill she could always count on. In a way, it was what had started everything.

Soren stood. The glazed look in his eyes was gone, replaced with fevered anticipation of the challenge. “I’m going to run a basic vulnerability analysis to get a look at the Komodo’s attack surface.”

Aria had no clue what that meant. Judging by the blank faces around her, she wasn’t alone.

Soren rolled his eyes and wiggled his fingers in the air. “You know. Feel the security system up a little to see what I’m dealing with.”

A laugh burst out of Jupiter, but he muffled it when Perry stood.

“Uh, sorry,” Jupiter said.

She forgot how commanding Perry could be. How he could quiet people with a look when he chose to.

“Get to work, Soren,” he said, and then turned to Brooke and Roar. “Let’s start outside. I want a full sweep of the terrain. If we’re going to draw them to us, I want to be in the strongest position possible.”

Brooke looked at Soren and wiggled her fingers in the air, parroting his gesture. “That means we’re going to feel up the surrounding area a little, Dweller. See what we’re dealing with.”

Soren’s eyes never left Brooke as she grabbed her bow and headed outside with Perry and Roar.

“What was her name again?” he asked when she was gone.

Aria stood, trying to hide a smile. “Laurel,” she answered on a whim. Soren irritated everyone else. Let him be on the receiving end for once. Inspired, she added, “I think she likes you, Soren.”

Then she jogged outside.

Perry was buckling a black belt with a Dweller pistol in the holster. He seemed comfortable with carrying the weapon, though he’d held it for the first time only a week ago. His bow and quiver also rested at his feet. Aria smiled to herself. Instead of choosing a weapon from her world or his, he’d decided to take both.

“Do you need me?” she said. She could scout as well as Roar and Brooke, who had already disappeared into the darkness.

Perry looked up. His hair was tied back with a leather strip, but a piece fell forward, a blond wave coming to rest at his eyebrow. “You want the truth?”

Aria braced herself for a comment about her arm. “Always.”

“That’s my answer. But it’s probably better for you to keep an eye on things here.” He grinned, sweeping his bow and quiver over his shoulder. “I’d do it, but I’m worried my fist might find Soren’s face.”

As she watched him walk away, she tried to shake off the feeling that he’d left too quickly. He’d just said he needed her always. Why couldn’t she focus on that?

When he reached the edge of the woods, she called out, “Be careful.”

She knew he would be. It was just a way to stall. To feel close to him a little longer.

He looked back, still walking, and pressed a hand to his heart.

In the cockpit, Soren had put on his Smarteye.

“I brought it out of Reverie,” he said. “Thought it might come in handy.”

She leaned against the threshold and pursed her lips, disliking his choice of words.

If something
handy
was useful, what did that mean for her, with her lame hand?

Soren mistook her expression, thinking she objected to his use of the Smarteye. “I don’t
need
it or anything. But I can work ten times faster with it.”

“I know,” she said, dropping into the other seat. “It’s fine. Use whatever you have to.”

Aria watched him for a while. Soren alternated between periods of inward focus when he was working through the Smarteye and bursts of frantic swiping at the commands on the Belswan’s controls. He was completely different when he had a task in front of him, a puzzle to solve.

She stared through the windshield at the trees tossing back and forth as anxiety began to build inside her. There were dangers in those woods. Bands of violent drifters. Aether storms that struck suddenly. She couldn’t get the image of Perry with his hand over his heart out of her mind.

Restless, she left the cockpit and rummaged in the rear storage room for field meals—prepackaged rations. Aria took spaghetti for herself and Jupiter, and tossed a meatloaf pack to Soren.

She sat at the top of the ramp, where she’d be able to see Perry, Roar, and Brooke when they returned. The trees shifted, their branches swaying and creaking as the wind rose.

“These woods look so strange,” Jupiter said, joining her.

“That’s because they’re real.”

Jupiter flicked his head to the side, tossed his shaggy hair out of his face. “Right . . . that makes sense.”

As they fell into silence, she found herself straining to see into the darkened woods. Why hadn’t they come back yet?

She ate slowly, though her stomach rumbled. The pain in her arm had intensified, leaving her a little nauseous, and eating with her left hand took longer. The food, which only tasted slightly better than dirt, didn’t help matters.

Jupiter finished before she did and found two twigs to use as drumsticks. “So, are you still singing?” he asked as he tapped a rhythm against the ramp.

“Not very much. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

Aria recognized the beat of the song “Winged Hearts Collide”—Roar’s favorite by the Tilted Green Bottles—but she had no urge to sing. The metallic clatter rattled in her ears. She felt like those twigs were banging against her brain, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about Roar and worrying about him.

“That’s too bad. Your voice is the best.”

“Thanks, Jup.”

Jupiter broke rhythm, pausing to rub his eye as though looking for the Smarteye that was no longer there. “You think Rune is all right? Caleb and the rest of everyone?”

She nodded, thinking of Molly. “They’re in good hands.”

Aria heard herself and winced. Was every stupid expression about stupid hands?

“You know, Beethoven?” Jupiter said. “He was deaf— mostly deaf or something—and he had to hear through percussion and conductivity and stuff. I just keep thinking about him, you know? If he was able to do that, then I should be able to figure this out.”

“Figure what out?”

“Not having the Realms anymore. I keep trying to fraction. I keep thinking my Smarteye is malfunctioning, and it’s kind of like I’ve gone deaf. Like there’s this huge missing piece. Then I remember this is all we have. Real is all that’s left.”

“It’ll get easier.”

Jupiter stopped drumming. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to complain or sound ungrateful or anything.”

“Ungrateful?”

“You saved my life.”

“You didn’t sound ungrateful. And you don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to act a certain way.”

Anxiety bled through her words. She’d meant to reassure him, but it sounded like she was scolding him. She looked down, hiding her grimace, and caught movement at the edge of her vision.

The fingers of her injured hand were twitching. She’d had no idea.

She tried to make a fist, hoping this meant she was healing. Instead of her fingers curling, they stopped moving. Her hand wasn’t even part of her.

Tears blurred her vision, and she didn’t think.

She jumped up and ran down the ramp, plunging into the night.

10