Fall of Hades (25 page)

“Thank you.”

Taylor glanced at me, then went to the back of the plane. After a moment Cassy said, “That was nice of her.”

“She's a good person,” I said.

“I know.” She closed her eyes again. “I've wondered what it felt like to be on the other side of my power. It's not so great.”

“You do a better job of not hurting people,” I said.

“I'll have to remember to go easy.”

“I think you just went through more than most.”

She said softly, “I know. I think I died.”

“What?”

“My heart stopped, right?”

I looked at her quizzically. “Yes, but you were unconscious. How did you know that?”

“My body was unconscious, but I wasn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“I left my body. I was, like, floating above my body and I could see what everyone was doing. You reclined my seat and Gervaso gave me CPR. Ian shouted from the front that my heart was stopped and that blood wasn't getting to my brain. Then you shocked me.”

I looked at her in amazement. “That's exactly what happened.”

“I could see everything. Ostin was working on a crossword puzzle. He was writing
P
-
R
-
O
-
B
-
O
-
S
-something.”

I looked back over my seat. “Ostin.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you doing a crossword puzzle?”

“I was. Why?”

“Did you write . . .” I looked at Cassy. “What was that?”

“Probos . . . ,” she said, struggling with the word.

“‘Proboscis,'” Ostin said. “Eleven across, a nine-letter word for a mammal's long nose or snout. That's when I stopped to see how you were. How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess,” she said, leaving Ostin baffled. She looked back at me. “The really weird thing, I was able to go outside the plane and travel as fast as it was. Even faster. I went to the front of the plane and watched the pilots. The younger one is asleep. The other was eating a Hershey's chocolate bar.” Her brow fell. “Do you think I was dead?”

“I've heard that when you die, you're supposed to see a light.”

“I didn't see it,” she said. “But maybe it's because I wasn't supposed to die.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I'm glad it wasn't your time.”

“That's a good omen, right? About our mission?”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I think so.”

Cassy took in a deep breath. “I still don't feel very good. I think I'll rest a little.” She lay back and closed her eyes. Within a few minutes she was asleep. I picked up a
Popular Science
magazine and read.

About a half hour later she woke, rubbing her eyes with her hand.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, setting down my magazine.

“Better.”

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“What's it like, living with the voice?”

“I've been treated really well. I guess I've always considered myself lucky.”

“In what way?”

“You know, the Elgen could have found me first. I might have been fighting against you right now instead of with you.”

“What do you do with the voice?”

“I'm mostly his bodyguard. This mission is one of the few times I've left him.”

“He made you come?”

“No. I volunteered.”

“Really? You volunteered for this? Didn't you know how dangerous it was?”

She nodded. “I knew.”

“Then why would you volunteer?”

“Why did you?”

I shrugged. “Someone had to do it.”

“Exactly.” A moment later she added, “And maybe I was bored.”

“If you were bored, you could have found something safer to do than attacking the Elgen. Like skydiving without a parachute.”

She laughed. “I think there was also some guilt involved.”

“Who made you feel guilty?”

“You. Not that I'm blaming you. It's just, you and your friends have been out here fighting this whole time while I'm living safe and in luxury. When I was little, the voice read a quote to me. It was something like, ‘You should be ashamed to die without winning some victory for humanity.'”

I looked at her with surprise. “I know that quote. I think it was important to my father.”

She slightly nodded. “Then you understand why I needed to prove myself.”

“Proving yourself could cost you your life. Is it worth it?”

She smiled a half smile. “Ask me that
after
I die.”

I grinned.

“I think the real question is, is an unproven life worth living?”

As I thought about the question, she touched my arm. “I think I should give Taylor her seat back.” She started to stand up.

“Cassy. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being courageous.”

She smiled. “I had good examples.” She walked slowly back to her seat, stopping to thank Taylor on the way.

Taylor came back over and sat by me. “She's really nice. I feel like such a jerk.”

“I'm the one who almost killed her.”

We landed in Sydney late in the afternoon, though the rain was torrential and the skies were so overcast that it almost looked like night. The storm was still raging a few hundred miles northeast of us, so there wasn't much we could do but wait it out and hope the storm died before the Glows did.

Sydney, Australia

I
should have felt safer in Australia than Taiwan. Much safer. As far as we knew, the Elgen had no presence in the country, and, except for the accent, we pretty much looked and sounded like everyone else.

But I didn't feel safer. Maybe it had nothing to do with Australia. Maybe it was just because the clock was ticking down on our mission and we were closer to Tuvalu than we'd ever been.

Still, I'd noticed that in spite of the stress, I wasn't ticking as much as usual. Instead of blinking or gulping, I was sparking more. I wondered if it was just because I was becoming more electric or if my Tourette's was taking a different form.

The weather might have had something to do with my anxiety as well. I think I might have a bit of SAD—seasonal affective disorder—which is just an Ostin way of saying I get blue when the skies aren't blue. And the skies were definitely not blue. I don't think that I'd ever seen it rain so hard in my life. Not in Idaho, at least. The rain was practically horizontal.

It was a challenge getting Zeus off the plane. First, we couldn't land because the runways were backed up because of lightning striking the tarmac. Then there was no hangar for the plane—so even if we had wanted to make a run for the terminal, Zeus still had to wait for a break in the weather, which, unfortunately, didn't come until about two hours later. Even then he had to wear a rain poncho and carry an umbrella. After more than twelve hours on the plane, we were past exhausted.

*  *  *

We stayed at a four-star hotel on the Sydney Cove across from the famous Sydney Opera House, which made McKenna really happy. It was one of her goals to see the opera house, and now she could see it from her hotel room.

I didn't care much about the scenery. I just couldn't wait to lie down in a real bed. After we got into our room, Ostin said, “So, Michael, going through this storm got me thinking.”

“Thinking or talking?”

He ignored my question. “I've been thinking about what would happen to you if you were struck by lightning.”

If someone else had said that, I would have thought they were crazy, but it was Ostin and that's just the way his mind worked. He'd think about the strangest scenarios and try to figure them out, which is why he came in handy in weird places like Elgen Starxource plants and Peruvian prison cells.

“Probably the same thing that would happen to anyone else,” I said.

“I'm not so sure about that,” he said. “Did you know that less than ten percent of ordinary people struck by lightning die? But you're not ordinary. You might be able to survive a direct strike.”

“I'd rather not find out,” I said, closing my eyes and hoping he'd do the same with his mouth.

“I'm not saying you should walk out into a storm with a lightning rod or anything, but it would be interesting to find out. Of course there's the heat problem. Did you know that the air around a lightning strike is superheated to more than thirty-three thousand degrees Celsius? That's more than four times hotter than the surface of the sun. That makes McKenna seem like a heating pad. I mean, not literally, but at least her power.” He sat down on the near side of his bed. “Just imagine if you were able to absorb that much electricity like you did in the rat bowl. You would be a god.”

“I'm not a god.”

“With that much electricity people would think you were. People have always associated lightning with gods. That's why the most powerful Greek god was Zeus, the god of lightning. And there was Thor in Norse mythology, Ukko in Finland, Tlaloc the Aztec god, and Indra the Hindu god, all gods of lightning. I could go on.”

“Please don't.”

“I'm just saying, with that much electricity, you could conquer the world.”

“For now I'd be happy to conquer this pillow.”

Ostin lay back. “It would be cool. Michael the god.”

It's the last thing I heard before falling asleep.

*  *  *

I woke to thunder the next morning.
More rain
, I thought. I walked to the window and opened the blinds. In spite of the thunder, the weather had improved some. There were dark clouds, but it was only lightly sprinkling. Twelve stories below I could see the wet street and harbor buzzing with traffic.

Ostin was still asleep, so I quietly took a shower and got dressed. As I was putting on my shoes, our room phone rang. It was Taylor.

“What are you guys doing today?” she asked.

“We haven't made any plans yet. Ostin's still asleep.”

“Is that him snoring?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. You weren't kidding. I thought that was thunder.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So, the concierge told us about a really cool wildlife refuge not too far from here. They have koalas and kangaroos.”

“I'm in. Did you ask Gervaso if we could go?”

“He said that the pilots are still waiting on the weather, so we can do whatever we want.”

“Where are you now?”

“We're just about to get breakfast. We're in the dining room in the lobby. Want to join us?”

“Yeah. I'll wake Ostin. See you in a minute.”

I woke Ostin and told him that I'd meet him in the first-floor restaurant.

“Wait,” he said. “I'll come with you.” He pulled on his clothes from the day before, then, without even looking in the mirror, walked out with me.

As we walked to the elevator, I said, “Dude, your hair looks like a tsunami.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should have looked in the mirror before we left.”

*  *  *

We found the girls sitting at a table near the back of the restaurant. I was happy to see Cassy sitting next to Taylor. On the other side of McKenna was Tessa. They were already eating.

“Good morning,” Taylor said.

“Good morning.” I kissed Taylor, then sat down next to her. “They already brought your food out?”

“It's a buffet,” she said. “You get it yourself.”

“Love the concept,” Ostin said, already on his way to the food.

I followed him over to the buffet. The food looked great. Best of all, they had Belgian waffles. When we got back to the table, Ostin began spreading a dark brown paste on his waffle.

“What's that gross-looking stuff you're putting on your waffle?” Tessa asked.

“Vegemite.”

“That tells me nothing,” she said.

“It's similar to the British Marmite.”

“Again, nothing.”

Ostin took a bite of the waffle, then said, with his mouth full, “It's a food paste made from leftover brewer's yeast extract.”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth,” McKenna said.

“I'd rather eat my shoe,” Tessa said.

“It looks like something from the bottom of your shoe,” Cassy said.

“I'll try some,” I said, feeling brave. I put just a little on my English muffin, but I still almost gagged. “Why would you eat that?”

Ostin shrugged. “I don't know. Why do people eat oysters?”

“A dare?”

I noticed Welch sitting on the other side of the restaurant eating alone. After a few minutes I got up and walked over to him. He looked up as I approached.

“Hi,” I said.

He looked up, then motioned to the chair across from him. “Have a seat. Coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I said, sitting.