The Quest (6 page)

Even in the darkness, I could clearly see the end of the runway now, and the fence and trees beyond. In but a few seconds, we would crash through the fence and die in a massive explosion.

“Addy!”
Alia cried in my head as I called out at the same time, “Terry!”

At the last moment, Terry pulled back on the flight controls, and I felt Alia suddenly get much heavier in my lap. We were airborne! Through the cockpit window, I saw the tops of the trees actually brush up against the underside of our airplane as we flew over them.

Within a minute, we had cleared the forest and were flying over farmland. Terry had left the landing lights on, illuminating the fields as we passed over them at dangerously low altitude.

I asked nervously, “Um, Terry, why aren’t we climbing?”

“Ground clutter,” said Terry.

“Excuse me?”

“Avoiding radar, Half-head. I don’t want the Wolves on us. Be on the lookout for high-voltage wires.”

I looked around the cockpit at the many gauges until I found the altimeter. The needle was at fifty feet.

Skimming the ground, our plane continued on into the night. Though we lost one brave boy on the road, we had managed to escape the fall of New Haven.

Chapter 3: A Changed Man

Once we got used to the idea of Terry flying our stolen airplane at just above ground level, Alia and I got out of our seat and faced the passengers. Terry had insisted that I find out who they were and who we could rely on.

It made psychological sense too. Most of the kids were obviously quite traumatized by what they had just lived through, and keeping them busy would help keep their minds off of New Haven, as well as how frighteningly close the ground looked from the windows. It was time to get acquainted with our charges. Including the baby, there were sixteen total.

“I’m Adrian Howell,” I said uncomfortably as fifteen pairs of eyes focused on me. “I guess most of you know that already. We’re, uh, safe for now.”

Some of the younger kids still looked dazed, but most seemed to hear what I was saying.

“This is my sister Alia,” I said.

Alia gave a little wave, saying nervously, “Hi.”

The annoying teen girls smiled at us.

“I want to know who you all are,” I said. “If you could tell me your names and ages, and uh, talents, if any.”

A few started to talk at once, so I stopped them and pointed to each of them in turn, going around the cabin like a schoolteacher.

“I’m Daniel Livingston,” said a dark-haired boy about my height. “I’m thirteen. No powers of course.”

“James Turner,” said James. “Sixteen last week. No powers yet.”

“I’m Heather,” said the girl who had called Alia a cutie. “I’m eighteen. Nothing ever. My parents aren’t psionics.”

“I’m Candace,” said her friend, and I guessed that she was the same age. “I can speak some French.”

“That’s nice,” I said dryly.

The next kid, sitting in Candace’s lap, was a little smaller than Alia, and it took some coaxing before he said quietly, “I’m Teddy. I’m seven. I think they took my big sister and my parents.”

“You’ll find them,” I said in a confident voice, lying through my teeth, and Teddy gave me a weak smile.

“I’m Max,” said the next boy. “I’m eleven, and I’m a spark!”

“You’re already psionic?” I asked in surprise.

Max grinned. “Yeah, I can shoot lightning and everything. I can even–”

“Shut up,” I said frostily, and he did, instantly shrinking into his chair. Now that we were well out of New Haven’s hiding bubble and I was calmer, I could sense psionic destroyer powers around me. The only one I felt now was a pyroid’s.

“Addy, be nice,”
Alia said into my head, giving Max a reassuring smile.
“He’s just scared.”

The next boy was the one with the baby.

“I’m Patrick,” he said, holding the infant gently in his arms. “I’m ten, sir.”

“Please don’t call me ‘sir,’ Patrick,” I said with a wry smile. “Is that baby your brother or your sister?”

“Neither, sir,” said Patrick. “I just picked it up. I think it’s a girl but I’m not sure.”

“Well, you’ll find out when you change its diaper,” I said briskly. “You picked it up, it’s your responsibility. Get some help from the others if you need it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And please don’t call me ‘sir.’ It makes me feel even more uncomfortable than flying at this altitude.”

Patrick bit his tongue before he repeated himself, and a few of the kids laughed lightly.

Alia went up to Patrick and gently touched the baby’s arm. The baby woke and carefully wrapped its fingers around Alia’s thumb, smiling up at her and cooing softly.

“It’s so little,” whispered Alia, gazing down into the baby’s eyes.

I asked Patrick, “How did you manage to keep it alive when we crashed back there?”

Patrick looked down at the baby. “Well, when the window broke, I was afraid we might hit something or turn over. I didn’t know what else to do, so I put the baby behind me and used my body as a seatbelt.”

“That was good thinking,” I said, impressed. “You saved its life.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Alia was beaming at Patrick, and he looked away embarrassedly. As my sister continued to play with the infant, I pointed to the next person, who in appearance reminded me a little of Laila Brown.

“I’m Rachael Adams,” she said. “I’m seventeen, and I’m a hider.”

“We could use a good hider,” I said.

“I’m not very good yet,” she said apologetically. “I just came into my power last month. I can only hide myself and anyone within a yard or so.”

“Better than nothing.”

And so it continued. After the baby, the youngest was only five years old, the oldest, nineteen. I learned that most of them were children of Knights and other important Guardians who had been called out to meet the Angel threat, while a few were from common Guardian families where both parents were simply out of the house when the invasion began. The Knights had been rounding up these strays in the basement of NH-4 and preparing for their evacuation when the Seraphim swarmed the building. In the confusion that followed, more than half of the children gathered there had been taken by the Angels, including the siblings of several members of our group.

This group kidnapping of Guardian children didn’t make a lot of sense to me since, without a master controller, the Angels couldn’t convert their captives. I wondered if the Angels were hoping to use them as leverage on their parents.

Only two of our escapees had psionic powers. Aside from Rachael, there was the tall boy who had challenged me in the park.

“I’m Steven,” he said gruffly. “I’m eighteen, and I’m a pyroid.”

I already knew that there was a pyroid aboard, but with everyone packed so closely together, I hadn’t known it was him.

I looked at Steven crossly. “Why didn’t you say anything back in the park when Terry asked for people with combat powers?”

He shrugged and looked away. “I didn’t feel like it.”

“I see,” I said evenly. “Well, next time your life is in danger, we’ll discuss how we feel about it before deciding whether or not to save you.”

Steven snorted loudly and refused to look me in the eye. It didn’t bother me. I knew a coward when I saw one.

Once I had everyone’s name, I returned to the copilot’s seat and resumed looking out for power lines. Alia stayed in the cabin for a while longer before coming back and sitting in my lap again.

Terry occasionally brought the airplane up to two hundred feet or more, but for most of the flight, I could see the ground passing swiftly beneath us. The kids in the back were still visibly unsettled by what they saw through their windows, but we had to trust Terry. There was no one else to do this. Time passed slowly.

“The sun will be up soon,” said Terry, raising the plane higher off the ground. “Here, hold the yoke for me.”

The first time she said that, a little after takeoff, I had thought she said “yolk” and wondered aloud what egg she was referring to. After much laughter at my expense, Terry taught me that the “yoke” was the steering-wheel-like flight control she was gripping in her right hand. There was one in front of me too, for the copilot, and I held it steady for Terry whenever she needed to do something with her hand that she couldn’t do with her hook. Terry didn’t want to risk using the autopilot at this altitude.

I gently pulled back on the yoke, keeping the nose of our overloaded plane slightly up, and watched the altimeter needle climb to the 150-foot mark. Terry opened the map we had found in the cockpit and flipped back to a page she had been studying earlier.

“We’re almost there,” said Terry, putting down her map. “Give me back the controls. I need to make a course adjustment.”

Terry was aiming for a low mountain range not far from the God-slayers’ training camp she had helped destroy with the Raven Knights last year. According to the map, just inside the mountains was a little lake surrounded by forest. Terry planned to ditch the plane there, sinking it to hide our tracks. Then we could hike back to civilization and make for a small Guardian settlement Terry knew of that wasn’t far from there.

It sounded like a good plan until you looked at the fine print.

First off, I wasn’t sure how the younger kids were going to swim to shore if Terry sunk the plane too far from it. And what of the baby?

Second, I had looked at the map too. It was a solid forty-mile hike back to civilization, and we had no gear, food or drinking water. Half of the kids were in their nightclothes, and it wasn’t just Alia who was lacking proper footwear. Though no one else was barefoot, some of the kids were in light sandals while two had made their escape wearing indoor slippers. We weren’t in any way fit for long-distance trekking.

When I pointed that out to Terry, she merely said, “We’ll manage.”

I shook my head in resignation. Terry had flat-out refused to land on a proper runway, arguing that the police or worse would swarm our plane the moment we did.

Another hour hugging the ground and we were now flying dangerously close to woodland mountainsides as Terry weaved our small airplane between the peaks.

“There,” said Terry as the quiet lake, sparkling in the early-morning sunlight, came into view. “It’s perfect.”

“Are you sure about this, Terry?” I asked one last time. “How about a backcountry road or something? Anything closer to civilization.”

“If you
must
know, Adrian,” Terry said uncomfortably, “I never really soloed until today. And I never landed either. I helped my uncle fly a few times, but I just kept the plane in the air. Charles did all the hard stuff. I’m sorry. I don’t want to risk crashing us on a hard surface.”

Under less petrifying circumstances, I might have laughed.

Terry dumped our remaining fuel as we approached the water. She tried to ease the plane down slowly, but panicked as she realized that we were coming in too fast and had already overshot half of the lake.

“Hang on, everyone!” shouted Terry as she pushed the yoke forward, tilting us down. “Brace for impact!”

The belly of the airplane smacked the surface of the water once and then the plane glanced off, bouncing back into the air. I could hear our terrified crowd screaming as we began to fall again. The second impact was rattling, but nevertheless smoother, and our plane stayed on the surface of the lake this time, gliding forward like a powerboat. Terry cut the engines, but we were still moving at a fair speed toward the trees that came right up to the water’s edge.

Staring out through the cockpit window, Terry said quietly in a panicked voice, “Uh oh, this is bad! Bad-bad-bad!”

“Addy, are we going to hit that?!”
Alia cried into my head.

I looked at Terry. “Terry, are we going to hit that?!”

We did. Our airplane ran aground and the nose plowed into the nearest tree, bringing us to another abrupt stop. Our seatbelts kept it from being nearly as painful as our plunge from the fortieth floor, though, and I breathed my sigh of relief with everyone else when I realized that it was finally over.

Unbuckling our seatbelt, I said to Alia, “Go check if anyone is hurt. Check on the baby.”

Terry and I got up too and followed Alia.

“Is everyone alive?” called Terry, and most replied that they were okay.

The baby was crying up a storm, but once again was miraculously unharmed. Patrick grinned.

The only one bleeding was Mr. Simms, who had sustained several injuries being knocked around during our semi-crash-landing. He was still unconscious, and Alia healed him again as Terry and I got the kids out of their seats.

The rear of the airplane was still in the lake, and the door splashed down into the water. It was only knee-deep, and soon we were sloshing our way up to the trees. While Alia stayed inside with Mr. Simms, Terry and I gathered everyone at the edge of the water and told them to stretch their legs.

I patted the crumpled nose of our airplane and gave Terry a wicked grin. “Nice landing, Five-fingers.”

Terry shrugged. “At least no one broke any bones.”

I yawned. “These kids haven’t slept, and neither have we. How long would it take for anyone to find this plane? Maybe we could let everyone rest inside for a few hours.”

“No, we need to get going. But first I want to talk to Mr. Simms.”

I nodded. “Let’s go wake him up.”

Mr. Simms was already awake when we got back inside. He was glaring up at Alia with bloodshot eyes, but he wasn’t struggling. He was drained and he knew he couldn’t move.

I asked Alia, “How long has he been awake?”

“I think he was awake when we landed,” she replied.

“Go on outside,” I said to her.

My sister sensed what was about to happen.
“But Addy…”

“Just go, please,” I said sternly. “Go talk to the other kids.”

Alia looked uncomfortably at Terry and me once before quietly exiting the cabin.

Terry and I dragged Mr. Simms farther up the aisle toward the cockpit.

“Talk,” commanded Terry.

Mr. Simms stared silently up at us.