pull the barge up from its dive. Faith broke Ezekiel’s hold, kicked the lifelike against the console, bouncing Cricket off the walls and snapping the control wheel off at the root. Pawing along the deck, Eve’s fingers wrapped around Excalibur’s hilt. And with a muffled curse, she cracked the bat across Faith’s spine.
A surge of 500kV. A burst of current. Faith cried out, landed a thunderous punch to the side of Eve’s head. Eve heard a damp crunch as the lifelike’s fist collided with her Memdrive, felt a blinding flash of pain. She dropped to the deck, gasping and clutching her skull. White light behind her eyes.
Ezekiel was on its feet, roaring Faith’s name and smashing the lifelike across the head with the broken wheel. And with a desperate cry, Ezekiel drew back its boot and kicked Faith out through the shattered windshield.
Faith tumbled toward the black ocean below. But over the static in her ears, Eve heard engines snarl on the ceiling above, squealing metal, and seconds later, a flex-wing roared down in pursuit of the falling lifelike.
Blood rushing in her temples. Vomit on her tongue. Blinding sparks in her eyes; broken images flickering in her head like some old 20C movie projector. The console was smashed to scrap, the controls a broken mess. The thought that her grandpa was inside that flex-wing flashed in her mind, shouted down by the knowledge that she couldn’t see the horizon through the shattered glass anymore. All she could see was black. Breakers made of Styrofoam. Gnashing waves, the color of sump grease.
The ocean.
She shook her head, trying to clear it.
But we’re flying in the sky, aren’t we?
Ezekiel dragged her into the copilot’s seat. Threw Lemon on top and strapped them both in. Her stomach lurched as the barge listed farther, the pain in her head growing worse. The engine roar swelled, louder and higher. She realized gravity wasn’t working right, that Cricket was bouncing along the ceiling. She could hear Kaiser barking in the background. Ezekiel yelling. Turbines screaming. Staring out through the shattered glass into a black and smiling face. So close she could almost kiss the waves.
Kiss them goodbye.
“Ana, hold on!” Ezekiel was roaring. “Hold on!”
He keeps calling me Ana.
“HOLD ON!”
But my name is Eve …
Her stomach in her throat. Holding Lemon tight.
She realized she didn’t want to die.
She hadn’t liked it much the first time.
Impact.
Dust howled across the wreckage of Tire Valley, tumbled and tossed in the grip of a blood-warm wind. The trash was black and smoking, the tires melted to bubbling puddles. A crater littered with broken shipping containers and shattered wind turbines was all that remained to mark the spot where the house of Silas Carpenter had once stood.
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