“What makes you think they’ll stay with the chopper?”
I shrug. “It’s what I’d do.”
“Still doesn’t answer my question about your chute.”
“They’re hailing us,” Bob announces. “Ordering us to set it down.”
“Tell them to suck it,” Razor says. He stuffs a piece of bubble gum into his mouth. Taps his ear. “Popping’s bad.” Jams the gum wrapper into his pocket. Notices I’m watching and smiles. “Never noticed all the crap in the world until there was nobody left to pick it up,” he explains. “The Earth is my charge.”
Then Bob calls out, “Sixty seconds!”
I tug on Razor’s parka. Now.
He looks up at me and says slowly and distinctly, “Where’s your freaking chute?”
I haul him out of the seat one-handed. He chirps in surprise, stumbling toward the back. I follow him, squat in front of Teacup to remove her harness.
“Forty seconds!”
“How are we going to find you?” Razor yells, standing right next to me.
“Head for the fire.”
“What fire?”
“Thirty seconds!”
I haul open the hatch door. The blast of air that punches into the hold blows Razor’s hood off his head. I scoop up Teacup and press her into his chest.
“Don’t let her die.”
He nods.
“Promise.”
Nods again: “I promise.”
“Thank you, Razor,” I say. “For everything.”
He leans forward and kisses me hard on the mouth.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I tell him.
“Why? Because you liked it or because you didn’t?”
“Both.”
“Fifteen seconds!”
Razor maneuvers Teacup over his shoulder, grabs the safety cable, and shuffles back until his heels touch the jump pad. Silhouetted in the opening, the boy and the child over the boy’s shoulder, and five thousand feet beneath them, the limitless dark. The Earth is my charge.
Razor releases the cable. He doesn’t seem to fall. He is sucked out into the ravenous void.
I HEAD BACK to the cockpit, where I find the pilot’s door unlatched, the seat empty, and no Bob.
I wondered why the countdown stopped; now I know: He changed his mind about the whole bailing issue.
We must be in range, which means they don’t intend to shoot us down. They’ve marked the location of Razor’s drop, and they’ll stay with the chopper until I bail or it runs out of fuel and I’m forced to bail. By this point, Vosch has figured out why Jumbo’s implant is on this aircraft while its owner is in the infirmary being treated for a very bad headache.
With the tip of my tongue, I push the pellet from my mouth and lick it onto my palm.
Do you want to live?
Yes, and you want that, too, I tell Vosch. I don’t know why and, hopefully, I never will.
I flick the pellet from my hand.
The hub’s response is instantaneous. My intent alerted the central processor, which calculated the overwhelming probability of terminal failure and shut down all but the essential functions of my muscular system. The 12th System has the same order I gave Razor: Don’t let her die. Like a parasite’s, the system’s life depends on the continuation of mine.
The instant my intent changes—Okay, fine. I’ll parachute out—the hub will release me. Then and only then. I can’t lie to it or bargain with it. Can’t persuade it. Can’t force it. Unless I change my mind, it can’t let me go. Unless it lets me go, I can’t change my mind.
Heart on fire. Body of stone.
There’s nothing that the hub can do about my snowballing panic. It can respond to emotions; it can’t control them. Endorphins release. Neurons and mastocytes dump serotonin into my bloodstream. Other than these physiological adjustments, it’s as paralyzed as I am.
There must be an answer. There must be an answer. There must be an answer. What is the answer? And I see Vosch’s polished, birdlike bright eyes boring into mine. What is the answer? Not rage, not hope, not faith, not love, not detachment, not holding on, not letting go, not fighting, not running, not hiding, not giving up, not giving in, not not not, knot, knot, knot, naught naught naught.
Naught.
What is the answer? he asked.
And I answered, Nothing.
I STILL CAN’T MOVE—not even my eyes—but I’ve got a pretty good angle on the instruments, including the altimeter and fuel gauge. We’re five thousand feet up and the fuel won’t last forever. Inducing paralysis might stop me from jumping, but it won’t keep me from falling. The probability of terminal failure in that scenario is absolute.
It has no other option: The hub releases me, and the sensation is like being hurled the length of a football field. I’m shoved back into my body, hard.
Okay, Ringer 2.0. Let’s see how good you are.
I grab the handle of the pilot’s door and kill the engines.
An alarm sounds. I kill that, too. There is the wind now and only the wind.
For a few seconds, momentum keeps the chopper level, then freefall.
I’m thrown to the ceiling; my head smacks against the windshield. White stars explode in my vision. The chopper begins to spin as it drops, and I lose my grip on the door. I’m tossed around like a die in a Yahtzee cup, grasping at empty space, searching for a handhold. The chopper flips, nose up, and I’m flung twelve feet into the rear of the aircraft, then slung back as it flips again, smashing chest-first into the back of the pilot’s seat. A hot knife rips across my side: I’ve broken a rib. The loose nylon strap of the pilot’s harness smacks me in the face and I snatch it before I’m thrown again. Another flip, and the centrifugal force whips me back into the cockpit, where I smash into the door. It flies open and I jam my white-soled nurse’s shoe against the seat for leverage and heave myself halfway out. Release the strap, lock my fingers around the handle, and push hard.
Roll, pitch, flip, somersault, flashes of gray and black and sparkling white. I’m hanging on to the handle as the chopper rolls pilot side up and the door slams closed on my wrist, snapping the bone and tearing my fingers from the handle. My body bounces and twists along the length of the Black Hawk until it whacks into the rear wheel, rocketing straight up, and when the tail rotates skyward, I’m shot toward the horizon like a rock from a slingshot.
I have no sensation of falling. I’m suspended on the updraft of warmer air pressing against the colder, a hawk sailing in the night sky on outstretched wings, behind and below me the tumbling helicopter prisoner to the gravity that I deny. I don’t hear the explosion when it crashes. Just the wind and the blood roaring in my ears, and there is no pain from the beating inside the chopper. I am deliriously, exhilaratingly empty. I am nothing. The wind is more substantial than my bones.
The Earth rushes toward me. I am not afraid. I’ve kept my promises. I’ve redeemed the time.
I stretch out my arms. I spread my fingers wide. I lift my face toward the line where the sky meets the Earth.
My home. My charge.