She nodded, her eyes slits pinned to the ground below. “I can see it.”
From the air the broken dam looked like a row of cracked teeth with the two largest ones missing. Water still spilled through the gap even though the Minnesotans had made an effort—with rubble and dirt—to close it. A flowing river was a strange sight, and it gave me a vision of the world in which my parents were born. It twisted and coursed, foaming white and brown, a thing alive and vibrant as it rushed uncontrolled toward the sea. Green vegetation had sprouted along its banks, like a holo of an ancient world.
“Hold on!” said Sula.
I tried to steady myself, but my breath came in quick short bursts and would not slow down. My nails dug into my palms, but I could barely feel the pain. I looked to Will. His face was as pale as I had ever seen it. Kai laid his hand on my forearm, but his fingertips trembled and moisture pearled his brow. There was nothing to do except put our faith in Sula and hang on.
The jet began to plummet. One moment I could see the low tops of buildings, the next moment we hit the ground hard enough to blow two tires. We screeched and veered off the runway, then careened through dirt and scrub at three hundred kilometers an hour, spinning crazily in a dust vortex. A window popped, and the door burst open. Sand, soot, and black smoke swirled into the plane. Someone was coughing, and someone else was yelling instructions. But somehow we slowed and came to a rest. “Everyone okay?” asked Sula.
We were, miraculously. No one was hurt, although my bad shoulder ached painfully where it had been restrained by the safety belt. Kai looked as if he might be sick, and Will’s face had shaded from pale to green. Our stomachs settled as the air cleared.
Ulysses wasted no time in securing our position. He grabbed the laser-taser and his knife and pushed through the mangled door.
“Wait!” Sula shouted after him. “Men on the ground!”
It was too late. We heard the yelling. The roar of an engine. A sound like a dog barking. Ulysses bellowed as if in great pain, and then his voice was buried. We braced for the onslaught.
I was outside before anyone could stop me. My feet touched ground, and my hands went up defensively, but I was knocked backward by something large and heavy. It sat on my chest and its hot breath washed over me.
I waited, eyes shut, for the jaws to clamp on my throat.
Cheetah barked, then licked my face again and again.
CHAPTER 21
We left Ulysses’s men at the border.
The Minnesotans wouldn’t let them cross without a bribe, and as Ulysses explained, the pirates had little to offer. They had lost ten men, much of their equipment, and Pooch in the flood. They needed to conserve resources for the next campaign. Besides, too many men would stir suspicion and cause a diversion before the job was done. Ulysses alone would come the rest of the way.
We took a truck, two sidearms, water for the journey, and Cheetah.
After all our travels, the trip south through Illinowa was like a Sunday jaunt. The roads were empty, and no one stopped or harassed us. Will and Kai slept most of the way, and I played Quarts with Sula while Cheetah rested on my lap. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived.
Torq found us at the gaming center. He appeared in a convoy of combat vehicles bristling with heavily armed men clad in black and blue. They surrounded the center and sealed access from the road. A bat-winged drone kept a lookout in the sky. Torq himself led a dozen gunmen through the doors. His shiny head gleamed in the artificial light, and his perfectly manicured hands caressed a machine pistol.
The gaming center was filled with the usual assortment of players. Boys and girls gathered at the consoles, competing for high scores and each other’s attention while solitary men fed their chips into credit readers. On the walls, the screens broadcast a constant stream of content from across the globe: song and dance routines from YouToo!, news reports and info oddities in obscure languages—anything to distract people from their misery. The popular clips rose to the top, while the disfavored sank without a trace. The wireless was truly the most democratic forum in the world. Governments tried to filter it, but the signal could not be stopped. Any user with an uploader and a transmitter could post anything for the world to see: truth and lies in equal measure.
Torq couldn’t kill us in the open. Not even he was brazen enough to shoot three people in plain view of a crowd. Besides, although his men were well-equipped and protected by kev-armor, it would have been a close battle against Ulysses and Sula. Torq told us to line up at the wall, but Ulysses refused, and Sula stepped in front of me.
“There’ll be no heroes here,” said Torq.
“Killing you wouldn’t be heroic,” said Sula.
Torq smiled, but his gray-blue eyes slitted black. “Where’s the boy?”
“What boy?”
The sound of his safety catch clicked loudly.
“Put your weapon down,” said Ulysses.
“A shame to have to kill the girl.” His gun pointed at Sula, but I knew that when the shooting started, the bullets would go right through her.
Three boys playing Death Racer inched toward the walls, out of the line of fire. Two girls at Geyser let the imaginary water spray harmlessly while they ducked behind a pillar. They were old enough to know when to run.
“Not even Bluewater can cover up a massacre of innocents,” said Ulysses.
“Don’t be too sure,” Torq said.
I held my breath. My plan had been a good one, but it required just a few more seconds. If the shooting started now, it would all be ruined. I stepped out from behind Sula.
“He’s back there,” I said, indicating the wi-booth behind us. “I’ll get him.”
I moved toward the booth before Torq called out to me, as I knew he would. “Stop!”
I stopped, turned slowly.
“Yes?” I asked politely, as if I were still innocent.
“I’m not a fool. Do you think I believe you’d just lead me to him? Come back here.”
I walked as slowly as I could. Each step was excruciating, drawn out, as slow as I could make it. Naturally Torq thought I was frightened of him—he was so powerful with his weapons and muscles! And of course he didn’t trust me—not after my trick with the destabilizer. I shuffled the last few steps, sliding awkwardly across the hard floor. When I was close, he reached out and grasped my wrist, then twisted my arm behind my back. I cringed and stifled a cry. The pain in my shoulder was unbearable. Ulysses started but stopped when Torq pressed his gun against my skull.
“Now,” he said, face so close I could smell his skin. “Where is he?”
“In the booth,” I managed.
“This is your last chance.”
I didn’t want to die, but if it gave us the time we needed, I was not afraid. The irony of being killed when we were so close to home was wretched, but there was a certain perverse logic to ending at the beginning. I let the moment linger as long as I could, each second improving our odds. Then I said, “It’s the truth.”
Before Torq could fire a shot, Kai emerged from the wi-booth, followed by Will and Driesen, as if they had been making a dance holo or posting wi-texts for everyone to see. They sauntered toward us. Torq released my wrist and pounced on Kai, who didn’t resist. Ulysses grabbed me and clutched me to his side like his own daughter.
“This one’s coming with me,” Torq said to his men. “You can do what you want with the others.”
“It’s over,” said Ulysses.
“Save your regrets for later.”
“Look up.”
At first one of the wi-screens seemed to be displaying a bad home holo: sand, dust, and machinery. But as the camera zoomed in, the image came into clearer view: A blue stream like life itself, shimmering with luminous clarity.
Water! It arced from the ground into the sky like the most extravagant fountain. It was Kai’s secret river, unleashed from the earth and sharing its bounty with the land. Water fell from the heavens like an impossible storm. It soaked the dry beds, washed over desert scrub, and covered the dirt with water. It rained and rained, not for forty days and forty nights but long enough to make men grateful for the blessing.