That trust took a jolt when she led him to the lab where her two trackers rested in their small Faraday cage.But he acted on instinct, ahead of his thoughts and worry, grabbing both and shoving them in his pocket.
“Now can we get out of here?”he mouthed.It felt like the alarm was louder and more insistent.Everything looked the same, so why did he feel like the walls were closing in on him?
Jack pushed back the hatch and clambered out, turning to help Mel out.He couldn’t see Con or Rita, so he left the hatch open for them.
At least the alarm wasn’t as loud out here.He still held Mel’s hand, knew his clutch was painfully tight.
They both had their packs on their backs, with emergency rations, but it was a big desert and a long way to a town on foot.
“Run,” Mel said, tugging at his hand.
“What?”
She pointed up.He didn’t want to, but he did.
The tip of funnel was reaching down out of a swirling mass of gray and black and, oddly enough, gold.
Now he was the one who tugged her forward, toward the hangar, though what protection it could provide, he didn’t know—actually he did.
“TheRay.” He had to shout now to be heard above a roaring that seemed to suck up the klaxon of alarms emerging from the silo.
He yanked the canvas back and worked on activating the hatch, feeling as clumsy as a toddler.Mel’s hands joined his and it swung up, allowing first Mel, then him to scramble inside.
“Strap in,” he said.He didn’t know if it would enclose them or vanish around them.There wasn’t time to fire up the engines.
He lowered his chin to meet Mel’s gaze.“This is gonna be rough,” he told her.He looked at Mel.
“We got this,” she told him, and grabbed the hand he stretched out to her.
Around them the hangar dissolved, not destroyed, just gone.And then the funnel found them.He felt theRaylifting and then the world went dark.
Con followed Rita out of the opened hatch and then stopped and looked around, amazed.
The hangar, the hut, all of it was gone but the Pitts standing forlornly in a patch of sage brush.There was no sign of Jack or Mel.Or theRay.
He looked back and the hatch to the silo was gone, too.Beyond that empty spot, the horizon was dark, ominous.It reminded him of the storms they’d passed through getting here.
There was no shelter, not even a gully.He grabbed Rita’s hand.
“Let’s go,” he said.She didn’t pull against him, so time must approve, he concluded as they stumbled their way to the Pitts.“Get in.”
She was up on the wing before he could help her.He did his fastest flight check ever, one eye on the approaching storm.Someone had been working on fixing the damage to the Pitts.Or—he almost stopped moving—had time erased the damage?
He glanced at the wing as he scrambled into the cockpit behind Rita.The bullet holes were still here.
This could get dicey, starting with trying to get up enough speed without even a rudimentary runway.
He fired up the engine and they started to bump forward.The storm hit their six, lifting them up into the air.
He wondered if Rita called out—or cried out.He didn’t have time to try to find out as he wrestled with the controls, or perhaps it was the storm he fought for control.
He had zero visibility ahead or to either side.All he could try to do was keep the plane level.The only reason he knew they were upright was because he wasn’t hanging on the straps.
He wished he could talk to Rita or even hold her hand.It felt urgent to have physical contact with her, as if the storm sweeping them forward might also whisk her away from him.
He clung to the sight of her head just in front of him.Her view had to be the worst yet.
She moved and to his shock, he realized she must have unstrapped so she could turn and look at him.
