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“Is this another one of your manhood tests?” I asked. “I thought I’d already passed!” My voice was shaky. I sounded desperate, and I was.
“I no longer doubt your manhood,” she said.
“I can’t do this!” I said. I backed up against the wall. “This iscrazy!”
Kira pulled me forward again and stood right behind me. Her hands were on my shoulders. She spoke right into my ear. Her voice was calm and reassuring. I thought maybe I could still talk her out of it.
“Wait! I just need a little more time!” I could feel my palms sweating.
Her voice was calm and reassuring. “No rush, Doctor. I know you’re nervous. Totally understandable. We’ll go when you’re ready.”
I took a deep breath. She shoved me off the ledge.
CHAPTER 62
I MIGHT HAVE screamed. I don’t really remember. What Idoremember is the feeling of my heart thudding and the air rushing up against my face. I was falling straight down, head first. I could see the street and all the traffic zooming closer in a blur. Then I heard a loud bang and a roar behind me. I felt a tremendous jolt. And suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore. I was shooting up into the sky like a rocket, so fast it felt like my stomach was being pressed down toward my feet.
I looked over. Kira was right alongside me. I saw a bright tear-shaped flame blasting out of the bottom of her jetpack. Her hair was whipping out from under her helmet in little copper-colored waves.
She flexed her legs and leveled out until she was flying parallel to the ground. I copied her exactly. Got the same result. I was a bad judge of heights, but it looked like we were a couple thousand feet up. We were soaring over the center of Chicago, with skyscrapers stabbing up and all the other buildings laid out like a giant puzzle. The streets were a neat crosshatch pattern. The Chicago River was like a blue ribbon winding through the city.
It probably took me a half minute to adjust to the reality of what was happening—the fact that we were flying with machines built sixty years before I was born. And that they actually worked. There was no use trying to talk, or even shout to each other. The wind was too loud. But I could read Kira’s body language in the air.
She was having a ball. And once I realized that I wasn’t going to drop out of the sky like a stone, I started to have a ball, too.
At first, Kira took the lead, and I followed what she did. She was like a ballet dancer in the air. A total natural. I wasn’t quite as smooth, but I was getting the hang of it. I realized that I could control my position in the air by dipping my head and adjusting my arms. When I tucked my arms tight against my sides, I swooped down. When I lifted my arms out to the sides, I rose back up. After I got a little confidence, I straightened out and shot out in front. The sensation was unbelievable. It was a mix of lightness and speed and amazing power. I had to hand it to my ancestor. I’d never felt anything like it.
Lake Michigan was off to the east, looking like a big green carpet. I banked to the left and headed out over the water. Kira was right behind me. I tucked myself into a dive and plummeted down until I was about thirty feet above the surface. When I passed over a lake freighter, I was close enough to see the crew looking up and pointing. The lower I got, the faster it felt like I was going. It was a total rush, and I was loving it. I lost all sense of time. I wanted it to last forever.
Suddenly I felt a lurch from my rocket pack. Instantly I dropped about ten feet. I looked over at Kira, who was flying right next to me. The flame from her rocket was coming out in short bursts, with little belches of smoke in between. I felt another lurch, then a loud pop. Then I started to spin like a pinwheel, end over end. My vision flipped between sky and water. Sky and water. And then only water. I hit feet first.
I sucked in one last breath, and then I went under, sinking fast. I saw Kira plunge in a few yards away. She sank down in a cloud of bubbles until she was out of sight in the murky lake. I couldn’t see the bottom. But I knew that’s where I was headed. With fifty pounds of metal strapped to my back, it’s not like I had a choice.
CHAPTER 63
I STARTED TO panic. The light was fading above my head and the water under my feet was getting blacker. My lungs were on fire. I wrestled with the straps around my chest and middle but they wouldn’t budge. I lost all sense of space. There was nothing but murk all around me. I tried to swim up, but it was no use. With my jetpack attached, I was dead weight.
About five seconds later, my boot landed on a long piece of metal. I had reached the lake bottom. I spun hard to the left. Something caught on the strap behind my back. I felt around with my bare hands and realized that I had fallen onto a pile of cement and rebar. Pure terror shot through me. After everything, that’s where I was going to end up—wrapped around a pile of construction debris at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
I saw a blast of white in the distance. Then I saw Kira swimming toward me out of the dark. Her jetpack was gone. So was her helmet. Bubbles were blowing out of a device attached to her face.
When she got close, she went blurry. I was starting to pass out. She grabbed at my strap fasteners and yanked them open. I felt the weight of the jetpack drop away. I was loose. But still drowning.
Then Kira was in my face, holding up a set of nose plugs attached to something that looked like a toothpaste tube. She yanked off my helmet. She jammed the plugs into my nostrils and twisted the top of the tube. I felt a rush of air into my lungs. I clamped my mouth shut and inhaled through my nostrils. My head instantly cleared. I was breathing again. Kira gave me a thumbs-up. I think I nodded. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I only knew that I was alive.
Kira started kicking her way through the water. I followed right behind, trying to keep her in sight in the murk. After a few minutes, the water started turning green again.
Suddenly there was a ripple of light above. A few strokes later, my head broke water. I opened my mouth and took in the fresh air. Deep, long breaths of it.
“Pretty ingenious, right?” Kira’s voice, yelling from a distance. I twisted around in the water. She was about twenty feet away, holding up her breathing apparatus.
“Thank your great-grandfather for these!” she shouted.
All I could do was shake my head and spit out some lake water. I was starting to wonder how many lives I had left. We were still about fifty yards from the shoreline. I could see a modern building with white pillars overlooking the lake. The Oceanarium of the Shedd Aquarium. We started swimming toward it.
As we approached the shoreline, I could see crowds of families on the curved sidewalk in front of the building. There was some kind of water festival going on. I saw kids and balloons and costumed characters dancing around. The outdoor sound system was blaring Disney music.
We climbed over the ribbed cement wall between the lake and the sidewalk. Water drained out of our fireproof suits. I still had my breathing tube dangling from my face. The whole crowd turned in our direction. A little girl holding a toy lobster started bouncing on her toes and laughing. She poked her younger brother and pointed at us. Then they both started clapping. Their parents joined in. So did the rest of the crowd. They thought we were part of the show. I looked at Kira and pulled the apparatus out of my nose. I was exhausted and mad.
