Beneath us, the earth was huge, dominating my vision. My fear of drifting solo through space was replaced by the larger fear of free-falling. Plummeting through biorecycle chutes and jumping off of fifty-story buildings was scary enough. This awesome height made me want to puke. Which, inside a helmet, wouldn’t be a smart idea.
I took large, deep breaths, focusing on Sata, concentrating on getting closer. Around me, the sky was changing from black to blue. I got within a few hundred yards of Sata, and closed the distance even more. Though part of me wanted to swoop down and cut his chute to ribbons, I needed him alive if I wanted to save Chicago.
“So, Talon, I see you’ve managed to follow me.” The speakers were in my helmet. “What did you think of reentry? Hot stuff, huh?”
I wondered how to activate the microphone. Maybe it was voice-activated.
“The microphone is voice-activated,” Sata said.
“I knew that,” I told him.
“We’ll still be in the air when Chicago transports to the parallel world. But we should be able to see it from up here.”
“Guess again, asshole. I’ve got the TEV on me.”
I patted my chest and checked the time.
2:35.
“What? You fool!”
Sata’s airfoil turned a hundred eighty degrees. I altered my trajectory to get out of his flight path. He adjusted his as well, so we were both heading toward the same point. We closed the distance quickly, proof that even with the rogallos we were still falling at very high speeds.
A second before we collided, I veered right and Sata veered left, so we flew side by side.
“Give me the TEV!” he thundered, his shout making my ears hurt.
“Come get it, Grandpa.”
Ducking his shoulder, Sata turned hard and slammed into me. The impact made my teeth rattle. Both of our rogallos became entangled, and we began to plummet in a twisted, spinning mass. Sata tugged at the TEV straps across my shoulders. Without even thinking, I lashed out at his face, the Nife cutting a line across his helmet visor. He grabbed my wrist and locked his legs around my waist, squeezing my lungs to the point of bursting. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder, and saw a metal knife blade protruding from his gloved finger. He twisted it into my flesh as I fought to push him away.
He screamed something at me, but all I could hear was the wind whistling in through the hole I’d made in his helmet. I felt his finger knife twisting inside my chest, nicking my ribs. Then he pulled out and punched the awful blade into my opposite shoulder.
I understood the point of his attack only when he withdrew the weapon. He wasn’t out to harm me.
He was cutting the TEV straps.
Sata kicked away from me, dropping at a faster rate.
I don’t know if he was trying to escape, or if he’d had a major wardrobe malfunction, but he left his rogallo twisted up in mine and began to free-fall again, sans chute.
He also managed to get the TEV. I watched him wave at me as he dropped into a blue-and-white storm cloud, disappearing from my sight.
I tried reaching up over my shoulder with my Nife, to cut the lines. But our two wings had tangled into a sort of propeller shape, making me spin. The wind resistance was so strong that no matter how I strained, I was unable to flip over and reach the ropes.
I tried twisting my body. Contorting my sore shoulders and pelvis. Stretching out my arms. Tucking into a ball.
Nothing worked. And the spinning became faster, and faster.
In space, spinning was confusing.
But under gravity’s grasp, the fluid in my inner ears was being shaken like a snow globe, bringing disorientation, dizziness, nausea, and an overwhelming feeling of panic.
Chicago was going to implode in less than two minutes, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Then the centrifugal force became too much, and once again I began to black out.
And then I actually did black out.
Unconsciousness wasn’t peaceful. Even knocked out, every synapse in my brain was firing in panic. I somehow managed to startle myself awake, and when I did I saw I’d dropped the Nife, which made me panic even more.
That meant I had only one chance left for survival.
I stared at the button on my wrist and hit “1.”
Nothing happened.
I tried “2.”
Nothing.
“ 3.”
No change at all.
I stared at the last two buttons, “4” ionizer and “5” cruciform. I knew cruciform was another type of parachute, but if I hit the button now, would it get tangled up with the dual rogallo death spiral? And should I even try to hit a button out of order?
I had no idea what ionizer was. But at this point I had nothing else to lose.
I pressed “4.”
The rogallo detached, taking its snarled twin along with it, and I once again was free-falling. All too soon I reached the storm cloud Sata had disappeared into. I was so elated to be free of the chutes that I didn’t even think to question what the storm cloud was.
I found out twenty seconds later, when I drifted into it and the world became a brilliant explosion of blue.
I’d reached the Tesla field.
FIFTY
The Mastermind clutches his prize to his chest as he hits terminal velocity, falling at close to six hundred miles per hour. The slit in his visor is letting cold wind in, but he can still see if he squints, and the rebreather is still feeding him oxygen.
He smiles. The finger knife had been a last-minute addition to the suit-a precautionary measure in case the parachutes didn’t detach as designed. It turned out to be a very smart move. He never would have gotten the TEV from Talon otherwise.
Who could have predicted the mouse would have a Nife? Talon had played it smart, kept it hidden until the last possible moment. But in the end, even that hadn’t been enough.
Sata plummets into the Tesla field. He’s already pressed the ionizer button, shielding his suit against the incredible amount of electrical energy. The whole world turns bright blue.
Bringing the TEV close to his face, Sata squints at the clock.
1:01… 1:00… 0:59… 0:58…
This next part is going to be tricky. Sata should still be able to vanquish most of Chicago, but he’ll have to aim it manually. He won’t be able to implode as wide of an area, but Sata hears a tremendous thunderclap, louder than anything he’s ever experienced before, and at the same time sees a flash of superb right light.
Then he doesn’t see anything at all.
Sata understands what just happened. The ionizer is supposed to form a defensive antistatic barrier around his suit. But when Talon had slashed his visor, he’d also put a hole in the ion shield. Lightning, like water, takes the path of least resistance.
The Mastermind screams.
He screams at his miscalculation.
He screams at the ruination of his calculated plan.
He screams at the mouse, who somehow managed to beat him.
But most of all, he screams in pain, because both of his eyeballs have just exploded and are leaking all over his cheeks.
FIFTY-ONE
I braced my entire body as I fell into the Tesla field. You’d think I would have gotten used to being zapped by electricity by now, having been subjected to enough volts to power a small city for a year, but the thought of the ensuing pain still made me want to curl up in a fetal position and suck my thumb.
Incredibly, the pain didn’t come.
Everything became bright blue, and thousands-millions-of lightning flashes streaked sideways, diagonally, up and down, all around. Beautiful, and potentially deadly. But none of them zapped me.
I credited the ionizer button, and then tilted my body face-first, looking for Sata.
Incredibly, I found him.
Even more incredibly, he was the one curled up fetal, clutching the TEV to his chest. By dipping my shoulders I was able to increase my rate of descent. We both fell through the bottom of the Tesla field and into open sky just as I bumped into him.