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  I nodded wordlessly and then went to retrieve her some water from the bay, unscrewing the lid of the bottle and holding it out to where she was now sitting on the floor, her back to one of the dead control boxes. Her cheeks flushed red, but she tilted her head back, and I carefully poured some into her mouth. She made a sound in the back of her throat, and I stopped, giving her a chance to swallow.

  “How much fuel do we have?” I asked, fighting back another yawn as I poured some more water into her open mouth.

  Behind me, Belinda tossed something metallic onto the floor, giving an irritated grunt, but I ignored her. It was an important question.

  Kathryn swallowed the mouthful and exhaled. “It’s hard to say for certain. I can’t really tell how fast we’re going, and have no idea if we’re flying against the wind. At top speed with the hardest headwind we could actually continue moving against, we would’ve been halfway through our supply an hour ago. But since we are moving quickly, it’s hard to say.”

  “How much time with no headwind?” I asked, and Kathryn crunched the numbers, then looked at her watch. “Two more hours? Maybe a little bit more. But again, there’s no telling what speed we’re moving at, not without the handheld.”

  Another metallic clang came from behind me, and I turned to see Belinda looking over her shoulder at us, the manual on the other side of the gap in the floor. “A little help.” It wasn’t a question.

  I looked at Kathryn, and she gave me a little shrug as I recapped the water and sat it next to her. “Let me know if you want more,” I said as I moved over to the manual. Picking it up, I stared at the first few dozen words on the page, trying to decipher the images and words there.

  “Read it to me,” Kathryn instructed as she gave a groan and slid down a few inches.

  I repeated the words, skipping down a few lines as she told me they’d finished that part, and then listening closely. She took a minute, and then quickly explained the next batch of wires for Belinda to work on.

  We were just on the last few wires—thank God—when Kathryn sat upright with a jerk, dragging my attention from Belinda, who was carefully soldering another wire to a metal contact. “What is it?” I asked, immediately alarmed.

  I was already standing up and moving, even as she breathed, “What is that?”

  As I looked out the window, I also found myself viewing the scene with confusion.

  “I got it, if either of you care?” grumped Belinda from behind us.

  “You see that, right?” asked Kathryn, looking up at me as I gazed at the massive gray and black structure that rose up from the desert at a ninety-degree angle, shooting up into the sky. The structure was so massive that the river that flowed by it seemed to disappear behind it. The walls were perfectly flat, the structure angled in an almost hexagonal shape, with strange black wings jutting out from the sides near the top.

  “This might mean people!” I gasped, trying to resist the urge to press my nose against the glass, desperate for a clearer look. “Maybe they could help us. Maybe we could land there!”

  “Are you crazy?” asked Kathryn, just as Belinda said, “There’s people?”

  “Look for yourself,” I told her, stepping back from the window. Belinda set the handheld down and moved over to the window, looking at the structure as it continued to grow in our view. The platforms jutting off the side revealed themselves to be thicker than I’d first thought, and as it continued to draw nearer, it was clear that they were bigger than I could’ve imagined.

  “Oh my God,” said Belinda, her eyes growing wide. “It’s so big. How can it be so big? It looks… sinister, like something from my worst nightmares.”

  “You have some pretty tame nightmares, then,” I retorted, perhaps a touch bitterly, under my breath.

  If Belinda heard me, she gave no sign of it as she continued to gape out the window. “It’s so big,” she repeated in awe. “It has to be at least a mile tall. Maybe more.”

  “Actually, I should be able to tell,” said Kathryn. “Violet, the handheld.”

  I moved over to it, sitting down on the floor in front of it. The thing had dozens of wires jutting out of the back, and moving it too much could cause any one of them to disconnect—better just to go to it rather than attempt moving it. I clicked the screen on and immediately paused at the sight of the flashing red alert that popped up.

  “Kathryn, you may want to get over here and look at this,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Belinda, help me up,” she ordered, and I watched over my shoulder as Belinda bent over her, gently hoisting her up. Kathryn sagged heavily against the larger woman, and moved over, her legs almost giving out on her. Belinda helped lower her to the floor next to me, and she peered over my shoulder at the screen, reading the display. She spat out a curse and looked out the window. “I guess you’re going to get your wish, Violet. We need to land now.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, and she licked her lips nervously.

  “The problem with the hydraulics is worse than I thought. All of the flaps, the blades, everything mechanical needs some of that fluid, and the system is bone dry. If we don’t stop now to fix it, then the entire thing will lock up, and this thing will be about as movable as a flying brick. Then it’s just a matter of time before we hit something, or run out of fuel.”

  “We could land on the ground,” insisted Belinda. “We shouldn’t land on that… thing! If there are people inside—”

  “Then hopefully they’ll be curious first,” I cut in.

  “It doesn’t matter, Belinda,” Kathryn replied tiredly. “The ground is too far below us. Trying to take it that far down with the hydraulics like this will only make everything worse. That tower is our only chance.”

  I looked over at Kathryn. “What do I do?”

  “Push that button there, and then pull up the index. Go to the flight readout, then add a window for the controls. You’re going to have to input my numbers precisely here. This is a more… mathematical way of landing.”

  I gave her an alarmed look even as my fingers danced across the screen. “You have done this before, right?”

  The look she gave me told me all I needed to know. This landing was not going to be easy.

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  6

  VIOLET

  I had braced myself as much as possible from my spot on the floor, but when the heloship hit the platform jutting out from the tower with a hard jolt, it still threw me to one side. My casted arm broke the fall, and from the bottom of the ship there came an awful grating sound, like glass being cut or nails being dragged down a chalkboard.

  The noise stopped for another moment where we went weightless again, and then we landed with another hard jolt and it came back worse than before. Kathryn cried out. Even though we had taken great pains to strap her in using the remains of the harness, it was probably still hard to control both her arms beneath the elbow without being able to brace them on anything. I felt her pain—I knew what it was like to have most of my body unable to function. I’d made sure to strap Solomon down as quickly as I could before we impacted the tower, too. I didn’t want him to be in any more pain, either.

  The grating sound slowed to a stop, and the heloship shuddered before going still. I sat up and cut the engines the way Kathryn had instructed me to before we’d strapped her down. The subtle vibrations beneath me stilled, and I slowly extracted myself from the complicated mess of wires and equipment on the floor, gently setting down the handheld that now controlled the heloship’s engines. It had been difficult to hold during the landing with all the wires jutting from its back, and we still couldn’t move it very far—hence why I was sitting on the floor to begin with.

  I breathed in and climbed to my feet, taking a moment to carefully release Kathryn from her straps. Sweat continued to pour from her face, and she was growing paler. I knew that wasn’t a good sign at all, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was just from pain, or from some internal bleeding I knew nothing about. />
  “Give her some more water,” I said to Belinda. “And check her stomach and chest for any dark bruises. I don’t like her color.”

  “As if you care,” said Belinda, unhooking herself from her own chair and moving forward on shaky legs.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Belinda.” My legs were also shaky, but I was determined not to show them that. She looked at me, and I looked straight back into her eyes. “She’s in pain. I’d have to be a monster not to care.”

  “Aren’t you?” gasped Kathryn from between us.

  Something inside me must have snapped a little at that—less anger, and more the sheer pain of being called something terrible, a word I hadn’t heard in a long time. I heard my own voice crack. “A monster? Did I call Belinda a monster when she told me to my face that you were taking me back to execute me? No, she’s just trying to do her job, and so are you, and I get it, I really do. But Kathryn, just because you view me as your enemy, it doesn’t mean I can’t understand, I can’t feel, the fact that you’re in pain. I’m a criminal, I won’t deny that. But I’m not inhuman.”

  I ran out of breath and pressed my lips tighter together. Kathryn and Belinda didn’t answer me, just stared at me with hard eyes, and I reminded myself again that it was pointless to try to get them to empathize with me.

  Instead I moved back into the bay and knelt down next to Solomon. His body had shifted even under the straps—likely from the rough landing—but after my inspection of the bandages and the patches, everything still looked about the same. His color was darkening, finally, which was good, but it might not last long.

  “I wish you were awake,” I whispered as I inspected his wound. “I wish I could trust you to be awake… But please, just stay asleep for a little while longer.”

  Kathryn groaned loudly, and I turned to see Belinda helping her move through the narrow hallway that separated the cockpit from the cargo bay. “You were right,” Belinda grunted. “She’s got some really bad bruises on her chest and stomach.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Kathryn gasped, and I heard the wheeze in her voice. “We need to get out there and fix this ship.”

  “I need the bullets,” I said, pulling out the gun.

  Belinda and Kathryn froze.

  “For all we know, this structure is abandoned,” Belinda said, taking a step forward. “But why do you get the bullets? I should have the gun. I’m probably a better shot than you.”

  “That’s true,” I acknowledged. “Especially considering that my broken arm is my dominant one. But that just adds to the fact that Kathryn knows this ship, and you have the working appendages. The only thing I can do is play guard duty—so on the off chance there are people, I can defend us, although I hope they’d rather talk than fight.”

  Belinda snorted. “Someone like you trying diplomacy? Please.”

  “I seem to have inspired the three of us to work together.” I held out my hand, looking at her expectantly.

  Belinda just glowered at me, and yet again it was Kathryn who broke the stalemate. “Just do it, Belinda,” she grated out harshly. “You’re wasting time, and if I die because you two can’t get along, at least I’ll die knowing I took you with me.”

  Gallows humor. Maybe Kathryn and I could get along after all. I kept my face neutral, however, waiting for Belinda’s reaction. She squinted at me, and then shook her head, her free arm reaching into her pocket and pulling out the clip. “You better keep us safe,” she warned.

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied, reaching out to take the clip. I slid it into the slot at the bottom of the handle and chambered a round, a process that required me to use my armpit and pray that no flesh or fabric got caught in the grooves. Belinda watched the process with a wary look on her face, but I ignored it and turned toward the door.

  Stepping around Solomon’s still form, I hit the button to open the bay doors. There was an odd grinding sound, and then the door jolted forward a few feet before stopping and slowly lowering down.

  Immediately, bright yellow light streamed in, carrying with it a dry and dusty heat that blasted the atmosphere inside from warm to just plain hot. I had shrugged out of my jacket and sweater earlier to reveal the short-sleeved shirt I was wearing beneath—the cast made regular long-sleeved shirts difficult to wear, and for once that was to my benefit.

  The door continued to open painfully slowly, the gears groaning loudly, before it settled with a clang on the hard shell of the platform of the building we’d landed on. I stepped out first, using my cast to shield my eyes from the bright sunlight. The burning ball of light was fully over the horizon now, steadily climbing up toward its zenith, but still hours away from noon.

  The light created long shadows, and luckily, a portion of the tower blocked the bulk of it, creating more shade. We were just shy of being sheltered by the shade created by the tower; however, any remaining darkness would shrink away, rather than stretch toward us, as the sun climbed up into the sky.

  I crept out of the ship, my eyes searching for any sign of movement.

  The air seemed to ripple, and I realized it was from the heat—sweat was already beginning to collect at the base of my spine. I continued forward down the ramp, blinking furiously against the intensely bright light.

  I paused when I came to the end of the ramp created by the door and bent over, examining the surface of the tower wing we’d landed on. What had appeared from far away to be a solid black thing was actually a deep rich brown, almost the color of earth that had been brought up from deep below. It also wasn’t metal, as I had expected, but made up entirely of glass. And it wasn’t like any glass I had ever seen before. For one thing, I couldn’t see any sign of cracks or damage, even though an object of great size and weight had just crashed into it. For another thing, the glass itself was lined with small, perfect circles, black in color, running in tidy rows across it.

  On impulse, I knelt down on the edge of the ramp and pressed my face to the pane of glass, doing my best to cut out the ambient light to see if I could peer through it. I couldn’t, and didn’t dare hold my face to the panel for too long. It was already hot from the sun’s rays. After a little while, who knew how hot it would get outside of the ship? I was beginning to worry about the weather being as dangerous as anything else out here. We needed to move fast.

  I stood up and stepped off the ramp, my gaze immediately going to the spot where the platform attached to the tower. If anyone were to come for us, I suspected it’d be from there. It was some hundred feet away, so it would be easy to see if anyone was coming, though there was no way to know that there weren’t hatches elsewhere too.

  “Is it clear?” Belinda called from behind me.

  Stepping around the far side of the ship, I exhaled and lowered my gun. The platform in my view was still empty. “It’s clear,” I called back to her.

  I hurried back into the ship as Belinda slowly helped Kathryn down, and I headed for the toolkit to make their jobs easier. Tucking my gun back under my armpit, I hefted it up and headed back out, following Belinda and Kathryn as they made for the nose of the ship.

  Now we were on the shaded side of our ship, and the contrast between the sun and the shade was startling. Without the blazing rays beating down, I felt almost a touch too cold in my t-shirt. Still, I knew that would change soon enough—as soon as the rising sun reached its peak. Just one more reason to do this as quickly as possible.

  I set down the toolkit and proceeded to help Belinda unscrew a panel under the wing, taking it off. All too soon, however, there was little for me to do, as the job really required the use of two arms—and Kathryn’s expertise.

  So I resigned myself to guard duty, and walked a path, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but decidedly non-elliptical around the heloship. Patterns made it easier to make plans, and whoever was inside the tower had to be watching. I wasn’t sure how, yet, but they would be.

  If there was anyone in there, that was. Minutes had already ticked by since our landing. Almost half an hour,
in fact. Granted, the place seemed huge, and perhaps traveling across it would be difficult, but that still seemed odd. Wouldn’t anyone inside be able to see us through the panes of glass? But what if the odd platform structures didn’t have anyone inside? For all I knew, they could be filled with machines that performed some important function. Nobody had ever talked about something that could sustain life inside The Outlands. Nobody had ever come from here, despite the close flying distance, and there had never been any reports of such a tower in Matrus… Though, knowing the higher-ups as I did now, I realized that even if there had been such reports, they might never have shared them with the public.

  This place was a complete mystery to me, and the truth was that there was no way to know what was happening inside until someone chose to come out. If there was anybody there. And that uncertainty was weighing heavily inside my stomach. Sometimes I felt sure this structure was made for human uses; the next moment, I would feel equally sure there could be nobody out in this barren place, and I was guarding pointlessly. It made me twitchy and nervous, in spite of the heat trying to suck the energy away from me.

  Smacking my lips together to try to generate a little moisture, I once again changed my orbit, moving closer to the edge that sat some sixty feet from the nose of the heloship. It was a bit far, but the area was so wide, I figured I would be able to see anything before it got too close.

  As I passed by, I looked under the heloship’s wing to see Kathryn leaning heavily against the side of it, and Belinda’s legs sticking out from the hole we had opened up on the side. I drew nearer to the northern edge of the platform, trying to ignore the feeling of vertigo as the expansive wasteland opened up below me. It did not escape me that we were standing extraordinarily high, but… it also didn’t bother me as much as it normally might. The platform felt sturdy under my feet, and it helped to steady me.

  As the expanse grew, I frowned when I saw a splash of blue appear, and moved forward a little faster. The blue—a slim line initially—broadened and grew as I drew nearer, until I realized that what I was looking at was the river. I drew to a stop, sweat trickling down my back and my skin already feeling tighter and hotter than it should.