But not to jump out of jets.
Suddenly I feel very sick, and sweat breaks out on my forehead.
“Cal?” I say again, my voice climbing higher.
He ignores me. “Cam, your job is to protect the jet. Put out as much silence as you can—picture a sphere; it’ll help keep us level in the storm.”
“Cal?” I yelp. Am I the only one thinking this is suicide? Am I the only sane person here? Even Farley seems nonplussed, her lips pursed into a grim line as she cables herself to one of the six gravitrons. She feels my eyes and looks up. Her face flickers for an instant, reflecting one ounce of the terror I feel. Then she winks. For Shade, she mouths.
Cal forces me up, either ignoring my fear or not noticing it. He personally straps me to the tallest gravitron, a lanky woman. He cables in next to me, one arm heavy across my shoulders while the rest of me is crushed against the newblood. All down the jet, the others do the same, flanking their gravitron lifelines.
“Pilot, what’s our position?” Cal shouts over my head.
“Five seconds to center,” comes a responding bark.
“Plan all passed on?”
“Affirmative, sir! Center, sir!”
Cal grits his teeth. “Arezzo?”
She salutes. “Ready, sir.”
There’s a very good chance I will throw up all over the poor gravitron in the middle of this honeycomb of people. “Easy,” Cal breathes in my ear. “Just hold on; you’ll be fine. Close your eyes.”
I definitely want to. I fidget now, tapping my legs, shuddering. All nerves, all movement.
“This isn’t crazy,” Cal whispers. “People do this. Soldiers train to do stuff like this.”
I tighten my grip on him, enough to make it hurt. “Have you?”
He just gulps.
“Cam, you can start. Pilot, begin drop.”
The wave of silence hits me like a sledgehammer. It isn’t enough to hurt, but the memory of it makes my knees buckle. I grit my teeth to keep from screaming and squeeze my eyes shut so tightly I see stars. Cal’s natural warmth acts as an anchor, but a shaky one. I tighten my grip around his back, as if I can bury myself inside him. He murmurs to me but I can’t hear him. Not past the feel of slow, smothering darkness and an even worse death. My heartbeat triples, ramming in my chest until I think it might explode out of me. I can’t believe it, but I actually want to jump out of the plane now. Anything to get away from Cameron’s silence. Anything to stop remembering.
I barely feel the plane drop or rock against the storm. Cameron exhales in steady puffs, trying to keep her breathing even. If the rest of the plane feels the pain of her ability, they don’t show it. We descend in quiet. Or maybe my body is simply refusing to hear anymore.
When we shuffle backward, crowding onto the drop platform, I realize this is it. The jet rumbles, buffeted by winds Cameron cannot deflect. She shouts something I can’t decipher over the pound of blood in my ears.
Then the world opens beneath me. And we fall.
At least when House Samos ripped my last jet out of the sky, they had the decency to leave us in a cage of metal. We have nothing but the wind and freezing rain and swirling darkness pulling us every which way. Our momentum must be enough to keep us on target, as well as the fact that no sane person would expect us to be leaping out of planes a few thousand feet in the air in the middle of a storm. The wind whistles like a woman’s scream, clawing at every inch of me. At least the pressure of Cameron’s silence is gone. The veins of lightning in the clouds call to me, as if saying good-bye before I’m turned into a crater.
Everyone yells on the way down. Even Cal.
I’m still yelling when we start slowing about fifty feet above the jagged tips of Corvium, spiraling out in a hexagon of buildings and inner walls. And I’m hoarse when we bump gently against the smoothly paved ground, slick with at least two inches of rainwater.
Our newblood hastily unclips us all, and I fall backward, not caring about the bitterly cold puddle I’m lying in. Cal jumps to his feet.
I lie there for a second, thinking of nothing. Just staring up at the sky I plummeted through—and somehow survived. Then Cal grabs my arm and hoists me up, literally pulling me back to reality.
“The rest are going to be landing here, so we have to move.” He shoves me ahead of him, and I stumble a bit through the sloshing water. “Gravitrons, Arezzo will come down with the next batch to teleport you back up. Stay sharp.”
“Yes, sir,” they echo, bracing themselves for another round. I’m almost sick at the thought.