Timecaster

FORTY-NINE

In the past twenty-four hours, I’d been frightened so many times I’d lost count. But prior to these recent life-threatening events, my biggest scare had been skydiving with Vicki. While giving us a last-minute pep talk in the heliplane, our instructor had regaled us with a history of the sport, along with the many types of parachutes developed.

Rogallo, drogue, and cruciform were all chute shapes, used for different purposes. A rogallo was a fancy name for a flexible airfoil. Though made of triangular cloth, it functioned more like a wing than a parachute, and was used on hang gliders and Parasevs. Sata’s triangle a few miles beneath me was a rogallo chute.

Mustering up my remaining dregs of common sense, I knew it was too soon for the rogallo, partly because it seemed like I was traveling too fast for it to work, but mostly because Sata had labeled it “3.”

I hit button number “2” on my wrist instead, launching the drogue.

Drogue chutes were invented to be deployed by rapidly moving objects, just as spacecraft, missiles, and, in this case, me.

The effect was instantaneous. Though I’d never had my limbs pulled off, I could imagine it felt similar. The drogue parachute exploded out the back of my suit and immediately reduced my speed, so fast I felt blood slosh into my hands and feet, making them swell up. The suit’s infrastructure focused the brunt of the force on my shoulders and hips, which instantly ached. My vision blurred, and I swung back and forth like a pendulum, fighting not to pass out.

Eventually, thankfully, the terrible heat diminished. Inside the suit, the circulating air slowly cooled, so it no longer felt like I was breathing inside an oven. The swaying eventually evened out. I became lucid enough to pull back the TEV and check the timer.

5:23 and counting.

While the drogue had slowed me down considerably, I was still going much too fast to land. A glance upward revealed a chute that looked like a long, tapered sleeve, with a large hole in the top. If I hit the ground using only this, I’d pancake myself.

Luckily, Sata had more buttons on his clever little space suit. Keeping in sequence, I hit “3,” the rogallo.

The drogue detached and a triangular wing popped out the back of my suit, immediately slowing me down even more. My angle of descent went from a straight plummet to a thirty-degree angle. But it was a smooth transition, rather than a jarring one like the drogue.

I leaned backward, cutting my angle of attack even more, reducing my speed while learning how to tilt and twist my body to go in the direction I wanted to. After a few arcs and turns, I located Sata, perhaps half a mile below me. I aimed myself toward him.

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.