Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (24 page)

“She’s one of the instructors here.”

“Oh?” Breeze and Ray said in unison.

She told them about her experience with Kera on the beach and how she projected out into space and back.

Breeze was stunned. “Okay. So there are other instructors around here, not just Oslo. She shows up and gives you a midnight lesson. As if this place couldn’t get any weirder.”

Sally nodded. “She made it a point to tell me that a time would come when a friend would need my help, and I wouldn’t be ready. That’s how I felt with Bram. It was like I had known him for a long time and he felt familiar to me. That’s why I didn’t hesitate to reach out to him, though I could still feel the sting of Kera’s words in my mind, and that I would fail when the moment arrived. I didn’t want that to be true and I was so eager to help. That’s when Kera showed up.”

She closed her eyes and brought his hand to her chest. “She shouted at me to leave, telling me this was not the time. She looked so frightened. I never saw a face with that much fear in it as she pushed me back. Then,” she cocked her head slightly as her eyes fluttered open, “I just remember her shouting at someone.”

Breeze nodded. “I saw her hovering over you and she told me to get us both out. I wasn’t going to argue. Then she waved her hand at us and I felt the whole platform get shoved out of the chamber. I looked at you and you were whole again, but your skin was ice cold.” Breeze patted her hands.

She smiled. “Once again, you saved me. I need to thank you.” She leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She lingered for a moment, and then pulled away.

Breeze felt his face burn red and he hoped that the moonlight wouldn’t give him away.

Ray spoke up. “But it was Breeze’s fault for bringing you down there.”

She turned to him. “No. I could have left anytime, but I didn’t. I was just as curious as him, and I needed to know more about what’s going on around here. The more I see, the less I like it. I want to leave.”

Ray smiled.

Breeze was stunned. “Sally, I know this place is not exactly the greatest, but—”

“But what Breeze?” She pulled her hands away from him. “Don’t put your head back in the sand. I know you and Oslo are close, but I don’t know why you would be loyal to him. What has he done for you? Remember what I said to you earlier? Have you really learned anything since you arrived? Do you feel more confident with your powers?”

I was starting to feel more confident with you,
he almost said. “I guess not. I mean...not really sure.”

She sighed in disgust and turned to Ray. “I want to go.”

He immediately stepped up and took her hand. She didn’t resist.

“The best thing I’ve heard in a long time,” Ray said as he pulled her away from Breeze and walked down the boulevard with Sally in tow.

Breeze threw his arms up. “Wait a minute, it can’t end this way. Not after everything we saw.”

Sally whirled on him. “Why don’t you want to go home? Is it because you have nothing to go back to?”

Breeze felt the elation he experienced from her kiss fade to despair. “Sally, why would you say something like that?”

“Are you happy here? Wake up, this is a scam! Our parents were talked into sending us here, but for what? Nothing happens! Where are the other students? The other instructors? I mean, look around you. This place is a tomb!”

Breeze took a halfhearted look around. She was right. He thought he was coming here to learn something and to see new things. Instead, he felt he more miserable here than at home. It was time to call it quits.

“Okay, what’s your plan?” Breeze said as he stuffed his hands into his jacket’s pockets.

Ray nodded. “Okay partner, good thinking. I have a plan, and you can help us.”

Sally looked at Ray with admiration as he spoke.

Breeze could see just how beautiful she was in the moonlight, and then shook his head.
Get over yourself.
“What do you want me to do, Ray?”

Sally jumped in. “Don’t let him help us, he might run to Oslo and say something.”

Ray put a hand up to silence her, then faced Breeze. “You say you spent some time at the hangars watching those robots work on the aerocraft, could you get them to prep one to take us back home?”

Breeze took a long hard look at Ray. “Yeah, I could try, but I could do you one better.”

“Oh?” Ray smiled.

An hour later, the trio were in a hover that Breeze commandeered from the motor pool next to the hangars. He piloted it through the palm forest first before bursting out onto the wide open tarmac of the landing facility where he whooshed by row upon row of old and dilapidated transports until he brought the hover to a stop.

He jumped out and the others followed him as he walked up to one transport in particular. “When I first arrived here, I saw these ships from the air spread out on the tarmac. Then we landed and I was really dizzy along with the feeling that I’d seen these types before, but couldn’t remember. Turns out I was right. We have similar ones piled up in our scrap yard back home. Those use air turbines, but these,” he pointed at the transport before him, “are different. They’re using the same hover tech you find with everything else around here. Oslo probably uses these for the recruiters to travel around and bring people and supplies here. It would be easy for me to jump inside and look at the avionics in the cockpit. I’m betting they’re pre-programmed to fly in and out of this place on auto pilot.”

Sally spoke up. “What about that fog you told me about? You said this place is covered by something that makes it hard to find.”

“So you really don’t remember coming here at all?”

“Breeze, I told you, Ray and I fell asleep on the way here and woke up as we were landing. You told me you passed through some kind of tunnel before you passed out. Is that going to happen again? Can we make it out of here?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Ray said.

Breeze arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

Ray grinned. “Well, you know I’ve been a real pain about wanting to get in contact with my father.”

Breeze rolled his eyes. “It seems like that was your big thing. Yeah, couldn’t forget it.”

Ray ignored him and turned to Sally. “So I’ve been poking around in the Science and Engineering Building and was able figure out why we couldn’t get a signal out to the mainland. The fog that Breeze mentioned to you; he wasn’t kidding. It really exists and it interferes with the signal.”

Sally looked at him blankly. “So this means...?”

Ray sighed. “C’mon Sally, it’s so obvious.” He cupped his hands. “Picture my hands as a bowl.” He then inverted his hands. “Now we put a lid on the bowl. Lid off, you can send signals anywhere. Lid on, no signal, no outside contact. It’s that simple.”

She sighed with exasperation. “Raymond Verhesen, I just want to leave this place and go home to see my parents and sleep in my own bed. I’m not asking for much.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m very tired. I’ve dealt with too much weirdness. And that man in the chamber,” she shuddered with her eyes closed, “is something I want to get very far away from.” When her eyes opened, they shined fiercely. “So please, get to the point,” she said and placed her hands on his chest. “How do we get out of here?”

The words tumbled out of Ray’s mouth. “I found a control room. It controls the shielding around this island. I figured out how to drop it, and then I sent a signal to my father that I’m coming home. It will make it very easy for us to leave. Hell, it makes it easy for anyone to find this place,” he said with a sly grin, then quickly sobered up.

Sally smiled. “The greatest news I’ve heard in a long time.” She swiveled toward Breeze. “Will you be a sweetie and help us get off this rock?” she said and batted her eyes at him.

Breeze nodded. “Yeah, sure, just one thing though. Ray, what do you mean you told your father you’re coming home? You came here with Sally, were you planning on leaving without her? And why the rush to leave? I thought your father and Oslo were on the level, you know, on the same team?”

Ray shifted his weight looked away. “Breeze, look, you wouldn’t understand. For you,” he waved his hand, “all of this is a really big deal. It’s your first time far away from home and you get to feel a little bit special being here. But things are not really going your way, yet you don’t want this to end too soon. For Sally and me,” he shrugged, “this is not for us. Greenbrier is our school and we were doing just fine there. Whatever was going on that made our parents send us here for the summer seems to have been a misunderstanding. My father told me so in a message he sent back. I just didn’t want to say anything to you, because, well, I feel kind of sorry for you.” He held up his hands. “Look, don’t take that as an insult, but we have nothing in common with you. This was all just a big mistake and it’s time to call it quits.” He clamped a hand on Breeze’s shoulder. “Come on, you told me you were a team player,” he said with a grin, “so are you going to help us get a ship?”

Breeze brushed the hand off his shoulder. “You know, you don’t have to be so condescending. I’m not dumb, I know when I’m being talked down to.”

“C’mon Breeze, don’t be like that. We’re friends here!” Ray’s grin seemed to widen by the second.

Breeze looked away. He was getting the same feeling from Ray just before the sailing accident. He knew better than to escalate the situation.

He walked to the stern of the ship, then opened a panel cover under the hull and flipped a switch. The sound of hydraulics whining pierced the humid night air as a cargo ramp lowered from the aft section.

“Follow me,” Breeze said and stepped up the ramp and into the transport.

Ray gestured toward Sally. “Ladies first.”

She shook her head and crossed her arms. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about things. Can’t you just be a little more subtle?”

“Sally, don’t be like that. I’m getting us out of this place, am I not?”

“Yes. Finally.” She stepped up the ramp.

Ray took a few steps up, then stopped and looked behind him. Satisfied, he turned and disappeared into the ship.

A woman in a white flowing dress materialized where the three once stood. She looked down at the tarmac where she could still see the heat of their footprints leading up to the ship. She looked up at the star filled sky and scanned the heavens, then turned her gaze to the campus off in the distance. She placed her hands to her chest and disappeared.

Inside the transport, Breeze was sitting in the pilot’s seat and explaining the ship’s systems while Ray stood behind him and listened. “From what I’ve been able to pick up watching the RF work, this screen right here,” Breeze tapped it with his finger, and it immediately came alive with a series of numbers and symbols scrolling across, “is where you input your destination. This is the same transport you two arrived in, so reversing the coordinates is easy.” He punched in a series of codes onto a keypad and the screen bleeped, and then went dark.

Ray barked out. “What’s the matter with it? Are you doing this right—”

Breeze held up a hand. “Relax, it has to digest the data before it can plot your route. Hold onto to your pants already.”

Ray gripped the headrest of Breeze’s seat. When the screen came alive again, he relaxed.

Breeze pointed at it. “There, now you’re set.” He swiveled to look Ray in the eye. “And don’t touch anything. You think you know a lot about aerocraft and boats, but you really don’t. Just let the ship fly itself.”

Ray gritted his teeth and seethed. “Fine, got it. You need to get your last digs in on me before we leave. But are you sure you did this right?”

Breeze shrugged. “Just don’t touch anything. I’m going to say goodbye to Sally.” He marched out of the pilot house and down the short steps that led directly into the passenger cabin.

Sally was sitting in a window seat on the starboard side of the ship. She was unfolding some blankets she found in the storage bins above when she saw Breeze coming down the aisle.

Breeze stopped at her row. “Well, goodbye for now?”

She turned to look at him with a forced smile. “Yes, I suppose. Are you going to stay here or...?” she said weakly while trying to hide her lack of interest.

The ship shuddered as the engines began to spool up. Breeze saw Ray exit the pilot house and head toward them down the aisle. Sally smiled upon seeing him.

Breeze knew when he wasn’t wanted, and didn’t need to see anymore body language from Sally to sense otherwise. “Guess I’ll go home, too. I’m going to stop by Oslo’s office later this morning to let him know what happened. It’s the least we...I can do.”

She looked up at him. “Sure, you do that,” she said, then turned her head slightly away. “Good luck to you, Breeze. I really do hope things go well for you. We’ll try to stay in touch?”

Breeze grunted and turned to look out the stern cargo ramp where he could see the sun beginning to rise.

“Safe journey, Sally.” He walked away.

He shook his head as he marched down the ramp and onto the tarmac.
Safe journey? Couldn’t think of anything better to say?

Sally twisted in her seat and watched him fade from view, then started to get up when Ray arrived.

“What’s his hurry, he’s that eager to get home? Well, can’t say I blame him. Doesn’t really fit in anywhere I bet,” he said as he plopped down into the seat next to her. “Where are you going? Did you forget something?”

She looked at him, then back towards the ramp. “No. I mean, yes. We never did pack our things from our room—”

“Forget about it. My father will just have Oslo ship it all back to us. Sit down and put on your harness, the ship is about to lift off.”

“Why the rush, Raymond Verhesen?” She only called him by his full name when she wanted to get the truth out of him.

But Ray was aware of this and would use it to his advantage. “Do you really want to stick around any longer after what we’ve been through?”

She shook her head meekly. “No, not really,” she said and looked down at her hands on her lap.

“Exactly. So let’s just go.” He put a finger under her chin and gently raised it so her eyes were level with his. “Trust me.”