The panic in Jasper’s voice should have been enough to paralyze Grace. If Jasper was afraid, things were bad.
Instead, she rose to her feet. “We have to do something.”
The rest of the team exchanged apprehensive glances.
“Can we shoot them down?” Grace asked.
“Not from the ground,” Thea said. “They fly too high and move too fast when they dive for prey.”
Grace spread her wings. “Good thing I’m not confined to the ground.”
Jasper was even more distressed now. “Angel! Don’t you dare come out here—” She cut herself off with a yelp.
“Jasper? Are you okay?” Grace frantically glanced around. She needed something to fight with. Her eyes found the bag of tools and weapons Jasper had left with them.
“I’m fine! They grabbed someone in front of me.”
“I’m coming to help.” Grace grabbed a blaster.
“No, you’re not!”
“Grace, don’t,” Thea said. “She can handle herself. She’s faced worse enemies. Alone. Dozens of times.”
“Please,” Dax added.
Holly watched with narrowed eyes.
“Sorry,” Grace told them. “But I’m going to try.”
She raced to the edge of the roof. Her wings spread out as she ran, her metal feathers caught the desert air, and then she was flying. She sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself higher, high enough that she could see seven terrifyingly large birds circling in the sky beyond the glittering city.
While Grace flew toward them, she looked over the blaster. She’d never used one, but all she had to do was pull the trigger, right?
The closest snatchawk took an interest in her. She lifted the blaster as it soared her way. How close did she need to be for the blast to do any good? How close was too close? Too late?
Grace squeezed the trigger. A blue laser fired and missed the bird by ten feet. She tried again. And again. Her fourth shot struck the middle of the bird’s head.
It silently dropped from the sky.
“I did it!” Grace cheered. She halted and beat her wings against the air to hover in place. Three more birds looked her way. Uh oh.
“Get down here!” Jasper yelled into the comms.
A fourth bird dove toward the racers. Toward Jasper.
Grace folded in her wings and dove. “Jasper, look out!” She caught herself as close to traffic as she dared and soared over the heads of the racers.
Jasper yanked her motorcycle to the right, barely dodging the bird’s talons.
Grace lifted the blaster and fired. The bird shrieked, but the hole in its stomach wasn’t enough to stop it. Grace fired again. It swooped toward her.
It was almost on top of her when her third shot sent it crashing into the road, causing a few vehicles to either collide or fly off the course.
“Okay, that was cool,” Jasper admitted. “But you’ve got three more coming your way.”
“They’re faster than me,” Grace realized, panic overriding her determination. She flew as low to the ground as she dared in hopes that the racers would distract the birds from her. “Jasper!”
“It’s going to be okay.” Jasper sounded only slightly more confident than she had before. “Catch up to me. I have something that’ll help.”
Jasper slowed. Grace shot past a few racers, including Cutthroat, who watched her pass with a curious expression.
“Here!” Jasper removed a smoke bomb from her belt and held it out as Grace caught up. Grace’s fingers grazed the sphere. Her hand wrapped around it, and she slid it into her pocket.
Jasper passed her three more. “Please don’t die!”
“I know, I know, you need me to take down Starr. Don’t worry, I won’t ruin your plans.”
“It’s not—” Jasper stopped herself. “Good luck!”
Grace managed a small smile as she ascended. “I don’t need luck!”
Jasper laughed. That was good. Maybe they weren’t totally screwed. Grace drew out the first smoke bomb. Two snatchawks changed paths to pursue her. She pushed the button on the bomb and threw it their way.
The smoke swallowed them. Grace fired blindly into the cloud, not stopping until both birds had fallen. “Where are the other—?”
Sharp talons dug into Grace’s shoulder, drawing blood and a cry of pain from her lips. The blaster slipped from her fingers.
“Grace!” Jasper screamed.
Grace grabbed at the bird’s leg and clawed blindly. A gunshot—no, something louder—went off below. The bird let out a deafening shriek. Its claws released their hold on Grace. As Grace fell, the sound echoed again. She looked down.
Cutthroat was firing from the miniature cannon on his vehicle. His next shot sent the bird that had grabbed Grace crashing into the desert sand.
Grace forced her wings to move through the pain. That probably wasn’t helping the whole bleeding out situation, but she could deal with that on the ground. She located the blaster lying in the sand, adjusted her wings, and glided toward it.
The landing was rough, and more pain shot through her legs as she stumbled and fell to her knees. She grabbed the blaster and looked up.
Two snatchawks left. “What happened to the racers they grabbed?” Grace asked.
“They drop them off somewhere to eat later. Of course, we’re tougher than their usual prey. Most of the racers will probably survive and get away.”
Grace swallowed and pulled out another smoke bomb. This was going to hurt like hell. She thought about all the times she’d seen Jasper get hit or wounded or fall a little too far and still get back up to keep fighting. Her wings unfolded. She jumped.
The snatchawks swooped down to meet her. Grace activated the smoke bomb and tossed it up as hard as she could. She aimed and fired off shots, one after another.
“You know blasters have a limit before they have to be recharged, right?” Jasper asked.
Grace paused. “Wait, what?”
One bird fell. The other emerged from the smoke shrieking, talons out, red wings spread wide. Grace was close enough to see the rows of razor-sharp teeth filling its beak. She tucked in her own wings to drop out of range, then flew behind and up. As the bird turned itself around, she rose above it. “How do I know how many shots I have left?”
“There’s a screen on the back with a number,” Jasper said.
“You mean the tiny blue square?”
“Yes, that!”
Grace’s heart skipped a beat. “It says one.”
“Oh. Well, better make it count!”
The snatchawk was close. Grace needed more time to take aim. While she fought to rise higher and stay out of the bird’s grasp, she readied another smoke bomb. Activated it. Let go. The bird shrieked as the smoke surrounded it and obscured its sight. Grace took aim at the cloud, waiting for the bird’s shadow to appear. One shot.
Movement at the edge of the cloud. Not yet. Almost.
The snatchawk’s head broke free of the smoke. Grace pulled the trigger. The blue laser cut clean through the bird’s neck.
“I got it!” Grace twisted in the air and searched for Jasper among the racers.
“I knew you could, Angel.” Jasper reached for the sword strapped to the side of her motorcycle and, as she passed Grim Machine, jammed it into a gap in the tank’s side. “Take that, you dumb idiot robot!” she yelled as he flipped over and tumbled off the road.
“You couldn’t string together a more intelligent insult?” Holly asked.
“I’m too angry for that right now!” Jasper had almost made it to the front of the pack, and Ringmaster’s finish line was less than a minute away. Grace followed from above, trying to focus on the feeling of wind on her skin and not the way she was still shaking from her fight with the snatchawks.
Jasper moved into fifth. Fourth. Third. Grace veered away from the road and moved to hover above the sand a few hundred feet off. She wasn’t sure if the final stretch of the race would be dangerous, but if anyone had any last-minute tricks up their sleeve, she wanted to be far out of range.
Cutthroat came up on Jasper’s right. He pushed a lever, and his exterior weaponry, cannon included, detached from his cart, rolling along the road behind him and crashing into racers before they could get out of the way. Flames exploded out of the back of the vehicle, pushing Cutthroat into third and across the finish line seconds before Jasper.
Grace expected complaining or cursing from Jasper, but the comms stayed silent. Jasper swerved off the road and cut across the sand, toward where Grace was hovering. Grace lowered herself to the ground. The sky had faded to a dark violet now, turning to fire at the horizon.
Jasper hopped off the motorcycle and pulled off her helmet. “Are you okay?” she asked, wide eyes darting over Grace.
“I’m going to have some pretty bad scars on my shoulder, but other than that I’m good.” Grace’s entire body still trembled. She pressed a hand to her aching shoulder where the talons had found her flesh. Her shirt was damp with blood, but the pain had faded enough that the wound didn’t feel urgent anymore. “Why hasn’t anyone gotten rid of those things?”
Jasper leaned against the motorcycle and tipped her head back to watch the stars appearing overhead. “No particular government wants to take responsibility for them. And they usually keep away from civilization, so they’re not a threat to people unless you go out into the desert unprepared.”
Grace sank into the sand. “I just need to sit down for a minute, and I’ll be okay,” she said when Jasper shot her a concerned look.
“We should get you to Dax,” Jasper said. The concern in her expression didn’t let up in the slightest. Did she really think Grace was worth worrying about, now? Maybe the fight with the snatchawks had proved she wasn’t as useless as she seemed.
“I don’t think I can fly again tonight.” Grace looked back at the city. “Looks like a pretty far walk.”
Jasper sighed. “All right, take a few minutes to rest. You’ll have to ride back with me on the motorcycle.”
“Okay.” Grace scooped up a handful of white sand and watched it pour through her fingers. “So, have you seen them before?”
“Seen what?”
“The snatchawks. It sounded like you did.”
Jasper stared at her for a moment before sliding up a finger to mute her comm. “It was a long time ago.”
Grace muted hers, too. “How long?” When Jasper didn’t answer, she added, “I—I saw a photo somewhere in the shack. Of you. Dressed in a military uniform, I think.”
Jasper kicked at the sand. “I don’t know how long Sky Labs has been running, but Syrus Starr’s grandfather was the one in charge when I was taken to Kronos,” she said. “And I’m not going to explain all of that to you right now. But the labs—that’s where it happened. The cybernetics. The computers in my brain. They did it. And they gave me some serum.” Her shoulders sagged. Her gaze lowered to the ground. “I think it was meant to be a healing thing, to make my body fix itself faster. I don’t know if they intended for it to work the way it did but…I haven’t…aged since.”
Grace swallowed. “So, you’re…?”
“I was born on Earth in 1952. I’m sixty-eight.” Jasper eyes met Grace’s for a heartbeat before moving back down. “I was here on Si Hera during the Waste Wars. I fought in them.”
“Oh.”
Grace couldn’t begin to imagine… Sixty-eight? What else had she seen, besides war and monstrous birds? She lowered her own gaze to the sand, racking her brain for something to say. Anything.
“So, your mind’s sixty-eight but your body’s seventeen?” she asked after a long moment.
“Sort of? Not really. I mean, I have sixty plus years of memories, sure, but I’m pretty sure my stupid brain hasn’t aged either. I still feel seventeen.” Jasper rubbed her forehead. “But sometimes I feel young and old at the same time.”
“Why not tell the others?” Grace asked.
“They think I’m crazy enough as is.”
“You don’t trust them?”
“I do. I want to. It’s complicated.” Jasper moved her hands into her pockets. “Maybe I’m telling you because my gut tells me I can trust you. Or maybe I’m telling you because we haven’t known each other long, so it doesn’t matter to me what you think.”
That stung, oddly enough. Grace swallowed. “I think you should tell the others. They’re your team, aren’t they?”
“I guess they deserve to know. I just don’t know how to talk about my past.”
Grace rested her chin on her knees and stared out at where the vast expanse of sand met the dark sky. “You called me Grace.”
“What?”
“Instead of Angel. When the snatchawk grabbed me.”
“Oh. Did I? The whole thing’s kind of a blur.”
“Jasper? Grace? You guys still there?” Thea asked.
Jasper tapped her comm. “Yeah, we’re good. We’ll be back in a few.”
“Okay, well, that gunshot you heard? It’s all over the news now. Someone was killed.”
“Interesting.” Jasper looked at Grace. “Could be a random murder, but the fact that it took place during the race…”
“The race would make a good distraction,” Grace climbed to her feet, wincing at the stabbing pains that seemed to have multiplied. “Maybe the victim is the target Ringmaster and Aymes were discussing.”
A grin broke out on Jasper’s face. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.” She tossed Grace her helmet. “Let’s go.”
Grace barely managed to catch it. “What about you?”
“I’ve got metal in my skull and the ground’s made of sand. I’ll be fine.” Jasper swung one leg over the motorcycle. “Come on.”
Grace slid on the helmet. She climbed on behind Jasper and held on tight, bracing for the high speeds and swerving she’d seen during the race. Instead, Jasper started slow and built up speed gradually.
Si Hera’s silver moon Sera hung in the sky over Sagev, and its second black moon Vala peeked over the horizon. The light they reflected made small, metallic fragments in the desert sand sparkle as Grace and Jasper raced over them.
The sight made Grace want to go flying again, to see the breathtaking view from above. As awful as fighting those birds had been, realizing she could twist and turn in the air like that had been amazing. And she’d proved something to herself. To Jasper’s team. She was a fighter.
Grace wished she’d seen the world outside Kronos sooner.