"Hold onto your tits, kid. This shit is wild. We don't often fly at the threshold of this thing’s capabilities, but this is my daughter we're talking about. Mercedes is under orders to push as hard as she can."
"What is the threshold?" I ask.
"Mach…six? Seven? Somewhere in there. I know Val's got his engineers constantly tinkering with this thing, trying to squeeze every last ounce of speed out of it."
"Mach six?" I mutter, stunned. "Jesus shits."
He fiddles with something in the armrest of his seat—I look at mine. It’s a small touchscreen with haptic buttons. Seat controls—tilt, recline, bolster, massage, heating, cooling, bed. Wait, bed?
"What's the difference between recline and bed?" I ask."Oh. Well, recline means lean back, but not flat. Bed mode turns the seat into a cot, basically. Pretty damn comfy, actually. Not that we'll be sleeping this trip." He winks at me, clicking his tongue. "Assuming Bryn keeps you, you might get a chance to try it out another time, though."
Oh. Oh man. That was…weird. Awkward? Nicholas Harris is…awkward? I notice him watching me, though, and I get the impression he's playing a character or something.
Testing me? Checking me out? Seeing how I'll react to Bryn's dad being a bit of an awkward doofus? I mean, who winks at another man? Fucking weird.
When I don't react, Harris bursts into laughter. "Okay, you passed."
I frown. "Huh?"
“Oh, c'mon, kid. Bryn thinks I’m an awkward weirdo. The thing is, I just do it because she's so easily riled up."
"Oh." I sigh. "Sorry, mate. I'm a bit preoccupied."
The humor fades. "I know. You can't dwell on it. You'll go nuts. You gotta save your energy for the hunt, the fight." We've finished taxiing and have turned and halted at the end of the runway. A smooth female voice fills the cabin from hidden speakers. "Prepare for takeoff."
That's all the warning we get, and then the Fist of God smashes me back into my chair. I flex every muscle in my body to keep the blood flowing as the pressure increases with our building speed. My vision wavers and blurs, and it feels like my limbs are made of lead. And that's just the initial burst to hit takeoff speed. I feel my stomach drop away as we ascend.
Across from me, I see Harris straining to move a finger—he taps the screen in his seat's armrest, taps again, and then a third time.
A chorus of terrified shouts echoes throughout the cabin as the floor, walls, and ceiling go transparent. As in, suddenly we're sitting suspended over nothing, like we're in that one superhero's invisible jet, only we're visible and it's not. Harris is grinning again, getting a kick out of it. Once the initial shock wears off, it's actually fascinating. The sense of speed is incredible—the ground falls away and blurs beneath us. And even as we reach cruising altitude, it's still visibly apparent how incredibly fast we're going.
We level off at cruising altitude, and the pressure slackens. I let out a breath and move to unbuckle.
"Seven minutes until hypersonic acceleration," the same female voice says.
"That wasn't hypersonic acceleration?" I ask.
Harris chuckles. "Nah, son, that was just takeoff. We can't break the sound barrier over cities."
I look down and see that the landscape has changed in the seconds since I last looked. We're passing over a fairly large city. As I watch, the city falls away rapidly. And this isn't even hypersonic? Oi. That's gonna hurt.
Minutes pass, and the landscape changes, becoming the patchwork quilt of farmland. We're also steadily rising, I realize, the sky going darker and darker blue.
"Prepare for hypersonic."
"We can't have reached the Atlantic yet?" I ask.
Harris shakes his head. "No, we went south to the Mediterranean first. It's faster, apparently, to fly subsonic toward the nearest ocean, cross the barrier, and then find your vector. Hypersonic flight is a whole other ballgame."
"Hypersonic in five…four...three…two…one…" A dramatic pause. "Now."
I've been donkey-kicked by The Almighty. The breath wheezes out of me, the immense pressure on my body so intense it feels like I’ve been teleported to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. My vision narrows, darkens, tunnels.
It goes on and on.
For several seconds, at least.
How long?
