Page 152 of White Lights
Ready for departure,the screen reads.
But the plane doesn’t move.
She tries to remember Rafe’s motions that night, what he did to maneuver them out of the Death Valley desert, into the sky, and across several states—almost without her noticing it. He made it look so easy Dez thought someone else was flying the plane. And Asher had called just before they took off, leaving a voicemail that completely consumed her attention. The mechanics of piloting the jet had been the furthest thing from her mind. And yet, by the time they reached Acheron, Dez had begun to understand, if not consciously than intuitively, what was going on.
Glancing up directed the jet to climb higher. Glancing down made it descend. Left and right steered, like handlebars on a bike.
Somewhere there’s another scanner that’s not picking up Jet’s retina. Dez has to find it, trigger it. She holds the eyeball forward. She rolls it toward the ceiling. Nothing happens.
She moves it around, the way she used to with her phone, trying to get service in the desert. Her heart pounds as she glances out the window, back toward the dark, imposing windows of Acheron.
She pictures Rafe still at her door. What was going through his mind as he thundered up her stairs? What was he going to do when he reached her? Even in his frozen state, is he conscious? Can he feel himself moving at a different rate of time than her?
What did he expect? He should have known Dez would never make Asher’s film. He should have known she’d do anything to save Asher from death.
But if she doesn’t find a way to get out of here before the Soma wears off, Rafe will find her. He will win. And Asher will die.
Anger steels her resolve, but she doesn’t know how to do this on her own. She’s tired and out of ideas.
She misses Mo. He would tell her she can do this. He would say that if she didn’t, no one would. He would have believed in her, no matter how crazy her plan was.
“Thanks, Mo,” she whispers as she gets an idea. She raises Jet’s eye so that it’s level with her own. So that she’s looking directly at the back of it, at the jellied artery she’d severed from his head.
A narrow white beam shines through the darkened cabin. The laser scanner. Dez has activated it. She holds very still as it stretches across the walls. Watches as, at last, it reaches the immortal eye in her hand. And then, as easy as if she’d turned over the ignition in a car, an engine beneath her purrs to life.
She will not crash. She will not fail.
Her limbs go rigid as she tips Jet’s eye up. The jet jerks forward, then rockets up into the sky.
“Fuck,” she gasps.
Too much, too soon.
There are no seat belts, and Dez can’t let herself grip the armrests of her chair or she’ll come back into time. Her only option is to smooth this flight out. To respond the way a normal eye would operate in a normal angel’s head.
Glancing at the navigation screen, she sees she needs to make a U-turn so that she flies west, all the way to the edge of the country. She turns Jet’s eye slightly to the left, causing the plane to bank that way.
This time, the plane’s pivot is smoother. And when Acheron is over her shoulder, Dez doesn’t even look back at its false moonlight and snowcapped arches. She’s doing this. She looks toward the horizon, toward Asher and his worthy life.
Ahead the sky roils. It looks like a storm. But it’s strange and otherworldly, the colors marbleized blues and blacks. Not clouds. She must be approaching thebarbelo. Dr. Ezekiel’s filter was designed to shield the school from the rest of the world’s sight, to make them nothing but a dark spot on a mountain.
Flying headlong into the roiling clouds, she readies herself for the bolt of lightning. But she isn’t prepared for what happens in slow time.This time it strikes the plane with what feels like unending force, dropping the jet’s elevation ten times longer, making Dez feel as if the atmosphere is compressing into a single atom.
The force flings Dez out of the captain’s chair. Airborne, she rolls across the plane as it rolls through the sky. She screams as her shoulder smashes into the floor and her face collides with one of the footrests. She has to get the eye back to the scanner, but she can’t use her hands to grab hold of anything. She uses her elbows to prop herself up, struggles to crawl on her knees as the plane nosedives.
Red lights blink in the cabin. An urgent voice comes over the PA.
“Return to your seat. Return to your seat.”
Alarms sound as, out the window, Dez glimpses a fast-approaching mountainside. In a panic, she hooks her foot on the armrest of the captain’s chair where she sees the white beam searching the cabin again for Jet’s retina. She holds the eyeball up.
Just before crashing into the Rocky Mountains, the scanner finds Jet’s retina again, and the plane shoots vertically up from its death spiral—into shockingly blue sky. Dez gasps to catch her breath, squinting into sunlight after so much time away.
High above the mountains, the plane’s angle evens out.
It’s beautiful, so bright it seems to make a sound, a hum Dez hears in her soul.
It takes time for her eyes to adjust, but once they do, she inhales deeply, soaks it all up. Gold sun, lace-like clouds. Aching, brilliant sky. Sunlit mountains, verdant trees, and sparkling rivers. The real world is unspeakably gorgeous.
