Payback

65

The helicopter stuttered to the left as it took off. Lia’s stomach floated in the wrong place for a moment, waiting for the rest of her body to catch up. She closed her eyes to regain her equilibrium; by the time she reopened them the helicopter was over a long valley, the mines and smelters behind them. The mountains stretched in all directions. The air had a dark purple hue; the ground mixed green and brown like a mottled blanket. It seemed to Lia the terrain rushed by while they stood still.

The drone of the helicopter’s engines shut her off from the others, putting her in a little cocoon where she could rest for a while. She had one more card to swap. Hopefully that would be done quickly and she could go home and rest, retreat to a beach or someplace quiet where rats didn’t run in the ceiling while you were trying not to freeze to death under blankets stiffer than cardboard and not half as warm.

The helicopter wove its way north following a series of long, deep valleys, generally staying a few hundred feet below the nearest peaks. It seemed impossible that anyone could live in these mountains, and yet the slopes were dotted with houses, new and old, as well as massive stone ruins. Some had come for gold and silver: large strip mines were scattered around as well, along with old-fashioned tunnels. But the terraces along the mountainsides, the cultivated fields a thousand feet high, showed that more than the hunt for treasure had kept them here.

After about a half hour’s flying time, Lia grew tired.

“I’m going to take a nap,” she told the others — and Rockman. She reached to her belt and clicked off the com system. Within a few moments, she felt her mind starting to drift and she was sleeping.

In her dream, she saw Charlie shaking his head at her.

Why?

She was back in the vault, looking at her hand trembling before her. But this time she stopped it, staring crossly at it.

I will not be afraid.

Charlie materialized again, once more shaking his head. Why? she asked him.

Before he could answer, there was a soft pop, followed by a louder bang. Lia felt herself lurch upward. Caught between sleep and consciousness, she thought she saw the nose of the helicopter skitter upward and then back down. The tail slid to the left, then back; in an instant the helicopter was yawing back and forth as well as up and down, flying in a large, unguided corkscrew through the sky.

Fernandez grabbed Lia’s arm and shouted something. As he did, the chopper pitched hard to the right, and Lia’s mind seemed to lift up away from her body, soaring into the azure sky.