D. MacHale - SYLO

She looked at me and I gave her a smile. “It’s okay,” I said with surprising calm.

“I know,” she said with a cocky shrug. “We’re gonna make it.”

She gave me a wink…

…as the superstructure came down.

It hit the battleship and we were instantly enveloped in a cave of fire. The heat was so intense I feared it would melt the fiberglass boat. The screaming sound of a thousand tons of wrenching, burning metal cut through the roar of our engines. Above it all I could hear the panicked cries of sailors from both doomed ships who were desperate to escape the death trap.

I braced myself, ready to be crushed or burned alive…as we cleared the destroyer’s bow and charged into open water.

Safe.

“Yahhh!” Kent screamed in triumph as we flew on, leaving the carnage behind.

Olivia screamed too, out of pure joy.

The superstructure erupted like an angry volcano, shooting massive spikes of flame high into the sky. A powerful wave of heat hit us in the back as the two ships collapsed into each other to create a single massive floating inferno.

“Granger?” Tori asked while keeping her eyes straight ahead.

I focused on the flames at sea level, expecting to see the attack boat come charging out of the fire.

A second passed. Then another. The destroyer was nearly on its side, its burning superstructure having hit the battleship and crumbled into the space between the ships. Kent had called it. It was hell.

Olivia said, “Do you think they—”

An explosion erupted in the space that had once been the corridor between the ships. A cloud of debris blew from the impact point, creating a fiery bloom of burning metal. For a fleeting instant I saw the dark silhouette of a machine gun spinning out of control. The one thing I didn’t see bursting out of that explosion…was the attack boat.

Olivia, Kent, and I kept staring back, not daring to believe what we had seen. Seconds passed as the two massive ships burned as one.

“There’s no way they turned around in time,” I finally said.

“And they sure as hell didn’t make it through,” Kent added.

We all shared stunned looks.

“Is it possible?” Olivia asked.

“I think it is,” I said, hardly believing it myself. “They’re done. Granger’s dead.”

The four of us let out a spontaneous cry of triumph. Kent threw his arms around me and lifted me off my feet.

“We did it, Rook,” he said with tears in his eyes. “We beat him. We won.”

Olivia wrapped her arms around the both of us. She was sobbing.

I think she said, “We’re not going to die,” but it was hard to tell because she was such an emotional mess.

Tori stayed focused ahead.

I leaned down to her and whispered, “You know something? You are crazy.”

Tori gave me a quick look—and a smile.

“I told you we’d make it.”

Olivia gently put a hand on each of her cheeks and kissed her on top of the head.

“Sister, you are my new hero,” she said. “But I will not go on a boat with you ever again.”

“Take a break, Sleeper,” Kent said as he put one hand on the wheel. “You earned it.”

That’s as big a compliment as Kent was capable of giving.

Tori hesitated, as if not wanting to give up control. Or maybe her hand was frozen to the wheel after having gripped it tightly for so long. She leaned forward, winced with a twinge of pain in her shoulder, and eased back on the throttle.

“She’s all yours,” she said to Kent. “Get us the hell out of here.”

We had done it. We’d escaped. And as a bonus, we had cut off the dragon’s head. SYLO’s leader was on his way to whatever level of hell he belonged in.

It was a moment filled with relief and joy. I walked to the stern of the boat, alone, to look back on the miles of floating devastation that had once been a fleet of ships spread across the horizon. Several were still intact and under power, though just as many were foundering. The sky had grown dark with the smoke of a hundred floating fires.

Pemberwick Island was completely blocked from view. I wondered if I would ever see it again.

“We did it, Quinn,” I whispered. “We made the Pemberwick Run.”

Against all odds we had survived. But the feeling of triumph was soon replaced by another nagging thought.

Was this the end of our journey, or just the beginning?

Itook control of the boat from Kent.

Driving actually helped calm me. The battle seemed to be over but I wouldn’t be able to relax until we hit dry land. Tori lay across the stern seat with her head in Olivia’s lap. Kent stood over them, staring back at the war zone.

Several of the black planes flew overhead, their incongruous music now clearly audible as they headed west, back toward the mainland and away from what was left of the naval blockade. They were no longer flying in perfect formation but instead were scattered across the sky like shell-shocked soldiers staggering back from the battlefield after having lost most of their comrades.

Casualties were heavy on both sides. Looking back at the line of damaged ships that grew steadily smaller the further we moved away made it clear that the Navy had taken just as bad a beating as the invaders from the sky.

“How many people died?” Olivia asked wistfully, to nobody in particular.

“I only care about one—Granger,” Kent replied without a trace of sympathy.

“What was the point?” I said. “Who won? Those planes came from over land. Don’t invasions usually come from the sea?”

“I guess that depends on what’s being invaded,” Tori pointed out.

That reminded me of something she had said earlier.

“Is that possible?” I asked. “Could those Navy ships have been trying to keep the black planes away from Pemberwick Island?”

Kent snickered and said, “Possible? Are you serious? Why use logic now? I’m thinking anything is possible.”

“But then… why?” I asked. “More important, who? We just saw two huge military forces going at it. Who has the kind of technology we saw with those singing planes?”

“We know the United States is involved,” Tori offered. “President Neff himself set up the quarantine.”

“So then who was flying the black planes? Were they from SYLO, like Feit said? Why would they be attacking their own navy?”

“It could be the Chinese,” Kent said. “Or the Russians.”

“What about that laser weapon we saw the other night?” I asked. “Where on earth did that come from? And why didn’t they use it today?”

“Maybe you hit it, Rook,” Kent said soberly. “Who on earth has that kind of technology? Maybe nobody. What if that attack came from somewhere else?”

I didn’t register what he meant at first but when it finally struck me, I had to laugh. “You can’t be serious. You think this is, like, an alien invasion?”

“This is real life, Kent,” Tori admonished.

Kent stiffened.

“No, it isn’t,” he said with absolute conviction. “This is fantasy. There’s nothing that happened over the past few weeks that has anything to do with real life. At least not the life I know. When you cross that line, I don’t think you can rule anything out.”

I’d disagreed with pretty much everything Kent Berringer had said and done since I’d known him—until then. In the absence of any real explanations, how could we rule anything out, no matter how wild it seemed?

“So then, what do we do now?” Olivia finally asked.

Tori said, “All we can do is stick with our original plan. We go to Portland, find a TV station, and talk to the world. Let somebody else figure this out.”

Now that her adrenaline spike had left her, Tori was left looking pale and fragile. She was right, we had to stick with the plan, but that plan had to include finding a hospital to get her help. For that we had to get to Portland, so we pressed ahead, drawing ever closer to the mainland and hopefully to answers.