Michael Grant - BZRK

Grey was slamming himself as well as he could against the cockpit door. Yelling. Cursing, which was not something Grey McLure did.

The plane was tilted so sharply now that it was more vertical than horizontal. Stone lay on his back on the carpeted floor and kicked against the cockpit door beneath him, while his father lay pressed against the bulkhead and slammed himself against it.

“Dad! What’s happening?”

Stone kicked again and again.

A sudden give. The doorjamb cracked. One more hit would do it.

Stone hauled himself back up, using the seats to climb, like a slippery ladder, then dropped, feet punching out with every bit of power he had to give, and with a sound like a breaking branch the door gave way.

Stone fell through in a tangle with his father. The two of them hit Kelly’s seat and crashed into the instrument panel, smashed into the windshield. Pain shot through Stone’s knees, his elbow, his shoulder. Didn’t matter because now the green field was so near. Zooming up at him.

A flash of Kelly’s face, eyes blank, mouth bleeding from hitting the instrument panel, short-cut gray hair matted, staring hard in horror. Staring at something maybe only she could see.

A flash of the stands full of people.

His father flailing, legs tangling, something broken, head hanging the wrong way, too confused to . . .

“Dad!” A sob, not a shout.

Stone pushed himself back from the instrument panel and somehow found the stick with his right hand and pulled hard.

Kelly turned to look at him. Like Stone’s action was puzzling to her. Like she was amazed to find him there. With dreamy slowness she reached for the stick.

The three of them tangled together in a heap and the field rushing up at them. So fast.

Way too fast.

And Stone knew it.

But he pulled back on the stick and yelled, “Dad!” for no reason because there wasn’t anything Stone could do but look at him with eyes full of horror and so sad; so, so sad.

“Dad!”

The jet began to respond. The nose started to come up. The stadium seats looked like they were falling away, and now the top of the stadium, the upper rim was in view.

And some remote, still-functioning part of Stone’s brain realized they were actually inside the stadium. A jet. Inside a bowl. Climbing toward safety.

Faces. Stone could see thousands of faces staring up at him and so close now he could see the expressions of horror and see the eyes and open mouths and drinks being spilled, legs tripping as they tried to run away.

He saw team shirts.

A redheaded kid.

A mother pulling her baby close.

An old guy making the sign of the cross, like he was doing it in slow motion.

“Dad.”

Then the jet flipped. Up was down.

The jet was moving very fast. But not quite the speed of sound. Not quite the speed of sound, so the crunch of the aluminium nose hitting bodies and seats and concrete did reach Stone’s ears.

But before his brain could register the sound, Stone’s honest brow and strong nose and broad shoulders and his brain and ears, too, were smashed to jelly.

Stone was instantly dead, so he did not see that his father’s body was cut in two as it blew through the split side of the cockpit.

He did not see that a section of Grey’s shattered-melon head flew clear, bits of gray-and-pink matter falling away, a trail of brain.

A small piece—no bigger than a baby’s fist—of one of the great minds of modern times landed in a paper cup of Coors Light and sank into the foam.

Then the explosion.

THREE

Sadie McLure didn’t see the jet until it was far too late.

The boy she was with—Tony—was not a boyfriend. Not really. But maybe. If he grew up a little. If he got past being weird about the fact that his father was just a department manager at McLure Industries. That he lived in a house half the size of the McLure home’s garage.

“Sorry about these seats,” Tony said for, oh, about the tenth time. “I thought I might get access to my buddy’s skybox, but . . .”

Yeah, that was the problem for Sadie: not being in a skybox while she watched a game she didn’t understand or like.

Until Tony had brought it up, Sadie had had no idea what a skybox was.

So not the most important thing in the world, that disparity in income. If she limited herself to dating the kids of other billionaires, she wasn’t going to have much to choose from.

“I enjoy mixing with the common people,” Sadie said.

He looked startled.

“That was a joke,” she said. Then, when he didn’t smile, she added, “Kidding.”

Try to be nice, she told herself.

Try to be more flexible.

Sure, why not a football game? Maybe it would be fun. Unless of course it involved some otherwise perfectly attractive and intelligent boy apologizing for his five-year-old Toyota and his jacket, which was just . . . she didn’t even remember what brand, but he seemed to think it wasn’t the right brand.

If there was a downside to being well-off—and there weren’t many—it was that people assumed you must be a snob. And no amount of behaving normally could change some people’s mind.

“Have a nacho,” Sadie said, and offered him the cardboard tray.

“They’re pretty awful, aren’t they?” he replied. “Not exactly caviar.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve already had my caviar for the day,” Sadie said. And this time she didn’t bother to explain that that was a joke. Instead she just scooped up a jalapeño and popped a chip in her mouth and munched it gloomily.

This was going to be a long date.

Sadie could be described as a series of averages that added up to something not even slightly average. She was of average height and average weight. But she had a way of seeming far larger when she was determined or angry.

She was of average beauty. Unless she was flirting or wanted to be noticed by a guy, and then, so very much not average. She had the ability to go from, “Yeah, she’s kinda hot,” to “Oh my God, my heart just stopped,” simply by deciding to turn it on. Like a switch. She could aim her brown eyes and part her full lips and yes, right then, she could cause heart attacks.

And five minutes later be just a good-looking but not particularly noticeable girl.

At the moment she was not in heart-attack-causing mode. But she was getting to the point where she was starting to seem larger than she was. Intelligent, perceptive people knew this was dangerous. Tony was intelligent—she’d never have gone out with him otherwise—but he was not perceptive.

Jesus , Sadie wondered, probably under her breath, how long did these football games last? She felt as if it was entering its seventy-fifth hour.

She couldn’t just walk away, grab a cab, and go home; Tony would think it was some reflection on his lack of a diamond-encased phone or whatever.

Could she sneak a single earbud into the ear away from Tony? Would he notice? This would all go so much better with some music or an audiobook. Or maybe just white noise. Or maybe a beer to dull the dullness of it all.

“Clearly, I need a fake ID,” Sadie said, but too quietly for Tony to hear it over a load groan as a pass went sailing over the head of the receiver.

Sadie noticed the jet only after it had already started its too-sharp turn.

She didn’t recognize it as her father’s. Not at first. Grey wasn’t the kind of guy who would paint his plane with some company logo.

“That plane,” she said to Tony. She poked his arm to get his attention.

“What?”

“Look at it. Look what it’s doing.”

And the engine noise was wrong. Too loud. Too close.

A frozen moment for her brain to accept the impossible as the inevitable.