Chapter 5
Kali
Every part of Kali’s escape had been rehearsed into clarity … except for the last part.
The first time Kali had been brought to the island, she’d had some freedom and a few human overseers.
The second time Jack had negotiated her return, the terms had changed. The reward for her capture was too high to trust anyone with her location or identity. So she’d been locked in a wing of the facility with sensors reporting her well-being into a computer Jack could monitor.
That computer had been the one to make her run the escape simulation until she could do it on autopilot … up until the last choice.
In the updated version, she boarded a different plane at the end. She knew that, but it threw her off when she’d arrived in the hangar to find both the old and the new options waiting for her.
Recent drills told her to take option #2, while instinct told her to stick with the tried and true. Yet logic reinforced the idea that the tried and true had been compromised when she used it the first time around, so Kali snuck aboard a beat-up plane that looked like it vacationed in the Bermuda Triangle. In a hangar where everything was shiny and new, she was boarding the one plane older than her. But once she made it into the flight attendant’s luggage closet, she didn’t care how old the plane was anymore. She fit in the closet and didn’t have to move anymore; that was a win in her book.
Closing her eyes, Kali leaned her head against the metal wall and let herself relax in the dark, tight space. Every so often, a body part twitched as if a current of electricity ran through it. The random movements kept her from falling all the way asleep—or that’s what she thought until the sound of someone boarding the plane woke her.
How long had she been out? The adrenaline shouldn’t have faded that fast.
She stayed frozen as a man walked about the plane, moving in and out of the cockpit several times before finally shutting the cabin door and taking a seat. A moment later, Kali heard him close off the door that sealed him into the cockpit and the engine fired up.
About a minute passed, then the plane pushed back.
Finally. Kali was on her way, and all she could think about was the food that awaited her on the other side of the plane ride. Vegas wasn’t her favorite city, but it had restaurants. Pressing her forehead against the cool steel of the forgotten luggage closet, Kali started devising her dream menu.
Soup would be her starter. Something simple, with a lot of broth to remind her stomach how eating worked. If she kept that down, she’d move to a fruit plate. Berries with yogurt. She tried to dream up a third course to her meal, but her mind stayed stuck on soup and berries.
Heaven really came down to the simple things, it seemed.
After takeoff, it occurred to Kali that she didn’t have to spend the entire flight in the closet—not with the pilot’s cabin locked. She could get out. Stretch.
Hunt for food.
When the plane leveled out, she did just that.
The cabin was dark when she stepped out, drawing attention to the sunset outside the windows. She didn’t know what day or even what season it was, but she knew they were flying north.
A search of the cabin revealed exactly no food and a 24-pack of bottled water. She grabbed one of the bottles, nursing it tentatively to see how her stomach would react to the liquid.
Not well.
What day was it? How long had it been since she’d physically eaten?
She was too weak to think about it all too hard, opting to take a seat in the cabin and stare out the window instead. Three or four sips of water later, her eyelids dropped and the world went dark until the moment a blinding light had her flinching in her sleep.
White light way too bright to be the sun blinded her through her eyelids and almost felt tangible in the air around, like a sea of lightning. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, night stars appearing in the sky and city lights appearing below. Had they just flown over the Luxor? Because, man, that was—
Terror replaced rational thought when Kali looked out the window and down at the pentagonal city below.
No.
She blinked, rubbing her eyes and willing herself to see a different picture when she opened them again. It was a childish wish with a real-world result. When she opened her eyes, she saw the exact same scene as before she closed them.
Without a doubt, Kali had gotten herself onto the wrong plane. Because worst-case scenarios didn’t get any worse than what she was looking at. She’d run this sim hundreds of times. And she’d failed it every time.
This was the one-way city.
That’s what the people called it in the sim, and that had been her experience of trying to break out.
It wasn’t possible. Her only hope was to stay on the plane, undetected, and wait for it to fly back to the island ... which wasn’t possible because the floors in the hangar automatically weighed the plane for discrepancies while scanning it for heat signatures.
The second the plane landed, security would know she was on board.
Internally, Kali was freaking out while, in reality, she simply stared out the window gripping the water bottle in her hand. The four ounces she’d had to drink suddenly wanted out with an intensity that was making her cramp up a bit, making the whole situation that much more ridiculous.
She was heading into the most secure building in the world and her bladder was trying to make itself the most important factor in the room.
Not knowing what else to do, Kali laughed. She laughed until tears came and her bladder threatened to follow the lead of her tear ducts and start a waterfall of its own.
Well, Kali didn’t control much in her life at this point, but she could control whether she faced the last minutes of her life comfortably.
Ignoring the sharp decline of the plane as it made its approach to land, Kali found the cupboard-sized bathroom and put it to use. She was pulling up her pants when the plane landed, knocking her lightly to the side before the wall held her up.
There. Bladder solved.
Time to go face the music.
Her heart pounded even as her body stayed still. Survival instincts insisted she try something—anything—to get her through this, but hundreds of runs in a VR simulation had conditioned her that there was nothing to be done. The moment she stepped on the ground, software would identify her by weight and footprint and be able to locate her anywhere in the facility from that moment on. And as quickly as it could locate her, it could kill her.
There was no way around it, and she had yet to figure out how to escape a facility without touching her foot down while trained killers chased her. Her mind could scream all it wanted for her to do something, but Kali knew the long list of what she couldn’t do. That list included touching the ground. If she miraculously sprouted wings maybe she’d have a chance.
Maybe.
But as a small lake of people gathered outside the airplane’s door—some in medical coats and others in tactical gear—Kali knew even wings couldn’t help her. They knew she was here and they were ready.
A soft pop came over one of the speakers and a man’s voice spoke. “Are you ready for your final destination, Ms. Jensen?”
Man, it had been a long time since someone called her that. It wasn’t even her married name. It had been her name back when she was young and stupid and had gotten herself into this whole nightmare.
Hearing the old name messed with her mind for a moment. Kali might not be the biggest fan of her new name, but it certainly helped her keep things straight in her head. Old-her had died. Literally. There was a headstone, a widower, a grieving father, and friends who probably still hadn’t given up on her.
But if Kali thought about all that, she went crazy pretty quickly. Old-her had no place in this new world, and new-her could only endanger those she’d left behind.
‘Ms. Jensen’ was no longer in the building. Kali was, and she needed to figure things out. Fast.
The plane’s side door opened, and two guards with automatic rifles surged in. When they screamed for her to put down the water bottle, she laughed. She couldn’t help it.
They wanted her to put down the water bottle? Sure. She’d put it down.
Outside the plane, two men started arguing.
“I got her here. I get her for four hours,” one screamed. “Break your word, and I’ll burn this place down.”
Burn down a building made of pure metal? was all Kali could think. That would be a fancy trick.
“You’d be wise not to issue threats,” a second man replied, his voice cold and forceful.
“You’d be wise not to break your word,” the other man warned.
That was the last thing Kali heard before one of the guards pulled the trigger and the world went dark.