Why won't this buckle click in place!
“Mariya!” Lucca roars, “Are you locked in? Tell me yes or no.”
My audible is beeping insistently in my ear and I wish I could rip it out of my helmet. My mouth is dry as dirt but I call back, “Yes, we’re good.” It’s only one buckle. We’re fine.
“Deploy!” Lucca shouts.
Haneul is wrapped around me like a baby monkey to a palm tree and we both yelp at the violent jerk as the canopy deploys. We’re double the weight and we’ll fall faster, so I pull the cord for the secondary Drogue canopy to slow us down.
“We got this,” Han repeats, over and over. “We got this, girl.”
“We do,” I wheeze, “We’re good. The big, ugly secondary chute is going to slow us down, but it’s going to be a hard landing, okay? Rolling as a tandem rig is going to be tricky, but we have this.”
“Gotcha,” he says, tightening his grip and making me feel like he’s going to squeeze my lungs out.
The flat topography of the island is racing toward us and at the last moment, the Drogue slows us down just enough to get our feet under us as we hit the ground. We still flop over awkwardly, hitting the dirt with a thud. The air’s knocked out of me, and we roll a couple of times, arms and legs flailing, before I can release the canopy.
“Bozhe moy,oh my god…” I moan gratefully.
“I think I elbowed you in the face,” Haneul wheezes, “sorry about that.”
Now that he mentions it, I can feel the pain radiating from my jaw, but he looks so guilty that I force a smile. “No worries. We’re alive.”
Athena strolls over and helps Haneul and me untangle before hauling me briskly to my feet. “Why are you so happy?” she asks.
“We’re alive!” I said, resting my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
“Eh, for now,” she says cheerfully, “that’s only the first task.”
“I hate you so much,” I gag, trying not to throw up on her boots.
Chapter Fourteen
In which this just sucks so much.
Konstantin…
“Professor Fukumoto!”
I break into a run when I see him standing next to one of the trucks waiting to take us back to the Academy. After my team landed safely and our gear was returned to the flight crew, I spent my time trying to determine which groups made it. I know at least two or three washed out. Aaberg’s team didn’t even leave the plane, and Badawi had a team member who panicked and deployed their chute too soon.
“Yes, Mr. Turgenev?” He turns to smile at me politely, but all the warmth he shows when he’s talking to me as my academic advisor is gone.
“Could you tell me, Sir, which teams made it out of the first task?”
“That could be considered an unfair advantage, so no,” he says firmly. “Head back to the Academy and get ready for your next task.”
Grinding my teeth, I nod politely. Tatiana hurries to climb into the truck bed with me. “Did you hear anything about Lucca’s team? I couldn’t discover anything about the teams that dropped out,” she said.
“Fukumoto wouldn’t tell me,” I rubbed the back of my neck, trying not to think about my throbbing ribs. “He claimed it would, and I quote, ‘be an unfair advantage.’”
“That… makes no sense, actually,” she said. “He’s just getting off on tormenting us. Do you know the worst part of this?”
“There are so many answers to this,” I sigh.
“If something as terrifying as possibly not having a chute deploy in mid-air is the first task, it means this can get worse.” She zips up her jacket and huddles closer for warmth.
“Welcome to the second task!” Dean Christie calls cheerfully.
