“Where’s the pilot?” she asks.
The call, she sees, goes to voicemail.
“Don’t need one,” Rafe says, using his foot to spin his chair around. “This plane’s operating system is far beyond human capacity.”
What he’s just said is alarming, but Dez is distracted from fears of AI air navigation by the fact that she can see Asher is leaving a message on her phone right now. She’ll be able to listen to it as soon as she’s alone. She’ll be able to call him and tell him … everything. She puts her phone back in her pocket, feeling like it’s made of solid gold.
“Buckle up,” Rafe says. “Oh wait, you can’t.”
Dez gropes around her chair, finding nothing to strap herself in. “Where are the seat belts?”
“Don’t worry,” Rafe says. “You’ve never had a smoother ride. Other than the full one you just got to Acheron. Which reminds me.” Rafe hands Dez an Acheron-logo fountain pen. “I need you to sign your offer. In the acceptance letter I gave you.”
Dez pulls out her acceptance letter and reads, at the bottom of the page:
By accepting this offer, I accept the generosity of Acheron, and itsrequirements therein, whatever Acheron determines that generosity and those requirements to be.
Under this sentence, there’s a place for her to sign and write the date. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into with this acceptance, but at this point, what other choice does she have? She signs the offer quickly, places it in Rafe’s outstretched hand, and grips leather hand-sewn armrests as she feels the plane begin to stir to life beneath her and taxi down the landing strip. She thought there’d be more time to settle in, to say a prayer. She raises the black leather shade on her window and gazes out into the dark night. She can barely see the plane’s wings.
Rafe folds his hands over his lap. “You look worried. I’ll let you in on a secret. This plane—we call it anIgi, the Sumerian word for ‘eye’—it’s designed to be effectively invisible.”
“What? Why?”
“Because what we do is no one else’s business.”
“Not even air traffic controllers?”
“Especially them,” Rafe says. “Look, it’s very simple. Did your taxi driver think he was dropping you off at an abandoned hangar?”
“Yes. It seemed like he did.”
“To the untrained eye it would look like that. But you saw it, didn’t you, Dez? Because you have the eye.”
Dez swallows as her hand finds its way inside her pants pocket. The eye is still there. There are so many things wrong with her life at the moment.
“This plane’s near-invisibility is a special effect that our tech team at Acheron figured out how to make work in the real world.”
“That’s absurd.”
“And patented. One of the ways we can afford so many of the luxuries you’ll soon experience on campus.”
Dez’s stomach flips as the plane lifts off the tarmac, into the sky.
“So the plane just knows where we’re going?” she says.
“It knows what I tell it to know.”
Dez stares at Rafe, watching the movement of his eyes, how they seem to be watching some invisible arc through the sky. When his gaze shifts slightly left, Dez looks out to see their flight path arc left over her darkened neighborhood—now a thousand feet below.
“Holy shit,” she says under her breath. She’s only flown a few times before, and never in a plane like this.
“It’ll take a beat,” Rafe says, “but you’ll come to appreciate Acheron’s amenities. We’re very well endowed.”
“Maybe you’re overcompensating for something,” Dez says, holding his gaze because he doesn’t intimidate her. Not that much.
“Maybe you need a drink.” He passes his hand over a panel of mirrored glass, which slides back to reveal a bottle-packed, black marbled bar.
Dez reaches in and pulls out a random bottle. Its label readsPappy Van Winkle. “Is this good?”
