Chapter Sixteen–FIRST CONTACT

 

 

Ari vanished. A millisecond after the three were airborne, they slapped their suits' activation switches. Face and Yu slowed to graceful drifts, never losing sight of each other, but Ari was gone. He had plummeted out of sight.

Not wanting to face that truth, they searched for him, seeing only clear unbroken reaches of sky. Looking back at the cliff edge, they found it empty. Reluctantly they looked in the only direction left to search — down.

Ari was in free fall. Down, down he fell.

My activation switch failed!

The lush rain forest canopy grew larger and greener, as Ari tumbled toward it. Racing at him, the collage of leaves shifted in the winds as Ari tumbled toward his destiny.

Yu struggled frantically to aim her fall. She made a steep dive that sent her speeding down, perilously close to Ari. She skillfully maneuvered until she was under him. For an instant, she thought she could save her friend. In the next, she knew Ari was plummeting so fast that even her interception couldn't stop him.

They crashed together through emerald ferns, breaking tender foliage, snapping cedar branches. As forest foliage fell, the broken green smell of primal sap stung the air.

Face followed at break neck speed, landing on top of the two and enveloping them in his bioisomer deflector. The emptiness of a still-deeper abyss awaited, masked only by a fragile lacing of branches. The violence of their fall fractured the welcoming branches into battle spears.

As threesome hit the trees, pain, exhaustion, and blackness claimed them. They dangled unconscious more than a hundred meters above the forest floor.