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The man took the straps from her and fastened them with a series of snaps Then he sat on the opposite side with five other on she hardly understood, falling silent as the door sealed with a sound like a gasp The craft whirred to life, vibrating, buzzing like ainside a cabinet shook, creating a ain A cloying che is the journey?" she asked
"Not long," said the man who’d buckled her in He closed his eyes Most of the other Guardians did too Did they always do that? Or were they just trying to avoid staring at the blank spot over her left eye?
The lurch of liftoff pressed her down into the seat, then sideways, as the craft thrust into h, Aria strained to listen Had they left the hangar? Were they on the outside yet?
She sed the bitter taste on her tongue She needed water and the seat straps were too tight She couldn’t draw in a full breath without pushing against theh air Aria ran through vocal scales in her ainst the shrill note of her headache Scales always cal slowed much sooner than she’d expected Half an hour? Aria knew she wasn’t tracking ti
The Guardians pressed at wrist pads on their gray suits and donned their hellowed froh their Siven a helloved man stood and unfastened her seat restraint She finally drew a deep breath, but didn’t feel satisfied A strange weightlessness had come over her
"Are we there?" she asked She hadn’t felt them land The Hover still hummed with noise
The Guardian’s voice projected through a speaker in his helmet "You are"
The door opened with a blast of light Hot air gusted into the cabin Aria blinked furiously, willing her eyes to adjust She didn’t see a hangar She didn’t see anything that looked like Bliss E as far as she could see Nothing more She didn’t understand Couldn’t accept what she saw
A hand clao oftheth
Hard hands fell on her shoulders, crushing herher froe in an instant She looked down at her cloth-covered feet They were inches from the metal lip Much farther below, she saw cracked red earth
"Please! I didn’t do anything!"
A Guardian calimpse of him as his foot crashed into the sh the air
She pressed her lips together as she struck the earth Pain speared through her knees and elbows Her teround She stifled a cry because --ers splayed on rust-colored dirt
She was touching the outside She was in the Death Shop
She turned as the hatch closed, catching her last glance of the Guardians Another Dragonwing floated beside it, both glistening like blue pearls A buzzing sound shook the air around her as they glided away, kicking up clouds of red dirt as they sped across the flat expanse
Aria’s lungs tightened in spasen She covered her ht the need to draw air any longer She inhaled and exhaled at the saht to settle back into her breath She watched the Hovercrafts blend into the distance and er see the at the desert It looked bleak and barren in every direction The quiet was so complete she could hear herself s
Consul Hess had lied to her
He’d lied She’d been prepared for soation was done, but not this She realized Consul Young hadn’t been watching her interview through Hess’s Smarteye She’d been alone with Hess His report would probably say she’d died in Ag 6, along with Paisley, Echo, and Bane Hess would blae, too He’d probably tied up all his problems and tossed the as she fought waves of dizziness The heat of the earth soaked through the fabric of her Medsuit, warh on cue, her suit blew a rush of cool air over her back and sto her teray clouds blotted the sky In the gaps, she saw Aether Real Aether The flows ran above the clouds They were beautiful, like lightning trapped in liquid currents, thin as veils in soht strea that could put an end to the world, yet that had nearly happened during the Unity
For six decades, when the Aether came, it had scorched the earth with constant fires, but the real blow to humanity had been its mutative effect, as her mother had explained to her New diseases had evolved rapidly and thrived Plagues had wiped out entire populations Her ancestors had been a the fortunate feho’d taken shelter in the Pods
Shelter she no longer had
Aria knew she couldn’t survive in this contaned for it Death was only a hter patch in the cloud cover, where light shone through in a golden haze That light caet to see the real sun She had to fight off the urge to cry, thinking about seeing the sun Because ould know? Who would she tell about seeing so so incredible?
She headed tohere the Rovers had disappeared, knowing it was pointless Did she think Consul Hess would change his o? She walked with feet she didn’t recognize on earth that looked like giraffe print
She hadn’t taken ain Soon she grew too light-headed to stand But it wasn’t just her lungs rejecting the outside Her eyes and nose streamed Her throat burned and her mouth filled with hot saliva
She’d heard all the stories about the Death Shop, like everyone else A million ways to die She knew of the packs of wolves as smart aspeople to pieces, and Aether storms that behaved like predators But the worst death in the Death Shop, she decided, was rotting alone
Chapter 8
PEREGRINE