056 Airship - Part 3 - Mark’s POV

  Uuogh…

  My brain felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to it, wrapped it in tin foil, and then thoughtfully microwaved the whole mess. I blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Pale metal. Rivets. Some kind of subtle hum vibrating through the floor. I squinted toward the light streaming in through the porthole-sized window. Sky. Nothing but sky. And a smear of golden dawn stretching along the edge of the horizon.

  “Oh,” I croaked. “Right. Airship.”

  I sat up slowly, with the exaggerated care of someone trying to assemble IKEA furniture with a concussion. My mouth tasted like regret and citrus vodka. The floor swayed slightly under my feet when I stood up. Not metaphorically. The whole damn ship swayed.

  “Why,” I muttered, “does punishment involve altitude?”

  I stumbled to the tiny window and pressed my forehead to the cool glass. Wisps of clouds trailed beneath us, and the ocean glimmered way, way below. Somewhere down there was the ESPer Island’s mission objectives.

  After the absolute circus involving Karl’s dad… and the not-so-small incident involving a pyrokinetically-flung vending machine, one very angry second year, and several missing pants undergarments, we’d been politely asked to take our skills elsewhere. “Elsewhere” being an undisclosed location in the south, where we were now assigned to a top-secret bodyguard mission.

  “Bodyguard” meaning: “Protect this VIP, because we’re getting paid and you are not, nerds.”

  There was a polite knock on the door. Three taps. Like a sitcom character with manners.

  “Mark, are you awake yet?” came Mirai’s voice through the thin metal.

  “Define awake,” I rasped, my voice half static and half sandpaper.

  There was a pause. “Define vertical,” she countered. I could hear the smirk.

  I shuffled to the door and leaned my weight against it like that would somehow improve my stability. “I’m standing. Possibly alive. Jury’s out.”

  The door slid open with a hiss, revealing Mirai, pristine and put-together as always, her expression somewhere between amusement and mild concern. She had a mug in one hand… my mug, I realized, which probably meant mercy was on the menu.

  “Coffee,” she said, holding it out.

  “You angel,” I said, taking it reverently. I sipped. It was black, scalding, and tasted like salvation. “Did you make this, or did the gods descend and offer it as a blessing?”

  She shrugged. “The ship’s galley. Close enough.”

  I took another sip and tried to make my brain connect to my legs. “How long until we land?”

  “We’re not landing. Not exactly.” She crossed her arms, glancing down the hallway. “We’re parachuting in.”

  I stopped mid-sip. “I’m sorry. Come again?”

  “It’s a stealth op. The Academy doesn’t want us drawing attention by landing a blimp the size of a luxury cruise liner. So… parachutes.”

  “For a bodyguard mission?” I stared at her. “I can barely stand up straight and now I’m expected to defy gravity with style?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Blame yourself for getting tricked by Greg and having an astonishingly low alcohol tolerance.’”

  “Really?”

  “That’s on you.” She turned. “Get dressed. We’re going in twenty minutes. Karl’s already suiting up like he’s going to prom, and Greg’s arguing with Elena about whether a hoverboard counts as parachuting.”

  I groaned and rubbed my face. “So, business as usual.”

  “Pretty much,” she said over her shoulder.

  After finishing my life-saving cup of coffee and recovering approximately 12% of my will to live, I dragged myself into the tiny airship bathroom. The mirror was a war crime. My hair looked like a flock of birds had attempted nesting in it, and my Academy uniform had the faint yet unmistakable blotches of mystery stains—souvenirs from last night’s “harmless fun.”

  Nope.

  I stripped it off like it had personally offended me, tossed it into the corner, and took a quick, scalding shower. It wasn’t luxurious, but it got the job done. Once clean, I changed into my backup tracksuit—navy blue with two white stripes down the sides. Comfortable, aerodynamic, and most importantly, stain-free. I slicked my hair back with water, ran a towel over it until it poofed up again, and called it a draw.

  When I made it to the deck, Professor Merrick was already there, looking like a misplaced Victorian librarian with battle experience. Wind tugged at his coat as he stood near the railings, arms crossed, face unreadable as always.

  He turned toward me, eyes narrowing. “Mark. Where’s your luggage?”

  “Oh—uh,” I blinked. “Good question.”

  He didn’t answer, just arched one of those judgmental Merrick eyebrows. I saluted awkwardly and turned heel, jogging back to my room. My luggage, a single beat-up duffel bag that had probably seen more trauma than me, was hiding beneath the bed. I grabbed it by the handle, ignored the ominous clunk from inside, and dragged it back to the deck like a reluctant pet.

  By the time I got back, Merrick was standing beside a large wooden crate strapped to a hovering lift platform.

  “Put it here,” he said.

  I did as instructed, and he promptly used telekinesis to stuff the bag into the crate like he was folding fitted sheets into a suitcase. The duffel bent in ways it definitely shouldn’t have, but it fit.

  He turned to the rest of us—now gathered around: Elena, arms crossed; Karl, looking like a tactical magazine cover; Mirai, calm and ready; and Greg, who was definitely going to try something stupid in the next ten minutes.

  Merrick snapped open a locker built into the side of the wall and began handing out parachute packs. “Standard grav-chute rigs. Stabilizers auto-engage at sixty meters. Pull the main release tab here—” he tapped the red tab on the front “—unless you feel like splattering.”

  “I think we all know how to use these,” I said quietly, mostly to myself. No one was listening, anyway. Greg was already flipping the buckles like a fidget toy, and Karl was doing mysterious stretches.

  Professor Merrick walked to the railing and pressed his hand against a flat panel. With a click-thunk, part of the railing detached and rotated open, revealing a drop straight down to the open sky and clouds beneath us.

  He pointed to the crate. “You three—Mark, Greg, Karl—push it.”

  We shuffled over and, on his count, shoved the heavy box until it tipped over the edge. It fell for a few seconds, then disappeared into the clouds, carried downward by its own grav chute. The airship had slowed to a near-hover, gliding lazily over some coordinates that probably had a very official name on the mission file.

  Merrick turned to us with a final glance and said, “Order of descent: Mark first. Then Elena, Karl, Mirai, and Greg. You will regroup on the beachhead rendezvous point.”

  He looked at me.

  “Try not to scream.”

  Before I could think of a smart reply, he stepped onto the edge of the platform, turned his back to the drop, and jumped.

  Just like that. Gone. Coat flapping like a cape, vanishing into the clouds.

  I stared after him, parachute heavy on my back, adrenaline already spiking in my bloodstream.

  “Alright,” I muttered, backing up a few steps toward the opening. “Let’s fall with purpose.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  And then I ran.

  And jumped.

  There was a moment right after I jumped when I felt weightless. Not in the liberating, romanticized way you hear in songs. More like the kind where your organs try to migrate north and your brain screams something like: We have made a tactical error.

  The air roared past my ears as I plummeted, clouds whipping by, my tracksuit flapping like it was trying to escape my body. I adjusted my arms, steadying my descent just enough to spot Professor Merrick falling ahead of me like a bullet-shaped librarian, completely unbothered by the laws of physics.

  Elena followed close behind, her posture rigid, legs tucked just right—textbook form. She muttered something as she dropped, barely audible over the wind. Something like, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Which, fair. That probably applied to most of our lives at this point.

  A second later, Karl launched after us with the subtlety of a missile and the war cry of someone who thought he was in an action movie.

  “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he bellowed.

  I didn’t look back, but I imagined him doing finger guns on the way down.

  The landscape below opened up into a wide, breathtaking sprawl of green. A vast forest, stretching endlessly in all directions, like someone had spilled a bucket of trees across a continent. Mountains carved the horizon. A river glinted like a silver thread winding through the trees.

  I tried to memorize everything—the ridges, the colors, the direction of the sun—burning the image into my head just in case we lost our tech, or Greg “accidentally” broke another GPS unit trying to turn it into a snack dispenser.

  The rendezvous point was a small clearing marked on our pre-mission brief. I spotted it—barely visible from above—a circular patch of land where the trees thinned just enough to safely land.

  I pulled my chute. It jerked me upward, hard, almost dislocating something. The canopy bloomed overhead with a satisfying foomp, and suddenly everything slowed. Peaceful. Drifting.

  I descended in a gentle spiral and hit the ground with a solid thump, knees bending to absorb the impact. Dust kicked up around me. My chute deflated behind me like a sulking jellyfish.

  I unclipped the rig, rolled my shoulders, and glanced up just in time to see Elena land ten meters away with graceful precision. She dusted herself off like she did this every weekend.

  She glanced over. “Well, that wasn’t terrifying at all,” she deadpanned.

  A branch snapped as Karl came crashing down a bit farther off, yelling something triumphantly incoherent. His chute caught a tree, and he dangled for a moment before cutting himself free and thudding to the forest floor.

  “I’m fine!” he called. “That was AWESOME!”

  His childish glee was unexpected.

  Mirai touched down soon after, composed and quiet, as usual. She landed like she’d planned it in a dream.

  Greg came last, doing weird spirals mid-air with his arms outstretched like he was pretending to be a plane.

  “I regret nothing!” he shouted on his way down.

  He landed in a bush.

  And then, with eerie timing, Professor Merrick strolled out from behind a nearby tree, his coat pristine, his hair unruffled.

  “Took you long enough,” he said.

  I exhaled, my pulse still a little wild, but my feet on solid ground. The team was here. Mission clock had started.

  And the weirdness was only just beginning.

  We barely had time to shake the dust off our boots when it happened.

  A low whump echoed through the sky. I turned instinctively, looking past the trees to the horizon, just in time to see a fireball bloom in the clouds.

  The airship.

  Our airship.

  It cracked apart midair, flames licking across its hull like angry paint strokes. Shattered pieces of the deck spun out, trailing smoke, and the tail section twisted into a spiraling, flaming mass as it plummeted toward the ocean far beyond the treetops.

  I blinked. “That… was not in the itinerary.”

  Mirai stepped up beside me, her eyes wide, jaw tight. “Was that supposed to do that?”

  No one answered right away.

  Elena turned slowly, face pale beneath her usual composure. Karl stood frozen, mid-stretch. Even Greg, who had been trying to shake leaves out of his hair, stopped moving.

  Professor Merrick said nothing. His arms were crossed, his face carved from granite. Eyes locked on the burning debris in the sky, lips pressed thin.

  That silence said more than anything.

  It wasn’t part of the plan. Not even the weird ones.

  If we’d been slower, if we’d argued, hesitated, taken even five minutes longer to gear up, we’d still have been on that ship.

  Dead.

  My heart did this awkward, belated thud. Cold sweat prickled at the back of my neck.

  “Okay,” I muttered, “so that’s fun. Assassination attempt, sabotage, or—dare I say—Monday?”

  Professor Merrick finally spoke, his voice low and unreadable. “Eyes forward. We proceed with the mission.”

  That was it. No speculation, no comforting debrief, no “Glad you’re all safe, kids.”

  But his jaw clenched just a little tighter, and I noticed his fists stayed balled at his sides longer than necessary. The only sign that maybe—just maybe—he’d almost lost us.

  I looked back at the smoke curling above the treeline and felt the weight of what hadn’t happened. What almost did.

  This wasn’t just a simple babysitting gig.

  Something bigger was happening. And someone didn’t want us making it to the ground.

  I swallowed hard and adjusted the straps on my gear. “Well. Guess we’re not going home the same way.”

  Mirai let out a dry laugh, no humor in it. “Guess not.”

  And then we moved… quiet, focused, a little shaken, but alive. For now.

  We moved quietly through the forest, the crackle of leaves and twigs underfoot the only sound for a while. The distant plume of smoke from the airship still trailed into the sky behind us, an ominous flag waving from the past. No birds sang. Even the wind felt like it was holding its breath.

  Then Elena finally broke the silence.

  “So… what was up with that, Professor?” Her voice was sharp, accusatory. “Can you explain? Can anyone here explain?” She pushed past a fern like it owed her money. “Because just so you know, my father is a person of importance—”

  “Oh, here we go,” Greg muttered.

  Elena ignored him. “If that explosion was random, that’s one thing. But if someone’s targeting us, don’t you think we deserve to know?”

  Greg turned around, walking backward as he spoke, arms folded behind his head. “And the fact you’re here, Elena, either means your very important daddy just doesn’t care…” He glanced sideways. “Or he agreed to you being here. Which honestly? Might be worse. No way someone like your father wouldn’t know something like this was gonna happen. Right?”

  Elena flushed—not with embarrassment, but frustration. Her mouth opened for a reply, but Mirai cut in before it could turn into another lecture war.

  “I hate to say this,” she said quietly, “but Elena has a point.” She glanced at Professor Merrick. “What was that about?”

  Merrick kept walking. For a second, I thought he might ignore it completely.

  Then he said, almost absentmindedly, “A butterfly effect…”

  Karl stopped mid-step. “What?”

  Professor Merrick slowed to a halt. Turned. His coat whispered around him like the trees were listening too.

  He looked straight at me.

  “Tell them, Mark.”

  I blinked. “W-what?” I laughed awkwardly, holding my hands up. “What are you talking about?”

  He watched me for a moment, the way he does when he knows something and is waiting to see if you’ll catch up or trip on the way there.

  “In recent years,” he said, turning slightly to address the group again, “your parent is the person closest to being the strongest precog.”

  I felt everyone look at me. Great. Love that.

  “She always insisted she wasn’t one,” he continued, “claimed she didn’t qualify as a precog. No documented predictions, no formal training. But in terms of theory and intuition, she was the closest we’ve had to the ideal.”

  He paused, then added, “In a sense… she could see the future.”

  The group fell silent again. The wind chose that moment to rustle the leaves. Because of course it did.

  “And when a precog talks about time,” Merrick said, his voice low, “we are sure to tackle topics such as destiny, cause, and effect. It goes on and on… a list, a catalog, an etcetera of everything that could happen… including blind spots.” He looked toward the distant smoke trail. “And butterfly effects.”

  “Okay,” Greg said, frowning, “so like… what, she predicted the airship would explode?”

  “No,” Merrick replied, flat. “She warned the world years ago that something would start from within. A ripple. A small decision. A missed moment. Something no one noticed—until it was too late. Admittedly, she wasn’t the first to declare a prophecy… but’s been a long time since there had been one.”

  Karl scratched his head. “But what’s that got to do with us?”

  Merrick turned back to the trail. “Because now we’re in the ripple. The moment she couldn’t see past.”

  My throat felt dry. I didn’t know what to say.

  I’d always known my mom was smart… scary smart. To be more specific, ‘insanely’ smart. But this? This sounded bigger than ESP. Bigger than politics or missions or assignments.

  It sounded like the beginning of something none of us had signed up for.

  And the worst part?

  We hadn’t even reached the mission site yet.

  “Wait,” Mirai said, slowing her pace as she glanced at me, eyes narrowing. “Mark’s mother? You mean the Guidance Counselor?”

  Her tone wasn’t mocking—just trying to piece the puzzle together—but I still winced like someone had just slapped me with a folder full of my own embarrassing childhood stories.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, shoving a low branch out of the way. “That one.”

  Karl blinked. “So… your mom wants us dead?”

  “What? No!” I said, spinning around. “Why is that your first takeaway?”

  “I dunno, man, I’m just following the vibe.” He raised his hands defensively. “Airship explodes. Psychic warnings. Butterfly ghosts or whatever. Feels mom’s-got-a-death-wish to me.”

  “Seriously?” I groaned.

  Merrick stopped walking again, fixing Karl with a stare that could’ve stopped a bear mid-rampage.

  “She didn’t want you dead,” he said. “She saved you five.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  Merrick continued, gesturing vaguely to the forest around us. “By putting you into this mission.”

  Greg let out a soft, disbelieving laugh. “You mean… detention wasn’t actually about Karl punching that vending machine into orbit?”

  “Hey,” Karl said. “That was an accident. It provoked me.”

  “Are we seriously calling Karl’s dad a vending machine?” piped in Mirai.

  Karl complained, “Greg started it.”

  Merrick ignored them. “The ‘punishment’ was a cover. A reason to get you all on that ship. Away from the Academy. Away from what was about to happen.”

  Mirai crossed her arms. “So… the whole bodyguard mission… that’s real?”

  “Oh, very real,” Merrick said dryly. “But the urgency behind it? That was her doing.”

  A heavy silence settled over us, the kind that left room for too many thoughts.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, heart thumping a little harder. So Mom had seen something, something bad enough that she’d manipulated my entire detention just to shove me and the others on a burning blimp? Cool. Normal. Not terrifying at all.

  Merrick clapped his hands once, sharply.

  “Well, chop chop,” he said, abruptly back in mission mode. “We’ve got a bodyguard detail to fulfill. VIP won’t protect themselves, and I’m not doing all the heavy lifting.”

  He turned on his heel and started walking like none of what just happened had even ruffled his metaphysical hair.

  Karl leaned toward me. “So your mom’s, like, a time ninja?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I muttered. “I’m still trying to process the fact she knew the airship would explode and didn’t just… call.”

  Greg gave me a sympathetic look. “Parents. Am I right?”

  We all followed Merrick into the forest, the smoke from the destroyed airship still curling faintly in the distance behind us.

  And somewhere ahead of us, the mission waited… along with answers none of us were quite ready for.