James Swallow - Fallen Angel

“No,” Evelyn was shaking her head. She suddenly felt dizzy. “That’s not possible.”

He turned away. “People are gonna ask… And I’m going to tell them I caught her skimming from ArcAir’s finances.”

“That’s not true!” The denial burst from her in a snarl. “I won’t lie about her!” Evelyn aimed a finger at him. “This is because of you! She’s dead because of you!” Tears prickled her eyes. She could hardly believe it. Faridah, gone? Evelyn tried to hold on to the memory of that moment in the air after the skydive, her friend’s bright smile and sheer sense of life. It faded from her, guttering out like a doused candle.

Cheng advanced toward Evelyn, shaking his head. “Think very carefully about what you’re going to say next. The only reason you’re standing here right now is because Lee Hong has a thing for you, and his family have influence. The people I work for don’t want to piss them off, so be grateful…” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “So you say and do nothing. Be smart. Because if you do open your damn mouth, not even your well-connected new boyfriend will be able to help you.”

In that moment, Evelyn hated him more than she could express, and she turned away, fighting to hold her grief in check.

Out beyond the edges of the landing field, among the towers of Lower Hengsha, a pillar of black smoke was rising.

***

There was an axiom that all pilots shared, dating back to the days of the first propeller-driven flyers, when the skies were harsh and deadly to all those who reached for them. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

It didn’t matter if your aircraft came apart around you; if you made it down alive, you could consider yourself lucky.

Faridah Malik didn’t feel very damned lucky at all, despite the evidence to the contrary. As she sheltered on a high balcony, on a derelict building across from the construction site where the Osprey had made its final

touchdown, all she felt was a weight of sorrow.

Flames consumed the VTOL, stripping away the skin of the fuselage and exposing the ribs of the hull beneath. She heard glass fracture and pop, smelled the acrid tang of burning aviation fuel. The Osprey was being devoured before her eyes, and her life here in Hengsha went with it.

Those final moments before the aircraft collided with the drone were a blur of impressions, and she knew if she wanted to, she could recall them through the memory buffer in her implant, freeze-frame each one and sift it for detail. But the thought of that rang a wrong note with her. All at once, the only thing Faridah wanted was to get away from this place, and to deactivate the black box implant once and for all.

She remembered the impulse clearly enough. The certain knowledge that she was a dead woman unless she could escape the claws of the Red Arrow and their Belltower cohorts. They wanted her dead…so she would die for them.

In the seconds before the fatal impact, Faridah detached her harness and threw herself toward the crew hatch. She struck the tab on the wingsuit and felt the sails snap open as she left the Osprey behind. The air, swelling around her. The fall, arrested.

Then the blast, hot gas and fumes hitting her back in a tidal wave of force. It blew her into the side of the derelict apartment block, and she might have fallen all the way to the streets far below if she hadn’t been ready, if Faridah Malik hadn’t been as quick as she was.

So now she sat, watching the fire eating her life, and picked through the pockets of her suit for all that remained. Faridah found her vu-phone, and thought about tossing it from the window; then another idea occurred to her.

Evelyn’s name blinked at her from the top of her contact list. She wanted to hear her friend’s voice, to know that she was alive and well, but she hesitated to tap the ‘call’ key. I’m dead. I’m going to have to stay that way for

a while. If Cheng or Khan know I’m alive… Evelyn won’t be safe. They’ll use her to get to me.

That truth brought another in its wake. She could not stay in Hengsha. Belltower’s security forces ruled the lower city, and all it would take was one watchful trooper to recognize her face.

She thumbed down the list and found a different name. Maji Duc Tranh. An older guy, divorced from a capricious wife who had left him with a sickly son and a hard job working for Hengsha’s much-denigrated State Police authority.

I owe you the greatest debt a father can know. Maji had said those words to Faridah one cold morning, years ago on the rooftop helipad of a pediatric hospital in Taiwan. She had been an air-ambulance pilot then, and Maji’s son would have died that day if not for the mercy flight Faridah had flown. Anything you need, he had said. You only have to ask.

He was surprised to hear her voice when he answered. News had already filtered out to the State Police, a grudging report from Belltower Security to let the local law know that they were handling this ‘incident’. They were saying she was dead. That she was a thief and a fool.

Faridah let the lie wash over her and told Maji that she was calling in the debt. He didn’t hesitate to offer his help. He was a good man, and he knew people who could get her out of the city. It would be done by nightfall, he told her. Debt paid, and gladly done.

“But where will you go?” he asked.

It could not be close, she knew that. Seoul or Hong Kong, even Tokyo would be too near, too much of a risk. The Red Arrow triad had influence all across the Pacific Rim. She had to go far, and – at least for now – stay dead.

Faridah asked Maji to watch out for Evelyn while she was gone. In time, once she was safe and far from the eyes of the Red Arrow, he could pass a message to her friend and let her know that she had cheated death, done it one more time.

***

The question still echoed. Where will you go? With one single act, with a moment of defiance, Faridah had destroyed the life she had made for herself here. That should have been cause for sadness, but it wasn’t.

That darker emotion fell away now, burning off like the shell of the stricken Osprey. Beyond it, she felt renewed. She felt free and she felt bold. Faridah vowed that what she had seen, what she knew about Cheng and ArcAir, would find its way to net and to people who spread the truth. When Jai Cheng’s secrets were forced into the light, the Red Arrow would turn its attention to him, and all his mistakes. Payback’s a bitch, she thought.

There was one other thing in the pocket of the wingsuit; a business card, an archaic thing in a digital age, crumpled and torn, long forgotten. Faridah remembered being given it by a friend of her uncle’s. He’d talked about a job, a tech company back home in Michigan that needed good pilots like her.

The company logo was a stylized wing, raised high to capture the air. The name – Sarif – made her think of angels. Angels falling, catching the wind in skies full of amber sunlight and grey clouds.

“Detroit,” she told Maji. “I’m going to Detroit.”