“Who built all this?” Rocky asked, picking up a ping-pong paddle and flipping it in his hand.
Katie shrugged. “The Supers have been around for decades. It makes sense they’d build something hidden like this.”
As they walked past the library on the way to the infirmary, James noticed a door they hadn’t been through at the end of the hallway. It was the only door he’d seen so far that had a keycard reader next to it.
“What’s through there?” he asked.
“Not sure,” Katie said. “Auri said only Supers are allowed through.”
“Must be where they keep the bodies,” Rocky joked.
James didn’t dwell on it. He figured there were plenty of private files and lots of information the Supers didn’t want a couple of kids snooping through or messing with. They returned to the infirmary, which was now just their dormitory. Auri had offered for them to sleep in the missing Supers’ empty rooms, but all three of them had agreed not to. The idea of sleeping in a missing person’s bed wasn’t very appealing.
Now, the day was upon them.
After a quick breakfast in the kitchen, they met the Supers in the conference room. All six Supers were there—Calico in the middle, surrounded by Afectrus, Tonitrus, Mungus, Myrcellus, and Auri. They were dressed in the same suits James had seen before: thick, black leather and fur, with scarves around their necks and goggles over their eyes. Calico, Afectrus, and Tonitrus all wore harnesses on their chests, which James recognized. Derek seldom let James fly with him, but the few times he did, it was always with a harness.
After James, Rocky, and Katie were given similar outfits and had changed, they all gathered at the main door. Mungus turned the heavy locking mechanism and swung open the door. One by one, they stepped through.
Despite the scarf and thick uniform, James felt the chill immediately. Cold wind slapped against his face and ruffled his hair. The platform they walked onto was small, with barely enough room for all of them to stand. It protruded off the side of a cliff, raised up by metal supports so the mountain fell off quickly beneath them. James glanced over the side and felt dizzy. The snow-covered mountain sloped down, soon disappearing into a thicket of pine trees.
Calico clipped the harness in and put his arm around James’s chest. James could feel the power in his grip, and he felt tiny, insignificant next to the taller and larger Super. Katie strapped into Afectrus, and Rocky, clearly uncomfortable next to someone more muscular than him, strapped into Tonitrus.
When all three of them were strapped in and secured, the Supers turned to Calico. He raised one hand and looked up toward the clear sky. He stared up for several moments, as if examining the clouds passing lazily overhead. Finally, his hand dropped.
At once, they launched into the air. James seized his harness as the platform and the mountain around it dropped away at a dizzying speed. The air tore at him as they shot up, threatening to pull him out of the harness. He held on tighter, and his stomach dropped to his feet.
They soared high into the air, the smaller mountains shrinking beneath them. Calico curved the trajectory until they were flying parallel to the ground. Only the very highest peaks were above them now. The Himalayas stretched in every direction, the rocky, snow-covered peaks extending up, the tallest so close James felt he could reach out and touch them. Low clouds drifted among the valleys between the mountains, while the peaks pierced the higher clouds like so many knives. They were truly on top of the world.
They streaked through the air, occasionally adjusting course to avoid the tallest mountains. The other Supers kept stride, and James caught glimpses of Rocky and Katie, both strapped below their Supers and holding their harnesses tightly. Rocky stuck out a hand and gave James a gloved thumbs-up. James shook his head.
Soon, though, the terror wore off, and pure exultation and joy replaced it. James had only flown with Derek a few times, and never this high up or over such amazing terrain. He was flying. It was like nothing else he had ever experienced. It was more exhilarating than the craziest roller coaster, more freeing than cruising the highway at sunset. It was the feeling when a kid let go of a swing at the top or the moment a chair tipped too far back. It was all that and more, because the comedown never came. Every part of James told him it would end, that the feeling was fleeting and he would come crashing down. That was the way of things. A child would land roughly in the mulch. The chair would tip past the point of no return and you’d fall on your back. Small moments of pain, of reality, were payments for the exhilaration. But flying was unnatural. The bill never came due.
They flew for some time. The mountains continued to stretch below them, an endless expanse. But the peaks became lower and the snow cover gave way, revealing gray and brown rock beneath. If they weren’t in Tibet, they had to be close.
Indeed, half an hour later, James was surprised when he saw the mountains transition to a large, sand-covered plateau. It wasn’t quite a desert, but it stretched on for several miles, uninterrupted and imposing.
They flew lower, the air still cool despite the desert-like appearance. Calico scanned the ground below them, like he was searching for something among the sand. He must have spotted it, because he abruptly banked left. James squinted through his fogged-up goggles and saw what Calico was flying toward.
A stone structure stood in the sand below them. It seemed to be the ruins of a building
