"Got it." Erik claps Samson on the shoulder. "I can program the car to take us there."
"Not all of us." Luther faces me. "Fit as many as you can inside this vehicle and get them to safety."
"I will." I hold his gaze. "But you'd better be right behind me." I pull him close and kiss him. He kisses me back with the vigor of a man half his age.
"Can you fly this thing?" I ask Erik.
He pauses. "Probably."
"Get in."
Samson removes the dead clone from the passenger side, and I climb into the bloody seat. Erik slides behind the controls and activates the engines, ducking his head to see around the goo-smears on the windscreen.
"Here." He retrieves a handful of metal discs from his pocket and leans out of the cockpit toward Milton. "Stick one of these on each of those approaching aerocars, and they'll stall in midair. I've heard you might be able to fly. Literally."
Milton chuckles. "Okay. Then what? We want to commandeer those vehicles, not crash them."
"Steer them my way," Samson says, "and I'll catch 'em."
"Have you ever done this before?" Milton asks.
Samson shrugs. Then he reaches down and picks up our aerocar. It wobbles, reminding me to strap into my harness, but he's got a solid grip on it. With a beastly roar, he raises the vehicle overhead like a weightlifter heaving twice his body weight.
"No worries!" he bellows.
"You'll want to reactivate the engines once they've landed," Erik calls down to Milton. "Remove the discs, and fire up the thrusters. Keep them running. They won't restart again without a new battery installed."
Milton gives him a double thumbs-up.
"Wish we could stick around." Erik taps the console before him, and the doors drift shut, locking into place. "I'd like to see them pull this off."
"I'm sure we will." I glance down at the throngs of people on the streets who have halted in their tracks to stare upward. "Somebody's bound to record it."
He keeps his eyes on the control panel as he runs through our preflight sequence. Helpful the way the onboard computer walks him through it. "Things are going to change in Eurasia. Dust freaks are one thing. But people like us with permanent superhuman abilities? We'd better brace ourselves for a brave new world."
"Maybe a better one," I offer.
"We can hope, right?"
As Samson tosses us aloft, Erik activates the thrusters. We sail off the top of the building, veering away from the oncoming security vehicles identical to ours. Meanwhile, Milton jets into the sky on an intercept course with the six aerocars. He lands on top of the first one and stoops to affix the device Erik gave him. The vehicle shudders in place, dropping out of formation, pitching nose-first toward the street far below. But Milton swoops beneath the craft and guides it toward the rooftop where Samson stands waiting, his metal arms gleaming under the sun. Luther, Shechara, and the others have wisely moved toward the stairwell door in case they need to make a hasty exit downstairs. But Samson manages to catch the aerocar with only a tight grimace and slight tremble to show how much superhuman strength is required to pull off such a feat.
Erik has finished entering the coordinates into the navigation console. Now he's staring at the screen, and he's not blinking. Which dome would be best suited for safeguarding Eurasia's greatest treasures?
"Where are we headed?" I keep a hand on the gun tucked into my belt.
"Outside the Domes," he manages at length. "First time for me."
Unexpected. Why pick a location beyond the safety of the Ten Domes to sequester the Twenty? It makes no sense—unless the move has nothing to do with their welfare.
"Anything I should know about...things out there?" He glances at me.
"The sun can cook you alive."
"Noted."
In under five minutes, our aerocar reaches the airlock at the docks. Erik darkens the windscreen and side windows so no one can see inside, and he runs the flashers along with an automated recording. An authoritative computerized voice announces, "OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BUSINESS. PLEASE MAKE WAY."
The port security personnel wave us through, and a few minutes later, Erik is steering us over the glittering Mediterranean Sea toward the north coast of the African continent.
On the console before me, the desolate terrain ahead is mapped in infrared gridlines demarking every rise and fall in elevation. Unlike the North American Sectors, there's not a single city ruin in sight. When the United World built the Ten Domes, they must have razed everything else as a way to keep their citizens from looking back. Always forward. So if we're headed to some type of secure location, it must be an underground bunker.
"Just like old times," I murmur.
"How's that?" Erik is hyper-focused on piloting. From what I can see, there isn't much for him to do but adjust the speed and trajectory. Our course is laid in, and the vehicle is taking us to our destination.
Maybe he's nervous about what we might find waiting for us.
"Any idea how we're getting inside?" I glance at his pockets full of EMP discs. "We shouldn't expect a warm welcome."
He pats the dashboard. "The security clones who came for Sera were flying this thing. As long as we keep the windows dark, they should let us in." He sounds confident. "You look a lot alike." He glances at me sidelong, then quickly averts his gaze. "You and Sera, I mean."
"All in the genes." I shrug.
"The way you carry yourselves. You don't take crap from anybody."
That almost makes me smile. "I look forward to meeting her."
"She's here." He nods, scanning the desert wasteland below as we leave the sea behind. "Somewhere."
"How long have you known each other?"
He gives me a roguish grin identical to Samson's. "We met last night. She chased me across the rooftops of a few domescrapers." He laughs at the memory. "She's relentless."
He brakes suddenly as the ground shifts below. Dust rises in clouds as dirt recedes from the top of a tower gradually
