Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Dan tugged uncertainly at his tie. “You, uh, failed to mention this part.”
He stood outside of a small private hangar, dressed in a 3-Piece Navy blue suit with a dark red tie. His shoes were shined, his hair was styled, and his brow was sweaty. A private jet sat on the runway before him, its hatch down awaiting his presence.
The thing looked like it had flown right off a science-fiction set. The few business jets Dan had seen in his life had always resembled, at their core, miniature commercial aircraft with a bit of stylish sleekness thrown in. They were planes. A man like Dan could see one and say “Oh, that’s a cool looking plane.”
Dan was looking at a jet. Not a jet fighter like he’d seen in Top Gun. This wasn’t a Tomcat or a MiG. The nose was wide and flat, raising up only slightly to accomodate a cockpit. The wings swept backwards in a sharp V shape, with a pair of small fins mounted on the rear of the aircraft for reasons that Dan couldn’t begin to fathom. Rather than turbines, beneath each wing was a simple hollowed out circle. They looked like Dyson fans, one for each wing, and showed no visible blades. The body was diamond shaped when viewed from the side; narrow at the front, widening slightly at the middle, then angling back to a point at the rear. The whole craft was painted matte black.
It looked like a damned stealth fighter. Abby’s chosen method of arrival to her family reunion was by way of a modified military jet.
“What’s wrong?” Abby asked curiously, bouncing over to his side.
She was a vision of beauty, wearing a flowing yellow sundress and short white heels. A thin golden bangle was clasped around her right wrist, and she wore a pair of blue oval earrings. Her smile was positively radiant, and hadn’t left her face since Dan had laid eyes on her this morning.
They had taken a limo from her apartment in Brunswick. That was fine, Dan had expected that. Rich people took limos, and while Abby drove herself most days, there were certain expectations that had to be met when she visited family. He could understand that. The jet was different. Dan wasn’t sure why, but it was.
Was it that he’d been in a limo before? A limo was something familiar, something normal even. He’d hired a limo for Senior Prom for god’s sake. A limo, not a private jet. People like him didn’t have friends with private jets. People like him didn’t take private jets.
“You didn’t say we’d be flying there,” Dan said, his voice a little unsteady.
It hadn’t actually occurred to him to ask where the reunion was taking place. His power had rather stifled his common sense in that regard. An idiotic omission, in retrospect. Of course they would have to travel a bit.
“We aren’t going far,” Abby replied cheerfully, bumping his shoulder with her own. “Just down to Key West, in Florida.”
She met his eyes and tilted her head to the right, beaming up at him. “Is that okay?”
Abby used Charm!
It’s super effective!
Dan matched her smile as best he could. “No, it’s fine. I was just surprised by the way it looked, that’s all.”
“Oh, right!” Abby spun to face the plane, shaking her head in exasperation. “It’s been so long that I’d just gotten used to it.”
She waved her hand airily. “Grandma’s had the whole family in these things since, like, before I was born. She’s real big on privacy, and didn’t like that people could track our flights.”
“Is that… legal?” Dan asked cautiously, glancing around the empty air strip. Other than the two pilots, already in their cockpit, there wasn’t a soul in sight. The limo driver had already left.
Abby shrugged. “I guess so? Nobody’s ever mentioned anything. I’m sure grandma has it handled.”
An uncertain shiver ran down Dan’s spine.
“Alright, let’s go!” Abby clapped her hands together happily, then looped her arm through Dan’s. “We don’t want to be late!”
Dan allowed himself to be dragged forward, muttering, “No, I definitely don’t want that.”
They boarded the plane with minimal fanfare. No smartly dressed British Butler met them onboard, no skimpily dressed waitresses brought them flutes of champagne, and no professionally dressed pilots bowed and scraped before Heiress Abigail.
It was all comfortably rote. One of the pilots checked in on the intercom, asking if the passengers were strapped in and ready for liftoff. Abby replied in the affirmative, and then they were flying.
The last part wasn’t quite so comfortable. Not for Dan, at least, whose last experience with flight had him leaving Earth’s atmosphere. It was one of those creeping fears, the kind that catches you by surprise. One moment he was fine, the plane was grounded and level, the scenery was stil. The next, they were rocketing through the air at speeds that screamed unsafe, as roads then trees then clouds zipped by the window.
There was no feeling of acceleration, no build up of inertia or slow increase of speed. The plane moved through the sky much like a drag car, and Dan felt none of it. But his eyes saw the surroundings blur, saw the ground disappear into the distance, saw white clouds and a ceiling of blue, so his brain decided to have a bit of a minor panic attack.
He sat stock-still for several minutes, with Abby by his side holding his hand and whispering comforting words in his ear. She noticed his distress almost instantly, her upgrade giving her an insight into his body with a brush of her hand. He was stiff and unmoving, taking gasping breaths just shy of hyperventilation. His mind ran on full tilt, replaying his initial soujorn into space over and over again.
He didn’t want to lose everything. Not again, not after building himself a new life. He wasn’t ready for a third round.
Abby ran her hand through his hair, whispering “You’re alright, you’re okay, I’m right here,” over and over again, and slowly he calmed down. His brain fell back to Earth and realized that, no, he wasn’t in space again.
He slouched in his seat, trying to calm his raging heart, and sheepishly said, “Sorry about that.”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of flying,” Abby replied softly, hugging his head to her side.
“I’m not,” Dan replied, feeling distinctly lightheaded. “I’ve never been.”
Abby narrowed her eyes at him, her pretty face twisting into a frown. “I know what a panic attack looks like, Danny.”
“It’s not flying,” Dan said earnestly, shaking his head back and forth. The motion made him woozy, and he had to pause to steady himself.
He turned to face Abby, his friend patiently waiting for him to speak.
“It was the suddenness of it, that’s all,” Dan tried to explain. “We went up so fast, and I couldn’t feel anything. My brain just… couldn’t compute.”
Abby’s eyes lit up with understanding. “You’ve never been in a plane with inertial dampeners?”
Dan took a second to process the word, then nodded.
Abby sighed, “I guess with your upgrade that’s understandable. They’re pretty standard on commercial planes these days, but why fly when you can teleport, huh?”
Dan smiled weakly. “Sure.”
“So you’re okay?” Abby pressed again. “I was gonna route us to a hospital if you hadn’t snapped out of it in the next minute or so.”
“No!” Dan said, waving her off. “I’m fine. I’m good. It’s over with, and I’m fine.”
Abigail scrutinized him carefully, wrapping her hand around his wrist and checking his body with her power. After a moment, the stern expression faded away.
“See?” Dan said, wiggling the wrist she was holding. “I’m fine. Now, I believe you were going to brief me on your family.”
Abby giggled, releasing his arm. “You make it sound so serious. I’m not briefing you, I’m just giving you a few, um, pointers on how to deal with my more difficult relatives.”
“Yes yes, pointers,” Dan echoed with an eager nod. “Gimme those.”
“Well, I guess I should start with my brother Jason…”
Another limo was waiting for them upon arrival. Dan caught sight of it idling on the road next to their landing zone. The private airstrip that they came down on was almost barren in its design. The trees had been leveled for a mile in every direction, leaving nothing in sight except tall grass and concrete. The road to and from the little hangar was surprisingly well kept, clear of debris and almost shining in the morning sun.
The jet came to a stop as smoothly and as quickly as it had taken off. Dan laid eyes on one of the pilots for the first time when the man exited the cockpit and opened the hatch. He greeted Abby with a smile, and Dan with a cool nod, then retreated back to his sanctum. The ladder leading into the plane unfolded itself from a hidden compartment in the floor, and then Dan and Abby were on their way to the reunion.
“Grandma owns all of this land,” Abby explained genially as the limo puttered down the paved road. In the distance, Dan could see the black jet rising back into the air. It was a matter of moments for it to vanish against the blue sky.
“She doesn’t actually like the ocean very much,” Abby continued with mirth. “She transplanted a bunch of trees so the manor can’t even see the sea. I’m pretty sure she just wanted to live as far south as she could get and this is what her travel agent came up with.”
“That’s…” Odd. “Interesting.”
“She’s got her quirks,” Abby admitted shamelessly.
Dan let that pass without comment.
Soon, the terrain changed. The tall grass crept lower and lower, fading into an immaculately groomed lawn. Trees appeared, tall and broad and so very green. They circled a distant mansion, acting as a veil between it and the rest of the world. Large bushes dotted the landscape, trimmed into the shape of large animals. Lions with manes of leaves, tigers with flowered stripes, elephants with tusks carved out of milky white branches, Dan felt like he was walking into Poison Ivy’s favorite zoo.
There was a wide crescent shaped lake hugging the western edge of the property. Dan almost laughed out loud at the sight. For a woman who disliked the ocean, Mrs. Summers certainly splurged on her lake. The edges were lined with blue marble, and an elaborate wooden bridge passed through the center of the water. Lilypads dotted the surface of the lake, and teams of large—
Dan stared at the massive animals paddling around the lake.
Swans?
“They’re upgraded,” Abby remarked, following Dan’s line of sight.
“Uh huh,” Dan replied numbly. He knew, intellectually, that animals could be upgraded. One of Marcus’ main experiments involved refining the upgrade process on non-human creatures. Merrill, who was happily snoozing in Dan’s room back at the Pearson, was a perfect example of why such research even existed.
Simply put, upgrades went weird when they were put on animals. Merrill, and her kin on the space station, had been bombarded with equal levels of cosmic radiation in an attempt to have them manifest any sort of useful power. The results were mixed, at best. One of Merrill’s little brothers had jaw strength somewhat comparable to a leopard’s. Another, Dan had taken to calling Spider-rat, given its ability to wall crawl. Merrill herself hadn’t manifested anything visible, but Dan often found himself questioning her ability to understand his speech and body language. Regardless of if she had gained some sort of super-empathy, or nothing at all, her circumstances were every bit as unique as the rest of her furry family. This, despite the fact that they were enhanced under meticulously precise, identical circumstances.
The point being: animal upgrades were notoriously unreliable. It was one of those little bits of public knowledge that everybody knew but nobody really thought about.
Dan thought about it. He thought about it a lot, despite his lack of knowledge in the subject, because it was weird as hell. It was weird in the same way that child pageants were weird; it existed but why?
So it was extremely odd for Dan to see half a dozen swans leisurely swimming through the lake, each with the exact same appearance and upgrade. They were massive, their heads easily able to reach his shoulder despite their seated position on the water and the graceful arch of their necks. Their plumage was white as untouched snow, but the patch of unfeathered skin between their eyes and bill was a brilliant royal purple. Dan couldn’t even begin to guess at their wingspan, but he could picture them carrying a person with moderate difficulty.
“Beautiful, right?” Abby asked, breaking his contemplation.
Dan turned from the swans, letting his questions fade away. He wasn’t here to satisfy his curiosity, he was here to stand between Abby and the family she could barely stand. He smiled at her, nodding his agreement.
His eyes moved past her, to the approaching mansion. “We’re almost there.”
Abby laughed nervously. “Last chance to back out.”
She smiled at him, but her anxiety was poorly hidden. Dan wrapped an arm around her waist and hugged her close. His own uncertainty coiled in his gut, but that was nothing new.
“Not a chance,” he replied firmly.
His friend leaned into him, and they spent the rest of the ride in silence, watching as the mansion loomed ever closer.
There was nothing to fear here, Dan told himself. Just a nice and calm family reunion. He’d shake some hands, smile when prompted, and shield Abby from anyone who annoyed her. They were just people, the same as any other.
It would be simple. Easy.
Nothing to fear at all.