Renegade Runner Nicole Conway (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

Another tongue of lightning popped off the cliff to our left, so close, I could practically taste the current sizzling through the air. Phox flinched and let go of my hand to grab on to the joystick again, flipping our ship into a nimble dive lower into the canyon. We skimmed the base, barely fifty feet off the rocky ground.

Sienne followed. I cursed as her much sleeker, expensive-looking runner craft dipped in just beside us. A figure stared back at me through the darkly tinted windshield—nothing more than a humanoid shadow beyond that dark glass. But somehow, I knew. That was her. It had to be. I could just feel it—like a cold chill on my neck or a wave of déjà vu.

A sudden burst of wind threw up a spray of rocks and dust between our ships. In an instant, I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see anything.

Phox worked at the controls, speedily swiping through holographic menus until he found what he wanted.

“Switching to simulated topography mode,” he announced as he made a grabbing motion and brought his hand up to the windshield’s curved glass pane. Immediately, the windshield went dark and a 3D, real-time rendering of our surroundings appeared, blurring by in glowing shades of green. Beside us, Sienne’s ship was shown in shades of red, still speeding along right off our left wing.

Another blast of wind hit us head-on, setting off a new string of alarms as the nose of our ship pitched up. Phox bore down hard, struggling to keep the thrust angled so that we didn’t go flipping out of control. Meanwhile, warnings continued to flash over the screen. The engines were overheating because of the sediment.

“Brinna, you gotta listen to me, okay?” Phox grunted and growled as he wrestled the controls. “We’ve got about two minutes before I have to do a full system shutdown.”

“B-But Sienne is still—!”

“It doesn’t matter! We keep going and we’ll lose both engines permanently. This ship’ll be a dead stick. Got me? So just do what I tell you!” He flashed me a glare of warning, the veins of his neck and arms standing out against his skin as he fought to keep our nose into the wind. “When we hit it’s gonna be bad. We gotta go down nose-first to try to save the engines from impact. There’s an emergency seat with a full-body harness right behind—”

“NO!” I yelled back, returning his glare despite the tears that blurred my vision. “I’m not leaving you up here, so just stop with that! If you die, I die, got it?!”

He didn’t reply. His mouth snapped shut, strange eyes searching my face for a few precious seconds before he reached over and roughly tightened my harness until I could barely breathe. With both hands locked on to the controls, I watched his look of quiet rage gradually change, crumbling beneath a desperate, anguished grimace.

The storm gulped us down, blotting out the sun, so I couldn’t see anything except the faint, strobing flashes of lightning somewhere through the whipping sands.

“Brace for impact.” Phox reached under his seat, his fingers probing until he opened a panel hidden right behind his feet. His big hand wrapped around a red-and-yellow-striped lever hidden inside, hesitating for a fraction of a second. Then he pulled.

Or I thought he did.

Light burst through the cockpit with another deafening CRACK. Phox let out a howl of pain or panic—I couldn’t tell which—as the smell of smoke, burning chemicals, and scorched metal stung my nose. The alarms went silent, dying to the CRASH, BOOM, CRUNCH as our ship bounced off the rocky canyon wall. Or maybe it was the ground? The windshield had gone dark, so there was no way to be sure.

Every hit sent my body pitching out of control against the harness. My arms and legs flailed. My head snapped back and forth, helpless to fight the force of the fall. The wind rushed out of my lungs, so I couldn’t scream. End over end, crashing, smashing, and falling, we dropped out of the sky and were tossed by the storm’s gusting winds like a child’s toy.

I saw it an instant before we hit—solid ground rushing up like a giant fist, straight for the nose of our ship. Oh my god. This was it. We wouldn’t survive. Not this time.

My fault—it was my fault!

I shut my eyes as a scream tore out of some dark, unknown place deep in my body. A blaze of heat. A ripping sensation, as though someone were tearing my ribcage open.

And then it all went dark.

23

SIGNS FROM ABOVE

Home. I was back at home.

Sitting on the floor beside my bed, I stared down at the heap of paperwork spread out in front of me. Applications. Background checks. Consent forms. All of it was so I could start the long, grueling process of competing in the Olympic qualifying trials.

A loud retching sound from the bathroom across the hall made every muscle in my body go stiff. I gripped the pen in my hand until my hands shook. A few seconds of silence stretched out like an eternity.

Then I heard mom gag and vomit again.

My throat burned as I swallowed hard. Tears ran down my face, peppering the pages before me. I dropped the pen and covered my mouth to stifle my sobs. Mom couldn’t see me cry. It would only make things worse for her and she was the one suffering—not me.

Breathe. I had to breathe and pull myself together.

Sucking in rapid, deep breaths, I quickly wiped my eyes on my sleeve and got up. I carefully stepped across the hall and peeked through the bathroom doorway.

Inside, past a counter cluttered with prescription pill bottles, Mom was on her knees in front of the toilet. With nothing but a thin pajama tank top and shorts on, I could see every bone and muscle in her body move as she went on dry heaving. Her ashen skin shone with sweat and her thin hair