MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 20

They left the guesthouse by the fire escape, the next morning. Delphine was waiting for them at the bottom with the truck. There was no one else around.

Jonah didn’t say a word to Delphine. He rode in the back with the others, this time. He felt better after a night’s rest, though also a little guilty. He knew it was irrational, but he felt he had let everyone down. He had let his dad down.

He asked Axel where they were going. ‘I told you last night,’ said Axel. ‘Delphine has laid on a plane for us.’

‘We’re still going to Moscow?’ said Jonah. ‘I thought...’

‘We aren’t the only Guardians looking for the Four Corners,’ said Sam. ‘There are other agents out there.’

‘And, when they find them—’ said Axel.

‘If they find them,’ Sam corrected him.

‘It’ll happen one day,’ said Bradbury. ‘When it does,

we must be ready. We’ll need the Chang Bridge.’ Delphine’s driving was as aggressive as ever, and Jonah had to wedge himself behind the wheel arch to keep from being thrown about. He was glad when the truck came to a halt and, a moment later, the back doors were wrenched open.

‘We’re here!’ announced Delphine.

Jonah could still hear engines. He stepped out of the truck onto an asphalt surface, and his jaw dropped open in astonishment.

He had never seen so many aeroplanes in his life. They were huddled around him, eight or nine of them. Delphine had driven right into their midst.

One of the planes was suckling at a fuel truck. The unfamiliar stink of gasoline fumes burnt Jonah’s throat. Another plane was being guided out of a hangar by a man in green coveralls holding a pair of paddles. There were several other people running about, shouting to each other in French. One of them, a man who looked too young to have a moustache, came up to Delphine and discreetly swiped his meta-card in Delphine’s hand- held. The machine dinged, the transaction complete, and only then did he acknowledge her four companions with a curt nod and lead them towards the parked aircrafts.

By the time Jonah realised Delphine wasn’t coming with them, they had left her behind. He saw her getting back into her truck. He wasn’t sorry.

He found it hard to imagine a GuerreVert supporter owning an aircraft at all. He was only a little surprised, then, to be taken past the gleaming white and silver jets, to a corner in which stood a beaten-up old turbo-prop. It was bulky and inelegant next to the gleaming jets, with its chipped red, white and blue paint.

‘Hiram!’ shouted the moustached youth. ‘Ils sont ici!’ 

The pilot leapt out of the cockpit to greet them. He was about fifty, grey-haired, with healthy bronze skin. He wore an open-necked shirt and shorts.

‘Howdy folks,’ said the pilot in an American drawl, ‘and welcome aboard the Fourth of July. The name’s Hiram. I hear you’re Moscow-bound.’

Jonah placed a hand on the fuselage of the plane. A stream of memories flooded into his brain, memories that weren’t his own. He saw himself at the controls of a hundred planes like this one, performing all manner of aerobatic manoeuvres.

The images threatened to overwhelm him, and he quickly snatched his hand away and shook his head to clear it.

Jonah had never flown in a real plane before.