Keeping a plane in the air proved harder than I expected. I found it hard to keep the flying smooth as the wind pushed us around and I kept playing with instruments that I didn’t really know what they were doing.
As the city grew larger on the horizon, we had to try and put it down somewhere that was still rural but close enough for us to walk if we needed to. There was no way I was flying near the city, especially when they’d be on the lookout for us.
Ahead of us were two fields with a wide set gulley in between them not too far away from a tiny township off to our right hand side. I started to reduce our thrust, which at first, lightly began to put us closer to the ground. Until of course I had to start to panic.
We began dropping fast, the gulley was fast approaching and I cut the throttle too hard. Alarms were blaring throughout the cabin, seriously aggravating Jake but also making my lack of flying skill, well, even more lacking. We cussed, yelled and caught with each other right up until we hit the ground with a large bang, then a bounce, and another large bang as we slid to complete stop.
Thankfully it was a semi controlled crash, with both of us relatively unharmed. The plane however, that’ll never buff out.
We quickly escaped the smoky, not yet firey crash and made our way toward the direction of the tiny town we spotted from the air. As we passed through the fields all I could think about was how I wanted was to crawl into my own bed in our apartment. After listing out a bunch of the pros and cons, we both agreed the comfort of our own place was a risk we were willing to take, and maybe Mr Swan or the enforcers wouldn’t think we’d be so stupid.
We entered a small roadside tavern on the outskirts of the small town and figured it was the best place to take a minute to plan how we would get back to the city.
“Two beers, on the house,” I said to the woman tending the bar, making eye contact and using some persuasive empath.
The woman stared us down.
“Don’t try that shit in here you freaks,”
It was ironic that the woman called us freaks, but we were doing exactly what they wanted — reversing the bioengineered DNA.
They think of themselves as ‘purists’ but they were either ill-informed or straight up in denial.
I had never ran into anyone that had zero ability. I’d notice the oddness of it straight away, like a missing feeling because although I’d never be paying attention to everyone around me, I’d always picking up on their DNA subconsciously.
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“You know lady. There are no purists anymore. In fact you have edits. Are you pretending you don’t or are you just unaware?”
“What? How dare you!” She barked.
“You’re super healthy for your age and occupation so you definitely have life extension and I’m going to hazard a guess and say you have really light empath ability because you’re inadvertently increasing my frustration ten fold right now.”
The woman scoffed and walked over to the fridge, pulling out two beers before placing them on the counter, my concentration never losing focus on her.
“You boys enjoy now,” she said with a rather confused but accepting expression. She had no hope.
“Can’t believe people are like that,” whispered Jake.
“Hmm,” I contemplated, “yeah, but I’m starting to understand it now.”
A muffled screech of tyres broke us from our back and forth. It was the support van and meant our lovely little break from reality was over as we reluctantly made our way out and hopped in.
After getting berated for the next ten minutes on how crazy and idiotic we were, they made us hand over the drive of data which they sent through to Tai straight away. Apparently it was quite easy for them to track us down. They just had to follow the erratic low flying plane until it disappeared and smoke appeared, then just look for the most likely place two guys like us would go which was so blindingly obvious it would be the tavern.
After an hour or so of mainly awkward silence except for the occasional eruption of arguments on who was more stupid, us or them, we entered back into the city limits. Staying true to our pros and cons list, and despite their protests, we got the support van to drop us back at our apartment block.
It felt like forever since we had been here but it was only a short few days. Instantly getting assaulted by salesmen, advertisements, and even Amy trying a distance crack at getting in my pants. It felt normal.
Our apartment was still strewn with shit, not exactly any different to how it usually was, but at least our front door had been replaced.
We both crashed onto the couch and mindlessly watched tv while we slipped in and out of naps until a news story caught us both at the perfect time as we were drifting off but still taking in outside information.
The news anchor popped up on the tv for some breaking news, as soon as she muttered the word LifeSpan both Jake and I sat up straight as could be.
‘The CEO of Lifespan, Felix Tewk, was found dead this morning shortly before word started to circulate about illegal edits performed by rogue groups within the organisation.
Police aren’t treating the death as suspicious so far in their investigation. We will provide more updates as they come in. ‘
“What the fuck!” We both shouted at the tv before I quickly called Tai.
“Did you just see that,” I asked as soon as he answered.
A long exhale came through the phone.
“Yep, they’re getting ahead of it but we’re still leaking documents through the media. It might be enough to start freaking people out and build distrust.
“Reed meet me tomorrow at 11 at the little Asian joint where we first went.” Tai added before hanging up.
Over the remainder of the evening the news cycle kept covering updates on LifeSpan, often met with some sort of excuse from the Consortium as they tried to distance themselves from the rising condemnation of LifeSpan by the media and public.
It was glorious but I knew that it would only make things more turbulent in our lives. The Consortium won’t let one of the organisations fall so easily and LifeSpan was already trying to spin the narrative, talking about rogue groups and a rogue CEO offing himself. Sequencers still had three more organisations to fall after this one. Three more that were more aggressive and important than the one just extending people’s lives.