I hoped in flash for Reed to come save me. Then I remembered his stomach wound, how he coughed and blood came out, his semi-conscious state, and knew that if he came after me, we would both die instead of just me. My breathing was wild, my lungs trying to sift oxygen out of the thin air so high up. I tried to remember a lesson, long ago, from Glen Parks about combat drops. I moved my body into a more wind-resistant position, my arms and legs extended, my body flat against the upward pressure of the wind. I had no idea why I bothered, but I was desperate enough to try anything to prolong my life by even a few seconds.
My metahuman abilities wouldn’t solve this problem, and I doubted there’d be enough left of me to heal after impact. I remembered reading something once about how someone had survived a skydive gone wrong, landing in a swamp after a parachute failure, but that had to be a one in a million shot. There was no hope of that for me; I saw nothing but flat green fields in every direction.
I was about to reach in and beg for help, for anything, when something hit me in the back, hard, and I felt arms wrap around my midsection. The little oxygen in my lungs was knocked out, and I gasped for breath even harder. I threw up my head to look at who had struck me, hoping against all hope and logic that it was Reed.
It wasn’t.
“You idiot!” I gasped between frantic breaths. “You’ve killed yourself, too!”
Scott Byerly’s face was redder than normal, and I could tell he was trying hard not to pass out. He was holding his breath, and a quick look down confirmed that we were not going to be in the air much longer. “Hold on to me!” he shouted, then took another long breath, a look of deep concentration on his face.
What else could I do? I turned in his grasp, pushing around so that my chest was against his, my arms wrapped around his neck. Once I had a good hold, he unlocked his hands from around my midsection and extended them. His eyes closed and his face got deep with concentration. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything or not, and I waited, in silence, for what felt like minutes before I finally spoke. “What are you doing?”
He opened one eye and grinned. “Just enjoying the feel of a woman pressed against me before I die.”
“You ass!” I screamed, and looked down again. It wasn’t far now, a thousand feet at most, and it was coming up ridiculously fast.
“HOLD ON!” he shouted and I felt something rush past my legs, something strong and powerful, something that stirred the air around us. Scott’s face went red again in spite of the fact that we were now low enough to breathe without difficulty. I clenched my arms around his neck as if he were a life vest and I was a drowning woman. I thought about kissing him on the lips for the hell of it and decided against it, but only because his face was veiled in utter and complete concentration.
The jets of water coming out of his hands were so intense that I could feel the power of them. My arms snugged tight around him, I could feel us start to fight back against gravity’s pull, a little at a time. We began to slow and I held on, the centrifugal force on my brain causing me to see spots. Just when I thought I couldn’t handle another moment of the force, my feet hit the ground, hard enough that I knew I’d dropped but not hard enough to break anything. I didn’t let go of him, though, and we ended up in a tangle in the middle of a cornfield, the foot-high stalks and a puddle of mud cushioning my landing. Scott’s chest thudded against mine, knocking the wind out of me. I felt his arms take up his weight for only a second before he collapsed on me, his head buried on my breastbone, the smell of wet dirt filling my nose. It was warm against my back, oozing into my clothing, seeping down my neck.
I looked left, then right, and all I saw was spring corn, barely out of the ground. I was breathing slowly but steadily, long breaths reassuring me that I hadn’t died and entered some afterlife that began with endless fields.
“Are we dead?” Scott asked, his voice muffled from where his head lay buried in my chest. “Is this Elysium or something?”
“I think it’s Iowa,” I said, “which means we’re probably closer to hell.” I glanced down and realized his head was pretty much right between my breasts. “You ... uh ... you can get up anytime now.”
“Huh?” His head came up and his chin rested right on my sternum, his face completely drained of color. His brow was coated in sweat, his eyes almost closed, and he looked like he’d just run a five-hundred mile race.
I felt a little stiff, my back feeling the corn stalks underneath it. It was a little awkward because he was right between my legs, too. I had a very embarrassed flash as I remembered the last time I’d been in this position. It had been about six months. “You should probably get up,” I said, feeling the flush of red on my cheeks.