“I know the gate’s up here somewhere. It’s guarded, but they’ll recognize me and let us in.”

“You sure about that? Not everyone in the world is like your worshipful tithes.”

At last the gate comes into view, and Lev picks up the pace.

“Slow down!” Miracolina yells.

“Catch up!” Lev yells right back.

As he nears the gate, he sees one of the kids on guard duty hurrying to greet him. There’s something in the kid’s hands, but it’s gotten too dark to see just what it is until it’s too late, and a single rifle shot explodes through the dying dusk.

60 • Starkey

From the moment the cuffs are on Starkey’s wrists, he begins his escape act. He has no secret key, no penknife in his shoe to pick the lock, but a true master knows how to improvise.

He keeps his wits about him as they bring him to Connor’s jet, suppressing his fury at the humiliation of being collared in front of the entire Graveyard. The arrogance of Connor! Allowing him to “preserve his dignity” was anything but dignified. Starkey would rather have fought as they dragged him through the dirt. That would be dignified—but to treat him with such limp pity? It was the ultimate insult.

The two kids assigned to guard him are bigger than him and are armed. Once inside the jet, they relock the handcuffs around a steel support strut so he stays in one place. Satisfied, the two kids leave, one of them dangling the key in front of him to taunt him, before shoving it in his pocket. They close the door, and Starkey finds himself an official prisoner of war.

He watches the two guards from the window of the jet, sizing them up. They’re chatty with each other—probably friends. Of course, neither of them are storks; Connor made sure of that. Storks are now the enemy. Well, if Starkey has his way, Connor will see what a formidable enemy they are.

This, Starkey knows, is the turning point of his life. Not his escape from the Juvies, not his arrival at the Graveyard, but this moment alone, handcuffed in a plane. Everything depends on getting out of this jet, and no mistakes can be made. If he’s going to lead the storks to greatness, he’s going to have to dazzle everyone with his escape.

Starkey squats, getting his feet on the chain between the cuffs. He knows they’re tempered steel. Not even bolt cutters would separate them. As for the support strut, it’s part of the plane’s airframe and can’t be torn loose. The weakest link here is flesh and bone.

Starkey takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. Every escape artist is someday faced with an impossible escape; however, the true artist knows that nothing is impossible if you’re willing to do the unthinkable.

Getting himself leverage and locking his jaw to keep from shouting out, Starkey brings the heel of his boot down on his left hand. The pain is excruciating, but he swallows his scream. He brings it down again, this time feeling the fine bones of his hand begin to break. The pain makes him weak. His body resists, but his will countermands that biological order, and he brings his heel down again.

Quickly, before blood flows into the area, making it swell, he shifts the cuff slightly and brings his heel down on his wrist. The bones of his wrist shatter on the metal of the cuff. He feels his vision begin to go as dark as if he’s been tranq’d, but he forces away the cloudiness and nausea, breathing slowly, deeply, forcing himself to stay conscious and transforming the pain into action. He’s bit his tongue; blood fills his mouth, but he spits it out. The job is done. With his right hand, he twists his left cuff. This time he’s unable to hold back the wail of pain as he forces his shattered left hand through the small hole.

61 • Noah

Being assigned to guard a guy who’s handcuffed and closed inside a jet isn’t exactly a difficult job, but hey—if Connor feels Starkey needs two guards, who is Noah Falkowski to argue? This is the first assignment given to Noah directly by Connor since he was rescued from his unwinding nearly four months ago, and he’s not gonna screw it up. Inside the jet, Starkey lets out a guttural scream.

“What the hell?” asks the other kid who’s guarding Starkey.

“That is one pissed-off dude,” says Noah.

Right about then a Jeep comes speeding toward them, its headlights making the twilight seem darker around them.

“What the hell?” says the other kid. Clearly his favorite expression.

The Jeep screeches to a halt, and out steps Trace. He heads straight for Connor’s jet.

“Whoa, Trace, hold up. Connor’s not in there,” Noah says.

“Where is he?”

Noah’s not quite sure. All he knows is that Connor has called the remaining members of the Holy of Whollies for a meeting after the Starkey incident. “He left the main aisle. One of the supply jets, maybe?”

“You’re useless.” Trace hops back into his Jeep and speeds toward the outlying planes. Only once he’s gone does Noah hear a banging sound from inside Connor’s jet—but it’s not the kind of sound he’d expect Starkey to make. The emergency exit above the wing begins to open.

“What the hell? How did he get loose?”

“Shh!” Noah cocks his pistol. He’s never fired it and knows it’s just a tranq, but it will do the job. He never really liked Starkey and won’t mind being the one to tranq him as he tries to escape from the jet. The emergency door falls inward. Both kids hold their weapons at the ready, but Starkey doesn’t come out. Cautiously they get closer, and when Noah looks inside, he sees straight through the plane to the darkening desert on the other side. While they were staring at this emergency exit, Starkey had climbed through the other one on the opposite side of the plane and is gone.

“Aw crap!”

Noah is less worried about Starkey than he is about having to tell Connor he screwed up his first real assignment.

62 • Starkey

He wears a hooded coat pulled from Connor’s closet to hide his face. His left hand feels like a twenty-pound weight on the end of his wrist. With every heartbeat it pounds so painfully that his knees wobble, but somehow he keeps himself moving. He knows that Trace is back, and that’s a game changer. Connor doesn’t know yet, which means Starkey can use Trace’s return to his advantage.

The Graveyard is scrambling. Kids race every which way. An aisle over, there’s a crowd at the arsenal. Hayden hands out weapons; not just one or two, but everything. No one notices Starkey.

A Stork Club member passes, carrying a load of weapons, and Starkey grabs him with his good hand. When the kid sees who it is, he almost shouts out his name, but Starkey stops him.

“Shut up and listen. Get a message out to the Storks. On my signal, we storm the escape jet.”

“But . . . that’s not the plan.”

“It’s my plan, do you understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, Starkey.” Then he looks at Starkey’s hand, like he might ask a question about it, but decides not to. “What’s the signal?”

Starkey looks at the kid’s load of weapons and pulls out a flare gun. “This,” he says. “Go now!”

The kid races off to spread the word.

Starkey can see Trace’s Jeep speeding back toward the main aisle from the supply jets, having been given bad information from the idiots guarding him. Starkey’s not sure where Connor is—perhaps the ComBom, which will probably be the next place Trace will check.

Then Starkey spots Ashley racing from the arsenal with a nasty-looking machine gun, and he intercepts her. Her eyes go wide when she sees him.

“What the hell are you doing out? Does Connor know?”

“He will if you don’t keep your voice down!”

Ashley moves closer to him. “Forget it, Starkey. Why don’t you just make a run for it? Connor won’t care, as long as you’re out of his way when the Juvies come.”

“Are you a stork, Ashley, or are you one of Connor’s lackeys after all?”

When it’s put that way, there’s really only one response that Starkey’s key “sleeper agent” could give.