CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Miles felt urgency spike through him as he rushed forward, trying or prevent Clancy from cutting through the final rope.
This man was broken, consumed by guilt and failure, but he might have information that could help them dismantle Kane's entire network.
He might know the names of other disciples. He might even know all of them.
"Wait," Miles said, halting just a foot or so away from him. He wasn’t sure if Clancy would use the knife for things other than cutting the rope. And if Miles could keep this from getting violent, that’s what he’d prefer.
"Just wait. Talk to me about Kane. About the other disciples. You can help us stop them."
"It's too late," Clancy said as he cut through the final rope.
Miles lunged forward, arms outstretched. His fingers grazed the edge of Clancy's jacket as the final two sandbags were severed almost simultaneously. The balloons surged upward with incredible force.
Clancy was ripped into the air in an instant. Miles's hand closed on empty fabric as the man shot skyward like he had been fired from a cannon. The sudden acceleration was shocking in its violence. One moment Clancy was on the ground, and the next he was twenty feet above the parking lot.
Miles stumbled forward, nearly falling as his momentum carried him into the space where Clancy had just been.
He looked up, watching helplessly as the balloons carried their burden higher.
For a moment, the idea of shooting the balloons occurred to him.
But he had no idea what the outcome would be and he also didn’t want to run the risk of shooting Clancy only to make the situation much worse.
Thirty feet. Forty feet. It was alarming just how quickly Clancy was ascending.
The balloons seemed to accelerate as they climbed, freed from the weight of the sandbags.
Clancy hung suspended in the harness, his body limp at first and then thrashing briefly as he adjusted to the sensation of flight.
Even from about fifty feet up, Miles could hear the strained cry coming from him.
But then, that was it. Miles could just see the man’s face and there was no fear in his expression.
No terror. Instead, there was something that looked almost like relief.
"Thank you," Clancy called down, his voice already fading with distance.
"Thank you for helping me do what I couldn't on my own. "
The words hit Miles like a physical blow. He hadn’t meant to help…not in this way. But his presence, his attempt to stop Clancy, had somehow given the man the final push he needed to go through with his plan.
"Damn it," Miles hissed.
The balloons were enormous, their translucent surfaces catching the afternoon sunlight and glowing with an ethereal quality.
They moved with unexpected grace, rising smoothly through the still air as they carried Clancy past what Miles assumed had to be at last seventy-five feet.
As he watched, helpless, he heard footfalls approach from behind him.
He turned only momentarily to see that Agent Kim had gotten out of the car, unable to sit still.
“Oh my God,” she said, clamping a hand to her mouth in despair. Apparently, she also understood that there was nothing they could do.
Miles could no longer see Clancy's face; hell, he could just barely make out the shape of his body.
Clancy's face now as the man looked down at him and that he only now realized were shaking, Miles pulled out his phone and dialed Morales.
He thought it was going to voicemail, but the detective finally picked up just before the fifth ring.
"Sterling, did you find him?"
"Yeah. He just sent himself up in the balloons. He's airborne now, probably two hundred feet and climbing."
There was a pause. "Jesus. Where are you?"
"Behind the old Food-4-Less in Vernon. But he's going to be over the city in minutes. We need to track him somehow. The wind is taking him fast."
"I can try to get the Coast Guard involved. They have helicopters that might be able to reach him." Morales sounded doubtful even as she said it. "But I don't know if they can do anything even if they catch up to him."
"I know. Just…I think we have to try," Miles said. He was still watching Clancy rise higher and higher. The man was three hundred feet up now, maybe more. The balloons had not slowed at all.
"I'll make the calls,” Morales said. “Keep me updated on his position."
Miles ended the call and stood in the parking lot with his head tilted back, watching as James Clancy disappeared into the Los Angeles sky.
Kim stood behind him, looking like she was trying her best not to cry.
She didn’t say anything, just stood there sharing the helpless frustration of watching a man float to his death.
The balloons continued their ascent, growing smaller with each passing second. Clancy was just a dark shape beneath them now, a tiny figure suspended in the vast expanse of blue. Four hundred feet. Five hundred feet. Higher than any building in Los Angeles.
Miles thought about the other victims. They had woken to find themselves thousands of feet in the air with no way down.
The terror they must have felt in those final moments was unimaginable.
And now, in some darkly poetic way, perhaps Clancy was feeling the same way.
But the look of relief he’d seen on Clancy’s face told Miles otherwise.
At the end of it all, Clancy had chosen this.
Had strapped himself into the harness and cut the ropes knowing exactly what would happen.
He was experiencing the same death he had inflicted on others, but with full consciousness and deliberate intent.
Maybe his blind devotion to the Elementalist had caused some of it—the failure, the unmet expectations.
Maybe floating away from it all had been the only way Clancy saw to put it right.
Six hundred feet. Seven hundred feet. The balloons were barely visible now, just specks against the afternoon sky, headed for the coast. Miles could no longer make out Clancy's figure at all.
His phone buzzed with a text from Morales. Coast Guard says they'll send a helicopter but it will take at least 20 minutes to scramble. Probably too late.
Miles didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. Clancy would be dead long before any helicopter reached him. The balloons would carry him high enough that the air grew too thin to breathe, or they would pop one by one until he fell. Or both.
Kim finally spoke. "There was nothing you could have done."
"I know."
"He wanted this. He planned for it."
"I know," Miles said again.
But knowing did not make it any easier to watch. But at the same time, he knew he’d not be able to look away until he couldn’t see those balloons at all.
***
The world shrank beneath James Clancy with startling speed.
The parking lot where he had been standing moments ago was already far below, the FBI agent and his partner reduced to tiny figures beside their car.
The abandoned grocery store looked like a model, like something built for a toy train set.
He rose higher and the city spread out around him in all directions.
The industrial buildings of Vernon gave way to the denser urban landscape of Los Angeles proper.
He could see the downtown skyline to the north, the tall buildings catching the late afternoon sun.
To the west, he caught glimpses of the ocean, a line of blue-gray stretching to the horizon.
There was no fear. No terror. Actually, he was coming to understand that this was the most exhilarating moment of his life.
Clancy had spent thirty-seven years afraid of heights, had structured his entire existence around avoiding elevation—yet he’d been so intimately obsessed with it.
And now he was soaring hundreds of feet above Los Angeles, suspended beneath twenty enormous balloons, and he felt nothing but freedom. He felt godlike.
The irony was not lost on him. The Elementalist had promised to help him overcome his fear, had given him a mission that would force him to confront it.
But Kane's true gift was not courage. It was manipulation, a carefully crafted delusion that turned Clancy into a weapon.
So, in the end, maybe the FBI agent, Sterling, had been right.
Regret settled over him like the cold air at this altitude.
He wished he could go back. He wished he could undo everything, return the victims to their lives, to never have become ensnared in the Elementalist's trap.
He had been so certain that he was doing righteous work that he was serving a higher purpose.
But now, floating above the city with nothing but sky around him, he saw it clearly.
The Elementalist had used him. Had taken his fear and his loneliness and twisted them into something monstrous.
Clancy looked at his watch. He had been airborne for over an hour.
The time had passed in a blur of ascent and changing perspective.
He could see his breath now, small clouds of vapor that dissipated quickly in the thin air.
The temperature had dropped significantly.
His fingers felt numb despite the afternoon sun beating down on him.
The buildings below were barely recognizable anymore.
They looked like scattered squares and rectangles arranged in geometric patterns across the landscape.
The streets were thin lines connecting them.
The ocean to the west sparkled in the sunlight, its surface appearing infinite and smooth.
He continued to rise. The air grew thinner with each passing minute. His breathing became labored, each inhalation requiring more effort. The familiar tightness in his chest was there, the sensation that had defined so much of his life. But this time there would be no inhaler to provide relief.
A loud pop echoed through the air. One of the balloons had ruptured, unable to maintain its integrity at this altitude. Clancy felt a brief jolt as the remaining five balloons adjusted to the changed weight distribution.
His breathing grew harder. The air was too thin now, lacking the oxygen his body desperately needed. His vision began to blur at the edges. The cold had spread through his entire body, making every movement slow and difficult.
Another balloon popped. The sound was sharp and clear in the thin air. Four balloons remained, still carrying him higher despite the reduced lift. And even as he looked up, another one popped.
James Clancy smiled.