18 - Nico
N ICO CLOSED THE THICK PLASTIC door to the private jet’s bathroom behind him. It was his first moment alone since he and Sam had gotten back together in Vegas.
When Sam had held Nico’s hand in that ridiculous hotel suite, Nico realized he’d never put his own wedding ring back on.
All the way back from Hawaii, to Bakersfield and Goldstone, Roswell and Las Vegas, Nico hadn’t even realized he wasn’t wearing it. Until Sam held his hand. Until he saw the water-blue lights glint along Sam’s wedding ring. And saw his own finger was bare…
And Sam loved him anyway.
Despite all the ways he was a mess, Sam loved him.
Nico fished in the change pocket of his jeans, past the thumb drive with the satellite data to his wedding ring. He pulled it out and slipped it back onto his left ring finger. Job or no job, he wasn’t going to take it off again.
2316
Nico went to check on Byron, who had taken over the bar area for his bee drone assembly line. What kind of plane had a bar area?
A Sam kind of plane.
Very James Bond of him.
Click. Whirr. And then a high pitched Eeee!
Like a complicated miniature factory, Byron had set up small conveyor belts carrying pipettes of liquid tranquilizer, mini batteries, transmitters, tiny waterdrop cameras, pinhole microphones, and wing assemblages into the main 3-D printer housing where it all came together.
“How’s it going?” Nico asked.
Byron was using a syringe to prep the next set of tranquilizer pipettes. “Alfred, how many bee drones will be complete by the time we land?” Nico noticed a little speaker/microphone unit hooked with a carabiner onto a looped corner of the bee drone factory.
“We’re making one bee drone every 10.6466165 minutes,” the AI assistant said.
“Alfred, that’s too much detail.” Byron filled another pipette.
“Twenty-six,” Alfred said.
“Better,” Byron told the AI.
Nico didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but that was barely half of what it would take to knock out one adult. “We’re going to need more.”
“We’ll keep making them,” Byron assured him.
Nico wanted to ask where Byron had gotten so much tranquilizer, then realized he didn’t really need to know. “Thanks,” Nico told him. He looked out the elongated window and pressed the button to lighten the digital shade.
Tapping against the curved plane wall, Nico found it hard to believe the scattered lights from the night world crawling below them were actually moving at 610 miles per hour.
No, he was thinking about it backwards. The jet was moving at 610 miles per hour.
Nico looked from the view to Byron. “Makes better time than your van.”
Byron paused before inserting the syringe into another glass vial of tranquilizer. “I guess the end of the world is as good a time as any to finally experience how the one percent live.”
“He’s the good one percent,” Nico said.
“They all tell themselves that,” Byron said, tilting his head to look at Nico. “Don’t let all this change you, No Obstacles.”
Nico felt his face flush. That felt like a compliment, and he wasn’t used to them. He never knew what to say.
But he wasn’t sure how Sam in his life couldn’t change him.
He was so much happier now.
Why wouldn’t he want to change?
2321
When Nico got back, his and Sam’s plush leather chairs were set up as lie-flat beds, side by side with puffy satin comforters and a pillow for each of them. Sam was already settled in, eye mask on. Nico wondered if he was asleep and moved quietly to not wake him.
It wasn’t a wide bed, but it was a lot better than sleeping in the rental SUV. And worlds better than the floor of the lifeboat. Or the cot in Dr. H’s Institute. Or the air mattress in the hallway of Janice’s foster house in Fresno.
A private jet, sleeping next to Sam, was change Nico was on board for.
Nico pushed aside the eye mask on his own pillow. He didn’t like the idea of not being able to tell if it was day or night. Sam had kicked off his shoes haphazardly, but Nico set his sneakers right where he could slip them back on fast.
He lay down, pulling the comforter over him. He was so tired. Even three hours of sleep would be amazing.
As soon as he closed his eyes, Sam spoke. “So we didn’t get a chance to talk about…”
Nico looked over. Sam’s mask was pulled down around his neck.
“About what?” Nico asked. Their phones were in Sam’s luggage in the cargo area of the plane under their feet, and the engines were so loud there was no way Keahilani or Noble One or Godeane could hear them. So they could talk freely. But he really needed to sleep.
Sam swallowed nervously. “You and me. Being exclusive.”
Nico stifled a yawn and tried to rouse himself. Okay. This conversation.
Sam blinked hard, again and again, like he was fighting to keep his emotions in check. “Have you… been with anyone else since we got together?”
Nico thought about lying, just to set Sam at ease. But Sam had said it himself, in their shaving cream messages: NO MORE SECRETS BETWEEN US, THEY GET BETWEEN US. And he’d agreed.
“There was this hot scientist. In Hawaii.”
Sam’s eyes got wide. Nico rushed to clarify. “But I didn’t sleep with him.”
He thought that would be the end of it, but then Sam said, “Did you want to?” He sounded so hurt.
Nico wondered how honest he could be. “He was crazy hot, so yeah—but no, I didn’t.”
“Why not?” Sam asked.
Nico went for a jokey tone and flashed his wedding ring. “Because you put a ring on it.”
“You’re going to quote Beyoncé to me?” Sam playfully hit Nico with his pillow.
Nico swiped back with his own pillow attack.
Sam dove in to tickle Nico under the arm, which got them both laughing. Nico lunged to grab both of Sam’s shins to tickle him back. His feet were his weak spot.
“Okay! Okay!” Sam’s laughter pealed until Nico let up.
Nico crawled back up Sam’s body and kissed him. He pulled back just enough to see their pillow-tickle fight had eased some of the anxiousness from the corners of Sam’s eyes. “Maybe you need to be tickled more often,” Nico told him.
“Just us, okay?” Sam was so earnest. “I don’t want to share you with anyone else, not in that way. Not in this way.”
“Got it.” Nico kissed Sam again and traced a swirling line across Sam’s chest. “No tickling anyone else.”
Sam pushed against Nico’s shoulders. “Jerk!”
Nico got serious again, wanting Sam to know he was listening. “Just you and me. Physically. Got it.”
“Emotionally.” Sam’s eyes locked on his. “I want to be the guy you’re in love with. Not one, the one. ’Cause you are for me. Is that okay?” He sounded worried.
“Yeah,” Nico said. He caught his thumb spinning his wedding ring around and around on his ring finger and made himself stop. Made himself accept the ring was there to stay. That Sam was there to stay. And so was he.
“If that’s what you want, it’s what I want.” Nico kissed Sam one more time and then rolled back onto his own lie-flat bed. “I need to get some sleep. It’s been like thirty-nine hours since I got any real rest.”
Sam looked like he wanted to keep talking but just settled his pillow back and put his hand out to Nico. His wedding ring gleamed in the pink cabin lighting. “Hold my hand until we fall asleep?”
Nico took Sam’s hand in his own and their wedding rings clinked together. “Sure.”
He was floating in midair again, and Sam was being vacuumed into the spaceship.
“Nico!” Sam shouted, arm reaching for him.
And then Sam disappeared inside.
He didn’t yell this time.
Gravity reversed, and this was where Nico always fell.
Float , he told his body instead. This is a dream, and I can float.
And he did.
The spaceship hovered there, like it was surprised Nico wasn’t plummeting to his death.
And then it flew off, growing smaller in the distance.
Nico wanted to fly after it, but he just hung there, hundreds of feet above the skyscrapers below.
No rain this time.
Maybe he could make things even more different.
Fly, he willed his dream body. I want to fly.
A gust of air caught him and suddenly he was moving forward! But the spaceship was so much faster, and it was getting smaller and smaller as it got farther away.
Nico followed.
They flew out of the city,
Past the suburbs,
To rolling farmland.
Up ahead the spaceship, matchbox-sized in the far distance, landed lightly on the rise of a smooth hill that was oddly flesh colored.
Nico willed his body to fly faster, to catch up, and when he was just a soccer field away the hill suddenly rose up into the air.
He tried to brake, but he kept accelerating toward the enormous moving mountain. No, not a mountain,
A head!
A body under it!
The bald giant stood as Nico hurtled forward. He was the size of a carrot stick compared to this massive humanlike figure, and Nico realized he was about to die in a completely new way.
The giant turned to look right at him and a shock of recognition shot through Nico:
It was Ari!
Sat16Feb 0238
Nico startled awake.
Checked he hadn’t woken Sam.
Sam was fine, fast asleep.
Nico sat up and checked their flight status on the monitor. They were just south of Chicago, 1 hour 40 minutes left before they landed in New York.
He should get some more sleep, but knew that wasn’t going to happen.
What was he going to do about Ari lying to him?
What were they going to do about the fake aliens?
And how was he going to keep everyone safe—especially Sam?