The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

We had worked together to save ourselves, and in under a second, our hard-won victory had been ripped away by the people in the tower.

“It’s moving toward us,” said Viggo, and I turned. Sure enough, the dish was twisting toward us, much faster than it had zeroed in on Belinda and Kathryn, and I felt a stab of anger.

“Amber! Dive!” I shouted, just as the panels on the array began to glow white.

OceanofPDF.com

13

OceanofPDF.com

Viggo

Amber was rushing to move the heloship almost before Violet shouted. She threw the control beam forward, her arms extending straight out in front of her, her teeth gritted. The deck dipped, and the view through the bubble was suddenly filled with earth and water rushing up to meet us at a phenomenal rate. I felt myself go weightless, and a high-pitched noise filled the air.

I caught sight of the holotable in time to see the white streak of light filling the screen—then the table went dead, and a juddering, jolting shudder ran through the ship. Something splattered onto the deck, and a klaxon alarm began to sound. Looking up, I could see that a wide strip of the roof grating overhead had turned red hot, and bits of molten metal were dripping down to the deck below, landing with sizzling plops.

Heat blossomed inside the cockpit, and sweat formed instantly across my brow. I pulled Violet away from the dripping wound in the ship, trying to get into a more secure position in the heloship.

“Arm the missiles!” Logan was shouting at Amber. “Shoot the bastards back, dammit!”

“Shoot at a giant beam of light? Are you crazy?”

“Not at the light beam, at the… the weapon!”

Amber’s voice sounded dangerously close to hysteria. “If you have time to aim right now then do it yourself!”

Logan lunged at the controls with a grunt, but he stumbled and slid across the cockpit as Amber began to yank back on the helm, shifting us left at an uncomfortable angle. “And get that damn alarm shut off!” she ordered, the muscles in her arms straining as she angled us up and away.

I managed to toss Violet onto one of the built-in seats before the rise of gravity again began to pull me back. My foot slipped out from under me as the deck grew steeper and steeper, and I would’ve fallen flat on my face had Violet not reached out to grab a fistful of my shirt.

“HANG ON,” she yelled, and I wrapped my hand around her forearm.

She looped her other arm through and around the unbuckled harness behind her, gripping the one from the seat next to her, and then she was holding my weight, as I was suddenly dangling from her arm. Violet gave a pained grunt, and her legs came around my chest, hooking behind my back, under my armpits, her hold the only thing keeping me from plummeting into the bulkhead below.

I looked out past her, toward the bubble, and saw the beam of light streaking across it, right in our path. Vox shouted something—it was hard to hear amid the chaos—Amber screamed in reply, and then we were dropping again. Violet and I slammed to the floor in a tangle of limbs as the angle on the deck slid toward ninety once again, but this time we both managed to make it to the seats and strap ourselves in.

“To hell with this,” Amber roared, and she pushed one control forward, holding the other one back. We began to spin in the air, the sky, earth, and water pin-wheeling through the bubble at dizzying rates as we dropped lower down, the earth growing larger. Just when I thought we were about to hit, Amber gave an angry shout and hauled back on both of the controls, forcing the nose back up, away from the impending earth.

She stabilized the ship low to the ground, and then began flipping switches. “Find them,” she said hurriedly, sweat beading on her forehead. “If it starts charging again, then we fire.”

Logan began cycling through images on the screen in front of her, until they found one of the tower, rapidly disappearing behind us. She watched it for a full minute, her violet eyes searching for any sign that they were firing again, and then sighed, sinking into the pilot’s seat.

“We’re clear,” she announced, flipping a switch and killing the image.

I let out a long breath, and then looked down and realized that I had been holding Violet’s hand tightly in my own, squeezing it with a death grip. She and I looked at each other, and I lifted her hand to my lips, kissing the back of it.

“Thank you,” I said softly, and she smiled.

“I think we’d better thank Amber,” she panted, and I realized she was trembling slightly. I undid our buckles and pulled her into a hug, and she let out a shuddering breath, clutching my arms. “Can we never do that again?”

“I only wish I could promise that, my love. But we’re okay. And you’re right—that was some spectacular flying, Amber.”

Amber swiveled around in her seat to look at us both. “I take thanks in the form of chocolate and strawberries, preferably where the strawberry is covered with the chocolate.” Even through her teasing, it was hard not to note her uneven breathing and the pallor of her cheeks.

I chuckled—it was hard not to—and then couldn’t resist the urge to tease her a smidge. “Should I also thank the man who taught you?”

“Ha!” Amber scoffed at the same time that Vox said, “Well, obviously. Anybody who could pull off such an impressive move probably had a genius teacher.”

I snorted as Amber whipped around to give him a hot glare. “Why don’t you go run an internal scan to see how bad the damage was? I think we only caught the very edge of the beam, but…” Her anger seemed to burn out in the face of shock at what we’d just witnessed. “God… can you believe that! How did they even