*in best airport announcer voice* Good morning everyone, it is my pleasure (not really) to present you with the last actual chapter of First Flight. An epilogue will soon follow. We are happy you enjoyed the book and we thank you for flying with us. *big grin*
...
Sorry, I've always wanted to do that at some point.
Chapter Thirty-five
When Saffa and Rose logged off and got back to the Computer lab, which now heavily reeked of gunpowder, they could hear voices shouting things downstairs.
“No doubt Austin’s been found,” Saffa said tersely.
Rose laid a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Relax. They’ll probably rule it a mugging or something. That sort of thing always happens here in the holidays.”
They cleared browsing history and cookies, shut down the computer, then took a look at the back of the CPU – and found a device somewhat like one of those Chinese-made portable Wi-Fi transmitters plugged into one of the USB ports. Saffa yanked it out and looked it up and down, and found the initials L.M. on the back.
“What a smart-ass,” Saffa said softly. “Of course... Lewis Miller was in the hardware department. He found a way to make the teleporting device, a little chip, portable. Ah well. I think Richard will know what to do with this,” she said, tucking it into her pocket.
Rose turned invisible and calmly walked down the stairs, out the front entrance and all the way back to the girls’ building, while Saffa morphed to hawk and took off out of the open lab window into the cool night air. She flew over the football ground, but did not look down. But the thing with hawk hearing was – you could still catch conversation clearly even a hundred feet up.
“I know thees boy – Austin Connor,” a voice Saffa recognized as the boys’ warden was saying. “He comes out for football practice sometimes in the early mornings.”
Good Lord, was it morning already? Saffa had hardly realized, what with the time flying by in RAF.
“Yes – and then before he could do anything, he got shot,” a female voice said, which Saffa realized was the principal. “Poor boy. And his poor mother. First her husband, and now she has to lose her son too.”
Saffa felt like ramming herself straight into the nearest wall. She felt like such a creep, dragging a completely innocent person into this madness, and now being the one to cause his dear mother so much grief. If she could have kept it all a secret – at that wedding party, if she didn’t tell Austin anything, and fought the monster with only Rose for assistance, if she hadn’t shown him Miller and RAF… he could have lived, gone on to do his duty… she didn’t even get the chance to tell him she loved him. Had he even realized it? She’d never know.
She shook her little hawk head and angled towards the open door of her bedroom. The glowing numbers on her digital clock read 1:13 AM. Rose, she noticed, was already peacefully sleeping, fully clothed, on the mattress they had managed to squish into the dorm. It was definitely not going to be as easy a sleep for her.
Surprisingly enough, she had a sound, dreamless sleep, and awoke the next morning to find Rose pouring hot water into a cup of instant noodles. “Breakfast is served,” she announced. “Slept well, I hope?”
“Actually, I did. No doubt Mum’s gonna be calling?”
“Oh, she’ll call all right; these things don’t need the morning paper to get around fast. Though we can’t possibly go home – there’s no one there. I think I’ll check in with Judy and see if she can put up with me for two days. What’ll you do?”
“I’ll ask Sonal. Gotta make a phone call from the office – see ya,” Saffa said, putting down her cup.
On her way back from the office, she caught up with Sam, the eleventh-grade Commerce student who had been staying back (but was now being called back home by similarly over-anxious parents), and had heard all about last night’s investigation from the warden, who, in a surprisingly kinder tone (miracles would never cease), had also told the three boys to get back home.
The warden had just recovered from a splitting headache – Saffa figured this had been from her punch, but didn’t say anything – when he heard gunshots, screamed, and then rushed upstairs to check if any of the boys were fooling about and that all three were safe. Finding that scene okay, he decided to check the grounds – and that was when he found Austin Connor lying still and bloody against the goalpost.
Naturally, the first thing the warden did was to run to the principal’s house, bang on the door and wake her up and lead her to the shocking scene. The police were called, and they were not too impressed at carrying out an investigation at such a ridiculous hour, but carried on anyway. They found several broken windows, with the glass of a sixth-grade classroom one even swept neatly underneath the cupboard, and a back door that had been shot clean through from the outside. The only other open room they found was the Computer lab, and they did find a bullet in a wall, but nothing further. Quite clearly, the muggers had been after the computers again.
“Again?” Saffa said, cutting Sam off. “You mean this has happened before?”
“Yeah, last year, in the hols. Someone stole a CPU and a monitor one evening. There was a tenth-grader there – Rajesh, he left – who was looking for his Computer notebook in the lab when they attacked him with a kitchen knife. He survived, but they managed to make off with one system. Apparently they got in through a hole in the fence.”
“So they’re finalising it as muggers.”
“Yeah. Of course, nothing’s been stolen, which is good. Just Austin’s bad luck, I guess.”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
Four hours later all five students were on the train back home, Saffa and Rose accompanied by Mrs. Agarwal till their station, who even got them driven to their respective friends’ houses – India was no country for young women roaming around alone. Sonal was more than happy to take Saffa in, since she realised how much she would be hurting.
At about six o’ clock that evening, a group comprising three young boys, an older woman, and a church priest walked through the grass of the town cemetery, the priest leading the group in prayers which Jason, Abhay and Peter duly followed, their voices cracking on a few words.
Mrs. Connor remained silent, instead, gazed at the two tombstones next to each other, one smaller than the other, yet both held in equal pride by the onlooker. For their owners had both played their part in saving the world.
She was lost in her own thoughts while the prayer went on, till she heard the flap of wings overhead, and looked up to see the distinct silhouette of a biggish bird of prey, its broad wings outstretched against the setting sun, clutching something in its talons.
The bird angled downwards, skimming the tops of the trees that dotted the graveyard, and Mrs. Connor could now see clearly its russet-red tail. It flew over the heads of the group and dropped its parcel on the smaller grave, and took off into the air.
They looked at the flowers that had dropped from above – a pale purple bunch of jacarandas, the official flower of Pretoria, South African capital.
Mrs. Connor looked back up at the sky, where the hawk was still lingering. She gave it the smallest nod of her head, and made a gesture of peace with her hand.
That was enough to reassure Saffa.
<Thank you.>
