Ark Angel

complete that for a moment he thought he might have died, and he had to remind himself he wasn’t home yet. He was plummeting down, feet forward, moving at eighteen thousand miles an hour. Five miles a second. This was the most dangerous part of the entire journey. If the control centre had miscalculated, he would be incinerated. Already he was aware of a pink glow outside the window as the module began to rub against the earth’s upper atmosphere.
    And then he was on fire. The whole world was on fire. The very air was breaking up, being smashed to pieces, the electrons separating from the nuclei.
    The module had become a fireball, and Alex knew that his life depended on the hundreds of thermal tiles that surrounded him. He was in the heart of a living hell.
    He yelled out. He couldn’t help himself.
    Then the red disappeared, like a curtain being torn apart.

    He saw blue.
    There was a second, back-breaking jolt as the parachute deployed. The world seemed to shimmer on the other side of the window and Alex saw the Pacific Ocean spread out before him.
    A splash. Steam. Waves lashing at the windows. Sunlight turning the water into diamonds.
    And at last silence.
    He was rocking back and forth, a hundred miles off the eastern coast of Australia. The wrong side of the world—but that didn’t matter.
    Alex Rider was back.