Reached

what kind of life they’ve trained us for either. If the Rising works, what happens next? That’s the part they don’t often talk about. They say that everyone will have more freedom and that there won’t be Aberrations or Anomalies anymore. But that’s about all they’ll say.
    The Society is right about Aberrations. We’re dangerous. I’m the kind of person a good citizen imagines coming up behind them in the night—a black shadow with hollow eyes. But, of course, the Society thinks that I already died in the Outer Provinces, another Aberration cleared away.
    Dead man flying
    “Give me a couple of steep turns,” my commander says through the speaker on the panel. “I want a left turn to a south heading and a right turn back to the north heading—one hundred and eighty degrees on each.”
    “Yes, sir,” I say.
    They’re testing my coordination and mastery of the ship. A coordinated turn with sixty degrees of bank exerts twice the force of gravity on the air ship and on me. I can’t make any abrupt corrections or changes or the ship might stall or break apart.
    As I perform the turns, I can feel my head, my arms, my whole body sinking into the seat beneath me, and I have to strain to hold myself upright. When I finish, my heart pounds and my body feels unnaturally light at the lifting of the extra pressure.
    “Excellent,” my commander says.
    They say that the Chief Pilot watches us. Some of the trainees think they’ve ridden with the Chief Pilot—that he’s disguised himself as a trainer. I don’t believe that. But it’s true he could be watching.
    I pretend that she is too.
    I turn the air ship in the sky. When I first came up it was raining but now all of that is below me.
    She’s far away right now. But I’ve always hoped that through some trick of distance and desire she might look up and see something black against the sky and know it’s me by how I fly. Stranger things have happened.
    And soon I’ll be finished with my practice flight and they’ll send me out on my real assignment for the night. When they handed out the assignments last week, I couldn’t believe my luck. Central. At last. Later tonight, she really could see me flying, if she looks up at the right time.
    I bank again and then begin to climb. We only fly alone like this when we’re on a training run. Usually, the Rising has us work in groups of three: a pilot, a copilot, and a runner who rides in the hold and takes care of the errands—the forays into the Society that the Rising conducts as stealthily as possible. I like it best when they let the pilots and copilots help the runners and we sneak through the streets of a City on a mission for the Rising.
    Tonight, I’m assigned to stay with the ship, but I’ll find a way around it. I’m not getting that close to Cassia and then staying on board the whole time we’re in Central. I’ll find some excuse to leave and run to the lake. Maybe I won’t come back, even though in some ways I do fit in with the Rising better than I have anywhere else.
    I’ve had the ideal upbringing to work with the rebellion. I spent years perfecting the art of being unnoticed in the Society, and I had a father who didn’t accept the way things were. I understand him better up here, where he has never been, than I ever did on the ground. Sometimes a line from the Thomas poem comes to mind:
     
    And you, my father, there on the sad height,
    Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
     
    If I could do what I
really
wanted, I’d gather up everyone I care about and fly them away. I’d swoop down first in Central, for Cassia, and then I’d get everyone else, wherever they might be. I’d find my aunt and uncle, Patrick and Aida. I’d find Cassia’s parents and her brother, Bram, and Xander and Em and all the others from the Borough where we grew up. I’d find Eli. Then I’d soar back up again.
    You could never fly with that many in this ship. It’s too small.
    But if I could, I’d take us somewhere safe. I don’t know where yet but I’d know it when I saw it. It might be an island somewhere out in the water, where Indie once believed you could find the Rising.
    I don’t think the Carving itself is safe anymore—but I think out in the old Enemy territory there must be some other secret place where we could run. If you go to a museum now, you see that the Society has changed the Outer Provinces—made them smaller on the map. If the Rising fails to overturn the