"I'M NOT SEEING anything," Dylan said a good twenty minutes later. "I mean, I see the wires. I see where we all hit the ground. The plane's sheared-off wings are over there, all in pieces. I can even see the plane's door that ripped off. But what I don't see is—"
"Hans. Or the plane's fuselage," I interrupted.
"You read my mind again!" said Dylan, and I glared at him.
"No, it's just the obvious huge missing thing. I have a brain. I can think."
"I know that," Dylan said mildly. "I was just teasing."
Now I felt like a clod. I rolled my shoulders to release some tension. "So where do you think it is?" I am highly skilled at changing the subject as demonstrated here.
"It was already smoking and spiraling by the time I got out," he said. "I didn't think it would get far at all."
"We should check under the cloud of balloon-type things," I said, and Dylan nodded as he started a wide, smooth, arcing turn.
"Show me how to fly sideways," he called over his shoulder. "That was cool."
"The hawks taught us that," I said. "Basically, you roll and point one wing down. Then keep flapping. You'll keep moving forward, even though it feels weird."
Dylan tried it. The first couple of times he looked a little clumsy, but when we reached the wires of death, he was flipping sideways like a pro, powerful and smooth. His learning curve was really amazing.
"Man, each tiny wire has four sides, like a four-sided razor," he said as we carefully started flying through the wires.
"You can see that?" I asked.
"Yeah. I can see really far, really close, and sometimes right through stuff." He turned back to grin at me, and I wondered what kind of things he could see right through.
"I guess you're the improved version of me," I said coolly. "I have great vision but not like that. I mean, I can see the school building way down there but not the four sides of the wires."
He smiled at me. "Everyone has strengths and weaknesses," he said with irritating modesty. So far, I had seen
only strengths and no weaknesses from him. But I wasn't about to say that.
"I'm not seeing squat, other than the school," I reported. "And we already knew that was there. Let's broaden our search area."
"Good idea," said Dylan, and ten seconds later we were out of those awful wires and in the open blue sky.
I breathed deeply, enjoying the sun on my face. For several minutes we flew in silence, hearing just the sounds of our wings and the occasional bird. After a while of finding no Hans remnants, I said, "Let's check out the school anyway."
Dylan said the exact same thing at the exact same time. Again.
