The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online Page B

across the screen. Tessa lost track of the number of times he was asked to provide a password.
    And then Gideon stopped moving. He just sat, staring at the screen. The color drained from his face.
    “No,” he moaned. “No. Not this.”
    “
What
?” Tessa demanded.
    “There’s been … a disabling signal sent out,” Gideon whispered.
    Tessa tried to absorb this.
    Be brave,
she told herself.
    “Well, you really can’t blame the enemy for doing that,” she said, and the calmness in her own voice amazed her.
    “It’s not the enemy sending out that signal,” Gideon said. There was enough horror in his voice for both of them.
    “Not the enemy?” Tessa asked. “But—”
    “It’s our own country,” Gideon explained.
    On the screen a wavy line flickered. Tessa guessed this showed the frequency of the disabling signal.
    “Our own country?” Tessa repeated, confused. “Then—can’t you just ask them to stop?”
    “No,” Gideon whispered. “Because … You need to see this so you’ll know … so you can decide how to spend your last moments….”
    He typed something, and the view on the screen changed. Now there were blips of light that seemed to be flying in formation toward an
X
at the bottom of the screen.
    “This is how our military does things,” Gideon murmured. Just listening to the pain in his voice was agonizing. “We always send out a disabling signal before a bombing run.”
    “
Bombing
run?” Tessa repeated numbly.
    “Yes,” Gideon said, his voice like a sob. With one trembling finger he traced the blips of light on the screen. “It’s an entire fleet of bombers—they’re only seconds away from their target.” Now his finger brushed the X at the bottom of the screen. “And their target? We’re right in the middle of it.”

CHAPTER
14
    “I’m so sorry,” Gideon said, and now he was sobbing.
    Tessa rose up from the floor and grabbed Gideon’s shoulders.
    “Stop that,” she hissed, shaking him. “Stop apologizing and stop
them.
”
    She jabbed her finger toward the blips of light on the screen.
    “You can contact them and let them know we’re here,” she said. “They won’t bomb us. They’ll … rescue us.”
    Tessa liked this idea. It had sprung into her mind fully formed, a beautiful thing. She could see planeloads of men in uniforms like Gideon’s storming in, fending off hordes of enemy troops, carrying Tessa and Gideon to safety.
    She couldn’t understand why Gideon, who was supposed to be so brilliant, hadn’t thought of it first.
    But Gideon was shaking his head violently.
    “I already tried that,” he moaned. “It won’t work without hours of tampering. This is a stolen plane. All the tracking links were erased—I erased some of them myself. Any signal we send out will look like a decoy, the enemy attempting to impersonate one of our jets….” Gideon grabbed Tessa’s hand back from the computer and pressed it against his tear-stained face.
    “I’m so sorry,” he whispered again. “So sorry, so, so sorry …”
    Tessa stood frozen, her hand on Gideon’s face. On the computer screen the blips of light drew closer and closer to the
X
. Little dotted lines dropped down from the blips.
    “Those are the bombs,” Gideon murmured. “Forgive me!”
    He sprang from his pilot’s seat, knocking Tessa flat against the ground. He cowered over her, and dimly Tessa realized that he was trying to protect her, trying to make sure that, if anyone survived the next few moments, it would be her.
    I should have left my parents a note last night,
she thought vaguely.
I should have …
    The word that blossomed in her mind was “lived.” She should have lived a better life, a fuller life, a more meaningful life, while she’d still had the chance.
    “It’s okay,” she told Gideon. If there’d been more time, she would have explained what that meant: that she didn’t regret following him the night before. That the best moment of her life had actually been saving