Lily wasn't hungry. She watched as everyone enjoyed their appetizers. "I'll have the garden salad," she told the waiter who had arrived to take their orders; it was the cheapest thing on the menu.
"Let's let them relax on the cruise; they seem really tense right now," she said. "Once we disembark in Corona we'll all be on the docks, and we can talk to them in town. That should give them time to cool off steam."
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Why is everything so awful? Nairda lamented. I must be having the worst luck in the entire world! Emilena never had to suffer through anything as bad as this!
He was eyeing the Mexican border with trepidation. Some hopefuls had taken him under their wing and taught him the art of sneaking past the border patrol. Seemed simple enough, but he admittedly only gets one shot. Each of them was armed with a spring-loaded pole vault, produced by the Colombian sports equipment black market. Nairda had sold his Augmented grappling hook for it, and only afterward realized his grappling hook would probably have been much better for the caper they were about to attempt.
Rodriguez looked at him. A beat of sweat dripped down Nairda's neck. He had bonded and loved his Mexican friends, and now their moment of truth was upon them.
Further away, Rodriguez noticed the signal. Leaping to his feet, the two men made a break for the fence, sprinting like their lives depended on it. Searchlights clicked on as the two dozens runners triggered a silent alarm.
At the designated point, each of them planted their vault and went flying through the air. Fighting to keep his form perfect, Nairda's internal altimeter clocked his terrifying ascent. Eighteen feet…twenty-five feet…twenty-nine feet…
Tucking into a ball, Nairda could hardly believe when he barely glanced over the thirty-foot border wall blocking him from the American soil. Activating his shock absorbers, he hit the ground rolling and stumbled to his feet. Other runners landed on either side of him. "°¡ndale!" he shouted, as a helicopter rose quickly into the air and opened fire with a machine gun.
Sprinting like his life depended on it, Nairda saw border patrolmen closing in with automatic rifles. Drawing his katana, Nairda smacked the first one with the blunt of the blade and sent him rolling. Grunting as bullets pinged off his armor, he downed another with a sharp whack to the helmet.
The helicopter fired a single blast directly at him. It hit the katana and shattered the blade, sending painful vibrations rippling through both of his arms.
The patrolmen seemed to decide that Nairda was the highest-priority target, and all bore down on him. With a cry Nairda got one last look at his fleeing friends before a dogpile of sweaty angry Americans blocked his view. "°Corre Rodriguez! °Corre SeÒora Rodriquez y los niÒos! °Yo nunca te olvidarÈ!"
At least a dozen men beat him unconscious with electrified nightsticks.
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"Probably, to be perfectly honest," Foley noted. "Nowadays they've got the entire Etherflix library and you can sign in with a guest account. The airline has this partnership thing."
"That's great, get on the plane," Emilena repeated for the fifth time. "Honestly, have you people never boarded an airplane before?"
She ushered them into their assigned seats, which due to being purchased last minute were nowhere near each other.
Flora leaned over to the businessman opposite her. "Hey…wanna join the mile-high club once we hit cruising altitude?"
The flight attendant explained how air masks worked and then with a groan the plane taxied down the runway, hitting mach speeds.
The woman's baby next to Emilena began bawling as soon as the plane began moving. "Madam," Emilena informed politely, "I must inform you that if your baby plans on being this loud the entire flight, I will be forced to knock it unconscious." The man to the left of the mother grunted his approval at that plan.
The woman instead took some sleeping pills and fell asleep, leaving her baby's bawling to annoy everyone in that cabin of the plane.
