Free Awakening: Dead Forever Book 1 by William Campbell

mechanism has struck the aircraft, which strains to recover, engines whining as it repositions over the smokestack. The ladder is reeled in fast, yanking the wire tighter around my belly, and I go soaring upward. Walls of soot stream past as I rise toward better air, clearing heat and smoke from my lungs and burning eyes. My ascent eases and I hang weightless for a split-second, fearing a rapid descent comes next, back to the death trap. Arms reach out and haul me into the aircraft.
    * * *
    Three bodies tumble across the compartment and crash. The woman untangles herself from me and another guy, then jumps up and shouts into a corridor, “David! Get us out of here.”
    “Wait!” I cry. “I want to see what happens to the ice.”
    I don’t know what gave me the idea I could start barking orders, but I have to know what this program is all about, especially that ice.
    The woman sighs, annoyed with me, and it’s familiar, like I’ve annoyed her before. “Okay, but be quick about it.” She turns away and relays instructions to the pilot. “David, hang on, Adam wants to see something. But keep away from that thing. I don’t want it smacking us again.”
    The aircraft shoots up. I get untangled from the wire, then lean out the open hatch. The machinery that collided with the aircraft is a giant crane. It lowers into the smokestack, pulls out the cube, then swings to one side and extends its boom, transporting the ice to another area, out of view.
    “Turn this thing around,” I say. “I want to see where the ice goes.”
    The woman shouts into the corridor, “David, turn us around. He wants to see where it’s putting that thing.”
    “Okay,” a voice replies. “Hang on.”
    I assume that corridor leads to the cockpit, and further assume that voice belongs to David, the pilot. I once knew a David, I think, but can’t quite remember. But I’m sure I know a guy named Dave, and might even recall—yes, he was a pilot. Here comes another migraine.
    The aircraft rotates and the crane comes into view. The ice with my name on it is lowered into a corrugated metal container, about the size of a train car, but without wheels. Spread across an enormous platform, countless containers are stacked one atop another, the highest with their lids open as blocks of ice are dropped in.
    The crane returns to the smokestack and retrieves another cube just that fast, and there is not one crane, nor one smokestack. Dozens of the dark cylinders line the backside of the building, and half as many cranes shift between them. The tubes periodically spit flame followed by a puff of smoke, then a crane lifts out the frosty cargo.
    Someone taps my shoulder. I swing around to find the lovely woman pointing to her wrist, at a nonexistent timepiece. “Time’s up. We have to get out of here.”
    She’s right—I’m sightseeing when we should be gone, before more trouble shows up. The Bobs won’t be happy with my escape, and will likely arrive any minute to show us just how unhappy they can be.
    “Okay, we can go now.”
    How is it that I’m giving orders and approving actions? I just got here.
    The woman pulls me in and secures the hatch, then hollers into the corridor, “Go, David, go! ”
    * * *
    The aircraft shoots ahead so fast I’m knocked to the deck, flat on my back. The woman follows, toppling over to land on my chest, her lips just above mine. An instinctual urge to keep her safe, I curl an arm around her and hold tight. The contact is arousing, her chest to mine, and in my grasp, toned muscle flowing along her spine.
    “Did you miss me?” she asks.
    Do we know each other? I wouldn’t mind knowing her. She’s awesome.
    “I’m not sure,” I say. “I mean, not sure who you are.”
    “Oh, right, I almost forgot. You don’t know a bunch of stuff.”
    As if I need to be reminded. Reminded of all I can’t remind myself—of anything. What I know, who I know, hell, I’m not even sure who I am anymore. I feel like a science