Read Falling for Free Online

that gap in the rock, people start to appear.
    They come out in ones and twos, looking organized and determined. Most are holding bags, or carrying rucksacks. The only ones who aren’t are the ones who appear to be injured. I recognize Marlene among their number, and I feel a little surge of gladness that at least some of those who have helped me have survived.
    “What’s in the bags?” Grayson asks.
    Lionel shrugs. “Information, weaponry, personal effects. Whatever they could grab, I should imagine. There is a lot of material kept at each base, and in the event of destruction, it would need to be transferred securely.”
    “Couldn’t you just do that online?” I ask, and find myself feeling stupid when Lionel looks at me. “What?”
    “That kind of transfer could easily be intercepted,” he says. “If one of the bases is under attack physically, then we have to assume that it would be attacked by hackers simultaneously, all ready to intercept any packets of information sent out from the site. No, it is far safer to move things physically. My only worry in that regard is whether the Others might be able to retrieve anything from the systems damaged by the destruction sequence.”
    “Mr. Cook incorporated a controlled EMP effect into the sequence specifically to prevent that,” Grayson says. I still can’t get used to the idea that he knows this stuff. “It would have been contained within the base by the outer shielding, but would have wiped all electronic storage.”
    “Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Lionel says, returning his attention to the screen. More people are spilling from the hole in the rock. Most of them are on foot, but a few ride motorcycles, skirting around the edge of the group with weapons at the ready. I guess that they’re those Faders who remained behind to supervise the evacuation rather than going out to face the Others with Jack.
    The three of us watch that screen, looking, waiting, hoping. It’s obvious to me that we’re all looking for the same thing, but none of us says it. We’re all hoping that Sebastian or Jack’s face will miraculously show up among those coming out of the base. That things will somehow be all right in spite of what I saw from the helicopter as we were leaving.
    As time goes on though, and more faces go past without any sign of them, my hopes diminish. And when the door in the rock slams shut without them having appeared, those hopes wither and die. If they aren’t in that group, it’s because they couldn’t be. Which means that they didn’t get away when they fought the Others.
    “So that’s it,” I say. “They’re… gone.”
    “We don’t know that for certain,” Grayson says. I know he’s trying to be comforting, and I appreciate the effort, but I can’t help remembering that it was he who shoved me into the helicopter, he who sedated me with a syringe full of who knows what.
    “What do you care?” I demand. “It’s not like you even like Jack.”
    “I care that it hurts you,” Grayson says, trying to put his arm around me again.
    I shrug him off. “But you wouldn’t be upset if he were dead, would you?”
    “That isn’t fair, Celes.”
    I shake my head. “No, what isn’t fair is that Jack is probably dead. That or captured, and from the sounds of it, the Others wouldn’t keep him alive for long. What isn’t fair is that there were only two seats on the helicopter, and suddenly you knew so much that they couldn’t risk leaving you behind.”
    “So you’d rather they captured me?” Grayson demands.
    “Your father wouldn’t have hurt you, Grayson. He’ll kill Jack though.”
    “That was before,” Grayson says. “Now… now I have a bunch of stuff in my head I didn’t have before. I know things I shouldn’t know. I can do things I shouldn’t be able to do. Now, I don’t even know who I am, so how is my father really going to react to me. I wish this situation didn’t have to be like this, Celes, but it