\chapter{3}

``For god's sake man,
are you crazy?'' The amplified voice roared out of the police helicopter.
``Turn around right now or you'll be in extreme danger!''

``You don't say.'' Scarhand growled.
He pointed at the darkness.
``Go faster!''

``This is your last warning!'' The voice screamed.
``Turn around!''

Nick wanted to say something,
but at that moment a hard hit went through the Cessna as if they had hit a pothole,
and in the same second the first heavy raindrop burst on the windshield.
What followed was the most supernatural thing Andrew had ever experienced.


The storm never started.
From one fraction of a second to the next it was just \textit{there}.
It was as if they had flown over an invisible border between two worlds.
They were just flying through sunshine and nearly still air and in the next moment the weather included wind,
lightning,
and hail with fist-sized raindrops from hell.
The Cessna reared up like an animal that was shot at,
tipped on its side and started corkscrewing.

Scarhand screamed out of fear,
almost letting the knife go,
and his companion actually \textit{dropped} the pistol,
quickly bending over to pick it up.
Under more normal circumstances that would have been the perfect moment for Nick to intervene and stop the wannabe kidnappers,
but instead he was busy trying to get the Cessna back under control.

Andrew was also thrown forward,
and because of all the excitement he had forgotten to buckle in,
he barely had time to throw his hands out in front of him to catch himself before he could dent his head on the metal Instrument Panel.
The result of that haphazard action was a jabbing pain that shot through his wrists and brought tears to his eyes.

The plane swung back and forth so much that it was hard for Andrew to get back up.
Half-stunned and with almost-numb fingers he felt for the safety belt and with some effort he finally got it buckled.
Only then he dared lifting his head to look outside.

He regretted that as soon as he had done it.
All round the Cessna hell was breaking loose.
Andrew took everything back that he had said about the mysterious darkness above the gorge.
It was a storm,
and the worst he had ever seen.
The sky above them was completely black,
but he wasn't even sure it was the sky.
The Cessna jumped around so wildly that he couldn't tell what was up or down,
left or right.

Nick was yelling something Andrew didn't understand.
The guy behind him had picked up his pistol,
waving it around like a madman,
fumbling about with a panicked look on his face.
Every once in a while a blazing streak of lightning tore open the formidable darkness,
allowing Andrew to briefly glimpse the baseball-sized hail and slightly smaller raindrops that were rocketing towards the small machine from all directions.

The cockpit thudded as if invisible giants were beating on it,
and most of the instruments on the dashboard seemed to be either broken or going crazy.

``God dammit,
what's going on?!'' Scarhand bellowed.
``Get this box under control!''

``I'll get it,
don't worry'' answered Nick.
``Keep your nerves under control.''

It took a few more seconds that seemed to Andrew as if they were a string of eternities,
but Nick fought back and won over control of the plane piece by piece.
The Cessna still lurched side to side like a small boat in a hurricane.
The pandemonium continued to make it impossible to communicate other than by yelling,
but at leas Andrew was pretty sure that they weren't flying upside down any more.
Mostly sure.

``What in the devil is going on?'' Screamed Scarhand.
``You didn't say anything about this.
If this is a trick,
you 'll regret it!''

``Its not a trick'' answered Nick.
``The instruments are going completely crazy! I need to go lower so I can orientate myself.''

This time there was no doubt that the fear in his voice was real.
There was sweat on his forehead although the temperatures inside the cockpit were dropping every minute.
He was gripping the control stick as if he were trying to break it.

``How high are we?'' Scarhand screamed.

``No idea!'' Nick bellowed back.
``But I'm going lower,
we have to orientate ourselves!''

Scarhand didn't talk back,
so Nick lowered the nose of the bucking machine a bit.
Andrew felt them lose height.
He couldn't see it at all.
The darkness that surrounded the machine was still just as opaque as it had been.
The blinding lightning that flashed up irregularly did not assist with Andrews attempts to orientate himself,
but instead seemed to confuse his sense of balance even more than the tumbling of the aircraft already did.

But then,
for only a split second,
he saw something.
An especially large and wide lightning bolt split the heavens into two asymmetrical halves.
In the reflection of the light off the ground,
Andrew realized that the Cessna had lowered threateningly close to the ground.
They were flying maybe eighty to a hundred meters off the ground and that distance was still rapidly decreasing.
Andrew wasn't the only one that started screaming,
but their screams were drowned out by the roar of the storm and the protesting whining of the motor as Nick desperately pulled back hard on the joystick.
Still,
the ground seemed to be coming closer and closer.
Slowly the Cessna started tipping to be parallel with the ground,
and finally started tipping upwards,
climbing away from the certain death of a crash landing.
Andrew had the dreadful feeling that they had gotten so close to the ground during that maneuver that they could have easily touched it with an outstretched hand.

He noticed something else.
Shortly before the blazing lightning threw them back into the thick mass of clouds he thought he recognized why the bizarre formations of rocks that were reaching for the belly of the Cessna seemed to be so symmetrical.
They weren't rocks at all.
They were ruins.
Below them lay the blackened,
burnt out ruins of an enormous city.
The flickering light went out for good and the eerie darkness closed around the Cessna like a gigantic black burial cloth.

Andrew blinked.
When he opened his eyes again,
the darkness below him was just as absolute as the darkness above him.
He must have been imagining things.
A city? This high in the mountains? Impossible.

The Cessna kept shaking more and more,
tipping from one side to the other and back and threatened to tank completely before Nick took back control from the plane.
All of a sudden three rectangular red warning lights lit up near Nick and a green flashing button joined them a split second later.
Nick stretched his hand out to press it,
but pulled it back quickly when the plane bucked against the joystick.
One of the red lights extinguished,
followed by another one.
Andrew didn't know why,
but he seemed to be watching a countdown that would end in something terrible.

It took Nick a bit to get the Cessna back under control.
He was finally able to attempt letting go of the joystick with one hand and stretching out to press the button that was flashing faster now.

A cracking sound rang out and a hand-length orange tongue licked past Nicks shoulder and stamped a smoking hole in the dashboard exactly where the flashing green button used to be.
Nick yelled out as if he were the one that was hit by the bullet,
not the dashboard.
He elbowed the shooter in the face with such force that he dropped his weapon and flew back in his seat.

``You're crazy!'' He yelled.
``I'll kill you for that,
you fucking dog!''

``That isn't necessary any more.'' Replied Nick.
``You just killed us all you blithering idiot.''

He ripped at the joystick so forcefully that Andrew would have impacted the dashboard again had he not been buckled in,
and tore the Cessna in a quickly descending pirouette that cost them most of the height that they had just fought for.

``What are you doing?'' Scarhand roared.

``Trying to save our lives!'' Nick answered.
``We need to get out of here!''

Another flash of lightning tore up the sky.
This one was different,
but Andrew didn't have time to analyze it as Nick pulled on the joystick and flew a complete roll,
throwing him into the safety belts and making the head of the kidnapper uncomfortably collide with the canopy of the cockpit.
It was followed by a steep ascent,
and a similarly steep plunge.
Andrew clung to his seat and the two kidnappers behind him who didn't have the chance to buckle themselves in did all they could to brace themselves against the crazy maneuvers Nick was pulling.
They were yelling something that Andrew didn't understand and probably didn't make any sense in the first place.
Nick fought more and more grimly with the joystick,
forcing the Cessna to perform wild maneuvers that pushed the breakable machine to its limits.
He was flying like a fighter pilot desperately trying to avoid enemy fire.

And it ended that way too.
Nick made the plane take a jump to the right and it was pure luck that Andrew was looking over his shoulder at the exact right moment.

It took less than a second.
Something in Andrew didn't believe it at first when he saw it: A salvo of pencil thin,
dazzlingly blue light bolts raced out of the darkness and stamped a perfect line of glowing red holes in the wing before Andrew could even process what was happening.
For a short moment flames shot out of the wing,
extinguishing almost immediately with the airflow,
but Andrew recognized that the wing was perfectly perforated.
Even if the Cessna had flown straight ahead it wouldn't have lasted longer than a few moments.
The cut-throat maneuvers that Nick was putting the plane through made them last until just about\dots

now.

Andrew watched in disbelief as the wing was bent upwards in slow motion,
then fluttered upright in the wind for another half second before it was completely ripped off.

The Cessna tipped in the direction of the removed wing and started spiraling downwards.
Andrew screamed with deadly terror and clung to his seat even though he knew how useless his actions were.
The two kidnappers behind him were screaming as well while Nick was still stubbornly fighting with the joystick.

Outside another salvo of blue white lightning flickered past.
Following the path of the bolts Andrew could tell just how fast they were heading towards the ground.
He also saw that he wasn't wrong earlier,
there \textit{were} ruins littering the ground.

The light went out and the corkscrew the plane was making turned into a somersault.
Nick accomplished an impossible miracle and not only caught the Cessna before it hit the ground,
but he also got it into a racing glide.

That lasted for two or three seconds.
Then something hit the landing gear and tore it off.
The roaring of the storm came to a deafening crescendo as the wind suddenly pierced through the cockpit without any hindrance.
Not only was the landing gear gone,
but so was the guy that had shot at Nick.
Somehow Scarhand was still holding on for dear life.

The rapid flight kept going.
A new flash of lightning ripped open the darkness and showed Andrew a gargantuan brick wall that seemed to climb to the heights of mount Everest as the plane was rushing toward it at a break-neck speed.

Nick tore at the joystick and even though they only had one wing,
the plane reacted as if it were a dying war horse trying to get its rider to safety,
even in death.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Instead of ramming into the brick wall,
the mortally wounded Cessna impacted the street directly in front of it.
The plane jumped into the air again like a flat stone thrown over water,
spraying sparks everywhere as it skidded down a rubble-sewn alley that ran perpendicular to the wall.

The alley was too small,
even for the already castrated machine.
The second wing sheared off with a hard impact,
turning the wreck into a spinning top that was spitting pieces in all directions.
Andrew was thrown forwards and backwards in his seat belts and got hit in the head by something with so much force that he felt immediately sick.
Glass splintered.
He tasted blood and felt something break deep in the belly of the craft.
The streaking ride lasted another breaths and ended with a final blow that was strong enough to make him almost lose his consciousness.

For a few seconds he just sat limply in his seat,
with his seat belts being the only thing keeping him in his seat.
He fought with all his might to keep from losing consciousness.
Flickering red light filtered through his closed eyelids and his mouth filled with blood.
He had bit his tongue,
or at least hoped it wasn't anything worse than that,
and felt some blood trickle down his chin.
The flickering red light meant fire,
and he was sitting in the wreckage of a crashed airplane.
If he didn't get out quickly,
he would burn alive.

It was that thought that gave Andrew the strength to force the darkness out of his head and open his eyes.
At first he still didn't see anything.
The twitching red light transformed the world outside of the burst Cockpit into a hellish kaleidoscope of disconnected pictures and pure pain,
with the blood that had run into his eyes not helping.
Andrew blinked,
but that only made things worse so he raised his hand to wipe away the blood.

Next to him Nick came to with a groan.
He was also buckled in like Andrew,
but seemed to have only hit his forehead on the control column since his sunglasses were broken in the middle.
With laborious and dazed,
unsure movements he righted himself,
took the broken sunglasses out of his lap and looked at them confused for a second.
Then he abruptly raised his head and turned towards Andrew.

``Are you hurt?'' He asked,
frightened.

``Not sure'',
mumbled Andrew.
He moved himself carefully and listened closely to his body.
There weren't many areas that didn't hurt on him,
but nothing seemed to be broken.
``I don't think so'' he corrected himself.
He needed to swallow to get rid of the blood that had collected in his mouth.
Even though he himself knew how absurd it was in this situation,
he was still embarrassed to spit in front of Nick.

Nick raised his hand to wipe the blood out of his face.
He still seemed somewhat groggy,
like someone who had just woken up out of a deep sleep and wasn't quite used to real life yet.

``We need to get out of here.'' He said.
``Can you walk?''

``I think so'',
Andrew answered.
What other choice did he have? Nick didn't seem convinced.
Andrew quickly released his safety belt and stuck out his hand to open the door.
It did all the work for him by falling off its hinges and rattling to the ground.

``Be careful!'',
Nick said.
Andrew heard him climb out of the other side,
but didn't turn around to look.
Instead he concentrated on getting out of the cockpit without inflicting further injuries,
which was turning out to be much more difficult than he had hoped.
He had pain all over and his left knee especially seemed to refuse to behave with the precision he was used to.

What he saw after he climbed out of the wreckage of their Cessna was not especially courage-inspiring.

The racing carousel ride had ended in the middle of a large,
dirty,
cobblestone court that was surrounded on all sides by many-storied brick buildings.
As far as he could recognize in the flickering glow of the fire they were all ruins,
burnt out hulls of charred brick and warped steel beams.
The empty window holed seemed to stare at him with unseeing eyes.
There was rubble and debris everywhere,
but there were no signs of life to be seen.

Andrew turned around.
The scene on the right was no different than the one on his left.
The plane had left an uneven trail of burning debris,
but somehow the tattered fuselage had somehow not caught fire yet.
Andrew got goosebumps as he realized \textit{how} big the miracle was that they owed their life to: The last impact had torn the gas tank off the airframe which now lay ten to twelve meters away blown open like a metal flower,
spitting fire and white embers in all directions.
In the flickering light Andrew recognized a crooked form that lay motionless on the cobblestone.
Scarhand,
who seemed not to have survived after all.

He heard Nick rummaging around the other side of the wreckage and limped over to him as fast as his bruised knee would allow him.
Just as he rounded the corner,
he saw Nick tuck something under his belt: the chromed pistol that the untalented and unfortunate kidnapper hat let go of.

``Come on'',
Nick called.
``We need to go!''

Andrew assumed that he was still scared that the wreckage could catch fire or explode at any moment,
a fear that was completely based in reality.
The tank lay at what seemed like a safe distance,
but he didn't know enough about aircraft to know for sure that that was the only tank that the Cessna had.
Either way the interior of the plane still had plenty of burnable materials.

Nevertheless he stood where he was and pointed back at Scarhand.
``We need to take care of him.''

Nick did something strange: he put his head back and quickly but thoroughly searched the sky before answering.
``He's dead.'',
he said.
``He couldn't have survived that.''

``And if he did?''

``He would only slow us down'' answered Nick.
He waved impatiently with his hand.
``Come on,
we don't have time!''

Andrew was so shocked that he didn't even react,
just staring at him.
Nick grabbed him by the arm and started pulling Andrew with him,
slowing down after a few steps when he realized that Andrew couldn't keep pace with his injured knee.
Nick didn't regard it very much,
in fact he pushed him on quite roughly.
After a few moments they reached one of the burnt out buildings and stepped in.
Nick pulled him with him for a good ways inside the entrance before letting go of his arm.

Andrew was still too perplexed to do anything other than stare at Nick stunned.
That wasn't the Nick he knew! He hadn't added Scarhand to his inner circle,
but to just let him lay there without even checking to see if he was dead or needed help.

``What was that?'',
he mumbled aghast.
``What's going on here?''

``Not now'',
Nick hissed emphasizing his words with a commanding gesture.
He looked around nervously and hurried over to one of the glassless windows,
crouching down in front if it too look outside.
Andrew stood there motionless for a few moments before he got his strength together to follow him.
Nick signaled him to crouch down as well with a quick nod,
and Andrew followed his lead automatically.

``Nick,
what does that mean?'',
he mumbled again.
``Where are we? What kind of strange city is this? You know what this is,
right?''

At first he was sure that Nick wouldn't even answer,
and endless seconds passed before Nick reluctantly answered ``Yes.''

``And?'',
asked Andrew.
``Is that everything that you have to say about it?''

``Yes'',
Nick answered again,
but continued with a reluctant tone: ``The less you know the better,
believe me.''

``Very odd'',
Andrew said.
``You don't believe that you'll get by with that.''

``Yes,
I do'',
answered Nick.
``Don't worry,
I'll get you out of here.
I won't fail you again.'' He added quieter and with a bitter tone.

``Again?'' Andrew shook his head.
``Are you crazy? Captain Picard couldn't have pulled that landing off any better.''

``But he shouldn't have been so easy to con.
That shouldn't have been so easy.''

``What?''

``What? Are you really asking \textit{what}?'' Nick shook his head angrily.
``That shot should have never been fired.
I didn't plan for those idiots to freak out because of the storm.
That's crazy! If that guy hadn't shot up the cockpit I would have been able to land the plane in one piece!''

``I thought your maneuvers were quite impressive'',
Andrew explained.
``Either way we're still alive.
And you aren't a trained Hijacking-Victim,
are you?''

Nick stayed serious.
``It just shouldn't have happened'',
he insisted.
``Not to me.''

``There was no way you could have expected that those two guys would get there before us'',
said Andrew in an equally serious tone.
``I don't understand how they even beat us with that beater of a delivery truck.''

Nick didn't reply with anything,
but he looked at Andrew with a look that told him that \textit{he} knew.

Then it dawned on Andrew: it was his fault.
The two wannabe kidnappers wouldn't have had a trace of a chance to catch up with them if \textit{he} hadn't given up their head start by driving the Hummer.
It was most definitely his fault.
He spared any corresponding remark.
He heard Nick's answer in his head already: \textit{In the end it was my decision to let you drive.}

Instead of that he motioned towards outside.
``And that?''

Maybe Nick would have answered in that moment,
as Andrew felt that he wasn't quite as determined as he was earlier.
But this time fate favoured Nick: Just as he was about to start his explanation,
the crumpled figure on the cobblestone started to move.
Scarhand was alive.

Andrew wanted to jump up,
but Nick quickly grabbed his arm and squeezed hard enough that Andrew almost let out a yelp of pain.
At the same time he pointed up toward the sky with his other hand.

Andrew raised his eyes and for a moment his breath caught in his throat.

Without him noticing,
the storm had cleared just as quickly as it started.
But the sky was not empty.
Two blinding light points were getting closer with a sickening pace,
and at virtually the same moment Andrew head the muffled sound of a helicopter.

``Well that was fast!'',
he said surprised and very relieved.
He wanted to stand up again,
but Nick held him down again,
this time with slightly less force.
He shook his head.

``What is it?'',
Andrew asked confused.

``Quiet!'',
Nick hissed.
``And don't move!''

Andrew was so perplexed that he didn't move.
But he didn't stay quiet.
``But why?'',
he wondered.
``Isn't that the police? I mean didn't they come to \dots'' \textit{save us?} The last two words didn't leave his mouth when he saw the look on Nick's face.
If he had ever seen fear in his eyes,
it was at this moment.
That up there was not the police or anyone else that had come to \textit{save} them.

With a throbbing heart he looked back at the sky.
The two dots of light rapidly approached and moved independently,
meaning that there were in fact \textit{two} helicopters,
not one machine with two lights.
That was odd.
Almost as odd as that the supposed rescuers were here so quickly.
Even if it seemed like it had just happened,
it had only been about ten minutes since their last contact with the police helicopter,
maybe less.
Actually it was impossible that they would show up so quickly.

``What's going on here?'',
he asked again.

Nick shook his head again.
``Not now.'' There was something similar to panic in his voice.
Andrew saw as he moved his hand along his sweater towards the pistol he had tucked in his belt,
but pulled it back at the last moment.

He looked up again.
The two blinding lights were now close enough that it was impossible to look at them without shielding his eyes from them.
Something wasn't right about the sound of the engines.
He couldn't say exactly what it was,
but it didn't sound like a regular sound a helicopter engine made.
The weirdly dampened flapping increased from one of the two,
and one of the lights turned into the beam of a searchlight that seemed to feel its way around the square,
lingering on the wreckage for a moment and moving on from there.

Nick had also noticed the searchlight and painstakingly righted himself.
His movements seemed weak and especially uncoordinated.
Andrew accepted that he had had less luck than Nick and was wounded pretty badly.
It was a borderline miracle that they were even still alive.

The two light circles ultimately separated.
The searchlight stayed unmoving on Scarhand,
who in the mean time had stood up completely with his left arm in front of his face to shield him from the bright light.
The second light went out suddenly and only a moment later the most special helicopter Andrew had ever seen lowered to the ground.

The machine was gigantic,
streamlined and formed aggressively like a shark.
It was such a deep black that it seemed to suck the light up instead of reflecting anything.
It was also very quiet.
The sound that Andrew had heard earlier was the hiss of the strangely shaped rotor blades cutting through the air.
The turbine itself seemed to be completely silent.

If the helicopter itself was special,
he didn't have any words for the three figures that stepped out of the flying fish of prey moments later.

They were definitely humanoid,
but that was pretty much all he could say about them.
The three men (if they were men) wore black shiny one-piece suits that blended seamlessly into gloves and massive black helmets.
Their faces hid behind the black,
mirrored visors and they carried clunky guns with stumpy barrels in their hands.

``Who is that?'',
Andrew asked.
Nick brought him to silence with an almost frightened expression and Andrew turned back to the courtyard with a pounding heart.

Scarhand still stood in the middle of the searchlight that the second helicopter had pointed at him.
He had turned around halfway to face the landed helicopter.
His left hand was still shielding his eyes while he waved at the men that got out of the helicopter with his right.

``That idiot'',
whispered Nick.

Andrew didn't even get a chance to ask him what he meant with that.

He \textit{saw} it.

Scarhand took a step towards the men in the eerie black protective suits and waved again.
One of the men raised his weapon and pulled the trigger,
barely bothering to aim.