Era of Madness

Fall

Almost an hour later, as their ship was looking more like scraps than anything else, Erica collapsed. John, cursing, got on his knees beside her to inquire about her condition:

"Hey, you alright?"

"Uh, depends what you call alright, I'm not gonna die- at least not from the backlash- if that's what you're asking" Erica replied "I'm probably going to faint soon though"

"Do you think you can stay conscious and maintain your power for a bit more time?"

"I can give you five minutes"

"Good enough"

John suddenly made the ship brutally drift upward, right toward the sky. At this rate, it would definitly crash into the Outercoat in less than five minutes. Erica noticed it but, be it because she understood his plan, trusted him or simly didn't have enough strength left to argue while maintaining her power and struggling to stay conscious, she said nothing.

'Alright, time for the big jump' John thought as he ran through the ship, in search of something.

He came back a minute later, as the ship kept approaching the Outercoat. He quickly unpacked what he brung back, being three masks to breath at high altitude, a back pack with a parachute and a rope.

Without hesitating, he put two masks on Erica's and Tyler's face, one each, and put the last on his own. He then used the rope to strap them all three together, which gave a weird result to the eye. Not that he truly cared about it at this point.

He put the backpack on and, thank to the Fefnir technology, passed through the floor of the ship, suddenly falling from the sky with his two comrades strapped to him, like a small dot moving downward in the vast clear blue extense.

Now was the hardest part was to find the right altitude to open the parachute. If they were too high when he did, even with their masks, they would die of the low temperature. On the other side, if they were too low when he did, the parachute wouldn't slow them down enough and, with Erica and Tyler unconscious, a rough landing would almost certainly have terrible consequences.

'I have to find the perfect timing' John thought.

Not now...

Not yet...

Still somes hundreds feets...

Almost...

Now!

John suddenly opened the parachute, and gasped due to the abrupt change in the speed of their fall. Slowly, they kept getting lower and lower, closer and closer to the floor.

Above them, John heard a loud but distant noise, and smiled weakly.

'Great, the ship got turned to dust in the Outercoat, now they won't be able to trace us'

Before jumping, he voluntarily took some time to find one of the few areas of the planet that were still left unwatched. Now that the ship was gone, they would be basically imossible to trace, at least on the short term.

Finally, they landed on the ground, that was covered in green grass. John took off the parachute from the backpack he was still wearing, unstrapped Erica and Tyler and put lifted them both on his large shoulders, carrying them both as he walked around, examinating the zone.

They were in some kind of 'nature' area, though John didn't see much animals. He quickly found a small cave where he installed Erica and Tyler and went back to the parachute, burrying it under the ground to hide the last traces of their escape.

Finally, he came back to the cave, sat on the ground and thought about what they would do next.

In addition to the parachute he just got rid off, his backpack also had some necessary product, rations to eat and some modern device that could help them to contact potential helpers, determinate their position and more.