Academy 7

  “I don’t care if there are fifty members. The announcement ceremony is tomorrow, and if Dr. Livinski finds us here, neither one of us will be on a flight team. Ever.”

  “Aerin, there’s another name on this plaque.”

  She waited.

  “Antony Renning.”

  The name reverberated off her eardrums. It flew up along the stairway, repeating and repeating and repeating until it rebounded off the ceiling and entered her soul.

  “My father?” she whispered.

  Dane held out the plaque.

  She took it, pulling the slick, carved surface up against the window’s light. And read her father’s name.

  “How?” Her hands began to tremble. “How do we know it’s him?”

  “It would explain a lot,” Dane replied, “about the General’s reaction to you. If he knew who your father was, he might have thought I brought you home as some kind of ploy. And he might have known when your father died.”

  “How could—”

  “Don’t forget who my father is, Aerin. He has access to data that never reaches the public, and even if he doesn’t know about the crash, he could still know when your father disappeared.”

  She felt a flood of emotion: anger at Dane’s father for what he might know and had not told her, doubt that any of this could be real, and hope—ridiculous, stupid, breathtaking hope. Her words came out in a firm question. “How do we find out?”

  Dane gestured toward the basement. “We look. That is, if you can break through Zaniels’s new clearance program.”

  She met his gaze.

  He needed no other reply.

  Within moments they stood in pitch darkness outside the tech lab. There was another series of clicks as Dane worked at the lock beneath the keypad; then the door slid open. Ivory light glowed from the machines. The room’s soft hum beckoned her in.

  And a louder whirr vibrated as she flicked on Zaniels’s computer. Golden light spread across the screen. Her fingers moved, interrupting the loading process and bypassing the clearance program.

  “If your father was a student here, his records should be in the archives,” Dane said. “At the very least, there should be a picture you can use to identify him.”

  With Dane’s advice, she began the search, entering the restricted school files, then the archives. A white box popped up, asking for a name.

  Her fingers typed in the letters, A-N-T-O-N-Y-R-E-N-N-I-N-G.

  Swish! Colors flashed across the screen as the machine rifled through its memory. A pause. Then a basic directory appeared with links for grades, awards, and postgraduate data.

  Beneath them emerged a simple school photo of a student, a young man with black eyes. A cowlick kicked up his dark hair just to the left of his forehead. Unmarred skin covered his cheekbones and jaw. His mouth spread in an irrepressible grin. So unlike the man she had known. And yet it was him. Her father.

  Aerin stared, soaking in the view of that face. Alive. Uninjured. A picture to replace her last haunting image.

  “It’s him, then?” Dane asked, shifting his stance and bringing her back to the present.

  “It’s him.” For the second time that evening, saltwater stained her vision. Her father. Here. In the Alliance. Her heart stuttered as she took in the implications. He was a citizen then. And according to Allied law, so was she. Was it possible?

  Yes. In fact, knowing what she did now about the security at Academy 7, it was the only real explanation for why she had been accepted here with her real name, and why she had never been exposed as an imposter. Because she wasn’t one. She had just as much legal right to be here as anyone else.

  Aerin blinked, gathering herself and calming her emotions. But if her father had grown up here, why had he never spoken about the Alliance? And why had he left? She slid the cursor toward the first heading on the page.

  His grades sprang onto the screen.

  “Doesn’t look like you inherited all your strengths from him,” Dane said, pointing at a row of C’s for tech analysis.

  “No.” She gestured at another C for combat. “But he had one of your weaknesses.”

  “I,” growled Dane, “have an A in combat.”

  “You wouldn’t if I was teaching it.”

  “Well, there’s a reason you’re not.” Dane slid his hand toward a row of A’s under introduction to flight. “Looks like he was destined to be a pilot.”

  “Maybe,” came her response as she moved on to the awards page.

  “Definitely.” A list of flying awards covered the top of the screen. “Best in Class, Pilot: Rank 1, Air Strategist,” Dane read some of the titles aloud. “You’d think he was the one in line for the rank of military general instead of my father.”

  “I guess they had something in common,” she whispered.

  “I’ll say,” Dane replied. “Wonder if they were rivals.”

  “And flight team members?” she asked with doubt. She scrolled down the page, this time reading aloud herself. “Best First-Year Essay: Planet Rebellion. Best Second-Year Essay: Flaws in the Alliance. Best Third-Year Essay: Allied Failure.”

  “Ouch!” Dane murmured. “Guess we know why he didn’t make military general.”

  “Second Speaker: Debate Team. Universe Debate Champion.”

  “Jeez, Aerin, your father knew how to argue.”

  She glared at Dane but couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across her face. This was a new feeling, sharing pride in her father with someone else. She moved on to the final award on the list. “Graduation Speaker.”

  “Not bad,” Dane teased.

  She sat down in the chair beside the computer and clicked the heading for post-graduate data.

  A sullen blank screen met her request.

  She waited but nothing appeared, and her chest began to feel hollow.

  Dane must have been disappointed as well. “Try a more general search,” he urged.

  “I’ve done that before,” she said. “Nothing comes up. He’s not famous like your father.”

  “Try it here. Maybe there’s something else in the private data bank for the academy, something that’s not under student files.”

  She followed his directions, doubt warring with hope as she produced a new search box. Again she typed in her father’s name. Again color lit the screen as the computer searched and searched and searched. Aerin glanced up at the glowing clock, 1:06 A.M. She turned back to the screen.

  And the blood left her face. The name, Antony Renning, had appeared, not once but again and again, all the way down the screen. Her trembling hand scrolled down the list of sites for almost a minute.

  Dane let out a low whistle.

  She clicked on a link. Sheer blackness covered the screen, and they waited; but as with the postgraduate data, nothing came up.

  Aerin returned to the list and chose another site. Again, darkness.

  She pulled a strand of brown hair between her teeth and chewed on the end as site after site produced the same reaction.

  Dane’s palm closed over her right hand. “Aerin, look at the screen.” Her eyes moved once more over the page with the list of her father’s name. “Read the descriptions next to the sites.”

  She had overlooked the small white font. It had seemed irrelevant with the lure of news about her father only a click away, but now the writing gripped her, not only for its content but because it was all the same.

  Slowly she scrolled down the list. Each address was different. They were all different sites, all different places with some tie to Antony Renning. And next to every heading, in that small white font, was the same single word. Classified.

  Chapter Eighteen

  FLIGHT

  CLASSIFIED. THE TERM SCORCHED THE INNER LINING of Dane’s brain, but his eyes focused on Aerin. It was her word. Her barricade.

  Which did not explain the look on her face. Those set eyebrows and pursed lips implied more than frustration and more than the type of thought required to cover her tracks as she exited
the computer.

  A twinge of fear crept up Dane’s spine.

  She shoved in her chair and left the lab.

  “Aerin!” Dane swept one last glance around the room to make sure it was the same as when they’d entered. He scrambled to lock the door, then hurried after her.

  She had already made her way down the outer stairs by the time he reached them.

  He jumped the steps and landed before her. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  Clouds had drifted in, covering one of the moons, but the light remained strong enough to highlight the determined look on her face. “I need to find answers.”

  “To what?”

  “Whatever the Council is hiding.” She set out across the grass.

  “Where are you going?” He was not sure he wanted to know.

  She stopped. And looked up. Over the roof of the Great Hall. Above the solid black wall encircling the grounds. To where the clouds themselves drifted around the spinning coils of the dark tower.

  “No!” His gut responded. When had she started listening to rumors? “You don’t even know what’s up there.”

  “The Center for Allied Intelligence.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “But you do, don’t you, Dane!” She whirled to confront him. “Being the son of a Council member must be good for something.”

  “That’s not fair.” True. But unfair.

  “If there’s classified data about my father, it has to be stored on a computer somewhere. And what better place than in that tower? Which just happens to be on the grounds of a school run by a Council member. And the Spindle just happened to be built right after Dr. Livinski joined the Council.”

  Aerin and her research. “You don’t know what you’re risking.” He tried to reason with her. “If someone caught you hacking into that material, they could charge you with espionage, and that’s only if you survived the trip.” He pointed at the black coils turning in the air. “That tube is the only entrance to the Spindle. It moves counterclockwise which means the pilot has to fly into the rotation. And the slope shifts. Some of the best pilots in the universe couldn’t make that flight.”

  “You could.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll go myself.” She set out in the direction of the airfield.

  “Damn it, Aerin, you don’t have a plane!” He followed.

  “I’ll take yours.”

  “The hell you will!” He grabbed her arm.

  She spun to confront him, her hair lashing his face. “You started this, Dane. You’re the one who craves danger. Why are you so scared now?!”

  Emotions crashed over him. He had been building up to this forever. Since she had knocked him on his backside that first day in combat. He should have figured it out when he had practically torn his way out of lockdown at the thought of her under arrest or when he had exploded with anger after Yvonne had threatened her. But he hadn’t understood. Not even when he’d wanted to plaster his brother to the wall after Paul had lured her beneath the mistletoe.

  Not until she’d walked through the door in that red dress. Her bare skin dropping to the low neckline, red velvet streaming down her arms, her chest, her waist—and flowing in waves to the floor. It had terrified him, not her beauty, but his sudden, urgent desire to pull her to him. Because he had known then that this relationship had gone further than he had ever intended. Beyond his control. Though he had tried for months to deny it—to deny the inevitability of this moment.

  He kissed her. For one single, frozen instant his lips were on hers, begging her to understand. That his fear came from needing her. It was the danger to her life that frightened him.

  Then she slapped him, giving a sharp cry, as if she were the one who had been struck. “I don’t need someone to tell me no.”

  Her rejection rammed into his chest with harsh intensity. If he had stopped to think, he would have known she was not ready for the kiss. Her heart was still barricaded by her father’s death. But at that moment Dane knew he had lost. Not only the battle with his own will, but the argument. She had laid down the gauntlet, and he had every right to be afraid.

  He could feel fate tightening its claws as he crept through the airfield. The humidity had grown heavy, and the clouds had continued to build, blocking out the remaining moonlight. It was dark, too dark.

  Thud! Aerin swore. “Sorry,” she whispered, doubling the error.

  He maneuvered her behind him and continued forward. Her hand settled on his back, pushing him or trying to calm her own nerves through human touch, perhaps both. But he was not about to be pushed. The planes would all have their own alarm systems.

  He inched his way along, past outthrust tails and tilted wings. Twice he ducked to avoid equipment not seen until almost too late, and once he pulled Aerin up close to save her from banging her head on an exhaust pipe.

  Gold Dust was at the rear of the lot, where it had been parked for the past two terms. He wound his way around the battered training vehicles used for second- and third-year students, then skirted a handful of more expensive machines that he assumed belonged to academy staff members.

  Finally, he spotted the smooth curve of his own craft. Aerin’s hand dropped from his back, and within minutes they had both boarded the plane. Dane leaned his forehead against the control panel. The tension refused to drain.

  He felt none of the rush that usually accompanied him in an act of defiance. He could lose his license for this, not to mention his freedom and education. But that was not what bothered him. It was the knowledge that he was not alone. One slip. One miscue up there, and she would die right alongside him.

  His hand hovered above the controls. He knew this next step was the most dangerous in terms of getting caught. Though Gold Dust had a soft engine, the initial start-up would cause a momentary burst of sound before sliding into its low hum. “Are you certain about this?” he asked Aerin, keeping his voice soft. “You could still opt out.” Attend the morning ceremony without fear of rejection.

  “I can’t,” her voice rasped.

  He understood, though he wished at the depth of his soul that he did not.

  “Start the engine, Dane.”

  He complied. The control panels lit up, and sound roared in his ears. The hair on the backs of his hands rose.

  Get up! Get up! his mind screamed, urging him to take off before anyone in hearing distance had a chance to track them down. He reigned in the panic, forcing himself to scan the radar for overhead movement. Nothing.

  And he lifted off.

  Vertically. With no lights.

  Every muscle in his trained body argued that this was unsafe, but he could not risk running the lights this low to the ground. He plastered his gaze to the radar. It remained clear.

  The altitude reading scaled up. A thousand feet. Two thousand. Three.

  That was his cue. The headlights beamed into focus, and his hand shot forward, switching to manual. He tilted the ship.

  The lowest point of the Spindle’s long black tube whipped around just above the plane and raced off on another circuit. Darkness camouflaged the remaining spiral, but Dane knew that eight full coils stretched above him. A marathon.

  For now, though, only the opening mattered. It’s all about the angle, he told himself, positioning the plane. The angle and the speed.

  Aerin gasped as the entrance neared once again, moving at seventy miles per hour.

  He didn’t look at her, didn’t want to see the doubt on her face. It was too late. The headlights were a beacon to anyone peering up from the ground below. He needed to enter the spiral. And he needed to enter now.

  Now!

  He hit the throttle, and the rotating tube engulfed him. White seam lines split the darkness. Use them, Dane ordered himself. They’re there for definition.

  Blood thundered in his chest, and the pumping sound grew faster and faster as he soared upward. Stay strong, he commanded himself. Steady. The edges of the steering device bit into his hands. His foo
t refused to lift. There was no air, none that he could feel. No lungs. No breath.

  Only the sucking spinning coils of white seam lines and darkness. He gave himself up to them. Nothing existed beyond those coils. Not Aerin. Not the school. Not his father.

  Dane melded with the plane. His eyes were the windshield, his hands the controls, his heart the engine, beating and beating and beating its way to the top.

  The coils grew steeper, shifting the flight pattern. And now there were more lines. Red this time and running crosswise. Not guiding. Distracting. Jumping at him. Flashing past. Thrum. Thrum. Thrum. Trying to drag him under.

  Dane filtered out the red. What if the white seams, too, began to mislead? What if they also detoured or faded to nothing?

  Where was he? In the fifth coil? The sixth?

  Don’t think. Fly.

  And now the tube was narrowing. A centimeter at a time. Drawing closer and closer to the edge of the wings. One hitch. One jerk in the flight path, and the plane would hit, bounce off the spiral in a pounding ricochet, and bathe in a shower of flames.

  He had been insane to try this. Insane to think he had the skill.

  And then the seams were gone! The red. The white. Momentum carried him forward into the black tube of certain death.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE SPINDLE

  THEN LIGHT.

  An open cone of light.

  Gold Dust soared into the empty cavity. The ship swung up in a steep arch, drained itself of speed, and dipped down in slow descent, once again a machine, a separate entity. Hovering in the air. Not able to land.

  Dane examined the open room. The black stem of the Spindle rose up through the center. A flat ceiling stretched above him, and a matching white wall slanted its way from the ceiling’s circular edges down to a point at the bottom.

  He scanned the sloping surface. Smooth. Except for a single ridge. There! A welded seam sweeping horizontally around the cone. As he focused, he could just make out a shift of light and a flat, glass surface—the landing pad.

  Gently he eased Gold Dust down, released the landing gear, and felt the slight rock of the ship as it came to rest. He pried his grip from the steering device, then lifted his hands to gaze with wonder at the blood oozing down his palms.