Her heart wanted to crash through her rib cage, and her legs felt shaky, as though every nerve in her extremities was being fed electricity. She couldn’t breathe fast enough to keep up with her feet, but she kept on until she met the first bulkhead. Two steel doors had slid closed to create an impassible floor beneath her feet. She found the emergency intercom display by the door and pressed the call button. “Sarek?”
“What?”
“Open the bulkhead on level twelve.”
“No.”
“Just for a second so I can slip down?”
“Waverly, you’ll endanger the entire ship.”
“Endanger? Seriously? This ship is sunk, Sarek. It’s over. You didn’t see the explosions from outside, but I did, and I’m telling you there’s no way to repair the hull. All we can do is save as many people as we can.”
She heard him sigh, but then the metal bulkhead doors creaked open and slid away to reveal more stairs beneath them. The breeze was stronger now, and her ears popped, but the air was still good.
She had the same conversation with Sarek five more times. At every level, he protested, and at every level, she begged until he’d reluctantly open the bulkhead and let her through. Each time, the doors closed above her with a chilling finality, and she realized what a risk she was taking. The deeper she went into the ship, the harder her breath came, the more her head swam, the dizzier she felt. The air seemed thinner, and it was much colder.
What if he’s already— She wouldn’t let herself complete the thought.
This made her run even faster, but she could hardly focus her eyes. Just above the last bulkhead, she tripped over her own feet and fell down half a flight of stairs. She lay on top of the bulkhead doors, dazed. The trickle of blood running down her forehead stirred her, and she sat up. She had a bad gash on her knee from the sharp corner of the metal stairs, and when she reached up to her forehead, she was surprised to feel a deep cut right at her hairline. With trembling hands she felt her limbs, her trunk, her spine. Nothing was broken.
It took her so much time to stand up and limp over to the intercom.
“Sarek,” she said breathlessly. “Open the last bulkhead.”
“Waverly,” he said, “I can’t.”
“Do we have to go through this every damn time?”
“No. You don’t understand. This time I really can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a short between here and the lower levels. The sensors aren’t operating.”
“But you can move the doors?”
“I can’t tell if there’s any air for you on the other side.”
Blood dribbled into her right eye, and she slapped angrily at it. “Can’t you just open them and we’ll see?”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
“Sarek. As a member of the Central Council, I am ordering you to open these doors.” Blood blinded her again, so with her fingernails she tore into the gauzy fabric of her tunic and ripped a strip from the bottom. As she tied it around her head, she yelled, “Sarek, I’m not kidding. Open these damn doors!”
“Waverly—” Sarek’s voice broke. “The shuttles are leaving.”
“This is the last thing I’ll ask you to do.”
“How will you get back up if I leave?”
“Open all the bulkheads before you go.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I’ll close them as I go.”
“Waverly, you’re sacrificing this ship for one guy.”
This stopped her. She was wrong and she knew it. Nothing was more important than the mission, and so nothing was more important than the variety of life-forms on the ship, many of which would not be duplicated on the New Horizon. Not to mention all the chickens and goats, the bees and ants and fish. All of them would be doomed. But it was Seth down there. He might be dying right now. “He’s an important guy,” she finally said.
“No one is that important.”
“They are if the ship is already done for, and it is, Sarek.” She punched the keypad of the intercom with her fist, nicking her knuckles on the buttons. “Open the damn doors!”
There was nothing but silence from Sarek’s end for the longest time, so long that Waverly began to think he’d left her to die. But finally the doors began to edge open. At first she thought they were opening to a vacuum because the air rushed at the widening crack with furious velocity. But she could breathe. The air was whisper thin, and frigid, but it would keep her alive.
She started down the final set of stairs, heading for the entrance to the storage bays. She opened the door to the enormous room, where the huge shapes of the storage containers, stacked on top of one another, made tall, deep canyons. The emergency lights blinked on and off, casting the containers in an ethereal, unreliable light. She started across, limping as quickly as her pounding heart would allow. She could feel the blood from the gash on her knee soaking into her sock, but she paid no attention. It didn’t matter how badly she was hurt. Once she got to Seth, it would all be okay.
The closer she got to the starboard side, the closer she was to the gaping hole in the hull. She could feel it in the distance, waiting to swallow her up.
It felt like an eternity crossing the huge bay. She wanted to run. She tried once, but black spots fizzed and popped before her eyes. She had to stop and rest. If she pushed her heart and lungs any harder, she’d faint, and then she’d be no help to anyone. So she took it slow, keeping her eyes focused on the place where the rows of shipping containers seemed to meet at the end. What was the word for it? From art class?
The vanishing point. She kept her eyes fixed on the place where space seems to disappear into smallness.
I’m not thinking clearly, she told herself. My mind is running in loops.
One foot, then the next, then one foot, over and over. Her steps were so small. The room was so big. She just had to make a lot of steps.
She fell once and rolled on the floor. Her tongue was numb; it felt like a sodden lump of cloth in her mouth. She licked her lips, which had gone dry and crusty.
Next thing, she was walking. Back on her feet and walking. The vanishing point had widened. She could see the place between shipping containers where they divided. She was almost there.
The end of the canyon came before she expected it. She stood looking at the wall. I’m there, she thought vaguely. I made it.
She didn’t know for sure which door led to the brig, so she headed for the nearest one to get her bearings. When she opened it, she got such a blast of cold, for a moment she thought she’d opened it to outer space. It was the starboard side stairwell. One flight down ought to open to the corridor that led to the brig.
It seemed so far away, but her feet stumbled down the stairs, then her hand was reaching for the door latch and she walked through it. The door opened to a corridor. The empty guard post at the entrance to the brig seemed endlessly far away.
“Can you hear me?” she whispered into the darkness, and started forward.
She had to prop herself against the wall as she walked. She looked at the ceiling just ahead of her because she was afraid if she looked at the floor she would fall onto it. When finally the door to the brig appeared to her right, she blinked, unbelieving. How could she have done it? It was impossible, she realized, now that she knew the thinness of the air and could feel the lightning-fast beating of her heart. How could she ever get back up to the shuttle bay like this?
Seth first.
“Can you hear me?” she murmured again. She’d meant to yell. The brig looked ghostly and abandoned, like a mausoleum, and she was afraid she was too late. But then she was standing outside of Seth’s cell, looking into it. She couldn’t see him.
“Seth,” she whispered.
A shape unfolded itself from the far, dark corner of the cell. She was looking at Seth Ardvale. He’d been huddled in a tight ball.
“Waverly?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came here,” she said with someone else’s voice, someone who was papery thin. “I’m here.”
“You idiot,” he said, but he was laughing. He jumped to his feet and rushed to her. “You stupid idiot.”
“You’re welcome, you jerk,” she managed to say before she finally passed out.
BLADE
He couldn’t believe his eyes. There was Waverly Marshall lying on the floor at his feet. She looked like she’d been beaten up, and there was a rough bandage across her forehead from which trails of brownish red oozed down her face. She’d exhausted herself coming here. “The air is thin,” Seth said under his breath. He hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until he’d stood up and crossed his cell. His head swam. No wonder she’d passed out. “Waverly! Wake up! Hey!”
She didn’t stir.
He reached for her through the bars, but he could only touch her lower leg. He patted it, then slapped it, but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. Finally he went to the small sink in the corner of his cell, filled a tumbler full of cold water, and splashed it on her face.
She sputtered and looked at Seth, surprised. “What?”
“What are you doing here?” Seth asked breathlessly.
“I came to…” She rubbed at her forehead as though she had a splitting headache. “To get you.”
“Where are the keys?”
“Keys?” she said, blank.
“You need a key,” he said with a sinking feeling.
“It’s not electronic?” she said vaguely.
“You don’t have keys?”
“I didn’t think…” Seth thought that if she wasn’t so exhausted, she’d break into tears.
“Jesus, Waverly!” He punched the air, and the motion nearly made him fall down.
“I’m so stupid,” she said wearily.
Seth shook his head and sat down on the floor, head slumped against the bars of his cage. “You better get out of here,” he said. He should be mad at her, but the air was too thin. Besides, he’d already resigned himself.
Waverly looked around her, noticed Jacob’s empty cell. “How’d he get out?”
Seth smiled at that. “His wife busted him out.”
“Wife?” Waverly shook her head, dazed. “How?” she panted. “He came on my shuttle but…”
“Maybe she was part of the original attack,” Seth said, and had to take a few breaths before adding, “and got left behind.”
“I never even thought of that,” Waverly whispered.
He thought Waverly would be much more upset, but he supposed with the lack of oxygen she’d entered an altered state. She blinked her eyes lazily and seemed to have trouble focusing.
She struggled onto her feet, favoring a bloodied knee, and limped over to the saw where it hung from the groove in the bar. “They used this?”
Seth stood up, making his head swim. Maybe he was in an altered state, too. He’d completely forgotten about it. With a surge of hope, he said, “Check that bag.”
“This one?” She limped over to the small satchel and picked it up. From inside she pulled a single, shiny disk. “What’s this?”
“A blade! Change it! Can you put it in the saw?”
She knelt in front of the saw where it hung from its mangled blade, wincing when the bloody mess of her knee made contact with the floor. She worked slowly and clumsily at the blade, which had torn partially free of the saw in a twisted mess of metal. She cut her fingers on the sharp edges and swore under her breath as she worked and pried at it, until finally it pulled free from the saw casing. She tried to pull the wedged saw blade free from the groove Seth had made in the bar, but it wouldn’t pull free.
“Never mind that,” she muttered to herself, and fitted the fresh blade into the casing.
“What do you mean never mind?” Seth said.
“Why didn’t you just cut the lock?” she asked simply. She heaved the saw up, leaning it on her hip, and stumbled over to the locking mechanism by the keyhole. “I mean, it’s got to be just a tumbler, right?”
“Right,” Seth said, feeling like an idiot.
Waverly held the heavy saw against the lock and turned it on. The saw jumped to life as it bit into the metal. She squinted into the flying sparks, grunting when the sparks speckled her skin with black singe marks. It was horribly loud, and Seth put his hands over his ears as he watched her.
She swayed as if she were drunk, panting, her breathing out of control and desperate. She was pale, and he thought he saw the slightest hint of blue around her lips. He didn’t know what was holding her up.
When her strength gave out, she dropped the saw on the ground, narrowly missing her foot. Seth got up and reached awkwardly through the bars to help her support the weight. It was risky, because if she dropped the saw again she might cut his arm, but it was the only way to hold the saw steady.
When finally the saw burst through the last of the lock, Waverly dropped it on the floor without ceremony and tentatively pushed on the door of Seth’s cell. It slid open, and Seth had her in his arms in an instant.
“Thank you,” he said into her hair.
“Don’t thank me,” she slurred.
He held on to her, feeling the rhythm of her heartbeat and the rapid rise and fall of her rib cage as she breathed. They leaned on each other that way for a moment, until he took hold of her hand and pulled her down the walkway to the corridor.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so far.”
“Shut up,” he snapped at her.
“I’m so tired.”
“I don’t want to hear it. March!”
He pushed her up the frigid stairwell, which was lit strangely by the emergency lights, and then pushed her farther to the storage-bay door. When he opened it, he couldn’t believe how cold it was, but he guided her into the cavernous room. He would carry her if he had to, though he wasn’t sure he had the strength for it. There was very little oxygen left, and it was achingly cold. Desperately he looked down the rows of storage containers, wishing he knew if there were oxygen tanks stored somewhere down here, but it would be foolhardy to even try looking for them.
He entered a strange state where the only thing he was aware of was the squeak of Waverly’s shoes on the floor. Eventually the periphery of his vision grew dark, and there was only one bright spot, directly ahead, at the end of the corridor between containers. So far away. So incredibly far. At one point he realized he’d taken hold of Waverly’s waistband and was holding her up. When she finally fell over he laid her out on the floor and picked up her ankle with his good hand, dragging her along the metal flooring toward the far wall. She was immensely heavy, or he was immensely weak.
In his mind he began to hear a song that his mother used to sing to him about an itsy-bitsy spider. The first line ran through his head over and over in a loop: Itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the water spout.… Itsy-bitsy spider crawled up … It was infantile, cloying, nagging, horrid. He hated it and wished it would go away, but he found himself walking to the rhythm, and eventually stopped fighting it.
How long did it take him to drag her across the bay? He could never guess afterward. It might have been ten minutes or two hours, but finally he found himself looking at a door, and when he opened that door, he was in a stairwell.
“Waverly. I can’t carry you. My hand…,” he said, on the verge of tears. His fingers were turning blue, and the knuckle joints were swelling horribly. “You’ve got to wake up. Waverly?”
He knelt by her, tried to rouse her, first with gentle pats to the cheek, then with a full-out slap across the face with his good hand, but she was out, and her breath was thready.
“Okay,” he said breathlessly. “You’re skinny, right?”
He pulled her up by her wrists, then, leaning her against the wall, laboriously lifted her until he could drape her over his right shoulder. He braced her with his good hand, hoping that would be enough. “God,” he whimpered, his cracked ribs screaming under her weight, but he starte
d up the stairs. He took one at a time, pausing to rest after each. The spider song was so insistent now he thought he could almost hear it with his ears—Itsy-bitsy spider … Itsy-bitsy … his mother’s voice woven into the wind.
After what seemed an interminable struggle, he knocked his head on something hard and looked up to find that he’d walked right into the bulkhead. He was so surprised he dropped Waverly on the stairs. She landed hard and groaned softly.
“Sorry,” he whispered. He dragged himself to the intercom and pressed the button. “Open the lower bulkhead,” he said weakly. “Please.”
No answer came.
“Please,” he said again. “We’re trapped.”
“Hello?” came Sarek Hassan’s voice. “Waverly?”
“She’s here,” Seth said. “Open the lower bulkhead.”
“I can’t believe you’re still breathing,” Sarek said, incredulous.
“Hurry!” Seth tried to yell, but the effort gave him a sudden, severe headache. If he passed out here, they’d both die, so he forced himself to take deep breaths until the headache lessened.
“Get ready for some wind,” Sarek said.
The doors eased open, and a burst of warm air blasted Seth in the face. He pulled Waverly up by the wrist. Her head banged on the stairs, but there was nothing he could do. He just had to get her above the bulkhead. When they were clear of it, he pressed the intercom switch on the other side. “Okay, close them,” he said.
The doors slowly eased closed, and the wind trickled from a gale to a breeze, back to almost nothing.
The air here was better. Not by much, but Seth felt his heartbeat slowing down incrementally, and his headache lessened slightly. After a few minutes, Waverly’s color was improved, and she was taking deeper, slower breaths. He patted her cheek again and tried to wake her. “Honey, Waverly. Can you wake up?”
She smacked her lips, but she didn’t answer.
He looked up to the next bulkhead, about ten stories above. “That’s nothing,” he said ruefully, and heaved her up over his shoulder.