Flame: A Sky Chasers Novel

  “Otherwise you’d have let him die?”

  Jared shrugged.

  “Seth’s too sick to do anything,” Waverly said, afraid of what the doctor might have planned for him. “Please don’t hurt him.”

  “Please don’t hurt him!” Jared whined at her. “Poor little Waverly is worried about her boyfriend!”

  What was this? Waverly tried to understand, but there were too many moving parts and she was too scared to think.

  “You think that Ardvale kid is better than me, Waverly?” he spoke her name with sneering scorn. Waverly shrank farther away. She thought of the needle in her pocket, but there was no way she could get it without him seeing. “Do you think anybody on this godforsaken ship is better than me?”

  She jammed her jaw shut, afraid if she spoke she’d only enrage him further.

  “This is a ship of murderers, honey. Okay? Your parents. My parents. His parents. Killers.” He nodded at her self-righteously. “They pretended this was a democratic mission so the engineers and the metalworkers and the scientists would work with them. Thousands of the greatest minds on Earth cooperated for a chance at a lottery that never happened!”

  Waverly shook her head—tiny little motions. “My father was a botanist.”

  “You don’t even know who you are! Your father was the heir to billions! Marshall Oil Refineries in British Columbia. Those were your people.”

  “He discovered phyto-lutein,” she said, her voice tiny. “He saved the mission.”

  Jared laughed out loud. “It only took him twenty-six years! Ask me how many Nobel Prize–winning botanists he killed so he could get on the Empyrean.”

  Waverly had nothing to say to this. Jared’s body was shaking with rage now, and he spat as he talked. “Daddy dearest? No better than me, sweetheart. Not by a long shot!”

  “You’re right,” she started to say, but he punched the wall again.

  “You know the best part? Your daddy and all his billionaire friends? They were the ones who ruined Old Earth in the first place! They could have protected the planet. They had the power to clean it up! Do you know why they didn’t?”

  Waverly’s eyes felt stuck open, and she stared like a doll.

  He sneered. “It was cheaper not to.”

  The back of Waverly’s throat felt swollen. She looked at his profile, that perfectly formed nose, those chiseled cheekbones, the angled jaw. He was calming down now, but something about his calm was terrifying.

  “Where are we going?” she finally asked. The elevator doors opened onto an empty corridor, deep in the innards of the ship. Jared closed a hand around the tender part of her elbow and squeezed. “That hurts,” she said.

  He tightened his grip. “When the doctor needs something done, I do it. I don’t question. I don’t worry about it. I’ve been given a role in life, and I fulfill it.”

  He jerked her in front of him, pushed her down the hallway. She stumbled but regained her feet and started to run.

  Because finally she knew what this was.

  Too late, a sneering voice like Jared’s whispered in her mind.

  “So, Waverly,” Jared said as he caught her wrist, twisting it until she crumpled to her knees. “What should I do with you?”

  “What?” she could only whisper as she looked up at him. His eyes looked black and bottomless, his breath rasping and dry, his lips yellow and cracked as he smiled.

  “The doctor was … annoyed … when he found out I saved you.”

  Long seconds passed as she took this in, staring at his twisted features in horror.

  “‘Take her to the shuttle,’” Jared quoted the doctor. “‘Do what you like with her. Record her saying that she lied. Then let her go…’”

  Understanding filled her. “You let the Pauleys find me?”

  Jared only stared at her.

  “Then why save me?”

  “You ran off before I could get what the doctor wanted!”

  “What does he want?” she whispered. The insides of her mouth stuck together like gum. “I’ll do it.”

  “He wants you to admit,” Jared cajoled, “that you lied during your testimony.”

  “The doctor wanted me to lie!” she pleaded. His grip on her arm was robotic and immovable. The human spark had gone out of his eyes. “You wanted me to lie!”

  “Just say it, Waverly.” He pulled his small com unit out of his pocket, flicked a button, and aimed at her. “Say, ‘I lied.’”

  “Why? Did the doctor cut some kind of deal with Mather?”

  Jared turned off the recorder and bragged, “Mather gets to keep her pulpit, we get the Captain’s chair.”

  “You mean you get the Captain’s chair.”

  “If I do one last errand for the good doctor.” He pressed the Record button again and held it in her face. Was he making a video? “Now admit that you lied.”

  She stared at him as comprehension flooded her. “They’re going to blame the impeachment on me. Everyone gets to stay in power.”

  “Because you lied about the whole thing.” He bent down and screamed in her face, “Admit it!”

  “They’re getting me out of the way.”

  “Say it.”

  “Then why?” she wailed. “Why did he try to impeach her at all?”

  “She grew a conscience and stopped cooperating. ‘No, I won’t kill the Empyrean survivors,’” he whined sarcastically. “‘I don’t want to go down in history as a murderer!’”

  “So she lobotomized them instead,” Waverly whispered in horror. “Or was it the doctor…?”

  “Little idiot.” Jared hammered on her head with his knuckles. “Who do you think designed the drug in the first place? What do you think killed Captain Takemara and his allies? Food poisoning? No. The first batch of the doctor’s little cocktail. He’s made some refinements since then. Goes down easier.”

  This was too much. Waverly hung her head and sobbed, “Please don’t hurt my mom.”

  He let go of her arm, pulled the gun out of the waistband of his pants, and held it in her face. “Do as I say”—he cocked the gun—“and I won’t kill your mommy.”

  “I lied,” she said through tears.

  “Good girl. Now say, ‘I lied during my testimony.’” He waved the muzzle of the gun in a circle, mouthing the words for her.

  She repeated, “I lied during my testimony.”

  “Now say, ‘I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather.’ Say that, honey, and I won’t hurt Mommy.”

  “I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather,” she whispered.

  He cocked an ear toward her. “I can’t hear you, sweetheart. Say it again. Louder.”

  “I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather,” she cried.

  “Good girl!” He flicked a button on the com unit and slipped it into his breast pocket. With one hand he gripped her wrist, with the other he pointed his gun at her face. “Now! What do you suppose the doctor would like me to do with you?”

  She was so scared she had to fight not to collapse. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, I think you do know, Waverly. I think that’s why you’re so scared.”

  Her eyes fastened onto his.

  “Now,” he said with mock officiousness, “I could follow orders like I usually do…”

  “But you won’t,” Waverly said quickly. She tried to get to her feet, but he twisted her wrist again, and she slumped to the floor.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Jared asked. “You already told me you can’t be mine.”

  “Because…” Waverly’s mind raced. “Without you pushing people around for him,” she said, “he’s nothing but an angry, weak old man.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Jared warned.

  “It’s you people are afraid of. What can the doctor do without you?” She realized her long hair was hiding her right hand from his gaze. She shook even more of her hair over her arm and fumbled in her pocket for the needle as she spoke, holding his gaze. “You don’t need him.”
/>
  “I owe him. He raised me.”

  “He used you.” Her fingers swam through the fabric of her pocket, which was twisted and tight against her body. She touched on the plastic cap over the needle and pulled, but the cap came off, leaving the needle still wedged in her pocket. “Do you think the doctor loves you?”

  “Manipulative little…” He twisted her wrist a little farther.

  “You don’t have to be a murderer,” she whispered as she worked the needle free.

  His expression changed. “What are you doing?”

  She jammed the needle deep into his calf and plunged the syringe in one motion.

  “Ow!” he screamed, and his hold on the gun loosened long enough for Waverly to bat it out of his hand. He saw the syringe sticking out of his leg, let go of her wrist, and backed away from her. “What did you do?”

  She tried to get to her feet, but he tackled her to the floor so quickly he knocked the wind from her body. As she sputtered, he sat on her back, holding her between his knees. She felt his hand in her hair and tried to pull away, but he twisted her head around.

  “You little bitch! I saved you!” he said and swung at her face with his left fist, his hand passing harmlessly through her hair as he slid to the floor. She rolled away and stood over him, watching him fade.

  “Whaddid you give me?” he slurred. “Whad issit?” He smacked his lips.

  She waited until his eyelids started to sag, then reached down and pulled the tracking device from his pocket, picked his gun up off the floor, and ran to the central stairwell, glancing once over her shoulder at the surveillance camera in the corner, which must have captured the whole thing.

  THE PLAN

  The first thing Kieran saw when he opened his eyes was the woman, Jacob’s wife—Ginny, he’d called her. She had a cruel little face, and the way she scowled gave her the aspect of a pouting child. She was bent over some kind of craft project, shoulders hunched, gloved fingers working with fine precision. She tilted a spoon full of what looked like black pepper into a small balloon, then tied it off with her teeth.

  “Where are we?” he croaked. He tried to sit up, but he was still bound by tight cords. He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but his mouth was dry.

  “Never mind.” She laughed as though he’d just asked the stupidest question she’d ever heard.

  Kieran looked around, considering his situation. They’d taken him to a small, nondescript room with a single buzzing fluorescent light overhead. Bare of furniture, the walls were lined with unlabeled cardboard boxes. He guessed they were in a storage room, and, judging from how far away the engines sounded, they were at about midship level.

  He looked again at her project. She gently placed the little balloon, which was the size of the upper joint of his thumb, onto a small pile of identical balloons. There were about ten of them.

  “You getting ready for something?” he asked fretfully.

  “Anne Mather’s trial’s, today.” She chuckled. “These are a little gift.”

  Today? He’d been so worried about Waverly he’d forgotten that he was supposed to testify today at Anne Mather’s impeachment. Is that why Jared Carver had traded him for Waverly? So he couldn’t testify?

  A shuffle sounded from the front of the room, which was obscured by stacks of boxes, and Jacob appeared, looking irritable and tired, carrying what looked like a fifty-pound flour sack over his shoulder. He dropped it on the floor with a thud and glanced at Kieran. “How long has he been awake?”

  “Just a few minutes,” Ginny said.

  Jacob crossed the small room to pick up a walkie-talkie and dialed through the channels, his ear to the speaker, smiling at what he heard. Kieran couldn’t make out any words, but he heard all kinds of different voices, both men and women, all of them sounding routinely officious. “They’re looking for you,” Jacob said. He put the walkie-talkie on top of a box. “I didn’t hear anything like this for that little bitch.”

  “Anne Mather must like you,” Ginny said with a distrustful look at Kieran.

  “I suppose,” Kieran said.

  “That woman’s a serpent,” Ginny said.

  “The serpent in the garden,” Jacob singsonged.

  “She’ll wrap herself around your legs till you can’t walk no more.”

  “And she’ll whisper in your ear, confuse you,” Jacob said, nodding.

  “So you can’t listen to her,” Ginny said. “Because the more she tries to make you her friend, the more of an enemy she becomes.”

  “I’m no friend of Anne Mather’s,” Kieran said. “She killed my father.”

  “That so?” Ginny jerked her chin upward. “My father was gut shot on our way to the launch. He drove me in his jeep to the launch site, bleeding from a hole in his tummy. Got us on board, but the launch killed him.”

  “Who shot him?” Kieran asked Ginny. He thought if he could make friends with them, they might have second thoughts about whatever they had planned.

  “Someone who wanted his spot on this ship,” Ginny said. “Lots of people died like that.”

  Jacob grunted in agreement.

  Ginny tied off the last of the balloons from her pile, and Jacob rolled one between his thumb and forefinger. “No way he can swallow that. It’s too big.”

  “What?” Kieran asked, but they ignored him.

  “Sure he can,” Ginny said, nodding toward Kieran. “He’s a big kid.”

  Jacob held up the small, tightly packed balloon. “Can you swallow that?”

  “I’m not swallowing anything,” Kieran said, trying to control his growing panic, because he was beginning to suspect what those little bundles were.

  “You love those little kiddies, don’t you?” Ginny snarled. “The ones from the Empyrean?”

  Kieran’s body turned to ice.

  “You might’ve figured out we’re not nice people,” she said through a rank grin, then looked at her husband and cocked her head at the large sack he’d brought in, which was still sitting by the door. “Jake.”

  Jacob obediently heaved the sack across the floor and set it at Kieran’s feet.

  “Show him what you brought, Jakey,” the little woman said.

  Jacob untied the mouth of the bag and something spilled out.

  No. Please don’t let it be … Kieran closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see.

  Serafina Mbewe lay facedown on the floor. Kieran recognized her immediately by the puffy pigtails over her ears, her coffee-colored skin, her skinny little girl legs and arms. She groaned and wriggled into a sitting position. Her eyes rolled in her head as she took in her surroundings. They’d tied her up, her arms bound behind her back, thick surgical tape over her mouth. She looked at Kieran, eyes wide with terror.

  “If you hurt her…,” Kieran snarled, pulling against the rope that bound his own wrists. He wanted to kill them.

  Ginny pressed her knife to Serafina’s cheek, just under her eye, and grinned at Kieran. Serafina’s body shook with spasms of terror, and a stain of urine spread over her pants.

  Kieran hated these people. He’d never hated anyone like this.

  “It’s your decision,” Ginny said to him as she pricked at Serafina’s cheek with the blade. A bead of blood formed on the knife edge, and Serafina whimpered.

  “I’ll do it!” Kieran screamed.

  While Ginny held the knife to Serafina’s throat, Jacob put a balloon in Kieran’s mouth, then tilted some water at his lips. He tried to swallow but he gagged on it, so Jacob brought a jar of butter and rubbed each capsule with it before feeding it to Kieran. They went down a little easier then, but they landed in his stomach like boulders and sat there in a painful, immovable lump.

  Next Ginny produced what looked like a transmitter of a type Kieran had never seen before. It had a blinking red light and an antenna. She held it up, squinting at him with her beady rodent eyes.

  “This sends and receives. Can you guess what it’ll send to me?”

  “My location.”
>
  “And your words,” Ginny said. “Everything you say, to anyone, and what everyone says to you, I’ll hear it. Understand?”

  Kieran nodded. He glanced down at Serafina, who was shivering and glassy-eyed.

  “And it’s a receiver,” Ginny said.

  “I’ll be able to hear you?” Kieran asked breathlessly.

  “No. But the payload will,” Ginny said, pointing at his swelling stomach.

  “So I’m a bomb? You made me swallow a bomb?” His voice rose in a shriek.

  Without warning, she ripped a hunk of Serafina’s hair out of her head. The little girl cried out. Ginny held it up to Kieran’s face—a puff of curly black hair. Oh, he despised her. “Swallow it, or she’ll die bald.”

  Jacob took the receiver from Ginny and placed it in Kieran’s mouth. It felt jagged and too big, but Ginny was winding another hank of Serafina’s hair around her finger, getting ready to pull. Frantically, Kieran gulped it down, ignoring the way it tore his throat as he swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. Jacob handed him another grav bag of water and Kieran drank, forcing the device down his esophagus until it finally scraped its way into his stomach. God it hurt.

  “Okay, then. We’re ready,” Ginny said. “Get up.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Kieran asked. Serafina was staring at him, her teeth chattering. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, but tied up as he was, all he could do was mouth the words I’m going to get you through this, hoping she’d be able to read his lips. She stared at him, trembling.

  “Stay here until it’s time,” Ginny said to her husband in a warning tone, ignoring Kieran’s question.

  “Why? What’s she going to do?” Jacob said, tilting his head at the little girl. “She can’t walk, can’t move, can’t talk, can’t hear nothing.”

  “I don’t want you going after that kid,” Ginny said, and the dark look she gave her husband made Kieran shudder. “Check the hall.”

  Jacob opened the door a crack and peeked out. “All’s clear,” he said. He picked up a black jacket and threw it to Ginny, who caught it with one hand. She handed her knife to Jacob, who trained it on Kieran and Serafina while she slipped the jacket on and fitted the hood over her head. Next she picked up a pillow from her bedroll and stuffed it under her shirt so that she looked pregnant. To the surveillance cameras, she would look like half the women on board.