“I don’t know,” he said, knowing he was letting his friend down.
“You have to get them off that ship.” Mather was sitting in front of him, he thought, judging from the direction of her voice. “The whole ship could decompress.”
Kieran trembled like a leaf. “Did you close off all the bulkheads that you could?” he asked Sarek.
“I closed all the ones where I’m pretty sure there are no people.”
“He has to close all the bulkheads,” Mather said. “He can’t wait.”
“I don’t trust anything you say,” he snarled at her. “Sarek, try to locate anyone who might be in that part of the ship.”
“For God’s sake, Kieran!” Mather cried. “You’ll sacrifice them all to save one or two! Close the bulkheads!”
Kieran felt the headset being pulled off of him, and he reached out, groping for it, until he heard his mother’s voice. “Sarek? This is Lena Alden, Kieran’s mom. Do you recognize my voice?”
“Yes,” Sarek said hesitantly.
“You must close all the starboard bulkheads immediately, or you’ll kill everyone on the ship. Close them now.”
“Okay,” he said, but he sounded unsure.
“Then he can look for pockets of survivors,” Mather said in a soft voice.
“Shut up.” Kieran tried to stand, but he felt a sudden weight on him. One of the guards was pushing him down so he couldn’t move. “You have no right to call the shots.”
“I know that,” Mather said.
“Did you close the bulkheads?” Lena asked Sarek.
“Yes.” He sounded tearful.
“Okay, now go compartment by compartment with the video system and look for survivors,” Lena said. “Call everyone else to the central bunker, okay?”
“Good, Lena,” Mather said.
“Why did you do this?” Kieran broke down. “Why do you keep killing us?”
No one in the room answered him.
TRAPPED
The brig was quiet. Seth lay on his cot, listening to Jake’s snoring. Seth had a large, rough, bloody patch on the inside of his cheek, and he worried at it with his tongue. When he was tense or afraid, that’s what he did: He bit his cheek, sometimes until the blood came. It was a horrible habit, and painful, but when he was a kid and needed to hide his pain or anger or humiliation, it helped him stay steely. He’d abandoned the habit when he started kissing girls, but now it was back because he knew something terrible was about to happen. He knew it for sure, like he knew his mother was dead that day the ship’s emergency alarm sounded. Jake had something planned, and people were going to die.
With a pang, he let his mind turn to Waverly. She hadn’t come to see him. Not once. Had he made her angry when he tried to stop her from torturing Jake? He closed his eyes, tried to erase from his mind the image of her screwing that Taser into Jake’s spine, and the way she grimaced, nose wrinkled and lips pulled back over her teeth, making the man scream and writhe. It wasn’t that Seth didn’t understand the impulse. He understood it too well, so well that he knew she’d never be able to forget what she’d done. She’d learned something about herself she’d have been better off not knowing.
And he didn’t like seeing her that way, either. He wasn’t so naive as to believe that she didn’t have any darkness inside her. Of course she did. Seth lived his life believing that everyone had a dark side; everyone could be pushed past the limits of their own humanity. It had happened to Seth many times. He’d watched it happen to his father, not in any kind of outward way, but in a slow, insidious cancer that grew within the man until the light behind his eyes turned to shadow and he lost the capacity to smile, even at his own son. But Waverly—it shouldn’t have happened to her. He’d give anything if he could take it away, make her the way she was before. Help her learn to be simple again.
“But those days are over,” he said, and woke himself. He’d been half-asleep, he realized, dreaming of her. Brown hair, brown eyes, light brown skin—she was all one color. She had no flash. Her beauty came from the shape of her, and the way she moved, the expressions on her face. Her beauty was quiet and mysterious. He could spend his life studying it, learning the nature of it.
Or maybe he was just being a romantic idiot.
“It’s not love,” he told himself, out of habit more than anything. Really, he was just trying to cover up the pain he felt at her abandonment. Because where was she? If what he felt from her that night in her quarters had been real, where was she now?
It’s all one way, buddy, he told himself.
When he looked over at Jake’s cell, he found the man watching him with a smile on his face.
“Hi,” Seth said. He’d become afraid of Jake and how unhinged he was. He’d given up trying to talk to him. Reason was ineffectual, and his quest for information only resulted in nebulous threats that hardly made sense at all. “How long have you been awake?”
The man shrugged. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“Yeah. I do that.”
“They say it’s a sign of creativity,” Jake said. “Are you creative?”
“No,” Seth said.
“Too bad,” Jake said. “I’m not creative, either.”
Suddenly, a shudder wriggled through the metal of the floor below Seth, and he heard a distant boom. It sounded like the night the engines misfired, but more percussive. Then came another, and another, and another, each boom closer than the last.
Jake stood up from his cot and gripped the bars of his cell, smiling eagerly.
“What is that?” Seth asked, standing, too.
“I told you it was coming,” Jake said. “And here it is.”
“What is it?” Seth yelled. He catapulted himself across his cell and jammed his body against the door. If he could only push hard enough, he could bend the metal and free himself. But it didn’t give, not even a millimeter. “Jake, God damn it, tell me what you did!”
“You’ll find out.” Jake tilted his massive head, peered down the corridor expectantly. He looked like an ancient primitive, the kind of being who belonged at a campfire, not on a spaceship.
“What’s going to happen?” Seth asked. He felt as though the blood were draining out of his body through a hole in the floor.
“I don’t know,” Jake said absently, his small eyes alight with anticipation.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” The emergency lights came on, casting weird shadows over everything Seth saw. “How can you not know?”
“I didn’t set this up,” Jake said.
A deep groan moved through the ship—a beast with a will of its own. Seth felt it move through the steel under his feet, and the bars of his cell creaked with the strain. The ship was changing shape, bending into itself. Where is Waverly? Where are the little kids?
The intercom crackled, and Sarek’s shrill voice whined through the speakers. “All hands report to the central bunker!”
“Hey!” Seth screamed down the corridor. “Hey! You have to let me out of here! Guard?”
He listened, but he heard nothing from the corridor outside. Had the guards abandoned their posts? Was he going to die down here, trapped all alone in the brig with this lunatic?
I don’t belong here, he realized. I’ve paid enough, and now I want out.
“Do you hear me?” he yelled. “I want out of here! You can’t do this to me!”
He heard the door to the corridor open, and he sank to his knees with relief. Footsteps came toward his cell, and he made himself stand again. “Thank God…” he began, but when he saw who had come, his voice died.
A small woman with rodentlike features and stringy brown hair was struggling down the walkway between the cells. She was thin and bony, and her eyes darted around her as though she expected to be flanked by some invisible force. She carried a huge saw that was almost too much for her, and every few steps she had to set it down and rest.
“Honey, what did you do?” Jake asked gently.
“Never mind,”
she said. “I’m getting you out of here. That’s what matters.”
He leaned down and kissed her forehead through the bars, but she hardly seemed to notice. “Stand out of the way,” she told him.
She never even looked at Seth, who stared at her, aghast. She was spectral, unreal. He swallowed, but his mouth had gone dry. What an idiot he’d been. An absolute idiot.
Jake stepped back, and his wife—the one who was so bitter and angry, the one who despaired of her unborn children, the woman Jake mourned—turned on the saw.
It made a piercing sound that seemed to bore through the tender flesh inside Seth’s ear canal, and he covered his ears with his palms while he watched the sparks fly. It took her five full minutes to saw through the first bar, then she had to change the blade from a small bag she had slung over her shoulder. She made four cuts in all, cutting away sections of two bars until Jake could wriggle through the hole she made.
“Now, Seth,” Jake said to her. Seth could hardly hear him speak through the ringing in his ears, but he saw the gentle way Jake turned her to look at the bewildered caged boy standing behind her. She looked Seth up and down.
“No time,” she said coolly.
“Honey, he’s just a kid,” Jake said.
“So?” she squawked. “Is his life worth more than ours? Come on!”
She dropped the saw where she stood and pulled Jake down the walkway.
“Someone will come,” Jake said to Seth.
“No they won’t,” Seth said calmly. “They’re in a panic. They’ll forget.”
“Nah,” Jake said, but he turned away to run after his wife.
“Hey!” Seth yelled after them. “I’m seriously going to die in here!”
He heard the door at the end of the walkway open and close, and he was alone.
But they had left the saw. It was just out of reach. Seth forced his leg through the slim opening between the bars and, with his toe, was able to barely touch the blade of the saw. Maybe with his other leg, and if he pushed harder.
It took twenty agonizing minutes of jamming his thigh between the bars of the cage until the circulation was cut off, and then dragging his toe across the smooth metal of the blade, edging the saw closer, millimeter by millimeter. He could feel the flesh of his thighs bruising painfully against the bars, and every muscle in his body ached. But finally the saw was within reach, and with his index finger and his thumb he was able to pinch the blade hard enough that he could drag it closer and finally pick it up.
The bulky saw wouldn’t fit through the bars, so he’d have to hold it awkwardly on the outside of his cell. He leaned against the bars, holding the heavy saw up with his right arm, and turned it on.
The whine of it drilled into his ears, gave him a headache, and it was next to impossible to hold the saw still as it bit through the steel. But when the sparks flew, he took heart and held it to the metal until he could feel and see a groove forming. He sawed on the bar for five minutes, ten, and he’d made it halfway through.
The blade is too dull, he knew. She’d used a new blade for every bar.
He eyed the bag she’d dropped, halfway down the walkway and hopelessly out of reach. Anyway, it might be empty. So he tried to put it out of his mind.
He’d broken into a sweat with the exertion of holding the saw up, and paused when he felt a cool breeze drying his cheek.
The air was moving over his skin, nowhere near a ventilation duct. That breeze was moving toward what must be a hole in the hull of the Empyrean.
“Oh God,” he said, and pressed the saw harder against the metal bar, but the saw suddenly bucked out of his hands. Pain crippled his hand; two of his fingers were twisted into unrecognizable lumps. He screamed as pain seared through his arm. For a time all he could do was blink back tears, moaning, but when he came back to himself and looked at the groove where he’d been sawing, he realized what had happened. The blade of the saw, overheated from the friction against the steel, had suddenly bunched up like a ribbon and jammed itself into the groove in the bar. There was no blade. The saw hung useless. And he was as trapped as ever.
He screamed. He screamed and screamed through his damaged throat, hoping that somehow someone might hear him. But then his voice seemed to burst in two, and he collapsed on the floor.
He’d felt afraid before, but it was nothing to this terror. He was an animal. He was trapped. He was going to die.
PANIC
“Where do I go? Where do I go?” Arthur kept screaming. Waverly could see almost nothing out of her right eye, but with her left she could see well enough to pull herself back to the cockpit. Arthur sat shaking at the controls, panting, his eyes shocked wide.
“How does the rest of the Empyrean’s hull look?” Waverly asked him. She thought she could still see the hulk of the great ship sliding under the shuttle, but she no longer trusted her vision.
“This side looks okay, but that was a massive explosion.” Arthur’s voice cracked.
“We have to help the little ones get off.”
“But what if they’re already—”
“Don’t even say it!” Waverly screamed. “Just shut up and get us there!” Arthur wiped a tear from his cheek, and Waverly took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“The port shuttle bay is probably still intact,” Arthur said. He sounded calmer now, and when he pressed the accelerator, the flight felt smooth and confident.
“Can you see?” Waverly asked, blinking. All she could see were dark shapes, but slowly they were resolving into color and texture.
“I saw the explosion in the video display. My eyes are fine.”
“Where’s the other shuttle?”
“I think they’re gone,” Arthur said. “It looked like the explosion swallowed them up.”
That other shuttle had been a few hundred yards to their right. With a jolt, Waverly realized their own shuttle had narrowly escaped the same fate.
She picked up the com headset and hailed the Empyrean Central Command. “Sarek?” she called.
“Where are you?” came Sarek’s frantic voice.
“Are you okay?” Waverly asked. “What’s going on there? Where’s the crew?”
“I’m fine, and I’ve called everyone to the central bunker.”
“Has the port shuttle bay suffered any damage?”
“I don’t think so. The explosion happened along the starboard side.”
The brig was on the starboard side.
“Sarek!” Waverly shrieked. “What about the brig? Is it intact?”
“I can’t tell for sure. The ship is very unstable.”
“You’ve got to let Seth out of there!”
“I’ve sealed all the bulkheads, Waverly. There’s no way to let him out.”
“Unseal them!”
“Then what? He’s locked in a cell, and there’s no one down there to let him out.”
“Someone’s got to go down there!”
“Who?” Sarek said bitterly.
“I’ll do it, then. Just send everyone else to the port shuttle bay. We need to get the kids off the ship.” She said this with a sinking feeling. There was only one place to go: right into the clutches of Anne Mather.
“Okay,” Sarek said doubtfully.
“This must have been part of Mather’s plan all along,” Arthur said grimly.
“And we walked right into it.” Waverly punched the seat of her chair. “Now she’s got everyone under her control.”
“No,” Arthur said. “She’s going to get the fight of her life. Right?”
Waverly studied his profile. Everything still looked dim to her, but she could see the way his lips were bunched together and how his fists gripped the controls. “You’re right, Arthur.”
“We’re going to get that evil woman.”
“And I’m personally going to kill her,” Waverly said, making a fist.
Arthur glanced at her but said nothing.
Arthur followed the curve of the Empyrean until the shuttle bay came in
to view. He looped the craft around and aimed for the huge doors. Waverly saw that his fingers were trembling, and he bit his lower lip until it turned white between his teeth, but he guided the shuttle into the air lock with the assurance of an experienced pilot. Once the shuttle touched down inside the bay, Waverly leapt out of her seat and skidded down the ramp into a scene of chaos.
Already many of the children had been evacuated from the central bunker to the shuttle bay. The littlest boys and girls were huddled in bunches, crying. Some of the older kids were kneeling next to them, trying to keep them calm, but almost all of them seemed to be in shock. Several had trickles of blood coming from their ears. Though the explosion had been inaudible in the vacuum of space, it must have been deafening aboard the Empyrean.
“I want to get my diary!” a little girl wailed—Maysie Fisher, a nine-year-old who’d been orphaned in the attack. “My pictures of my mom and dad!”
Sarah appeared at Waverly’s side, her face pale. “Do you feel that?” she asked with dread.
“What?” Waverly asked her.
“That breeze,” Sarah said distantly.
Sarah was right. There was a slight motion to the air, brushing gently by Waverly’s face. There were no wind turbines in the shuttle bay, and they weren’t standing near a ventilation duct. If the air was moving it was escaping out of the Empyrean. The ship was dying.
“Oh God,” Waverly said. “I have to go.”
“What?” Sarah shrieked after her as she ran toward the door. “Where are you going? Are you crazy?”
“Seth is trapped!” Waverly screamed over her shoulder, and ran in the direction of the rushing air. “Don’t wait for me!”
“I won’t!” Sarah yelled, furious. “Idiot!”
The floor shook under Waverly’s feet as she ran for the elevators. She pushed the call button again and again, but the elevators were stuck where they were, wouldn’t move. Must be some kind of emergency protocol.
The stairs, then.
She sprinted for them and started down, taking two at a time. She ran faster than she ever had, making her bad leg sore. She ignored the pain. All she could think was that Seth was trapped and alone, and she couldn’t let him die like that.
Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel Page 28
