“Competition?” I asked. “You’re trying to become immortal?” Because if that wasn’t the ultimate villain objective of the century, then I didn’t know what was.
“Perhaps. Or better yet, I can sell the elixir and reap the profits. No one knows about that more than a Saros, right, Cora? If anyone can locate the most valuable treasure in the entire universe, it’s Evelina Saros’s daughter. You can even bring your little droid and Earthan friend with you.” He frowned at Anders, but then his gaze skipped back to me. Did that mean that Anders had to stay here? All alone? I didn’t particularly like him, but if we were getting out of here, he could be useful to us. The guy was massive. If nothing else, he could offer us protection.
I nodded at Anders. “He comes too,” I told the warden.
He chuckled. “Absolutely not.”
“What are you doing?” Anders muttered to me.
“Helping you.” Like he helped carry Elio. He didn’t need to do that; he could have ditched us. But he didn’t.
“He comes too,” I told the warden again.
“And I told you no.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. You let him come—you let all of us out of here—and we’ll bring the treasure back to you faster. Say … three keys, two weeks?”
The warden tapped his fingers on the desk, each one forming a black claw where his nail met the wood. I was reminded of Evelina’s own pointed fingernails. An intimidation tactic, but I was anything but scared. My blood was on fire; my head pounded. Evelina and Cruz should have noticed that Elio and I were gone by now, but the warden hadn’t mentioned anyone contacting Ironside to plead my innocence or bribe him for my release.
Of course they didn’t care. Considering we were such a distraction.
My chained hands curled into fists behind my back.
“Fine. Bring back three keys and the chest. Two weeks.” The warden stood and approached me. He reached out, the claw on his middle finger digging underneath my chin. I felt blood drip down my throat. “If you succeed, I’ll see to it that your criminal records are expunged and you’ll never set foot in Ironside again. Of course, if you fail…” He licked his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue, as if savoring our misery. “If you fail, you’ll be incarcerated until the end of your lives, which could possibly be a very long time or a very short time. It’s tough to tell. There are plenty of hungry prisoners in Ironside.”
“I’m hungry,” Wren grumbled. “This has been a very long meeting.”
The warden flexed his claws again.
“What’s the catch?” Anders interrupted.
“Sorry?”
“The catch. Either we succeed and walk free, or we fail and our situation is the same as before? No punishment? That doesn’t seem like you at all.”
A dark, furious aura flickered around the warden’s head, but it was gone almost immediately. So, he was capable of the same invisibility trick as Anders. Must run in the family.
“No catch.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Might be a bit different than you’re used to.”
Anders pulled at his chains, but they didn’t budge. “Just a bit. You’re lying to my face this time instead of going behind my back.”
Wren, Elio, and I exchanged glances. We were definitely intruding on something here. But all I could think about was the elixir the warden spoke so highly of. Eternal life. The value of that kind of prize would be … astronomical.
I couldn’t pass this opportunity up.
“We’ll do it.” I sat up straight in my chair. Or as straight as the chains would allow. “We’ll take the job. We’ll be back in two weeks.”
“You don’t know what you’re agreeing to,” Anders snarled.
“Sure I do. You’re the one not comprehending. Find keys, get elixir, get free. Fail and we’re back to having slumber parties in our cell.” I glared at the warden. “Does that about cover it?”
“That about covers it,” he said.
“Great. So let’s get started.” My fingers itched, eager to get those keys and feel the weight of the elixir in my hands. Stars, I was turning into my mother.
But I knew I would do anything to find that treasure, short of murder. No, maybe even that, if it came down to it, although the thought made me squirm. Whatever kept the treasure chest out of the warden’s hands and in my own.
Because finally, praise to all the galaxies, I’d found the haul that might reinstate Evelina’s faith in me. The haul that might save Elio.
I just had to steal it for myself first.
* * *
“Well,” Wren said. “He was a treat.”
Ten minutes later, we were armed with blasters and comm links, sporting gashes on the backs of our necks where two of the warden’s guards had inserted tracking devices deep under our skin. I couldn’t think of a good way to remove them without causing damage to my spinal cord. Infuriating things. The warden insisted he couldn’t afford to have us running off on him while we were gallivanting about the universe, which made sense, but the grin on his red face when he said it made me think that the trackers were less about security and more about exercising control over his prisoners at any opportunity. They were a reminder that even though we were leaving Ironside, we weren’t free.
Not yet.
Anders wouldn’t stop grumbling about the warden under his breath as we headed to the docking bay and Wren’s ship, the lights in the hallway flickering and buzzing above us. I was shocked that he agreed to come with us, though Wren’s zest for life, my annoyance at almost everything, and Elio’s frequent beeping had to be better than anything waiting for him back in our cell. Assuming he could keep his claws to himself, maybe we would all get through this job in one piece.
He shot Wren a look so filthy that I had to avert my eyes. “Ah yes,” he said. “I forgot your planet enjoys sarcasm.”
“Who doesn’t? And look, I’m the absolute last person who would ever volunteer to stay trapped on this rock, but how do we even know this treasure is real? The inmate who gave the warden that key could have just been blowing smoke up his butt.”
Anders’s look of hatred changed to stunned disbelief. “Why would he blow smoke up the warden’s butt? What would that accomplish? Wouldn’t it just tickle?”
Wren slapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, stars above.”
“It’s an Earthan expression,” I told him. “It means telling someone what they want to hear.”
“But you didn’t answer my question. Wouldn’t it tickle?”
“It’s not literal!” Wren groaned. “There’s no smoke! And speaking of no one answering questions, you didn’t answer mine. How do we know this magic elixir even exists? He could be sending us on a wild goose chase—”
“We’re chasing keys, not geese,” said Anders.
“Oh my—look. All I’m saying is that we could bring back your superstitious fanboy father a bottle of fancy perfume and call it eternal life. He wouldn’t know the difference. Actually, maybe we should do that. It would save us a ton of time.”
“The treasure is real,” I said. I kept my gaze straight ahead as we walked down the corridor, but I felt Wren’s attention swing in my direction.
“You have proof?”
“No, but…” But it couldn’t be anything other than real. I had too much at stake.
Over the years, I had helped my family rob queens and dignitaries; we’d crept inside crypts and bank vaults, touched jewels as large as pod ships and as small as pinheads. I’d brushed my hands over hundreds of millions of ritles. Nothing was too much. Nothing was out of the question. If all those treasures existed in this universe, then why couldn’t the elixir?
“According to my net search,” Elio interrupted, “there is approximately a 0.8372 percent chance that the treasure is real.”
“And what is the percentage of us buying a bottle of perfume for under twenty ritles?”
“Don’t answer that,” I told Elio. He beeped, then started running to keep up with us when Wren picked up th
e pace. “We’re going to find the keys and the elixir,” I told her.
“If you say so. I’m just considering myself your getaway driver. But I’m also a glutton for gossip, and I would love to know what’s up with Andy and his oh-so-loving daddy.”
I turned to Anders. “Me too. What is up with you guys?”
Anders ground his teeth so loud that the noise raised the hair on my forearms. “I don’t answer stupid questions.”
“I actually thought it was a pretty good question,” Wren said.
“I don’t talk to Earthans either. You infuriate me.”
“But—”
“Be silent! I can’t think with your fruitless babbling.” He scrubbed the back of a hand across the tattoos on his forehead as we approached Wren’s ship, still covered by the shabby tarp. Four guards were standing across the room beside the service entrance, the barrels of their blasters resting comfortably against their shoulders. Upon seeing us, they huffed in boredom, but then they busied themselves with raising the door. A humid gust of air entered the docking bay, scattering dust at my feet.
My head spun at the guards’ reaction. They weren’t eager to attack us anymore, not since we agreed to assist the warden. This felt like an alternate universe, but it was one I thought I could quickly get used to.
“Okay, here we are. Feel free to ooh and ahh to your heart’s content.” Wren grasped the tarp in both hands, fingers twitching with anticipation. Her aura sparked from gold to bright red to neon green and back to gold again before I could properly read it. But she was ecstatic. I could tell that much.
The air in the bay seemed to still as she tugged the tarp free. It billowed and then settled in a heap at our feet, revealing in all its glory Wren’s legendary, grand—
Oh.
Well … I thought it was a ship. I was pretty sure it was. About 89 percent sure. Maybe.
Possibly 88 percent.
“It looks like a turtle with wings,” Elio whined.
“I have seen scabs on the bottom of my feet that are more appealing,” said Anders.
“Cut it out, Andy! It’s not that bad!”
Not that bad was subjective. The largest ship in the galaxy? By whose measurements? It was fifty times larger than my pod ship, sure, though it was still smaller than any self-respecting charter ship that I’d ever seen. Not only that, but it was old. I circled the ship slowly, taking inventory of all the damage.
The round body was covered in a thick layer of rust, which masked some of the dents covering the hull. Viewports on each of the four floors had hefty cracks, the one in front of the cockpit most of all. A jagged, diagonal slice that pained me just by looking at it. Next up were the flaps that had come loose along the wings, creating fist-size holes in the paneling. Those were followed by a weird egg-y smell wafting from the ramp leading to the starboard cargo hold, like maybe something had died inside and Wren had forgotten to clean it up. And then there was the landing gear, hanging on by only a hope and prayer, causing the parked ship to sit crooked and sad and—oh, Saturn’s rings, am I really going to board this death trap?
The answer to that was, unfortunately, yes. For Elio, I would do it.
“This is the Starchaser?” I asked. “More like Starcrawler.”
“Starturtle,” Elio added. “I’m calling it the Starturtle.”
“Stardead,” said Anders. “It is definitely deceased.”
Wren looked appalled. “What is wrong with you three?”
“Many things,” I said. “I can provide a list at your request, but I promise it won’t be anywhere near as long as the list of things wrong with this ship. Is it even flyable?”
“Yes! It passed its inspection last year. Come on, it looks way nicer on the inside.” She gestured toward the ramp and whatever horrors lurked inside the cargo hold. “I painted the cockpit after I stole it. The color is called Whispering Peach.”
“Are you sure it’s not called Dead Salmon?” I muttered, my nose wrinkling at whatever that smell was, and stepped inside the ship.
The cargo hold reminded me a lot of Ironside. Gloomy and gray, it was packed tightly with cardboard boxes and plastic crates. Wren waved toward a closed door in the corner. “The laboratory is that way.”
“You have a laboratory?” I said, heart soaring. Before we left, the warden bragged about all my belongings he’d confiscated from my pod ship on Vaotis and then sold on the black market. My VED, my broken phaser, my personal comm link. If I wanted any of them back, I’d have to build them myself. For a second time. From scratch. Using whatever meager supplies I could find on Wren’s ship.
Now that I’d actually seen the ship, I had a feeling that even asking for meager supplies would be like asking for a moon, but it was still worth a try.
“If you can manage to find anything in there, then you’re welcome to use it,” Wren said. “It’s a storage nightmare right now.” Our footsteps echoed off the metal grates on the floor as she led us past the laboratory door to a small lift in the corner. We crowded in—Wren and Elio up front, me and Anders in the rear. I felt the heat of his body on my back as we ascended, his infuriating, aura-less presence making me fidget. I couldn’t relax properly until we stopped, the gears in the lift grinding and clunking, and exited into the cockpit.
Whispering Peach. Huh.
The room was really more of a dull orange, like staring directly into a setting sun. The lights on the control panel blinked in a rainbow, broken up by radar displays and cameras showing various rooms in the ship—all dark at the moment. Wren plopped down in the leather captain’s chair, patting the seat beside her.
“Who wants to be my co-pilot?”
Immediately, Anders pivoted and stormed out of the cockpit. I whirled around, catching his shadow turning the corner before he disappeared completely.
“Where are you going?” Elio yelled after him.
“Bed,” he growled back. A door slammed somewhere in the distance.
Wren’s smile fell just a fraction. “Cora? Co-pilot?”
“That depends.” I leaned against the armrest of the empty chair, looking through the viewport. The warden’s guards were waving us toward the service door and the bleak backcountry of Andilly beyond. Wren flicked a few switches and pulled up on a lever near her feet. The Starchaser hummed, an animal coming out of hibernation, before lifting off the ground with a jerk that had Elio and me stumbling forward.
The landing gear and the cargo ramp retracted with a groan, and then we were clearing the prison walls. Free. For now, anyway. At least we were leaving Ironside, and we weren’t doing it in body bags.
Wren edged the ship forward, out of the prison’s no-fly zone and toward the mountains, her face the picture of ease as she studied the control panel. I’d only ever flown my pod ship, and this looked infinitely more complex. More lights and screens and the humming of voices through the comm link that was connected to Andilly’s control tower. Wren switched the voices off as we picked up speed, thrusting the cockpit into silence.
“You were saying?” She raised an eyebrow at me.
“I was saying that me being your co-pilot depends on whether or not I can trust you. Don’t think you can use me to help you start a riot in the prison yard and then ditch us right when we try to make a break for the hangar. That’s not how things work around here.” Or that wasn’t how things worked for me, anyway. But until Elio and I got our hands on the elixir, that fact was irrelevant.
Wren’s long fingers stilled, hovering over the ship’s controls. “I—I wasn’t going to leave Ironside without you. I was powering up the ship first, and then…”
“And then?” I prompted. “You were going to leave. You can admit it, you know. You’re no better than the rest of us. Not me. Or Elio. Or Anders. You come across so sweet, but I think that’s all an act. Maybe you aren’t as good of a person as you think you are. It’s okay,” I added quickly when she lifted a hand to protest. “Maybe I’m not either.”
“Cora,” Elio warned, ner
vously biting his fingers. He never handled conflict well.
The aura surrounding Wren flashed red, like the first spark of a fire. Anger. And somewhere underneath—determination.
Her gaze fell back to the control panel, and the ship continued out of the no-fly zone, gaining altitude. “So your mother is really Evelina Saros?”
“I’m stealing this line from Anders: I don’t answer stupid questions.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to talk about her?”
“I don’t want to talk about her in the same way you don’t want to talk about trying to abandon us in Ironside.”
Wren gripped down hard on the throttle, making the ship lurch. “Fair enough. But you should know that I’ve been studying your family for months. That heist you guys did at the treasury on Mars last year? Bravo. Only…” She wiggled her fingers, and I was reminded of her innate ability to steal anything within reach. “I think I could have done it better.”
“Is that so?”
She nodded. “Maybe one day I’ll be good enough to join your crew.”
What? Did she think it was a picnic being part of my family? With Evelina’s criticisms and Cruz’s refusal to go against the grain and be on my side instead of his wife’s for once in his life? With Blair’s insults, and the house that was packed full of people and junk but somehow always felt so empty? Would she, after enduring all that, still want to please those people? To prove to them—and herself—that she was more than just an inconvenience?
Probably not. The only person broken enough to do that was me.
“You can fly this thing, right?” I asked. Truthfully, even if she told me she was going to careen us into the mountains, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. I needed to get out of this cockpit. I needed to go somewhere quiet, where I could think about the nearly impossible task before me. And what would happen if I failed.
Maybe you really are no better than a distraction.
Wren looked a little crestfallen as I stepped toward the door. “Yeah, it has an autopilot feature. I didn’t know where we wanted to head first, so I was just going to get us out of Andilly’s atmosphere and then orbit for a—”
The Good for Nothings Page 9
