Flame (16 page)

“Thank you!” Seth took the can from her.

“What if he’s caught?” Josiah fumed.

“I’ll say I stole it.” Seth got up to leave, but with a start, he turned back to Amanda. “Did you ever find out where Waverly is?”

“Oh! Yes.” Amanda smiled. “She’s with her mother, thank goodness, and they’re being kept one level above us, in a wing of unoccupied apartments.”

Seth nodded, grateful to finally have a lead.

“I don’t want to see your face again.” Josiah’s hands balled into fists, his jaw set, seething with fury.

“You won’t,” Seth assured him, looking him in the eye to show he meant it.

“Now leave,” Josiah said. “Go the way you came.”

Seth got up and went back to the bedroom closet.

He could hear the couple quietly arguing as he sidled along the passage toward the vacant apartment Amanda had mentioned.

He broke through the back paneling of the bare closet and stepped into a bedroom with only a bed and a dresser in it. He crouched on the floor and ate every last scrap of meat, skin, and gristle off the chicken, followed by the entire loaf of bread and the decanter of juice. With a full belly, he became suddenly exhausted. He crawled onto the bare mattress and stretched out, every joint in his body loosening. Much better than the floor of a janitor’s closet.

I’ll just sleep a little while,
he told himself
. And when I wake up, I’ll find Waverly.

THE CAPTAIN

Waverly hadn’t expected the doctor to let her see Captain Jones, yet here she was, on her way to the brig, standing in the elevator with Jared on one side of her and one of Mather’s guards on the other. After the violence she’d witnessed on her way to testify, she was amazed that they let Jared and her walk the halls at all.

Choice tidbits of her testimony had been released to the crew only minutes after she had finished. The doctor had called Anne Mather to inform her that Waverly was now a protected witness of the church elders, and Mather had accepted this news with a single, chilling sentence: “So be it.” Jared had escorted Waverly back to her apartment, where a thinner, more disciplined guard was posted outside her door, and their lives had resumed as if the violence before her testimony had never happened. Days passed with the same monotony she’d grown accustomed to, until Jared appeared at her door this morning to pick her up. Mather’s guard let them leave without comment. Some of the New Horizon crew members they passed in the hallway had glared at her venomously, but most of them pretended not to see her at all. The day of her testimony had taken on a dreamlike quality in her mind, as though Jared hadn’t beaten those men in front of her, and as though she hadn’t testified at all. The only remaining vestiges of the incident were the fevered nightmares that vanished the moment she opened her eyes.

And to add to the unreality, Waverly was about to speak to the man who had killed her father and whose policies led to the destruction of everything she’d ever loved. The elevator doors opened, and she and Jared stepped off. They walked down the long hallway toward the admittance desk for the bridge. Now that she was about to see Captain Jones, she realized she had no idea what to say.

Jared and she stood at the desk, and the flabby guard sitting behind it looked at them as thought he’d been expecting them. He waved them in with a languid hand. “Twenty minutes,” he said over his shoulder.

“Surveillance?” Jared asked with a glance at the camera above.

“Darnedest thing,” the guard said with a smirk. “Stopped working a couple minutes ago.”

“Thanks,” Jared said.

The brig held a stale odor of food and ancient human sweat. Jared led her into the first cell to the left. Waverly looked around and gasped.

Standing shackled in the corner was a skeletal, stooped, ancient man who couldn’t be Captain Jones.

But it was.

The Captain had always been paunchy and physically substantial, but this man’s stomach was a concave, and his wrists were bony and frail looking. His beard had gone completely white, and his hair had grown past his shoulders. His hands shook with palsy, and he smacked his lips together as though he were terribly thirsty. His eyes danced over the cell as if he were expecting some kind of animal to jump at him from above, but then they landed on Waverly, and he blinked as a man waking.

“Captain?” she asked tentatively. She felt the wrongness of addressing him by his formal title. Calling him
liar
or
murderer
would be more fitting. But he was so pathetic, she couldn’t find it within herself to attack.

“Waverly Marshall,” the man said. Even his voice had lost weight, become wispy and weakened. “God, it’s good to see you.” His knees knocked, and the chains around his ankles trembled and clacked. Slowly, the Captain approached her and sat down at the end of the cot. “They wouldn’t tell me why they were shackling me,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I thought my time had finally come. I never thought I might have a visitor! How are you?” the Captain asked eagerly. “How are the rest of the children?”

“All right,” she said, meek and unsure.

“We’ve been so worried for them.” He seemed to be holding back tears.

“We?” Waverly asked in a whisper.

The Captain pulled himself together enough to look over at Jared, who stepped out to give them privacy.

“Gunther Dietrich, Kahlil Hassan,” the Captain whispered. “I know for sure they’re here. They’re still resisting the deal.”

“Deal?” Waverly shook her head.

“They refused the
pills.
” The Captain looked around furtively, then leaned in close. His breath was unbearably rank. “Your mother took them so that she could be with you. Almost all the parents took the deal.”

“Did they say whether the pills do permanent damage?” Waverly asked as she sat down on the cot next to him, suppressing tears. “Or what kind of drug it was?”

“I don’t know what it was,” the Captain said. “I just know it’s bad.
Bad,
” he repeated. “It’s been very hard being here, unable to see anyone or know what’s going on.”

“I—” Waverly began, but he interrupted her.

“And your parents?” he asked, lunging toward her, grasping for her hand. She pulled away from him, scooted to the edge of the cot. “How are they?”

“My parents?” Waverly shook her head, and finally her rage surfaced. “You mean my father? Who you killed twelve years ago?”

The Captain’s face fell. “Galen,” he said, as though just learning his friend had died. Was he senile? “Oh, Galen.”

“You sent him out an air lock with Seth’s mother and Dr. McAvoy!” Waverly pointed a finger in his face. He shielded his eyes. “You killed them to cover up what you did!”

The Captain studied the webbed skin over his palms, looking as though he were trying to recollect what she was talking about. “I’m sorry,” he finally muttered. “Tell your mother I’m sorry.”

“For killing her husband?” Waverly spat at him. “You’re
sorry
?”

“I couldn’t let him go!” the Captain pleaded. “Not after what he’d done!”

“You killed him to protect yourself!” Waverly said. She stood up, her hands stretched toward the Captain’s face as if to scratch, but she backed away until she felt the cold metal of the iron bars against her hip. “Tell me why.” The desperation in her voice alarmed her; she’d begun to cry. “Why did it have to be
my
dad?”

He blinked at her. “We can’t choose our parents, dear,” he said. He reached toward her, but the chains around his wrists stopped him. “You must remember him as your daddy. Try to forget what he did.”

“
Forget?
He discovered phyto-lutein!”

The Captain stared at her, reading her expression, then nodded emphatically. “That’s right. He was a hero. That’s right.”

“And you
killed
him.”

He nodded. “Right. Right.”

She shook her head, flummoxed. She’d expected some defense, some rationalization, or more lies. This … it didn’t make sense.

“What are you not telling me?” she said slowly.

He waved his palsied hands in the air. “Ask your mother. This isn’t my place.”

“Tell me what
happened
!” Waverly flew at the Captain, but a firm hand closed around her arm. Jared must have been listening just outside the door, and now he held her back, folding himself around her until she dropped her hands, and he finally let go. “I want to know the truth.”

The decrepit, ruined man looked at her with pity. “I’m sorry, child. You were never meant to know.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“Your mother and I. We only lied to protect you.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

He studied her from beneath bushy white eyebrows, then reached a hand toward her shoulder. “I suppose you had to find out sometime,” he said wistfully. “We tried.”

“Please.” Waverly breathed. She didn’t have the strength to make her voice work. “Just tell me.”

He shuffled back to the corner, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in a kind of nervous dance. “Ask your mother, Waverly. Ask her.”

“Time’s up,” Jared said in her ear, and she realized he was holding her again. “We have to go or Mather will find out we were here.”

She let Jared pull her out of the cell, but her gaze never left Captain Jones’s confused, wandering eyes.

Jared led her back to the elevator and pushed a button—she hardly cared where they were headed. Why had she thought seeing the Captain would bring her anything but regret? When had she ever gotten what she wanted since this dreadful turn in her life began?

In a daze of disappointment and sorrow, she followed Jared off the elevator and down a corridor at the midship level. He seemed to understand she didn’t want to talk and didn’t push her. In silence they walked back to her apartment. Waverly watched her feet take one step, and another, hardly aware of where she was going until they arrived at her door.

“What is this?” she heard Jared say sharply.

She looked up to see he was addressing the guard outside her door—the pudgy one was back, recovered from his fight with Jared except for a bruise on his forehead. An insolent smile pasted across his face, he stood with his hands behind his back, his chest swelling with smug pride. To his right, just over his shoulder, was a picture of Waverly. It was a black-and-white drawing of her, all in bold lines and dark shadows, and underneath in huge black letters was written a single word:
LIAR.

Fear coiled in Waverly’s stomach. She wrung her hands, squeezing her fingers to calm their trembling. “What is that?”

“You weren’t meant to see this,” Jared said, shaking his head angrily as he ripped it off the wall. He shot an angry look at the guard, who’s face fell in confusion. Jared moved to tear the drawing in half, but Waverly ripped it out of his hands to look closer. It wasn’t a drawing. It was a printed copy. “How many are there?”

“Oh…,” Jared stalled.

“Jared!”

He sighed regretfully. “They’re hanging all over the ship, I’m sorry to tell you.”

“Mather?”

“I think so. The Pastor has publicly ordered that they be taken down, but they keep reappearing. I think she’s trying to create the illusion of popular condemnation against you.”

“People hate you,” the guard said to Waverly with an ugly grin.

Jared stuck his finger in the man’s face. “You shut up.”

The guard’s face went blank with fear, and he stared at the wall opposite him.

Jared pushed her through the door to her apartment, pulled her into her bedroom, and closed the door. She sat on the foot of her bed, her legs too unsteady to support her.

“Some people believe me. Right?” Her voice sounded puny.

“Yes,” Jared said with a nod. “But … Mather is charging you, me, the doctor, and the rest of the elders with attempted mutiny.”

“Mutiny,” Waverly whispered. That could bring the death penalty, she knew. “What about the trial?”

“There’ll be a hearing,” Jared said with an apologetic smile, “in front of the whole crew.”

“Will I have to testify?”

“We’re hoping your video testimony will be enough because…” He trailed off.

“Because,” she prodded.

“Mather’s attack dog is quite good at pulling witnesses apart.”

Waverly remembered the large man with the dove insignia on his shoulder. The thought of facing him in an interrogation chilled her blood.

“Be alert,” Jared said to Waverly as he opened the door of her room. “Don’t talk to anyone.
Anyone.
That comes straight from the doctor.” He bowed his head to make hooded eye contact with her. “The safety of all the elders is in your hands. Understand?”

Waverly nodded, breaking eye contact with him too soon, knowing she was giving the impression of weakening resolve but unable to help herself.
I’m not strong anymore,
she realized as he closed the door behind him.
I’m starting to be nothing at all.

CONJUGAL

Kieran watched, annoyed, as Mather picked up a mug from the tea tray his mother had prepared and poured herself a cup, making herself perfectly at home in Kieran’s apartment. She’d shown up just as he and his mother were putting away the dinner dishes, unapologetic about the late hour. Now she huddled her fingers against the hot stoneware, tipping her nose into the steam, breathing it in before saying, “Something has happened. The church elders—” She scoffed. “What a joke to call them that now, after what they’ve done.”

“What?”

“They’re using Waverly against us.”

Us.
Inwardly, Kieran cringed, but it was crucial that Mather tell him everything, so he raised his eyebrows in a show of interest.

“They’ve released a video of an interview they conducted with her, and it has caused quite a stir with my crew.” She pivoted the com unit toward him and flicked a button with her index finger. Waverly’s face appeared on the screen. Her cheeks were ruddy, her hair disheveled, and she looked confused and exhausted.

A voice came from off camera: “You say you heard Anne Mather give the order to start shooting Empyrean crew members as they tried to save you girls?” The speaker sounded sickly, but the tone was forceful and angry.