Flame (2 page)

“You’re taking it too fast,” Sarah said.

Waverly
was
going too fast. She knew she was. “You think I should slow down?” Waverly asked, her voice muffled in her own ears.
If I ram them,
she thought
, I could decompress the shuttle bay just like they did to the Empyrean
,
when all this began.

“Are you thinking about…?” Sarah’s jaw set with ugly menace, but the menace wasn’t for Waverly.

Waverly didn’t answer.

The com system crackled to life, and a tense woman’s voice said, “Empyrean shuttle, slow your approach.”

But Waverly didn’t slow down. How many kids were on board her shuttle? Five? Ten? Probably every one of them would love to put a hole in the New Horizon, even if it meant dying.

“The shuttle bay is full of young children,” the woman’s voice warned.

The shuttle joystick waited between Waverly’s knees. To slow down, all she needed to do was pull back on it. It waited there, but she didn’t reach for it.

“Waverly,” Sarah said. Waverly glanced at her friend and saw tears streaming down her face. “I’d do it if it was just us, you know I would, but…”

“I know,” Waverly whispered, and she pulled back on the joystick. Both girls were pressed forward against their safety harnesses as the shuttle slowed for landing.

When the inner air-lock doors opened for them, Waverly eased the shuttle onto the deck of the New Horizon. The landing gear connected with the metal floor, and a metallic snap reverberated through the shuttle bay. Someday Waverly might stand on a planet with nothing but sky overhead, no metal walls and ceilings trapping her with these people she hated.
Forty-two years before we get there,
she thought.
I’ll never make it.
Through the blast shield she saw Anne Mather crossing the huge bay, an armed escort trailing in two neat lines behind her. She frowned at Waverly as they drew near and crossed her arms to wait for the shuttle to empty out.

“There are no kids here,” Sarah said, fatalistic and flat. “They lied.”

“I can’t do this,” Waverly said. She felt sticky with sweat and exhausted. She’d spent the last two hours trudging through the Empyrean as the ship died, enduring oxygen deprivation to rescue Seth until she’d collapsed completely. He’d saved her life, carrying her up endless flights of stairs to safety, and then he hadn’t even come with her on the shuttle! He’d abandoned her to face Anne Mather alone.

“We have to leave sometime,” muttered Sarah from the copilot’s seat.

“Will they take more eggs from us?” Waverly whispered.

“No,” Sarah said, her upper lip rigid.

The girls jumped in their seats when they heard the shuttle’s exit ramp extend onto the floor of the New Horizon. Waverly looked through a side porthole and saw her passengers trickling out of the shuttle, walking with jerking steps toward Mather and her sentries—the last of the kids to be evacuated off the Empyrean, looking dazed and traumatized.

“Should we go?” Sarah asked Waverly. “Instead of making her come get us?”

“Probably.” Waverly disliked the flaccid tone of her voice. She looked out the blast shield to find Mather watching her. “You go ahead,” Waverly said miserably, turning away from Mather to stare at her own cold hands.

Sarah stood, her face set with stony courage, and left the cockpit.

Waverly couldn’t make her legs move. She watched as Sarah, with her boyfriend, Randy, walked bravely out of the shuttle and across the gray metal floor, hands held over their heads. Two of Mather’s men patted them down for weapons, then led them away.

Waverly took hold of the pilot’s joystick with both hands and imagined escaping into the void of space where she would choose a direction, punch the engines, and just go. She’d be alone, and safe, and no one could come after her. It would take her awhile to die, but if it got to be too much, she could just blow out an air lock and it would be over.

If she wanted to do that, she should have thought of it sooner. And she didn’t want to do it. Not really. Not if there was a chance her mom was still alive.

“Get up,” she told herself. “Go out there. Go find Mom.”

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Acid rose to the back of her throat and she swallowed. Her saliva tasted corrosive.

She saw movement from the corner of her eye and looked out. Anne Mather had broken away from the group of guards. One of them started to follow, but she held a hand in his face and he stepped back into formation. He was vaguely familiar to Waverly from her time on the New Horizon, always in the background, behind Anne Mather, or off to the side. He was tall, with a bulbous, crooked nose, thinning gray-white hair, and the kind of heavy jaw that looked like it had been chunked out of a boulder. When he glanced up at Waverly, she looked away.

She heard the scuff of footsteps on the floor behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She knew who it was. “No one is going to harm you, Waverly.”

God, how Waverly hated that velvety tone! Mather wasn’t human. She was something manufactured, designed for manipulation. Waverly could smell her, that sickly sweet coconut smell that clung to the woman’s skin like grease. Waverly pressed her hand to the hollow of her gut.

“Waverly, I want to start over with you.”

“Take me to the brig,” Waverly said distantly. “I want to be with my mother.”

“I have a better idea,” Mather said. Waverly heard the whisper of the woman’s clothing as she moved toward the copilot’s seat and sat down, leaning her elbow on the back of the chair. “Naturally I can’t leave you loose on the ship,” Mather said carefully. “But I could let you and your mother have one of the empty apartments. How would that be?”

“Where did you take Sarah and Randy?”

“Your friends are safe. They’ll be well treated.”

“What did you do to Amanda?” Waverly asked. Amanda, the woman Waverly had lived with her first time on the New Horizon, had taken up arms against Mather and her guards to help Waverly escape the ship. Waverly had worried Mather might have thrown her in the brig, or worse. “Did you hurt her?”

“For what?” Mather said with a disingenuous smirk. “You took her hostage. She had no choice but to help you escape. Isn’t that so?”

Waverly studied Mather’s composed expression and saw the truth. Amanda had told a lie to protect herself and her unborn baby, and Anne Mather had chosen to believe her friend’s lie—or at least to pretend she believed. Mather was capable of loyalty, Waverly supposed, and even love, but that only made her crimes all the more monstrous.

“Waverly.” Mather had the audacity to lean across the aisle and place a hand on Waverly’s knee. Waverly looked at it, seething, and Mather removed her hand before Waverly could claw the bones out of it. “What we did to you was wrong. Absolutely wrong. I knew it then and I acknowledge it now. I wish I could explain to you my mind-set.” Mather shook her head as she gathered her thoughts. “Every last woman on board this ship was premenopausal. We had to harvest your ova and make them pregnant as quickly as possible. If I’d tried to win you over first—”

“Stop talking to me!” Waverly screamed at the top of her lungs. Instantly she heard heavy boots stomping up the ramp of the shuttle and into the cockpit. Two men squeezed themselves through the doorway, aiming their guns at Waverly. She ignored them. “You got your way. The Empyrean is destroyed and we’re all yours.”

Saying these words finally broke her. Sobs shredded her, and she collapsed against her chair. Mather reached for her hands, but Waverly jerked away. She thought if that woman touched her again she might go crazy.

“Waverly,” Mather pleaded. “I know how it looks, but I never ordered anyone to blow up the Empyrean. I’d never endanger the mission like that! Or children! Jacob and his wife acted alone.”

“Stop talking to me,” Waverly said again, and she sagged. It was all hitting her now. Her home was gone. How many kids must have died? Where was Serafina, the deaf little girl she used to babysit? She wouldn’t have heard the explosions. She might never have known there was any danger! “Where are the kids? How many…” She gagged on the words, forced them out, “How many died?”

“Very few,” Mather said. “Almost all of them were in the central bunker, waiting for word about their parents.”

Waverly could imagine them huddled in groups on the bunks, holding hands, waiting for Sarek to come in from Central Command to tell them their parents had been found on the New Horizon and their families would be whole again.
When will we learn to stop hoping?

“Come on,” Mather said. “Let’s get you settled.”

Mather reached again to take her hand, but Waverly ignored her and got up from her seat. The guards backed up the aisle of the shuttle, keeping their guns trained on her as she walked down the spiral staircase to the cargo hold, then down the ramp where the rest of the guards were waiting.

They walked her through the corridors of the New Horizon in a parade with Mather and Waverly at the head, followed by a small army of men. They met no one. Waverly supposed they’d cleared this part of the ship to deal with the Empyrean evacuees. As they walked, the big guard massaged the wooden grip on his gun, crushing his teeth together as though he were chewing on something that angered him. Unlike the other guards, who wore plain tunics, he had a gold insignia on his shoulder in the shape of a dove. Waverly had no idea what it meant, but she knew he must have some authority.

“Here,” Mather said to Waverly, indicating an apartment door in the middle of the hallway. “We’ll have guards outside round the clock.”

“So I’m under house arrest?”

“Until we know what we’re dealing with,” Mather said with a nod.

“Where is my mother?” Waverly asked.

“Inside,” Mather said and went to the keypad to unlock the door.

The door slid open, and there was Regina Marshall standing in the living room, emaciated and grayed but whole and alive, and she opened her arms to Waverly, who ran to her.

“Mom!” Waverly sobbed and couldn’t say any more.

“I’m here, honey,” Regina Marshall said. She combed her fingers through Waverly’s hair. “Your hair got long!”

Waverly tried to smile, but her face dissolved into tears.

“Oh, there now, Waverly, everything is fine!” Waverly leaned into her mother, letting herself be held up. It felt good to be a kid again, so amazingly wonderful to have her mother take care of her. She hadn’t realized how much she missed this.

“What a beautiful sight!” Anne Mather exclaimed from behind Waverly.

Waverly whirled, furious.

“Thank you so much, Pastor Mather,” Waverly’s mother said with a serene smile. “We’re so grateful.”

“Grateful!” Waverly sputtered. “Mom!”

“You two have a lot to talk about, I’m sure,” Mather said with a smile for Regina Marshall. “I’ll leave you to it. You have a stocked refrigerator.”

“That’s wonderful,” Regina said. “Thank you.”

Anne Mather backed out of the room, saintly eyes averted.

When they were finally alone, Waverly studied her mother. Regina met her daughter’s gaze uncertainly, as though she were eager to please but wasn’t sure how. “You know who that is, right, Mom?”

“That’s Pastor Mather,” Regina said with a strange pride. “Who would have thought a woman would captain a ship like the Empyrean?”

“We’re on the New Horizon, Mom. She led the attack on the Empyrean,” Waverly said. She felt faint.

“That was a rescue mission,” Regina said, shaking her head as though she were clearing up some minor point.

“No, Mom, it was an attack.”

“Oh, Waverly,” Regina tsked.

“That woman attacked the Empyrean and kidnapped me and all the rest of the girls! Most of the crew died in that attack!” Her mother’s eyes trained on Waverly’s lips, as though she were learning a lesson by rote. “She’s kept you and the rest of the parents on this ship for months, holding you hostage—”

Regina interrupted with a knowing chuckle. “You’re seeing all this in a very negative light, dear.”

“Mom!” Waverly stared at her mother, horrified.

Regina started toward the kitchen, smiling as though enjoying some pleasant daydream. “Pastor Mather explained the whole thing,” Regina said as she turned on the kitchen light. “It was all a misunderstanding.”

“Did the Pastor tell you how she drugged me and harvested my eggs to make babies for her crew? The other girls, too!” Waverly pressed a hand against her abdomen, feeling the surgical scars under her thumb like wires. “Mom?”

Regina did not seem to hear her.

The apartment had the same layout as the home Waverly and her mother had shared on the Empyrean, and the kitchen was identical down to the blue and yellow color scheme, but there were no baskets on the countertop, no scratches on the table from when Waverly was a toddler, no handwoven place mats, no scuffmarks on the floor.

Regina opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “Oh! There’s a chicken! And fresh herbs. I’ll make a roast for supper, sound good?”

“The Empyrean has been destroyed, Mom,” Waverly said. “Our whole lives, up in smoke.”

“Nonsense,” Regina said with a patronizing smile as she turned back to the refrigerator, rooting through the basket of herbs. “Those are
things,
Waverly.”

Regina hummed an old song Waverly remembered from childhood, a faraway look in her eyes as she carried the food to the countertop. Regina carefully set the chicken right on the counter, then arranged onions and potatoes in a circle around it as though designing a still life. She appeared unsure what to do with the bunch of fresh parsley she held in her hand and considered for a moment before placing it parallel to the edge of the countertop, tilting her head as she nudged the stems into order with her fingertip.

“What did they
do
to you?” Waverly whispered. “You’re acting so—”

“How would you like me to act?” Regina said, bemused. “I think I’ll make a nice spice rub.”

Eyes fastened to her mother’s face, Waverly crept closer and studied her. Had she been drugged? “Don’t you have any questions for me, Mom?” Waverly asked.

“How’s Kieran?” Regina asked as she ground up garlic, sage, and rosemary with a stone pestle and mortar. The familiar aromas inundated the room with memories of home. Waverly limped to the table against the wall and collapsed into a chair.