Flame (22 page)

He’d covered all three habitation levels with her image by the time he ran out of supplies. Hopefully the New Horizon crew would believe the graffiti had been done by one of their own so that those who doubted Anne Mather might feel brave enough to come out of hiding. It was small, but it was all he could do.

He sent the empty paint tubs and the stencil down an incinerator chute and ran back to the stairwell. He estimated his project had taken no more than thirty minutes, but he was certain they’d be on his trail by now. He took off at a run, pushing his body as fast as it could go. His feet felt as though they were attached to hundred-pound weights. His heart felt weak. His lungs felt clogged. His face was throbbing in time with his pulse.
I’m breaking down.

All he wanted was to get to the rain forest level. He wanted to smell that soil again, breathe in that fresh oxygen, bury his face in fern fronds, just one last time before they took him.

They were waiting for him on the next landing: five guards, armed with guns and Tasers and iron fists. Seth stopped on the landing above them, hands above his head. “I’m unarmed.”

They rushed at him en masse, and a hand shot out, slamming him in the ribs. Seth buckled. Hands pulled on his clothes, his hair. He covered his hurt fingers with his good arm. “I give up! I give up!”

They didn’t stop. He felt kicks on his legs, rough hands pulling on his clothes, a harsh grip on the back of his neck that paralyzed him with pain.

“I give up!” Seth cried again. His voice reminded him of the thousand times he’d defended himself to his father. The thousand times he’d insisted he hadn’t lied when he had. “You don’t have to do that!” he said as hard fingers on the back of his neck forced him to his knees.

“Try anything and we’ll finish you here.” The speaker’s lips were close to his ear, the breath moist and sickening.

“I won’t!” Seth said. He raised his hands over his head and screamed when someone behind him took hold of his twisted fingers. “It’s broken! It’s broken!” he pleaded.

“Owie,” someone behind him mocked, but they let go of his hand and jerked him to his feet. Then he had to endure having his wrists bound behind his back. He was face-to-face with the big guy, the mean one. He held a nightstick, which he shook in Seth’s face as he growled, “Just try and get away.”

“Say please,” Seth managed to whisper before he was pushed forward, up the stairs. Two men walked ahead of him, another two on either side, and the mean guy behind. All of them were quiet. All of them looked to be twice as strong as he was. None of them was Don.

“I need a doctor,” Seth said to the one on his left. “My hand’s hurt. I think it’s infected.”

The guy behind him jabbed him in the ribs with a nightstick.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Shut up,” the guy behind him said with a blow to the spine that was even harder. After that Seth didn’t try to talk to them.

When they emerged from the stairwell Seth recognized the corridor outside Central Command. It was disorienting to be walking openly in the public areas of the ship. The corridor was crowded with freshly showered morning crew members reporting for duty as the tired night crew waved good-bye and headed home. A woman, petite though soft around the middle, stared at him as she passed by on her way to Central Command. He wanted to cry out to her, ask for help, because she looked like a nice woman who would feed him some soup.

In that moment, he missed his mother. He missed her so much it was like a frozen block of ice inside his chest, one that could never be worn away or lightened, not even by Waverly Marshall. As the guards pushed him into the Captain’s office, he understood finally what his life had been about: revenge for his mother’s death. To be a hero. To save her. To undo it somehow. To bring her back.

Was this clarity or delirium? His fever ate through his thoughts. When had it gotten so bad?

“No wonder I’m so fucked-up,” he said under his breath as the tall office chair at the desk swiveled around and he was face-to-face with a matronly, plump old woman who could only be Anne Mather, the antimother.

“You’ve led us on quite a chase,” she said.

“I hope you had as much fun as I did,” Seth said breathlessly, becoming aware that his throat was sore. The guard pushed him toward a chair and forced him down.

“You’re unwell,” Mather said appraisingly.

“At least I’m not old.”

Her gaze lingered at his hairline. “What have you been up to, young man?”

“You know. Stealing pies off windowsills. Your basic Huckleberry Finn–type stuff.”

“You like Twain?”

“Never met him.”

“You’re coy,” she said without a hint of humor.

“Yeah. I like him,” Seth said.
Huckleberry Finn
had been one of the few books in English class that hadn’t felt like a waste of time. He’d had an affinity with Huck, who had a mean dad, too. After that he’d read everything Twain ever wrote. “Probably the best writer to come out of the United States of America.”

“I’ve always been partial to Hemingway.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You’d like him. He’s very”—her eyes narrowed with the word—“male.”

“So what are you going to do to me?”

“Who are you working with?”

“I’m alone.”

“Jacob Pauley?”

“That lunatic?”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not since he left me to die on the Empyrean.”

“What about Waverly Marshall?”

“Haven’t seen her since she
rescued
me.”

Her eyebrows tweaked upward. “You’re Mason Ardvale’s son.”

Seth stiffened at this. “So?”

“Your father was a bully.”

This enraged Seth beyond reason. He didn’t know why, since he agreed with her. Still, he was so angry all he could do was stare at her forehead, willing it to split.

She smiled. “I trained with Mason on the space station before the mission launch. He had a reputation among the women on board.”

Seth tried to think of something witty to say, something to make her think she hadn’t drilled to his core, but he was too tired. He stared at the blotter on her desk—it was pristine, perfectly aligned with the row of pencils that lay to one side, lined up with the intercom to Mather’s right.

“Wow,” he remarked distantly, “you’re really anal.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Retentive,” Seth said. “I read Freud, too.”

“Young man, do you appreciate your situation here?”

Seth sighed. All he wanted was to sleep. He felt used up, aged. “I tried to be a hero. I failed. Can I see a doctor?”

“We’re not finished. Why have you been hiding?”

“I thought I’d be able to help Waverly.”

“Help her do what?”

“Nothing.” Seth looked out the porthole. He hadn’t seen the stars in such a long time. “Just help her.”

“What is your relationship to her?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Why don’t you ask her?” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. A gray film had grown over his vision like a layer of mold.

“Because I don’t know where she is,” Mather said.

“She ran away?” Seth blinked his sticky eyelids.

Mather studied him carefully. He stared back at her, letting her see his surprise and his gladness. Waverly got away. Good for her, once again proving she didn’t need Seth Ardvale. Or anyone, for that matter.

“Of course you’d
pretend
you haven’t seen her,” Mather finally said.

“Look.” He waited for Mather to make eye contact with him. “If I’d known Waverly had slipped away, I wouldn’t have turned myself in. I’d be looking for her myself, and”—he smirked—“I’d probably help her kill you. But I don’t know where she is. And I need a doctor. That’s why I
let
you catch me.”

Mather tapped her chin with her finger. “Maybe Jacob Pauley has her after all.”

“What?” Seth’s heart skipped. “You can’t let Jake get her. He wants to kill her.”

“Yes, I know,” Mather said with a grim smile.

“Please,” Seth said, but then he found he didn’t know what to ask for. “You can’t let him hurt her.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Waverly wants to kill me, you said?”

Seth froze.

“And Jacob wants to kill Waverly.”

Seth opened his mouth to speak, to plead for Waverly, defend her. But he couldn’t find the words.

“Why should I do anything?” Mather spat.

Seth said the only thing he could think of: “To prove you’re not a monster.”

She nodded to someone outside the door. The big mean guard came in, holding his gun across his chest. His jaw protruded weirdly, as though he’d once been punched so hard that his whole face had been knocked out of alignment.
This guy probably had a mean dad too,
Seth mused.

“To prove I’m not a monster,” Mather repeated fondly, “when we find Waverly’s body, I’ll hold a memorial in her honor. There will be flowers, and a choir, and I’ll make a sermon about the sin of wrath.” She motioned to the guard, who pulled Seth up by the armpit. “Take him to the brig.”

“You can’t leave her,” Seth said weakly. “You can’t let him…”

But Mather had picked up a portable reader to peruse, tapping her chin with her finger as the big man pulled Seth out the door.

THE DARK

As she woke, Waverly became aware of a horrible ache at the base of her skull. It was dark, so dark that at first she couldn’t be sure her eyes were open, but she could feel her lids moving over her eyeballs. The inside of her mouth was stuck together and sour. Sweltering heat pressed against her skin, and a droplet of sweat ran down the side of her nose. She wanted to wipe it away but realized she was tied up, her arms wrenched behind her, her legs bent back, her wrists bound to her ankles. She couldn’t move at all. Her shoulders were horribly sore. Her neck, her back … she tried to roll onto her stomach, but she couldn’t throw her weight over, and after several tries she gave up.

She heard a snort, near enough to her ear that a puff of air disturbed the hairs at her temple. She froze, tried to quiet her breathing, and listened. Another body moved in the darkness. Someone sniffed—a man. He sounded close.

She reached back in her fuzzy memory. She’d been running. Running on the stairs away from Jared. Running to Seth. Then someone had closed a fat hand over her nose and mouth, smothered her until she’d fainted.

Jacob Pauley.

A paralyzing terror overtook her, and she gulped a mouthful of air.

“Shut up,” said a voice to her right, and a hand clamped over her mouth. A woman’s lips pressed against her ear, “You’ll live longer if you make things easy.”

Waverly whimpered, and the woman’s hand pressed the back of her head against the hard metal floor. “He wanted to kill you right away.”

Waverly could hear someone snoring in the darkness. The woman released her grip over Waverly’s mouth.

“You’re his wife?” Waverly whispered.

“I said shut up,” the woman said.

A light switched on, and Jacob Pauley’s groggy face appeared over Waverly, huge and looming. The corners of his mouth were pulled down, the nostrils of his hooked nose flared, the pores in his skin oversized and cruddy. His bloodshot eyes bored into hers.

“Jakey,” the woman said in a warning tone. “Light the Bunsen burner.”

His gaze shifted away from Waverly, then back again.

“She’s more useful alive,” the woman insisted. She was small and mousy, with angry, darting movements and sallow olive skin. Her hair was disheveled and greasy, and she wore a heavy wool coat despite the heat in this … room? Waverly looked around. The three of them were crammed into a tiny space. To their right was a wheeled vehicle Waverly recognized from training videos—a rover designed for travel over the surface of New Earth. On her other side were boxes of rations and jugs of water. At her feet was a corrugated metal wall, painted bright blue. This must be a shipping container in the storage bay, miles away from anyone.

Her heartbeat coalesced into a tiny point in her neck, tapping against the inside of her carotid. She was going to die here. It was going to hurt.

Jacob knelt in front of a cardboard box and turned the valve on a small propane tank until a hiss sounded in the close air. A blue flame sputtered to life. He dropped a handful of what looked like oats into a small metal bucket, poured water over them, stirred the glop with the tip of his finger, and set it on a metal frame over the fire.

“We got big plans, I keep having to remind him.” The woman glared with contempt at her husband’s broad back before turning her attention back to Waverly. “They’re going to have you testify, right? At Mather’s trial?”

It took Waverly a while to process the question. “Yes,” she said. Did this mean they were going to let her go? “Do you want me to do something? I’ll do it.”

The woman laughed sardonically. “We got a long list of grievances, and it ends with you, honey. It all begins with Anne Mather.”

“I hate her, too,” Waverly said through her teeth.

The woman spat on Waverly. She felt the spittle trickle from her ear and along the hollow between the tendons of her neck and larynx.

“I said shut up,” the woman snarled. “I’d like to kill you, too. Just give me a reason.”

Waverly couldn’t stop the tears. They stung like acid as they squeezed out from between her lids. She bit her bottom lip to keep from making any sound. She hated crying in front of them. She hated the way they looked at her through the sides of their eyes, smug and satisfied.

This was the worst thing that could have happened, and it had never once occurred to her that it might. How could she ever be safe if she couldn’t see the terrors coming?

A sudden knock on the wall of the shipping container made Jacob and his wife jump in their skins. Waverly held her breath.
Please let it be Jared. Please.

“Jake? Ginny?” came a gruff male voice. “It’s Tom.”

The wife, Ginny, he’d called her, picked up a large jagged-edged knife and pointed it at Waverly. She held a finger to her lips.

“Jesus, you scared us,” Jacob said. He crawled over the landing vehicle to a sliding door at the end of the container and opened it a crack. “What are you doing here?”