Flame (26 page)

“Don’t overthink this.” He lifted up his handheld com unit, and Waverly watched his thumb fly over the small keypad. He typed in a password:
mynx101
or
mynx1901
 … something very close to that. She lifted her eyes to his, hoping he hadn’t noticed her watching. “The cord I used to tie Kieran up?” he said. “It’s got a tracking device in it, no bigger than a pencil eraser.” He rounded on her so that they stood toe to toe, and she could feel his breath caressing her cheek. “I could help you find him, but you’ve never even thanked me for saving you.”

“You’re right,” she said as she took a step back. The easygoing Jared had been replaced by a callous, hard man who matched up a lot better with the violence she’d seen him do. “I’m grateful that you helped me. Really. I … I just need to help Kieran. Okay? Can you help us?”

“It’s just that,” he said, his eyes perfectly still on her, weirdly still, “I love you. But all you care about are these little boys of yours.”

She could only stare at him. “What are you talking about?”

He turned away from her abruptly, walked down the corridor.

“So you’re tracking them?” Waverly asked, trying to make her tone curious and friendly as she jogged to catch up. “You know where Kieran is right now?”

“Yes,” Jared said distractedly. He pushed the button for the elevator, tapping at his leg impatiently. “It doesn’t matter to you that I love you?”

She hesitated. She didn’t know how to have this absurd conversation.

“It doesn’t matter that I saved your life?”

“For that you have my gratitude.” She allowed no trace of emotion into her voice.

Jared looked at her flatly until the elevator doors opened, then he stepped on, his body taut with anger. There were other people already on the elevator, and a man quietly stepped forward and pushed a button for the next floor. The other people stood in the corners, their eyes fastidiously trained on the floor indicator until the elevator stopped for them, and they stepped off, but as they left a woman looked over her shoulder, first at Jared and then at Waverly. There was an unmistakable fear in her eyes.

The elevator doors closed, and Waverly was once again alone with him. “Why are people afraid of you?”

“People aren’t afraid of me,” Jared said, small voiced.

She said nothing.

“Why do you think they’re afraid?” he asked quietly.

“It’s the way people look at you,” she said. “The women especially.”

“You think you have a reason to mistrust me?” A droplet of spittle flew from between his lips. “I thought we were friends.”

The elevator shook slightly, and Waverly realized she didn’t know where he was taking her.

Jared laughed. “The doctor always warned me about pretty girls,” he said and raised one finger, bending it into the twisted shape of an old man’s talon. “‘If they’re too pretty, they’ll expect you to bend over backward to please them.’”

His impersonation of the doctor was flawless, but this time it was chilling.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Waverly said quietly. Was he taking her to the habitation levels? She watched the counter above the elevator doors, calculating the levels in her mind. They went past the floor where she lived with her mother, descending deeper into the ship.

“I was once popular with women,” Jared said as they passed the granaries and headed for the forests. “But I sure am striking out with you, huh, Waverly?”

“Maybe you should try someone your own age,” she said.

He punched the elevator wall. “What’s a guy gotta do if saving your life isn’t good enough?”

Waverly wedged her shoulders into the corner. “Why did you help me find Seth?”

He held up the com unit, flicked a button, and Waverly’s voice filled the air. “
Seth, your infection … it’s bad…”

“You were
recording
us?” she asked, stunned.

He grinned. “The doctor likes to know who all the players are.”

“Otherwise you’d have let him die?”

Jared shrugged.

“Seth’s too sick to do anything,” Waverly said, afraid of what the doctor might have planned for him. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“Please don’t hurt him!” Jared whined at her. “Poor little Waverly is worried about her boyfriend!”

What
was
this? Waverly tried to understand, but there were too many moving parts and she was too scared to think.

“You think that Ardvale kid is better than me,
Waverly
?” he spoke her name with sneering scorn. Waverly shrank farther away. She thought of the needle in her pocket, but there was no way she could get it without him seeing. “Do you think
anybody
on this godforsaken ship is better than me?”

She jammed her jaw shut, afraid if she spoke she’d only enrage him further.

“This is a ship of
murderers,
honey. Okay? Your parents. My parents. His parents. Killers.” He nodded at her self-righteously. “They pretended this was a democratic mission so the engineers and the metalworkers and the scientists would work with them.
Thousands
of the greatest minds on Earth cooperated for a chance at a lottery that
never happened
!”

Waverly shook her head—tiny little motions. “My father was a botanist.”

“You don’t even know who you are! Your father was the heir to billions! Marshall Oil Refineries in British Columbia. Those were your people.”

“He discovered phyto-lutein,” she said, her voice tiny. “He saved the mission.”

Jared laughed out loud. “It only took him twenty-six years! Ask me how many Nobel Prize–winning botanists he killed so he could get on the Empyrean.”

Waverly had nothing to say to this. Jared’s body was shaking with rage now, and he spat as he talked. “Daddy dearest? No better than me, sweetheart. Not by a long shot!”

“You’re right,” she started to say, but he punched the wall again.

“You know the best part? Your daddy and all his billionaire friends? They were the ones who ruined Old Earth in the first place! They could have protected the planet. They had the power to clean it up! Do you know why they didn’t?”

Waverly’s eyes felt stuck open, and she stared like a doll.

He sneered. “It was
cheaper
not to.”

The back of Waverly’s throat felt swollen. She looked at his profile, that perfectly formed nose, those chiseled cheekbones, the angled jaw. He was calming down now, but something about his calm was terrifying.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked. The elevator doors opened onto an empty corridor, deep in the innards of the ship. Jared closed a hand around the tender part of her elbow and squeezed. “That hurts,” she said.

He tightened his grip. “When the doctor needs something done, I do it. I don’t question. I don’t
worry
about it. I’ve been given a role in life, and I fulfill it.”

He jerked her in front of him, pushed her down the hallway. She stumbled but regained her feet and started to run.

Because finally she knew what this was.

Too late,
a sneering voice like Jared’s whispered in her mind.

“So, Waverly,” Jared said as he caught her wrist, twisting it until she crumpled to her knees. “What should I do with you?”

“What?” she could only whisper as she looked up at him. His eyes looked black and bottomless, his breath rasping and dry, his lips yellow and cracked as he smiled.

“The doctor was … annoyed … when he found out I saved you.”

Long seconds passed as she took this in, staring at his twisted features in horror.

“‘Take her to the shuttle,’” Jared quoted the doctor. “‘Do what you like with her. Record her saying that she lied. Then let her go…’”

Understanding filled her. “You
let
the Pauleys find me?”

Jared only stared at her.

“Then why save me?”

“You ran off before I could get what the doctor wanted!”

“What does he want?” she whispered. The insides of her mouth stuck together like gum. “I’ll do it.”

“He wants you to admit,” Jared cajoled, “that you
lied
during your testimony.”

“The doctor
wanted
me to lie!” she pleaded. His grip on her arm was robotic and immovable. The human spark had gone out of his eyes. “
You
wanted me to lie!”

“Just say it, Waverly.” He pulled his small com unit out of his pocket, flicked a button, and aimed at her. “Say, ‘I lied.’”

“Why? Did the doctor cut some kind of deal with Mather?”

Jared turned off the recorder and bragged, “Mather gets to keep her pulpit, we get the Captain’s chair.”

“You mean
you
get the Captain’s chair.”

“If I do one last errand for the good doctor.” He pressed the Record button again and held it in her face. Was he making a video? “Now admit that you lied.”

She stared at him as comprehension flooded her. “They’re going to blame the impeachment on me. Everyone gets to stay in power.”

“Because you lied about the whole thing.” He bent down and screamed in her face, “Admit it!”

“They’re getting me out of the way.”

“Say it.”

“Then
why
?” she wailed. “Why did he try to impeach her at all?”

“She grew a conscience and stopped cooperating. ‘
No, I won’t kill the Empyrean survivors,
’” he whined sarcastically. “‘
I don’t want to go down in history as a murderer!
’”

“So she lobotomized them instead,” Waverly whispered in horror. “Or was it the doctor…?”

“Little idiot.” Jared hammered on her head with his knuckles. “Who do you think designed the drug in the first place? What do you think killed Captain Takemara and his allies? Food poisoning? No. The first batch of the doctor’s little cocktail. He’s made some refinements since then. Goes down easier.”

This was too much. Waverly hung her head and sobbed, “Please don’t hurt my mom.”

He let go of her arm, pulled the gun out of the waistband of his pants, and held it in her face. “Do as I say”—he cocked the gun—“and I won’t kill your mommy.”

“I lied,” she said through tears.

“Good girl. Now say, ‘I lied during my testimony.’” He waved the muzzle of the gun in a circle, mouthing the words for her.

She repeated, “I lied during my testimony.”

“Now say, ‘I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather.’ Say
that,
honey, and I won’t hurt Mommy.”

“I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather,” she whispered.

He cocked an ear toward her. “I can’t hear you, sweetheart. Say it again. Louder.”

“I lied during my testimony against Anne Mather,” she cried.

“Good
girl
!” He flicked a button on the com unit and slipped it into his breast pocket. With one hand he gripped her wrist, with the other he pointed his gun at her face. “Now! What do you suppose the doctor would like me to do with you?”

She was so scared she had to fight not to collapse. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, I think you
do
know, Waverly. I think that’s why you’re so scared.”

Her eyes fastened onto his.

“Now,” he said with mock officiousness, “I
could
follow orders like I usually do…”

“But you won’t,” Waverly said quickly. She tried to get to her feet, but he twisted her wrist again, and she slumped to the floor.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Jared asked. “You already told me you can’t be mine.”

“Because…” Waverly’s mind raced. “Without you pushing people around for him,” she said, “he’s nothing but an angry, weak old man.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Jared warned.

“It’s
you
people are afraid of. What can the doctor do without you?” She realized her long hair was hiding her right hand from his gaze. She shook even more of her hair over her arm and fumbled in her pocket for the needle as she spoke, holding his gaze. “You don’t need him.”

“I owe him. He raised me.”

“He
used
you.” Her fingers swam through the fabric of her pocket, which was twisted and tight against her body. She touched on the plastic cap over the needle and pulled, but the cap came off, leaving the needle still wedged in her pocket. “Do you think the doctor
loves
you?”

“Manipulative little…” He twisted her wrist a little farther.

“You don’t have to be a murderer,” she whispered as she worked the needle free.

His expression changed. “What are you doing?”

She jammed the needle deep into his calf and plunged the syringe in one motion.

“Ow!” he screamed, and his hold on the gun loosened long enough for Waverly to bat it out of his hand. He saw the syringe sticking out of his leg, let go of her wrist, and backed away from her. “What did you
do
?”

She tried to get to her feet, but he tackled her to the floor so quickly he knocked the wind from her body. As she sputtered, he sat on her back, holding her between his knees. She felt his hand in her hair and tried to pull away, but he twisted her head around.

“You little bitch! I saved you!” he said and swung at her face with his left fist, his hand passing harmlessly through her hair as he slid to the floor. She rolled away and stood over him, watching him fade.

“Whaddid you give me?” he slurred. “Whad issit?” He smacked his lips.

She waited until his eyelids started to sag, then reached down and pulled the tracking device from his pocket, picked his gun up off the floor, and ran to the central stairwell, glancing once over her shoulder at the surveillance camera in the corner, which must have captured the whole thing.

THE PLAN

The first thing Kieran saw when he opened his eyes was the woman, Jacob’s wife—Ginny, he’d called her. She had a cruel little face, and the way she scowled gave her the aspect of a pouting child. She was bent over some kind of craft project, shoulders hunched, gloved fingers working with fine precision. She tilted a spoon full of what looked like black pepper into a small balloon, then tied it off with her teeth.

“Where are we?” he croaked. He tried to sit up, but he was still bound by tight cords. He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but his mouth was dry.