I sneak another peek at Hammond and wind up staring straight into her ice-blue gaze. I quickly look away, shivering, but from the corner of my eye, I can see her motioning someone closer. Luca Powell appears, and she whispers into his ear. He pulls away with a quizzical expression and taps on his tablet for a brief second before rushing away without comment. Hammond’s eyes locate the back of Dad’s head and a sick feeling seeps through my stomach.
Before I have time to think much further on it, she steps onto a platform ahead of the entrance to the Skybase.
“Thank you all for coming today,” Hammond says.
Applause fills the room, and Dad and I join in.
Hammond smiles coldly and continues. “We would not be here today without your generous support. As Dr. Foster stated last night . . .” she looks to my father and nods, “Arcadia is our salvation, a chance to begin again and do it right. This new Eden will give the human race room to expand. We will thrive once again. And, very soon, discover all the riches Arcadia has to give.”
Arcadia does have much to offer. It’s a lush planet, untainted by humans. The surface is loaded with new minerals, precious metals, and probably a number of undiscovered energy sources. But that bounty scares me, too. People are still fighting over how those things are best used on Earth, and the supply there is dwindling quickly. Money talks. Money makes the decisions. And how much people like Hammond are influenced by wealth, I don’t know. As I study the patrons’ dripping riches, I’m sure they want good returns on their sizable investments in developing Arcadia.
“Thank you again.” Hammond’s voice snaps me from my thoughts. “We’ll be disembarking to Skybase in a few moments. Please be patient.”
Hammond exits the platform. I link my arm into the crook of Dad’s. At least there are still good men like him. He has a clear voice in this situation.
“I need to take care of something, Cassi,” he says and wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure, Dad.”
He pauses and removes his jacket. “Will you hold this? All the excitement is getting to me and I’m feeling a bit hot. You think you’ll be okay?”
I take the jacket and nod for him to go. “No problem, I’ll be just fine.”
After he leaves, I spend a few moments scanning the bay, but the cavernous, white space is pretty boring without someone to talk to. And no one around here really wants to have a conversation with a teenage girl, even if she’s Richard Foster’s daughter. Maybe Max is here. He did say he performed a form of security for the “big wigs” and these people are about as “big wig” as they get.
I scan the crowd of maybe two hundred patrons and staff. But disappointingly, I don’t see Max’s spiky hair from here.
With a sigh, I check the space for Dad again. He had walked off toward the stage, but other than that, I’m not sure where he went. I know he told me to stay put. But there’s no harm in poking around a bit for Max. Plus I want to grab a bagel since I forgot to eat breakfast this morning. Tired of holding his jacket, I thread my arms through the too-big coat and pull the fabric in close. I have no idea why Dad was hot. It’s cold in here.
I stroll over to the buffet and pluck a cinnamon raisin bagel off the pile of assorted pastries. I scan the table for a topping like cream cheese, but I don’t see any. No butter, no jam, no nothing. You’d think with such a lavish display the staff wouldn’t have forgotten the spreads.
At the other end of the display stands a buffet attendant, his back to me. At least, I think he’s an attendant. Most of the people here are probably used to being served, so it makes sense staff would be helping. But his rumpled gray uniform isn’t exactly what I expect from the quality the patrons demand.
“Excuse me,” I say to him as I grab a plate and knife. As if he doesn’t hear my question, he remains with his back to me. I try again, moving closer to his position, and speak over the room chatter. “Um, do you know if the buffet is out of cream cheese?”
This time, the boy with bronzed skin and jet-black hair swivels my way. Surprise washes over his face and he furrows his brows in confusion. He raises his hand to his chest as if to say, are you speaking to me?
“Yes, I need some help,” I say. “I was searching for the cream cheese and wondered if you had any in the back.”
His brown eyes grow wide and, instead of answering my question, he turns and dashes into the crowd of patrons.
I stand in confusion. What was that about? Maybe he’s not supposed to be here. I drop the bagel, plate, and knife onto the table and follow him. To be honest I have no idea why I'm doing this, but curiosity overtakes me.
He’s tall, over six feet, and I don’t know if it’s the unkempt uniform, but something about him makes him stand out from the crowd, even as he weaves through the people. Strangely, the scene is almost as if he’s swimming through water, his moves are so graceful. And yet, none of the patrons he avoids seem to notice him.
With ease, he picks up his pace, but I do too, keeping my eye on him. The strange boy nears the edge of the crowd, and the opening to a corridor waits ahead of him. I’m going to lose him if he makes it there. Too many easy exit points after that and I’m not really familiar with this wing.
I speed up to catch him and, while moving full force, I accidentally slam into the shoulder of an older woman. She peers down at me in shock, and I’m pretty sure she’s the same person I sat next to at the Gala last night. When her surprise wears off, she lets out a loud yelp from our collision. The boy whips around toward the sound. He looks at the lady and then straight into my eyes. And when we lock stares, a wave of freezing energy surges through my body. I gasp, but quickly shake the sensation off.
“Sorry ma’am,” I pant.
The dark-haired boy tears from my gaze and spins away, rushing for the corridor. I push past the woman to get a visual of him again. I can’t let him get away. Ignoring the complaining woman, I surge forward again. But, when I reach the edge of the hall, he’s gone—vanished.
Behind me and from the opposite end of the bay, a scream pierces my ears. Momentarily I forget about the boy and pivot toward the distress. I hope it’s not that woman. I really only tapped her.
Before I have the chance to find out, a burst of orange and white light fills the room. A cry of help sticks in my throat as intense pressure, followed by heat, slams my body into the rear wall of the corridor.
Chapter 4
I blink my stinging eyes open to a wafting haze of gray smoke. Outside the corridor, a voice is shouting over the chaos, asking everyone to exit immediately through the south entrance. Then the emergency alarm drowns out all other sounds. I throw my hands over my ears.
What is happening? My mind spins as searing pain shoots up my neck and into the back of my head.
The smoke clears just enough for me to make out a few blurry shapes, if I squint. Beyond the corridor, people run around the bay while others lie still on the ground—hurt, maybe dead.
The memories rush back, and my chest tightens. A bomb! There was a bomb. I look down at myself to assess the damage and see Dad’s jacket.
“Daddy!” I scream and wrench myself from the ground, despite the pain in my spine and head. When I stand, the room spins, but I force myself to stay vertical and drag my aching legs through the corridor’s entrance.
The view is even worse than I expected. A large chunk of an internal wall beside the stage is blown wide open, and most of it lies on the floor. On people. Hazy smoke still fills the air, hiding the full extent of the horror. I cough and pull my shirt up over my mouth and nose.
A man runs past, and I snag his arm. He wheels toward me, his face full of panic.
“My father . . .” I say as my shirt collar drops down.
The man, whose clothes are gray with ash, stares at me with wide, blank eyes.
“Richard Foster—have you seen him?”
He shakes his head and pulls away from me.
“Help m
e!” I scream at the man as he disappears into the smoke.
Coughing, I sprint to the last place I saw Dad, when he was heading toward the stage. And now I can see it’s exactly where the bomb exploded. The crack of a second eruption rips through the bay. I throw my hands up into the air in self-protection at the same time a strong arm wraps around my torso, spinning me to the ground. The space around me transforms into a misty cyan, and a jolt of icy energy takes over my body. The room’s chaos vanishes, and everything goes silent as if I’m in a protective bubble.
Am I dead?
An arm’s pressure still holds me, and the cold turns to warm. My mind clears and my mission comes flooding back. Find my dad. I wriggle to loosen myself from the stranger’s grip and shift to see who this person is.
It’s the boy I chased through the bay. Being up so close, I get a good look at his eyes. Unlike the brown eyes I’d seen before, his irises nearly glow a deep cyan. His eyes are utterly magical.
“What are you doing?” I struggle against him, trying to forget the strangeness of his eyes. “I need to find my father.”
The boy furrows his brows. I’d swear his eyes shift and become darker, almost normal. I’m imagining things. He opens his mouth to speak and then shuts it again. And, instead of releasing me, he squeezes tighter. My head goes light.
I try to tell him to stop, but before I can do anything, the two of us are standing in the corridor I started in.
He spins me around and grasps my upper arms. “Listen, Cassiopeia, Richard Foster needs you to be safe.”
Anger and frustration well inside of my chest. I struggle to free myself from him. “I know. That’s why I’m trying to get to him. Let me go.”
The boy’s irises alter again with a slight cyan glow. Warmth overtakes my body and it’s as if, this time, my energy connects with his. Our souls and minds dance together as everything else fades away. His eyes widen.
“He . . . he tried to make them understand,” the boy mutters and, to be honest, I have no idea if the words are spoken out loud or straight into my mind.
He releases me and, with a snap of desperate loneliness, the connection severs, forcing me back to reality and into the horrible corridor. I inhale sharply as the boy disappears. Dizziness clouds my brain and I tumble to the ground in a heap.
“Cassiopeia!” Max shouts and drops to my side, appearing from the smoke. He gathers my torso up into his arms. “Can you walk?”
I want to tell him I can and that we need to go and find my dad. But none of the words come out. Only blackness seeps into my vision and the emptiness from the boy’s vanishing consumes me. Then everything is gone.
Everything.
♦ ♦ ♦
The strange-eyed boy comes to me in dreams colored in cyan. Tall and lean with powerful muscles and a haunting stare emanating sorrow. But, when I stretch my hand out to him, he’s always too far away, standing opposite of me across a vast chasm. Arcadia’s two moons hang in the sky above, companions that are never without one another. Warm, humid air envelops my body, and I no longer need the sweaters I always wear.
I call to him, but it’s as if he can’t get to me either. I have so many questions in my mind. Why did he know my name? How did he know about my dad?
Oh, Dad. Where are you? Are you with me and now I can’t wake up and get to you?
After what seems like years, I focus my mind and will my body to return to reality. I can’t stay here. Finally, the blue-green world around me falters, and I watch as the boy blurs and fades across the chasm. The earth quakes under my feet, and I let out a scream. I rip my eyelids open to the white ceiling.
I gulp in a lungful of air and sit up. The room spins.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a familiar voice says, but it’s not Dad’s, and a hand reaches to my shoulder and guides me to lie down once more.
I blink several times and stare toward the speaker. As I do, my vision clears, and Max is next to me, tight-jawed. Sitting up on my elbows, barely, I realize we’re in my room on the ship. My jewelry-making supplies are on the table next to me, and across the room is my computer and chair where I do my schooling. I glance down at my pajamas, and then at my hand, which is tethered to an IV and attached to a bag of liquid hanging from a corner of my bed.
I dart my attention back to Max. “Why are you here? Where’s my dad?”
The purple circles under Max’s eyes tell me he might not have slept for a while. His lips form a tense closed-mouth smile, and he reaches for a pitcher on my side table. “Can I get you water? You must be thirsty?”
I prop myself up again. The dizziness doesn’t return, but my heart pounds while waiting for Max to answer my question.
“I’m not thirsty,” I snap. It’s a lie. The reality is my dry tongue is nearly sticking to the roof of my mouth.
Max pours water into a clear glass on my side table. His hand shakes, but he manages to fill the cup halfway and then sets down the pitcher.
“Can you sit now?” he asks. “Without a dizzy spell?”
I prop back up onto my elbows. “I think so.”
He places his hand on my upper back and guides me up.
“Here, drink slowly,” he says as he hands me the water.
I grab the glass and start to sip, but then realize how thirsty I am and down the contents. I hold the empty glass out to Max. “More, please.”
He flashes me a disapproving stare. “I told you to sip it.”
“More, please,” I demand. “And answer my question!”
Max snatches the glass from my hand and drops it to his lap. “I’ve been ordered not to tell you anything yet. It’s not my place.”
Fear churns in my stomach. And he was right. I shouldn’t have drunk the water so fast. “He’s dead?” My mind races with the possibility. Both of my parents can’t be dead.
Max suddenly appears young, like a scared child.
“Tell me!” I scream and bolt up from the bed. I rip the IV off my hand and instantly regret it.
“I . . . I . . . I don’t know,” he stutters. “The Board won’t release any information about the casualties yet.”
“What do you mean?” I spin around and search for my clothes, but my mind can’t put together what I should do next. “Can Hammond do that?”
“I don’t know.” Max stands and reaches for his tablet. “I need to call the doctor. I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
I seize the tablet and hold the device away from him.
A pained look crosses his face. “Cassi, I can’t tell you anything else. After the explosion, transport shut down for two days—”
“Days? How long have I been asleep?”
“Four days,” he says and holds his hand out to me, gesturing to the bed. “Will you please lie down?”
I hand him the tablet and partially obey his request by sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Transportation to the planet shut down for two days. But the Board isn’t releasing any information about the bombing.”
I throw my head into my hands, and Max lowers himself beside me.
“What about me? What am I going to do?” I cry.
Max shakes his head. “I don’t know yet. There’s only a skeleton crew left on the ship. Almost all of the passengers have transferred to Arcadia. If you didn’t wake up after today, Hammond was going to transfer you, conscious or not.”
“And why are you still here?”
He shrugs, and his eyes fill with compassion. “I guess I figured you needed a friend when you woke up.”
Before thinking, I wrap my arms around his neck and sob into his shoulder.
I’m twenty thousand light-years from home, and all I have in the world now is a friend I barely know.
Chapter 5
I throw off my covers. My mind reels, forcing me to stay awake. I snatch the bottle of prescribed sleeping pills from my bedside table and throw it across the room. With a smack, the bottle hits the mirror behind my door. The lid flies open and the contents scatter ont
o the floor.
“Great,” I mumble. But it’s not like the medication was working anyway. Somehow, it’s doing quite the opposite. The doctor has no idea why. Maybe I got too much sleep while I was out. But he does say I'm healing up nicely. There's barely any more pain in my back.
I glance at the time on my Connect.
3:36 AM
Apparently, Hammond is making me move tomorrow—well, today—and movers will arrive at 7:00 am sharp to pack all my things. I can’t stay on the ship any longer, she said. Part of me just wants to ask if I can take the ship back to Earth, but I know it’s the wrong choice. Dad wanted me here. And I don’t even know if returning to Earth is an option.
My throat constricts at the thought of Dad. Is he dead? Gone? Why won’t Hammond release any information? I push the thoughts away, not emotionally willing to accept why Mom will never come home again, and now possibly Dad too.
Sighing, I get out of bed and grab for a pair of jeans from my drawer and slip them on. I drag off my nightshirt and pluck a navy blue sweater off the floor and pull it on. Dad’s jacket is draped over my desk chair and, without much thought, I tug it on to complete the ensemble.
I grab a hairband from my desk and use it to spiral my hair into a low, messy bun. I don’t bother looking in the mirror. I already know it’s bad, but there’s barely anyone on the ship, and if they see the disheveled girl in the jacket two times her size, what do I care anyway?
I race through the unit as fast as I can. I don’t want to see this place. Sitting on the counter in the kitchen is a plate of chocolate chip cookies Max brought me earlier. Logically, I know I should want to devour the entire plate since I haven’t eaten in days. But the sight of the treats turns my stomach, and it takes everything within me to depress the gag rising in my throat.
I activate the exit and speed into the hall. My feet have a mind of their own and take me to Dad’s office. I stand at the door and read the placard.
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