Her mother smiled wider from where she sat on the edge of the bed, and unless Annika was much mistaken, she had a look of pride on her face. Feric stood near the wall, and his presence caused another bloom of fear and betrayal. He smiled, too, looking as proud, but he didn’t speak, couldn’t when Nocturna had taken his voice.
“So, you’re both working for my grandmother?” Annika asked. “Which government torture chamber is this?”
“No,” Feric signed. “We’ve always been working for you.”
She frowned and tried to think past the lump in her throat. “Having me kidnapped and stunned? That’s working for me?”
“We had you set free to fulfill your destiny.” Her mother smoothed her hair, and Annika forced herself not to lean away. “And you’ve done beautifully.”
“What are you talking about?” She nearly vibrated with rage. As happy as she was not to be on a path where she’d have to hurt Noal and Judit, she didn’t like being forced into anything. “Are you trying to tell me you wanted me free? Then why didn’t we work together? You could have told me what you were planning. You knew I wasn’t happy, Feric.” She jerked against the restraints and felt them tighten in response. With a deep breath, she forced herself to relax.
“Yes,” he signed. “I knew you’d always do the right thing, but you couldn’t be prompted.”
“What the dark does that mean?”
“It means you won’t be under your grandmother’s thumb ever again,” her mother said. “After the explosives we set off on Prime, she might not even realize you’re still alive.”
Annika went cold. “What explosives?”
Feric put a hand on her mother’s shoulder as if warning her to keep quiet. She glanced at him and shrugged. “What does it matter now?”
He sighed and dropped his hand.
“What explosives?” Annika asked again. She jerked against her restraints. “Tell me!”
“By now, Judit’s father will have been executed for treason. The Meridian leader will think he was smuggling secrets to Nocturna, and now forces on Nocturna will think their homeworld has been attacked by Meridian infiltrators after several explosive devices detonated in Presidio, killing hundreds.”
Annika blinked, trying to process all of that. Judit’s father? Hundreds dead? What the dark was happening? “You…you killed…”
“Soon,” her mother said as she stood, “Nocturna and Meridian will turn on each other while the rest of the houses and the unaffiliated continue to undermine them from the outer reaches. They will annihilate one another, and the houses will continue to fall.” She smiled. “The galaxy will be reset to its proper form, and you will be free.”
“Let me go,” Annika whispered. Her chest felt too tight, the room too small and hot. She kept hearing hundreds dead. She’d killed people, people who’d been trying to kill her, but to use explosives, to kill without discrimination… “Let me go.”
“Don’t worry,” Feric signed. “You’ll see Judit soon enough. We’re so proud of you, Annika.”
“Proud?” She was shaking, but she tried to control it, to calm herself. She could hear Ama telling her to breathe, force the universe back into order. “Proud of what? I didn’t bomb anyone!”
Now Feric’s hand came up to her mother’s shoulder again, and this time, she nodded. “I wanted you to know that you’re doing so well.”
“With what?” Annika yelled. “What the dark are you talking about? Why would you bomb people? Why was Judit’s father executed? Where have you been?” She was breathing hard, nearly hyperventilating. The pounding of her heart drowned out Ama’s voice.
“Shh,” her mother said, bending close. “I never stopped loving you.”
“You…” She had a flash then. She’d seen her mother leaving the Eye with Feric. At the time, she’d thought it meant her mother had been pretending to be a hierophant initiate, but what if she wasn’t? What if she was proud of Annika for fulfilling some prophecy? What if she was trying to fulfill one herself? But hierophants were supposed to watch the future; they weren’t supposed to change it.
“What have you done?” Tears were gathering in Annika’s eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. Her mother had bombed people. And it was all supposed to be for Annika? And Judit’s father? Did Judit know? Had she been captured, too? Whatever had happened, she needed Annika now more than these two ever could.
Annika jerked against the restraints, feeling the tears slide down her face, but rage was overtaking disbelief and sadness. “Let me go!”
Feric pushed her shoulders down. She glared at him, even more of a betrayer than her mother. When her mother left, had they been working together? Had she always trusted him to one day kidnap her daughter and hold her on some darking ship?
“If you’re going to kill me, do it!” Annika said.
Feric looked pained, but behind him, Annika’s mother’s face went still. By the dark, they weren’t done with her yet, whether they were going to kill her or not. At least Feric seemed as if he didn’t want to. Annika’s stomach shrank into something cold and dark. “Let me go,” she said again, softer.
“You still have a part to play,” her mother said.
“From this bed?”
This time, Feric smoothed her hair, and she pulled away from him as much as she could.
“We’ll talk more soon.” Her mother stepped toward a door.
Feric hesitated, and she wondered if he doubted this part she supposedly had to play. That was the chance she needed. “Feric, please.” He’d know if she tried to trick him, so she summoned every good feeling she’d ever had about him and forced it into her voice. “Please.”
His forehead creased, and he looked as if he wanted to say something, but his hands dropped as soon as he lifted them.
Annika moved her fingers as much as she could, brushing his. “I know you care about me, Feric. You don’t want to leave me tied to this bed. You…you should scan yourself! Scan yourself for the worm!”
That would explain everything. The worm could turn loyalty and duty to anything it wanted. Her mother could have found a way to steal the worm from Nocturna, or maybe they’d implanted one themselves, and her mother had found a way to subvert it.
Feric frowned harder. “I’m not under anyone’s control,” he signed.
“You wouldn’t know if you were. They wouldn’t let you know. Scan yourself.”
He frowned, the beginnings of anger stirring on his features. “I don’t need to.”
“She won’t let you.”
“Come along, Feric,” Annika’s mother said from the doorway.
Feric followed her to the door.
“Try, Feric. Just try it,” Annika called as they walked from the room. “There might be a way to fight the worm!”
The door shut behind them, and Annika cursed. She didn’t even know if it was possible to fight the worm, didn’t know if she could plant doubts in his mind. Whoever was controlling him could make it seem as if Feric’s own assuredness kept him from wanting to be scanned. Whichever it was, worm or blind faith, it didn’t seem as if she was going to get through to him anytime soon.
And her mother? Annika was still thinking about the cold look on her face. Feric hadn’t wanted to kill her, but her mother didn’t seem to mind the idea. That hurt, but Annika didn’t want to feel that pain right now. Maybe her mother thought all Nocturnas had to die, or maybe Annika had to die to further her mother’s agenda. Whatever the reason, the result was the same: Annika had to find a way off this ship before they came for her again.
Annika relaxed against the restraints and let them ease before she tested them one by one to see how fast they could react. Each held, including the one across her chest. That made sense. Feric knew almost everything she could do. She’d never told him about the bone stiletto, but her mother knew about that. It was probably gone from her arm.
If they were working off a mad prophecy, they had some idea of what to do next, but she had no idea whe
re they were taking her or how her death would help them. She tried to think of what they could have seen in the future. If the current chaos in the galaxy was because of them, maybe they had a step-by-step guide of how to throw everything into ruin.
Of course, based on what Spartan said, the galaxy had been heading there already. The unaligned were tired of having houses at all, and most of the houses were tired of Nocturna and Meridian, especially when it seemed as if those houses might unite. But a full-scale war between them would put the lives of everyone else in jeopardy, too. Huge battles always had collateral damage.
Annika’s mother said she wanted the galaxy to reset. She wanted the houses gone. That would mean a lot of lives lost, maybe so many planets bombarded that the houses couldn’t go on, that they couldn’t rebuild. They wanted not hundreds of deaths, but hundreds of thousands. Maybe even millions. Billions? How could someone contemplate having that many deaths on their conscience even if they thought the galaxy would ultimately turn out better than before?
Funny, Annika had never thought the idea of death would bother her this badly.
Apparently, Feric and her mother thought of themselves as the real chosen ones, and they were using Annika, Judit, and Noal to unite the galaxy in their own way, first under hatred and then under grief. Well, she wasn’t going to help them anymore, not quietly. In the beginning, she’d wanted to run from this conflict, but now they’d darking well pissed her off.
Maybe that was part of the prophecy, too. Maybe this whole part of the plan was to make her so angry, she… What? What was it they wanted her to do? They’d been fine with her running around on her own so far. Or maybe they hadn’t. According to the computer from the kidnappers’ ship, Feric had left orders that she was supposed to stay asleep until someone came to collect her. Then someone else had “wanted to meet her,” so the crew had woken her up early. Who was that? If they hadn’t wanted her to get loose, had they been chasing her since then? What was it they’d wanted her to do?
She sighed loudly. If she kept worrying about what they wanted her to do, she’d never get anything done. She pictured the hierophants in their temple. Were any of them simply watchers? The idea chilled her as she pictured them manipulating history, the whole of time and space to get what they wanted. There was at least one in every house. But it couldn’t be all of them! The Nocturna spies inside the Eye would have reported such a thing. And if the hierophants were the real masters of the galaxy, they would have made a move long before now.
She had to remember that her mother was telling her only what she wanted Annika to hear. Annika needed to bring this information to Judit and Noal if they’d managed to stay free. They might have a better take on it than she did, might be able to find out what they should do next instead of what they were “supposed” to be doing.
She looked to a nearby console. No way to reach it, very little she could do, especially without her stiletto. But she didn’t actually know it was gone. She flexed her arm and felt it move.
She frowned. Her mother hadn’t taken it. Because she wanted Annika free? But no matter what, Annika needed to be free in order to act. She’d have to be careful of her actions from then on, but she couldn’t do anything strapped to a bed.
With subtle flexes, she pushed the stiletto out, guiding it through the scab. She rolled and flexed until the stiletto slipped down into her palm. Slowly, carefully she turned her hand so the knife lay between the restraints and her skin. Then it was a matter of patiently working it back and forth. The blade cut into her slightly, but she blocked out the pain, using the discomfort as a motivator. Blood trickled down her wrist, and she slowed her cuts so the trickle wouldn’t become a flow.
When one hand was free, she went to work on her chest before starting on the other hand. No one came to check, and she wondered again if they meant her to free herself. They had to have heard what happened on the kidnappers’ ship. They had to know how hard she could make it to keep her prisoner.
She freed herself at last but kept the electrodes at her temples in case they were feeding someone information. She eased the machine along with her as she searched the cabinets and drawers in the small medbay. She found a few strips of instaskin and pasted them onto her arm where the stiletto had cut her. She was still wearing the stolen uniform she’d gotten on Prime, but a look in the polished surface of a steel tray revealed they’d cleaned her face. That was fine. She wasn’t going to be hiding.
She turned to the machine monitoring the electrodes. If she shut it off or pulled free, there could be an alarm. To the dark with it. She couldn’t wait around in indecision. She peeled the electrodes off, then hurried for the door in case she triggered an alarm.
No one came. She put her ear to the door and listened but heard nothing. It was a small medbay, but the fact that they had one at all suggested a ship of some size, a crew of more than two unless they were running minimally, like the ship that had kidnapped her. And the door was unlocked.
She stepped back and scanned the room for cameras but didn’t see any at first glance. What the dark was she supposed to do now? She took another look through the cabinets and drawers, searching under and behind machinery.
Under the bed, crammed into a darkened space, she pulled out the bag she’d had on Nocturna Prime. She went through it quickly and found the data chip hidden in the lining where she’d put it. All she could do was stare. They wouldn’t have missed that. Why had they left it in the room with her?
Ama’s voice insisted it was because they wanted her to escape. They wanted her to take the chip to Judit. Somehow, it was part of their plan.
But they had to know she’d suspect that. And then she was lost in a “they know you know” style argument. What else could she do besides take the opportunities they’d given her? Sit and wait? Judit wouldn’t be content to wait. If she was free, she’d be trying to find Annika, and if she wasn’t free, she needed Annika’s help.
Nothing for it, then. She tucked the data chip into her bra and opened the door. They shouldn’t have made it so easy, but they clearly wanted her gone. Why not set her on some planet? Why this elaborate ruse? Why take her at all? They could have let her escape from Nocturna Prime!
It was making her head hurt. She slid the door open and looked outside, but no one waited in the hallway, no one guarded the door, and no one seemed to be hurrying down the corridor to check on her.
She sighed and wondered if the ship was empty, if she was supposed to take it somewhere. Maybe she’d blow it up and find her own darking ship. Maybe she should look for Feric and her mother and stab them both.
The hallway ended in a heavy, single door, a pressure door, and the controls beside it were dim. Annika listened but couldn’t hear anything through the thick steel. Time to throw caution to the wind. She tried the controls, but they were as dead as they appeared. She tried to pry off the panel to access the wiring, but it had been welded shut.
Well, now she knew why there were no guards. They’d barred the heavy door from the other side, and no bone stiletto was going to shake it loose. If they meant her to escape, they hadn’t made it as easy as she’d thought.
Annika headed back to the medbay. She’d already found some water and rations. Hidden behind a panel was a toilet. Maybe they knew she’d get loose from the bed, but after that, they planned for her to stay awhile. Then why leave her bag with the data chip? Maybe she’d need it when they let her out? Maybe someone was supposed to find it on her corpse? She sighed and put her hands on her hips. All the panels in this room were welded shut, too. Even the lights were secured in the walls. There was nothing she could force. She inspected the bed, looking for something that could be used as a pry bar, but it was a single piece except for the useless straps.
It seemed as if she was stuck here until someone came to see her, and with the food and water they’d left, she doubted anyone would. Perfect. All her worrying for nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
Annika was late for the rend
ezvous. Judit tried not to let it worry her, but worrying was so much better than grieving. Her every emotion felt turned up to the max, especially the bad ones. With each hour that passed, her anxiety and dread doubled until her insides felt like a bundle of knots, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that every horrible thing that happened would spawn other horrible things until life became nothing but a ball of misery ending in death for all of them!
Judit collapsed in her office chair and sighed. When had she gotten so melodramatic? Noal must have been rubbing off on her. She wondered if she should call him, and they could be melodramatic together, but after they’d wept, he’d retreated to his room, and she didn’t want to disturb him.
Since the execution, protests against Meridian had gotten louder. Some of their allies had cut off communications, though several messages of encouragement had been sent to the Damat, open signals everyone could hear. Judit wished they could make her feel better, but she feared nothing could.
Her nerves were so taut, she jumped from her chair when her office door chimed. Until she heard Annika was safe, she didn’t think she’d welcome any news. “Yes?”
Beatrice stepped inside. When she looked at Judit’s face, she shut her mouth on whatever she was going to say and cleared her throat. “Our listening outposts detected several networks going dark in Nocturna territory. Roberts says that usually means they found a security breach and are looking for the source.”
With Annika going to Nocturna space, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe they’d caught her and were looking for confederates. All of Judit’s other emotions stilled, poised. “Does Roberts know if they caught her?”
When Beatrice didn’t bother to argue that it might not have anything to do with Annika, Judit could have kissed her. “We don’t have any information that detailed,” Beatrice said. “Nocturna hasn’t made any official announcements about…her. And we haven’t heard from Antiles, either. We’re trying to keep ears on all ships leaving Nocturna Prime’s system.”
House of Fate Page 24