He paused and then with a tortured voice whispered, “I love you.”
Her mouth popped open. She pulled her skirt down over her scabbed knees as a fiery blush ignited her cheeks. “What do you mean?”
Suddenly he leaned in and kissed her, very softly. But it wasn’t the kiss she remembered so well; it was the way he’d let his mouth linger, the way his breath had caressed her cheek, once, twice, until he suddenly ran out of the room. She watched him go, thinking the word Stay. But she didn’t say it.
The next day when Seth sat next to her in class, he looked at her, hopeful. She turned away. It was too much feeling, and she didn’t know what to do with it. And later that week, when Kieran Alden asked her to the Harvest Cotillion, she accepted. As she danced with Kieran, she pretended not to see Seth standing by the punch bowl, hands in his pockets, looking at the floor.
Now she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t chosen Kieran. On impulse, she said, “Do you remember that day we did the puzzle?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Of course I do. Why do you bring that up?”
He looked at her, waiting. Suddenly she realized how tall he was. Taller than Kieran. He stood leaning toward her, arms loose at his sides. She felt a force pulling her into him, like gravity.
“It’s just…” She cast around. What could she say? How could she keep from betraying Kieran? Had she already? “It’s a sweet memory.”
A smile opened Seth’s face, but then he spoiled it. “I thought you and Kieran were still…”
“Yes.” Her breath caught in her throat.
His smile folded up again. “Makes sense, you two getting together. Him being the golden boy and all.”
“He’s not a golden boy.”
“Oh yes, he is.”
They looked at each other for a beat.
“I guess you don’t like him much,” she said.
“Let’s just say I have an instinctive distrust of perfection.”
Waverly tried to sound disinterested. “You have your eye on anyone?”
Seth lifted his gaze to hers and held it. She knew she should do something to break up this moment, so she said the first thing that came to her. “Do you ever wonder about the accident?”
He didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. “You do?”
“Something Mom said today made me wonder.”
Seth glanced toward his father, who was bent over a melon patch. “Yeah. I wonder about it.”
“Because I always thought it was an accident, but…”
Seth took a step toward her. “That’s what you need to go on thinking.”
“What do you mean? Have you heard something?”
Seth dug his toe into the roots of a pepper plant. “Let’s just say I have reason to doubt your boyfriend’s benefactor.”
“Captain Jones?”
“He’s not the kindly old man people think he is.”
“What are you talking about?”
Seth’s chin dropped and he looked at her shoes. “You know what? I’m paranoid. Always have been.”
“You tell me this instant what you know.”
Seth’s eyes lingered on her face, but finally he shrugged. “Waverly, to be honest, it’s just a feeling I have. I don’t know anything more than you do.”
Waverly narrowed her eyes at him. He was holding something back. “I don’t believe you.”
“Just be careful with Kieran, okay? Captain Jones’ friends tend to lead … complicated lives.”
“Are you talking about your dad?”
“We’re not talking about anything.”
“Who are you trying to protect? Your dad or me?”
Again the boy looked at her, and there was such sad longing in his face, she had to look away. She dropped to her knees and started digging at a weed.
Seth turned to follow his father, back bent under the hay bale. Waverly watched him go, waiting for him to look back at her, but he didn’t.
Suddenly the ship’s alarm blared. The Captain’s voice came through the intercom, so shrill and loud that she didn’t understand the words. She looked around her to see Mr. Turnbull dropping his spade and racing down the corridor toward the starboard side.
“Waverly!”
Mrs. Mbewe, her neighbor, was running toward her. “I need you to get Serafina.”
“Why? Where is she?”
“She’s in my quarters for her nap. Actually, gather all the children and take them to the auditorium!”
“Why?” she asked, dumbfounded. She dropped her trowel, which fell painfully against her anklebone. “What’s happening?”
“All hands have been called to the starboard shuttle bay. I have to go,” Mrs. Mbewe called over her brown shoulder. “Just go to the nursery to make sure all the children are on their way to the auditorium, and then find Serafina!”
Serafina was Mrs. Mbewe’s daughter of four years whom Waverly sometimes babysat. She was a sweet little girl whose curly black hair hovered in two round puffs of pigtails at the top of her head. Serafina was deaf, so she wouldn’t hear announcements and would need help getting to the auditorium.
Waverly ran to the nearest com station and keyed in the emergency code to make a shipwide announcement. “This is Waverly Marshall! All children report to the auditorium immediately!”
Then she ran to the central stairwell that led to the nursery room. It was slow going, because streams of adults were running downstairs at top speed, and she had to shoulder her way through the crowd. She wanted to ask what was happening, but the terror on their faces made her afraid to interfere. Once on the level for the nursery, she burst into the corridor and ran into Mr. Nightly, who was holding a bloody rag to his face. She stopped him. “Do you need help?”
“There’s no time!” he yelled.
“What’s happening?” she tried to ask, but he was already running away from her. Nothing was making sense.
Her limbs felt cold and floppy with fear, but she made herself run even faster. She saw Felicity Wiggam walking, dazed, in the opposite direction, and she stopped. Felicity’s blond hair was mussed, her porcelain cheeks flushed, her tunic hanging askew on her long, lithe frame. “Help me with the nursery!” Waverly shrieked at her.
At first Felicity only stared, but Waverly grabbed her wrist and dragged her down the corridor.
When they finally reached the nursery, it was empty. Building blocks and coloring books lay haphazardly in the middle of the floor. A box full of flash cards had been knocked down, splayed over the central table. “They must have already evacuated,” she said, breathless. “Thank God.”
“They’d have heard your announcement,” Felicity said through the curtain of pale hair hanging in her face.
“Felicity, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Where were you when it started?”
“The garden. You?”
“In my quarters.” She held her bony hands over her stomach. “I’m scared.”
“Me too.” Waverly took hold of her friend’s hand and squeezed her cold fingers. “I’ve got to go get Serafina. Can you check the kindergarten on your way to the auditorium?”
Felicity only stared at Waverly, impassive. She seemed in shock.
“Go!” Waverly shouted at her over her shoulder as she sped back down the corridor.
Just then the floor under Waverly’s feet seemed to shake, and she heard a rumbling that she’d never heard before. Something had gone very wrong.
Another river of adults ran past Waverly. She looked desperately at the passing faces, hoping to see her mother, but everyone was moving too fast.
She trotted along with the adults, but when she got to the central corridor, she turned toward the Mbewes’ quarters. She found their door, which was covered with a mural Serafina’s mother had painted of the African savanna. Waverly pushed the button for ingress, but the door didn’t open. Serafina must have locked it from the inside. There was a keypad for a numeric code. Once upon a time
Waverly knew the code, and she tried several combinations of numbers, but the door remained locked.
“Serafina!” she screamed, pounding on the door. But of course Serafina couldn’t hear. Waverly would have to break in.
She pulled from her pocket the folding knife she’d received as a gift when she’d turned fifteen. She opened the blade and slid it behind the faceplate that housed the door lock. She worked the metal plate off, then pried away the numbered keypad to reveal a mess of wires underneath.
She could cut the wires, but she was pretty sure that would leave the door locked permanently. No. She had to enable the mechanism that would open the door.
“There’s only on, and off.” She recited the lesson about circuits she’d learned last year in electronics class and looked for the mechanism to slide the door open. It was encased in yellow plastic, but the copper ends of it were exposed and fastened under a hinged copper plate. Right now, the plate hung open. Could it be so simple? Waverly pressed on the copper plate, holding it to the wire.
A shock of vicious electricity punched through her arm and into her chest. For long moments, she was frozen in an altered state, aware only of her frantic heartbeat and her burning hand.
Emergency. There was an emergency. She couldn’t go into shock. She forced her breathing into an even cadence. When she could think again, she saw the door had clicked open.
“Serafina,” she whispered as she limped through the small apartment. The electric shock had bunched up the muscles on her right side, especially in her arm. She limped as quickly as she could to the girl’s room, which looked empty, but the door to the closet was ajar.
Waverly opened it to find Serafina huddled in a ball on the middle shelf, hugging her knees to her chest, eyes screwed shut. She must have felt that strange tremor that went through the ship. Waverly placed a gentle hand on Serafina’s hip. The little girl opened her eyes, terrified at first, but she seemed relieved when she saw who had come for her.
“We have to go,” Waverly said, and held out her good hand.
Serafina took Waverly’s hand and followed her through the apartment and down the corridor toward the auditorium. Just as they entered the stairwell, the lights blinked out. Serafina’s fingernails dug into Waverly’s thumb. Waverly’s heart galloped from the shock she’d gotten. She thought she might be having a heart attack.
The emergency lights came on, casting a dull orange glow over the metal staircase, and the girls started toward the auditorium.
Waverly felt another shudder go through the ship—an aching groan in the metal itself. The air in the corridor started to move as though an invisible fan had been turned on.
They turned the corner to see the auditorium, dimly lit. At first Waverly thought the other children must not have made it because there wasn’t a sound, a seeming impossibility if all two hundred and fifty children were really gathered into a single room.
Slowly, Serafina and Waverly made their way toward the open doorway until they could see in.
“Oh, thank God, they made it,” Waverly murmured.
She saw Felicity huddled on the floor, surrounded by a dozen kindergartners, all of them focusing on a single point in front of them.
When Waverly was about ten feet from the door, Felicity caught her eye. She shook her head, barely perceptibly, and held up one hand, telling Waverly and Serafina to stay where they were. Serafina stopped, but Waverly wanted to get a little closer so she could discern what Felicity was trying to say. She limped nearer to the open doorway and waved at Felicity to get her attention, but Felicity stubbornly would not look at her.
Neither did Seth, whom Waverly could now see, looking angry—no, homicidal—in the corner of the room. He had his hand wrapped around one big-boned wrist, and he twisted the skin of his arm as though trying to unsheathe a sword.
Waverly was about to back away from the doorway, ready to run away, when a man she’d never seen before appeared in front of her.
“Well, hello,” the man said.
Waverly blinked. She had never seen a stranger before.
He wasn’t a tall man, and he had an ugly scar along the left side of his face that made a deep fissure when he smiled. He was holding an emergency landing weapon. Waverly recognized it from the training videos she’d watched in class. The weapons, guns they were called, were meant for use only in the unlikely event that there were hostile animals on New Earth. They lay locked in a vault in the deepest holds of the Empyrean. No one was permitted access to them.
The man pointed the end of the weapon at Waverly’s face and shook it. “You know what this does, right?”
Waverly nodded. If he pulled the trigger, a projectile from the gun would rip into her flesh and shatter her bones. It would kill her.
Waverly looked again into the room and saw several strange men, about five of them, looking at her. She felt disoriented to see such unfamiliar features: brown almond eyes, chunky noses, white lips, chipped teeth. The men seemed about her mother’s age, maybe a little older, and they stood panting, waiting to see what she would do.
The children crouched on the floor along the base of the stage, hugging themselves, hands gripping ankles, elbows on knees. They cowered away from the men.
She tried to make sense of it: men holding guns in a room full of children. A part of her considered that she ought to feel afraid.
“Don’t worry,” the man with the scar said. “This is a rescue mission.”
“Then why do you need that?” Waverly pointed at the gun.
“In case something goes wrong,” he said in a lilting way, as though he were talking to a girl much younger than Waverly.
“What would go wrong?” she asked.
His smile was thin. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
He jerked his gun at her, gesturing for her to enter the room. The way he turned his back on her showed that he did not expect, would not tolerate, disobedience.
Her breath laboring, she looked down at Serafina, took hold of her small sweaty hand, and obeyed.
BREACH
Kieran followed the Captain at a frantic clip toward the starboard shuttle bay. They were joined by a security detail, about twenty of them altogether, armed only with cricket bats. Kieran hoped it would be enough. He looked for his mother, but she had not arrived.
Kieran had expected chaos, but they found dim quiet. The group huddled around the porthole that looked into the shuttle bay, and they saw only the ghostly frames of the shuttles and the OneMan vessels, which reminded Kieran of pictures he’d seen of metal deep-sea diving suits back on Earth. Kieran looked at the Captain, who was stroking his beard thoughtfully. Captain Jones went to the com station near the doorway and pressed the code for his office. “Sammy, what are they doing?” he said into the microphone. “Can you see them on the vid?”
Sammy’s voice crackled through the speaker. “They’re hovering just outside the shuttle bay, sir.”
“Have you magnified the image?”
“One moment.” In the tense silence, the security crew looked at one another. Kieran realized he’d never seen fear before. Kieran didn’t like what it did to faces. It stretched them sideways, reddened eyes, widened mouths, dampened skin.
“Captain…” Sammy’s voice was hesitant. “I think I see a OneMan next to the outer air lock doors.”
Kieran looked at the Captain. “What’s he doing?”
“Forcing entry.” The Captain slammed his fist into the com console and yelled, “Security breach! All available hands to the starboard shuttle bay!”
He slapped the lock to the shuttle bay, and the security crew raced through the doorway, Kieran on the Captain’s heels.
The Captain pushed him away. “Get out of here, Kieran!”
“I want to help!” Kieran said, though he was so frightened his limbs felt wobbly.
Streams of crew members pelted across the immense bay. Alak Bhuvanath, the Central Council president, ran to the manual air lock controls and tried several t
imes to lock them. “They’ve disabled the lock from the outside!”
The intercom buzzed, and Waverly’s voice shrieked through the speaker. Something about taking all the kids to the auditorium.
Good. She’d be safer there.
Kieran watched as a team of technicians worked on the lock while the rest of the adults looked on. Barbara Coolidge’s small hands were riveted to the shovel she held. Councilman Ganan Kumar’s jaw worked as he stared at the door with hot black eyes. Tadeo Silva balanced his hoe over his shoulder like a spear. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
Already about half the crew had come. Kieran hoped that would be enough for the fight.
Unless …
“This might be what they want us to do,” Kieran said to himself. “What if they want us all here?… Captain?”
But the Captain pushed him away. “Go! Make sure all the kids made it to the auditorium, then take them through the pressurized conduits to the central bunker.”
“But—”
“You want to help? Go!” the Captain roared.
It was useless to talk to him now. Kieran ran back across the huge bay, dodging the dozens of people who were rushing in the opposite direction.
But all of Kieran’s instincts told him that loading the shuttle bay full of every last crew member was a horrible mistake.
In the corridor, Harvard Stapleton, Kieran’s physics teacher, was running for the shuttle bay, but Kieran grabbed his sleeve. “Harvard, what if this is what they want us to do?”
“Not now, Kieran!”
But Kieran wouldn’t let him go. “What if…” The idea formed in his mind as he said it. “What if they’re planning to blow out the shuttle bay?”
Harvard stopped, thinking, as another bunch of people ran in.
“We’ve got to stop people going in,” Kieran said to Harvard, whose face was pale under his thick graying hair. “We can’t have the whole crew in there! They’re sitting ducks!”
“Are you asking me to defy the Captain’s orders?”
“Yes!” Kieran shrieked as another group ran past. It now looked as if almost the entire crew surrounded the air lock doors.
“Harvard, you have to tell them!” Kieran pleaded. “They won’t listen to me.”
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