“I can’t imagine what you must be feeling. To be used this way.” Amanda waited for Waverly to speak, but Waverly wouldn’t look at her. “I agonized over whether I should accept embryos that were … created this way. There were only so many women on the ship whose cycles matched yours. And—you probably know—it’s all in the timing. If I hadn’t accepted implantation, this embryo might’ve died. And they’re so precious.”
Every word the woman said seemed to drill into Waverly’s skull. She didn’t care about Amanda and her tragic little thoughts.
“I don’t know if this helps,” Amanda said tentatively, “but your friend Felicity freely agreed to act as a donor. We’re harvesting her ova tomorrow. We only hope she’ll respond as well as you did to the medications.” Again Amanda waited for Waverly to speak, and again she was disappointed. “She’s outside. Would you like to see her?”
Waverly said nothing.
“I’ll send her in, all right? You two can talk.”
Amanda got up heavily and walked out of the room. A moment later, a hesitant hand touched Waverly’s shoulder.
“How’s your leg?” Felicity asked.
“Ruined.” She looked the girl in the eye. “So you’re going to let them do it to you?”
“Do you think I have a choice?” Felicity asked. “Here I am, walking around freely, being treated like royalty. And here you are, stuck in bed with a mangled leg. Is it a mistake for me to cooperate?”
To this, Waverly said nothing. She knew she couldn’t trust Felicity, but this might be her only chance to get a message to Sarah and Samantha.
“Are they listening?” Waverly whispered.
Felicity gave her a blank look.
“Are they listening to our conversation?”
“I don’t know,” Felicity replied, then mouthed, “Probably.”
Waverly beckoned Felicity closer until the girl’s golden hair tickled her face. She whispered so softly that she could barely hear herself, “I saw Mom. They’re holding Empyrean survivors in the starboard cargo hold.”
At first, Felicity sat perfectly still. When she leaned away, her face was ashen. “How did you find this out?” she asked.
“I can’t say.”
“Were my parents there?”
“I don’t know. I only had about a minute to talk to my mom. I’m sorry.”
Felicity shrugged as though indifferent about her parents. After the way they’d failed to protect her, Waverly wasn’t surprised.
“But they caught you down there?” Felicity whispered thoughtfully.
Waverly nodded.
“Then they’ve moved them. Or they’re going to.”
Of course. Waverly hadn’t thought of this, but she knew Mather was cautious. She was probably already looking for the traitor who had told Waverly about the survivors.
There wasn’t much time. Mather might kill the Empyrean captives. She might search out and kill the woman with the auburn hair who had left the note in the bathroom, and it would be Waverly’s fault for not being more careful.
Waverly heard someone coming.
“Tell Sarah and Samantha, but no one else can know!” she whispered before Magda hustled in, carrying a loaf of bread and a bowl of broth on a tray. “Tell them I said hi,” Waverly added loudly. “That I’m okay.”
“I will,” Felicity promised.
“That’s enough of a visit for one day,” Magda clucked. “You need some food in you.” She slid the tray over Waverly’s lap. “You girls can talk more later.”
Be strong! Waverly wanted to say as Felicity dropped her eyes and left the room looking doubtful and troubled.
“Here, sweetheart,” Magda coaxed, holding a warm spoon to Waverly’s lips. “Isn’t that good?”
“It’s fine.”
“Oh, come now. Is our patient cranky today?”
“I’m not your patient,” Waverly said coolly. “I’m your captive. You’ve basically raped me.”
Magda stiffened. Mechanically, she fed Waverly spoonful after spoonful, barely waiting for the girl to swallow before forcing the next on her.
“You’re lucky Amanda Marvin has taken an interest in you,” Magda finally said. “She’s the Pastor’s best friend, you know.”
“So?” Waverly managed to say before another spoonful was shoved into her mouth.
“So your attitude is not making you any friends,” Magda said sternly. “You’re so fertile, and you just take it for granted. If you were really dedicated to the mission, you’d be glad to help people have children, instead of feeling sorry for yourself.”
Waverly accepted another spoonful silently.
Magda pursed her lips. “Were all the crew from the Empyrean as selfish as you?”
Waverly stopped chewing and trained her eyes on Magda, staring coldly until the woman dropped her eyes.
“Well, I’ll tell you, the people on your ship didn’t have a very good reputation around here. We even heard they were letting women have abortions. I’ve never heard of such wickedness! A mother killing her own infant!”
“That only happened once. To save the mother. The baby would have died anyway.”
“Well. If it was me, I’d risk everything to save my child.”
“But it wasn’t you. So shut up.”
Magda bolted out of her chair and went straight to the cabinet, where she thrust a needle into a vial of clear liquid. Waverly didn’t know what it was, but she didn’t want it in her blood. While Magda’s back was turned, Waverly grasped the IV tube with her teeth and pulled the needle out of the back of her hand, then hid it under her covers. When Magda turned back around and stuck the needle into the tube, Waverly could feel the liquid dripping onto the sheets next to her leg. Missing her medication was bound to hurt, but she didn’t trust Magda, so she closed her eyes and pretended to nod off, lying still, breathing deeply and steadily, until finally the woman left the room.
Waverly lay like that for hours, drifting in and out of sleep, until the pain in her leg prevented any kind of rest. She lay in the dark, trying not to think about it. Instead she imagined Kieran’s strong arms around her, his smile. Oh, she missed him. If he were here, he’d find a way to get her out of this horrible place.
A door slammed, bringing her back to the present. Someone had come into the lab and was walking around just outside the door to her room. Magda laughed, and a man chuckled in an intimate way.
“Is she out?” he asked.
“Yes, the little princess is finally asleep.”
“How long?”
“Ten hours, at least. I gave her enough to knock out a cow.”
“So you can get away?”
“What do you have in mind?” Magda asked coyly.
“Artie brewed some beer in the granary.”
“He better not let the Pastor catch him,” she said with a giggle.
“Come on. I’ll buy you some.”
Waverly heard the door outside open and close, and the voices of Magda and the man grew softer as they walked down the corridor.
Could it be so easy?
She knew she shouldn’t try it. If they caught her sneaking around again, they might kill her, especially now that they had what they wanted from her. But what if she never got another chance?
The restraints were a problem. She bent herself awkwardly to gnaw at the Velcro with her teeth. The position was agonizing to her leg, but she was finally able to get a good grip and pull the Velcro from her right hand. Once one hand was free, the other restraints were easy.
The next thing was most difficult: getting out of bed. Already her leg felt flayed open, but she found the strength to swing herself into a sitting position, where she stayed. She felt woozy and nauseous and weakened by pain, but she could stay upright with effort.
When her dizziness subsided, she braced herself against the bed to take the pressure off her wound, and slowly slid her feet to the floor. She couldn’t put any weight on her leg at all, and so she hopped, a little at a time, inchin
g toward the door. She peeked out and saw long rows of counters and cabinets laden with centrifuges, scales, sophisticated-looking tanks, freezers, and countless trays of test tubes. Waverly hopped slowly, covering the five feet from the doorway to the nearest counter, which she leaned on heavily to catch her breath.
This was insane. She’d had no idea how weak she was. Her arms and legs were trembling uncontrollably, and she thought she might collapse. She took deep breaths, trying to nourish her exhausted muscles until the trembling subsided.
But it didn’t subside.
She needed to sit down, right now.
About ten feet away was a black office chair. She dragged herself along the counter, leaning with one elbow while scooting forward, inch by inch. When she was near the chair, she caught her breath, paying close attention to the quivering muscles in her thigh. Could her leg support her full weight?
She gritted her teeth and pushed herself off the counter, hopping as quickly as she could to the chair, each motion stabbing deeper into the wound in her leg. When she could touch the black fabric with her left hand, she cried out in relief, but then the chair rolled another two feet away.
It looked like a mile.
Acrid tears rolled down her face, but she made it to the chair and lowered herself onto it, trying to spare her injured leg as much as possible. There was a moist red pit of agony in the center of her thigh. Oh, it hurt. It hurt so much.
Too much. She couldn’t go anywhere. All this was for nothing.
Waverly sat alone in the lab, crying, her face in her hands. What was the point of fighting anymore? She wanted to give up, knew it would be easier. She tried to imagine how she could make a life here. There might be people here who could be her friends. Maybe after a while Mather would let Waverly’s mother and the rest of the Empyrean crew free, or at least let them see their children.
But no, there was no way Mather could ever let the Empyrean crew see their kids. If the other girls knew their parents were being held against their will, all hope of cooperation would be over. Mather would have to keep the families separated forever.
Waverly would not consent to this. She could not.
With her good leg, she scooted the chair across the room. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Just something. Anything that could help her. Then she saw the com station in the corner.
Waverly dragged herself to the com desk and studied the display. This was an internal link only; no way to reach out to the Empyrean from here. She slammed her fists into the keyboard, causing a missile of fresh misery to tear through her leg. All that work to get here and she couldn’t call home.
Tears threatened, but she savagely bit the inside of her cheek until they faded away.
Okay, she couldn’t contact the Empyrean, but she might be able to find something out. She scrolled through the menu, looking for active signals, and found only two terminals operating on the ship. She gasped. One was in Pastor Mather’s quarters. The other was a moving signal.
Waverly lifted the headset and fitted it over her ears, covered the microphone with her hand, and clicked onto Mather’s signal to listen.
Nothing but digitized garbling. Of course, Mather’s com station was encrypted.
But that moving signal might be on an open radio frequency. Waverly fingered the dial, listening for voices. Near the top of the frequency range, the static resolved into a rhythmic thrumming sound. Waverly knew she was hearing pumps of some kind. A man’s voice came on, and though it was muffled by static, she could make out the words.
“Most of them came peacefully, and now they’re all locked up, safe and sound.”
Waverly had caught a transmission about the prisoners! It had to be. Her heart beating rapidly, her breath shallow and rasping, she leaned toward the terminal so she wouldn’t miss anything.
Mather’s response was unintelligible. Waverly would get only half of this conversation.
“If you ask me,” the man said, “we should just get rid of them. Just to be—”
An interruption. Waverly held her breath.
“Yes, yes, of course you’re right, Pastor. I’m sorry.”
More from Mather. Waverly bit her lip, wishing she could hear what the woman was saying.
“Well, you never know what desperate people will do, Pastor. We’re just trying to keep you safe. I don’t think anyone’s going to find them here.”
A brief response from Mather.
“Have a good rest,” he said, and the signal ended.
Waverly hit the com station with her fist and hit it again. She’d gotten nothing she could use. Nothing at all!
She wanted to dissolve into tears, but she knew Magda could return at any moment. She dragged herself along with her good foot on the floor, wincing with pain each time the wheels under her chair jiggled. She was almost at her room when she heard voices outside the lab and a giggle that nearly stopped Waverly’s heart. The door to the lab opened, and Waverly doubled her speed, closing the last six feet into her room as quickly as she could.
She froze once she was inside her room and listened.
Brisk fingers tapped at a computer keyboard. Magda was on the other side of the lab, at the com station. As quietly as she could, Waverly dragged herself to her bed. She could barely manage to pull herself out of the chair, but somehow she found a way to fall onto the mattress. Her leg screamed, and she almost cried out, but she wriggled onto the bed until her cheek met the coolness of her pillow.
With her toe, she nudged the chair into the corner, hoping Magda wouldn’t notice.
Magda might be able to dismiss a chair that was out of place, but would she ignore the IV that Waverly had ripped from her hand? Those two clues together would certainly be enough even for someone as stupid as Magda.
The thought of what she had to do made her weep.
Waverly picked up the IV needle from the mattress next to her and looked at it. It was plastic and flexible. Narrow enough. Waverly examined the back of her hand. The puncture left by the needle had scabbed over, looking angry and red, and it hurt.
Waverly picked the scab off her sore hand. It came away easily. Blood oozed out of the puncture, and Waverly licked it away so that she could see the small hole. She wished for more light, but the dim light coming from the lab would have to be enough.
She pressed the end of the needle against the puncture, testing. It stung all the way into the fine bones of her hand.
Magda was just outside the door.
As quickly as she could, Waverly pressed the needle into her hand. The pain was unbearable. An agonized cry escaped her, and she froze. Magda had stopped humming.
Waverly leaned back against her pillow and closed her eyes, panting. Her hand was searing with pain, and she wished Magda would come in and give her another shot. But she’d have to wait hours for that. She didn’t know if she could make it.
She thought she felt someone looking at her, so she forced her breathing to slow. She cracked an eye open to see a shadow move across her doorway and away.
As quietly as she could, Waverly fixed the restraints on her legs and her arms, making it look as close as possible to the way she’d found them. She had to twist her body to do it, and her leg felt as though it were detaching from her body.
She didn’t know how she could ever sleep like this, but she closed her eyes. She lay perfectly still, perfectly still, perfectly still, letting the pain invade every part of her until she passed out.
She dreamed feverishly of a rhythmic thrumming sound, some kind of pumps. She knew that sound; she’d heard it before on the Empyrean.
That sound was the key to everything. If she could find it, she’d find the prisoners.
And her mother.
AMANDA
The next morning, Amanda came for a visit. She took one look at Waverly, who was white faced and gasping in agony, and pulled Magda by her nurse’s smock to Waverly’s bed. “How did this happen?” she demanded.
Magda touched Waverly’s forehe
ad. “She’s running a fever.”
Amanda put a hand on Waverly’s cheek. “Sweetie, how are you feeling?”
Waverly tried to speak, but her throat burned, and she was too weak.
“She’s exaggerating,” Magda said. “She was fine yesterday.”
“Get out,” Amanda snapped at her.
Magda huffed and marched out of the room.
Amanda pulled away Waverly’s bedding, discovered the restraints, and unfastened them. “Now maybe you can find a better position, sweetie.”
Waverly couldn’t even lift her arms.
Something caught Amanda’s eye, and she picked up Waverly’s right hand, examining the puncture Waverly had reopened the night before. “Oh God, honey. You’ve got a really nasty infection.”
She yelled for Magda and ordered the woman to fetch a Dr. Armstrong. Soon a small man came in, moving in a darting, birdlike way, and looked at Waverly’s red, swollen hand. “This isn’t good,” he said.
Gingerly, he pulled out the IV. She didn’t feel a thing. The skin had gone completely numb. He smeared a clear gel on the puncture and wrapped it in gauze.
“I’m going to start a line in your other hand, okay?” he asked with a smile.
Waverly thought this might be the man who had drugged her and taken eggs from her ovaries, so she said nothing.
He walked around her bed and, with a few deft motions, had an IV line going into her left arm. After feeding two different syringes full of medication into it, he said to Amanda, “I think she’d be better off in your care, Mrs. Marvin, don’t you?”
“Definitely,” Amanda said with disgust. “Magda should be banned from nursing.”
“I’ll worry about that,” the doctor snapped, and left the room.
Hours and then days passed with Waverly drifting in and out of consciousness. The pain in her leg faded to a dull throb, and after an interminable stretch of nightmares and cold sweats, her fever abated. Amanda never left her side. Waverly woke every morning to see her ready with a bowl of warm farina, and every evening ended with a delicious vegetable stew from Amanda’s own kitchen. Sometimes Amanda would bring Josiah, and they’d both sit by her bed, holding hands, telling her stories about how there used to be animals that weren’t cared for by humans, wild ones. How when the sun set on Earth, the sky glowed orange, something that Waverly had always yearned to see. There were rivers that ran downhill on their own, and in some places the wind blew so hard that trees grew crooked.
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