Glow

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  Waverly pointed her knife at her. “Leave me alone.”

  “Anne won’t let you go, Waverly,” Amanda said. “You need me.”

  Waverly scanned the room for Mather, but the woman had disappeared.

  With a sinking feeling, she realized she’d ruined the plan. She needed Mather. Without a hostage, she had nothing to bargain with, no way to get the guards to open the locks on her mother’s cage.

  She needed Amanda after all.

  Waverly nodded, and Amanda bolted forward. Josiah tried to chase after her, but she was too quick. She slipped through the doorway, Waverly on her heels, knife held aloft until the doors slid closed on Josiah’s stunned face. Quickly, Sarah sliced through the wires with Waverly’s knife. The smell of ozone burned Waverly’s nostrils.

  The door shook with the sound of a body slamming against it, and another. The door wouldn’t hold for long.

  “We have to get the girls to the shuttle bay,” Waverly said to Sarah.

  “I’ll take them,” Sarah said.

  “What about our parents?” Melissa Dickinson asked.

  “I’m going to get them,” Waverly promised. “Now go with Sarah and wait on the shuttle.” She turned to Sarah, whose freckled face was soaked with sweat. “If we don’t make it in time, you know what to do.”

  Sarah nodded reluctantly. Would she have the stomach to leave Waverly and the rest of them behind, if it came to that?

  “Go,” Waverly said.

  Sarah gathered up the girls, and they took off jogging down the corridor toward the elevators, the older girls carrying the toddlers. It would take them five minutes to get to the shuttle bay if they moved quickly.

  Waverly, Amanda, and Jessica took off toward the elevator bank that would take them to the atmospheric conditioning plant. Amanda pumped the button to the elevator. More shots rang out. “Oh God, I hope Josiah’s okay,” she moaned.

  The elevator doors finally opened with a cheery bell tone that made the violence elsewhere on the ship seem like a dark daydream. Waverly pushed the button that led to atmospheric conditioning, but Jessica punched a button for the administrative levels.

  “What are you doing?” Waverly asked her, suspicious.

  “I know where Anne keeps the key to the container.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Waverly wouldn’t have to take Amanda hostage after all.

  “Also,” Jessica said quietly, “we should get some guns.”

  “Why are you helping me?” Waverly asked, suddenly afraid she’d entered a trap.

  Jessica’s eyes were forlorn and deadly tired. “I used to believe in Anne Mather, but…” Her expression darkened. “Not anymore.”

  “I don’t think any of us can imagine the kind of pressure she’s under…,” Amanda began.

  “I can,” the woman said. “I’ve been working with her for five years.”

  “I’ve known her for forty,” Amanda said quietly.

  “So you know that she murdered Captain Takemara?” the woman challenged.

  Amanda opened her mouth to protest, but Jessica went on. “She all but admitted it to me, one night when I found her drunk in her office. Commander Riley’s suicide seems suspicious, too, but she won’t say anything about it. And remember when the Central Council got food poisoning?”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “Think about it, Amanda. Over the years, how many of Anne’s critics have gotten sick, or had an accident?”

  The elevator seemed to move agonizingly slowly, and when the doors opened, the lector held up a hand. “Wait here. I’ll get the guns.”

  She raced down the corridor toward Mather’s office, leaving Amanda and Waverly alone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so unhappy, Waverly?” Amanda pleaded. “I could have helped you find a better way than this.”

  “Did you know my mom was here the whole time?”

  Amanda’s thin mouth tightened. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then how can you defend Mather? Knowing she’s been holding our families prisoner for so long?”

  “She could have killed them. She didn’t.”

  “So you approve?” Waverly challenged.

  Amanda’s eyes closed, and when she opened them again, she was looking at the floor. Softly she said, “No.”

  Jessica ran back carrying a gun in each hand and a third strapped to her chest. She handed one gun to Waverly and the other to Amanda, who took it as though it were covered with slime. The elevator doors closed.

  “You have the key to their cage?” Waverly asked Jessica.

  Jessica held up a large key chain, selected a silver key in answer, and handed it to Waverly.

  When the elevator doors opened onto atmospheric conditioning, all three women instinctively pointed their guns ahead of them. But there was no one there. The thrum of the air pumps was so deep and loud that Waverly felt it in her chest.

  “Where are they?” she asked Jessica, who pointed down a short corridor. A sign on the wall read: HUMIDITY CONTROL.

  The women crept along, their eyes on every corner, watching for guards. At first Waverly strained to hear human sounds, but her ears were assailed by so many noises—the whirring of fans, the echoes of their footsteps on metal grating, and the air rushing in and out of the ceiling vents—that she resigned herself to searching with only her eyes.

  They reached a large chamber. Up high, on top of the huge metal housings for the air filters, sat a livestock container from the cargo hold. A ladder was propped against the housings, and Waverly vaulted up it before Amanda could hiss, “Slowly!”

  “Look out!” Jessica screamed, and waved her gun at Waverly, who ducked instinctively. A shot rang out. Amanda wailed, and Waverly heard a thud. She saw a guard lying on the floor below, writhing in pain, his gun lying well out of his reach. Jessica kicked it away from him and screamed, “Hurry!”

  Waverly pounded on the metal container with her fists. “Mom!” she cried.

  Faint sounds came from inside the container, then thin fingers reached through the vent. “Waverly?” someone whispered.

  “I’m getting you out,” Waverly said.

  Tears blurred her vision as she ran to the lock at the end of the container. She fumbled with the key until it fit into the keyhole, but the mechanism didn’t budge. She turned it over and tried again.

  “Stop.” The word came from behind her, but she ignored it. She was almost there.

  The sound of a bell split Waverly’s ears, and a dent appeared in the metal right in front of her face. She stared at it, and another dent appeared just near her shoulder.

  “Stop shooting!” Amanda screamed. “For God’s sake, Anne!”

  Bullets. Bullets were flying at her, hitting the metal. Anne Mather and several men were charging toward her from the other end of the room, pausing only to shoot. She ducked and tried the key again, but the lock didn’t move.

  The air crackled with weapons fire.

  “Go!” her mother yelled from inside the container.

  “No, Mom! I can get you out!”

  Her mother’s fingers reached out of the container, and she grabbed them. “Where are the other girls?”

  “Waiting in the shuttle bay!” Waverly screamed in frustration.

  “They’re waiting for you? You have to go, Waverly! Run to them and get off this ship. We’ll find a way off.”

  “I can’t leave you, Mom!” Waverly sobbed. It was all too much. She needed someone to take over, take the girls home. She couldn’t be the one who handled things anymore. “I need you!”

  “Come down from there, Waverly!” Anne Mather shouted. She was closer now, though by the cracking of guns directly below her, Waverly guessed that Amanda and Jessica were keeping Mather and her men at bay. “You can’t do this.”

  Waverly lifted her gun, aimed, and shot at Anne Mather, who ducked just in time. Waverly turned to work at the lock again, but the key stuck.

  Blood sprayed the metal door.

  Her blood.
<
br />   A bullet had winged her arm.

  “They’ll kill you, Waverly! Run!” her mother shouted.

  “Mom!” Waverly cried. Her arm hurt. Her leg hurt. She couldn’t do this anymore.

  “Run!” her mother screamed.

  Finally Waverly gave up.

  She threw the keys inside the container before sliding down the ladder. Bullets whizzed over her head as she ran down the narrow opening between filtration units, then turned toward the port side elevators, which would take her directly to the shuttle bay.

  She paused briefly to look at Amanda and Jessica, who were crouched behind a filtration unit. Amanda kept screaming, “Stop shooting! Have you lost your minds?” She held her gun to her chest, too terrified to use it. Only Jessica was shooting, but that was enough to make Mather and her guards hesitate.

  Amanda waved Waverly away. “When you get through the door, close it and shoot the lock! Go!”

  Waverly stared at her, wanting to say something, if only, “Thank you.” But she couldn’t. So she turned on her heel and bolted through the door, her lungs ready to burst as she ducked into the corridor. She jabbed the button to close the doors behind her, then shot the keypad, hoping that would hold Mather and her guards at least for a little while. Then she ran as fast as she could to the elevators.

  She skidded to a stop.

  She was in a nightmare.

  Standing at the elevator was the guard with the scar, the one who’d killed Samantha. His back was turned to Waverly and he was looking at the other end of the corridor, holding his gun loosely.

  Seeming to sense her, he turned his head.

  Their eyes met.

  He held up a hand as if to ask her, politely, not to shoot him.

  Without thinking, Waverly took aim. Just as her finger found the trigger, he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She pulled the trigger.

  He groaned and fell down.

  Simple. He was standing one moment and slumped against the elevator doors the next, his hand in the cave of his abdomen, which had burst into a show of red. Waverly waited as long as she dared (ten seconds? a minute? eternity?), until his eyes grew dim and the glistening tip of his tongue oozed out of his mouth.

  Only then did she hear Anne Mather and her guards pounding on the door behind her. She heard the screech of metal as the doors were pulled open. They were coming to kill her.

  She ran to the elevator and slapped the button above the dead guard’s shoulder. He was so still. She knew she should take his gun, and she almost did, but she couldn’t bear to touch him.

  The elevator doors opened, and he fell backward, his head bouncing when it hit the metal floor. His teeth clicked, air gurgled out of his throat, and he lay still, his torso inside the elevator, his legs sticking out of it.

  Waverly swallowed a sob. She had to get away. She had to touch him. It.

  She forced herself to push against the body’s shoulders. She could feel the sharp edges of his bones through the skin, and she could smell his open mouth. He already smelled dead. With all her strength, she shoved and pushed and pried him away until she was able to edge him out the door.

  “No! God, Shelby!” Mather wailed through the crack in the door.

  The man I killed was Shelby. That was his name, Waverly thought as she pushed the button for the shuttle bay.

  The elevator doors closed, and she was away.

  But it left a mark: touching a dead man who was dead because of her.

  She threw up in the corner of the elevator, bracing herself against the wall. An acrid smell filled the air, but once she’d vomited, had picked the particles of digested food out of her hair, had straightened up to stand again on her own two feet, she discovered she felt nothing. Not sorrow at having to leave her mother behind. Not grief that Samantha, wonderful, strong Samantha, had been killed. Not pain in her arm, still bleeding. Not regret at having killed a man. Nothing. She felt nothing.

  As the elevator moved through the floors, she heard the waxing and waning sound of gunfire. The violence had spread throughout the ship. She shrank against the back wall of the elevator, praying under her breath.

  When the elevator doors opened, Waverly took off at a dead run, tearing down the corridor, not even pausing to look around corners, whispering, “Please please please,” with every footstep.

  She rounded the corner into the shuttle bay and skidded to a stop.

  Dozens of women were gathered there. They had the girls.

  Waverly held up her gun, pointed it at them, yelled, “Let them go!”

  She would kill them if she had to. She knew now that she could.

  A few women straightened and stared at her blankly. Others loaded boxes of food and large jugs of water into the cargo hold. The little girls kissed hands, hugged legs, then trickled into the shuttle as people waved good-bye. Waverly crept toward the shuttle, her gun at the ready.

  “You don’t need that gun,” someone said.

  It was the short, florid woman who had thanked her during the services. She held up a hand. “Waverly, we wanted to say good-bye while the men hold off the guards. And we got you some food and water, enough for a couple months. You might be out there a while.”

  As she said this, the women finished loading the supplies and closed the door to the cargo bay.

  “We wish you would stay,” the woman added. “It’s not safe what you’re doing.”

  “We’re leaving,” Waverly said.

  “I know that,” the woman replied sadly. But she lifted her hands above her head and cried, “Peace be upon you!”

  “Peace be upon you!” echoed the others.

  Waverly edged toward the shuttle and backed up the ramp, her hard eyes fixed on the crowd. They weren’t afraid of her, they were afraid for her, she realized.

  “Stop them!” Anne Mather screeched, advancing on her with eight armed guards. “Waverly, you’ll never survive!”

  Inside the shuttle, Waverly slammed the control button to raise the ramp.

  She sprinted into the cockpit, watching through the glass as chaos broke out in the bay. A large man shot at the guards, who scattered, firing back when they dared. Mather was screaming, her face purple with rage, hair hanging in her eyes, her embroidered mantle hanging crooked on her shoulders. All her composure was gone, and now she seemed like an animal.

  Waverly fired the engines and fixed her eyes on the air lock, her heart in her mouth. She pressed the button on the control panel in front of her marked “Air Lock,” but the doors didn’t open. The monitor in front of her flashed a command: “Enter code to unlock.”

  Code? She didn’t have a code!

  Someone darted toward the air lock controls.

  It was Felicity. She had gotten off the shuttle and was hitting the keypad for the air lock. “What are you doing?” Waverly shouted.

  A blond woman wrapped her arms around Felicity’s shoulders and whispered into her ear as Felicity pressed the keypad buttons until the air lock opened. They both turned and waved good-bye to Waverly.

  Waverly nodded at her friend, knowing they might never see each other again. She mouthed, “Thank you.”

  Felicity smiled at Waverly for the first time in a very long while.

  Waverly started up the engines, released the tethers, and felt the shuttle lift off the floor of the bay. With trembling hands she guided it toward the air lock doorway, which was open now. Trying to remember the simulations she’d practiced with Kieran, she eased the shuttle forward into the chamber. With a hiss of hydraulics, the air lock doors closed behind them, and the outer doors opened onto the endlessness of deep space. Waverly pushed the joystick.

  They were out.

  She punched the engine thrusters, and the ship kicked forward, slamming her against her seat. On the monitor, the New Horizon faded away into the black night sky.

  “Where are the rest of them?” Sarah asked from the copilot seat.

  Waverly started. Had she been
there all along?

  Sarah’s face was white behind her freckles, and her voice sounded remote, as though it were being piped in from another room. “Where are our parents?”

  Waverly’s mouth became a tight, straight line.

  “Waverly?”

  PART FIVE

  METAMORPHOSIS

  A leader is a dealer in hope.

  —Napoléon Bonaparte

  A PALE THREAD

  How many hours—days—had Kieran been lying on this cot in the brig, staring at the ceiling? They kept the lights on round the clock, so he had no idea how much time had passed. Judging from his hunger, it had been a very long time.

  Before this, when everything was normal and Waverly was safe and he lived with his parents, Kieran had never been hungry. He knew that now. He’d called that nagging emptiness in his gut hunger, back when he could eat whenever he wanted, whatever he wanted. Corn on the cob. That had been his favorite. He liked a little walnut oil on it, just a little, and just barely boiled, only enough to make it hot. So crunchy and sweet. Or navy beans, dripping in olive oil, with parsley and garlic. Chicken, roasted with tarragon and rosemary, the way it would smell coming from his mother’s kitchen. He’d come home from classes, and the aroma of her cooking would stir his stomach, and he had called that hunger. But what he’d felt then was not hunger.

  Hunger was this agony Kieran felt in his joints. It made his head ache and his ear twitch at every sound. It made his teeth soft and loose in his gums, as though they might fall out from disuse. And it made him weak. Kieran felt as though each arm weighed one hundred pounds. Lifting himself upright took every ounce of his strength. Getting up from his cot and walking two steps to the sink for water took an hour of planning, cheering himself on.

  The only other thing he could feel, besides his hunger, was his rage. He’d saved their parents, risked his life for them, and they were letting him die.

  He hated them all.

  “You don’t look so good,” someone said.

  He had forgotten there was someone on the other side of the bars. Either Sealy Arndt or Max Brent, Seth’s cronies, had been guarding him constantly. It was Max this time.