Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  And that was located in the observatory.

  The more Seth thought about it, the more certain he became: Using the forward array was the only way the terrorist could be communicating in secret with the other ship. There was no other way. The terrorist could probably spend all day in the observatory, waiting for messages, without ever being discovered.

  And Waverly was headed there right now.

  Seth was suddenly filled with a horrible feeling of dread. He had to get to the observatory right now.

  After listening at the outer stairwell door for sentries, he jogged up several flights until he reached the prow. His breath came hard, and it made his ribs ache awfully, but the only thing he cared about was making sure Waverly was safe. The corridor was quiet, and Seth was stealthy as he tiptoed to the observatory door.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was too late.

  “Don’t be paranoid,” he said under his breath.

  He peeked his head into the dark room. He heard nothing, saw only the rows of theater seats arranged in a semicircle, pointed toward the domed glass that formed the walls of the room. How ridiculous of the engineers back on Earth to think this room would see any real use! The monotony of the view made people avoid looking out portholes, because it reminded them too much of how far they were from Earth and its constantly changing sky. Instead, the crew turned their eyes inward, toward the plants and animals, reminders of a planet they’d left behind decades ago that they’d never see again.

  Seth tucked himself behind a row of seats and watched the door. The room smelled musty, and the air had the close, dead quality that comes from being shut up for too long. Probably Kieran was conserving power by only running ventilation to areas of the ship seeing heavy use, not a bad idea considering the engines had recently been at the point of meltdown. In fact, much as he hated to admit it, Kieran wasn’t doing that bad a job.…

  Seth froze. He heard something. Did he hear it? Or did he sense it? Something behind him, close. Maybe the faint stir of air exhaled. Maybe the smallest whiff of another body.

  He turned half a degree before an iron arm clamped around his neck.

  “I don’t know how you keep finding me, you little shit,” snarled a hoarse voice. Seth tried to pull the arm away from his throat, but the man’s strength was brutish. He wedged Seth’s neck into the crook of his elbow, closing his windpipe. Seth could feel the blood supply to his brain being squeezed off, and he blinked his eyes against red spots. “This time I’m going to have to kill you,” the voice said softly, caressingly. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s not personal.”

  I’m going to die, Seth thought distantly. His face felt swollen with blood, and his throat was clamped shut. He tried to pull the man’s arm away from his windpipe, his legs twisting underneath him. But already he felt his mind growing small, his limbs weak, as the blood supply to his brain trickled to a stop.

  Then he heard the click of the door latch.

  Waverly.

  With his last bit of strength, Seth twisted his body away from the door so the man wouldn’t see her. He wrapped his hands around the meaty arm to relieve some of the pressure on his throat and drove all his weight downward, pulling the man into a stooped position.

  Run, he thought at her as he felt petals of nothingness blooming inside his skull. Please run away.

  He heard the sickening thunk of metal meeting bone, and the hold on his neck loosened.

  “You little bitch,” he heard the man growl. “You killed Shelby.”

  Seth felt himself falling, and he was on the floor, unable to move or open his eyes. He heard Waverly yelp with surprise, and then he heard her gurgling.

  He’s strangling her.

  He thought it like he might think of a scientific fact. Nothing travels faster than light, and Waverly is dying.

  I’m on my hands and knees, he realized. He was wobbling there as spots covered the dark room. He took a ragged breath through a badly swollen throat and somehow managed to get one foot underneath him, then the other. When he stood, the room tilted, but he caught himself on the back of a seat and staggered toward the sounds of Waverly being choked.

  On the floor in front of his left foot was a heavy wrench, the kind used for loosening the bolts on a tractor tire. From Waverly’s tool belt, he decided. There it was, the belt, fastened around her tiny writhing waist, screws and bolts spilling out of it as her legs twisted helplessly on the floor. The man’s bulk blocked her face as he knelt over her, leaning his weight into his hold on her neck.

  Rage rose in Seth, and he forgot about the weakness in his limbs and the way the room twirled. He picked up the wrench, took two steps toward the man, and swung with all his strength.

  The tip of the wrench peeled a flap of skin off the man’s skull, and he turned around, surprised.

  Never before had Seth seen features twisted in such an ugly way. The man’s nose was wrinkled, his eyes red-bleary in the dim light, his teeth were gnashing, and spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth. Seth swung the wrench again, but the man leaned away, and Seth missed. He felt the wrench being pulled from his weak fingers.

  The man swung back, grimacing, holding the wrench high above his head. If that wrench met Seth’s skull, he would be killed. He took a step back, and another, until he felt Waverly’s warm legs under his feet, and he sank down on top of her, covering her face with his hands. She’s dead, he thought for one terrifying instant.

  Nothing had ever felt more beautiful to him than when her breath warmed his fingers.

  He waited for the blow, but it didn’t come. Instead he heard a cry of surprise, and when he looked behind him, he saw a massively humpbacked creature wrestling with itself. The man screamed and dropped the wrench, pulling a now-bloody hand to cradle it against his body. The man turned slightly so Seth could see his back, and he knew what he was looking at:

  A tiny boy was fastened to the man, his legs wrapped around the waist, spindly arms around the muscular neck, clinging for dear life as the man clawed at his back with his good hand. The boy screamed bloody murder and said in words barely recognizable, “You killed my mom! You people killed my mom!”

  “Seth,” he heard whispered. He looked down to find Waverly looking at him, gasping. “Help him,” she managed to say before fighting for another breath.

  Seth took up the wrench again and stood up shakily, just as the man backed the little boy into the cold glass of the dome, hitting hard. The boy’s head slammed into the glass, and he groaned once, then fell limp onto the metal floor. The man looked down at him in astonishment and had just turned back around when Seth swung with every ounce of strength he had left. The wrench made solid contact with the brute’s temple, and he looked at Seth with stunned, watery eyes.

  The wrench vibrated in Seth’s hand like the clacker of a bell.

  The man collapsed first to his knees, his eyes still open but vacant, a line of drool rolling down his chin. Then he fell facedown onto the floor and lay there, twitching.

  Seth was on his knees again, he realized, though he didn’t know when he dropped the wrench and crawled to the com system at the back of the room. The button was four feet off the ground, so far away he didn’t know how he could reach it. He lifted his right arm despite its leaden weight and found the emergency call button with the flat of his hand. The screen flickered to life, and Seth saw Sarek Hassan’s shocked face staring at him.

  “Help,” Seth croaked through his swelling throat.

  He heard Sarek’s voice barking orders at someone. Help was coming. He wanted to crawl back to Waverly, but there were too many red spots, and she was so far away. So he lay on his side, closed his eyes, and waited for them to come.

  PART THREE

  JUSTICE

  Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

  —Sir Francis Bacon

  RECOVERY

  Kieran’s headache seemed too huge to contain in a single skull. Th
e pain was throbbing outward from the infirmary and into the black emptiness beyond the porthole above the head of his bed. A little girl with a minor cut on her finger wandered in and showed it to one of Tobin’s helpers, who took her to one of the curtained areas to clean it for her. As she passed by the foot of Kieran’s bed, she smiled shyly. Once again Kieran questioned why the designers thought to put most of the infirmary beds in the large main room, facing the door, in full view of anyone who might come in. It was humiliating to be so sick in such a public place.

  “Come on, tough guy. Ready for some morphine?” Tobin Ames asked again, a callused hand on his wrist, taking his pulse.

  “Go ahead.” Kieran finally nodded, and watched as Tobin expertly prepared a hypodermic and plunged it into the vein in Kieran’s elbow. The pain ebbed away, floated out through the hull of the ship, where it hovered just outside the porthole, watching Kieran, waiting for the morphine to trickle away so that it could come back.

  “I don’t know why you insisted on waiting,” Tobin said, shaking his head.

  “Morphine seems too strong for a headache.”

  “Depends on the headache.”

  “How can I tell how bad the pain is unless I let the morphine run out?” Kieran said groggily. He hated the morphine almost as much as he hated the pain. Morphine deadened his mind, unsettled his stomach, made him feel confused and weak. It gave him horrible dreams of Waverly cackling at him, Sarah poking him with a long accusing finger, or, worst of all, being trapped in an air lock about to be blown out by Seth Ardvale, who grinned at him through the porthole, his thumb poised over the button. Morphine was better than agony, but just barely.

  “You got a pretty nasty dose of that gas, I think,” Tobin said. “Either that or you’re more susceptible to it than the other kids.”

  “How are all the others?” Kieran said, waving away Tobin’s suggestion that he was fragile. I am, though, he thought. I used to be so much stronger, and now I’m weak. Because Seth Ardvale starved me.

  “Mostly over it.” Tobin pointed to his left with his thumb at Arthur, in the next bed over. “You and he are the sickest ones.”

  Kieran turned to Arthur, who was sipping at a bowl of soup. Arthur saw him looking and nodded.

  “Is your voice back?” Kieran asked.

  Arthur shook his head.

  “That gas is hell on vocal cords,” Tobin said. He shuffled around Kieran’s bed in that slow gait of his, his head hunched down between his shoulders in a permanent shrug. “All I can do is give Arthur steroids and hope his voice comes back.”

  “How do you know to do that?” Kieran asked him.

  “How do I know to do anything? I read the textbooks. I watch the training videos.”

  “Must be awful not being able to talk,” Kieran said to Arthur.

  The boy shrugged with an ironic roll of his eyes, as though Arthur considered his voice no great loss since he was quiet most of the time anyway.

  Kieran lay back. Now that the pain was out of him, he could turn his mind to other things. Waverly was probably doing everything she could to undermine him while he was laid up. That was the real reason he’d wanted to try going off the morphine, to see if he could function if he left the infirmary. If he stayed here as long as Tobin wanted him to, Waverly would have plenty of time to consolidate her power.

  She was probably up to something right now.

  He threw his covers aside and stood up from his bed, swaying on his feet. He had one hand gripped on the bed railing as he took a tentative step toward the infirmary door.

  “Whoa, what do you think you’re doing?” Tobin rushed at him, a clipboard in his hand. “Get back in bed.”

  “I just need to make a quick trip to Central Command.”

  “Sarek has everything under control.” Tobin tried to push Kieran back onto the mattress, but Kieran resisted him.

  “I’m Captain of this ship,” Kieran said, blinking. The room seemed to be changing color, from green to blue to red to yellow, flicking through the hues like an alarm light.

  “The Captain is supposed to follow doctor’s orders,” Tobin said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was about to say more, but suddenly an alarm sounded in his office, signifying some kind of emergency, and he ran off to answer it.

  Something was going on. Kieran hobbled toward the door, his steps uneven. Only a few of the gas victims remained, mostly younger children who were still asthmatic from the attack. He waved at one little girl, who was sucking on the ear of her stuffed bear as she stared at him. He probably looked drunk to her, but he kept his feet under him, and he walked out the door with as much dignity as he could muster.

  He got off the elevator without remembering how he’d ever gotten on it. The hallway to Central Command seemed to pulsate, growing wider then narrower. He had his eyes on the doorway for an hour, it seemed, before he finally reached it. He heard the whir of the video camera checking his face, and then the sound of a bell when the door opened for him.

  “Let me know when you get to the infirmary,” Sarek was barking into his microphone, then he switched channels. “Harvey! Have you gotten to the brig yet?”

  “Almost there,” came Harvey’s breathless voice. “He’s heavy!”

  “I’ll send a medical team down. But I want him tied up before you let anyone near him.” Sarek looked up and, when he saw Kieran, waved him over excitedly.

  “What’s going on?” Kieran asked. He looked out the portholes, and sure enough, his headache had followed him here. It hovered just outside, pulsing.

  “Waverly and Seth caught the terrorist!” Sarek said.

  “What? Waverly and Seth?” Kieran asked. He swooned for a second and almost fell, but a chair appeared behind him. He looked up to see Matt Allbright standing over him, hands on the back of the chair. He nodded curtly at Kieran.

  “He beat them pretty badly,” Matt said. Kieran was looking up the boy’s nose, at his nostril hairs, which quivered as he spoke. “And that little kid, Philip Grieg.”

  “He’s unconscious,” Sarek put in, one hand poised over the earpiece of his headset. “Waverly and Seth are in and out.”

  “They weren’t in the infirmary just now,” Kieran said. Or were they? The morphine had made his mind fuzzier than he thought.

  “They’re just getting there.” Sarek bent over his com station when Harvey’s voice came back on. “Yes! He’s there? Okay, I’ll let Tobin know.”

  Sarek paged the infirmary, and Tobin answered with, “What? I’ve got my hands full!”

  “I need a medic sent to the brig,” Sarek said.

  “The terrorist waits!” Tobin yelled. “I’ve got three of our own here, badly hurt.”

  Kieran must have just missed them. He sat in his chair, dazed. Seth and Waverly, his two greatest enemies, found the terrorist. They’ll be big heroes now.

  I’m going to look like a fool.

  “It all happened just a few minutes ago,” Sarek said excitedly. “I don’t know how or why, but Waverly and Seth came across the guy in the observatory.”

  “The observatory,” Kieran said quietly. He used to take Waverly there for dates. They’d huddle under a blanket, looking at stars, kissing. Now she was meeting Seth there. “What were they doing?”

  “Looking for the terrorist, I think.”

  “No,” Kieran said, slicing a hand through the air. “They happened on him by accident.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarek said, confused.

  “Seth and Waverly were working together,” Kieran said. His voice was wispy thin. “They were meeting in the observatory to bring me down, don’t you see? The election was Seth’s idea. He’s controlling Waverly. They found the terrorist by chance.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” said Matt slowly. “But—”

  “Not possible,” Kieran said with a sluggish tongue. “That’s what happened. I know for sure.”

  “How do you know?” Sarek said.

  “It’s just the way things are,” Kiera
n said. He shook his head to clear it and almost fell off his chair.

  “You know, boss, I don’t think you’re okay to be here,” said Matt’s floating head, which was drifting over Kieran. “I think you’re still sick.”

  “You all want to bring me down,” Kieran said, then took in a sharp breath. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Take him back to the infirmary,” Sarek said to Matt.

  “Don’t talk about me. I’m not a child,” Kieran said, but he felt himself being wheeled down the hallway. He wasn’t sure he was sitting or lying down, because sometimes he could see the ceiling and sometimes he could see ahead of him.

  When Matt wheeled him into the infirmary, he entered a scene of chaos.

  Waverly was lying on the bed right next to his own, and on the other side of Waverly was Seth. Both of them had their eyes closed. Horrible purple bruises covered their throats, and both were taking labored, staccato breaths. Oxygen tubes snaked from tanks by their beds up to their nostrils. Waverly was so pale.

  From the adjoining room came a burst of frantic voices. Tobin and two other boys were leaning over a bed, blocking Kieran’s view of the patient. All he could see was a pair of small feet shuddering and quaking. “Who is that?” Kieran asked.

  “Philip Grieg,” someone whispered. He turned to see Waverly looking at him through sickeningly bloodshot eyes. “He saved our lives,” she said.

  “Take me to him,” Kieran said, and Matt obediently wheeled him to the room. Kieran got out of his chair and, leaning on the wall, moved along the back of the small private room until he could see Philip’s face.

  The little boy’s left eye was swelling out of its socket. He was foaming at the mouth, and his limbs were trembling and jerking. Dried blood crusted his nostrils, and hideous moans and growls came from his throat. He sounded monstrous.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kieran shouted. He was already scared, but his blood chilled when he saw Tobin Ames, this competent boy who had been acting as ship’s doctor, look up at him with a tear-streaked face.