Flame: A Sky Chasers Novel

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  Jacob opened the door a crack and peeked out. “All’s clear,” he said. He picked up a black jacket and threw it to Ginny, who caught it with one hand. She handed her knife to Jacob, who trained it on Kieran and Serafina while she slipped the jacket on and fitted the hood over her head. Next she picked up a pillow from her bedroll and stuffed it under her shirt so that she looked pregnant. To the surveillance cameras, she would look like half the women on board.

  Ginny stood, waving her knife at Kieran to stand up, too.

  “At Mather’s trial,” Ginny said, “you’re her chief witness, isn’t that right?”

  Kieran gaped at her.

  “We’d better get you there,” Ginny said as she tugged at the rope that bound his wrists. To Kieran’s surprise, he felt the rope loosen, and suddenly his hands were free. “Let’s go.”

  “Let Serafina go first,” Kieran said as he massaged his wrists, which were deeply grooved by the rope.

  Ginny laughed at him. “You’re funny.”

  “I mean it. I’m not going anywhere until she’s free.”

  “Get going.” Ginny pressed her knife into his ribs and he took half a step forward. “Or I’ll kill her in front of you.”

  Kieran recognized the powerlessness of his situation. There was nothing he could do but look back at Serafina, who watched him go, stretching her neck after him, pleading silently not to be left alone.

  “Wait here,” Ginny said to Kieran, as though she’d just remembered something. She went back to her husband, and the two of them stood over the cowering little girl, having a vicious whispered conversation. Kieran couldn’t make out the words; he could only look at Serafina, who watched the two adults talking over her, shivering with fear. Ginny spat a final command at her husband and handed him something that Kieran couldn’t see. Jacob sat down on a box, nudging at Serafina’s leg with his boot, pushing her body aside to make room for his feet, as though that sweet little girl were nothing more than a pile of garbage.

  Ginny poked Kieran in the back with her knife, pushing him out the door. Hating himself for leaving Serafina alone with that lunatic, Kieran walked down the corridor slowly, conscious only of the woman behind him and the knife she held. Ahead he could hear the surreal sounds of playing children, and laughter.

  “Please,” he said as they approached a door. It hung ajar, and he could see a woman sitting on a stool at the head of a classroom holding up an illustrated edition of the Holy Book. Surrounded by two dozen little kids from the Empyrean, she told the story of Noah and the flood. That had always been Kieran’s favorite as a child because he imagined the Empyrean was like the Ark. The kids sat in a circle around her, rapt, their little faces lifted toward her. They were round and pudgy and dear to him, infinitely dear.

  “See that basket?” Ginny said. She pushed up behind him; he could feel her hard little breasts pressing into his side, and his skin crawled. He saw a wicker basket full of fruit sitting on the teacher’s desk. “It’s full of explosives.”

  “No!” he began, but she pushed the tip of her knife into his ribs, and he quieted.

  “Your little friends will survive the day if you go to the trial, get to Anne Mather, and tell her you were never kidnapped. You just needed some time alone to think about your testimony, so you went to the forests. You didn’t even know they were looking for you. You get on that witness stand in front of everyone and these little ones will be okay.”

  “You think using me to kill Anne Mather will get you what you want?” Kieran’s legs went weak and he almost fell down. Was this real? Was he going to die today?

  “Anne Mather dead is what I want,” the little woman said.

  “I could just run,” Kieran said.

  “You wouldn’t get more than two steps before I kill everyone around you, and these little ones.”

  Kieran looked into her eyes—eyes that showed no feeling, no compassion, and no concern for the future. There was no reasoning with her.

  “The trial is in the corn granary,” she spat. “Get going.” She spun on her heel and jogged off without a glance back.

  For long moments Kieran stood in the hallway outside the classroom listening to the sweet, soft little voices. He’d known each of them since their birth, and if anything happened to them, he’d never forgive himself. No. There was nothing to do but follow that hateful woman’s orders.

  He could hardly feel his feet hit the floor as he walked along the corridors. With each turn, the sound of a large crowd grew, until finally he reached the entrance to the granaries, full of people waiting to be searched for weapons. He took his place in line, hoping his terror didn’t show on his face.

  One of the guards searching people noticed him with a start. “What are you doing here?” he said to Kieran.

  “I’m ready for my testimony,” Kieran said breathlessly. Not ten feet away two women were talking and laughing together. One was hugely pregnant, and the other held a tiny baby to her breast. If Ginny blew him up now, they’d all die. It’s a nightmare. I’m in a nightmare.

  The guard lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips and said, “Kieran Alden is at the door.”

  A man’s deep voice sounded over the speaker. “I’ll be right there.”

  The guard motioned Kieran over to the side to wait. Kieran leaned against the wall, concentrating on the cool metal against his back, surrounded by pregnant women and old men and tiny babies. They talked in whispers, speculating about the trial, sharing stories about their babies, comparing notes about births and pregnancies, men massaging the backs of their wives, women hooking arms with their husbands. None of them knew they stood next to a bomb.

  And Felicity.

  She was coming toward him, holding hands with her fiancé. Just as she lifted her gaze to his, Mather’s barrel-chested guard with the dove insignia on his shoulder stepped in front of Kieran. “How are you here?” the man asked him, one eye narrowed.

  “I’ve been hanging out in the forests,” Kieran said. To his own ears he sounded like he was reciting from a script. “I needed to be alone to prepare for my testimony.”

  “You had dozens of people searching,” the man said angrily. “We thought you’d been kidnapped!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kieran mumbled. There’s a bomb inside me, Kieran wanted to tell him. They made me swallow a bomb.

  The man waved a sophisticated detection device over Kieran’s body and patted him down manually. Finally he lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips. “Pastor. He’s clean.”

  “Bring him to me,” Mather said.

  “Let’s go,” the guard said and took hold of Kieran’s elbow.

  He pulled Kieran through the entrance and down the aisle toward the stage. The music was already playing, and Kieran had to weave through crowds of people. When he passed by a group of Empyrean kids, one of them called out, “Kieran! Give Mather hell!” He could only wave and walk by, but he wanted to scream, send them all running. He felt as though his personality were splitting down the middle as the guard pulled him up the steps to where Anne Mather sat on a chair. Behind her, up on a dais, sat six old people who Kieran assumed were the Central Council. The old doctor had his knobby hands on his knees, and he regarded Kieran with a sideways stare.

  “Kieran,” Mather said sternly, “where have you been?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Kieran looked behind him. People were settling into their seats. The front row was full of small babies, and two rows behind them sat the Peters boys with the stern couple who had adopted them. One of them raised a hand to Kieran. Run! Kieran wanted to warn them. Please, please, please.

  The little boy smiled.

  “I remind you that Waverly is still missing, Kieran, and I need to stay out of the brig if I’m going to help you find her,” Mather said.

  Kieran nodded, trying to hide his confusion. Jared had saved her, so where was she?

  To the guard standing next to Kieran, Mather barked, “Take him to the witness box. He’s first on the roll.”

  A bead
of sweat tumbled down Kieran’s forehead and he batted it away as a guard led him to a dais off to the side. He sat in a tall chair behind a glossy black podium and waited for his life to end.

  RUN

  Waverly sprinted up dozens of flights, spurred by terror. She gripped Jared’s com unit in the palm of her hand, afraid to drop it and send it falling down the immense stairwell to shatter into a thousand pieces. When she couldn’t run anymore, she sat on a stair halfway between two levels, panting, when something caught her eye, and she looked above her.

  A camera. There were cameras in the stairwells now. How had she forgotten that?

  With shaking fingers, she flicked at the darkened com screen and it blinked to life, showing only two words: Enter Passcode.

  Mynx … with some numbers. That’s what he’d entered. He’d probably never have let her see him typing it if he hadn’t been planning to kill her. Jared’s thumb had barely moved over the number keys, she remembered, and she’d been sure that 1 had been the first and third digit. She shuddered and typed in mynx111. Nothing. She tried mynx11. Words blinked onto the screen: Final try before shutdown.

  A door banged open on the landing above her. “Waverly,” a man called. She looked up through the metal grating of the stairs and saw the dirty black soles of two feet, then a second pair, then two more. Four men. “Come with us now and we can protect you.”

  She started down the stairs but saw another two men on the landing below her. To her left was a doorway. The sign read LEVEL 36, but she was too scared to remember where it led.

  She looked at the com unit in her hand. One more try.

  As the men hemmed her in, she typed mynx121.

  The com unit blinked to life, and she cried out with relief. In the upper right-hand corner of the screen was a single button: Blackout. She enabled the application and, with a boom, the lights in the stairwell went out. She was surrounded by thick, impenetrable blackness.

  “What the—” said a man above her. She heard the pounding of a half dozen males rushing toward her. Frantically she felt for the doorknob and darted through the door, running. The com unit gave her just enough light to see by, and she pointed it at the floor, hoping the faint gleam wouldn’t register on surveillance. She turned at the first corner she came to and ran without a thought where she was going.

  I need to get off this level, she realized. If she stayed here, they’d be able to tighten a ring of men around her until they had her trapped. She turned the corner and headed for the central stairwell, hoping they didn’t already have searchers there.

  She heard the murmur of alarmed voices ahead of her; there must be people waiting outside the elevator, just around the corner. She pocketed the com unit and the corridor was plunged in thick darkness.

  “Another blackout!” a woman was saying. A small child whimpered, and she whispered, “Hush, sweetheart.”

  “God, I hope they figure out what’s going wrong,” said another, older-sounding woman.

  “The ship is over forty years old,” said a man. “Things are bound to go wrong.”

  Waverly slowed down. It’s so dark, I don’t need to hide, she realized. I just need to be quiet. She held her breath and eased around the corner. Their voices were close now.

  “Some people think that the stowaway is doing these blackouts,” said the younger woman.

  “They caught him,” the man said. “The Pauleys are still on the loose.”

  “Ugh. That man is too dim-witted to come up with something like this,” said the older woman. “It couldn’t be them.”

  “Ginny isn’t stupid,” said the younger woman. “Crazy, but not stupid.”

  Waverly crept by them, within feet of where they stood. Her breath was shallow and slow, and she felt light-headed, but she didn’t dare breathe deeper. She ought to be across the corridor by now. She held out two fingers in front of her, waiting to bump into the wall, but it didn’t appear.

  I’m moving diagonally. She turned a little farther to her right and her fingers touched the wall. She found the edge of the door and slowly drew her hand over the bumpy metal until she found the doorknob. She eased the door open, holding her breath, willing the hinge not to whine, and slipped through. She slithered down the stairwell, one stair at a time, gripping the outer railing. There was no sound in the blackness. She was free.

  She went downstairs until she could smell the rich dampness of the tropics bay and entered the corridor, which was thankfully dark. When she reached a doorway to the rain forest, she slid into it, pausing to listen. Not a sound. There was no one around. She’d escaped!

  She tucked herself into what smelled like a nest of palms, pulled out the com unit, and huddled over it, reasonably sure that she was invisible. She reentered the password and it blinked on.

  Now let’s see what this thing can do. She bit her lip and got to work.

  PART FOUR

  GOOD-BYES

  Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.

  —Albert Einstein

  BUDDY

  When Seth awoke, he was alone. He could still see the indentation of Waverly’s head in the pillow, so he knew he hadn’t dreamed it. He blinked. His eyes felt tacky and dry, and so did his mouth. He lifted a finger and croaked, “Hello?” He saw the shadowy shape of the nurse stand up and walk over to him.

  “Waverly?” he asked.

  “She’ll be back,” she said softly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Thirsty,” he managed to say.

  She picked up a plastic tumbler from his bedside table and lifted his head with a gentle hand at the nape of his neck. The water was cool and soothing, and he gulped down the entire tumbler. “More?” he whispered.

  She gave him two more tumblers full, and the more he drank the better he felt. Finally, when she set his head back on his pillow, he could look around. He was hooked up to an IV that snaked into a vein near his elbow. He looked for his other arm to check for an IV and remembered that it wasn’t there.

  “Your fever is really high,” the nurse said, then grunted once and slumped over.

  Seth stared at her, waiting for her to lift her head back up, but she didn’t move. “Hello?” he asked.

  “Hi!” called someone from behind her. A tall figure stood in the front doorway. Seth blinked. What he was seeing couldn’t be real: Jake Pauley with a grin on his face.

  The nurse toppled out of her chair, drooping forward and onto the floor in a heap. Seth saw the hilt of a knife jutting from her back and a growing stain of blood spreading over the thin fabric of her shirt.

  “What did you do?” Seth shrieked.

  “She wasn’t a friend,” Jake said with a shrug as he started across the room. “I knew Thomas would get you here!”

  Seth looked around for help, but the only other person in the room was an emaciated-looking man lying on his back, the only sign of life a slight rise and fall of his chest. Seth tried to sit up, but he felt lopsided, off balance, and so very weak.

  Jake leaned over Seth, studying his face. “You look like shit.”

  “What are you doing here?” Seth finally asked him, his eyes bugging in their sockets. He drew away from Jake until he felt the safety railing pressing painfully into what was left of his shoulder.

  Jake smiled, showing a speck of clay-white food between his incisors. “I’m busting you out of here.”

  “No!” Seth said, infuriated. “I can’t walk! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  “Aw!” Jake settled himself into the chair vacated by the nurse, resting his feet on Seth’s mattress to avoid touching her body. “You’re just mad because I left you in the brig. That wasn’t personal.”

  Seth stared at the man. He’d always known Jacob Pauley was insane, but his total lack of concern for the woman he’d wounded or killed, his cheerful demeanor … He was worse than crazy.

  “We better get you out of here,” Jake said, looking around the room. When he spotted the wheelchair next to the old man’s
bed, he bounded toward it. “Let’s get that tube out of your arm,” Jake said as he wheeled the chair even with Seth’s bed. Without warning, he yanked the IV out of Seth’s vein. “Put your arm around my neck.”

  “Why did you kill her?” Seth asked through sudden tears. That nurse had been kind to him. She’d saved his life.

  Jake lifted Seth out of bed, groaning with the weight. Seth felt a sickening dizziness, then suddenly he was upright, sitting in the wheelchair, gripping the arm with his good hand, leaning far to the left. “I need that IV,” he said with a thready voice.

  “We’ll get you some meds soon. I just want you to see this.”

  “See what?”

  “It’s a surprise!” Jake said and wheeled Seth out the door.

  The corridor was quiet, and Seth wondered how Jake could be walking out in the open so fearlessly. From his pocket the man pulled a small object that looked like a pen and pointed it at the surveillance camera as they passed by. Jake noticed him looking and explained, “It’s a laser. It whites out our image. Ginny thought of it.”

  Seth wasn’t well enough to be sitting upright. His arm—the missing one—felt suddenly enormous, as though it had swollen to the size of an elephant’s leg, and he tried to readjust it, but that only caused an agonizing ache in the stump.

  Jake pressed the elevator button without fear, and when the doors opened, he hummed a little tune as he pushed Seth through.

  “I felt bad about leaving you behind on the Empyrean. I really did,” Jake said, but there was no depth to the statement, as though he knew he should feel guilty and so he tried to. “But I’m here now, buddy.”

  Buddy. Seth was filled with such hopelessness, he let the man say what he wanted, take him where he wanted. He only half believed this was really happening. It’s a fevered dream, he told himself. Wake up.

  The elevator bell rang, the doors opened, and Jake wheeled him down the corridor toward some closed double doors. The corridor smelled of corn pollen. We must be outside a granary, Seth thought distantly. A man was lying facedown on the floor with a knife sticking out of his back. Seth’s stomach turned.