The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  The sound of an unlatching door rang in her ears, terrifying Mary and urgently forcing her to flee. She took one step toward the cabin’s entrance as the witch started to open the door, but found she couldn’t move because her fingertips were still attached to the handle. They tugged back at her, and she turned to them in horror. It was a trap, and she had fallen into it. Frantically, she grabbed her wrist and tried to pull herself away, feeling a searing pain in the skin affixed to the sticky metal.

  “I knew someone would come, eventually,” the old woman gargled through the open doorway to her room.

  Using a cane, she slowly hobbled toward Mary and the cabin’s main room. Unsure of what she would do or what would happen, Mary only knew she had to get away. It had all gone horribly wrong, and their chance at escape would be ruined. In this moment, she felt like she had just let Will’s life slip away, and she was all the more distraught for it.

  “Please, stay back!” Mary yelped, feeling tempted to claw at her own fingers but fearing she would only become more entrenched in the trap. How long would it take for the guards to come? She had to get out now.

  “You can never leave here. I’ll always be watching,” the witch imparted, a cold crackle in her voice. She inched ever closer, her cane knocking against the ground with every step. The woman was so old, had one eye, and could barely walk, and yet her wrinkled scowl told Mary she was not afraid to confront her prey.

  “It’s not right to keep us!” Mary argued feebly, still tugging at her fixed fingertips.

  “For believers, it’s an honor. The rest will leave in time,” she sneered darkly.

  Her meaning became all too obvious as she steadied herself and raised her cane high. It burst into a rainbow of swirling, speckled dots, infused with the wheelman’s power. Mary’s eyes grew wide at the teeming glow and she felt the cold, raw fear strike every bone from her head to her toes.

  The witch swung her weapon and Mary ducked, howling as she felt her fingertips tear away from the handle. In a second she was through the door, and just moments later she had started up the hill, never daring to look back. By the time she made it back to the bunkhouses, she was in tears and her bloody fingertips dripped onto the ground.

  Will and Roselyn raced from their hiding spots at the first sight of her racked and torn figure. They wrapped her fingers against her shirt to stop the bleeding, even though it’d only hurt more.

  “She was waiting for me,” Mary sniffled. “There’s nowhere to go. I’m so sorry.”

  “You mean we can’t go?” Will asked, still flabbergasted even though the answer couldn’t have been clearer. “I can’t be here tomorrow. We have to go!”

  “I know!” Mary sobbed, trying to keep her voice down. She couldn’t think straight enough to tell if anyone was around. They gravitated closer to a tree, unconsciously avoiding being out in plain sight.

  “Let’s just…‌let’s just go now. We might still have a head start,” he said, taking his first step down the hill, but Roselyn put her hand on his shoulder. He turned back and she shook her head adamantly. She motioned with her hand like she was drawing.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Will said, shaking his head.

  Roselyn put her hands together in prayer and then her hands followed her eyesight. Then she made the drawing motion again.

  “What does everyone watch she could draw on?” Mary guessed, calming down.

  “The statue during prayers. She could distract the whole camp,” he huffed, and Roselyn nodded violently.

  “Can you make it to prayer time?” Mary asked Will.

  “I guess I’ll have to,” he shrugged, taking a long look down the hill. There weren’t any guards rushing to meet them, just the empty clearing, the forge, and the porous gate below. The witch could call the guards at any moment, and they’d never make it to the gate. But if all the guards were under Roselyn’s influence, there’d be nothing to stop them from escaping.

  Chapter 11: Sawdust

  Aoi stood on the ship’s top deck near the front overlooking the wide, open ocean on a sunny day identical to all others. The sun shined against the metallic hull, heating it up until it became uncomfortable for her fingers to touch. She would’ve loved nothing more than for a thunderstorm to spew rain down upon them. That would’ve been just perfect.

  Another member of the shipbuilding crew trotted down the steps from inside the navigation center. The first time he called to her his words were drowned out by the intensity of her thoughts. Only when he crossed the entire deck and put his hand on her thin shoulder did she realize he was there.

  “Get back to work! The launch is coming quick and we have to be ready. So let’s go!”

  Nodding demurely, Aoi left her perch high over everything. As she walked next to him toward the rear of the ship, she looked out over the tops of the brown palm trees, past the gate, and beyond to the horizon. The world was so big, and yet they had been trapped in this tiny corner of it for so long. They would be ready when the time came, Aoi thought. And she would have to make sure of it.

  Together, Aoi and the other shipbuilder turned through a door underneath the navigation center into a small hallway. Another door hung open just across the small hallway, leading to the sparsely decorated captain’s chamber. A desk had already been moved in, as well as a mirror, a rug, and a few maps. But instead of entering it, they turned down the hallway and descended downstairs into the hull.

  “Do they need help finishing the ventilation shaft to the engine room?” Aoi asked the back of her companion’s head.

  “I don’t know. But that’s not what we’re going to be doing,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

  They followed pipes lining the hallway ceiling and passed door after door. Taking so many turns and heading up and down several flights of stairs, Aoi would’ve surely been lost if she hadn’t spent so much time putting this ship together. Because she felt confident getting around, she could concentrate instead on all those things Mira told her that she didn’t feel confident about.

  After a few more turns, she could tell he was taking her to one of the large sleeping cabins in the bottom of the ship’s belly. She didn’t know what he wanted her to do, but she would have to avoid it. They already descended below the level with the windows, and Aoi repeated over and over in her mind the path she would have to cut from the room with the front most window to the engine room in the rear. Once they made it into the ventilation shaft, they would be able to get to Arent without anyone suspecting.

  It confused Aoi when they passed the cabins, where other shipbuilders hastily assembled bunk beds, and continued to a storage hold. Stepping into a room twice as large as that of the engine room, which stretched from one side of the ship to the other and extended right to the rapidly narrowing front, Aoi’s companion left her to consult a few others who were busy marking squares on the floor. He came back a moment later to give her instructions.

  “Once the ship is put in the water, we’ll be loading it with materials and supplies before they set sail. This room is for all the food from the farm. There’s a plan over here, and you’ve got to help mark the different sections. Got it?” he asked, but Aoi just stared at him for a moment.

  “They’re taking everything from the farm? What is everyone left behind going to eat? What are we going to eat? What are you going to eat?” she puzzled.

  But the colossal problem of what would happen to everyone after the ship left didn’t seem like an issue to him, even though this man was a slave just like her and would be left with just as little.

  “I find greater fulfillment in the teachings of our Savior than I do in any tangible nourishment. We are doing his work, and when his wishes come to fruition they will bestow a great bounty on all of us,” he said.

  Aoi wanted to shout at him and slap him in the face. If Arent’s wishes were that they would all die of starvation, seeing them completed wouldn’t bring anything good to any of them. But she knew arguing against this man’s coerce
d blindness would be useless. The slaves would only realize they’d been duped when they pulled the diamond shard from Arent’s chest.

  “Fine,” she submitted, and she went to grab some rope and start separating the different sections. But she immediately started looking for opportunities to slip away and get to the real work that had to be done. Even as she made rope partitions, she kept thinking about all of the numbers she had to remember to do it right. She couldn’t make a mistake or it would be the end of all of them.

  Looking over her shoulder, the others in the room looked to be busy arguing over the plans. Without hesitating, Aoi raced for the door, trying desperately to take light steps. She slid into the hallway and immediately turned into a sleeping cabin. A few workers looked at her, but she didn’t say a word when she snatched a curved two-handled saw on the floor. She left a moment later, moving away toward the stairs.

  “Hey!” someone shouted, and she kicked herself as she turned. It was the same shipbuilder who had brought her down here. Aoi couldn’t turn back now. If she didn’t get this done today, she might not get another chance.

  “Crimshaw told me I needed to check the window fixtures,” she lied.

  “With a saw?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Aoi answered, standing very still.

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so? Make sure you follow his every instruction to the letter,” he ordered.

  “Absolutely,” Aoi replied, leaving him behind and going for the stairs.

  Once he could no longer see her face, a broad smile crept onto it. Her thrill didn’t come from the freedom to execute her plan, but rather because she had tricked him, and for a moment it felt good to have controlled him in that way. But as she climbed the stairs and passed under the infrequent lights in the dim, tunnel-like corridor, that satisfaction didn’t last for long. It was just another reminder of how much of the rancher’s teachings she had lost.

  The corridors were empty because most of the shipbuilders were working on a dock for the ship, but Aoi kept a straight face anyway. As long as it didn’t creep through to her skin, she could pretend her inner turmoil wasn’t a big deal even as it seemed to rip her apart. Where was her peace? Taking a deep breath and hunting through her feelings, she couldn’t find it anywhere inside of her.

  Nearly distraught by the time she made it to that front-most room with the window, the saw still in hand, she resisted the idea pounding inside of her head. Vern had taken away her contentment and her calm. He had done so needlessly, and he cruelly kept it from her when nothing more than a simple apology would bring it back. Why hadn’t he said he was sorry to her? Was trying to help him really so unforgivable?

  Aoi closed the door behind her and leaned against it as it caught the latch. It was a small room, smaller even than their one-room schoolhouse back in Corey Outpost. Directly across from her, a window in the wall would be her point of entry. It would be a tight fit, even for her. The room had the musty smell of freshly cut wood. A crate had already been moved in and sat near the corner. There was nothing to do now but get to work.

  Timidly staring at the ceiling, butterflies fluttered in her stomach. Nerves had always been with her at important moments, but she had never worried they would get the best of her like she did now. She loathed this iffy hesitation, the emotional mood swings, and the feelings of dependence. Altogether it reminded her of Mary, which made her feel all the more revolting.

  Emphatically denying the doubts in her head, she leapt at the crate, grabbed it, and dragged it back to the door. Once on top of it, she strained to remember Mira’s instruction. Numbers kept bubbling up, but were they the right ones? Setting her elbow against the corner of the ceiling and the wall, she measured two arm-lengths. From there, she took both hands of the saw and let its teeth chew through the wood right above her.

  Sawdust fell into the air and drifted down onto her face as she worked the saw back and forth. It ate away at the wood like her feelings ate away at her stability. Maybe she’d been better off before when the only thing she cared about was proving how strong she was. Now her work had to be so careful and precise, cutting a square into the ceiling with each side the length of her forearm. Like Mira told her, she compared the length of her thumb and the cut against the warming saw, checking to see if she had gone deep enough before moving on to the next side.

  The cuts needed to be just the right depth so the ceiling would hold but could easily be broken through. Setting the saw against the final side, she started to think about how unfair it all was. Grinding the saw back and forth, she wondered why she had to care so much if Vern could care so little. It infuriated her and she lost her focus. The handles of the saw clacked against the ceiling, snapping her back and signaling the saw had cut clean through to the other side.

  Slowly pulling it out, she could see straight into the room above. Growling, she dropped the saw. What a stupid mistake. She would have to find a way to fix it. If someone stepped right in the middle of that square, the whole thing might collapse, tipping them off someone was up to something pretty quick.

  Hopping down, she pushed the crate back and found another pestering problem. The floor was coated in sawdust. She clenched her fists, ready to punch through a wall. This would have to be dealt with too. Where was Will when you need him, she wondered. He could just blow it all into a corner and be done with it. But she had to pat her hands against it, scoop it up, and dump it behind the crate.

  Before she left the room, she took one look through the round window set into the wood. The hull was pretty thick, and the water would be pretty far down. A new doubt came to her, and she trembled at the thought that Vern wouldn’t be strong enough to lift her out of the water. So many things could go wrong, and more kept creeping up all the time. But she couldn’t give up.

  Heading upstairs, she entered the room above the one she was just in. Opening the metal door, she stood on the doorway’s small step, leaning forward to look at what she had done to the floor. The small slice was as obvious as the sun in the sky. This room was completely empty, meaning nothing could be dragged over to cover it up. It angered her to have endangered their mission with such a careless mistake.

  There would have to be a way to fix it, but first she gingerly stepped around the weakened part of the floor and went to the right wall. She couldn’t let herself cause any more problems, and so she shut everything out of her mind except the task at hand. Measuring in from the ship’s outer wall, the saw’s teeth once again ground away at the wooden planks separating the room from the next one. Using her index finger and the saw, she tested the depths of her cuts until the section of the wall was exactly like Mira wanted it.

  After scooping the sawdust into her pocket, Aoi was ready to move onto the next room, but there was still the hole in the floor to worry about. It just made her so frustrated to deal with all these little annoyances. Aoi beat her head against the wall trying to figure out what to do about it, and, as it turned out, that knocked a little bit of sense into her. Smiling again, Aoi left the room and slammed the door as hard as she could. The sound reverberated through the corridor, but it would be fine as long as the door never opened again.

  But slamming hadn’t done enough to make it stick, and she easily opened the door. Closing it, this time she took the handle and twisted it beyond what the design would allow. The metal yielded to her forceful pressure, warping into a shape that rendered it entirely useless. Clapping her hands together, Aoi marveled at her handiwork and skipped down to the next room over across the hall.

  Just as Mira directed, Aoi worked her way through the ship, making cuts in the walls in the appropriate places. Taking an undue amount of pleasure, any problem or surprise was resolved with as much force as she could generate. A dresser blocked one wall, and Aoi smashed it to pieces. Farther down, it turned out one wall was metal instead of wood, so Aoi bent the panels. When the time came, she would just rip them off the wall. She accidentally knocked through one of her holes, so to fix it she just sliced away th
e entire wall until it looked like the two rooms were meant to be one.

  After stacking away all the extra wood into a corner, it finally came time to figure out how to get into the ventilation shaft that would lead them into the engine room. Considering Mira didn’t know how it would be built or what they would have to do to enter it, Aoi had to figure this part out all on her own.

  The first thing she did was go down to that metallic door at the end of the hallway and actually enter the engine room. Sure enough, right above the two pillars, a metal grate had been installed into the ceiling. There would be no way to get into it from down on the floor, and so she went about searching for signs of it above.

  Strolling around upstairs, she scoped out the hallway floor for strange protrusions or evidence of recent construction. Nothing caught her eyes. After spending a few agonizing minutes tramping around the halls, she finally started throwing open doors and inspecting the floors of storage rooms and bunkers that were variously furnished. There didn’t seem to be anything, not a grate or strip of metal siding anywhere.

  Getting impatient, she went back to the top deck and starting leaning over the side to inspect the ship’s exterior. If this vent was supposed to bring in fresh air, it would have to come from outside, right? The huge supports that held the ship over the slipway were still in place, but Aoi peeked over as best she could.

  Only when she got to the very rear of the ship did she spot a grate in the hull just over the ship’s rudder. Her eyes lit up a bit even as her eyebrows furrowed. That ventilation shaft had to lead somewhere. Heading back inside, she wandered the empty corridors searching for it. Scouring every inch of the walls, it dawned on her that she hadn’t actually been on the other side of one section.

  Staring at this wooden barrier stretching around the boat’s back end, Aoi fumed at the realization that it didn’t have a door. She walked along all three walls, contemplating the possibility of smashing her way through to see what was on the other side. It didn’t make sense why they would build a room with no doors, and she struggled to think of when they built it like this. Surely it hadn’t been something she did herself.