The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  “If it’s true, it looks like the boat’s not going to fall apart this second. We’ve got to get a move on and get this done!”

  “You’re right,” Mira said, glad to have a chance to distribute her agreement evenly. Aoi stood quietly in the center of the room. “There’s a process called carbon dating that I could use to determine how quickly the wood is disintegrating, but it would take lots of equipment and time. Course it’s also possible he just focused on key parts of the ship. Putting a hole in the bottom would cut our trip short real quick. There’s no way we can know how much time we have. We just need to move!”

  She put her hands on one of the crates to shift it under the sawed square in the ceiling. Aoi took it by the other side and together they slid it across the floor.

  “Do you think he knows about the carafe? Is that why he’s doing this?” Aoi asked.

  “The Specials were kept in stasis for so long. He could be ancient. There’s no telling what he knows.”

  Mira climbed onto the box and peered at the four cuts made in the ceiling. One of them went clear through to the other side, making the section so weak someone could have fallen right through it. Sighing, Mira turned to Aoi to point out the error, but the girl was already holding her head down with her face in her hands.

  “It’s OK. It’s fine. Just hand me the saw. We’ll have to do this quietly. People could walk by at any minute.”

  Before Aoi could pull herself together enough to move, Vern already had the saw ready for Mira. No louder than the sound of a soft breeze, Mira glided the saw over the wood, finishing off the cuts Aoi had started. Shaking her head to get the sawdust out of her brown hair, Mira reached to pop the disconnected panel. It gave way like a charm and soon there was nothing stopping them from climbing to the next level.

  “Let’s not waste any more time,” Mira said to her companions. “There are lives at stake, and not just our own.”

  She jumped and pulled herself up, rolling and swinging her legs until they stood firmly on the floor. Vern and Aoi looked at each other for a moment until Vern gestured to let her go first. Aoi hopped onto the crate and then swept herself up in one quick and simple motion. A moment later they were all upstairs and creeping toward the next severed section in the wall.

  But before they could even get close to it, voices and creaking floorboards signaled occupants on the other side. Feeling anxious to continue yet deflated, they put their ears to the wall and listened to mumbling chatter from several soldiers on the other side.

  “What do we do now?” Vern asked, looking like he was steeling himself for an inevitable confrontation.

  “Maybe they’ll leave if we just wait a minute,” Mira whispered.

  But the driving impulse to keep moving forward ate away at Mira too. She started looking at the walls, trying to see if she could detect any deterioration. And then there was Chucky, who was trapped somewhere within the ship. Who could guess what he was going through at this moment? He must be trapped and scared, and that didn’t sit right with Mira. Precious minutes ticked away, and the people on the other wide of the wall showed no signs of leaving any time soon. Finally, Mira pulled herself away and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Aoi asked her in a whisper. Mira waved them closer to her in the center of the room.

  “We’re getting nowhere here. Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Let’s get Chucky first. That way if the ship goes down, at least we’ll be together.”

  Considering their current path seemed irrevocably blocked, Aoi and Vern nodded in agreement. Mira took a step around the hole to the door when Aoi reached out and caught her arm. Jerking her head back, Mira saw Aoi looking a little pained.

  “You can’t go through there. That door is sealed shut. He’d probably be in one of the lower storage cabins anyway, so we’d be better off going back down.”

  “How are we ever going to find him though? I can’t believe you lost him,” Vern grimaced, showing some frustration.

  Some light flickered in Aoi’s eyes.

  “Well!” she burst, and then checked her anger. “Well, in the storage room all of the produce is sorted into sections. The crates had markings, and so Chucky must be alongside the rest of the carrots. We just need to find that section. It’s just a few floors below us.”

  Now that they had a solid direction to go in, they set about to their task. They returned to the first room and gawked at the doorway. There would be no hidden passageways or prepared holes waiting in the walls to sneak through. The only things they would find on the other side of that door were the snaking and twisting corridors of lazy shipbuilders and the fierce enemy soldiers who roamed them.

  Keeping deathly quiet, Mira cracked open the door and peered for any signs of life their ears might have missed. Their hearts beat furiously, but there was nothing to do but step out into the open, exposing themselves to whatever might happen upon them. But it pushed them knowing Chucky was in even worse conditions.

  This dim stretch near the very front of the ship seemed to be clear, and soon Aoi was directing them along the brass pipes to a stairwell. They passed doors on their right, some of them containing raucous laughter. Any one of them could burst open at any moment. Further down, the corridor divided and dove to the floor below, and the small group of three first checked down an adjoining hall before approaching.

  Getting ready to take their first step down, the sound of clacking boots startled them, and they scrambled around to hide behind the stairs. There were spaces between the steps though, and through them they watched a shaggy character in a black uniform limp up the stairs. If he turned around, they’d be caught for sure. Looking up, they saw more people passing back and forth on the floor above. Penned in, they held their breath when their most pressing threat reached the top. Vern had one foot turned, ready to run. But it wasn’t necessary. The man never looked back, just continuing forward and turning down the side.

  As soon as they possibly could, they returned to the stairs leading down and looked for more trouble. Finding none, they started down, wondering how long they could keep this up. Mira kept them close to the wall until they settled down on the corridor’s floor. Every second seemed to carry so much tension, but it couldn’t be too much longer until they made it to the proper storage room.

  They heard clacking from down the hall, and so they quickly wheeled around to descend another flight of stairs. A small group passed overhead, and Mira yanked Vern away from the stairwell. They had reached the lowest deck, where tiny bulbs fought to bring light to the cramped corridors. Mercifully, no one seemed to be patrolling this area.

  Sneaking onward, their impression that they had come to a vacant floor shattered when they peeked around a bend and saw two guards block the way to the storage-room door. One of them entertained the other by creating a circle with his forefingers in thumbs in which images of far-off places appeared.

  “We’ll have to try going around,” Mira whispered.

  Backtracking and taking an adjacent hallway, they hoped to find another point of entry or a more advantageous position. They crept along, slowly and attentively, past metal doors. Careful to keep themselves quiet, they turned to the right at an intersection, making a circle around this bottommost deck. Down here, the ship seemed to creak under the pressure of displaced water.

  Tiptoeing along, they came to the next turn. But just as Vern looked around the edge to see if anyone was coming, the door behind them popped open. Shocked, the three of them instantly turned to look. A slim, tall woman who had hair floating around her head and wore a black uniform ducked through the doorway. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t even look angry. But as she stared her eyes started to glow bright red.

  Clueless about what sort of havoc she was about to wreak upon them, they gasped and staggered a few steps back. The female mercenary stepped into the hallway, her floating hair extending just shy of the ceiling. Another door opened down the next corridor too. Her glowing eyes looked like t
hey would pop any moment.

  A flash crashed into her side and she fell back toward her door, knocking her head on its upper lip as she bent and fell inside. Rushing to the doorway, they saw a ragged brown mass around her. And it wasn’t until he lifted his head that they could see his shaggy brown hair.

  “Chucky!” Mira gushed.

  He got up and turned to them, a smile breaking onto his face. They couldn’t express their relief at seeing him, especially after they had just been caught. Brushing himself off, Chucky stepped out of the room and joined them in the hallway.

  “We were just coming to find you. What happened?” Aoi asked.

  Chucky shook his head and scratched his hair.

  “I mean, I figured out I wasn’t put in the right room, and I thought I’d just sit tight until everyone on board started chasing after you. Then I’d break out and save the day. But then I noticed the crate I was in started to shrivel up and develop these cracks. Soon I could see outside without a problem. It was the strangest thing. There was nobody inside the storage room though, so I busted out and made it into the hallway over there without the guards noticing. Then I heard lots of little steps and guessed it was you,” he explained.

  “This is getting really weird,” Vern lamented.

  “Aoi saw Goober by the beach when the ship set sail. We think he’s doing to the entire ship what he did to your crate,” Mira revealed.

  Chucky’s eyes grew wide. He looked at Aoi and Vern, all of whom seemed to share the same pensive dread.

  “At least the vegetables are OK,” Chucky clarified. “But maybe there’s still time to turn the ship around. Who knows how far out to sea we are by now!”

  “Yeah, maybe if we ask nice,” Mira scoffed, rolling her eyes.

  “I’ve got it!” Vern spoke up. “How about we spend more time gabbing in the hallway?”

  “That’s a great idea,” Aoi chuckled.

  Taking his point, they shuffled into the room containing their unconscious adversary to try and figure out what to do next. The door fit firmly against the latch, and the four of them collected themselves in the small supply closet housing brooms against the wall and shelves full of twine.

  “We could go back to where we were and start over with our path,” Mira suggested.

  Vern quickly shot down her idea though. He stepped out into the middle of them to explain something that appeared painfully obvious.

  “Why are we dealing with these tunnels and holes when we know they won’t take us anywhere but to a dead end? The only place we need to get to is the deck. Once we’re outside, I’ll take us to the grate in the rear and we’re there. Tell me you have a better idea!”

  “There’s still that room with no doors. The ventilation shaft passes right through it and there must be a way to get into it from the captain’s cabin,” Aoi reminded them.

  Vern crossed his arms, waiting.

  “The deck’s got to be pretty dangerous, right? Everybody’s going to be up there. That would have to be just like giving ourselves away,” Chucky said.

  Mira knew there would be no easy way to do what they had to do. Getting to Arent would require more cunning, more skill, and more luck than she believed they had. She pulled her hair back against her head and rubbed her tired eyes. If she just had more time she knew she could figure it all out.

  “Vern’s right,” Mira finally said, making Vern smile. “But Chucky’s right too. They are all so excited to be on the ship and everyone’s milling about and celebrating. That’s why no one’s here in the bunks. Going up there now is the perfect way to ruin it all. Let’s go back to the locked room, wait until rest hours and then make our way when there’ll be way fewer people out. I hate to waste all that time too, but it looks like the ship isn’t going to fall apart as quickly as we thought. Either way, I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “Ugh, I don’t think I can handle the nerves of waiting for so long,” Chucky groaned.

  “There’s just one problem,” Aoi pointed down to the woman on the floor. “What do we do about her?”

  Taking some of the supplies from the shelves, they found a way to tie up their victim and gag her. She had a nasty gash on her head from when she hit the metal door frame, meaning she wouldn’t be getting up at all in the near future. Soon they were out in the hall, and Aoi warped the handle to the door so it would never open again.

  Next they backtracked through the corridors to the stairwell. Cautiously, they ascended the stairs, at each moment keeping the utmost vigilance for even the slightest signs of life. Some people walked by above when they got to the proper level, and the small group of stowaways skulked behind them at a safe distance until they were able to slip into their room with the shattered window and the hole in the ceiling.

  Closing the door, they exhaled a sigh of relief. Now all they had to do was wait. Vern went to the broken window and stuck his head through. His shoulders pressed firmly against the sides of the frame.

  “What a shame we couldn’t just climb out through here and get it all done with,” he said.

  “That’d be a long ways for you to carry all of us,” Mira reminded him. “We’ll still have to work out how you’ll get us all from the deck down to the grate. You’ve got to promise me you’ll go it alone if we all get caught up there and you have a chance.”

  “Don’t talk like that. We’re all going to make it,” he imparted, catching her eyes.

  “I know we will, but you’ve got to promise me you won’t hesitate to go first.”

  Vern pursed his lips and squinted at her, but finally he caved in and nodded his head.

  “I’ll tell you what’s a shame,” Chucky interjected. “Not having Mary here. Or Roselyn if she had her power. We’d know where everybody was in a snap. There’d be no need to wait for them to fall asleep because Roselyn could just put them under.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having Will around,” Aoi added. “He can be good company sometimes too.”

  “Well, there’s no use wishing for things we can’t have. But we’d do much better to hope we’ll get to see them again once we make it through this crazy mess,” Mira concluded wistfully, sliding her back against the wall and taking a seat on the floor. There was no way to tell what time it was or how quickly it passed since the sun remained ever-present in the sky, but the minutes and hours started to tick away nonetheless.

  After some time, the whooping and hollering storming through the corridors and raging on the top deck died down, and it was as good a time as any to make a move. Even if half the ship had gone to sleep, that meant there was a fifty-percent-less chance they’d run into somebody in the halls or find themselves entrenched within an unknown power. The four of them were itching to go too; the excitement had kept them from even catching a wink of rest, and they had eaten enough oranges to last a lifetime. The only thing that gave them pause was whether or not they had just finished their last meal.

  Giving each other firm nods, they forsook their path through the ceiling and moved for the door. This would bring them much closer to the stairwell, and with any luck it’d be a straight shot to the top deck. From there, they’d weave around any lookouts and navigators on their way to the back of the boat. They agreed it was now or never when Mira put her hand on the latch and pulled the door open.

  Falling from its hinges, the door scraped against the metal frame and tipped toward them. Instantly, Chucky, Vern, and Aoi had their hands on the thick metal door, preventing it from crashing down and causing any more noise. Astounded, they looked out into the clear hallway, which Mira hadn’t even been able to check. It was clear, but what demanded their attention more were the rusted and destroyed hinges.

  “Who knows what else this is happening to. We’d better hurry!” Mira said before sticking her head into the hallway. Hiding in their room was no longer an option, but fortunately the corridor seemed free from trouble. Ducking into it, they maintained all possible silence, tiptoeing, breathing slowly, and always listening.

&nbs
p; Coming to the first intersection, it seemed like they were bound to run into someone. Mira ducked at the very edge with the others lined up behind. She felt like she just had to make it work. From the top of Shadow Mountain to the battle of Darmen, she had suffered so many monumental failures. Now they were so deep in the clutches of their enemies, and the need to finally take a step toward righting the wrongs her family had endured rang with every heartbeat. The adjacent corridor proved empty, and together they quickly skittered across.

  Reaching the stairwell, they strained their ears to pick up any traces of movement or impending danger. How easy this would’ve been for Corey, who could’ve sensed in an instant every faint blip in the silence. Their hometown had fallen to the scum infesting this vessel, and the community they lost would remain buried within the rubble of the outpost. Scanning all directions, they waited for a moment to be confident about their chances. A sliver of light came down from the very top, their destination.

  Mira felt Vern press his fingers into her back, and she agreed it was time. Carefully and deliberately, they took to the stairs, placing their feet on each step as if it were thin ice. Rounding the first flight, they came around and started up the next one. Halfway to the top, the sounds of clacking heels from the floor above sent them into a panic and they spun around to head back. Chucky leapt from the edge of the stairs, leading them away, but he looked about frantically, unsure of which way to go.

  Someone started down the stairs behind them, and their pulses flurried with the realization they had to get away. Some kind of banging came from further along the hall, and so they all raced to the side corridor. Things had been so quiet, but now signs of trouble sprung up everywhere. They ran openly, breathing hard and trying to make it to the other side of the ship. Following the curve in the corridor, they approached its end, where yet more voices vexed them.

  A Sunfighter started to turn the corner, and all of a sudden they were pressed against the wall. Aoi twisted a door handle, and together they spilled inside as it opened. She closed it behind them but then jerked back when Chucky uttered a terrified gasp. This double room, in which Aoi had destroyed the dividing wall, had two men jumping from their seats. Mira didn’t know what to do or say, and together they all froze for an instant.