Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (26 page)

“He can’t legally stop you from checking on the prisoner,” he said at the end of it.

“Then let’s go down there,” Waverly said. “Right now, before Kieran can find a way to stop us.”

Alia stood up, looking around the room, challenging the others to follow her. Sealy went to the door and ushered Alia out ahead of him, then Harvey and Melissa followed. Tobin and Arthur seemed the most reluctant, and Waverly felt sorry for them. They were both close to Kieran, and they didn’t want to create a rift. But that would be Kieran’s doing, not theirs. She was last out of the chamber, and she jogged to catch up to Bobby, who was rubbing his grubby hands on his pants.

“I should be cleaner for something like this,” he said, embarrassed.

“Remember J.P. Connor?” Waverly said with a fond smile, recalling the slender man, the way he always seemed to be eating a piece of bread. He had died several years before the attack, and the whole crew attended his memorial. Waverly was sad he was gone, but maybe it was a good thing he didn’t live to see the attack. He died before, when everyone thought they were on a peaceful mission, when everyone believed they were safe. “He always had grease under his fingernails. You’re carrying on the tradition.”

“I guess,” Bobby said doubtfully.

The elevator ride down was grim. There was a tangy, musky scent to the close air—the scent people give off when they’re afraid. Waverly thought absently that she ought to feel afraid herself, but she didn’t. She felt eager.

When the guards outside the brig saw the Central Council coming, they both straightened their spines, holding their rifles across their chests. So Kieran had finally resorted to the use of firearms, Waverly noted.

“Access to the brig is restricted,” Hiro Mazumoto said, his eyes immobile in their sockets.

Bobby Martin stepped up, pulled something from his pocket, and flashed a badge in Hiro’s face. Waverly wondered where he’d gotten it. “I’m the J.P. and I’m ordering you aside.”

“Not without orders from Kieran Alden,” said Ali Jaffar, his hazel eyes shifting nervously from face to face.

“If you don’t stand aside, I’ll arrest you both,” Bobby said.

“The bylaws state we’re to be given access,” Arthur said with his gravelly voice, which was still healing. He produced the book of laws, opening it for the guards so they could see for themselves.

Hiro took the book and read the passage, Ali leaning over his shoulder. Neither boy seemed to know what to do.

“We’re the Central Council and the Justice of the Peace. You’ve got two branches of the ship’s government standing in front of you,” Waverly said. “Kieran’s word doesn’t stand against all of ours. He’s not our dictator.”

Hiro sighed, shaking his head. “I wish people could just get along,” he murmured, but he stood aside and let them pass.

The brig smelled of rancid sweat. The prisoner was lying on his cot, the crook of his elbow shielding his eyes from the light as he slept. His mouth hung open, showing a ruin of teeth, crooked and brown, as he snored. He sounded like an animal.

“Wake him up,” Waverly said to the guards.

Hiro banged on the iron bars of the cell with the muzzle of his gun. “Hey. You’ve got visitors.”

The prisoner rubbed sleep out of his eyes, smacking his thick, stubbled lips, slow to wake, until he saw Waverly on the other side of the bars, looking at him. Instantly his face hardened, and he sat up, staring at her, murder in his eyes.

“Cuff him,” she said, her voice low.

Ali positioned himself outside the cage, his gun pointed at the prisoner’s head while Hiro unlocked the door and stepped in. “Stand,” Hiro said to the prisoner, who complied, never taking his ruddy eyes off Waverly’s face.

“Now cuff his ankles to the feet of his cot,” Waverly said.

The prisoner’s face shifted almost imperceptibly; Waverly could see he was becoming afraid. Ali handed Hiro two sets of cuffs from his belt, and Hiro fastened each of the prisoner’s ankles to the bottom legs of the metal cot, which were fastened to the floor with heavy bolts. The prisoner sat, his legs spread awkwardly, hands behind his back. He was helpless.

“Waverly,” someone whispered, and she turned, surprised to see Seth standing in the cell right behind her.

“I thought you were at the other end,” she said to him. She didn’t want him watching this.

“What are you doing?” He was still hooked up to an IV, and his color wasn’t good.

“We’re going to ask him questions,” she said. She held her chin up, defying him to say something.

Seth cocked his head, studying her. “You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you?”

“Leave me alone,” she said, and turned away. She wanted to be the first one in the cell with the terrorist. She wanted to be the one asking the questions.

She stood over the brute, close enough to smell old onions on his breath. She could see beads of sweat on his scalp between the cropped hairs on his head, and she could smell his odor, a sharp reek that stung her nostrils in the place between her eyes. She stood over the man, letting him feel her presence, letting him hate her, until she could find a way through her rage to speak.

“We’re going to ask you some questions,” she said, her voice shaking, barely within her control. “And you’re going to answer them.”

He laughed mockingly.

From her pocket she pulled a Taser. She heard murmurs of surprise from the Central Council. Alia watched her searchingly. Melissa stared, her face blank. The Taser was normally used on the livestock if the herd was in a panic and injuring themselves. It had enough power to knock out a billy goat, but the shock wouldn’t be enough to knock out a man. It would cause hurt, though—a deep, physical pain in the nerves.

“I didn’t agree to this,” Bobby said, stepping toward her.

“I want to know if our parents are still alive on the New Horizon,” she said to the terrorist, knowing this would stop Bobby, whose parents were unaccounted for.

Bobby hung back, waiting for the man to answer. The rest of the council and even Kieran’s guards all seemed to be holding their breath.

“I don’t know,” the prisoner said.

She jammed the business end of the Taser into his neck and held down the trigger. The man cried out and his body shook, rattling the chains on his cuffs. When Waverly pulled the Taser away, she saw a V-shaped burn on his skin, and she could smell singed flesh.

“Waverly, don’t,” Seth called hoarsely from across the way.

“Are our parents still alive?” Waverly said, and pressed the Taser against the prisoner again, but she didn’t pull the trigger. Not yet.

Instinctively, he drew away from it, but he said quietly, “I think so.”

“Where are they being held?” she asked him.

The man closed his lips, his eyes stubbornly focused on the floor.

“Where!” she screamed in his ear, and pulled the trigger again. She could feel the buzz of the current moving through the device and into the man’s body, which shook with spasms deep in his core. He screamed, and his face contorted into a mask of agony. She remembered the way he’d held her windpipe closed, the way he’d looked into her eyes, whispering, “I’m going to kill you like you killed Shelby, you little witch.” The way she’d accepted that this was her death, that he was her killer. The hopelessness he’d made her feel. How easily she’d given up. Oh, she hated him.

But she took her finger off the trigger, and his spasms stopped. He groaned.

“Where are they?” she said softly.

“I haven’t heard anything new,” he said, breathless. “They’re probably still in atmospheric conditioning.”

“Mather’s too careful. She’s moved them. I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t know!”

She zapped him again, and he cried out. When she released him, he blubbered, “Please don’t do that again. Please.”

“Then tell me where the prisoners are!”

“They’re … they’re in the sewage plant! The doors are chained closed! You’ll need bolt cutters to get them away from there!”

“How do you know that?”

“She … she wanted a more permanent place, so they modified the sewage plant. It’s probably done by now.”

“Is that the truth?” Waverly said warningly, holding the Taser near his eye.

“I swear it.” He begged, his blue eyes darting from one council member to the next, pleading, looking for a sympathetic gaze. “It’s true. That’s where they are.”

Waverly looked at Alia, who nodded at her. She seemed to believe him.

“What kind of guard is being kept on them?” Waverly asked, moving the Taser between the knobs of bone at the base of the man’s neck, just over his spine.

“A light detail, I think,” he said tearfully. “Since you’re not on the ship anymore.”

“And what’s the political situation?” she asked.

“I haven’t been there since you have. I don’t know anything more than you do.”

“You’ve been talking to them.”

“No, I haven’t.”

She jammed the Taser into his spine and pulled the trigger. This time he screamed, but she didn’t stop. He shook, and spittle rolled from his mouth as his head flopped forward and backward. When finally she released the Taser, he was limp, shoulders hunched, head hanging between his knees.

“Water,” she said.

Ali went to the sink, filled a plastic tumbler with water, and handed it to her. She poured it over the prisoner’s head, and he shook himself awake, grunting. He sounded like a pig.

“You’ve been in contact with the New Horizon, haven’t you?”

Tears ran down his face, but he nodded.

“And what have you learned about the situation there?”

“What do you want to hear?”

“The truth. When we left, things weren’t going well for Mather.”

“She’s still in control,” he said, his eyes screwed shut.

“You’re holding something back.” This time she moved the Taser to his groin and glared right into his face. Tears streamed from his eyes as he searched her expression. He trembled. She felt the muscles of his thighs tense and release under her Taser. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Mather doesn’t have a good relationship with the church elders. Shelby told me that once. They could oust her any day now.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” he whined.

But she pulled the trigger anyway. He screamed, and screamed again, but she held the Taser in place, watching his face as it twisted in agony, feeling the helpless tremor of his legs, the jolts and spasms that rocked his body. He gurgled, and bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth, but still she held on, until she felt a hand on her arm and looked up to see Alia’s shocked face.

“He’s finished,” Alia said. Her face was drained of color, and her lips twitched as she pulled Waverly away from the prisoner, who was sobbing.

Waverly let herself be led out of the cell. Until she tried to walk, she didn’t realize how shaky her legs were. She watched as Ali unlocked the man’s cuffs and arranged him on his mattress. The man jumped at every touch, every movement, whimpering like a toddler. When Ali laid him down, the man curled himself into the fetal position, moving his hand to his mouth as if to suck his thumb.

The other Central Council members shuffled out of the brig, each of their eyes trained on the floor, making little sound other than embarrassed coughs and the scuff of their shoes on the grimy metal floor. Waverly watched them leave, then turned to Seth, who stared at her wide-eyed, as if he’d never seen her before.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was stopped up in her throat, so she turned to go. She didn’t understand her feelings yet. She didn’t understand the hollow pit in the center of her chest, the weight that dragged on her limbs, and the gray dark that seemed to cloud her mind. She’d never felt it before.

Later that night, when she couldn’t sleep, she understood what she felt was deep, irrevocable shame.

Seth had seen the whole thing.

HINTS

Seth lay on his side staring at Jacob, who hadn’t moved in hours. The man sat crumpled in his bed, rocking back and forth, singing some unintelligible song under his breath. He’d come unhinged. But it wasn’t the behavior that disturbed Seth. What frightened him was what the man said in his sleep, crying out or moaning. At first it had sounded like babble or baby talk, but after a while Seth’s ear was attuned to it, and the words resolved into something ominous: “She’s gonna burn, Shelby.”

Something terrible was going to happen. Something Jake had planned. And Seth had to get a message to someone about it.

“Guard!” Seth croaked, picking up his metal plate and banging on his bars. “Guard! I need help!”

He’d tried this before, but Kieran must have given new orders, because no one came. No one even spoke to him. No one looked at him when they slid his meals into his cell. He felt like an animal in a trap.

“Hey! I need medical assistance!” He tried to scream, hoping that might rouse them. In truth he felt better now that he was eating again, but if Tobin came to give him “medical assistance,” he might listen.

“Everyone on this ship is dead.” The words were spoken with satisfied smugness.

A chill settled between Seth’s shoulder blades.

The voice had been Jake’s, but it had a removed quality, as though someone else were speaking through him. His eyes were oddly distant, and his lower lip hung from his face like a piece of flab.

Seth stared at him, his mouth dry. “What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t get worked up. Because it doesn’t matter anyway,” Jacob said. For the first time since he’d been tortured, he turned to look at Seth. His lips pulled back to show his crooked teeth, and his cheeks bunched up under his eyes, which shone in the bright lights of his cell. But it wasn’t a smile. It was an effigy of a smile. “Soon, nothing is going to matter.”

“Why?” Seth asked. “Jake?”

“You don’t want to know. Just trust me.”

“What did you do?” Seth tried to sound eager, like a coconspirator, someone who wanted to be let in on the joke. It was a thin disguise, and he guessed Jake could see through it. “The engines. Did you screw up the engines somehow? Or the reactors?”

“Why did you want medical assistance?” Jake asked, suspicious. “You seem fine.”