Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (27 page)

“I…” Seth wiped his hand over his face to buy time. “To get a message out that the Central Council is torturing prisoners, because, you know, I might be next.”

“They don’t hate you enough.”

“I’m not exactly popular.”

Jacob only laughed, shaking his head as if to say
Silly boy.

“Come on, man. Tell me what you’ve got planned! Who am I going to tell?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m bored,” Seth said, knowing the urgency in his voice was betraying the lie. “And if these bastards have something coming to them, I want to savor it.”

“I want it to be a surprise,” Jake said, and smiled that chilling smile.

“It’s the reactor, isn’t it? You rigged it to melt down.”

Jake turned away, uninterested, and went back to singing his eerie, tuneless song. He rocked back and forth, his hands buried in his lap, staring at a faraway point. The torture had been bad, but it hadn’t lasted that long, and it had only happened once. It shouldn’t have been enough to unhinge a sane person. But then do sane people go around killing kids? Maybe the guy had always been nuts and Waverly’s Taser had been the last straw to push him over the edge.

When he stopped singing, Seth said, “You’re starting to creep me out.”

Jake smiled again. His forehead was shiny with sweat, and his breath, moving in and out of his barrel chest, sounded wet and weighed down by his fleshy throat.

“Shelby wasn’t the only one you lost, was he?” Seth said. It was only a hunch, but he had to try something to get Jake to talk.

“My parents. I told you that,” Jake said, sounding like a man who was thinking of something else.

“No. More recently. You lost someone else. Didn’t you?”

For a long time Jake sat there as though unaware of Seth’s question. When he turned again to look at Seth, there were wet patches on his cheeks.

“All she ever wanted, all her life, was to be a mama,” the man finally said. His voice broke, and he buried his chin in his chest. “My Ginny was the only one on the New Horizon who could conceive.”

Seth held his breath and watched as the man relived the past, sorrow passing like a shadow over his features.

“The first time we were so happy, and proud. We told the whole crew, and everyone congratulated us. We gave them hope. Pastor Mather even said a sermon about us. She called Ginny the new Eve, and I guess that made me Adam.” He straightened as he said this, smiling at the memory.

“I thought there weren’t any kids on the New Horizon,” Seth said, his voice eerily quiet.

Jake’s smile faded away. He glanced at Seth, the kind of look a predator flashes at his prey. “There aren’t.”

“She lost the baby,” Seth said quietly. He almost felt sorry for this fractured, confused man.

Jake buried his face in his square hands. “And another and another and another.”

Seth let it rest for a few moments, watching Jake’s labored breathing.

“After a while it was like her light went out,” Jake finally said, his voice strained. “She stopped smiling, then she stopped talking, then she stopped getting out of bed. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she’d get better. But…”

Seth wanted to ask what happened to Ginny. He thought he knew.

“I’m just trying to make it right,” Jake said into his hands. “All our dead babies. All our babies who never got to be. There’s got to be a way to even things out, you know? After what they did to us.”

“Killing Max made it right?”

“It was a start.”

“Max wasn’t even born when all that happened.”

“But his dad was,” Jake said, his voice coated with misery. “Now his father will know what it’s like when your baby dies.”

“His dad died in the attack.” It gave Seth no satisfaction to say these words.

Jake made no response.

Seth stared at him, at first unaware that he was trembling with rage. The foolishness, the blind idiocy of lashing out for the sake of revenge—it was repugnant. Seth had done it to Kieran, after his father died, punished him for everything that had gone wrong. Hurting Kieran had made Seth feel good for a while, but the feeling soured, and then he’d just wanted a way out of the sickening black maze he’d made for himself.

Now Waverly was wandering a maze just like it. Her face, when she’d pressed that Taser into Jake’s neck, grimacing when he screamed, her eyes glistening as she watched the fine tendril of smoke rising from his burning flesh. Ostensibly she’d been after information, but Seth knew what she was really doing. She’d been through too much. Some part of her had snapped. Her humanity had gone on hiatus, and what was left behind was her animal instinct: kill, hurt, maim, survive.

But he knew, just as his memories of what he’d done to Kieran haunted him, Waverly would remember that moment in time when she’d taken leave of her higher nature. There was nothing worse than knowing how deep you could go into barbarity.

This man was even more lost than Seth or Waverly had ever been.

“I used to believe in revenge,” Seth said, trying to sound conversational. “I tortured Kieran Alden, punished him for his mistakes, made him suffer. I was a monster. I was only making everything worse, creating more enemies, more hatred on this ship, more reasons for revenge. Look where I am now. Kieran thinks I’m dangerous, and he’s right. I
was
dangerous. But now here I am stuck in the brig when I could be helping run the ship. And even if the adults come back and things go back to some kind of normal, I’ll never be trusted again. I ruined my life, all because I wanted to make someone suffer.”

“I guess he’s the one who got his revenge, then,” Jake said with a twisted smile.

“All I know,” Seth said, trying his best to sound reasonable, “is that I made things worse by being mean when I could have made things better by being kind.”

“You’re still young enough to believe in fairy tales.”

“It’s pure logic I’m spouting here, man.”

Jake looked at Seth askance, a lopsided grin on his face. “You’re the only one I’m going to regret.”

“
What
are you going to regret, Jake? What do you have planned?”

“You’ll see,” he said. The smile was back. That strange, beatific smile on a gargoyle face, and Jake turned away and started humming to himself, that odd melody. Seth stared at him, awash in the most horrid feeling of helplessness he’d ever felt in his life as he listened to the broken man sing.

DAMAGE

Kieran was still seething about his argument the day before with Waverly when he arrived in the brig for another interview with the terrorist. He walked past Hiro and Ali, both loyal guards. They seemed withdrawn and troubled today. When he got to Jake’s cell and looked through the bars at him, he saw a man trembling on the floor, lying curled on his side, his hands tucked between his knees, sleeping fitfully.

“Jake?” Kieran said.

The man didn’t move.

“Ali!” Kieran called. Ali walked down the hallway, sighing heavily. He was barely able to meet Kieran’s eyes.

“How long has he been like this?”

“About twenty-four hours.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

The boy stood before Kieran, his mouth open as if to speak, but he was unable.

“Kieran,” someone whispered behind him. He turned to find Seth Ardvale leaning on the bars of his cell. Seth looked in Kieran’s eyes, desperate and pleading. “I need to talk to you.”

Kieran turned his back on him.

“Is he sick?” Kieran asked. The man was covered in sweat, and though his eyes were closed, Kieran could see the bulge of his corneas moving under his eyelids, as though he were deep inside a disturbing dream.

“No,” Ali said reluctantly. “The Central Council was here.”

Kieran turned to glare at Ali, who shrank away from him.

“What happened?” Kieran growled.

Ali hesitated.

“Kieran,” Seth whispered. “Seriously. I need to talk to you.”

Kieran took hold of Ali’s arm and pulled the boy back to the guard station, where Hiro stood, eyes trained on the empty corridor. “I want to know what happened here, right now.”

The guards looked nervously at each other.

“Waverly Marshall brought Bobby Martin down here,” Ali finally said, haltingly, “and they said it would be illegal to keep them out.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“We were about to, but…” Ali looked at Hiro, who was watching the conversation with worried eyes.

“Waverly started asking him about our parents,” Hiro said. “I forgot about calling you. I wanted to know what he’d say.”

“What did she do to him?” Kieran asked with a sinking feeling.

“She used a sheep Taser on him,” Ali said, shamefaced.

“Why didn’t you call me?” His voice shook with rage, and both boys looked frightened of him.

“We were afraid to,” Hiro said. “We knew you’d be mad.”

“You were hoping I wouldn’t find out.”

Both guards looked at Kieran as though they expected to be rapped across the knuckles with a ruler.
They’re kids,
Kieran thought.
They’re little boys afraid of getting into trouble.

Kieran closed his eyes and sighed. How could he run a ship with guards who acted like eight-year-olds?

“Give me your walkie-talkie,” Kieran spat. Hiro handed his over, and Kieran spoke into it. “Sarek, send two fresh guards down to the brig.”

“Are you giving us a break?” Hiro said hopefully.

Kieran laughed as he jerked the keys from Ali’s belt, then from Hiro’s. He took each of their guns and locked them in the metal cabinet behind the guard desk. “I’m relieving you of duty. You’re back on farm work.”

Hiro dropped his eyes, seeming to accept that he deserved to be punished, but Ali glared at Kieran.

“If you weren’t such a jerk, people wouldn’t be so afraid of telling you the truth,” Ali said.

Kieran ignored him and went back into the brig. The terrorist hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Kieran, please,” Seth whispered, reaching for him through the bars. “I know some things that you need to know.”

“So tell me,” Kieran said without looking at him.

“I can’t here,” Seth said, his eyes on the prisoner, who was stirring from sleep.

“Jake?” Kieran called loudly through the bars. “It’s me, Kieran.”

The man didn’t move. Quietly, Kieran let himself into the cell, careful to stay near the door in case he bolted. “Jake,” Kieran whispered.

The man’s eyes popped open, and he gasped as though he were finding himself in the brig for the very first time.

“Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to do that to you.”

The man’s eyes rolled in his head until they found Kieran, then he stared.

“You’ve got to believe me. Waverly didn’t have permission to do that. I’m very sorry.”

“No you’re not,” the man said, sounding tearful.

“I don’t believe in torture. I haven’t laid a hand on you, have I?”

“Good cop, bad cop. That’s what they call it.”

“What?”

“One is your enemy, one is your friend.” He spoke as though he’d repeated this over and over to himself, preparing himself. “That’s how they do it.”

“Waverly is no friend of mine,” Kieran pleaded. All his work trying to build a bridge to this man was finished. “We’re not working together.”

The man looked at him, eyes and face blank.

“I’m going to get you some medical attention, okay?” Kieran said.

Jake closed his eyes, shielding them from the light with his hand.

Kieran stepped back out of the cell and locked it behind him.

“Kieran, please,” Seth said. “I need to get out of here for a few minutes. Just to talk.”

“Go to hell,” Kieran said to him, and left.

Once he gave orders to the new guards for a medical team to come check on the prisoner, Kieran went directly to the Central Council chamber. It wasn’t until he saw Arthur sitting at the table with the rest of them that he realized his trusted friend hadn’t told him what happened with the prisoner, either. When Arthur saw Kieran standing in the doorway, Arthur’s face drained of color and he looked into his lap. Soon the rest of the council sensed Kieran standing there, and the conversation trickled to a murmur, then ceased altogether into an embarrassed silence.

“Hello,” Waverly said to him. She was the only one who looked defiant.

“I heard you visited the brig,” Kieran said.

“That’s our legal right,” Waverly said, sticking her chin out.

“And torture? Is that your legal right, too?”

Her face changed; he could see she didn’t like the word.

“I caused him no permanent harm.”

“Not to his body, maybe.”

“I did what needed to be done.”

“We do not torture on this ship, you once told me,” Kieran said, his voice deadly quiet. “You’re a hypocrite.”

Waverly looked down at her hands, which were wrestling with each other in her lap.

Finally Arthur piped up. “Don’t you want to know what we found out?”

Staring at his friend, Kieran felt racked with betrayal. He’d never have thought it possible that Arthur could side with Waverly against him.

“Kieran,” Arthur said, “Mather’s situation might be politically vulnerable. She and the church elders aren’t on good terms.”

Kieran wanted to deny the value of this information, but he couldn’t. This could be useful.

“Also,” said Waverly, “our parents are being held in the sewage plant.”

“So what?”

“So it’s not a bad place to fight,” Waverly said.

Kieran looked at the table and saw that the council was looking at schematics for the New Horizon.

“We’re not going to fight them,” Kieran said quietly.

The room was quiet as they all looked at him, until finally Alia Khadivi said, “You aren’t suggesting that we negotiate with Anne Mather?”

“It’s the only way,” Kieran said. He met Arthur’s eyes, but the boy was unable to hold his gaze and looked instead at the blueprint in front of him.

“She’ll trick you, Kieran,” Waverly warned.

“She
thinks
she’s going to,” Kieran said.

“She’ll never give us what we want,” someone said from the corner, and Kieran looked to see Sarah Hodges scowling at him. Her ruddy hair was pulled away from her face in a sloppy ponytail, and she sat hunched in her chair, glaring at Kieran like she used to glare at the physics teacher. She wasn’t even on the Central Council! Why was she privy to this ridiculous meeting and he wasn’t?