Avalon

CHAPTER 18

SO MUCH FOR A PARTY. ALL THE GOOD VIBES AND celebratory spirit had vanished from the room.

“Shouldn’t we leave the Belgrave now?” Lizzie said, looking first at Jeth and then at Sierra. “Aren’t we in danger of more weird stuff happening if we stay?”

“By weird, I think you mean dangerous,” said Flynn.

Sierra turned her gaze to Vince, and the two shared a silent exchange.

Finally Vince said, “I’m not sure this is the same as what happened before. Seems more like a parlor trick than the full-on magic show we got deeper inside the Belgrave.”

Jeth considered the idea. Disappearing glass did seem a little less ominous than the holes. But still—it might be somebody’s hands or head that vanished next.

“Seems risky enough to me,” said Shady.

Sierra pursed her lips. “Yes, but if the nav isn’t ready, we’ll risk even more if we move outside the Belgrave.”

Jeth ran his hands through his hair. He was tired of these between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place scenarios they kept getting into. But Sierra was right; they couldn’t risk getting picked up outside the Belgrave. He faced her. “What if we move closer to the border or just somewhere further down from here?” He glanced at Flynn. “The recalibration only has a few hours left, right?”

“Sure, as long as nothing goes wrong with it,” said Flynn.

Jeth ignored the implication and fixed his gaze on Sierra and Vince. “What do you think?”

“Moving certainly won’t hurt any,” said Vince.

“Okay,” Jeth said, not as reassured as he would’ve liked. “I’ll move us down a ways, and we’ll try to wait it out until morning. But if anything else weird happens, we’ll reevaluate our options. All right?”

Everyone agreed, and while the others started to clean up, Jeth left for the bridge. As soon as he sat down, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, surprised to find it was Milton. Jeth frowned at the unopened bottle of whiskey tucked beneath his arm.

“When you’re done, come down to sick bay,” Milton said, his smoke-broken voice oddly low, as if he feared being overheard. “But wait until everyone has gone to bed, and come alone.”

“What’s up?” Jeth said.

“I need to show you something.”

A strange prickly sensation slipped over Jeth’s arms and the back of his neck. He didn’t know what Milton would show him, but he knew it wouldn’t be anything good. In his experience, good things rarely needed to be kept secret. “Okay.”

Milton patted his shoulder, then turned to leave, opening the bottle of whiskey as he went.

Jeth returned his attention to the front window, taking hold of the control column. As always, Avalon came to life in his hands, her engines a soft rumble, like a gigantic metal cat set to purring. Jeth didn’t know if moving the ship would help at all, but he sure didn’t mind the excuse to fly her.

He piloted Avalon as close to the border as he dared and then he flew her alongside it, following the energy border on the readout like a trail through space. He didn’t stop for nearly an hour. Not until he heard someone come onto the bridge behind him.

He smiled automatically as he spotted Sierra and Cora.

“She wanted to kiss you good-night,” Sierra said, letting go of Cora’s hand as the girl came forward, opening her arms for an embrace.

Embarrassed, but not ashamed, Jeth pulled her onto his lap and planted a kiss on her forehead. She giggled then turned his head so she could kiss his cheek.

“Good night, sweet girl,” Jeth whispered.

“Good night.” Cora slid down and then walked back to Sierra.

“See you in the morning,” Sierra said, and then the two of them left.

Only four days until they’re gone, Jeth realized. I’m going to miss them. He ignored the thought and the tight squeeze in his chest

He flew on for another twenty minutes before deciding he’d taken them far enough. Nothing amiss had happened since dinner, and he was feeling better about their chances. Besides, as much as he dreaded what Milton had to show him, he was anxious to find out what it was, too. He anchored Avalon once more, and then stood up and stretched before heading down to the passenger deck. He could tell at a glance that everyone had turned in.

He walked silently past the closed cabin doors to sick bay. The moment he stepped inside, a familiar voice filled his ears. The sound cut into him like a dull knife, realization slow and painful.

Mom.

He hadn’t heard her voice in ages, yet he had no trouble recognizing it. How could he have ever thought he’d forgotten? For a moment, he just stood there, frozen in place as all his other senses slid away.

“I’ve tried and tried to get a message to Charles, but he hasn’t answered,” his mother was saying. “He was our only hope, but I don’t think he’s going to help me now, even though he said he would.” She sounded broken somehow, a woman standing on the edge.

Jeth walked farther into the room, his eyes moving automatically to the source of her voice. It came from the video screen on the wall above the operating table. Milton sat on a stool in front of it, his head bent back, the whiskey bottle half-empty in his hands.

“But there’s no one else I can turn to,” his mother went on. “Not now. We’ve come too far. He’s not the person I thought he was.”

Jeth stared at his mother, hardly believing it was her. She looked just like he remembered. Except there was something different about her, too. She looked impossibly young, her skin smooth and eyes bright. She seemed to exude an aura of vibrancy completely at odds with her broken, panicked tone. And yet gray hairs he couldn’t recall threaded through the auburn like silver streamers.

“Who’s Charles?” Jeth said.

Milton gave a little jump then looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know. Someone in the ITA, someone she trusted and thought could help her out of whatever situation she was in.” He turned around and paused the video. “She was always too trusting,” Milton muttered. “Always seeing what she wanted to in people. Just the good, rarely the bad.”

Sounds like Lizzie, Jeth thought, stepping closer. His eyes remained fixed on the image of his mother. He didn’t think he could look away even if he wanted to. “This is from the data crystal Lizzie found?”

“Yes.” Milton took a long drink from the whiskey bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I knew it would hurt, seeing it, but I never guessed how much.”

Jeth didn’t say anything. He understood exactly. He had known how the content would make him feel. The way he did now—empty inside except for an angry, pain-pulsed hole where his heart used to be.

And terribly, utterly alone.

Milton set the bottle on the table and then picked up the video remote. “I wish I did know who this Charles was. Marian . . .” Milton paused, a hitch in his voice, as if speaking her name caused him physical pain. “In the next entry, she says that he betrayed her. Told the ITA their location.”

The floor seemed to drop out from Jeth’s feet. “What? What happened?”

Milton shook his head. “I don’t know. Looks like she and your dad knew the ITA were after them and tried to hide. She recorded a lot of this then, but she doesn’t say what’s happening. She doesn’t say much of anything. Half of it’s gibberish. Like she was suffering from some form of dementia.”

“How do you mean?”

In answer, Milton pressed a button on the remote. Marian’s face disappeared from the monitor, replaced by the main screen that listed the contents of the data crystal. Jeth saw the problem at once. His mother had always been extremely organized and logical about everything. She was fond of alphabetizing jars of food and folding towels with such precision they might’ve been on display in a store. But the contents on the crystal were a mess. Random letters and numbers comprised the file names, none of them comprehensible. It was the sort of thing that would’ve driven his mother mad.

“What is all that stuff?” Jeth said.

“Mostly the Belgrave star charts she and your dad mapped out. The rest are video journals and sensor readouts that are still in computer code. Looks like she did a straight data dump from the system to the crystal for most of them without bothering to run a translate analysis.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Who can say, given the state she was in?” Milton made a fist and slammed it on the table. “Why didn’t she come to me instead of this Charles? She might still be alive.”

Jeth gaped. Milton rarely lost his temper. Anger required too much effort. You had to care to get worked up, but Milton only cared about the next drink and living as undisturbed a life as possible.

That’s not true and you know it.

Jeth sighed, conceding the point. He knew the drinking and apathy were just an act, nothing but a self-defense mechanism. Trouble was Milton cared too much. Anybody could see that. Jeth took in his uncle’s appearance, dismayed at the ruination of old age and alcohol abuse on his face. Purpled flesh covered his cheeks and nose. Red hatch marks speckled the whites of his eyes.

“I’m sorry for shouting,” Milton said.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. Nothing about this is all right.” Milton stood, swaying a bit.

Jeth stepped forward and grabbed his arm to steady him.

Milton jerked away. “I’m fine.”

Sure you are, you stubborn old man.

Jeth moved aside as Milton walked past him. His uncle stopped at one of the supply cabinets and opened a drawer, pulling out another data crystal. Then he came back to the control unit and switched out Jeth’s mother’s crystal with the new one.

“I brought you up here to show you this.” Milton opened one of the files, and an image appeared on the screen, some kind of medical readout comprised of bars with thin blue lines etched sideways across them in a random pattern.

Jeth stared at it, his mind blank. “What is it?”

“DNA test results.”

“Okay?”

“So is this.” Milton pulled up another file that appeared right below the first. This one showed a similar pattern of bars and blue lines, except there were more of them—hundreds more.

“The top one is my DNA,” Milton said. “The bottom is Cora’s.”

Jeth blinked a couple of times, still not understanding. Although he supposed this was one of the reasons why Milton had shut himself up in here the last two days. He wondered how he’d gotten a sample of her blood, but then he remembered the scratch on the back of Cora’s hand.

“Why the difference?” {g}

“No idea,” Milton said, his frustration palpable. “All I can tell you is what it means on a biological level.”

Jeth waited for him to go on, breath held.

“She’s not human.”

Shock drove all thoughts from Jeth’s brain, as he stared at the bottom image, his mouth slackening. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Cora as he’d first seen her—something wild and exotic, and with her eyes too large and dark.

Milton cleared his throat. “I should clarify. She’s not entirely human. Some of this is human DNA, but the rest of it isn’t.”

“Animal?”

“Not any animal I know of.”

“Then what is it?”

“. . . Nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Jeth closed his mouth to keep from asking the next question that occurred to him. It was stupid, impossible. In the entire universe, there was no such thing as aliens. Humans had colonized all the inhabitable worlds and had never found anything else. Not one sign of life in hundreds of surveyed planets.

He pictured Cora again, this time as he’d last seen her, with a sleepy smile on her face as she kissed him good-night. Was there something wrong with her beneath all the normal little girl things? Something dangerous? For the first time in days he remembered that horrible, animalistic scream he’d heard on the Donerail and the way it had gotten inside him, like a predator intent on consuming him from the inside. Sierra and Vince had been just as affected by that sound as he and Shady were. But Cora . . . there’d been no sign of her.

Jeth shuddered, pushing the idea away. Things were complicated enough. “Why did you want me to see this?”

Milton scratched the thick stubble on his chin. “Because if there’s more to Cora than meets the eye, then there might be more to their entire situation. Stuff they’re not telling us.”

Icy fingers seemed to stroke Jeth’s neck. “You think Sierra and Vince know what she is?”

“It’s certainly possible. They did rescue her from an ITA scientist. And it wouldn’t be the first time the ITA experimented on children. An organization so powerful and autonomous has little reason to worry about moral consequences.” Milton shuddered, and Jeth had a feeling that he was speaking from experience. He’d been an ITA doctor for a very long time. Jeth wondered if that wasn’t the reason why his mother had called Charles for help instead of him.

Jeth rubbed his temples, suddenly aware of how late it was. “Why show me this? I mean, what does it matter what Cora is? She seems harmless.”

Does she? Are you sure?

Milton shook his head. “That’s just it. She might not be harmless. She might be a ticking bomb ready to go off at any moment. I’ve seen it happen before with some of the ITA’s test subjects. And,” Milton said, his tone growing more ominous, “if we assume Cora was part of an ITA experiment, how do we know that she isn’t what Sierra and Vince stole, instead of this so-called Aether Project? What if that was just a lie to hide the truth from us?”

“They didn’t steal her. They rescued her from a bad situation.”

Milton raised his hands. “I’m not saying they have bad intentions toward Cora.”

“Clearly not,” Jeth said.

“But they would lie to protect her if they had to. Even to us.”

Jeth considered the idea, trying to look past his personal feelings. He supposed it was possible. And it did seem more likely that Sierra would’ve gotten to know Cora through their roles as scientist and subject rather than as occasional babysitter. But did that mean the Aether Project data cell didn’t exist? He didn’t want to believe it, and yet here was a thread of doubt, a possibility that Sierra and Vince might be lying, might be keeping a dark, frightening secret.

Jeth met Milton’s gaze. “What do you think I should do about it?”

Milton rubbed his forehead. “Find out the truth of what’s really going on. There’ll be hell to pay if Hammer finds out about any of this. You know that as well as I do. I don’t blame you for believing them. I like them too, but we shouldn’t ignore this.” He motioned toward the screen. “And I don’t want you to make the same mistake your mother did in trusting the wrong person. People can’t be trusted, Jeth. Not without earning it.”

Jeth supposed he had a point. He had no proof at all that the Aether Project data cell really existed. And he didn’t know any of them well enough to be aware of what their true motivations might be.

Doubt rose up inside Jeth like a fog, blurring everything. He locked his eyes on Milton. “I’ll confront them about Cora tomorrow. And I’ll insist Sierra show us proof she’s telling the truth about the data cell.”

“What if she refuses?”

Jeth thought about it a long time, playing out all the possible scenarios. The only thing he knew for certain was that if he couldn’t get a copy of the Aether Project, then he had no leverage against Hammer to ensure he got what he wanted most of all—Avalon. And he couldn’t let his ship get turned into scrap metal. He just couldn’t. That left him with only one alternative. An awful one, but still a means to an end.

“If I don’t get the answers I want tomorrow, then I’ll have to call Renford instead. He’s—” Jeth paused. “Did you hear that?”

Milton frowned. “Hear what?”

Jeth walked to the door and peered outside. At first he thought he’d imagined the sound, but then he saw something small and yellow scurrying down the corridor. He turned around again. “Stupid cat.”

“Don’t let Lizzie hear you calling it that,” Milton said. “But are you sure Renford is the solution? If Cora is an ITA test subject, you’ll just be handing her back over to them.”

Jeth swallowed. Please let them be telling the truth, he thought, the words like a prayer. He definitely didn’t want to hand them over to the ITA. Then he realized he might not have to. If Sierra and Vince failed to show him the data cell, he could throw them in the brig, and then fly out of the Belgrave directly to the nearest planet or spaceport. Surely they had to be something within Avalon’s direct flight range. Once there, he could unload the three of them and then call Renford.

Jeth considered running this alternative past Milton, but he held back at the glossy look in his uncle’s eyes. He sighed. “All I know is, if Cora is valuable, then she’s better off with the ITA than with Hammer.”

“That’s like saying a mouse is better off with the trap than the cat.”

“I know,” Jeth whispered, struggling to hold back his temper. He didn’t like those options either. The universe was a terrible, fucked-up place, but he didn’t make it that way. He just had to live with it. “But I don’t have to make that decision yet. I’m prepared to give Sierra and Vince the benefit of the doubt.”

“Yes, me too,” Milton said, although the listlessness in his voice suggested he hadn’t much hope of it.

Jeth’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He wished there were someone else in the universe he could call for help. But there wasn’t. Alone, completely alone.

Milton covered his mouth as he started to yawn. He reached over to the video unit and ejected the data crystal. Then he picked up the bottle of whiskey, a tremor in his hands. “I’m turning in. But I want to be there when you question them about Cora.”

“All right,” Jeth said, realizing Milton was far more intoxicated than he seemed. He wondered how much of this conversation his uncle would remember in the morning.

Milton walked past him then paused in the doorway. “For what it’s worth,” he said, not turning around, “I’m sorry for all the mistakes I made after your parents died. I never meant for you and your sister to end up like this.”

Jeth didn’t say anything. He’d heard this speech before, and while he believed Milton, the apology didn’t hold enough weight to matter.

But then Milton surprised him. He looked over his shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, said, “I hope you know I love you, Jeth. You and Lizzie both. You can always come to me with anything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Just like there was nothing I wouldn’t have done for your mother.”

Jeth swallowed. “We love you, too.” The words were automatic, spoken without any consideration of whether he meant them or not. Only, deep down, he knew he did. Milton wasn’t perfect, but he was family. Jeth might not hold with a lot of what his parents stood for, but he did that one—nothing mattered more than family.

Milton walked out of the sick bay and down the hall to his cabin. There was a faint click as his uncle locked himself in.

Not long afterward, Jeth slipped out of his cabin and headed down the stairs to the nearest shuttle. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to find the Aether Project. He wanted answers. He didn’t want to wait and confront Sierra about it. He’d rather have proof now that she’d told him the truth. Everything depended on it.

He spent hours searching. He started in the Donerail’s cargo bay and worked his way up, through the galley and common area and finally to the passenger deck. He searched every room, rummaging in drawers and scanning the walls and crevices for hidden compartments.

In the end he found nothing. Jeth tried to tell himself this was only because Lizzie had been right. The thing was too small to find on a ship so large. And except for possibly hiding the truth about Cora, Sierra and Vince had given him no reason not to trust them. Just the opposite. They’d helped him from the start. He drew some small comfort from this truth.

And yet, as he walked up the stairs from the shuttle to his cabin, he dreaded the morning.