Mindee Arnett - Avalon

“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.

JETH WOKE THE NEXT DAY, UNCERTAIN IF HE’D ACTUALLY slept at all. Terrible images of corpses stuck in walls and of a little girl with too-black eyes and a killer scream had plagued his mind all night.

Even though it was early, Lizzie and Flynn were already up, running a final diagnostic on the nav system, both of them anxious to be on the way. Celeste, Vince, Milton, and Sierra were still in their cabins, but Shady and Cora were in the common room. Shady was lying on a sofa, watching one of his favorite shows on a handheld video screen with a pair of earbuds in.

Cora sat at the gaming table, playing with an art program that allowed her to draw pictures on the table’s touch-screen surface with her fingers.

“Hello, Cora,” Jeth said, walking over to her.

She smiled up at him. She looked so normal, nothing at all like the creature in his nightmares. She seemed so human . Maybe the test had been wrong. Maybe the Belgrave had distorted the results somehow. Stranger things have happened .

Everything from the night before seemed less intense now that it was morning. Jeth wondered if Milton was just being paranoid. He’d been very drunk, not mention his emotional jag from watching the video journals.

Jeth shifted his gaze toward Cora’s drawings. He’d expected hearts and rainbows, maybe a unicorn or two. Instead he saw a crude outline of a spaceship he easily recognized as the Donerail .

Cora was drawing little circles on it.

“What are you doing?” Jeth said, unsettled by the slow, methodical motion of her hand as she trailed her fingers around and around.

“Drawing,” Cora said with no hint of sarcasm.

Jeth let out a breath, wondering if maybe Cora had seen whatever had done the damage to the Donerail . He knew children were supposed to be more perceptive about certain things. Or maybe her strange DNA gave her special sight or something. “Are those circles supposed to be the holes on the other ship?”

She nodded.

“Did you see what made those holes?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Cora,” Jeth said, assuming his best parental voice, the kind his father had always used when he thought Jeth was hiding something, “did you see what made those holes?”

“What’s going on?” a voice said from behind Jeth.

He straightened from his hunched position and turned to see Sierra watching him, her expression wary. “Cora was just explaining her drawing to me.”

“I see.”

Jeth frowned at the tone of her voice. True, he didn’t know her very well, but he’d lived with girls all his life. And he had no trouble recognizing the universal sound of an unhappy female. She was pissed at him about something. Just what, he couldn’t say. In his experience, girls rarely needed a rational reason. “Something wrong?”

“No. I mean . . . yes .” She turned and walked across the room, motioning for him to follow.

He did so, mentally bracing himself for a scolding.

“Look,” Sierra whispered the moment he was in earshot. “I know that Cora really likes you and everything, but that doesn’t give you the right to start asking her questions about what happened on the Donerail . That experience was too traumatic to ask a child to relive it.”

Jeth opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. He supposed she was right. He tried to imagine how he would’ve felt when he was Cora’s age, seeing that man stuck in the wall. I’d probably be scarred for life . “I’m sorry.”

Momentary surprise crossed Sierra’s face. “It’s okay. I should’ve mentioned it earlier.”

Jeth nodded, realizing now was the perfect opportunity to ask her what Cora really was. He racked his brains for the best way to phrase the question, but nothing came to him. They all sounded so awful. So what is Cora, anyway? Or Is Cora some kind of genetic experiment? Or Is Cora an alien?

He could barely think the questions with any kind of seriousness, let alone say them. Because no matter what Milton’s test results might indicate, what Jeth saw was a little girl, bright and maybe a tad unusual, but still sweet and funny and about as normal as everybody else on this ship.

“Are you all right?” asked Sierra, frowning.

Jeth ran a hand through his hair, his fingers snagging in the long strands. He seriously needed a haircut. “I’m fine. Why?”