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MISSION
     
    “We just want to move you girls to a safe place,” the man with the scar told Waverly as he and six others ushered all the girls down the corridor toward the port side. The girls, the youngest two years old and the oldest fifteen, sounded like a small army as they ran. Waverly wondered what the men would do if all the girls ran away at the same time. Would they shoot? After what they had done to Seth, she didn’t want to find out.
    They’d been rounded up like goats, the girls pulled from their brothers, cajoled, the men saying brightly, “Ladies first!” The men lined up the girls by the door while the man with the scar casually pointed his gun at the boys, who had shrunk away, too scared to protest.
    All except Seth, who stood up, fists at his sides. “You can’t do this,” he’d said. His eyes had skirted over to Waverly, who looked on, crazily hoping that Seth could do something.
    Seth lunged for the man with the scar, but with one fluid motion he whacked Seth on the head with the butt of his gun. Sealy Arndt had run to Seth’s side, and the man swung his gun again, tearing Sealy’s ear and sending the boy sprawling. “That’s what happens when people panic,” he said to the rest of the boys, and turned toward the girls. “Quick time, march!”
    Now the men were walking cautiously down the corridors, but they were horribly out of breath, and sweat streamed from their foreheads. The man with the scar on his face was clearly in charge, and though he was slightly built, with weak, bony arms, he was obviously capable of anything.
    Were they afraid, or sick? Waverly could hardly breathe herself. Her muscles were still horribly cramped, and her heart seemed to have lost its rhythm. She needed to catch her breath, but her terror only made everything worse.
    “There’s been an accident,” the man with the scar announced in response to a question that Waverly hadn’t heard. “The port side is the safest area.”
    “Then why not bring the boys, too?” Waverly asked.
    “We are bringing the boys,” he said cheerily, as though she’d asked a silly question. “They’re right behind us.”
    She wanted to believe him, but a nagging unease spread through her when she looked at the gun he held so tightly. If he was trying to help, why did he need a gun?
    But what could she do? She tried to think how to get away from these strange people, but her mind felt charred. She couldn’t think. So she went where the men told her to go, and she kept quiet.
    The corridors were empty, probably because the entire crew had been pulled away to deal with the accident. The emergency lights cast a dull pallor over everyone. Serafina clung to Waverly’s shirt, letting herself be pulled along as they jogged through the hallways. Each time they crossed a junction between corridors, she looked desperately for a crew member from the Empyrean. But there was no one.
    Finally the man with the scar stopped walking, holding up a hand for the others to stop.
    Waverly looked back over the long line behind her and saw Samantha Stapleton, a tall girl of fourteen, carrying Hortense Muller, who was crying, her knees bloody from a fall. Samantha and Waverly had always had a strained relationship, ever since a fistfight they’d gotten into in the seventh grade. Samantha had been jealous that Waverly had been tapped for pilot’s training when she herself had been assigned to farming. “You cheated,” Samantha spat through the gap between her teeth.
    Waverly didn’t see the first punch coming, but she didn’t let a second one land on her. Both girls walked away from the fight with black eyes and learned to avoid each other ever since. But now, Waverly could see that Samantha was the only girl here who wasn’t paralyzed with terror. She was fully alert, watching the guards, noticing things.
    Samantha looked at Waverly with wide eyes. In that one look, their old rivalry melted away. Waverly wished she could signal something that