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voices outside in the corridor and paused to listen, his heart in his mouth. Had they traced him here? Maybe Kieran had found him on the video! But no. It sounded like two little girls on their way to the central elevator bank.
    “Did you see the way Kieran took Waverly to his office last night?”
    “Maybe it’s true. Maybe they really did break up.”
    “I don’t believe it. Not with the way she still looks at him.”
    Seth’s stomach knotted up, and for the thousandth time he wished he didn’t love her. She’d never be with a brute like him, and he should let her go. He’d been telling himself this for years and he knew it was true, but he still couldn’t make himself give her up. Maybe he was stubborn; probably he was just stupid.
    Besides, there’s no such thing as love, he told himself, remembering the wolfish way his father used to look at his mother. When a husband can kill his own wife, you know it’s just a fairy tale.
    This brought Seth back to the safe place he knew, the one where he didn’t need anyone, where no one would ever depend on him, where he’d never get close enough for anyone to see the darkness inside him. For people like Seth, there was no such thing as uncomplicated love or friendship, and he was better off alone. So was everyone else, especially her.
    Seth heard the elevator doors slide open for the girls, and their voices faded away. He slipped out of the closet, sprinted to the outer stairwell, and ran up the stairs two at a time to the shuttle bay. He peeked in through the window to see only the lifeless forms of the shuttle craft and OneMen that lined the walls, then slipped through the doorway and into the bay.
    It felt crowded with spirits. Both shuttle bays had been the scenes of such death and loss, he was pretty sure the crew avoided them. He didn’t like being here himself.
    Seth ducked behind the shuttle craft and jogged to the com station near the air-lock control panel. He fired up his father’s portable computer and hooked into the ship’s computing system via the universal port, hoping that his father’s passwords had not been changed. As head pilot of the Empyrean, Mason Ardvale’s level of computer access would have been second only to Captain Jones’s. Mason probably wasn’t officially supposed to allow his passwords to be automatic, even on his own computer, but before the attack, everyone had been lax about security.
    “Come on, come on,” Seth whispered.
    The computer flashed an access screen to the ship’s central computers. Seth held his breath and waited for his computer to automatically log on to the ship’s system. If it did, he was home free. If it didn’t, he’d have to drop the computer and run like hell.
    The screen winked once and flashed the words “Access granted.”
    “Thanks for being such a slacker, Dad,” Seth muttered under his breath. As quickly as he could, he located the software that controlled the surveillance system and scanned the lines of code that governed the motion detectors. It took him almost fifteen agonizing minutes to find the code that he needed, and when he found it, his jaw dropped.
    Max must have already altered the code. He’d made precisely the change that Seth had intended, disabling the motion detection software, but leaving the cameras themselves intact. Impressive, given that Max was an idiot. Then again, if he could tamper with the thrusters, he ought to be smart enough to do this.
    Ought to be. But was he? It didn’t sit well.
    Seth shook his head. It must have been Max who had done all this. No one else had a motive.
    Seth folded up his father’s computer, tucked it under his arm, and jogged out of the shuttle bay. He disappeared into the outer stairwell again, but he crouched on the landing. At least now he didn’t have to worry about keeping one step ahead of the video surveillance.
    This might give him the time he needed to find Max. Where would he go to hide?
    If Max was smart he’d go someplace