MUTATION

  REMNANTS #5

  K.A. Applegate

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Prologue

  It didn't hurt. Not exactly.

  Something was blocking the pain, but whatever anesthetic was numbing Kubrick's nerve endings, it did nothing to block the smells or sounds.

  The sound of flesh being torn wetly away from his muscle in square after perfect square.

  The smell of fat smoking as a laser beam burned through his skin.

  The sound of his father weeping and muttering, "No, no, please, god, no."

  The smell of blood.

  It went on for hours. Kubrick kept his eyes closed, but he couldn't stop the images from forming in his mind. He could feel what was happening to him from a distance — the way he remembered feeling a dentist drill into one of his molars back on Earth, five hundred years ago.

  He was floating in midair, suspended by some sort of invisible field, unable to move as the robotic machinery worked slowly and carefully. First the laser beam tracing the sides of a square, then a robotic arm moving in to peel back the skin.

  Starting from his scalp, moving down over his face and neck, across his chest and belly, and then down his legs and feet.

  He lost the hair on his head. He lost his lips, his fingers, and his toenails.

  There was only one explanation. He was in hell, in purgatory, in one of Dante's circles, being punished for the wickedness of his life. Punished for stealing from his mother's purse, for hating his father. Skinned alive. Finally, it was done.

  Several long minutes passed during which Kubrick waited, eyes squeezed shut, heart pounding. He expected somehow for it to start over again, for the robotic arm to move back to his head and begin again on his scalp. He would be like Sisyphus with his stupid rock, condemned to this one awful experience for eternity.

  Instead he heard a wet sucking sound and his father's gasp. He felt a hot, dry wind on his tongue. He was lowered onto the floor. The surface pressed into his shoulder blades and butt. But, still, there was no pain.

  Then – nothing. Nothing for so long, Kubrick couldn't stand the suspense any longer. Cautiously, reluctantly, stomach clenching, heaving, he opened his eyes and looked down the length of his body. Total horror show.

  His skin was completely gone. He'd known that. Yes. Felt it happening. But that wasn't the same as seeing it. Seeing his red muscles exposed, blue veins, startling white bones. Seeing his whole body glistening as if he'd been dipped in a clear neoprene suit. He squeezed his eyes shut again, but it was too late to erase the image. And now his father was approaching. "Frederico, son, can you hear me?" He was weeping, doing a decent impression of someone who cared. "Are you able to get up?" Kubrick sat up.

  His father was right there, looking a bit freaky himself. Bloodshot eyes, gray complexion, pale lips. He reached out with one panicky, trembling hand and gingerly touched Kubrick on the forearm.

  Kubrick jerked away. A gesture remembered from another life, but no longer necessary. He couldn't feel his father's sympathetic touch. He couldn't feel anything.

  CHAPTER 1

  "I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN THINGS."

  Mo'Steel crouched, ready for action.

  Things did not look good. He was trapped inside a dimly lit room with the deeply strange Billy Weir and a dead body. The body belonged to Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake. She'd been washed over the rail of the U.S.S. Constitution and drowned.

  Dead things gave Mo'Steel the overall body shudders. At least he'd convinced Billy to stop moving Wylson like an oversized marionette. Billy could do things like that. Billy could do things that chilled Mo'Steel's soul and something told him he hadn't seen the half of it yet.

  Mo'Steel's fingers itched for a weapon. He had nothing. Just the ragged clothes — now wet — he'd been wearing when Billy Weir and Wylson went overboard and he went after them.

  His ears strained toward any tiny sound. A metallic grinding noise like a rusty motor came and went. Ditto an electrical snap that put Mo'Steel's nerves on edge. Water dripped from half a dozen pipes feeding into the room.

  Mo'Steel could also hear something like little pops. Small sounds nearby or big sounds far away? Big sounds far away. Mo'Steel felt sure.

  The sounds of battle.

  Two alien species, the Blue Meanies and the Squids, fighting over a statue that looked like a primitive godhead. The humans – including his best friend and his mom – sere caught in the middle.

  The Blue Meanies were better fighters, more advanced. They had flying space suits, missiles, and guns that fired tiny shards of metal.

  Mo'Steel knew only two things about the Squids. One: They looked like Squids, with a dozen or so arms, pink eyes, and a long bullet-shaped head. Two: They could convert matter into deadly liquid jets.

  The humans were basically defenseless. Trapped on a ship they could barely control.

  Mo'Steel wanted back on the ship, back in the action. He hated waiting. Waiting made every fiber of his body scream in protest. Waiting was boring and boredom was a slow death.

  "Don't worry," Billy said. "Someone is coming for us."

  Mo'Steel believed him. Why shouldn't Billy be able to see the future? He'd seen Billy do things that were crazy, impossible.

  "When?" Mo'Steel said, easing into a sit.

  "Soon."

  "You think or you know?"

  "I know," Billy said.

  "How?" Mo'Steel had been wondering for some time how Billy did the things he did. Now seemed as good a time as any to get some answers.

  "I've always known things," Billy said, troubled. He didn't seem interested in talking, but Mo'Steel felt the need to draw him out.

  "What kinds of things?"

  "I knew the Rock would come," Billy said.

  Mo'Steel absorbed this silently. The Rock – that's what their little band of ragged survivors called the asteroid that destroyed Earth. Mo'Steel had seen it hit, seen the planet break apart like an overripe watermelon smashed by a bullet into three pieces.

  The Remnants missed impact by mere hours. Just before the asteroid hit, they'd been rushed aboard a patched-together shuttle called the Mayflower in a panicky attempt to save the human race.

  Eighty people fled on the ancient shuttle fitted out with solar sails and hibernation berths. Many died on the journey. Mo'Steel lost his father.

  Five hundred years later, the survivors, the ones who hadn't molded in their berths or gotten eaten by worms, found themselves on what first appeared to be a planet.

  They now knew it was actually an immense ship. A ship run by a computer so powerful the Blue Meanies worshipped it as a god they called Mother. This computer was capable of creating environments based on data chips stored on the Remnants' shuttle.

  So far, the computer had displayed malice or confusion or possibly a very twisted sense of humor. The environments it had created were creepy and often deadly.

  "Something happened to me during the trip." Billy spoke without affect, and yet Mo'Steel felt a strange chill. Something happened to Billy and it had been woolly enough to leave him catatonic. He'd only recently begun to move and to talk.

  "What do you mean, during the trip?" Mo'Steel asked. "What could happen to you during five hundred years of blank nothingness, the big sleep?" For Mo'Steel, the five-hundred-year voyage had passed as swiftly as a night's sleep. "I didn't sleep."

  "Didn't..." Mo'Steel sat back and let out a low whistle. Five centuries of insomnia. Talk about waiting- Imagine waiting five hundred years without so much as twitching a muscle. It was the worst kind of prison, a prison with no escape — not even offing yourself.

  "How –" Mo'Steel started to ask how Billy had kept from losing his mind, but he let his voice trail off. He knew the answer. Billy hadn't stayed sane. Five hundred years of tick, tock, tick, tock without a little action to relieve the ho-hum? Sanity wasn't an option.

  "Why were you zoned out at first?" Mo'Steel asked.

  "I think I just slowed down. Not much happening on that long ride."

  "How come you're back to normal now?"

  "Don't know. Things sped up." Mo'Steel's mind was turning. Maybe Billy could do something, get them out of this stupid dim cell. Get them out even though Mo'Steel couldn't see a door. Couldn't see anything but four black metal walls, a grate floor, and dripping pipes.

  "You know –" Mo'Steel hesitated, not sure of how to say this. "You know you can do stuff, right?"

  "I think I can see your memories."

  "Memories!" Mo'Steel laughed. What good were memories? Earth was history. And everything that had happened since they'd woken up was a nightmare. "Forget memories. You can fly! I saw you hovering over your old man."

  "Did I? I wasn't sure if that was real or a dream. I'm not sure you're real, either."

  "Oh, I'm real," Mo'Steel said. "And I want out of here. Got any ideas?"

  "I can touch their minds," Billy said."Touch their minds and make them come."

  "Whose minds?"

  Billy didn't answer.

  Mo'Steel crouched down again. His ears strained. Long moments passed and then he heard them. Voices.

  Human voices. Just outside.

  CHAPTER 2

  "DETAILS AREN'T MY THING."

  The battle was over. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the Constitution was in serious danger of swamping, capsizing, sinking.

  Jobs stood unsteadily on the deck as the ship fell into the trough of a wave and rolled to starboard. Rolled and rolled and rolled ... and rolled.

  Just as Jobs was certain they were really going over, the wave started to rise under them. The ship righted itself for a few seconds. But as the wave's motion continued, they rolled just as crazily toward port.

  Jobs looked up into the rigging. Sails hung in tatters. Ropes were shredded. All three masts were chewed and burned by Blue Meanie weapons. The few scraps of sails that were picking up a light wind weren't large enough to move a massive wooden warship.

  The oversized statues they'd been dodging since the night before rose up here and there like bumpers on a pinball machine. Miss Blake could probably have told him the artists' names.

  Jobs couldn't. He didn't know anything about art history. He did know the statues were Statue of Liberty size and constructed of solid marble. Oh, and he knew one more thing. Unless they could regain control of the helm, they were going to crash into one of them eventually.

  This is my fault, Jobs told himself angrily.

  He'd fallen asleep.

  Fallen asleep and woken up in the pitch black to feel the ship rolling wildly, creaking eerily from the strain of simply holding together.

  Weak.

  He never should have given himself permission to go belowdecks after they'd escaped from the Blue Meanies. He'd found a quiet spot on one of the lower decks, laid flat on the deck so nobody would see him, and shed a few tears for Mo'Steel.

  Mo'Steel had gone overboard during the battle, hours earlier. He drowned, must have drowned. Thinking there was some way he might be alive was childish, ridiculous.

  Jobs had to face facts. Mo was dead. His mom and dad were dead. Cordelia, dead back on Earth. A clean sweep – almost. The only person Jobs had left was his little brother, Edward. And Edward was only six. He was a responsibility more than anything else. Still, Jobs had to take care of him. If he lost Edward, he would be totally alone.

  Maybe he'd fallen asleep because he was sad. Maybe he was just tired after battle. Either way. it was a stupid - possibly suicidal — thing to do. He was the one who had the best idea of how to sail this ship. Judging from the ship's wild motions, his little nap just might kill them all. Jobs looked out at the water. The waves didn't look especially dangerous. Especially not after the high winds and big sea of the storm that swallowed Billy, Mo'Steel, and Wylson. But the waves were big enough considering they were hitting the ship broadside.

  Jobs carefully moved aft toward the helm. He found 2Face, Violet, Yago, and Edward clinging to the helm. As usual, 2Face and Yago were arguing with the intensity of siblings.

  Violet, who liked to be called miss Blake, was standing somewhat apart. Back on Earth, she'd belonged to a clique of girls called "Janes." They tried to re-create the world created by the author Jane Austen — a world of formality and femininity.

  No sign of the others. No sign of the adults. This was the first environment the computer had created that allowed them to hide from one another, to spend some time alone. Olga, Mo'Steel's mother, was probably somewhere dealing with her own grief.

  "We have to turn her," Jobs called. "Turn her to face the waves!"

  "I thought of that!" Yago yelled. His face had an unnatural gray cast. "But we can't! The wheel's broken."

  "Broken?" Jobs repeated, hanging on to the wheel to keep from sliding with the exaggerated motion of the ship. "No, that can't be right. The problem is that we have no momentum. The helm won't respond unless we're moving forward."

  "We need to unfurl another sail," Edward said.

  "Right," Jobs said.

  Yago nodded sagely. "Before we unfurl another sail, we should take down the highest portion of the mainmast. They come in three pieces."

  "What's that supposed to do?" Jobs asked.

  "Lower our center of gravity," Yago said.

  "Not much," Jobs said. "That section of the mainmast probably weighs five, six hundred pounds. That's nothing compared to the weight of the ship and the cannons."

  "I've seen it done," Yago said.

  "Yeah, but that must have been on a modern yacht with hydraulic lifts," Jobs argued. "All we have here are primitive ropes and pulleys. What if one of the ropes snaps? If we drop that thing, it will plunge right through the decks and possibly straight through the bottom of the ship. Oh, and here's another problem. Once we get it down, we'll never get it back up there again."

  "It comes down," Yago said, covering his mouth with one hand and closing his eyes. His complexion had turned even grayer. It was almost unsettling to see the plastic-surgery poster boy look so unattractive.

  "How?" Jobs demanded.

  "Details aren't my thing" Yago snapped. "Work it out. Consider yourself my chief technical officer. Now, you'll have to excuse me. I need to —go belowdecks."

  Yago staggered away, ending the discussion. Jobs sighed and looked up into the rigging. "Maybe that portion of the mast is heavier than I think."

  2Face laughed bitterly. "Or maybe Yago is trying to get you killed! I don't think he likes it when someone corrects him."

  Jobs didn't buy that. Except for cartoon-character villains, nobody was that ruthless. 2Face had an Oliver Stone complex. She was always imagining conspiracies. But Jobs was willing to cut her some slack. Her father, Shy Hwang, had died that day during the battle with the Blue Meanies. Slowly, they were all turning into orphans - he and Edward, Violet, 2Face.

  "Tell us what to do," Violet said.

  Jobs considered. Then, "Go belowdecks and round up Anamull, Roger Dodger – and, um, Tate, and D-Caf. Tell them I need them in the mainmast rigging, pronto. Ask Anamull to bring as many tools as he can carry. Screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and as much rope as he can find."

  Violet started toward the ladder.

  "You're actually going to take down part of the mast?" 2Face demanded. "Just because Yago said so?"

  Jobs shrugged. "I've been sailing exactly twice in my life. Once in a tourist boat around San Francisco Bay. Once in a Sunfish on a pond during Boy Scout camp. Yago has probably spent weeks floating around in presidential yachts. Why is it so hard to believe he knows something I don't?"

  "Because he's an idiot," 2Face said without a hint of humor. "He thought the helm was broken!"

  "Everyone makes mistakes," Jobs said.

 

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