Starflight (34 page)

After turning two more corners, they reached a set of double doors bolted from the outside. Without a glass pane or any labeling, there was nothing to indicate where they led. Doran glanced down the hallway at another corner, torn between continuing on and staying to investigate.

“You and Solara stay here and check it out,” Renny suggested, nodding at the doors. “Kane and I will see what’s down that way.”

“Sounds good,” Doran said, even though he didn’t like the idea of separating. He agreed to check in using the suits’ com-link, and then watched half the group walk away.

Solara took his hand and gave it a fortifying squeeze. Together they unlocked the bolt and inched open the doors while Doran pointed his pistol inside. The motion triggered another set of overhead lights, and a wide room came into view. His eyes automatically scanned for life, and when he found the room empty, he allowed himself to look closer.

The space was pristine, with white walls and glossy tiled floors. Several tables stood along the perimeter, covered in computers, microscopes, and an assortment of machinery. It didn’t take long to figure out the room’s purpose.

“It’s a lab,” he said.

Solara peeked around his shoulder. “What kind? Medical?”

“I don’t know.” Since it seemed safe, he holstered his gun and entered the room. “Let’s find out.”

They explored opposite halves of the room, starting at the entrance and working their way toward the back. As Doran moved from one table to the next, he detected a familiar scent, something that plucked at his memories of his internship with new product development. The smell was slightly sharp and metallic, like melting ore. Then he noticed a glass-paned furnace in the wall with a chunk of metal burning inside, and everything clicked into place.

“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “It’s fuel development.”

“Not just any fuel.” The sudden flatness in Solara’s tone prompted him to face her. She trailed her index finger along a data tablet affixed to the wall and added, “The one you’re accused of stealing.”

He rushed to her side and glanced at the screen, instantly spotting the word
Infinium
in several places on the page. The rest of the text was a nonsensical jumble of numbers and formulas, so he tapped the panel and returned to the main data directory.

He found a file called
G.S. INFINIUM LABORATORY JOURNAL
and selected it, then scrolled through the entries while Solara read along with him.

“Look.” Doran pointed at a small clear bag of rocks resting on the table, labeled
INFINIUM RAW ORE SAMPLES
. “It’s like I said. I’ll bet my father found out how dangerous this was and wanted it destroyed.”

The next several entries confirmed his theory as the scientist detailed the challenges involved with stabilization. On its own, the metal was highly combustible to the point of weaponry use. But then the journal took a different turn. After several months of trial and error, G.S. found a combination of additives that allowed the ore to ignite and generate energy without exploding. Once the process was complete, he named the new matter Infinium, because it seemed to burn eternally.

They’d just scrolled through another week’s report when the com-link in their suits activated, and Renny’s voice crackled from inside their collars.

“Report back,” he said. “You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Doran answered. “We found the Infinium lab, and we’re getting caught up on the data files. How about you?”

“There’s a private residence down here,” Renny said. “Stocked with—”

“More like a mansion,” Kane cut in. “This place is swank. Theater screens in every bedroom, a full gym, showers so big you could drown. There’s even a heated pool with sun lamps and a beach simulator.”

“It’s true,” Renny said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is the house abandoned?” Solara asked.

“It don’t think so,” Renny said. “There are dishes in the sink and food in the cooler, but we haven’t seen a soul.”

“Neither have we,” Doran added, feeling the urge to check behind him. No one was there, but that didn’t put his anxiety to rest.

“The hangar is empty, so whoever lives here may have flown off world,” Renny said. “Keep your eyes peeled, and we’ll check in again soon.”

Doran exchanged a heavy glance with Solara. The posh living quarters, the hidden lab. Clearly his father had rewarded someone lavishly to stay here and experiment with Infinium, far from the reach of the Solar League. But nothing about the data led Doran to believe there was a weapon of mass destruction here.

He leaned in and skimmed the screen until he found the next entry describing the scientist’s progress. It took several months, but G.S. finally created a sample of Infinium that was interchangeable with Spaulding fuel.

Doran scrolled through the next two months’ entries but couldn’t find any indication that the original sample had run out. He turned and stared across the room at the hunk of rock burning inside the laboratory tank, then had to force himself to blink.

“You mean to tell me,” he said, “that a tiny rock has been powering this whole complex? For
months
?”

Solara touched his arm. “If it’s true, think about what this means.”

He didn’t need prompting. His mind was already reeling with the implications of Infinium on the open market. A lump of this super-fuel would burn a lifetime in the farming machines that now lay dormant on fields across the outer realm. Homes would stay heated for generations. Travel expenses would plummet, opening new trade routes and freeing settlers to come and go as they pleased. Commerce would flourish, and lives would be saved.

Infinium had the power to change everything.

But what none of this told him was why his father had sent him here or how his DNA had ended up on the supply crate. All Doran knew was that he’d never touched these samples. He glanced around the lab until he noticed a strand of long jet-black hair on the floor, and an idea came to mind. Using a pair of tweezers, he picked up the hair and carried it to the lab’s genetic scanner.

“Let’s find out who G.S. is,” Doran said.

After he inserted the sample, the machine buzzed for several minutes, and the words
MATCH FOUND
scrolled across the screen. He tapped the
DISPLAY
option and leaned closer, pulse ticking in anticipation. But when the result flashed on the panel, his own face stared back at him, along with the text
DORAN MICHAEL SPAULDING, HOUSTON, TEXAS: EARTH.

“That can’t be right,” he said. “You saw that hair—it’s not mine.”

“Has your hair ever been that long?” Solara asked. “Maybe someone planted it here.”

“No, never.”

“Then we have to assume it’s your genetic code.”

“But it’s not.”

“Are you sure?” Solara dipped her head and peered at him intently. “Doran,” she said with a gentle touch of her hand. “Think about it. A long time ago, there was someone who shared your DNA. I think he’s the one who invented Infinium, or at least that he handled the crate your father supposedly stole from the Solar League transport.”

Doran’s twin? The implication was so absurd that he nearly laughed. “My brother’s gone. We found his body.”

“Did you see the remains?”

“Of course not. I was nine years old.”

“What was his name?” she asked. “You never told me.”

“Gage,” he said. As soon as the word left his lips, the hair along his forearms stood on end. “Gage Spaulding.”

“The initials fit. It
all
fits.”

“No,” Doran whispered. “That’s crazy.”

He shook his head again and again, never stopping, because denial was the only way to bat down the prickle of hope quickly swelling inside him. He couldn’t afford to hope. It would only hurt that much more when reality set in again. His brother couldn’t be alive, otherwise Doran would have sensed it somehow. And what about his parents? If their other son had survived, they’d know it, and they would never keep a secret like that from him.

Solara was wrong. She had to be.

But then the lab doors swung open and revealed something that shifted his very center of gravity. Renny and Kane strode inside with their hands folded behind their heads, both of them led at gunpoint by a furious, distorted mirror image of himself.

At once, a memory washed over Doran—an emotional snapshot from his childhood that he’d nearly forgotten. On the night he was snatched from his bed, he recalled lying blindfolded on the cold floor of a shuttle and holding his brother’s hand. Fear had choked him in tandem with a musty rag shoved inside his mouth, but the grip of Gage’s fingers had kept Doran grounded, connected to something safe and familiar.

Now those fingers were curled around a pulse pistol.

Doran had to remind himself to breathe. Impossible as it seemed, Gage Spaulding was alive and well. But how much of the boy Doran remembered was still in there?

“G
age,” Doran whispered, his body as stiff and motionless as a tomb.

The twin’s eyes moved toward the sound of his name, then flew wide in a way that told Solara this encounter was just as shocking for him as it was for the rest of them. He studied his brother, no doubt taking in the subtle differences that set them apart. Gage’s skin had the slightly golden hue of someone who bathed in artificial light instead of natural sun, with a silver web of scar tissue tugging down the corner of his left eye. He wore his hair in a low ponytail that disappeared behind a pair of broad shoulders that could pass for Doran’s. And both of them had the same arrogant tilt to their chins, the one she’d taken months to recognize as a defense mechanism. Each boy peered at the other through an identical mask of reserved wonder, as if afraid to believe what their eyes were telling them. The similarities were uncanny.

Except this twin knew how to wield a gun.

When Doran took a step toward his brother, Gage aimed at him and warned in a shaky voice, “Drop your pistol and stay back. I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here.”

Doran tossed his weapon to the floor and held both palms forward. His mouth seemed to have stopped working, because it took a few tries before he spoke. “How are you alive?”

Gage faltered, as if the question had caught him off guard. “The same way you’re alive. I got out of the house before it burned down.”

“But we buried you. There was a body.”

Gage didn’t look too surprised to hear that. He glanced away from his brother, staring thoughtfully at the discarded pistol before picking it up and tucking it inside his waistband. “The body wasn’t mine. I ran for two blocks and hid behind a garbage bin. That’s where Mom found me. She wanted to keep me safe from Dad, so she let him think I was dead. But she said you knew our secret. She never mentioned it to you?”

“Never mentioned it?” Doran echoed. “She sat next to me at your funeral.” For a long time afterward, Doran went very still and quiet. His eyes were shimmering with unshed tears when he finally broke the silence. “And then she left me with Dad and brought you here to live with her for all these years. Because you were the science prodigy, not me. I was just average. I wasn’t…”

Useful to her
.

Solara didn’t need to hear the final words—they were written on Doran’s face. Her heart broke as she watched him try to blink away the moisture welling in his eyes. Abandonment was one thing, but his mom had left him in favor of another child. Solara had never told anyone, but that was the real reason she refused to seek out her birth parents. She couldn’t bear the possibility that they’d started a new family without her.

“Is Mom here now?” Doran asked, and wiped a sleeve across his eyes.

Gage shook his head.

“Good,” Doran muttered. He swallowed hard, his gaze turning sharply to ice. “As far as I’m concerned, she died that day instead of you.”

That seemed to ruffle Gage’s feathers. His chin jerked up, along with the barrel of his pistol. “Watch your mouth.”

“You’re defending her?” Doran asked, flinching back like he’d been slapped. “She faked your death and kept us apart for almost a decade. And for what? To take revenge on Dad? To invent the perfect fuel and drive him out of business? It’s sick!”

Solara agreed. The Spauldings made her glad to be an orphan.

“And Dad’s a total saint, right?” sneered Gage.

“Maybe not, but he’s a victim in all this, too.”

“A victim?” Gage snapped, rage burning behind his eyes. “He knows me! Mom let me call him months ago, to tell him about what I created—how Infinium was going to change everything, and how the Solar League paid a fortune for my first batch. But do you think he asked me to come home?” Gage made a noise of disgust. “No. He begged me to bury the project, just like Mom said he would. He told me Infinium would make Spaulding Fuel redundant and ruin the family legacy. When I refused to play along, he stole the batch from the transport. Then he traced our location and threatened to send someone here, either to destroy my research or to steal it; he didn’t say which.” Gage’s voice sounded broken when he added, “I just didn’t know it would be my own brother.”