“I don’t understand,” I said, leaning toward her. “What was so important about Andromeda?” I stopped her before she answered. “Wait, you came out of hiding for an anonymous email detailing some mysterious Omega project? What the hell were you thinking?” I felt hot irritation flood me. “What about all those times you told me that ‘Motion reveals the prey; hold still and go unnoticed’?”
She looked deeply uncomfortable. “I think the moral of the story there is that after six months of not leaving a house, even I get a little antsy. Maybe too antsy to think things through logically.”
I just stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“What?” She frowned, and I caught a hint of irritation.
“Come on,” I said, “Surely you can’t possibly miss the irony in that statement.” She stared at me blankly, so I leaned toward her, as though my proximity might wake her up. “You went stir crazy after being confined to a house for six months without being able to go outside ...”
“Oh,” she said with a subtle hiss of impatience. “I get it now, yes, very funny. There’s a big difference between being locked in a house and not even being able to see the light of day because you’re underground.”
“What?” I laughed. “Rule #3 was that I wasn’t allowed to look outside, remember?”
“Oh, please, you looked out the back window all the time,” she dismissed me.
I stared at her, a little shocked. “You knew about that?”
She slanted her head, everything about her expression asking me how dumb I thought she was. “Of course I knew. You weren’t that good at putting the curtain right after trying to peek out past the armoire I covered it with.” She straightened in her seat. “But that was fine. I wanted you to have at least one open channel to quietly defy me, so I left it that way.”
“Why?” I asked, a little befuddled.
“Because,” she said, “expecting you to perfectly obey me in all things would be an exercise in futility. Everything I did, I did with an eye toward practicality. I had to keep you away from the world, away from the threats outside. Getting you to buy into those threats at age six was impossible. So I worked you like a dog, trained you in martial arts, fighting—”
“I thought that was so I could defend myself,” I interjected.
“Dual purpose,” she said. “It did that, which was obviously most important, but it also gave you an outlet for your frustrations and physicality, wore you out so you didn’t have as much energy to expend trying to find ways to escape or subvert me. Same with your studies. Admit it,” she said and smiled a little. “You may have been confined to the house for ten years, but you were never bored.”
“No,” I conceded. “Not when I was in the house at large. I always had studies to work on, or something else.” I glanced down at the bulkhead in front of me. “Still wouldn’t have been the way I’d have chosen to spend my childhood, though.”
There was a quiet from her seat for a long moment. “It wouldn’t have been the way I’d have chosen for you to spend it, either.”
I started to say something else but a hideous, groaning screech came from behind me and I stood. Mom matched my motion and we both looked back to the rear of the plane. The Hercules who had been unconscious was most definitely not unconscious now; he was on his feet, the chair he had been resting in ripped from the floor of the plane.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed, but I was already running down the aisle. I could hear Mother two steps behind me.
Scott was blocking my passage and I hipchecked him out of the way. Breandan was quick enough to move on his own, just behind Scott, tripping onto Reed, who screamed in pain as the Irishman landed on his stomach. The narrow cabin forced me to slow my run so I didn’t bounce up and hit the low ceiling. I didn’t make it back in time to keep the enraged Hercules from doing something stupid.
He was still well secured to the seat, but it was ripped free of the cabin floor, hanging off his back. I saw him stress it, trying to break the handcuffs, but the sound of the seat resisting and the metallic grind from stress in the chair itself were the only noises.
The Hercules viewed my approach with a wild-eyed demeanor. He knew he was stuck: his hands and feet still bound, he was unable to fight me. I saw the options roll through his mind and the desperation set in, eyes darting. Finally, something clicked as he looked back toward the wall of the cabin, and I didn’t even have a chance to scream, “NO!” before he launched himself into it full force, leading with the seat.