A Million Suns
I press my wi-com. “ENOUGH!” I roar, and this time, every single frexing person on the ship hears me.
“The ship is now on curfew. Go to your homes. Do not leave them. The Shippers will be enforcing this curfew tonight. Everyone—everyone—is to leave the City streets, leave work, and retire to their own homes.” If Eldest were giving this sort of order, he would have spoken with cold authority. But not me. I’m so mad I’m shaking, and I can’t keep the quiver of anger from my voice. I turn my attention now to the mob in front of me, even though this com is going out to every single person on board the ship, “Look at what you’re doing. Look at how you’re treating the body of one of your own. This is disgusting. Leave him here so Doc can send him to the stars.”
Silence.
“Go. Now,” I say, and my voice sounds exactly the way Eldest’s voice used to.
They go.
They grumble, and they scowl, and they mutter curses . . . but they go.
Marae moves silently beside me. “They still fear you,” she says.
“They fear the past. They still remember Eldest.”
“It’s enough. It worked, didn’t it?”
But I don’t know if it did. Because I might have just enough authority in my voice to send them all home, but now what will they talk about behind their closed doors?
28
AMY
WHEN I GET TO THE ELEVATOR AT THE HOSPITAL, MY HAND hovers over the 3 button, but at the last second, I press 4 instead. I don’t want to hide in my room. If something is wrong, if I need to be somewhere safe . . . I’d rather be with my parents. Besides, the cryo level is one of the safest places for me on the ship. Although Elder told everyone about the level after he took the ship off Phydus, few of them cared to see it, and fewer still can access it with their biometric scan. On the fourth floor, I race down the hall and roll my thumb over the scanner. As the elevator to the cryo level opens, my wi-com beeps.
Even though his voice has to travel all the way from my wrist, I can hear Elder’s roar of “ENOUGH!” through my wi-com. I raise the communicator to my ear, but the sinking feeling in my stomach has more to do with Elder’s message than the descending elevator. Someone has died.
Someone else. First the girl in the rabbit fields. And now, whoever was killed in the City.
I have to figure out what Orion’s clues mean. He hasn’t told me what choice I’ll have to make or what he’s ultimately leading me to, but it can’t be worse than the rage and fear and anger that’s going to keep growing until the people pull the ship apart—especially once they learn the ship’s not even moving.
I bite my lip, thinking. Orion knew this would happen. He had this planned from the start, from the moment he pulled me back out of the cryo chamber. Whatever secret he’s kept, he knew we’d need it now.
So why the hell did he give me such a confusing clue? Go home? What does he mean by that? Doesn’t he realize that I don’t have a home anymore?
The elevator doors slide open, and I go straight to cryo chambers 40 and 41, just as I have every morning for the last three months. Then I pull out my parents and sit down on the ground. It’s not like they can give me answers, but if I focus my eyes on their frozen faces, maybe I can focus my mind on Orion’s puzzle. Just as I start to sift through my muddled thoughts, though, the elevator dings.
My heart drops.
Someone’s coming.
My first thought: Elder. But no. He’s in the City.
My second thought: My parents. I jump up and slam them back into their cryo chambers, my heart racing. The doors to their chambers click closed just as the elevator doors slide open.
Victria.
“What are you doing here?” I snarl. I shouldn’t—there’s no reason for me to act like that—but I’m on edge.
Victria doesn’t bother answering me—she gives me one quelling look, then strides straight across the room to the genetics lab.
When she reaches the door, I call out, “It’s locked.”
Victria doesn’t bother turning around. She just runs her thumb over the biometric scanner, types in the password, and walks straight into the lab.
“Hey!” I say, jumping from the table. “How did you do that?”
I jog over to the lab door. Victria leans against the workbench where Eldest and Doc used to store DNA/RNA replicators.
“How did you know the password?” I ask. “And how did you get past the biometric scanners? The only ones who can unlock this door are Elder, Doc, and some of the Shippers.”
“And you.” She says this as if it was an accusation. It’s true—but I don’t bother to reply to her sneer. Instead, I wait for her explanation. “Elder gave me access more than a month ago,” she admits.
“He . . . did?”
Victria finally turns her attention to me. “You know, Elder did exist before you came along. Frex, he even had friends and a life, all without you.”
“I . . . I know.”
Victria’s face is stony, but I can see the muscle in her jaw clenching from how hard she’s keeping her emotions in check.
“Can you please go?” she asks. But she doesn’t look at me. She’s looking at the cryo chamber where Orion’s frozen, his eyes bulging, his hands clawing at the glass. I shut the door to the gen lab, giving her privacy.
Elder said he and his group of friends broke apart after Kayleigh died. Victria, I think, as the only other girl in the group, lost more than any of them, with the exception of Harley. I can see her, the writer who loved books, spending most of her time in the Recorder Hall. Where Orion was.
She must hate me. First I took away Elder and Harley, two of her last childhood friends. Then I took away Orion.
I somehow never thought of anyone caring about Orion. My memories of him revolve around the last time I saw him alive. Even though I thought when I first met him that he was kind and gentle, generous and friendly, all I can really remember about him is the crazed look in his eyes as he shouted at Elder to let my parents and the other frozens die. But of course, Victria never saw that. All she saw was her friend, the Recorder, with his face twisted and frozen.
And, on a day when Elder locks down the entire ship, when she must be scared because we’re all scared—on a day like this, she ignored the command to go to her room. She goes, instead, to Orion.
I realize then: she didn’t disobey Elder’s order. He told her to go home. Well, sometimes home is a person.
I turn back to the cryo chambers. Victria has unwittingly given me the answer; I finally understand what Orion meant. He told me to go home. And I did, even before I understood what he meant.
I put my hand on the handle of cryo chamber 42. It’s where I should be. It’s the only home I have left.
I pull open the door.
I talk to my parents every morning, but this time, the lingering scent of the cryo liquid brings bile to the back of my throat. I gag, my body remembering how it felt to drown in the sickeningly sweet liquid. I can’t breathe, and then I’m breathing too much, and with every breath comes the scent of the cryo liquid, and that scent is killing me.
I remember the way the liquid burned my nostrils, the way my vision blurred cornflower blue.
The glass box inside is missing a lid—it broke in pieces when Doc and Elder dropped it in their haste to rescue me from drowning in my chamber.
I’m thrown back into that time. I remember being in pain, but my memory of what hurt and how has faded with time. Instead, I remember Elder’s deep soothing voice. I was so scared, so disorientated, and his voice pulled me through the fog of terror.
I force myself to quit thinking about waking up and instead focus on the actual cryo chamber. The glass is cool to the touch, and I marvel at how slender the box is, how my arms and legs pressed against the glass as I struggled to escape.
My hands stop.
There—right where my heart would be if I were lying in the box now—is a single piece of paper, folded in half.
My hand shakes as I unfold it.
MILITARY PERSONNEL ABOARD GODSPEED
1. Katarzyna Bergé
4. Lee Hart
12. Mark Dixon
15. Frederick Krasczinsky
19. Brady MacPherson
22. Petr Plangariz
26. Theo Kennedy
29. Thomas Collins
30. Ximena Roge
33. Alastair Potter
34. Aigus Wu
38. Jeremy Doyle
39. Mariella Davis
41. Robert Martin
46. Grace Spivey
48. Dylan Farley
52. Iñes Gomez
58. Aislinn Keenan
63. Emma Bledsoe
67. Jagdish Iyer
69. Yuko Saitou
72. Huang Sun
78. Chibueze Kopano
81. Mary Douglass
94. Naoko Suzuki
99. Juliana Robertson
100. William Robertson
29
ELDER
AFTER REMINDING DOC TO STOP BY LIL’S HOME BEFORE taking Stevy’s body away, I help the Shippers inspect the City streets. Faces peer through windows as I pass. Sometimes I catch a meek glance marred by worry and fear, but more often the people glare down at me. They may have obeyed my curfew, but their eyes are defiant, angry.
My stomach roars—my last real meal was yesterday—and I only stop to eat when Marae insists. The streets are empty, but we don’t leave until the solar lamp clicks off. As I ride the grav tube up to the Shipper Level, I can’t help but notice that nearly every light is on in the City. I’m pretty sure I can guess what they’re staying awake to talk about.
Most of the Shippers remain in the City—they make their homes here, after all, only coming to the Shipper Level to work—but Marae follows me up the grav tube. As our footsteps ring out across the metal floor, I realize that tonight, after Marae leaves the Shipper Level and I return to the Keeper Level, I’ll be even more separated from the rest of the ship—two empty levels, all for me.
We make our way toward the whirr-churn-whirr of the engine. It’s dark inside the Engine Room, but the engine still casts a shadow. It smells of burnt grease, but it seems smaller in my eyes, now that I know it’s not moving the ship. Marae doesn’t look at it at all as she crosses the floor and goes straight to a thick, heavy door with a seal lock.
The Bridge.
I remember Eldest’s words for me before I started training—the Bridge is for the Shippers. I take care of the people, not the ship.
Marae opens the door and waits for me to enter first. An arched metal roof curves over the Bridge. The room is a pointed oval, drawing me to the front of it. There are two rows of desks with monitors protruding from them. A giant V-shaped control panel is built into the front of the room.
I sit down at the control panel and try to imagine what it would be like to steer this massive ship down to the new Earth.
But I can’t. . . . The idea is so impossible to me that I can’t even imagine being the triumphant leader who lands the ship.
I jump up from the chair. Eldest was right. I don’t belong here.
Marae stands in front of one of the control panels. There are two screens there, both blank. One is labeled COMMUNICATION, the other NAVIGATION. “I was working on this today, as you requested, when you commed me to help with the . . . with the trouble,” she says, brushing her fingers over the metal navigation label.
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