A Million Suns

“Have you had a chance to figure out where we are?” I ask, interested.



Marae scowls. “It’s a mess.” She lifts up a hinged panel below the screens, showing me a jumble of wires and circuitry. “If I had to guess, I’d say this was deliberate, probably as far back as the Plague—after all, we did lose communication with Sol-Earth at that time.”



“So someone, probably the Plague Eldest, cut communication with Sol-Earth and that destroyed the navigation equipment too?” I ask, noting how both operations were housed in the same control panel.



Marae shrugs, hiding the ravaged electronics under the metal panel again. “I’ve been trying to sort it all out.”



Even though she tries to disguise it behind an even-toned voice, I can still hear the disdain. “I’m sorry about today. I know the Feeder Level problems interrupted your work.”



Marae eyes me. “You did well today,” she says finally.



“Did well?” I snort. “That was one step away from a riot. Next time it will be a riot. But—thank you. It really helped that the Shippers stood on my side.”



“The Shippers always stand on the side of the Eldest,” Marae says simply, in the same tone she’d use if she were to tell me that the name of the ship is Godspeed or that the walls around us are steel. “But . . . I hope you realize, Elder, that we wouldn’t have needed to be down there if you’d put the ship back on Phydus. If we didn’t have this kind of trouble, then the Shippers and I could focus on the problems with the engine and the nav system.”



“No Phydus,” I say immediately, but the determination that’s usually in my voice is gone. Even if Stevy was poisoned by Phydus, Marae’s still right. How much time was wasted—not just in the Shipper level, but across the whole ship—today? We have to work, or we’ll all die. We can’t afford to break down like this.



“Eldest,” Marae starts.



“Elder,” I insist.



“Without Phydus, things are going to keep getting worse. They don’t care what kind of leader you are—they want someone else. Anyone else. Or no leader at all. People are, at their heart, constantly moving toward a state of entropy. Much like this ship. We’re all spiraling out of control. That’s why we need Phydus. Phydus is control.”



I sigh. “I admit, the way I’ve run things—or not—in the past three months hasn’t worked well. I thought I could trust everyone to keep doing things the way they were.”



“Can’t you see?” Marae asks gently, like a mother talking to her child. “That’s exactly why we need Phydus. That’s the first thing you need to do, if you want to control the ship like Eldest.”



“I don’t.”



“You don’t what?”



“I don’t want to control the ship like Eldest,” I say. “Amy—” Marae narrows her eyes at the mention of Amy’s name. I continue anyway, a growl in my voice now. “Amy helped me see that Eldest never controlled the ship anyway; he just controlled the drugs. I think I can do better than that. I hope I can.”



“You realize,” Marae says, “without Phydus, this may mean mutiny.”



I nod.



I know that.



I’ve known it all along.



30



AMY



I STARE AT THE PRINTED LIST AND CURSE ORION ALOUD. Another puzzle.



I glance behind me, but Victria’s still in the gen lab. Orion’s clue was simple: 1, 2, 3, 4. Add it up to unlock the door. I run my finger down the list, counting. Twenty-seven people on the list. The doors on this level are locked with a keypad—maybe punching in 27 will unlock one of them.



My hand goes immediately to the wi-com on my wrist. I know Elder would want to open the door with me. But I don’t push the button. All I can think about is the anger in his voice when he ordered a curfew. And—I cringe—I promised him I’d go straight to my room and lock the door. How mad will he be if he finds out I came here instead?



Still clutching the list, I rush past the rest of the cryo chambers and head to the hallway on the far side of this level. There are four doors here—each made of thick, heavy steel and sealed shut with its own keypad lock. The hatch that leads out to space is through the second door—the keypad is smeared with red paint, a reminder of Harley’s last night. There’s one door to the left of it, one door to the right. At the end of the hallway is another door, the largest of all.



I start with the door to the left of the hatch. The keypad has both letters and numbers. I try typing in 27 first, but an error code flashes across the screen—ERROR: PASSCODE MUST BE FOUR DIGITS OR MORE. I try 0027 next, and when that doesn’t work, I spell it out: t-w-e-n-t-y-s-e-v-e-n. Nothing.



I move to the right, past the hatch, and try the password on each of the other two locked doors.



Still nothing.



Frustrated, I recount the number of the people on the list, but it’s still twenty-seven. I run back to the elevators and grab a floppy from the table there, checking the official record of frozens against Orion’s list. Twenty-seven.



The significance of who Orion listed isn’t lost on me—he’s trying to remind me that the number of frozens in the military indicates trouble for those born on the ship. He thought this was a good enough reason to try to kill them all, including my father. And while, yes, twenty-seven military personnel out of a hundred frozens may be large, Orion’s still a psycho to think my father would be okay with enslaving anyone.



I try the stupid doors one more time, but they still stay locked. Whatever the passcode is for opening the doors, it’s not 0027 or t-w-e-n-t-y-s-e-v-e-n.



Frustrated, I take the elevator back up to the Hospital and—after locking my door, just as I promised Elder—I stare at the wrinkled paper until I fall asleep.



For the first time in a long time, I dream about Jason, my old boyfriend back on Earth. In my dream, Jason and I are at the party where we met. Even though in my memory, the party is full of laughter and dancing and fun, in my dream all I see is cigarette smoke and jocks who splash their red plastic cups of beer on me. When Jason and I meet outside, it starts to rain—but it’s not romantic warm summer rain. It’s spitty, cold, sharp rain. My father would have called it “pissing rain,” and it stings my skin and gets in my eyes.



When we pull apart, Jason says, “I love you now that I can’t have you.”



And I say, “You were my first everything.”



But Jason shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t.”



And before I can figure out what he wasn’t my first of, he kisses me.



It’s sloppy and wet and awkward and our teeth clack together and his tongue feels like a dying fish in my mouth, flopping around.



I pull back—but it’s not Jason kissing me, it’s Luthor.



“You’ll never escape,” he says.



I want to run away, but my muscles are frozen as Luthor steps closer. His mouth opens in a wide grin, and his teeth are all black and rotten. I open my mouth to scream, but before I can, his lips crash against mine.



I wake up, struggling against my tangled quilt. My face is damp—with sweat or tears, I can’t tell. As soon as I escape my bed, I run to the bathroom and splash cold water on my cheeks, still gasping from the scream I never sounded in my nightmare.



I grip the sides of the sink with both hands, unable to stop shaking. I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror. Eyes red, lips cracked, fear spilling out. I don’t like admitting how much Luthor scares me. I wrap my arms around myself, squeezing them tight against my body. Why should I be so afraid of him when he hasn’t even really done anything? Is almost a good enough reason for fear?



Yes.



The room caves in around me. What I want to do is run, but I’m too afraid of what lurks in the dark, in the places where there’s nothing but cows and sheep and no one to hear me shout for help.



And that pisses me off.



It’s not just Luthor, though he’s the biggest part of it. It’s the eyes that glared at me in the City. It’s the way some of them, like Harley’s mother, Lil, still flinch when they see me. It’s the fact that it will be this way for the rest of my life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, no more than I could jumpstart the ship’s engine. I can’t change what I am or where I came from, and because of this, they’re never going to accept me.



I dress quickly—so quickly that I mess up my hair wrap and have to do it over again. I doubt anyone’s awake yet, it’s so early, but I don’t want to risk it. I make sure the paper I found last night is tucked securely in my pocket and then I am out the door, through the silent Hospital, and racing down the path. When I reach the grav tube dais, the solar lamp clicks on, momentarily blinding me. I press the wi-com on my wrist and activate the grav tube.



The winds start up, and for a minute I think about jumping out, just comming Elder and asking him to come get me. A few strands of my hair float up. Then the winds accelerate and even more hair escapes from my scarf, reaching up like thousands of tiny arms. For one instant my toes are on the ground but my heels are lifted, and then whoosh! I’m sucked up into the tube. I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see the Feeder Level shrink away as I soar higher and higher. I don’t open them again until the winds die down and I step out onto the Keeper Level.



I try to smooth the scarf over my hair, then give up and rip it off, stuffing it into my jacket pocket. I don’t have to hide my hair from Elder anyway.



I open my mouth to call for him, then snap it shut, realizing something.



For the first time in three months, I didn’t start my day by talking to my parents on the cryo level.



When I woke up sad and lonely and empty inside . . . I came straight here.



Straight to Elder.



Just like Victria went straight to Orion.



Orion was wrong about me. It’s Elder who’s my safe place. Elder’s my home.



The Keeper Level is silent. I’m going to feel like an idiot if I’ve come all the way up here and Elder’s not around. But as I cross the Great Room, I can hear soft snoring. Elder’s bedroom door is open. I lean through the doorway.



He looks younger asleep, the exact opposite of the fierce aging that yesterday’s chaos spread across his face. The room is messy in a way only a boy’s room can be messy: clothes everywhere, despite the fact that he’s got a “hamper” that automatically cleans clothes right there. There’s a musky scent in the room, something that doesn’t exactly smell like Elder, but that reminds me of him even more. You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I’d know this was his room just from the smell.



I step over piles of clothes and sit on the edge of his bed, near his feet. Elder’s bed dips, and his eyes flutter open.



“Amy,” he says in a sleep-heavy voice, warm and smiley, drawing the syllables out so that my name ends with “meeee.”



“Amy!” he shouts, sitting straight up in bed. “What the frex—how’d you—why are you here?”



I grin. “I found this,” I say, tossing the folded paper I found in my cryo chamber at Elder’s lap. He reaches for it, stretching in a way that reminds me of a cat.