Eldest and I got in a fight once — this was early on, when I was angry at Eldest but not yet afraid of him — and he yelled at me and I yelled back, and he raised his hand and struck me across the face. I’d run from the Learning Center to my room — it felt like I’d put miles between us — and hid between the bed and the nightstand for over an hour, until the smell of roast chicken and mushroom leaked into the room and up my nose. When I eventually crawled out, Eldest let me eat supper on the floor of the Great Room, using a projector to show me an old movie from Sol-Earth.
I remember:
When I was four or five or six, the family I was living with then, they were canners, decided to throw me a party. It was a going-away party — I was moving to another family the next day, but I was young enough to not really understand what that meant.
The mother of the family, Evie, she must not have been on Phydus, because she was funny and charming and she always knew what to say and do to make everything wonderful. Very different from the way I know her now, barely surviving with a green patch on her arm.
The day before I left her family, there was a feast in celebration — lamb and mint jelly, roast corn, biscuits and honey, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, berries sprinkled with sugar. And in the end, a cake.
It was a giant cake, so dense that Evie had to use both hands to cut it. The whole thing was iced in thick, crusty white icing, and Evie had written across the top We love you, Elder! She cried when she handed me the piece with my name on it.
An old man walked into the kitchen just as I was about to take the first bite. I didn’t know who he was, but everyone else seemed to, and they all slowly put their forks down and pushed away from the table. I did the same, even though I didn’t know why.
“I’m not here to interrupt!” the old man had said, laughing, and the tension broke like glass.
Evie cut a piece of cake for the old man — he got the piece that said love. Then he pulled up a chair beside mine. He was kind and funny — he acted like he didn’t know how to use a fork and let me show him how. He kept dropping it, or using the wrong end of it, or trying to balance the cake on the handle instead of piercing it with the tines.
I remember everyone at the table laughing — true, hooting, uncontrollable laughter — as the old man just gave up and ate the cake with his fingers.
He nudged me. I grinned — there was icing on his nose, I recall — and I scooped up a handful of cake in one hand and crammed it in my face.
And then we were all eating cake with our hands, not even bothering with plates as we reached for more. Crumbs and icing were everywhere — smearing the tablecloth, in our hair, under our fingernails — and no one cared at all.
It was the happiest day of my life.
The next morning, Evie woke me up and helped me pack my few belongings in a bag. I would be spending the next year with the butchers, and there would be no cake at all that year.
“Who was that man who came yesterday?” I asked.
Evie was crying as she folded my clothes, but she laughed at my question. “Silly! That was Eldest, of course!”
•••
I close my eyes and think of the way my teeth cracked the paper-thin crust on the top of the creamy icing, the way the cake filled my mouth as I chewed.
I glance at my bed, at the threadbare old blanket I had as a child that Eldest kept for me — or for himself. I pick up the blanket from the edge of my bed, press it against my face, and think about all Eldest was, and all he wasn’t. All this ship has been, and all it will never be.
For a moment, I forget that today is the day I leave the ship, shut my eyes, and breathe in the scent of a thousand dreams.
Before heading to the Shipper Level, I re-activate the wi-com system for the rest of the ship. Within sconds, Shelby coms me.
“We’re prepped and ready to begin planet-landing, sir,” she says in my ear.
I smile as I walk away from my room. “Let’s go home.”
56 AMY
I WAKE UP EARLY. AFTER I DRESS, I THINK ABOUT SENDING Elder a com or even going up to the Keeper Level to see him. I want to see Elder. But — he has a ship to land.
To land. On the new planet. I release a shaky breath, full of relief and joy. Nothing else matters. Not Orion’s stupid clues or Bartie’s ridiculous revolution — we have the planet.
I head straight to the cryo level. It feels strange to do this now, even though I’ve done it every day for the last three months. I did it then because I believed I’d never see my parents alive again. Now, with my back to one row of cryo chambers and facing my parents’ frozen bodies, it feels false.
Maybe it’s because I know how close we are to waking them up for good.
I have so much I want to tell them — about how I’m stronger than I was before. About Harley and Luthor and Elder. I want to spill out every memory and every worry and every thought.
But I also know that I don’t have to. We’re there.
In the distance, I hear the unmistakable sound of a heavy door slamming shut. It’s not the gen lab behind me. It’s one of the doors down the hall past the cryo chamber… one of the locked doors.
This is it. This is whoever’s tampering with the clues. It has to be.
I tear off down the hall, determined to catch whoever it is.
But no one’s here.
Then I notice a crack of light seeping from the armory door.
I catch my breath. The armory door… that means whoever’s in there has all the weapons. I, on the other hand, have none… unless you count the pocket-full of Phydus med patches I took from Victria.
I creep forward. The smart thing would be to run. But if I can just get an idea of who has been playing with us…
The door creaks loudly. Of-freaking-course it would creak loudly.
But no one’s inside. Just in case, I step over to the closest rack, where the smallest guns are stored. At the top are tiny pistols. I wasn’t kidding when I taunted Luthor. My father raised me to know what a gun is and how to use it. I pick up one of the red protection plastic bags and slide my finger through the seal. Gun oil wafts around me as I tip the bag open and the revolver falls into my hand. It has a small frame and a snubbed barrel, but it can hold.38 caliber bullets. The bullets are stored in a separate box, sealed with plastic. I press the grip into my palm as I load the gun. My hand’s too small to fit it comfortably, but the gun’s a double action, and all I’ve got to reach is the trigger.
I look closer, behind the shelves, the gun firmly in my hand. But no one is here.
Then I remember — I came here because I heard a door slam shut. Whoever was here may have started in the armory, but he slammed another door — on this hallway full of doors that are supposed to be locked.
I go back out and check the hatch through the bubble window, then open the room with the space suits. Nothing. I press my ear against the big door at the end of the hall, the last locked door, but it’s too heavy for me to hear anything.
What’s behind that door anyway? I briefly consider staying here to guard it. Whoever went in will have to go out. No one passed me as I raced through the hallway, and the only doors that can slam shut rather than zip open are these. Whoever it is has to be here.
Except… if this person knows how to unlock the doors, then whoever it is must also know about the stairs I found behind the walls… they go down too. They must reach the cryo level. And since there are no stairs here — they have to come out behind this last locked door. If I go up to the Feeder Level right now and run down the stairs, maybe I can catch whoever’s been tampering with Orion’s clues and discover what else is behind the locked door! If only Elder were here with me…