A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel

by Beth Revis

  Shelby’s crew is hit the worst—some have caught onto the control tables or the bolted-down chairs, but I don’t see everyone. I do see blood and bone and organs at the front, near the hole—whatever blew apart the Bridge’s window also blew apart the people sitting closest.

  A Shipper—Prestyn—tries to stand but stumbles, lunges, and flies through the doors. His body catches on the metal fingers of the broken seams, ripping through him. Great globs of blood float off him in crimson spheres.

  I slam into the wall by the Bridge’s doors so hard my bones rattle, but the wall stops me from also flying out the window. I stand, pressing against the back wall for support, trying to breathe through the rushing wind. It won’t take long—minutes maybe—for the vacuum of space to suck out all the air from both rooms.

  Clutching the metal supports on the wall, I twist my head around to peer inside the Bridge.

  It’s too late—the gaping maw that was once the window has destroyed the Bridge. Shelby clings to a chair that’s bolted to the floor. Her hair is plastered back, and her eyes are red and streaming.

  “Don’t!” she screams. “Don’t!”

  She means the button. This one, here, by my hand.

  The one that would seal the Bridge doors.

  The one that would protect us from space—but leave her in it.

  She’s reaching for me with one hand, straining, but she’s too far away, she’s just barely too far away, and I’ll never be able to get to her, it’s too late. Too late.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” she pleads.

  She reaches toward me. Her fingers are almost within reach. If I reached out—maybe I could pull her to safety before I seal the doors shut?

  But I can’t take that chance. I can’t risk the whole ship to save one person.

  “No,” she whispers.

  But I push the button anyway.

  The Bridge doors swing shut.

  The violent winds die.

  It takes a moment before everyone left can stagger back up. Some are bleeding—a few broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, a limp—from the debris that crashed into them. More than their physical injuries, though, is the horror that twists each face, a hollowed-out shocked expression that I doubt will ever fully fade.

  It is silent here, but nowhere near as silent as the other side of the door.

  58

  AMY

  I HAVE NEVER RUN SO HARD OR SO FAST AS WHEN I RACED from the Hospital to the grav tube. Still, I knew I would be too late.

  And I was.

  When I finally got to the Engine Room, I could hear the explosion from behind the door.

  And the screams.

  Now, the Shipper Level—already packed from the events of the day—falls into a sort of hushed horror. People crowd around me in the Energy Room. The door to the Engine Room dents inward, like a monster is trying to claw it out, but the steel reinforcements hold. We fall back against the far wall anyway, and some people race out of the Energy Room, heading for cover, as if they think Godspeed will continue to protect them even as it’s being ripped apart.

  We all stare at the door, but it gives us no answers.

  Red lights fade in and out along the edges of the floor and ceiling. The ship’s computer announces, “Breached hull: Bridge,” in a pleasant, cheerful sort of voice.

  We wait. A woman opens her mouth to speak, but I quell her with a look. We’re all listening to the silence. Wondering if anyone still lives on the other side of the door.

  If Elder survived.

  Something smacks against the door. A woman behind me screams, and a man near the hallway shouts, “Frex!” The door moves again—not with the force of a tornado, like before, but instead with a rattle and shake.

  Fingers pop out at the door edges.

  “They’re alive!” shouts the same woman. And as one, we all rush to the door, prying our fingers into the open crack. Together we strain against the mechanics to slide the damaged door open. The door moves an inch. We all push harder. With a screeching metal-on-metal sound, the door finally, finally gives way.

  I see the blood on him first—dripping from a gash in his shoulder, staining his dark skin red. Sweat makes his hair cling to his forehead. His arms strain to cast aside the remains of the door, and he staggers through.

  “Elder,” I whisper. My voice cracks in the middle. I feel tears stinging my eyes, but they don’t fall. I almost lost him. Again. It wasn’t until I saw his body on the hatch floor yesterday that I realized how much I cared about him, but even then I couldn’t define my feelings.

  A part of me has been holding back from him since I first started to see how devoted he was to me. That part of me wove words into my soul, words like doubt and can’t trust and lust and not worth it. All those words break, all at once, like strings ripped from torn cloth.

  Now, though, staring at his grief-stricken face, I don’t think with words at all.

  Beyond him, the Shippers are helping each other up. They cry in joy for those who lived and begin to mourn for those who died beyond the sealed Bridge door.

  But I’m just looking at Elder, and he’s just looking at me, and everything else disappears.

  My hands are shaking. My legs are too—in fact, I’m shaking all over. I want to rush to him, but I can’t. Instead, he’s the one who makes a move. He barrels through the mangled doorway (although he’s limping; why is he limping?) and wraps his arms around me. I collapse into him, but he supports me, lending me his strength when I don’t seem to have any more of my own.

  “Oh, God, Elder,” I mutter into his chest, and it’s not much, but it’s the best prayer I’ve got.

  He strokes my hair soothingly. The world continues around us—­people rushing into or out of the Engine Room, more cries, more reunions—but we are a silent stalwart amid the chaos.

  “How did you know?” Elder asks, his nose buried in my hair. The question is so the opposite of everything I am right now—logical words formed into a logical question—that it confuses me at first. I lean back and look up at him. Elder leads me past the remains of the door and through the crowd to a quiet corner in a room nearby. Beyond his shoulder I can still see the chaos of the explosion—Kit has arrived with a posse of nurses and taken charge, corralling the wounded to one area and commanding everyone else to leave. A group of engineers examines the seal-locked door of the Bridge, ensuring that there’s no more danger of exposure.

  “The explosion,” Elder says, drawing me back to him. “You knew before, didn’t you? You came here to warn me.”

  “I found another one of Orion’s videos. In the armory.”

  “Orion—Orion did this?” Elder’s eyes are befuddled; he’s still reeling from the explosion.

  “No, not Orion. But . . . someone else has his videos. Someone else knows the codes to the locked doors. I think Orion’s been trying to tell us the way off the ship all along, but someone else found out his secret before we did and they’ve been trying to stop us.”

  I hand Elder the floppy with Orion’s video. In the first video I found, Orion seemed certain that there was a choice to be made and that I would make it. But by this last video, he sounds the same way he did in the video of him just after he ran away from Eldest—scared and unsure. Whoever found these videos of Orion clearly agrees that the planet isn’t worthwhile—and will murder anyone who tries to land the ship. The explosion on the Bridge is proof enough of that—it has ensured that even with Centauri-Earth so close, we’ll never land.

  I can’t read Elder’s face as he watches the short video—grief, anger, doubt, something else, something empty and painful. But when he looks up at me, all that’s left in his eyes is a hollow sort of nothing.

  “None of this matters,” Elder says. “With the Bridge gone, we’re going nowhere.”

  Once he says it, it becomes real for him. I see the sixteen years of his life trapped on the ship, and the decades of his future fall on him like a weight—he literally sags with the realization that Godspee
d can’t land. He’s got everything on him now—the ship, the people, the deaths, the disappointment. And I realize: he has always had them. Always.

  Elder looks behind him, to the Engine room, and beyond to the sealed doors. “Shelby was in there. In the Bridge.”

  And just like that, the terror’s back. I push it down, try to drown it under the waters of my soul, keeping it under with both hands and watching it die.

  “Why?” Elder’s eyes search mine. He’s not asking why someone would blow up the Bridge. He’s asking why someone would let Shelby die for it.

  59

  ELDER

  “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,” SHELBY SAID.

  The words circle my mind, and I know they’ll never leave.

  Amy kisses me.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Amy tells me that someone did this because of a stupid video Orion made. That whoever did this just wanted to make sure that we would never, ever leave the ship. Ever.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Amy leads me to the grav tube and takes me to the Feeder Level. She shows me the hidden door and the stairs behind it.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Amy pushes open the door, and light fills the hidden space behind it. It creaks open, but all I hear is:

  “No, no, no—”

  BOOM!

  Another explosion, this one deeper than the first, rumbles the ground and shakes the foundation of the Hospital. Shingles fall from the Hospital roof and clatter down the sides of the building, smashing against the ground. The doors fling open, and people stream out, a pillar of gray and brown smoke chasing after them. Emergency ladders flutter from the upper stories, and people start climbing down, dropping a few feet to the earth and racing toward the Recorder Hall for cover.

  “The frex—” I start, as Amy grabs my arm. Even from here, we can feel the rumbling under our feet.

  “Why would someone blow up the Hospital?” she asks. Her words are hollow, but her eyes are filled with fear.

  Smoke drifts from the doors on the ground floor but nowhere else. There’s no evidence of fire, no evidence of damage.

  Amy’s face drains of color, and she’s paler than ever. “Oh, God. It wasn’t the Hospital that exploded—”

  “It was the cryo level,” I finish for her.

  “My parents,” she whispers. Her eyes lose focus; her mouth is slack. “There are stairs; they go down to the cryo level. I know where they are. I could—”

  “Go to them,” I say, gripping her shoulders until she comes back to me. “Go now—but be careful. Whoever did this could still be there.”

  Amy swallows.

  “I don’t think that was a big enough explosion to destroy the cryo level.” I shake my head, considering. “No, I’m sure of it. They’re fine. They’ve got to be fine.”

  I can feel her pulling away, but she’s still holding on to me, her fingers gripping my sleeve.

  “Go,” I say gently. “I can do this. I’ll take care of the ship—you take care of your parents. But . . .” I pause. “If you see anyone . . . or anything—if it’s not safe down there, come back to me. Right away.”

  She gives me a slight nod and runs to the stairs without a word.

  I turn and face the ship.

  60

  AMY

  MY HEART THUDS IN MY THROAT, AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO throw up. I’ve been so focused on everything else—Elder, the murders, the mystery—I’d nearly forgotten the most important thing.

  My parents.

  Trapped in ice, in the cryo level, sleeping.

  Helpless.

  I race down, down, using the handrails to leap the steps two at a time—and the deeper I go, the more the smoke wraps around me.

  It’s an acrid scent, like burning metal, a smell so sharp it cuts my tongue like a knife. A snot-yellow dust covers my skin. It’s as fine as baby powder, but it stings like bites from fire ants, and I use my sleeves to beat it off. I tug my tunic up over my face so it covers my nose and mouth, and I let my hair down, hoping I can get at least a little protection on the back of my neck from it.

  My foot slips, and—fortunately—I grab a handrail. Just in time. There are two more steps—and then nothing.

  I lean down, gripping the handrail for support. The bomb was centered on the elevator that extends from the Hospital to the cryo level, just as I’d suspected. Shrapnel and the force of the explosion have ripped through the metal stairs here as easily as if they’d been made of paper.

  We’re cut off from the cryo level.

  For one crazy moment, I consider jumping. How many feet could it be to get to the bottom? These steps don’t go directly into the cryo level. I’m a couple of feet above a solid metal surface. There must be a hatch or something leading down to the cryo level. There’s a pillar between the stairs and the elevator—maybe there’s a door built into it. But the yellow smoke is heavy and impenetrable, and judging by the ragged edges of the metal on the stairs, I bet there’s plenty of debris below that could kill me. I stare as hard as my watering eyes allow me to, but all I can see is a mangled mess of shattered metal, twisted beams, and blown rivets.

  My throat burns, making me cough; the yellow powder must be affecting me in ways I can’t even tell. I shiver; it’s colder here than anywhere else on the ship. I creep back up the stairs. I can feel my heartbeat thudding in my ears, and I’m cold with sweat. I grasp at air. I remember the way Victria thought she was dying, overwhelmed by the idea of a world beyond the ship. I feel the same panic surging inside me, overwhelmed by the idea of still being trapped behind walls, forever behind walls.

  When I get back to the top, I search through the crowd that’s gathered around Elder at the Recorder Hall to tell him what I found. He’s surrounded by people, and I don’t bother being polite—I shove them out of my way, ignoring their angry cries, then I pull Elder by the arm until we’re far enough away that no one else can overhear us.

  “I can’t get to the cryo level,” I say. I describe what I saw between the levels.

  He nods as if he expected it. His eyes are dead and empty. Elder gave up hope on the Bridge, but I didn’t give it up until I could see no more in him.

  61

  ELDER

  THE HOSPITAL’S NO LONGER SAFE, SO WE SET UP THE RECORDER Hall as a temporary infirmary. Doc, who’d been close to the elevator when it exploded, has his left arm in a sling and a deep gash on his cheek, under his eye. Still, he moves from person to person, quickly assigning pills and med patches and bandages. More often than not, he slips the patients a pale green patch. I pretend not to notice.

  In truth, I sort of want one myself.

  Kit and the nurses bring the Shippers who survived the Bridge explosion, and another panicked wave of activity follows their arrival—bandages here, stitches there, all wrapped up with a bright green patch on top.

  There aren’t that many injuries. Not on the outside, at least. But I can see a spark of desperation in people’s eyes as they slowly become aware of the fact that the explosions did not just kill nine more of our people: they also killed any hope we had of planet-landing.

  Later that afternoon, maintenance crews inspect the Hospital. Just as Amy told me, the elevator—the one that goes all the way to the cryo level—was destroyed. The cables broke and the elevator itself crashed at the bottom of the shaft, but that was the extent of the damage.

  Once things settle down, I do an all-call, requesting that everyone meet in the garden behind the Hospital. Eldest would have ordered another ship-wide meeting on the Keeper Level, but I know the last thing people want is to be away from the familiarity of the Feeder Level, especially if it brings them closer to the now-destroyed Bridge. The statue of the Plague Eldest is traditional for the changing ceremonies from Elder to Eldest, and it seems appropriate, given what I plan on saying.

  “Hey, wait up!” Bartie calls as I make my way from the Recorder Hall to the garden. I don’t answer him, but I do slow my pace.

  “I
s it true?” Bartie asks when he catches up to me. “The Shippers in the Recorder Hall are saying the Bridge is gone.”

  “Yeah,” I grunt.

  “Are you going to tell them?” Bartie continues, matching my quick pace so he can walk beside me. “I think you should tell everyone about the Bridge. About how we can’t leave now.”

  “Shite, Bartie, you think so?” I don’t bother quelling the sarcasm in my voice. “Here I was just thinking I’d take a nice little break and then maybe get a bite to eat; stars, might as well go into the Hall and watch a vid or something.”

  Bartie raises his hands in peace, but his face is angry. “You never do anything without someone telling you to,” he says. “How was I supposed to know that this was different?”

  “You’re such a frexing hypocrite,” I spit. “You’re so worried about all I’m doing wrong, you have no idea what I’m doing right.”

  Bartie snorts, and in that sound, I can hear all the contempt and derision that I’ve had to put up with from him—from everyone—who’s been judging me since Eldest died. And I’m frexing sick and tired of it.

  “You want to be Eldest?” I say loudly. “Fine. Be Eldest. Then you’ll know what it’s like when you have to watch your friends die. Know what I did while you were just frexing lying around here all day? I was on the Bridge; I was in the doorway when it exploded. I watched Prestyn and Hailee and Brittne and the others get sucked out into space. I watched Shelby hanging on to a chair, saw the tears in her eyes as she reached out to me. But I let her die so I could save the Engine Room. And the rest of the frexing ship.”