by Beth Revis
But they can’t show me a planet and then snatch it away.
“Can you really go on living in Godspeed after having seen this?” I ask in almost a whisper, sweeping my arm toward the window.
Elder doesn’t look to the planet. His gaze doesn’t leave my eyes. “No,” he says. “No, I couldn’t.”
Bartie clears his throat. I can’t tell if he’s scared or if he’s angry—he glares at Elder, but he shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “I say we take a vote. If people don’t want to go . . .”
“They stay?” I ask incredulously. “Really?”
“We have a better chance of survival on the planet now anyway, monsters or not,” Elder says. Bartie turns to him. “The food stores are gone.”
“We can grow more—” Bartie starts, but he’s interrupted by a loud boom!
“What was that?” Victria says.
It wasn’t the same explosive thunder the bombs made; this sounded more like something heavy crashing to the floor in the distance.
But we’re alone on this level.
We’re supposed to be alone on this level.
We creep to the door leading out of the bridge—the last locked door on the cryo level. It opens from this side, but Elder’s smart enough to cram a chair in the door so it doesn’t lock again.
The hallway’s empty, the other doors all closed and locked. My stomach lurches—what if someone’s down here messing with the cryo boxes? What about my parents? I force myself to think despite my rising panic. My heartbeat is thrumming in my ears, urging me to race down the hall. But no—I take a deep breath. The chambers would make a glass-on-metal cracking sound, not that thunderous boom of metal-on-metal.
The cryo area is empty—except for the far wall. Black dirt and debris from the explosion litter the floor near the elevator. The doors have been blown off; they lie like fallen soldiers on the floor. But the elevator shaft is blocked off with another set of heavy, seal-locked doors.
“The gen lab door is open,” Elder whispers.
I nod. The four of us creep forward slowly. Elder steps around in front of me when I reach the door. I want to yank him back—I don’t need him to play the hero—but he stops dead in the doorway. I crash into his back.
“Doc?” he asks. His voice is surprised, but I notice the way his neck tenses and his fists clench.
Doc turns around slowly as Victria, Bartie, and I pile into the room behind Elder.
Behind Doc is the source of the crashing sound we heard earlier—Doc opened up the cryo tube Orion was frozen in, and the metal frame smashed against the floor.
“What are you doing?” Elder asks. I try to move around Elder so I can get a clearer view, but he throws his arm out, keeping me behind him.
“I knew you were here,” Doc says, tossing a floppy at Elder. Elder scans it and hands it back to me; Victria and Bartie look over my shoulder. The screen shows the wi-com locator map. Blinking dots indicate each of us on the level—Doc, Bartie, Victria, Elder . . . and Orion.
My mouth feels dry and tasteless. Orion. That’s my wi-com. Doc gave it to me just so he could keep track of where I was going.
“What are you doing, Doc?” Elder asks again. His tone is even, unnaturally calm.
Doc turns back to the cryo chamber. The glass window in the cryo tube is foggy with condensation, but I can still see the red veins popping in Orion’s eyes. I imagine myself mirrored in his pupils. His hand is pressed against the window in front of his face. This cryo tube was developed after the glass boxes my parents and I were frozen in. It’s metal, insulated like a thermos, and operates much more simply. It’s like a shower instead of a bath—instead of lying in a glass coffin, all you have to do is step inside, let the cryo liquid dump on you, and then initiate the freezing process: one big red button on the front. I stare at it now, remembering when Elder pushed the button.
“Doc,” Elder says, his voice a warning.
Finally, Doc turns to Elder. “This ship needs a leader. And the only one we have left is Orion.”
“We have a leader,” I say, stepping in front of Elder.
Doc smiles at me in a sad, ironic sort of way. “He could have been a leader. Given a few more years and a lot less of you.” I sputter in anger, but Doc just shakes his head. “We have to have control. We need a real leader.”
I laugh, a harsh sound I don’t even recognize coming from my own throat. “We have a leader, I told you. And Elder will never let you go back to the way things were.”
Doc laughs now, a soft, low chuckle. “Oh, Amy,” he says, “you’re so slow. And so wrong.”
I turn around to tell Elder to shoot Doc’s idea down.
He stares blankly, emptily, back at me.
“Elder?” I say, fear making my voice crack.
Victria steps out from behind both boys. “I’m sorry,” she says, letting the pale green wrappers drop to the floor. “I just want Orion back.”
In her hands is a gun, a small revolver with large-caliber bullets. “How did you . . . ?” I ask.
“Doc gave it to me. He knew—he knew I wanted protection. And when he told me that he could get Orion back . . . I made sure I could help him.”
My mouth drops open. I’ve come to know so many sides of Victria—the unrequited lover, the victim, the forgotten friend. I never thought I’d see her as a traitor.
She moves to stand between Doc and the cryo chamber holding Orion’s frozen body. And she never once lowers the gun.
Elder and Bartie stare straight ahead. A single square green patch clings to each of their necks.
65
ELDER
“NO, NO, NO,” AMY WHISPERS.
Her words remind me . . . of . . . something.
But everything’s so . . . slow.
“Stay back,” Doc says.
I struggle to hold on to the situation . . . to understand. . . .
“Are you okay?” Amy says.
Why wouldn’t I be?
Doc. Holding something that looks like an orange cut in half. Mustard yellow.
“I’ll blow us all up,” Doc says. “If that’s what it takes. We have to protect the ship. Or I could just have Victria shoot you. Yes. We’ll do that. It would leave less of a mess.”
“I . . . I don’t know how,” she says softly.
“It’s very easy, dear,” Doc says. “Just point and squeeze the trigger. At this distance, you won’t miss her.”
His words mean something. I’m sure of it.
But . . . what?
Amy’s crying. Just one tear, on the edge of her right eye, but I notice it.
Can’t do anything.
Words float around me. Loud. Angry. Pleading.
“If he’s that much of a distraction,” Doc says, “maybe we should kill him now.”
“Not Elder!” Amy shouts, pushing me behind her.
I feel gray.
Fuzzy.
“Elder!” Doc commands loudly. “Show me what’s in your pocket!”
I do.
Wires.
Pretty wires.
Red.
Yellow.
Black.
Wires.
“Put them back in the Phydus machine,” Doc orders. “You know you want to.”
I do.
I do want to.
I shuffle toward the Phydus machine.
Something stops me.
Something pulls me back.
I try to keep walking.
I go nowhere.
“Amy,” Doc warns. “Don’t try to stop him.”
“Elder,” Amy’s voice whispers in my ear. “Elder, fight it. Fight it. You don’t want to start the Phydus machine again. You don’t have to rule with drugs. You’re good enough the way you are. Fight it. Be yourself.”
“Amy,” Doc warns. “You know I’ll kill you. Or him. You know I will.”
My legs move up and down, and I move forward again.
To the Phydus machine.
To put back in the wires.
> Like I always knew I’d have to.
66
AMY
ELDER STANDS NEXT TO THE PHYDUS MACHINE, THE WIRES in his hand, but he doesn’t seem able to hook them up. He’s motionless, staring at the console. I wonder how long he’s carried those wires in his pocket. He must put them there every day when he dresses, the same way I put on my necklace or wrap my hair. Has he carried them around with him all this time because he wanted to remember the way things were and should never be again . . . or because he wanted to remind himself that he had the same power to control people that Eldest had, if he chose to use it?
Doc stares into the glass at Orion. “He entrusted me with everything. I let him live. I helped him escape. He kept himself hidden from me for a long time—I didn’t know he was the Recorder; I didn’t know he was right beside me all those years. But before you froze him, he gave me his secrets. And I will not betray his trust the way you betrayed him.”
Doc moves over to stand by Elder. I start to lunge after him, but Victria steps in my way. Her hand is shaking; she’s not used to the weight of the gun, and the grip sits uncomfortably in her palm. Not that it matters . . . all it would take is one squeeze of her trigger finger, and I’d be gone.
I eye her warily, taking in the fear in her face, the sweat trickling down her neck. She doesn’t want to do this, she doesn’t want to hurt me, but she’s like a caged animal, and a caged animal will do anything if threatened. I stay still.
“Oh, Elder, I tried to warn you, I did,” Doc says, gently plucking the wires from Elder’s hands. “I told you each time—follow the leader.”
“You’re insane,” I shout. “Elder is the leader!”
Doc turns and looks at me, as if he’s evaluating my worth and finding that I come up just short. “I did hope he could become Eldest. I gave him three months. But as more and more people started to question him, it became clear he was hopeless. And then there was Bartie.” He sneers the name.
My eyes flick to Bartie, the green patch on his neck.
“Bartie thought he could start a revolution.” Doc rolls his eyes. “His attempts were clever—hacking into the floppies and the wi-coms was smart—but in the end he’s such a feeble sort of person. He would never really have what it takes to lead a true revolution. And besides,” Doc adds, “I wasn’t going to let dissent evolve into rebellion. Once we have a real leader again, any question of a revolt will disappear.”
I don’t like the way he says “disappear” in a voice that holds so much finality.
Doc’s gaze shifts to me. “I tried to help. I made the patches, and when Elder didn’t use them, I did. He could have used those deaths to instill the proper amount of fear required to demand obedience. But did you?” he asks, turning to Elder’s emotionless face. “No.” He shoves Elder’s body. Elder doesn’t resist, and he crashes against the Phydus machine. “As time went on,” Doc continues, “it became more and more obvious that what we needed was for him to step down. He was the one who needed to follow the leader. The warnings were for him.” He pokes a finger in Elder’s chest. Elder stares straight ahead, his body slack.
“And Marae?” I ask.
“I tried to talk to her. Of everyone on the ship, she should have been on Orion’s side. But no. She was for Elder.”
Doc places the wires on top of the Phydus pump. The drug is not his main concern. He strolls across the room, back to Orion’s cryo chamber.
“It’s too late anyway, Amy.” Doc sighs, a sound filled with disappointment. “Whatever kind of leader Bartie thought he could be or Elder may one day become, Orion already is. His only mistake was in trusting you to make the choice about the shuttle. I let you find Orion’s vids, but I should have destroyed them all.”
My mind races. “Why did you even give me Orion’s wi-com?” I ask. “You must have known it would lead us to the clues he left!”
Doc glances up at me. “I did it,” he says, “because Orion asked me to.”
And it really is as simple as that. Call him anything you want, but Doc’s loyal. Not to Eldest, not even to Orion, and certainly not to Elder. He’s loyal to the system. According to the system, Orion should be the next leader, and, therefore, the person Doc will blindly obey—even when he disagrees.
But—this doesn’t make sense. “If you’re the one who gave me the first clue, then who tampered with the sonnet book and the clue in the armory?”
“I did.” Doc checks a dial on Orion’s cryo chamber.
“You? But—why?”
He looks at me as if he can’t quite believe how slow I am. “I didn’t do it for me. This ship—everyone on board—we could all die if we land on Centauri-Earth. Die. But,” he adds, “I’m not unreasonable. I’ll let the Eldest make the final decision. If he says the shuttle should be launched, well, I will step aside. I just didn’t think he was right in choosing you as his decision maker.”
I finally understand—he altered the clue in the armory and cut out the page in the sonnet book because he didn’t want me to succeed. But he still left the book so I could find it. He didn’t want me to find the clue, but he couldn’t disobey Orion all the way.
“Did you mess with the space suits?” I ask.
“I figured if you got in there, one of you would use them.”
“And you didn’t care which one of us died?”
“If it helps,” Doc says, turning back to the dials on Orion’s cryo chamber, “I’d hoped it would have been you.”
It doesn’t help, actually.
“You never did realize the thing I needed you to understand,” Doc continues, adjusting another dial. “You got so obsessed with what Orion was showing you that you never saw what I was showing you.”
“Yeah?” I say. “And what was that?”
“That the important thing wasn’t getting off the ship. We can’t get off the ship, Amy, we can’t. Orion hoped that one day, far in the future, it would be possible, but no. The armory, the probes—it’s too dangerous. We have to stay here. We have to maintain the same order we’ve always had since the Plague Eldest.”
I can’t help myself—I snort in disgust.
“I know you disagree, Amy,” Doc says idly, as if we’re having a casual conversation between friends. “But the Eldest system works.”
“Eldest was twisted, sick,” I say. “You saw him at the end. He was too desperate for power.”
“Yes, yes,” Doc says dismissively. “There are aberrations in every Elder and Eldest, that is well documented, and Eldest should have stepped down when Orion came of age. And Orion—not Elder—should have become Eldest.”
“Orion was a psycho!” I shout. I start to move forward, knocking into Bartie’s shoulder as I do. He stares blankly ahead.
This was the wrong thing to do. The gun tightens in Victria’s hand—she loves Orion, after all—and Doc moves closer to the cryo chamber.
“He is neither a ‘psycho,’ nor is he Orion,” Doc says, turning a dial on the chamber door. “He is Eldest.” He looks back at Elder, still standing motionless by the Phydus machine. “You never wanted to be Eldest, did you? You always wanted to be just Elder. That’s why you wouldn’t change your name. You knew, didn’t you, that you weren’t good enough to be Eldest. You’re still just a child, preoccupied more with your silly infatuation than responsibility.”
Elder—patched and silent—nods in agreement.
“Don’t talk about Elder like that!” I roar. “Orion was a coward who killed helpless people!”
Doc turns toward me. “Don’t forget, it was Orion who gave you your precious planet, not Elder. Even when he was nothing but a block of ice, he still controlled you as you searched the whole ship for his clues. That’s the power of a real leader.”
He’s so calm, so even and measured—just like he always is. Even in this—in murdering people in Orion’s name, in staging a coup to overthrow Elder—even now, there’s no fire in Doc’s eyes. He’s just quietly and steadfastly moving forward with what he thinks is so
obviously right. He’s putting us all in our assigned places. Orion as Eldest. Elder as Elder. And me—I’m still, as usual, the one he can’t categorize. And that’s the real reason why he’s got Victria pointing a gun in my face.
And I know for sure now, I know it deep down inside me—I’m not going to get out of this. I don’t fit in with Doc’s plan because I don’t fit in on Godspeed, and Doc can’t stand to have something—someone—stick out. He needs everyone to be perfectly the same, perfectly calm, and perfectly obedient to the proper Eldest, and I never, ever, will be.
I am so certain that Doc won’t let me out of this room alive that I half expect Victria to pull the trigger and end it all now. Instead, Doc punches a code into Orion’s cryo chamber.
Doc turns back around. “Amy, I’m no leader. I know that. I only want to do what I’ve been trying to tell everyone else to do.”
“Follow the leader,” I say softly.
“Exactly. There’s no hope anymore,” Doc says. “We can’t land on the new planet. And we can’t survive up here without Orion. Don’t you see? We need a real leader. Not Bartie, not Elder. We need our Eldest. It’s our only hope.”
Victria looks up at Doc, but he isn’t looking at her; he’s looking at me. “I just want Orion back,” she says, but he doesn’t pay any attention to her.
“We’re not talking about hope,” I tell Doc, but my eyes are on Victria. “We’re talking about faith. Faith that the new world will be better than this. And faith that even if it’s not, it will be worth the risk to go down there and see.”
Orion’s cryo chamber beeps, a loud echoing sound.
“There,” Doc says, “the regeneration process is beginning.”
“What?” I snap.
“Really?” Victria says, turning.
And that’s my chance. Elder’s not the only one who’s been carrying things in his pocket—I still have Phydus patches of my own. In one swift motion, I rip one from its packaging, slap it on Victria’s arm, and snatch the gun away from her unresisting fingers.