A Million Suns

54 AMY

I IGNORE THE ALL–CALL ELDER SENT INVITING EVERYONE TO the Keeper Level. He couldn’t have meant that I should go too. My support would hurt him more than help, and I can think of nothing more dangerous than being crammed into a close-fitting room with every other person on the ship. Instead, I’ve spent the last hour with my face pressed against the bubble window in the hatch door, thinking about how, just beyond my vision, there’s a planet waiting for me.

I don’t move until I hear footsteps and the sound of a door zipping open on the other side of the cryo level.

My first instinct is to freeze, but then I remind myself of how few people have access to this level, and so I creep forward until I get to the main room. The door to the genetics lab is open.

“Hello?” I call out.

I can hear shuffling noises from inside. I step through the door. Victria kneels in front of Orion’s cryo chamber. Her dark hair clings to the skin on the back of her neck, and her hands shake as she tucks a strand behind her ear. The chair that usually stands beside it is knocked over, as if she’s slid from the seat to get closer to him.

“How do you stand it?” she asks in a hollow voice.

“Stand what?”

“Your parents are still frozen, right? How do you stand not waking them up? They’re so close.”

I don’t say anything. There’s something strange in her voice, scary.

“I could do it,” she says. “I could do it right now. It can’t be that hard to unfreeze someone. You were unfrozen.”

I stop.

“What does it matter, anyway? The ship’s landing soon. I can just unfreeze him.”

So, Elder’s told them about the planet.

“I need him!” Victria says, her voice raising an octave. “I need him!”

“Why?” I ask gently.

“Because I’m frexing scared, all right? I’m terrified!” Victria screams. Her hands are shaking; she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a square green med patch.

“Doc said those were dangerous,” I say.

“Everyone has them; everyone uses them.” Victria’s voice sounds like a chant. “Just not more than one, only one.”

“How did you get this?” I ask warily. Kit had told me they were stolen.

Victria shrugs as she tries to rip one open, but the package twists instead of tears, and she throws it down. She sits down fully on the tile floor, and more green patches spill from her pockets, at least a dozen. I raise my eyebrows but don’t comment, although I do want to know why she has so many. Ignoring the patches completely, Victria wraps her arms around her legs and buries her head into her knees.

“Why are you so scared?” I ask, scooping up the med patches and slipping them into my own pocket, out of Victria’s reach.

“It was so huge.”

“What was?”

“The planet.”

My heart sinks. Elder showed everyone else the planet? Why didn’t he tell me he was going to? Maybe it would have been worth the risk, if I could have finally seen it for myself. Or… he could have shown me before.

“It was pretty,” Victria says. Her eyes rove over me, lingering on my red hair. “But it was different. Strange.”

“You’ll like the new planet,” I say.

“How do you know?”

“Well — there won’t be walls.”

“But I like the walls,” Victria whispers.

And I realize, to her, the metal isn’t a cage, crushing her into a claustrophobic existence. No — to her, the walls are the walls of a comfortable home. It’s the outside — the vast, never-ending outside — that terrifies her.

“Orion used to say we don’t know what’s down there. It could be anything.”

“The probes and scans all say the planet is habitable,” I start, but she cuts me off. She drops to her knees and leans forward, her panicked eyes meeting mine.

“Orion used to show me stuff, forbidden records. There were dinosaurs on Sol-Earth. Monsters that eat you. Animals bigger than people. Sinkholes and volcanoes and tornados and earthquakes.”

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” I say softly, but Victria doesn’t see it as a joke — she nods in agreement. These are monsters to her too.

She’s rubbing her stomach so much that she reminds me of the shiny-bellied Buddha at the Chinese restaurant Jason took me to for our first date, back before I even knew what Godspeed was.

“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” Victria chants. Her hand clutches convulsively against her chest.

“Let’s get you in the chair,” I say, offering her my hand to help her stand. Victria shakes her head so violently that her entire torso turns. She jerks away from me. Her arms are seizing and shaking, and I can see beads of sweat building on her face, trembling down her neck. She rocks back and forth, clutching her legs closer to her chest, gasping for breath.

“I’m dying, I’m dying!” Victria chokes out.

“You’re not,” I insist, forcing my voice to remain calm. “You’re having a panic attack. Victria, you’ve got to calm down. The baby—”

“Oh, stars, the baby!” Victria wails, rocking faster. “I can’t have a baby! Not here! Not there!” She wheezes, trying to drag air back into her.

“Victria. Victria! Calm down, please, calm down. Tell me what’s wrong,” I say, desperately. “What’s making you so scared?”

All I can make out of her response is “dying” and “Orion” and “planet” and “no.”

I shove my hand into my pocket, withdrawing the same med patch Victria tried to rip open earlier. Beneath the wrapper, I can feel the oddly squishy patch — but it’s so thin that it’s hard to believe this little square can knock someone out. That three will kill. I smack it onto the top of her hand.

Her rocking stills. Victria’s arms slacken, and her legs sprawl out in front of her.

“Are you okay?” I ask quietly.

Victria blinks.

“Come on,” I say, standing. I offer Victria my hand, and she pulls herself up. She’s upright now, but her shoulders are slouched and her eyes vacant. Her hair, sweaty and bedraggled, clings to her face. I reach over and swipe it off her forehead, tucking the loose strands behind her left ear, next to her wi-com. She doesn’t flinch when I touch her; she doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Victria?” I say. Then, louder: “Victria?”

Victria blinks.

I lead her to the elevator.

When we get to the Hospital lobby, it’s more crowded than I’ve ever seen it. Two hassled nurses are trying to contain a group of people trying to push their way farther in, and apprentices are dashing about from patient to patient. A man near me grips the armrests of the chair he’s sitting in so hard that he bends the metal.

“What’s wrong with them all?” I ask Kit as she rushes by. “Was there some sort of accident?”

She shakes her head.

Doc sees Victria and me from across the lobby and makes his way over to us, dropping a single green med patch in the hands of every patient who gets to him first, their arms reaching out to him in supplication.

“What is going on?” I ask him. “Is this from the riot today?”

Doc shakes his head. “Elder doesn’t think. He never thinks first. You can’t give them everything at once. People can’t handle this sort of thing.” He diverts his attention to the man gripping the chair beside us. Then he reaches into the pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a pale green packet. He rips the backing off it and slaps it on the man’s arm. The man’s grip slackens, and an empty, expressionless sort of peace washes over him.

“I’ll take her to her room,” Kit offers, steering Victria by the elbow down the hall.

I think of returning to my room but instead go the other way, toward the door. I need fresh air, even if the air is just recycled oxygen. Outside, it’s pitch black, but I don’t need lights along the path to the Recorder Hall. Everything’s muddy from the heavy rain, but mud or not, I know this path better than any of the courses I ran back at home. I know the feel of it under my feet — the thicker mulch near the Hospital doorstep, the flowers that brush my legs as the path winds through the garden, the cool scent of water as I turn around the pond, the slight incline as I approach the Recorder Hall.

I begin to see why those people in the Hospital are freaking out, and I’m overwhelmed with a sense of wonder that there’s anything more than this. Even I, who once breathed air on top of the Rocky Mountains, who once swam in the Atlantic Ocean, have come to feel like there’s nothing beyond these walls.

I forgot about Earth.