A Million Suns

69 ELDER

BARTIE SLAMS THE HATCH DOOR SHUT, AND I PUNCH IN THE code. We both stand at the window and watch as we send our last childhood friend to the stars.

Through the bubble glass window, we see Victria’s body fly up. The pull of the vacuum makes her rise and float backward, her face obscured by her black hair, her arms and legs reaching to me even as they are pulled farther and farther away.

And then she’s gone.

Kit approaches us as the hatch door closes. Doc — with the green patch still on his arm — limps beside her. Kit tries to use her weight to support Doc, but he’s much bigger than she is.

“Let me help,” Bartie says, taking Kit’s place under Doc’s arm. His voice is gravelly with unshed tears. When I meet his eyes, I know — what’s happened in the last three months cannot overshadow what’s happened in the last thirty minutes. We’re friends again.

“Make sure that patch stays on,” I say, and Bartie nods.

Kit and Bartie take Doc toward the hatch. I think about giving them a hand — it’s going to be hard getting him up the ladder — but I don’t want to help Doc. I don’t ever want to see Doc again.

I go back to the gen lab. Amy, her arm swaddled in bandages, stands in front of Orion’s frozen face.

The memories of what happened while I was patched are hard to sort out in my mind. It’s the difference between swimming in water and swimming in syrup. But I do know one thing: Doc killed Marae and the others because I’m not as good a leader as Orion would have been.

Amy said Orion had a plan for everything, and I’m starting to think I should have one too. Because I don’t know what I’m going to do now.

“You kept those wires,” she says as I step beside her. “The wires to the Phydus machine. You had them the whole time. You went straight to the machine—”

“Doc had patched me,” I say. “I don’t think I could have helped but go to the machine.”

“But you had those wires with you the whole time.”

I did. “But,” I say, “I think I deserve some credit for never using them, even if I did have them.”

“Yeah,” Amy says, offering me a hint of a smile. “You do.”

We stare at Orion’s cryo chamber.

“What do these numbers mean?” Amy asks, pointing to the LCD screen on the front of the box.

I watch the numbers tick down. “It’s a countdown clock.”

“I was afraid of that.”

I bend down, examining the electronics. Apparently, Doc already started the regeneration process. Orion should be unfrozen within twenty-three hours and forty-two minutes. I try to stop the clock, but even though I turn the dial, the screen continues to tick away time.

“Just turn it off,” Amy says, bending down to look at the electronics.

“We can’t just unplug it,” I say. I’ve definitely learned my lesson about that one.

“Well, make it stop.”

“I can’t,” I say, fiddling with the dials some more. I notice the screen and keypad. “Doc’s locked up the system.”

“Reset it.”

I hesitate. “That could be dangerous. If regeneration has already started, it could damage his body if we just stop it.”

“It’s only been going on for twenty minutes,” Amy says. “It can’t do that much harm.”

But I’m remembering how I froze Orion without preparing his body. He’s already damaged from that. Messing with the cryo tube now might kill him.

“I don’t care if it’s dangerous. He needs to stay frozen.”

“Amy, it’s not that simple. I can’t. The cryo chamber is only programmed to go one way.”

“I don’t want him to wake up,” Amy says in a very quiet voice.

I look at Amy and bite my lip. Because I do.

I don’t know if it’s because of our shared DNA or because I understand the choices he’s made. Maybe it’s because of the guns in the armory or the ship records in the bridge. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to think Doc was right, and Orion would be a better leader than me. But Orion doesn’t seem as loons as before.

Amy puts her hand on my elbow, drawing my gaze away from the countdown clock and back to her. “I couldn’t kill him.”

I stare, unsure of how to respond.

“Doc. He had a gun on me. On you. I didn’t know which of us he’d shoot.”

I touch the bandage on Amy’s arm — not firmly enough to put any pressure on her wound.

“It’s just a graze. But when the gun was pointed at us, I thought, ‘I have to kill him, or he’ll kill one of us.’ But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Why are you—”

“Elder,” Amy says, “I believe in the bottom of my heart that Orion doesn’t deserve to live. There are some people,” she adds, emphasizing the word, “that don’t deserve a second chance. I haven’t forgotten what it was like to drown in my cryo box. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t remember.”

I did that to her. Not Orion. Me.

“Two people are dead, and they died like I almost did. And he did that to them.”

“Amy, I can’t stop the regeneration process.”

“He doesn’t deserve to live.”

“Would you kill him?”

Amy’s eyes dance back and forth between mine. She couldn’t kill Doc. But her hatred for Orion goes deeper.

“You’re right. Some people don’t deserve a second chance. But Orion—” I pause, unsure of how to explain. “Orion was wrong, yes. But it’s not like he went on a murdering spree or something. He had a reason. He acted out of fear.”

Amy bites her bottom lip, thinking. I know she’s comparing Orion, who thought he was doing the right thing, to Luthor, who knew he was doing wrong.

I want to wrap my arms around her and erase the worry etched on her face, but I know it’s not as simple as that. “Maybe,” I say, turning back to the cryo chamber. “I can’t stop the regeneration… But I can delay it.”

Amy steps aside and lets me focus on the controls on the chamber. I feel two sets of eyes on me: Amy’s, begging me to keep Orion frozen, and Orion’s, pleading to come back to life.

“I can do it,” I say finally. “I can slow it down.”

“Do it,” Amy says.

I punch the numbers in, adjust the dial, and the countdown clock goes from one day to three.

“Can we keep doing this?” Amy asks. “Every time the countdown clock gets low, can we just add more time?”

I nod slowly.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” she says, her jaw set. “We’ll just keep backing it up. He doesn’t ever have to wake up.”

Amy stares into Orion’s bulging eyes with a sort of fierce intensity. But I stare at Amy, unable to recognize this girl with such hatred in her heart.