A Million Suns

“How did you know the password?” I ask. “And how did you get past the biometric scanners? The only ones who can unlock this door are Elder, Doc, and some of the Shippers.”

“And you.” She says this as if it was an accusation. It’s true — but I don’t bother to reply to her sneer. Instead, I wait for her explanation. “Elder gave me access more than a month ago,” she admits.

“He… did?”

Victria finally turns her attention to me. “You know, Elder did exist before you came along. Frex, he even had friends and a life, all without you.”

“I… I know.”

Victria’s face is stony, but I can see the muscle in her jaw clenching from how hard she’s keeping her emotions in check.

“Can you please go?” she asks. But she doesn’t look at me. She’s looking at the cryo chamber where Orion’s frozen, his eyes bulging, his hands clawing at the glass. I shut the door to the gen lab, giving her privacy.

Elder said he and his group of friends broke apart after Kayleigh died. Victria, I think, as the only other girl in the group, lost more than any of them, with the exception of Harley. I can see her, the writer who loved books, spending most of her time in the Recorder Hall. Where Orion was.

She must hate me. First I took away Elder and Harley, two of her last childhood friends. Then I took away Orion.

I somehow never thought of anyone caring about Orion. My memories of him revolve around the last time I saw him alive. Even though I thought when I first met him that he was kind and gentle, generous and friendly, all I can really remember about him is the crazed look in his eyes as he shouted at Elder to let my parents and the other frozens die. But of course, Victria never saw that. All she saw was her friend, the Recorder, with his face twisted and frozen.

And, on a day when Elder locks down the entire ship, when she must be scared because we’re all scared — on a day like this, she ignored the command to go to her room. She goes, instead, to Orion.

I realize then: she didn’t disobey Elder’s order. He told her to go home. Well, sometimes home is a person.

I turn back to the cryo chambers. Victria has unwittingly given me the answer; I finally understand what Orion meant. He told me to go home. And I did, even before I understood what he meant.

I put my hand on the handle of cryo chamber 42. It’s where I should be. It’s the only home I have left.

I pull open the door.

I talk to my parents every morning, but this time, the lingering scent of the cryo liquid brings bile to the back of my throat. I gag, my body remembering how it felt to drown in the sickeningly sweet liquid. I can’t breathe, and then I’m breathing too much, and with every breath comes the scent of the cryo liquid, and that scent is killing me.

I remember the way the liquid burned my nostrils, the way my vision blurred cornflower blue.

The glass box inside is missing a lid — it broke in pieces when Doc and Elder dropped it in their haste to rescue me from drowning in my chamber.

I’m thrown back into that time. I remember being in pain, but my memory of what hurt and how has faded with time. Instead, I remember Elder’s deep soothing voice. I was so scared, so disorientated, and his voice pulled me through the fog of terror.

I force myself to quit thinking about waking up and instead focus on the actual cryo chamber. The glass is cool to the touch, and I marvel at how slender the box is, how my arms and legs pressed against the glass as I struggled to escape.

My hands stop.

There — right where my heart would be if I were lying in the box now — is a single piece of paper, folded in half.

My hand shakes as I unfold it.

MILITARY PERSONNEL ABOARD GODSPEED

1. Katarzyna Berge

4. Lee Hart

12. Mark Dixon

15. Frederick Krasczinsky

19. Brady MacPherson

22. Petr Plangariz

26. Theo Kennedy

29. Thomas Collins

30. Ximena Roge

33. Alastair Potter

34. Aigus Wu

38. Jeremy Doyle

39. Mariella Davis

41. Robert Martin

46. Grace Spivey

48. Dylan Farley

52. Ines Gomez

58. Aislinn Keenan

63. Emma Bledsoe

67. Jagdish Iyer

69. Yuko Saitou

72. Huang Sun

78. Chibueze Kopano

81. Mary Douglass

94. Naoko Suzuki

99. Juliana Robertson

100. William Robertson

29 ELDER

AFTER REMINDING DOC TO STOP BY LIL’S HOME BEFORE taking Stevy’s body away, I help the Shippers inspect the City streets. Faces peer through windows as I pass. Sometimes I catch a meek glance marred by worry and fear, but more often the people glare down at me. They may have obeyed my curfew, but their eyes are defiant, angry.

My stomach roars — my last real meal was yesterday — and I only stop to eat when Marae insists. The streets are empty, but we don’t leave until the solar lamp clicks off. As I ride the grav tube up to the Shipper Level, I can’t help but notice that nearly every light is on in the City. I’m pretty sure I can guess what they’re staying awake to talk about.

Most of the Shippers remain in the City — they make their homes here, after all, only coming to the Shipper Level to work — but Marae follows me up the grav tube. As our footsteps ring out across the metal floor, I realize that tonight, after Marae leaves the Shipper Level and I return to the Keeper Level, I’ll be even more separated from the rest of the ship — two empty levels, all for me.

We make our way toward the whirr-churn-whirr of the engine. It’s dark inside the Engine Room, but the engine still casts a shadow. It smells of burnt grease, but it seems smaller in my eyes, now that I know it’s not moving the ship. Marae doesn’t look at it at all as she crosses the floor and goes straight to a thick, heavy door with a seal lock.