eyes clearer.
“Back again?” I whisper.
He nods, a grim expression filling his face. He eyes linger on Victria’s body, and I wonder how much he saw and understood while under the influence of the Phydus patch.
“You shot him,” he says, his eyes darting from Doc to me again.
I did. But if I hadn’t — maybe he wouldn’t have fired his gun either. Maybe Victria would still be alive.
“I had to shoot him,” I say, hoping to convince myself of the fact too.
He nods again. I can’t tell if he doubts me or not. Does he blame me for Victria’s death?
“How bad is it?” he finally asks, jerking his head toward my arm.
“Are you hurt too?” Kit says, looking up from Doc as she sprays foam on his wound. The foam bubbles up and turns pink as it disinfects the wound. Kit starts to wrap Doc’s leg in a large bandage.
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
“She’s shot,” Elder says. “In the arm.”
He takes the other yellow patch from me and moves over to Bartie. Bartie’s eyes are glued on Victria’s body the whole time as he shifts from drugged to aware, and once the Phydus has truly left his system, he tries to say something but chokes on the words. He lunges toward Victria, but Elder catches him, and the two stand there, their arms wrapped around each other, all rivalry forgotten in the death of one of their last childhood friends.
“Here,” Kit says.
I jump, surprised — I hadn’t noticed that she’d finished with Doc. Kit cuts away the sleeve of my tunic and cleans the wound with the disinfecting foam.
“Is it bad?” Elder asks as he and Bartie break away.
Kit rips open a pale purple patch.
“No,” I say immediately.
“It’s for pain.”
“No patches.”
She shrugs and starts to wrap my arm. The bleeding hasn’t quite stopped, but it’s slower — I probably won’t even need stitches. It’s Victria who got the full force of the bullet.
“Come on,” Elder says to Bartie.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“We’re sending Victria to the stars,” Bartie says.
“Let me help.” Kit tugs the bandage around my arm, tight, and I hiss in pain.
Bartie holds Victria by the shoulders, and Elder stoops to pick up her feet. “We can do this alone, Amy.” Elder’s voice is kind, and his eyes beg me to understand. Bartie and Elder need to say goodbye together. They need to remember Victria the way she was before Orion was frozen, and she drowned in her love for him. Before I was unfrozen.
The two men silently carry their friend’s body out the door, toward the hatch, leaving only a bloodstain behind.
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
“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.
