“I could have died!” I shout. “I almost did die!”
“I didn’t know”—he trips over his words—“that—I mean—frex! I didn’t know you’d be—and—”
I want to ask why. Except—there is no why. I can see it in his face. He didn’t mean to hurt me. To take away my only chance to be with my parents. To trap me in a metal cage.
To kill me as effectively as I am dead on Earth.
He just did it.
There is no why, just like there is no going back.
“But I had to tell you the truth. ”
That stops me.
Something inside me snaps into place, painfully. The truth grinds against my bones.
Daddy lied to me when he said coming or not was my choice. He made the choice. The empty trunk in the cryo chamber is proof enough of that.
Jason let me believe what I wanted to believe.
This whole ship has been held together with metal and lies, everyone either deceived or a deceiver.
Except for Elder.
80
ELDER
AMY’S FACE IS STONE, AND I CANNOT SEE ANY CRACKS IN IT. It’s not been this immovable since she was frozen.
My hands clench compulsively in my pockets. The wires from the Phydus machine poke my fingers. Amy expected me to throw them away, I know she did . . . but I can’t. Their weight in my pocket is the weight of another lie. But I can’t shake that nagging voice in my head, the one that asks: Can you rule without Phydus?
I’m afraid the answer is no.
I should tell her. I should produce the wires like another confession.
But it would just drive her further away.
“When I did it . . . when I unplugged you . . . ” My voice cracks, something that hasn’t happened since I was fourteen. “I didn’t know Doc couldn’t put you back. I thought I could wake you up, and that maybe we could meet, could talk, and then after you told me about Sol-Earth, I’d be ready to let you go and be frozen again. I didn’t know you couldn’t go back. I didn’t know that I would almost kill you. ”
I’ve spoken all of this in a rush, but now my words peter out until they are almost nothing.
Amy doesn’t say anything.
I touch my cheekbone tenderly, pushing at the place where she hit me. It will bruise. If she’d aimed higher, I would have a black eye.
“I’m really sorry, you know,” I say.
Amy stares ahead of her. I can’t tell if she’s staring at the metal that traps her inside the ship or the glass that shows her the universe outside it.
“I know,” she says.
It’s not much of an invitation, but it’s the only one I’ve got. I lean against the wall beside her. A rivet digs into my back, but I don’t care. This may be the closest I’ll ever be to her again.
Amy doesn’t move away. That’s something, I guess.
“I just wanted to meet you. I didn’t know I’d ruin your whole life. ”