There’s so much we don’t understand. It’s our ignorance that will kill us on this planet.
Our ignorance . . .
But someone knew. There’s one person here who knew what perils this world held all along. And his knowledge might save us now.
I’m reminded of Orion’s last words on the floppies he left for Amy. His voice trembled and cracked with fear. Is the ship so bad that you have to face the monsters below? Is it worth the risk of your life—of everyone’s lives?
My eyes meet Amy’s.
He knew.
/> “Orion,” I say. He can tell us. We won’t let him speak in riddles and codes, we’ll force him to tell us everything he knows. If he doesn’t . . .
Amy’s face drains of color. “Orion,” she whispers. Her eyes focus on me. “Elder, Orion. We didn’t—we forgot . . . his timer. ”
Frex. Between the shuttle locking us out and being forced into the ruins . . . no one has reset his timer.
Amy and I both take off at a run, crashing through the trees and not even bothering to look up to see if there are any more of the bird-creatures waiting to attack. For a brief moment, I worry that we won’t be able to find the way back to the shuttle, but moving nearly fifteen hundred people yesterday left more than enough trail for us to follow back. Locating a place to settle seemed to take forever because there were so many of us and we didn’t know where we were going—we only knew that the probe indicated water. But there are just two of us now and returning to the shuttle takes far less time than I expected.
Amy bounds up the ramp and tries the door. “Still locked,” she growls.
I slam into the seat in front of the control panel. There has to be something I can do. I swipe my hand across the onboard controls, setting the shuttle’s computer to do a full scan of all operations.
“Why weren’t you there?” Amy asks as I lean back, staring at the control panel in frustration, waiting for the results.
“There?” I ask. The sensors seem to be reading fine now—but then why is the shuttle still in lockdown?
“When I woke up. ”
My fingers freeze over the shuttle’s controls. Do I tell her that I spent the night outside the building her parents kept her in, propped under the window so I could hear if she woke up? Do I tell her that when the suns rose, the first thing I did—before checking on my people, before re-checking everything with Kit—was stand on my tiptoes so I could look at her face in the morning light? That I barely slept, racked with guilt that it was I who nearly killed her . . . again?
“I should have been,” I say. “I’m sorry. ”
Amy sniffs. I glance up at her. She’s looking not at me, but at the locked door. “Let’s get this open,” she says, the closest she’ll come to accepting my apology.
I drop underneath the control panel, looking for the small box labeled FUSES AND SENSORS. The wires connecting the air pressure sensors are covered in black tape. They must have frayed or something long ago and then been hastily repaired—no wonder they malfunctioned. I’m surprised to find the tape still tacky; that repair must have been made gens ago.
But either way, they seem fine now. And if the sensors are operational—who the frex knows why they cut out in the first place—then I should be able to override the lockdown procedure.
The military authorization code request flashes across the computer screen as I crawl out from under the control panel. Shite. I don’t know Colonel Martin’s ten-digit secret code. I try to bypass the request. There must be some way—after all, Orion himself figured out the way to break open every door on Godspeed, including the ones on this shuttle.
If Orion could do it, so can I. I turn back to the computers, this time looking at the key logs stored in the computer’s archives. It’s a simple enough task—other than Amy and me, very few people ever came to the shuttle while it was still attached to the ship. After a moment, I find the same code entered over and over again—K-A-Y-L-E-I-G-H. It doesn’t take that much of a guess to figure out that this is the override command Orion’s programmed into the computer. He would pick her name, little Kayleigh, whose dead body was found floating above the spot in the pond that hid the secret hatch to the shuttle.
Amy steps aside as I jump up and run to the keypad by the door. I punch in the code, and the seal locks break.
I throw open the door and am about to step through it when Amy grabs my arm. “If he’s awake,” she says, “we have to refreeze him. ”
I shake my head. “Frex, no! If he’s awake, we need to question him. Amy, he’s the one—the only one—who knows what’s down here. He knew there were monsters; he must know what kind of monsters. He might be able to help us fight them. ”
“Question him, then refreeze him,” Amy counters. Her voice is still cold, but there is fear and pain in her eyes. “We can’t afford to have him here. Imagine the chaos he’ll bring . . . imagine what he’ll do to the people from Earth now that they’re awake. ”
I don’t bother saying anything else. Amy will never be able to see Orion as anything but evil. She doesn’t see what I see. She doesn’t see herself in him.
Amy lets me go, and I push the door open farther.
“You’re not going to abandon me again, right?”
I freeze. Her voice was calm and quiet, almost a whisper, and filled with more sadness than I’ve ever heard from her lips before.