I can see streams of white-blue fire shooting out the front, and the shuttle jerks, then slows, the sudden movements leaving me breathless. And just like that, all my other senses kick in. Everything becomes real again. I tast
e copper in my mouth—I’ve bitten my lip so hard I’ve drawn blood—and I can already tell that I’ll bruise from the too-tight seat belt on my chest and around my hips. The noise from the other side of the door seems deafening, but I can pick out individual cries of pain and alarm from the 1,456 passengers in the cryo room.
And then we stop.
We haven’t landed—we’re hovering over the treetops—but we’re not moving forward anymore. We’re not crashing.
The shuttle isn’t completely stable, and I can hear a hiss-shh sound from under our feet: the rockets are shooting down straight into the ground, keeping us over the surface.
“Land shuttle? Please select yes or no,” the computer says evenly.
Elder and I exchange a glance. There is no meaning, no words behind the look—just one shared feeling. Relief.
Instead of reaching for the blinking green Y, he grabs my hand. His fingers slide between mine, and they’re slick with sweat, but his grip is firm and strong. No matter what happens, what awaits us on the other side—we’ll face it together. Elder pulls our joined hands toward the last button, and we push it.
The hiss-shh slowly fades as the shuttle sinks down and down toward the ground. I realize that somewhere in our mad descent, gravity’s returned, and everything feels heavy again, especially the seat belt strapping me down. I throw it off and race to the honeycombed glass windows. I can see that our landing has decimated the area—the trees nearest us are nothing but smoldering ash, and the ground is black and shiny, almost as if it has melted. Trees—trees! Real trees, real ground, a real world! Right here!
With a sudden lurch that nearly knocks me to the floor, the rockets cut out and we drop the last few feet to the surface of the planet.
“Well,” Elder says, staring out the window at the burning earth, “at least we didn’t die. ”
“We didn’t die,” I repeat. I look up at his shining eyes. “We didn’t die!” Elder grabs my wrist, pulling me into his lap. I melt against the warmth and security of his arm, and our lips collide in a kiss full of all the fear and passion and hope this new world brings. We kiss as if it were our first kiss and our last, all at once. Our lips meet in desperation; our bodies wrap around each other with a sort of fervent fury that exists only in the joy of surviving the certainty of death.
I pull away, gasping for air. I look into Elder’s eyes . . . and for one brief moment, I see nothing but the boy who taught me about first kisses and second chances. But then the image shifts, and I don’t see him. I see Orion. I scramble up out of Elder’s lap, and even though I tell myself that Elder isn’t Orion, I can’t forget about the way Elder insisted Orion be on this shuttle with us, as if his crimes should be rewarded with a whole planet instead of only ice.
Elder reaches for me again as he tries to get up from his chair—but can’t. “Stupid seat belt,” he mutters, unfastening it.
I turn around.
The world is there, on the other side of the glass window.
The world.
Our world.
“We made it,” I say.
“Yeah,” Elder replies, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. “We did. . . . ” His words are a breath of warmth at the back of my neck.
I turn around to meet his eyes, but my vision slides past him, to the door that leads to the hallway that leads to the cryo room.
“My parents,” I whisper.
I can finally have my parents back.
4: ELDER
Without saying another word, Amy turns and runs through the seal-lock doors. Her footsteps clatter across the metal floor, the sound rising over the distant shouts from the 1,456 passengers in the cryo room. I take a deep, shaking breath. I still can’t believe we’ve actually made it. Despite my incompetence, despite whatever it was that caused our near-disastrous crash landing . . .
I pause. What was it that made us nearly crash? It felt almost as if something hit us. . . .
“This concludes the landing of the shuttle,” the computer says. “Please shift operational command of the mission to the highest-ranking officer in cryogenics once reanimation is complete. Do not leave the shuttle until you are commanded to do so. Thank you for contributing to the mission of the Financial Resource Exchange. ”
The computer’s voice crackles and dies, leaving me in silence. In its place, the monitor on the control panel lights up, flashing a single phrase:
Military Authorization Code: - - - - - - - - - -
That word—military—makes my stomach jerk with the same intensity of the ship’s sudden stop earlier. Orion would have been in my place if he hadn’t feared the military of Sol-Earth so much that he tried to kill them, convinced they would turn us into soldiers or slaves.