Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

Kit shakes her head, already kneeling beside the next person. “Not enough of one. ”

I stand awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what to do with myself. Elder is nearby but focused on helping others. My heart swells with pride at the way they turn to him, trust evident on their faces despite everything.

A woman near the wall moans. Her eyes are on the three dead bodies lined against the shuttle wall at her feet, the people who didn’t survive the landing. I think for a moment her exclamation of pain was for that, but then I see the river of blood snaking down her arm.

I squat beside her, but she barely registers my presence. I peel back her shirt—a ragged cut mars her back shoulder, the red a stark contrast to her dark brown skin.

“I’m going to stitch you up, okay?” I ask, hoping that I sound confident.

She glances up at me, a look of fear in her eyes. I wonder if she doesn’t want me to work on her because of who I am and how I look, but she turns away again, angling her shoulder more toward me, offering it up like a sacrifice.

“Do you know how to do this?” she asks, her voice hollow.

“Yeah,” I lie, because honestly, what else am I supposed to tell her?

The first time I pull too tight, ripping the thread through her. She hisses in pain, and I try to apologize, but she’s shaking her head, eyes closed, wishing, I know, for it to just be over.

“What’s your name?” I ask, trying the same diversion tactics I used with Heller.

“Lorin,” she says shortly. I start to make small talk with her, but then I notice the way her lips are pressed tightly together, her eyes squinched shut.

She doesn’t want to talk.

I plunge the needle back in, and out, and in, and out, and then I can breathe again because it’s finally done.

“Thanks,” she mutters.

I spray the cut down with disinfectant and start on the next person.

I lose track of time and how long I have left until my parents awaken, my body slipping into a machine-like state as I try to separate my mind from my actions. I try not to think about how the needle pierces flesh, not cloth; I try not to notice the wet sound of the thread sliding through bloody skin. I am so focused on what I’m doing that when a harsh, shrieking scream echoes throughout the chamber I jump back, dropping the needle.

Like everyone else, I look up—but all I see is the metal ceiling.

“That was outside,” Elder says, his voice deep and low as he crouches beside me.

My eyes round. “What was it?”

“Something—outside,” he repeats.

The man whose leg I’d been stitching looks up at us, fear in his eyes. “Is that one of them monsters Orion warned us about?” he asks, and I’m ashamed to admit that was the same thing I—probably everyone—was thinking.

I look around me. All 1,456 sets of eyes are watching us. Are watching him. Elder. They are waiting for their leader to react. If he shows fear now, their new world will begin with fear.

Elder lowers his voice. “I’ve got to go,” he tells me in nearly a whisper. “I’m going outside,” he says, this time loud enough for everyone to hear.

I grab his wrist, leaving a bloody handprint there. “Why?”

Another screeching cry echoes above us. Whatever it is—it’s close.

Elder pulls me up, dragging me away from the man I was working on. One of Kit’s nurses kneels beside him and takes over, disinfecting the needle I dropped.

“Remember the way the shuttle was knocked off course?” Elder asks me softly. I nod. “What if that was no accident?”

“We were, what—attacked?” My voice sounds doubtful. “And you were mad at me for trying to wake up the frozens? If we were attacked, we need them even more!”

“Shh!” Elder says, his eyes darting over my shoulder. No one heard me, though. Still, even Elder seems to agree that the idea that we were attacked seems a little ludicrous. The shuttle did seem to be pushed out of trajectory—but the shuttle is also old. One of the rockets could have blown. Something could have malfunctioned.

“We have to know what we’re up against,” Elder says.