A Million Suns (Across the Universe #2)

I offer her my hand. I can feel her trembling in my palm, but she stands anyway. She searches my eyes at first—looking for something, I don’t know what—but I tilt my head up, and I see her do the same out of the corner of my eye.

Because the universe is there, above us, glittering through the honeycomb windows that cover the Bridge. The universe—the stars, the blackness between them—and the planet.

44

AMY

AT LUNCHTIME, I PRESS THE BUTTON IN MY WALL, BUT NO food comes out. I punch it again. It does no good.

My first instinct is that the food delivery system in my wall is broken, but when I step outside my room into the hallway, I can hear Doc shouting, even though his office door is shut.

“I don’t care if you think the people in the Ward don’t count, Fridrick!” Doc bellows. “They still deserve food!”

I slip back into my room and snatch the sonnet from my desk, but my heart’s sinking. This is more trouble for Elder—and for the ship. I think about comming him and warning him that no food’s been delivered to the Hospital, but his dead friend takes priority over lunch.

Instead, I make my way down to the grav tube to search for the stairs. There are two tubes, one near the City, one on this side of the level. My stomach twists at the idea of going into the City by myself, but considering how close this tube is to the Recorder Hall, I think I’ve got a better chance of finding the hidden stairs near it than the other one. If there even are stairs, I can’t help but think. I just hope I’ve got this clue figured out correctly.

The Hospital lobby is crowded as usual, but I keep my head down and my hood up as I weave through the people complaining about med patches. A few people look really sick—one woman is dangerously thin, with sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. Another man keeps throwing up, holding a pail in his lap.

I take a deep breath of the recycled air as soon as I leave the Hospital—then immediately put my head back down. A group of people, among them the crowd that was arguing for Elder’s removal yesterday, are gathered down the path near the pond.

“And, once again, no food deliveries for lunch,” a voice echoes from the crowd. I glance up; Bartie’s in the center of the group, standing on the bench.

I resist the urge to run over and knock him into the pond. Bartie had always seemed nice and even quiet before this week, but as the ship spins more and more out of control, all I can see is him standing in the center of the storm.

As I hurry along the path, I keep my head down. Which is, perhaps, why I bump right into a couple heading toward Bartie and the group at the pond.

“Sorry!” the woman says pleasantly.

“Where are you going?” the man asks. I hesitate—just a moment. I recognize that voice.

Luthor.

I should have started running, but my brief pause has given Luthor time to touch my shoulder. I peek at him under my hood, careful to keep my face down. The bruises Victria and I inflicted on him are a nasty greenish purple. His left eye is still swollen; a dark red scab covers his split lip.

“Come with us,” he says, still not recognizing me. “Bartie’s talking about how we could move the ship to a system that’s more fair.”

He pulls me around by my shoulder. I try to jerk away, and my hood slips down. For a moment, I see surprise in Luthor’s face; then his eyes narrow to malicious slits.

The woman gasps as if I’m Quasimodo or something, but Luthor grins with all his teeth. The cut in his lip cracks open, shiny red, but he doesn’t seem to care. His grip on my shoulder tightens, and I hiss in pain.

“Come on,” the woman says. “The freak isn’t invited.”

Luthor releases me suddenly, pushing me at the same time, and I stumble on the path. Laughing, the two of them continue down toward the pond.

“It’s not like I wanted to go anyway!” I yell. The pair pause, their backs to me. Before they turn around, I race down the path toward the grav tube.

Fortunately, since this grav tube can only be used by Elder, no one else is out this way. I lean back, looking at the clear plastic tube that goes all the way up, through the ceiling, to the Keeper Level.

It’s stupid, but the first thing I want to do is push the wi-com on my wrist and fly up to Elder. I can’t get the taste of his kiss off my lips.

I shake my head, forcing myself to focus on the wall behind the grav tube. I usually avoid the ship’s walls. From a distance, you can squint and blur out the rivets that hold it together, pretend that the sky-blue paint is sky. But when you’re up close, you can smell the metal, the same sharp taste in the back of your throat as blood, and when you touch it, it’s cold and immovable.

I rap my knuckles against the steel wall the same way my father tapped on the drywall in our house to find a stud before hanging a picture. Maybe the sound will clue me in to whatever’s behind the wall. For a moment, I flash back to the other time I beat against the walls, when I was crying and screaming and clawing at the metal, desperate to find a way out. Orion found me then, one of the only welcoming faces on the ship, and I thought I’d found a friend in him. Not a murderer.

I focus on the sound of my knuckles against the wall. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. There’s nothing here. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. What am I doing? I look like an idiot. Tap-tap. Taaap-taaaap.

My hand stills. Just to the right, a little off center from the grav tube dais, the wall echoes hollowly. I lean closer.

And then I see it. Faint, dusty, almost invisible.

A seam in the wall.

I run my fingers along the outline of what I now know is a door. There’s no handle or hinges that I can see, so the door must open inward. I push against it, but it doesn’t give. I lean in with all my weight, my shoes sliding on the ground, digging scar marks into the earth.

The door opens.

It’s dark inside.

The door doesn’t want to open more than a crack, and I have to squeeze myself inside. With the sliver of light from the Feeder Level pouring into the darkness, I can see a bigger handle on the side of the door, a stamped metal floor, a covered box on the wall at eye level.

And stairs.

I push against the inside of the door with all my weight, and the three-inch thick door crashes shut. For a moment, I panic and tug against the giant handle until the door opens back up a crack, allowing me to catch a whiff of grass and dirt from the Feeder Level. I can get back out. I sigh in relief and push the door shut again.

It’s empty and silent here. I breathe deeply, and notice the sound of my presence more than the taste of dust and stale air.

I can see nothing through the inky darkness. I fumble in the dark, patting the cool metal wall until I stub my fingers against the raised plastic of the covered box I saw embedded in the wall before I shut the door. The cover lifts up on hinges at the top, and under that I find a light switch similar to the ones I remember from Earth. I should have assumed that the lights would operate like this—this whole area is part of the ship’s original design.

But it’s not an overhead light that flicks on; instead, the stairs start to glow. My feet thud hollowly on the metal floor as I draw closer. Tiny LED lights race up the railings on either side of the stairs, and a thin row of lights mark the front of each step. The lights are encased in plastic tubing, almost like outdoor Christmas lights.

My mind stops.

Before, if I thought Christmas, I would have remembered my past on Earth and would have succumbed to the aching sadness for a life I can never have again.

Now, I can think the word and not feel anything but a dull ache, a phantom pain for a part of my life that’s been amputated.

I shake my head and place my hand on the railing. My fingers glow pink from the tube of lights. I mount the first step and look up—the stairs climb higher and higher, zigging up like levels in a parking deck. I try to count how many times the stairs twist and turn, but the lights jumble together at the top. Godspeed is as tall as a skyscraper. The last time I was in New York, I tried to climb the stairs of the Empire State Building. My parents and I raced to see who could get to the top quickest. I made it to forty flights before I gave up, and that wasn’t even halfway. These stairs are twice as big, reaching up all the way from the Feeder Level to the Keeper Level, where Elder is.

But what about the cryo level? Where are the stairs that go down there?

I wander away from these stairs to the wall. On the other side is space—and past that is the planet. It’s odd. The Feeder Level wall is clearly thinner—I can feel residual warmth through the metal, and the door leading out isn’t too heavy; it’s the same thickness as the wall. On the other hand, the exterior walls seem massive. Steel beams arch up, following the curve of the ship at a smaller angle than the rounding roof of the Feeder Level. The rivets in this wall are much, much thicker, about the diameter of my palm.

I press my hand against the metal, and it comes away with a reddish-brown-colored dust. The metal here is cooler, and there’s a sense of stoic, strong weight behind it.

Inside the Feeder Level, where it’s airy and bright and warm, I feel caged in and trapped. But here, beside thick, heavy walls, in a narrow, curving corridor, in dim light with nothing but the smell of metal and dust—here, I feel closer to the outside.

To freedom.

I find a second set of stairs soon after, a narrow hole leading down in this space between the heart of Godspeed and the universe. These stairs are narrower and steeper, and they go down into what must be the cryo level. I long to explore—the only place I can imagine the stairs open up on the cryo level is in the last locked room. But I can’t do this without Elder. It’s not right to explore the ship without him.

I meander back around to the door leading to the Feeder Level. Orion said he lived here, in hiding from Eldest. I can’t imagine what it would take for someone to willingly cage himself into a narrow dark hall without even the fake sun of the solar lamp to warm him. How many days passed before he couldn’t bear the darkness anymore and crept back into the Feeder Level under the guise of being a Recorder? Did he spend his time leaned up against the outside wall of the ship or against the inside wall that surrounded the Feeder Level?

Whatever he did, this was the perfect hiding place. No one else knows the stairs even exist.

Once, I stayed at a fancy hotel in Atlanta when my mom was giving a lecture at a genetics conference. I spent most of my time in the hotel’s pool. On the last day, I attempted to go back to my room and pack, but the elevator was broken. It took me half an hour to find the stairs, and when I did, they were hidden behind a door marked with a four-inch square metal placard. I’d gone an entire week not knowing where the stairs were, not even thinking about them, even though I knew, logically, that the hotel had to have stairs, somewhere.

The people of Godspeed have gone years without knowing about the stairs. And I can’t help but think: if they’ve forgotten stairs, what else have they forgotten?

45

ELDER

I SLIDE MY THUMB OVER THE BIOMETRIC SCANNER AGAIN, and the metal panels over the ceiling start to close. Shelby’s eyes stare as hard as they can until the metal clicks back into place.

“We’re there,” she says, her voice alight with music and tears. “We’re here.”