Shades of Earth - Page 16/54

“What was that?” Elder asks in a low voice, but we both know what it was. We scan the skies but see nothing. Elder steps closer to the sprawling tree. “I think . . . I think these flowers came from that stringy stuff that was on the trees earlier.”

He’s right—the purple Spanish-moss-like plants that clung to the trees are the same shade as the flower petals, a delicate lilac on the edges that sinks to deep purple in the center. A few tendrils of the moss haven’t blossomed, but most have unraveled, twirling into paper-thin, almost-translucent flowers. “They’re lovely,” I breathe.

“You like the flowers?” Elder asks, a wry smile on his lips. Before I can respond, he reaches up and plucks one from the branches of the closest tree. “Here you go. Least I could do, after I made such a mess of the last time I brought you flowers.”

I look at him curiously—when did he last bring me flowers?—and then I bend my face down to breathe in the intoxicating sticky-sweet scent of the flower.

I smile. “It reminds me of—”

My body goes numb.

My eyes are still open as I fall. The ground rushes toward me, but I cannot put my hands down to protect my face, I cannot tense as my body impacts against the ground.

I feel nothing.

My eyes are still open as I lie, facedown, in a pool of muddy rainwater. I can see swirls of dirt and brown. Something sticks to my eyes, and some reflex takes over as my eyelids flutter shut.

Water seeps into my slightly open mouth and up my nose and trickles into one ear.

I try to shout, I try to move, but I can’t, and it’s just like when I was frozen, and I’m trapped again, and I can’t move, I can’t, I can’t, and I have to breathe, I have to breathe, but there’s no air, just water, and I am screaming inside my head to not breathe but the only things that work are my involuntary functions like my heart that’s beating too fast and my lungs that have to breathe.

And then there’s air.

And then there’s nothing.

18: ELDER

Amy’s voice drops off suddenly. Her eyes roll back in her head, and she falls to the ground, limp. For one moment I watch with horror as she lies facedown in a puddle. Little bubbles burst on the puddle’s surface, then the thin layer of water is still.

“Amy?” I say, dropping to my knees beside her. “Amy!”

I roll her out of the water and swipe the water off her face. “Amy?” I shake her shoulders, but her head lolls lifelessly. “AMY!”

Nothing. Dirty water dribbles out of her mouth. I push against her chest, and more water leaks out, but she doesn’t move. Her breathing is shallow but steady. Carefully, I peel back her eyelids. No response.

My heart’s racing, my ears are ringing. What happened? Is she—

I press my head against her chest. No. Thank the stars, no. She has a heartbeat.

Frex! What should I do?

I scoop Amy up in my arms. I need help. Now.

I stumble down the stairs, shouting for Kit. She can’t be that far behind. People in the other buildings peer through the windows and doors carved out of the stone walls. When they see me holding Amy’s unconscious form, they gasp or scream, curse or blanch, but none of them are Kit, none of them know medicine, none of them can save her.

“KIT!” I bellow.

Someone tall and dark turns the corner—Emma, on patrol duty with Juliana Robertson. “Help!” I shout at them. Even Juliana, who wanted nothing but to fight me earlier, is worried, her face draining of color, a stark contrast to her dark, bushy hair.

From behind them, Kit comes running. She stops short when she sees Amy. “What happened?” she gasps.

“Help her!” I shout again.

“This way,” Emma says as she and Juliana take off at a run toward the buildings at the edge of the ruin, where the Earthborns are. I race after them, slipping on the wet stone pavers. I twist to protect Amy’s lifeless body, gouging a long scrape into my thigh that I barely feel. Kit helps me up, then runs beside me, already checking Amy’s pulse as we jog toward the outer buildings.

Emma and Juliana lead us straight to the first stone building in the row, the one that’s slightly bigger than the rest, and moments later, Colonel Martin emerges. “What the hell happened?” he bellows, striding toward us. I don’t stop. I need doctors, medicine, something. Colonel Martin takes one look at Amy’s pale, unresponsive face and curses long and loud, running beside me, shouting for assistance.

“Stand back!” he bellows once I duck into the building. Amy’s mother screams. I kneel, carefully laying Amy down on the cold stone floor.

“What happened?” Dr. Martin cries as she stares at her daughter’s motionless body. Kit kneels beside Amy, lifting her eyelids. Two other people—a female with narrow eyes and a short man—drop down beside Amy and take over. Earthborn doctors.

“Where’s Gupta?” Colonel Martin shouts. “Where is he? He’s the lead medic!”

“I don’t know,” the female Earthborn doctor says.

“What happened?” Dr. Martin wails again.

“I don’t know,” I say, my words coming out as a plea. “We were just up there, at the buildings, and there was a tree, and—”

“Could be anything,” the Earthborn doctor says. His accent is strange, stranger than Amy’s, but that knowledge just makes my chest ache. “There was rain—perhaps there’s a toxin in the precipitation. Or a bug bite.”

“Bugs! There were lots of bugs, little annoying flying things,” I jump in.

The doctor nods. “Perhaps a venom that reacted strangely to her system. Anything out here, no matter how seemingly harmless, is alien to us. We don’t know how we’ll react to any stimuli on this planet.”

“What’s this?” Kit asks, lifting Amy’s limp hand. The sticky remains of the purple flower petals still cling to her palm.

“A flower. She sniffed a flower and then—”

“Passed out?” Kit lifts Amy’s eyelids, but much more gently than I did earlier, and shines a light in them.

I nod.

“Well, wake her up!” Colonel Martin shouts.

The Sol-Earth doctor presses a stethoscope into Amy’s chest.

“You!” Colonel Martin rounds on me. His wife gives a tiny sound of fear. “You put her in this danger!” Colonel Martin’s accusations slice into me, ripping my flesh to shreds.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” the Earthborn female doctor mutters.

“Where the hell is Dr. Gupta?” Colonel Martin shouts. His gaze zeros in on Juliana Robertson. “You! Go find that lazy medic and bring him here!”

I reach for Amy—I know she can’t hear or see me, I just want to touch her—and Colonel Martin slams both hands into my chest, throwing me to the far wall of the building.

“Get. The hell. Out.” He grinds the words out through clenched teeth.

I stare up at him, shocked at his reaction.

“You did this. If she dies, her blood is on your hands. You can’t keep her safe. You can’t keep anyone safe. GET OUT.” He pushes me again, and I stumble against the wall. Kit looks up—the only other shipborn in the room—but she can’t afford to divert her attention from Amy.

I drink in the image of Amy—pale, empty, lifeless on the ground. Her mother, weeping. Colonel Martin’s rage.

I run from the building, Colonel Martin’s accusation digging into my heart like a salted blade.

19: AMY

My mouth feels as if it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. I smack my dry lips, my tongue heavy in my mouth.

Something twitches in my hand. The movement startles me, and I try to jerk my arm away, but my muscles are sluggish. I struggle to sit up, but it feels as if there’s a weight on my chest even though no blankets sit on top of me.

My mother’s asleep, her hand wrapped loosely around mine. That was what I felt before. I curl my fingers over hers.

Her eyelids flutter and then pop open, as if she’s suddenly remembered something vitally important. She turns to me and sucks in all her breath. “Amy?” she gasps.

“Mom?” My voice is croaky.

“Amy!” she screams, and throws herself on me. In another moment, my father appears. His eyes are wet, and he seems unable to talk. I’ve never seen him this emotional.

My eyes skim the room. Where’s Elder?

“What’s going on?” I ask. My back aches. All around me, the air is cool and dim—have I slept until dusk? But no—the sky is growing lighter and lighter. It’s dawn. I’ve slept the entire day and into the next.

“What do you last remember?” one of the doctors from Earth—I think her name is Dr. Watase—asks.

I look down at the hand my mother still holds, and it’s not until I do so that I realize my body is answering for me: the last thing I remember is holding the flower Elder gave me.

No. I shudder involuntarily, swallowing down the bile rising in my throat. The last thing I remember is losing control of my body, just as I felt when I was frozen. And then the sensation of drowning, just as I felt when I first woke up.

The memories pour into me, poison my soul.

I look around me. Everyone’s waiting for me to talk. “The flower,” I say, because I know they don’t care about how I feel; they need only a cold medical analysis. “It made me pass out.”

My eyes are still looking around the room. I’m filled with disappointment.

I can’t believe Elder would just leave me here.

“We thought so,” Dr. Watase says. She points to a line on the floor where dozens of purple string flowers are laid out. “We haven’t been able to do any tests, but from observation, it seems as if the flowers are carnivorous. When they’re wet, they blossom and emit a neurotoxin that causes insects to drop into their center.”

“And geniuses like me to drop to the ground,” I say with as much of a smile as I can muster, attempting to alleviate the tension in the room. But it doesn’t work. Everyone just looks at me, gravely nodding in agreement.

“Precisely,” Dr. Watase adds. She pats my hand in a grandmotherly way. I would roll my eyes at her, but that seems to take too much effort.

“I’m starving,” I say.

“We all are,” Dad says. “If the shuttle doesn’t unlock itself, we’ll have to figure out how to get food from the planet.”

I close my eyes—on Godspeed we at least had food. If we all starve to death, it’ll be partly my fault. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost twenty-four hours,” Dr. Watase says.

We’ve spent practically a full day and night in the ruins, and I slept through nearly all of it. I look around me, trying to gauge what’s happened since I was knocked out. Everyone in the building I’m in is Earthborn. There’s a rumpled sort of look to them all, even Dad. They’ve slept in their clothes; no one has eaten. I doubt anyone’s left the buildings at all.

I stand up, my back cracking. The floor wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to sleep, despite the fact that my parents appear to have padded the ground with spare coats to give me a kind of makeshift bed. At first Dr. Watase and Mom try to help me walk, but I just want to stretch my muscles, and the remaining effects of the flower are rapidly evaporating.