Shades of Earth

I nod silently.

“At any cost,” Chris says. He looks—tormented. As if he’s trying to make a decision but cannot bring himself to it. I wonder if he knows more about Emma’s death than I thought or if he’s discovered the same thing that made her paranoid.

And then—before I can pull away, before I can even gasp in surprise—Chris swoops down and plants his lips on mine. The kiss takes me by such surprise that I open my mouth—and he slips his tongue against mine, hesitant at first, and then the kiss deepens, almost as if he’s trying to convince me of something through the kiss. To claim me, to make me his. My cheeks grow warm, my mind spins.

I used to think that loving Elder didn’t count if he was my only choice.

And here’s Chris, only a few years older than me, smart and strong and brave—and I realize I had another choice all along.

I lean away from him, pulling back until he lets me go. I take several steps away from him, trying to catch my breath. Catch my thoughts. My racing heart.

“I—I’m sorry,” Chris says immediately.

I’m glad it’s too dark now for him to see how bright my cheeks must be, how deep my blush.

“I thought—it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry,” he says again. “I saw you leave Elder’s building, but I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know you two were more than friends. . . . ” He shuffles nervously, avoiding my gaze. “I mean . . . I’d hoped . . . ”

“It’s okay,” I say, still breathless.

I move toward the remains of the path we made, heading back to the shuttle and the colony, but nearly trip over a root. Chris dashes forward, quicker than I would have thought possible, and keeps me from face-planting.

“Thanks,” I say.

Chris lets me go and steps awkwardly back. “Friends?” he asks. It’s a peace treaty, an apology.

I take it. “Friends,” I say, but I can’t help but notice the way he’s standing too close to me, as if he’d gather me up in his arms if I gave even a hint that I wanted us to be more.

44: ELDER

By the time I’m dressed and racing down the steps after them, I can barely see Chris and Amy entering the forest on the other side of the meadow. They must be going to the shuttle. Amy had an idea for another test or something. That’s it. That has to be it.

I don’t follow. They would see me in the meadow, and it’s not safe anyway. Following them, unarmed, alone, is quite possibly the stupidest thing I could do right now.

And yet I almost have the chutz to do it anyway.

Instead, I slink back to the colony. I tell myself that all I’m doing is checking in on my people, but the truth of the matter is that I’m waiting for Amy to return. And trying not to think about what Amy and Chris are doing. Alone. In the dark. Together.

I skip the buildings filled with snoring Earthborns, but there’s at least one of my people awake at every building I visit. I find Heller, one of the former Feeders, perched on the stoop outside his building, staring up at the sky. Behind him, I can see the sleeping forms of nearly two dozen people. It’s not comfortable, but we’ve done the best we can, using clothes and blankets to create beds and covers.

“I can’t quit thinking about her,” Heller tells me in a low voice as I pass by.

I very much doubt he’s thinking about the same girl I can’t get out of my mind, so I ask, “Who?”

“Lorin.” The first girl killed on the planet, the first casualty from an alien threat we cannot identify.“She was a good person. She didn’t deserve to die.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” I say.

Heller shakes his head. He keeps staring up at the night sky, and I wonder if he’s looking for Godspeed and wishing he’d never come here in the first place.

After I make my rounds, I sneak back to the front of the colony and the first building, where Amy lives with her parents. I peek into the window of Amy’s room, but she’s not back yet. How long have they been out there? Has something gone wrong? I don’t know what fills me with more dread—the thought that something’s happened to them or the thought that they’re just enjoying each other so much that they can’t be bothered to return.

Something glows on the other side of Amy’s house. I duck back down, sneaking to a window that will give me a clearer view of what’s happening.

“I’m sick of lies,” Amy’s mother, Dr. Martin, says. I couldn’t possibly agree more. I stand on my tiptoes, trying to get a better view of their conversation.

“No more lies.” Colonel Martin’s voice sounds sincere. “I’ve only been trying to follow my orders.”

“You and your orders.” Although exasperated, Dr. Martin sounds as if she understands her husband. “So this is what it’s all about?”

The lights inside the building shift, and I see something small and flat that seems to glitter despite the darkness. . . . I gasp aloud, then clap my hands over my mouth. The scale. This is the thin, flat scale I found in the tunnels, just before Chris pulled me out.

“Who would have thought something like this would be so valuable?” Amy’s mom says, marveling at it.

“I think—” Colonel Martin pauses abruptly. “What was that?”

I strain my ears and hear what made Colonel Martin stop. Footsteps, from the other side of the building.

“Probably just Amy coming back,” Dr. Martin says. The glowing light goes dark as Colonel Martin covers up the scale.

I rush as quietly as possible around the building. I’m just in time to see Chris and Amy turn to face each other. I slink back into the shadows.

“Thanks for walking with me,” Amy says. “And, you know. Earlier.”

Earlier? Earlier? What happened earlier?

“Don’t mention it. And . . . er . . . ” Chris shifts uncomfortably.

And then—

—he bends his head down toward Amy—

—shuts his eyes, leaning in close—

My fingers curl into fists as I see red. I’m going to rip that frexing guy’s head off—

Amy steps back, gracefully dodging Chris’s attempt. “Friends, remember?” she says gently.

My hands go slack. I’ve been such a chutz.

Half of Chris’s lips twitch up in a grin. “Yeah,” he says, “friends.” He watches as she disappears into the building. But I can tell by the way he stares after her that he would do anything to make Amy redefine the word friends.

45: AMY

I wake up well before dawn the next morning. The floor is hard and cold, but that’s not why I couldn’t sleep. I don’t need my sleeping bag. I need Elder. My memories of last night bring an immediate, silly smile to my face.

I pull back the curtain of my tent wall when I hear low voices.

“Morning, sunshine,” Mom says softly when she and Dad notice me. “Want coffee?”

I nod, yawning as I make my way over to the table. Mom dips a metal collapsible mug into a bucket of cold water, then mixes in a pouch of instant powder.

“Almost like home,” Dad says, clinking his own collapsible mug against mine and taking a swig of the “coffee.” He makes a face I can’t help but giggle at.

Breakfast is dehydrated rations in FRX-marked packs. Powdered eggs mixed with water and biscuits that are more like crackers. I wonder how many dehydrated packs we have. The Earthborns have used them sparingly—and out of sight of the shipborns, who’ve shared their rations of wall food.

Dad dunks his “biscuit” in his “coffee,” something he always did at breakfasts back on Earth.

“Well,” Mom says, wiping crumbs from her shirt, “I’m heading to the lab.”

At the mention of this, I think about what I discovered last night, with Chris. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but at the last moment, I bite them back. I’m not ready to tell them this. Not yet. I want to tell Elder first.

Dad peers outside, then calls back to Mom, “Chris isn’t here. I’ll escort you to the lab. Amy, are you going?”

I’m not—but I follow them outside to say goodbye just as the suns start to rise. Around us, we can hear signs of others waking, soft chatter and shuffling as people greet the new day. It’s amazing to me how quickly we’ve fallen into this role of colonists. How quickly we’ve made this our home.

I smile.

And then the forest explodes.

Dad acts first—he throws Mom and me to the ground, covering our heads with his massive, strong hands. The air burns white hot over the forest, and the ground beneath our feet—solid stone, sturdy—rumbles and shakes. I can hear screams and shouts of panic, sounds echoed by my own heart as I whip my head around, wondering where Elder is. A high-pitched ringing pierces my eardrums, and I don’t know if it’s coming from the explosion or if this is a sign that my eardrums have ruptured.

A cloud billows over the forest, blotting out the suns and casting a dark shadow over the whole colony. Chunks of stone and whole trees fall from the sky like hail. The big pieces rain down in the forest, but even here, in the colony, dirt and charred remains of trees clatter down on the stone path.

“What the hell just happened?” Dad roars. The military starts to assemble around him just as another, smaller explosion erupts like an aftershock, shaking the remaining treetops.

I cannot rip my eyes away from it. The big, black, scarred earth.

Right where the shuttle used to be.

46: ELDER

The military tries to stop me, but—short of shooting me or tying me up and leaving me behind—they can’t. As soon as the explosion goes off and I realize what’s happened, I race out of the colony and toward the shuttle. Amy’s been at the lab with her mother every morning. Every frexing morning. If she was there this morning—my heart bangs against my ribcage, and my eyes burn. She can’t have been.

I catch up with Colonel Martin and his task force before they reach the forest.

“Where’s Amy?” I ask, panicked and breathless.

Colonel Martin stares at me as if he doesn’t understand my words. “Amy?”

“Yeah, is she okay?”

“Amy’s fine. She’s not here.”

My knees go weak at his words. Thank the stars! Colonel Martin shoves past me, not bothering to waste the time it would take to send me back to the colony, and I get a hold of myself enough to follow him toward the site of the explosion. We move forward, the acrid smell of smoke burning our noses and blurring our eyes.

We continue as a tight group, me in the center. Everyone except me has a gun out, and they use the guns like eyes, always pointed forward.

When we reach the blast zone, the smoke billows around us, making it almost impossible to see. My eyes water as we creep forward, and I’ve never been more grateful for wind than when a breeze dilutes the smoke, making the world visible again. The trees are nothing but charred, blackened sticks in the ground. The ground itself is lumpy, like freshly plowed soil, but scorched and marred.

We stop when we see the shuttle.

The elegant, smooth lines of the shuttle have been ripped into three sections. The bridge is the farthest away but least damaged, as if a child snapped it off and tossed it into the trees. The rest of the shuttle is split in half longwise, the roof blown apart like a blossoming flower made of burnt, smoking metal.