A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel

by Beth Revis

First, I have a question for you. Why do we have these kinds of weapons?

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering,” I mutter.

  “Mm?” Amy asks, her eyes bouncing from word to word.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  There has to be a reason for it. You have to be asking yourself the same thing I asked Eldest: If we are on a peaceful, exploratory mission like Eldest said—why are we armed for war?

  Eldest never really answered me. It’s for when we land. That’s all he’d tell me. That the frozens have a reason for needing this kind of weaponry. But you don’t have guns like these unless you plan on killing something. It’s either us or them—whoever, whatever is on Centauri-Earth.

  Either way, we—all of us born on the ship—are going to be caught in the middle when we land.

  The last words fade to nothing but black, and then static fills the screen, quickly replaced with an image of Orion on the bottom of the big staircase. This video is different from all the other videos—not just because it was prefaced with scrolling text, but because Orion is much younger here, maybe twenty or so. The camera films at a crooked angle, and Orion reaches out and readjusts it. He keeps looking around, as if nervous to be discovered.

  ORION: I just learned the secret. The big one.

  “He’s younger here,” Amy says.

  “He looks like me,” I say.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  He does.

  Orion leans forward on the steps, closer to the camera.

  ORION: This is bigger than the cloning, bigger than Phydus. It’s the reason for Phydus.

  “He sounds like me too.”

  Orion swallows hard. A few moments pass before he speaks again. Amy casts a worried look in my direction, but I ignore her, focusing on the way Orion chews on his bottom lip.

  ORION: Eldest doesn’t want anyone to know this secret. I don’t think he even wanted me to notice, but . . .

  Orion speaks in a hurried voice now, low and urgent. We both lean forward too, neither of us breathing as we strain to hear.

  ORION: . . . the outside of the ship needed maintenance. He told me to send First Shipper Devyn, but instead, I did it. I—I saw what he wanted me not to see. He’s angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. I’ve thought before that he might . . . But this time, I really think . . . I might have to . . .

  The camera pans to the left, behind the staircase. A bundle of supplies lies open on a makeshift cot, along with a few sealed boxes.

  ORION: I’ve been preparing for a while. Ever since I first saw the icy hell in the cryo level. Ever since I learned about the cloning. I know I can be replaced. It won’t take much for Eldest to follow through with his threats.

  The camera pans back to Orion, who looks defiant. He looks, I think, like me.

  ORION: I may know Eldest’s secrets, but he doesn’t know mine. He hasn’t figured out where I’m hiding or how. He’s been watching me on the wi-com system, but I’ve figured out how to trick the signal, make it look like I’m at the Hospital when I’m not.

  Orion raises a hand to his left ear and gently touches—but doesn’t depress—the button there.

  ORION: He doesn’t know about this place. But it’s not enough. I might have to . . .

  Orion’s fingers seize over the wi-com, his nails scratching the skin and leaving pink welts in their wake. I glance at Amy as she touches the bracelet wi-com on her wrist with one finger, a worried frown on her lips.

  ORION: But the secret . . . it should stay a secret. No one should know this. Not even me. It’s . . . too much.

  Orion stands and begins pacing. His feet come off camera and on camera; his voice fades in and out.

  ORION: I don’t know what’s frexing right anymore. Do I tell the truth? Or is the lie better? . . . And what about . . . ?

  Muffled sounds echo as Orion moves away from the camera.

  ORION: I can’t cover it up. Someone may need to know—there might be a time when we have to . . . But the floppy network’s not safe . . .

  I strain my ears to make out the indistinguishable sounds in the background—Orion’s muttering something, words I can’t make out over the sound of his footsteps marching back and forth in front of the camera. He picks up the camera, and a jumble of images wash over the screen. After a moment, he turns the camera back to his face, now cast in shadows.

  ORION: I’m leaving this for whoever finds it. If something happens to me . . . if Eldest . . . you know. Well. If something happens to me, I figured someone ought to know.

  Orion takes a deep breath, then opens his mouth to speak.

  The video cuts off abruptly.

  “That’s it?” Amy asks.

  “No, look—there’s more.”

  Scrolling words fill the screen again.

  That was a long time ago, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Amy, you’ve seen the truth for yourself. You’ve seen the weapons. You know—you must know—that if we need weapons like this, then whatever’s on Centauri-Earth isn’t worth it. Lock up the armory, forget the passcode, and walk away.

  32

  AMY

  “WELL, FREX,” ELDER SAYS, LEANING AWAY AND LOOKING AT the blank floppy in disgust.

  I look up at him inquiringly.

  “All that floppy did was prove that he was paranoid—and that this whole clue-chasing thing has been pointless.”

  “Pointless?” I pick the floppy up and stand as well.

  Elder nods. “Pointless. I was hoping to learn how to restart the engine, but all we get from this vid is some big secret that Orion decided not to share with us. He sent us on a chase all over the ship to find clues that lead to a door that he just tells us to lock again. You don’t get much more pointless than that.”

  I nod, folding the floppy and slipping it into my pocket. “There is definitely something sketch about this,” I say as soon as the last words fade to black.

  “Sketch?”

  “You know, weird.”

  A wry grin slides across Elder’s face. “Every time I think I know you, you say something so . . . strange.”

  “Ha!” I punch him on the arm. “I thought we’ve been over this before: you’re the one who speaks sketch.”

  Elder pushes the heavy submarine-like door closed, and I make sure the door does lock behind us—but I’m not going to forget the code.

  “I think Orion was scared,” I say, following Elder down the hall.

  “He was loons.” Elder’s voice is bitter. “That was filmed around the time Eldest tried to kill him, and it’s clear he’d already lost it. Orion was paranoid—”

  “He had a right to be paranoid.” I can’t help it; I touch the smooth skin behind my left ear, remembering the way Orion had scratched his skin in the video. What did it take for him to dig deeper into his skin, to rip the wires from his own flesh? I glance at the wi-com encircling my wrist and swallow back bile at the thought of how it was those wires, dripping in gore and blood, and . . . ew.

  “It’s weird, though.” I pause, thinking. “All the rest of the videos have been on that mem card thing. This one was already loaded on a floppy, sitting in the armory. None of the other ones had text. And none of the other ones were that old. That video was made just before Orion faked his own death. Maybe someone, I don’t know, messed with it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Elder frowns at the video. “Look, I get that Orion made these vids for you, and you feel like you have to solve his frexing riddle. But we’re going to have to figure out how to live on this ship without whatever stupid message he left for us.” He runs his fingers through his hair. He usually does this when he’s thinking, but there’s anger in the way he does it now, as if he’s only doing it to stop himself from punching something. “We have serious problems to deal with—and this was just a frexing waste of time. The engine isn’t going to fix itself. Orion’s just distracting us from the real problems.”

  I bite my lip. Orion didn’t leave a message for us; he left it for me. And it
was something about getting off the ship, I know it. The key to fixing the engine, the reason for the delay—something. Something important.

  Besides. How much longer can we go on like this?

  “Hold on,” Elder growls, and then turns away from me, jabbing his wi-com button on the side of his neck with such force that it looks like it hurts. He speaks in a low voice for a moment, then shouts, “What?!”

  “What is it?” I ask softly, putting my hand on his arm.

  Elder jerks away from me. “What?” he says again into the wi-com. “I’ll be right there.” He presses the button behind his ear again and glances at me before taking off down the hallway toward the elevators. “I’ve got to go,” he says.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” I have to jog to catch up. “Elder, what’s wrong?”

  “Bartie’s causing more trouble.” Elder slams his fist into the elevator call button. “I can’t waste my time with this anymore,” he says.

  “It’s not a waste,” I say softly.

  The elevator doors open, and Elder holds his arm out to prevent them from closing without him. He searches my eyes. “I’m not angry at you,” he says, his voice sincere. “But these ‘clues’ aren’t going to fix the ship.”

  Elder steps into the elevator, leaving me alone on the cold, empty cryo level. Part of me wishes he could stay, but I know he’s needed on the other levels. As I walk slowly back to the locked doors, I wonder how things would be different if Elder didn’t have to be in charge of Godspeed. I would never ask him to give up the leadership he’s longed for all his life . . . but maybe if he didn’t have to care about the ship first, I could believe him when he said he cared about me.

  I pull the floppy we found out of my pocket. Maybe Elder is right. Maybe this is nothing but a wild-goose chase.

  But . . . it’s all I have right now. It’s all I’ve had for three months. It’s the first spark of hope I’ve had since waking up, and I have to cling to it. I have to. I have to believe something, something will come of this.

  I play the video file again, skimming over the words and straining my ears to pick up some nuance in Orion’s tone, something that will give me a clue.

  Orion’s voice—so much like Elder’s—fills the hall. “Eldest doesn’t want anyone to know this secret. I don’t think he even wanted me to notice, but . . . the outside of the ship needed maintenance. . . . I—I saw what he wanted me not to see.”

  “Whatever you found,” I tell Orion’s face, “you saw it outside the ship.”

  We can’t go outside the ship. There’s the vacuum of space, waiting to suffocate us or turn our lungs to mush or pop our eyeballs or whatever. We’d die. Unless . . . unless behind one of the two remaining locked doors are space suits.

  I stare up at the hatch that shows the stars. Well, of course there’d be something to enable people to safely go out the hatch. Surely the makers of the ship realized that in centuries of travel, the ship would need maintenance. That’s what Orion called me in the first video, his contingency plan—this must be theirs. Four locked doors on this hall. One leads to the armory, one leads to an evacuation hatch . . . one must store space suits.

  The possibility of what I’m thinking hits me so hard that I don’t breathe for a minute. Then I remember the other thing Orion said.

  But the secret . . . it should stay a secret.

  No. I want—I need—to follow this through to the end. I need to know what Orion knows. Because if it’s something that will get the ship going again, that will get us to the planet—it’s worth it. And if it’s proof that the ship will never move again—that’s worth it too. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me. Not knowing if there’s a chance that something can change, not knowing if there’s hope at all.

  I play the video again.

  The thing is—there’s something different about this clue. It feels off. It was on a floppy, not a mem card. The scrolling text, the fact that Orion was so much younger—it’s as if someone found this video and cobbled it together from an old film. Which means . . . Orion didn’t make this.

  Someone else has the real video—the real clue.

  33

  ELDER

  “FREX,” I MUMBLE AS MARAE RUNS DOWN THE LIST OF EVERY thing that’s happened so far today. I’ve only been with Amy for two hours, tops, but I should have known better than to ignore my coms.

  First there was the meeting Bartie held at the Recorder Hall as soon as the solar lamp clicked on. Second Shipper Shelby had been there already and commed Marae, who tried to com me. By the time Marae had gotten to the Recorder Hall with the rest of the first-level Shippers, Bartie had already presented his ideas for what the ship’s leadership should be like in the future, with an added note that I was too inept to rule. Thirty people had pressed their thumbprints on his petition, giving it their mark of approval.

  Then Marae tried to “arrest” Bartie, but I don’t think she really even understood what the word meant, even though we’ve all been reading up on police forces and civil conflicts. I think she thought if she just shouted “I arrest you!” really loudly that would mean he’d quit, but instead he uploaded the petition to the floppy network and everyone on the ship had it by lunch.

  Not that I had lunch. By midday, I was back in the City, standing up on the table at the Food Distro, explaining that, for some reason, wall food production was delayed. The whole time, the Food Distro manager, Fridrick, was staring at me, smirking, and I kept remembering how Bartie said that you could start a revolution if you took away people’s food. I did an all-call explaining that extra portions would be delivered for supper, but no one was really satisfied with that answer.

  It wasn’t until now, with the workday nearly done, that Doc bothered to summon me to the Hospital and explain that someone had broken into his office and stolen his supplies of Phydus med patches.

  “Why the frex didn’t you tell me this sooner?” I shout.

  Doc cringes. “You looked busy.”

  I roar—an inarticulate sound with no words. The stolen patches explain a lot—as I was running from one end of the ship to another, I’d noticed surreptitious looks and veiled comments, but I’d thought it was people passing around Bartie’s manifesto. Now I see they were also passing around the Phydus patches. The people who’ve been depressed—and many who weren’t—are trading anything they have for them.

  “The worst thing,” Doc tells me as I stare at his disheveled office, “is that this must have happened yesterday. I haven’t been back to my office since early last morning. Whoever killed Stevy must have pocketed the patches after I left.”

  Doc’s lips curl in disgust. I don’t know which part he hates the most: that someone stole med patches, or that whoever it was turned his office into a mess.

  “I made the concentration of Phydus in the patches high on purpose,” Doc says, “so that one patch could quickly placate a person. But the problem is, with such a high concentration—”

  “It only takes three patches to kill a person.”

  “Yes. It’s very concentrated—two patches, and . . . It slows everything down. The organs. It’s too much for the body to handle. Three is death. I should have diluted the drug, but I thought . . .”

  “You thought you’d be the one administering it.”

  “Me or Kit. Someone who knew the dangers and could regulate it.” He sounds guilty, sad. But I’m as much to blame as he is. I approved the use of the patches.

  We both stare silently at his trashed office for a moment. Everything is normally so neat and organized. But now it’s a chaotic mess. The desk shoved to one wall. The locking cabinet smashed open, with med patches spilling out in all colors, but none of them pale green.

  Kit runs into the office. “There’re reports,” she says breathlessly.

  “Of what?” Doc snaps.

  “Dead. Someone dead. From the patches.”

  We immediately spring into action. Doc drives the electric cart across the Feeder Level, with me riding behind h
im. As the level flies past us, all I can think of is how much worse everything has been since I took over.

  “You’re going to have to do something,” Doc calls back to me over the roar of the electric cart. “Something to really make the Feeders see you as leader. Use this problem to show your strength!”

  Yeah. Right.

  When we get to the City, Doc stops the cart in front of the weaving district. “Why are we stopping here?” I ask, my heart sinking.

  Before Doc can answer, someone yanks me off the back of the cart and throws me onto the street. I stumble, almost losing my balance.

  “You frexing chutz!” Bartie bellows.

  I step back, surprised.

  “What are you—?” I start.

  Bartie shoves me, hard, with both hands on my chest. I stagger back, hitting the cart with the back of my legs. He hurls a handful of square, pale green med patches at my face.

  “Did you do this?” Bartie shouts. He towers over me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Those ‘special’ med patches are full of Phydus, you chutz.” Spit flies in my face as he growls the words at me.

  “I—I know,” I say, looking over his shoulder where the patches he threw at me lie scattered on the ground.

  “You know? You’re not even going to deny it? You know? How could you let Phydus back on the ship? You—you—swore that you wouldn’t use it again! You stupid frexing chutz!”

  “How did you get any?” I shout back. I don’t like the way he’s in my face, the way he won’t back up, give me room to breathe. I try to lean up, but he doesn’t back down.

  “How could you?” Bartie sneers. “You prance around here, talking about how great you are for letting the people all get off Phydus, and then you just slather some frexing med patches on them and call it done! Anyone get in your way—anyone cause too much trouble—just slap a frexing patch on them!”