Page 29 of A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

Static fills the screen.

“That’s why he destroyed the cams in the cryo level,” Elder says.

That’s one reason, anyway.

Elder drops the vid screen on my desk and stands. Hair flops into his face, but I can still see his eyes shift to me. Waiting for me to react.

But I don’t know how to respond. I don’t know how I feel about this. About the way Elder looked at me, about the way Orion didn’t. My brain can’t process this.

“Amy?”

Elder’s head whips up, panic in his eyes. He wasn’t the one who spoke.

We both rush to the vid screen on the desk. The static has faded. Orion’s face fills the screen, so close up that the camera must have been just inches from him.

Before the screen fades to black, Orion’s voice rings out clearly. “Amy? Are you ready for this? Are you ready to find the truth?”

17

ELDER

THE SCREEN GOES BLANK. ORION’S LAST QUESTION HANGS IN the air, but the image Amy saw of me pulling her out of the cryo chamber fills her eyes.

“Amy?” I whisper, hesitant.

She swipes her hand across her face. Her eyes are red.

“Amy?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, her voice cracking in the middle. “What’s done is done. ”

And that’s what kills me inside. Because what’s done was done by me. And as much as I wish Amy could see me the way I see her and want me the way I want her, she will never be able to forget the image of me pulling her out of her cryo chamber and walking away. No wonder she doesn’t want to be in the Keeper Level with me.

I could punch whoever made Amy see this. My fists clench involuntarily. It’s not like I’m so brilly on my own, but I certainly don’t frexing need someone showing Amy what a chutz I was! “Who gave you this?” I demand.

Her clear green eyes meet mine, her voice steady now. “Orion did. ”

“What?”

“Orion did. Kind of. I mean, he left the wi-com for me. It has lettering on it, see?” She holds the wi-com out for me. “It’s from a book. The book led me to the painting, the painting led me to . . . this. ”

“Why did he leave messages for you? What’s he playing at?”

Amy hesitates, then hands me the mem card that was originally attached to the vid screen. When she presses her thumb against the ID box, the video plays. Orion’s voice calls Amy his contingency plan, seeks her aid for a mission should he have failed, and—I can’t help but notice—if it looks like I am failing too.

“Where did you get this?”

“I told you,” Amy says. “Orion left me these clues. ”

“And you think—if you play his little game and solve these clues, then . . . what?”

“I don’t know,” Amy says. “But the way he keeps saying someone from Sol-Earth has to make the decision, it makes me think . . . ”

I remember First Shipper Marae telling me about how Orion influenced the decision to hold back information about the ship’s dead engine, how Eldest tried to have Orion killed soon after. If he made these videos as a way to get the word out on whatever it was that he discovered that led to Eldest trying to kill him, then there really might be a way to get Godspeed flying again.

This is huge. This—maybe at the end of this loons’ hunt for clues and codes is the solution for the ship’s engine! In which case . . .

“We should wake him up,” I say.