Page 128 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

“Come on, Amy,” Chris says, a touch exasperated. “We’re friends. ”

“We are not friends,” I say. “We will never be friends. ”

“But—” Chris’s face looks devastated. His oval irises stand out in his watery eyes, but all this does is remind me that he’s not entirely human and neither am I, not anymore. “I did what I thought I had to do,” he says.

“Like killing both of my parents. ”

“I want you to know . . . ” he says, “I need you to know—I’m sorry. ”

Sorry means nothing coming from his lips.

Chris heads down the tunnel, and I follow—not to hear any more apologies, but so that I can understand just why he did what he did. We walk in uncomfortable silence.

I sniff the air. Something’s different.

“You noticed,” Chris says.

I smell . . . copper, and something . . . something animal. It’s nothing I recognize, but it’s still familiar, like the memory of a scent I’ve never noticed before. The little hairs on my arms rise and my skin prickles with gooseflesh.

It can’t be. Not here. We’re underground. This is the one place on all of Centauri-Earth that there cannot be . . .

“Pteros!” I scream as Chris leads me around the corner and I see them, all clustered at the end of the tunnel. I’m about to run when I notice the glass between the monsters and me.

“It’s okay, that’s solar glass,” Chris says. “There’s no way they can break through. ”

A ptero—one of the smaller ones in the group—hops on its massive hind legs, coming closer to the window. I creep forward too. The ptero extends its wings slowly—just to stretch them; there’s nowhere for it to fly. The hooked claws at the end of its wing joints scrape against the glass, and I cringe at the sound.

“The pteros—they were made by the first colony, before the gen mods and Phydus,” Chris says. “The scientists in the first colony were trying to see if extinct animals from Earth could be resurrected here on this planet. ”

Mom knew, I think. The closeness between the pteros and actual pterosaur DNA. “The pteros also had Phydus, though,” I say. Chris was with me when I ran that test.

“I wanted to tell you before, but . . . ” Chris doesn’t meet my eyes. “That was us. The rogue hybrids, I mean. That’s one of the reasons I brought you here—I wanted you to know that you were right: we figured out a way to control them. To use them to fight for us. ” He pulls out a tiny silver tube like a dog whistle. He blows a few notes on it, and the pteros all look up at him, swaying at the high-pitched sound until Chris pockets the whistle again.

The littlest ptero rubs its head against the glass, turns around three times, and sinks to the ground, curled up.

I shut my eyes, and I remember the other ptero, the one I shot in the head, the one whose mouth dripped with the blood and gore of the remains of Dr. Gupta.

“You used them against us,” I say flatly. “Is that what you brought me down here to show me?”

Chris throws up both his hands. “No! I mean—yes, but not that—I just . . . I wanted to explain. ”

“So explain,” I growl.

“I didn’t know it would be so bad. I . . . Zane and the others . . . they were just supposed to take that shipborn woman on Phydus. But the doctor was with her, so they took her too. And then the military woman showed up, and—”

“And they killed all of them. ” Maybe the pteros ripped Juliana Robertson apart after she died, or maybe the rogue hybrids made it look like Juliana’s death was because of them, but either way, she’s dead.

“The shipborn woman was an accident. We didn’t mean to make her overdose on Phydus. ”

“And Dr. Gupta?”

Chris frowns. “I didn’t know they would kill him. They—they thought he knew more about Phydus because he was with the shipborn woman who had the green patch. When he didn’t tell them . . . ”

“They thought they could control him. Make him talk, under Phydus’s influence. ” My words are bitter. I think about what Elder said once, how different everything would be if people just told the truth.

“Dr. Gupta,” I say. “Was eaten. Alive. ”

Chris’s mouth turns down. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” he says.