Page 33 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

it as easily as breathe it. Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe’s skin glistens with sweat. Amy called her “black,” but to me, she looks dark brown, like freshly plowed earth on the Feeder Level or the darkest dyes the weavers used.

“Something wrong?” she says, scowling at me.

I blink, almost miss my step. I didn’t realize I’d been staring at her. “I’ve never seen someone that looked like you. ”

“Got a problem with it?” She sounds bemused, but there’s a sharp edge to the question.

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Sorry I was staring. It’s just different, that’s all. ”

Her lips spread in a smile. “’S’alright,” she says. “I’ve been staring at you lot. Weird, the way you all look the same. ”

I pick up my pace again as she starts to outstrip me. “Wait, Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe,” I call.

She pauses, her lips twitching even farther up. “That’s a mouthful, innit? Just call me Emma, then. ”

“Emma?”

“It’s my first name. Lot better than ‘Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe,’” she says, trying to imitate my accent. It’s so much like what Amy did to me when we first met that I am filled with an immediate sense of relief. Orion was wrong: not all frozens are bad.

The trees start to thin, the branches spreading far enough apart to make speckles of sky visible—which only makes it more obvious how dark the sky is growing. I shiver. None of the Earthborns seem upset by the changing sky, but it’s . . . weird, unnatural, the way it changes so quickly.

“Look!” Colonel Martin calls from ahead. Emma picks up her pace, dodging branches as she reaches the front of the crowd.

Colonel Martin’s climbed on top of a boulder at the edge of the forest, and he points down, at a wide, clear circle of blue perhaps another half mile away. A lake.

“Fresh water, enough for all of us!” Emma says.

“We have to test the water first,” Colonel Martin says quickly, but he’s grinning. This is a triumph for them.

The sky roars, a sound so loud and deafening that my first instinct is to cover my head and look up, trying to find the source of the sound.

“Thunder,” Amy reminds me gently, touching my arm.

And then fire explodes across the sky, leaping from one dark cloud to another.

“The frex is that?!” I shout, leaping back.

Amy laughs this time. “Lightning,” she says.

Her laughter grates on me. I’d never seen lightning before, not when it was right in front of me like this. Fortunately, only a few of my people have emerged from the trees by this point, and so only a handful saw the lightning. But their worried cries grow fast.

“We have to find some sort of shelter,” I tell Colonel Martin urgently. “People are going to panic. ”

“From a storm?” he asks, doubt in his voice.

“They’ve never seen a storm, Dad,” Amy tells him.

“What’s that?” Chris asks, pointing to the right of the lake Colonel Martin found.

Colonel Martin frowns, but squints in that direction. We all follow his line of sight. A tall hill—or a small mountain—stands in front of a grassy meadow. Its sides are bare rock, yellowish exposed stone. And built into the stone are . . .

“Houses?” Emma asks, shock in her voice.

“Can’t be,” Colonel Martin says, staring harder. He snaps his fingers at one of his soldiers, and the man places a pair of binoculars in Colonel Martin’s hands. Colonel Martin stares through them, then curses.

“They’re ruins. Buildings built straight into the rock, but probably abandoned. ”

“We need to go there,” I say.