Page 38 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

I run from the building, Colonel Martin’s accusation digging into my heart like a salted blade.

19: AMY

My mouth feels as if it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. I smack my dry lips, my tongue heavy in my mouth.

Something twitches in my hand. The movement startles me, and I try to jerk my arm away, but my muscles are sluggish. I struggle to sit up, but it feels as if there’s a weight on my chest even though no blankets sit on top of me.

My mother’s asleep, her hand wrapped loosely around mine. That was what I felt before. I curl my fingers over hers.

Her eyelids flutter and then pop open, as if she’s suddenly remembered something vitally important. She turns to me and sucks in all her breath. “Amy?” she gasps.

“Mom?” My voice is croaky.

“Amy!” she screams, and throws herself on me. In another moment, my father appears. His eyes are wet, and he seems unable to talk. I’ve never seen him this emotional.

My eyes skim the room. Where’s Elder?

“What’s going on?” I ask. My back aches. All around me, the air is cool and dim—have I slept until dusk? But no—the sky is growing lighter and lighter. It’s dawn. I’ve slept the entire day and into the next.

“What do you last remember?” one of the doctors from Earth—I think her name is Dr. Watase—asks.

I look down at the hand my mother still holds, and it’s not until I do so that I realize my body is answering for me: the last thing I remember is holding the flower Elder gave me.

No. I shudder involuntarily, swallowing down the bile rising in my throat. The last thing I remember is losing control of my body, just as I felt when I was frozen. And then the sensation of drowning, just as I felt when I first woke up.

The memories pour into me, poison my soul.

I look around me. Everyone’s waiting for me to talk. “The flower,” I say, because I know they don’t care about how I feel; they need only a cold medical analysis. “It made me pass out. ”

My eyes are still looking around the room. I’m filled with disappointment.

I can’t believe Elder would just leave me here.

“We thought so,” Dr. Watase says. She points to a line on the floor where dozens of purple string flowers are laid out. “We haven’t been able to do any tests, but from observation, it seems as if the flowers are carnivorous. When they’re wet, they blossom and emit a neurotoxin that causes insects to drop into their center. ”

“And geniuses like me to drop to the ground,” I say with as much of a smile as I can muster, attempting to alleviate the tension in the room. But it doesn’t work. Everyone just looks at me, gravely nodding in agreement.

“Precisely,” Dr. Watase adds. She pats my hand in a grandmotherly way. I would roll my eyes at her, but that seems to take too much effort.

“I’m starving,” I say.

“We all are,” Dad says. “If the shuttle doesn’t unlock itself, we’ll have to figure out how to get food from the planet. ”

I close my eyes—on Godspeed we at least had food. If we all starve to death, it’ll be partly my fault. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost twenty-four hours,” Dr. Watase says.

We’ve spent practically a full day and night in the ruins, and I slept through nearly all of it. I look around me, trying to gauge what’s happened since I was knocked out. Everyone in the building I’m in is Earthborn. There’s a rumpled sort of look to them all, even Dad. They’ve slept in their clothes; no one has eaten. I doubt anyone’s left the buildings at all.

I stand up, my back cracking. The floor wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to sleep, despite the fact that my parents appear to have padded the ground with spare coats to give me a kind of makeshift bed. At first Dr. Watase and Mom try to help me walk, but I just want to stretch my muscles, and the remaining effects of the flower are rapidly evaporating.

I wander along the walls, my fingers trailing across the dusty yellow stones of the building. The room is the same size as one would be on Earth, the doors and windows perfectly proportioned for humans. Steps lead up to a second story. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” I say.

Mom doesn’t need to ask what I’m talking about. “It is. ” Her voice drops an octave. “Your father’s worried. ”

We both stop by the window and look to him. He’s talking with Emma in the doorway in hushed tones. They both look angry and tired. As if he can feel our gaze on him, Dad turns around and offers us a weak smile, a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

I realize now that Dad has a trapped look about him. The same look Elder had, after Eldest died. Haunted.