Page 58 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

“I was hoping you’d say that. ” I grin up at her. Amy steps away from the window, grabbing her gun and holster from the ground and belting it around her waist before pulling another shirt over her tank top. She uses both arms to push up on the window ledge, then swings her legs over and drops silently on the ground beside me.

“What’s the plan?” she whispers as I lead her away from the ruins.

“Follow the water pipe to the lake, then head back to the forest. I think the probe is somewhere around there—or, at least, something’s there that Colonel Martin doesn’t want us to find. ”

Amy frowns as we sneak away from the colony. “You know, there could be a perfectly valid reason Dad’s made the probe off-limits. He’s not Eldest. This isn’t Godspeed. ”

I don’t answer her as we duck around the new latrines, following the pipeline in the shadows of the mountain.

Once we’re far enough away from the colony, Amy speaks again, her words cutting through the darkness. “I saw a man die today. ”

I pause.

“I wish you had been there. ” It sounds morbid to hear her say those two sentences so close together, but I know what she means. For the past three months, the walls of Godspeed forced us close together. Now I’m wondering if they were the only things that kept Amy near me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean about more than just today.

“Maybe the only reason Dad is keeping everyone away from the probe is because it’s dangerous,” Amy says, her voice still distant. Her fingers touch the hilt of her gun for reassurance, and I can’t help but notice that it’s the weapon that comforts her, not me.

We don’t speak again until we reach the lake, and even then it’s in hushed tones.

“Look how exposed we are here,” Amy says. “Do you really wonder why Dad’s keeping people away?” She slips the gun out of her holster and carries it at the ready. She’s right—there are no trees here, and any ptero circling overhead could easily strike us.

“That’s not why he won’t let anyone come here. ”

Amy’s eyes dart to the sky. “Elder . . . those pteros . . . they’re horrible. ”

There is panic in her eyes, something dark and scared I’ve never seen there before. But while her knuckles are white, the gun is steady in her grip.

“Let’s get this over with,” Amy says, narrowing her eyes as she starts up the hill.

I squint in the darkness. I can barely make out the black, rectangular outline against the sky, almost hidden by a small hill. If we hadn’t been standing right at the water pump, I’d never have seen it.

I glance at Amy. Her face is paler than usual now, contrasting with the dark night.

We move slowly, careful to keep checking behind us to make sure we don’t wander so far away that we get lost, especially as we near the forest edge and the trees obscure our path. The forest itself curves out and then back in. I try to make a mental map of where we are—the shuttle to my left, the lake to my right, the ruins we now live in behind me. And something straight ahead.

“Look at the way the land is so flat there,” Amy says, pointing. Her voice is still quiet, even though we haven’t seen anyone this far out.

Long stalks of some sort of grain or grass ripple in the breeze like cloth. But where Amy is pointing, there is no grain. No trees. No nothing. Something black and starless and manmade amid the sea of nature, dotted with low-roofed buildings standing up in straight edges that are in stark contrast to the swishing grass and twisting trees.

“Come on,” Amy says, tugging my hand.

We race across the open meadow, and I keep thinking about how Amy said we were exposed. My muscles are tense, waiting for the outline of a ptero against the too-bright stars.

We stop short of the area where the tall grass ends.

“What is this place?” I say, my voice so quiet that even I barely hear it.

Amy steps forward, her footsteps louder as she walks across asphalt, not sandy soil. I follow after her, staring with wide eyes at a cluster of small buildings dotting the horizon on the other side. “It’s some sort of compound,” she whispers, “built around the probe. ”

I trip over a thin ridge in the pavement, and Amy and I both crouch to inspect the gleaming band of metal—a large rectangle embedded into the asphalt. There’s something under the asphalt, some panel or room that can open up if we could only figure out how to trigger it.

“Look at the lines painted on the ground,” Amy whispers in my ear.

Bright white lines, marking distances, with more markers embedded into the asphalt.

“It’s a runway,” Amy gasps. “And underneath it are airplanes. Jets. Something. ”