Page 64 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

The ship is dying, and he knows it. He’s trying to decide how long to wait before he distributes the black med patches. The ones that kill.

31: AMY

Elder doesn’t talk as he storms from the compound, heading back to the colony. I have to race to keep up with him. “Elder, wait!” I call under my breath. He slows down but doesn’t stop.

His back is rigid, his shoulders stiff. When I reach out for him, he jerks away. I grab his elbow and don’t let go, yanking him around to face me.

“We can save them too,” I say.

Elder barks in laughter, a short, bitter sound. We both freeze, looking to the forest, waiting for a ptero’s cry. But soon the soft noises of the night that I’d taken for granted return—a low, chirruping sound from a nocturnal bird, the almost inaudible shuffling of small animals on the forest floor. We haven’t seen much wildlife, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

“We can save them,” I say again, my voice lower.

“We can’t even save ourselves. ” Elder’s jaw is hard.

“We’ve as good as solved Orion’s last clue,” I counter. “We have the communication bay at the compound. We won’t let them die up there. ”

“Yeah?” Elder asks through clenched teeth. “And how are we going to survive the frexing aliens that are down here?”

My heart stills in my chest.

“There’s something out there, Amy,” Elder says. He looks over my head, into the black forest. “Something that killed off the first colony. ”

“Pteros—”

“They didn’t program those biometric locks to keep pteros out,” Elder snaps. He’s right. Those locks were for something . . . something else. “Besides,” he adds, shooting me a glance and then looking away. “There are more than just pteros. ” I know he’s thinking of that strange crystalline scale he found in the tunnel, and it frightens me, too. There’s a lot about this planet we don’t understand. A lot that can kill us. “Remember that footprint?” he asks.

I nod. How could I forget the sharp ridges of the three talons, as if designed to maim?

Elder continues in a hush, as if afraid of being overheard. “I thought I saw something in the forest, right before I was attacked. Maybe whatever it was controlled the ptero. ”

An image briefly flashes in my mind: a bug-eyed green-skinned alien with clawed feet, one that watches us and waits until we’re most vulnerable to attack.

I don’t want to think about this. I can’t think about this. I’ve learned too much tonight. I turn away from Elder, and we continue back to the colony wordlessly, not stopping until we nearly reach my building on the edge of the colony. The world is silent now and dark. Elder steps closer to me, sweeping the hair I’d been hiding behind out of my face.

“Stop,” a low female voice commands. I start to turn and feel the hard metal cylinder of a gun in the back of my head. I drop Elder’s hand and lift my own.

“Amy?” the voice asks. The gun lowers. When I turn, I see Emma, dressed in fatigues, a semi-automatic in her right hand.

“Emma, you scared me to death!” I exclaim.

“Shh!” she says. “Or do you want the rest of the guard on duty tonight to come down here and see what you two idiots are doing?”

I glance at Elder. How much does Emma know?

“If you two can’t keep your hands off each other, then go to one of the buildings,” she growls. “Snogging in the middle of the night on the edge of the camp is likely to get you shot. I thought you were—” She stops short. “I thought you were an enemy. ”

I narrow my eyes. What enemy is she referring to exactly? Emma doesn’t know what we were up to, but I have more than a sneaking suspicion she knows more than she’s telling us. She was with Dad, that first day, when he went to the probe and found a high-tech modern compound.

She knows just how much he’s kept hidden.

When neither Elder nor I say anything, Emma frowns. “You lot weren’t just out here to snog, were you?”

“No!” I say too quickly. “Emma, we were—”

She cuts me off with a wave of her hand. “I don’t care what you were doing, and I don’t want to know. But you’re smart, both of you, and I’m betting I can guess what’s up. ” She glances behind her—in the direction of the compound. “Don’t go out at night,” she says, more sternly this time. “There’re things out there you don’t know about. ”

Elder nods solemnly, then turns to go. Emma grabs my arm, keeping me in place. “Amy, this is important,” she says, her voice low and urgent. “You don’t want to hear this, I know you don’t, but you can’t trust—”