Page 85 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

And then—

—he bends his head down toward Amy—

—shuts his eyes, leaning in close—

My fingers curl into fists as I see red. I’m going to rip that frexing guy’s head off—

Amy steps back, gracefully dodging Chris’s attempt. “Friends, remember?” she says gently.

My hands go slack. I’ve been such a chutz.

Half of Chris’s lips twitch up in a grin. “Yeah,” he says, “friends. ” He watches as she disappears into the building. But I can tell by the way he stares after her that he would do anything to make Amy redefine the word friends.

45: AMY

I wake up well before dawn the next morning. The floor is hard and cold, but that’s not why I couldn’t sleep. I don’t need my sleeping bag. I need Elder. My memories of last night bring an immediate, silly smile to my face.

I pull back the curtain of my tent wall when I hear low voices.

“Morning, sunshine,” Mom says softly when she and Dad notice me. “Want coffee?”

I nod, yawning as I make my way over to the table. Mom dips a metal collapsible mug into a bucket of cold water, then mixes in a pouch of instant powder.

“Almost like home,” Dad says, clinking his own collapsible mug against mine and taking a swig of the “coffee. ” He makes a face I can’t help but giggle at.

Breakfast is dehydrated rations in FRX-marked packs. Powdered eggs mixed with water and biscuits that are more like crackers. I wonder how many dehydrated packs we have. The Earthborns have used them sparingly—and out of sight of the shipborns, who’ve shared their rations of wall food.

Dad dunks his “biscuit” in his “coffee,” something he always did at breakfasts back on Earth.

“Well,” Mom says, wiping crumbs from her shirt, “I’m heading to the lab. ”

At the mention of this, I think about what I discovered last night, with Chris. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but at the last moment, I bite them back. I’m not ready to tell them this. Not yet. I want to tell Elder first.

Dad peers outside, then calls back to Mom, “Chr

is isn’t here. I’ll escort you to the lab. Amy, are you going?”

I’m not—but I follow them outside to say goodbye just as the suns start to rise. Around us, we can hear signs of others waking, soft chatter and shuffling as people greet the new day. It’s amazing to me how quickly we’ve fallen into this role of colonists. How quickly we’ve made this our home.

I smile.

And then the forest explodes.

Dad acts first—he throws Mom and me to the ground, covering our heads with his massive, strong hands. The air burns white hot over the forest, and the ground beneath our feet—solid stone, sturdy—rumbles and shakes. I can hear screams and shouts of panic, sounds echoed by my own heart as I whip my head around, wondering where Elder is. A high-pitched ringing pierces my eardrums, and I don’t know if it’s coming from the explosion or if this is a sign that my eardrums have ruptured.

A cloud billows over the forest, blotting out the suns and casting a dark shadow over the whole colony. Chunks of stone and whole trees fall from the sky like hail. The big pieces rain down in the forest, but even here, in the colony, dirt and charred remains of trees clatter down on the stone path.

“What the hell just happened?” Dad roars. The military starts to assemble around him just as another, smaller explosion erupts like an aftershock, shaking the remaining treetops.

I cannot rip my eyes away from it. The big, black, scarred earth.

Right where the shuttle used to be.

46: ELDER

The military tries to stop me, but—short of shooting me or tying me up and leaving me behind—they can’t. As soon as the explosion goes off and I realize what’s happened, I race out of the colony and toward the shuttle. Amy’s been at the lab with her mother every morning. Every frexing morning. If she was there this morning—my heart bangs against my ribcage, and my eyes burn. She can’t have been.

I catch up with Colonel Martin and his task force before they reach the forest.