I sit up straighter, staring at the handwritten annotations. They’re all about something hidden and forgotten. And tube? The only tube I know is the grav tube, and nothing could be further from a Shakespearean sonnet than a futuristic device that sucks people up to different levels of a spaceship.

I trace my finger over the weird lines near the bottom of the poem. They almost look like stairs.

My eyes widen. Stairs. Like the staircase Orion has been sitting on in every video he left for me!

The grav tube was invented on the ship after the launch, which means that there had to be some way for the first generations on Godspeed to go between the levels. Like a staircase . . . a hidden staircase that everyone has since forgotten because of the grav tube! I scan the lines of the poem Orion underlined—hid and vanish’d sight must mean that these stairs are very well hidden. In the videos, the stairs are always dark. Orion felt safe there, even from Eldest, who didn’t know about them.

But . . . where are they?

Chapter 43

43

ELDER

MY MIND WHIRLS AS THE WIND IN THE GRAV TUBE BEATS against my skull as I fly up to the Shipper Level. Amy has never kissed me like that before, has never looked at me that way.

I want to replay what just happened over and over in my mind, but when I reach the Bridge and see Second Shipper Shelby’s solemn face, I force myself to forget about everything else but Marae.

“We found her in here,” she says, moving to open the door. Although the Engine Room is crowded and the Shippers appear to be working, all eyes are on Shelby and me as we enter the Bridge, our footsteps echoing across the metal floor. The only light comes from a lamp near Marae’s still hand.

I look away—I don’t want to face the fact of her dead body yet. My eyes drift to the metal ceiling, high and rounded. On the other side of the steel plates is a planet. Marae had no idea how close she was. And it was always just right there.

She lies sprawled across the table, her body dripping off the chair. Her eyes are open and empty, staring at nothing. Floppies with diagrams and charts flash under her face; a printed schematic of the engine lies crushed under one arm.

At the base of her neck, just under her shortly cropped hair, are three pale green med patches. One word in black ink on each patch.

Follow.

The.

Leader.