Shelby scans her thumb and the locks click into place. She flicks another switch, and lights cascade on like dominoes. But rather than illuminating Shelby’s face, the lights cast shadows over her. She looks doubtful—even scared. Scared to be locked in a room with me.

And with what’s left of Marae.

“Today I went outside.” I speak to Shelby, but my eyes are locked on Marae’s open, empty ones.

“I don’t understand, sir,” Shelby says.

“Outside. In the stars. Through the hatch.”

Shelby gasps.

“Amy and I found some space suits, and I went. And I saw . . . well, let me show you what I saw.”

I start to move toward the far wall but stop, turn, and bend over Marae’s still body. Carefully, as respectfully as I can, I tilt her cold, stiff face up so that her empty eyes can see the ceiling. This is my last gift to her.

I go behind Shelby and roll my thumb over the biometric scanner on this wall, the one just like the scanner by Eldest’s door on the Keeper Level. This—like the roof over the navigational chart in the Keeper Level—must have been retrofitted into the ship’s design. Not part of the original, no—this must have been the Plague Eldest’s way of covering up the truth.

“Command?” the computer’s voice asks in a pleasant tone once it accepts my authority.

“Open,” I say, unable to keep from smiling.

And the metal roof splits apart.

Shelby screams and drops to her knees, covering her head. She thinks the ship itself is splitting open, just as I did when the roof on the Keeper Level opened up to reveal the light bulb stars. She thinks the Bridge will tear apart in explosive decompression and we’ll be sucked out into space, our deaths quick but painful as our bodies succumb to anoxia, our skin turning blue and our organs bursting.

I walk over to Shelby—my calm pace makes her quake more—and crouch down beside her. “Get up,” I say over the whirr of grinding gears as the roof folds out of the way. “You don’t want to miss this.”

I offer her my hand. I can feel her trembling in my palm, but she stands anyway. She searches my eyes at first—looking for something, I don’t know what—but I tilt my head up, and I see her do the same out of the corner of my eye.

Because the universe is there, above us, glittering through the honeycomb windows that cover the Bridge. The universe—the stars, the blackness between them—and the planet.

Chapter 44

44

AMY

AT LUNCHTIME, I PRESS THE BUTTON IN MY WALL, BUT NO food comes out. I punch it again. It does no good.