I dress quickly, but before I rush out of my room, I look behind me.

I’ve lived in this room over three years, ever since Eldest took me from the Feeder Level and began training me to be his successor. I have hated this room, when Eldest would lock me inside after I did something stupid, or later, after his death, when it reminded me of how alone I was. But I have loved this room, too. I smile, remembering the way Amy bounced on my bed when she woke me up here. I can’t wait to hand her the one thing she’s always wanted, the one thing I thought I’d deprived her of forever.

But—as eager as I am to move forward, I can’t help but think of all I’m leaving behind.

I remember:

The first night I was here, lying awake, scared. And Eldest came in, sat on the edge of the bed, right there, and he told me he remembered feeling the same way the first night he started his training.

I remember:

Eldest and I got in a fight once—this was early on, when I was angry at Eldest but not yet afraid of him—and he yelled at me and I yelled back, and he raised his hand and struck me across the face. I’d run from the Learning Center to my room—it felt like I’d put miles between us—and hid between the bed and the nightstand for over an hour, until the smell of roast chicken and mushroom leaked into the room and up my nose. When I eventually crawled out, Eldest let me eat supper on the floor of the Great Room, using a projector to show me an old movie from Sol-Earth.

I remember:

When I was four or five or six, the family I was living with then, they were canners, decided to throw me a party. It was a going-away party—I was moving to another family the next day, but I was young enough to not really understand what that meant.

The mother of the family, Evie, she must not have been on Phydus, because she was funny and charming and she always knew what to say and do to make everything wonderful. Very different from the way I know her now, barely surviving with a green patch on her arm.

The day before I left her family, there was a feast in celebration—lamb and mint jelly, roast corn, biscuits and honey, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, berries sprinkled with sugar. And in the end, a cake.

It was a giant cake, so dense that Evie had to use both hands to cut it. The whole thing was iced in thick, crusty white icing, and Evie had written across the top We love you, Elder! She cried when she handed me the piece with my name on it.