At least, with the wi-com, I can reach Elder. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen him less and less—and I get it, really I do, I know he’s busy. But . . . I can’t help but smile. It will be nice to be able to talk to him.

I push the button on the wi-com and say Elder’s name. I raise it to my ear, waiting to hear his voice. Beep! “Com link denied,” a pleasant female computer voice says.

Well, it would be nice to talk to Elder. If he’d actually answer my com.

I look closer at the wi-com—small black letters are printed along one of the wires. I wouldn’t really notice them if I wasn’t inspecting the wi-com so closely. I dig my finger into the braided wires, separating the red wire from the others so I can see the letters more clearly.

It’s one phrase, three words repeated over and over and over in tiny print: Abandon all hope.

My first thought is, how did Doc miss this? He said he cleaned the wi-com. But, I suppose, this is just another mark of how disturbed—by which I mean downright psycho—Orion was. I wouldn’t be surprised if Doc saw the message and gave the wi-com to me regardless—words printed on a wire don’t actually change whether or not the stupid thing works. Doc cares more about practicality than whatever leftover bits of Orion’s insanity are braided up into the thing.

Beyond that, the phrase is apt. If there’s one thing I don’t have any more of, it’s hope. It’s almost like Orion left that message just for me.

And then I realize: he did.

Doc said the wi-com came with a note. It is, in a way, my inheritance.

My mind spins. Orion doesn’t have to tell me there’s no more hope for me aboard Godspeed; I figured that out on my own. But . . . maybe he meant something more . . . Because—I know where this phrase comes from. It is, according to my tenth-grade English teacher Ms. Parker, one of the most recognizable lines in literature, right up there with Rhett not giving a damn about Scarlett and Hamlet waffling on about whether to be or not to be. Abandon all hope is the phrase written above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno.

And, since books were pretty much off-limits until Elder took over as ruler of Godspeed, that’s not something Doc would have known. Of everyone on the ship, I’m probably the only one who knows about books from Earth.

Other than Orion, that is, who spent most of his life hidden in the Recorder Hall with only words and fictional characters for company.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am. These aren’t just some casual words Orion doodled somewhere. “Abandon all hope” is a specific phrase from a specific book written on a wi-com that Orion left specifically for me.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. It’s probably nothing. But I’ve had “nothing” for far too long, and I’m ready for something. Anything. I’d rather go to the Recorder Hall and look up the phrase in Dante’s Inferno than just sit here and stare at the walls some more. I zip my jacket all the way up, leave my room, and head to the elevator. I’m excited, and my legs want to run . . . but instead, when I get outside, I remember how running only makes me more noticeable and walk with my head down and the hood of my jacket pulled up. As I mount the stairs to the Recorder Hall, I glance up out of habit. In a cubby by the door hangs a painting of Elder, one of Harley’s last works. This is the closest I’ve come to seeing Elder in days; the more time that passes, the more wrapped up he is in running Godspeed. In a lot of ways, he’s more trapped than I am.