Bartie holds Victria by the shoulders, and Elder stoops to pick up her feet. “We can do this alone, Amy.” Elder’s voice is kind, and his eyes beg me to understand. Bartie and Elder need to say goodbye together. They need to remember Victria the way she was before Orion was frozen, and she drowned in her love for him. Before I was unfrozen.

The two men silently carry their friend’s body out the door, toward the hatch, leaving only a bloodstain behind.

Chapter 69

69

ELDER

BARTIE SLAMS THE HATCH DOOR SHUT, AND I PUNCH IN THE code. We both stand at the window and watch as we send our last childhood friend to the stars.

Through the bubble glass window, we see Victria’s body fly up. The pull of the vacuum makes her rise and float backward, her face obscured by her black hair, her arms and legs reaching to me even as they are pulled farther and farther away.

And then she’s gone.

Kit approaches us as the hatch door closes. Doc—with the green patch still on his arm—limps beside her. Kit tries to use her weight to support Doc, but he’s much bigger than she is.

“Let me help,” Bartie says, taking Kit’s place under Doc’s arm. His voice is gravelly with unshed tears. When I meet his eyes, I know—what’s happened in the last three months cannot overshadow what’s happened in the last thirty minutes. We’re friends again.

“Make sure that patch stays on,” I say, and Bartie nods.

Kit and Bartie take Doc toward the hatch. I think about giving them a hand—it’s going to be hard getting him up the ladder—but I don’t want to help Doc. I don’t ever want to see Doc again.

I go back to the gen lab. Amy, her arm swaddled in bandages, stands in front of Orion’s frozen face.

The memories of what happened while I was patched are hard to sort out in my mind. It’s the difference between swimming in water and swimming in syrup. But I do know one thing: Doc killed Marae and the others because I’m not as good a leader as Orion would have been.

Amy said Orion had a plan for everything, and I’m starting to think I should have one too. Because I don’t know what I’m going to do now.

“You kept those wires,” she says as I step beside her. “The wires to the Phydus machine. You had them the whole time. You went straight to the machine—”

“Doc had patched me,” I say. “I don’t think I could have helped but go to the machine.”

“But you had those wires with you the whole time.”

I did. “But,” I say, “I think I deserve some credit for never using them, even if I did have them.”