I hesitate before I go down the hallway into the book rooms. Isn’t Shelby’s lecture futile? The engine is dead, even if the Feeders don’t know it yet. Frex, we’re not even sure how far we are from Centauri-Earth. Even if these Feeders do garner enough information to get the ship moving again, chances are that they won’t see the planet in their lifetimes.

One of the Feeders listening to Shelby rubs her stomach in a slow circle. She’s three months pregnant now, but her tunic hides her rounding belly. Her movement, as unconscious as it is, reminds me—that’s what this is about. Shelby’s lectures aren’t meant to solve the engine problem—not really—but to give these people hope.

That’s the one thing Eldest did right. He may have lied—but in the end, he gave them a reason to keep going.

That’s what everyone’s missing now.

I duck silently into the hallway and head to the book rooms. I throw open the door of the room dedicated to works on civics and social studies.

“What the?” someone shouts from inside.

I jump back, startled, my heart racing. “You scared the shite out of me!” I exclaim, collapsing in the chair at the table across from Bartie.

Bartie’s laughing too hard at his own response to reply. For a moment, this feels like old times. Bartie and I were friends when I lived in the Hospital for the year before moving to the Keeper Level with Eldest. There was a whole gang of us, then: Harley, Bartie, Victria, Kayleigh, and me, counting my lucky stars that, for the first time ever, I had friends.

We would spend our days in the Hospital or the garden. Harley would paint while Bartie played guitar and Victria wrote. Kayleigh was always flitting around, trying to tinker with everything. She made a metal canvas stretcher for Harley that nearly bit his fingers off, and she once tried to figure out the old Sol-Earth schematics for an electric guitar that very nearly electrocuted Bartie.

Those times were all laughter and happiness.

The smile slips off my face, and Bartie’s grin fades. I don’t have to look at him to know we’re both thinking the same thing: everything changed after Kayleigh died. Kayleigh was the glue that held our friendship together, and with her gone, we were nothing. Harley spiraled into darkness that only Doc’s meds got him out of. By the time he’d started recovering, I’d moved to the Keeper Level, and Bartie and Victria had drifted in different directions. Victria spent her time in the Recorder Hall with Orion, and Bartie, as far as I could tell, found friendship only in his music.

“How have you been?” I ask, leaning forward.

Bartie shrugs. A stack of books surrounds him, but they’re all thick, regal-looking tomes from the civics section of the book room, not music books.

“It’s odd to see you without Amy,” Bartie says.

“I—it’s just—we—” I heave a sigh, running my fingers through my hair. Amy and I have spent a lot of time lately in the Recorder Hall, in this very room, actually, developing a plan for a police force. I know she’s wary of me, hesitant to trust me after I confessed to being the one to have woken her up, but . . . she’d quit flinching at my touch, she used to smile at me easier.