For a moment, I think of Elder’s face—not handsome and noble like I know it now, but blurry and watery like the first time I saw him, as he crouched over my naked, shivering body after pulling me from the dredges of the glass coffin where he found me. I remember the warm cadence of his voice, the way he told me everything would be okay.

What a liar.

Except . . . that’s not true, is it? Of everyone on this ship, even the frozen bodies of my parents, Elder’s the only one who handed me truth and waited for me to accept it.

The watery image of Elder comes into sharp focus in my mind’s eye. And I’m not seeing him through the cryo liquid anymore; I’m remembering him in the rain. That night on the Feeder Level, when the sprinklers in the ceiling dumped “rain” on our heads so heavy that the flowers bent under the force, when I was still scared and still unsure, and droplets trailed from the ends of Elder’s hair across his high cheekbones, resting on his full lips . . .

I shake my head. I can’t hate him. But neither can I . . . Well, I can’t hate him, anyway.

The one I can hate? Orion.

I wrap my arms around my knees and look up at the frozen faces of my parents. The worst part of being woken up early, without your parents, on a ship that’s as messed up as this one is, is that there’s nothing to fill your days but time and regret.

I don’t know who I am here. Without my parents, I’m not a daughter. Without Earth, I barely even feel human. I need something. Something to fill me up again. Something to define myself by.

Another drop splashes down.

It’s been ninety-eight days since I woke up. Over three months. And what should have been fifty years before we land has become nothing but a question mark. Will we even land?

That’s the question that brings me down here every day. The question that makes me open my parents’ cryo chambers and stare at their frozen bodies. Will we ever land? Because if this ship is truly lost in space with no chance of ever reaching the new planet . . . I can wake my parents up.

Only . . . I promised Elder I wouldn’t. I asked him, about a month ago, what was the point of keeping my parents frozen? If we’re never going to land, why not just wake them up now?

When his eyes met mine, I could see sympathy and sorrow in them. “The ship is going to land.”

It took me a while to realize what he meant. The ship will land. Just not us. So—I keep my promise to him, and to my parents. I won’t wake them up. Not when there’s still a chance their dream of arriving at the new world is possible.