“Luke!” she called again, wheezing as the oxygen seemed to vanish from her helmet. She’d taken too big a breath, and needed to wait for the ventilation system to readjust. Don’t panic, she told herself. But then she caught a glimpse of the Colony, and gasped. She’d already drifted too far—Walden, Phoenix, and Arcadia were in view, and growing smaller by the second. The wire seemed far too long. Should it have caught and snapped her back toward the Colony by now? Then another thought hit her, sharp as a knife. What if the cord had broken? Glass knew enough about momentum to know that unless she collided into something, she would keep spinning in the same direction. In ten minutes, her oxygen would run out, and she would die. And then her body would keep floating, forever and ever, into the distance.
She felt herself crying and bit her lip. “Luke?” she asked, trying not to use too much breath. Her head hurt from the disorienting spinning. Every time the Colony flashed into view, it was smaller. This was it.
Then there was a sharp, violent tug on the front of her suit, and the cord went taut. “Glass? Are you there? Are you okay?”
“Luke!” She had never been so happy to hear his voice. “I tried to jump, and I missed the rung, and then—what happened?” The wire began to slowly retract, pulling her back toward the ship.
“We had some… unexpected visitors in the control room, people scavenging for supplies. Don’t worry, I took care of it.”
“What do you mean?”
Luke sighed. “I had to knock them out. There were four of them, Glass, and they wanted to—” He paused. “They weren’t being friendly. You were in danger, and I couldn’t take the time to explain what was going on.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Then she caught sight of the skybridge, and the series of handholds. She flexed her fingers in anticipation. There was no way she was missing it this time.
“I’m almost there,” she told Luke. The handhold was approaching rapidly. Glass stretched out her arm, fixed her eyes on it, and reached out—“Got it!” she shouted as her fingers locked onto the metal rung.
“That’s my girl!” She could hear the smile in Luke’s voice.
Glass exhaled loudly and then swung her other hand over the adjacent rung. It didn’t take her long to traverse the underside of the skybridge and make her way up toward the Phoenix airlock.
When she finally reached the entrance, she planted her feet against the side of the ship and used all her strength to rotate the heavy handle. The door slid open with a satisfying hiss. “I’m here!” She grabbed the edge and pulled herself into a small antechamber, almost identical to the one on Walden.
Luke gave a joyful whoop. “Okay, I’m on my way. Meet you at the skybridge.”
“See you there.”
Glass waited for the outer door to slide back into place, then unhooked herself and hurried toward the second door, which opened automatically. Without missing a beat, she took off the helmet, and began struggling with the suit. It took her longer to get out of it than it had taken Luke to put it on, but she managed.
There didn’t seem to be any guards in the corridors. There didn’t seem to be any people at all. Glass’s exhilaration gave way to concern as she imagined what her mother might be doing. Was she alone and panic-stricken? Or were the Phoenicians pretending that everything was business as usual, ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the Colony had been abandoned to die?
There were only two guards at the skybridge, neither of whom was paying any attention to the controls. They were both about a third of the way down the bridge, their hands on the guns at their hips, watching the partition at the middle of the skybridge. So many people were pressed against the clear wall that it almost seemed to be made of human flesh.
Men and women were pushing their faces against it, screaming, holding blue-faced children up for the guards to see. No sound came through, but their anguish echoed in Glass’s head nonetheless. She watched palms grow red from the banging. An elderly man was being crushed against the wall by the surging crowd, his face white with panic as he slid down the barrier toward the ground.
There wasn’t a choice. She had to let them through. Even if it meant less oxygen for her, for her mother, for Luke.
Glass scrambled over the side of the unmanned control booth. The switch looked simple enough. There wasn’t a great deal of nuance to the technology. The bridge was either open or closed. She took a deep breath and flipped the main switch.
By the time the alarm started ringing, it was too late. The guards spun around and looked at Glass in shock and horror as the partition began to rise into the ceiling.
An old man was the first to slide under, pushed by the frenzy of the crowd. Then a few of the smaller women crawled underneath on their stomachs. Within seconds, the partition had completely retracted, and the skybridge was flooded with people—shouting, weeping with joy and relief, taking huge lungfuls of air.
Glass rose up onto her toes, looking through the sea of bodies for the only one who mattered to her. There he was, at the other end. As Luke came toward her, a proud smile on his face, she hoped they had done the right thing.
She’d just saved hundreds of lives—and drastically shortened hundreds more. Including their own.
CHAPTER 13
Clarke
By midmorning, the cabin had mostly cleared out. After twelve hours spent jostling for room in a densely packed space that reeked of fear and sweat, everyone had apparently decided that the Earthborns weren’t so threatening anymore.
But the mood in the camp was still tense. A large group was already hard at work building a fourth cabin, so they could shelter more comfortably. Wells was nowhere to be found, so Bellamy had taken over. She could hear his voice in the distance as he gave orders about foundations and support beams.
Clarke smiled, but then felt it slip away as she walked over to check on Molly and Felix. They weren’t improving. Even worse, two others—an Arcadian boy and a Walden girl—had begun showing the same symptoms of fatigue, disorientation, and nausea.
Priya was inside the infirmary cabin, helping a half-awake Molly take a few sips of water. She nodded at Clarke, then gently lowered Molly’s head back down. She walked over, still holding the metal cup. “I thought we’d use this one for the sick people,” she said softly. “In case whatever they have is contagious.”
“That’s a good idea,” Clarke said. “Though you don’t seem to be afraid of catching anything.”
Priya shrugged, then pushed a piece of her thick black hair behind her ear. “If we can’t take care of each other, then it means they were right about us all along.”
“They?”
“The people who sentenced us to die on our eighteenth birthdays. They took me from the execution room, you know. The doctor had the needle ready and everything. He was just about to inject me when he got a message on his cornea slip telling him I was being sent to Earth instead.”
“What were you Confined for?” Clarke asked softly, sensing that it was okay for her to ask Priya the one question that was strictly taboo in their camp.
But before Priya had time to respond, the door swung open and Eric trudged inside, worry and exhaustion etched on his face. “I think we should give them the pills,” he said, abandoning any pretense of civility. Clarke opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, but Eric cut her off. “I know about the radiation pills. I think you should give them to the sick people. Now.”
Clarke gave him what she hoped was a confidence-inspiring look. “It’s not radiation poisoning,” she said, calling on whatever reserves of patience were left after their horrific night. “And those pills will kill them if they’re used for anything else.”
“How can you be so sure? You didn’t even finish your medical training. What do you know about radiation poisoning?”
Clarke blanched, not from the insult—she knew Eric was just worried about Felix—but from the secret festering inside of her, far more toxic than any wound. Only two people on the planet knew why Clarke had been Confined. No one else knew anything about her parents’ experiments, or the children who’d suffered under their watch.