Read Online A Million Suns by Beth Revis - Free Book Online Page B

they grow at all. How the only thing that had been keeping the people calm and in check was Phydus. I know Elder. I know he’s going to try to rule without Phydus. And nothing could be more dangerous. When the Feeders are off it, when they see what is becoming of their world—then you’ll have a true rebellion on your hands.
    Â 
    I think of the way Luthor’s voice rang, loud and angry, throughout the Recorder Hall.
We can do anything we want!
    Â 
    ORION:
Godspeed
won’t last much longer. It wasn’t designed to last forever. It’s a miracle it’s lasted as long as it has. Here’s the thing—here’s why I need you, Amy, and I need you to make the choice that, for whatever reason, I can no longer make. I know you hate, you must hate me.
    Â 
    Orion leans forward, his face filling the entire screen.
    Â 
    ORION: But did you ever ask yourself why I was unplugging frozens now, of all times?
    Â 
    I suck in a shaky breath; I’d forgotten to breathe.
    Â 
    ORION: Why didn’t I just wait and let some future gen take care of that problem?
    Â 
    Even though he’s on the screen and not really here, I can feel the urgency in his voice all the way deep inside me, in my very bones.
    Â 
    ORION: The choice is coming! And it is a choice. And you—you must decide for everyone.
    Â 
    For a long moment, Orion pauses.
    Â 
    ORION: But I can’t tell you what it is. You’re going to have to find it.
    Â 
    Orion runs his fingers through his hair, in exactly the same way Elder does when he’s worried.
    Â 
    ORION: It took me years to discover the truth, and just as long to accept it. When I met you . . . I know you must hate me because I left people from Sol-Earth to die. . . .
    Â 
    Left them to die? It was so much more than that. He pulled them from their chambers and
watched
them die. There’s a big difference there. He killed them.
    My eyes narrow so that Orion’s recorded face is nothing but a blur. I glance up at the real Orion, frozen behind the glass of the cryo chamber.
You have no idea how much I hate you,
I think. I could lay at his feet everything that’s wrong in my life now.
    Â 
    ORION: But Amy, you are so special. You’re from Sol-Earth. But you don’t have an agenda like the others . . . like your parents. You didn’t come here with a mission. You—and only you—will be able to determine what choice needs to be made, if the risks are worth it. I can’t trust anyone else to make this choice, not even Elder or those I once counted as friends. I’m going to hide the clues so that only you, someone from Sol-Earth, could find them. Trust no one, Amy. Not Elder, not Doc, not anyone from my past. They’re from
Godspeed
, not Sol-Earth. They won’t know—they can’t know—that there even is a choice to be made.
    Â 
    I don’t like the way Orion tells me not to trust Elder. I don’t like it at all. But—I think back to yesterday, and the way I have kept my darkest secrets from him. I am already doing what Orion wanted me to do before he asked it of me, and I hate myself a little for that.
    Â 
    ORION: You’ll need to begin with the first piece of the puzzle. But here’s the thing, Amy. I already gave it to you. So: go find it. Find all the clues I’ve left for you. And I have to hope that when you do, the choice you make is the right one.
    Â 
    Orion looks straight behind him, then back to me.
    Â 
    ORION: Because you’re running out of time.
    Â 
    <>

13
    ELDER
    I FEEL ALONE.
    I don’t mean I feel lonely; I mean I feel alone, the same way that I feel the blanket resting on my body, or the feathers of my pillow under my head, or the tight string of my sleep pants twisted up around my waist. I feel alone as if it were an actual thing, seeping throughout this whole level like mist blanketing a field, reaching into all