Beth Revis - A Million Suns

We both stare silently at his trashed office for a moment. Everything is normally so neat and organized. But now it’s a chaotic mess. The desk shoved to one wall. The locking cabinet smashed open, with med patches spilling out in all colors, but none of them pale green.

Kit runs into the office. “There’re reports,” she says breathlessly.

“Of what?” Doc snaps.

“Dead. Someone dead. From the patches.”

We immediately spring into action. Doc drives the electric cart across the Feeder Level, with me riding behind him. As the level flies past us, all I can think of is how much worse everything has been since I took over.

“You’re going to have to do something,” Doc calls back to me over the roar of the electric cart. “Something to really make the Feeders see you as leader. Use this problem to show your strength!”

Yeah. Right.

When we get to the City, Doc stops the cart in front of the weaving district. “Why are we stopping here?” I ask, my heart sinking.

Before Doc can answer, someone yanks me off the back of the cart and throws me onto the street. I stumble, almost losing my balance.

“You frexing chutz!” Bartie bellows.

I step back, surprised.

“What are you—?” I start.

Bartie shoves me, hard, with both hands on my chest. I stagger back, hitting the cart with the back of my legs. He hurls a handful of square, pale green med patches at my face.

“Did you do this?” Bartie shouts. He towers over me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Those ‘special’ med patches are full of Phydus , you chutz.” Spit flies in my face as he growls the words at me.

“I–I know,” I say, looking over his shoulder where the patches he threw at me lie scattered on the ground.

“You know? You’re not even going to deny it? You know? How could you let Phydus back on the ship? You— you —swore that you wouldn’t use it again! You stupid frexing chutz!”

“How did you get any?” I shout back. I don’t like the way he’s in my face, the way he won’t back up, give me room to breathe. I try to lean up, but he doesn’t back down.

“How could you?” Bartie sneers. “You prance around here, talking about how great you are for letting the people all get off Phydus, and then you just slather some frexing med patches on them and call it done! Anyone get in your way — anyone cause too much trouble — just slap a frexing patch on them!”

Bartie spins away from me. But just as I take a step toward Doc, who’s standing on the curb, too shocked to do anything, Bartie turns back and shoves me hard so that I slam against the side of the cart again.

“You’re worse than Eldest, you know that? At least he treated us all the same. You’re just picking us off as you choose.”

He turns to go, shaking his fist out.

“Wait a frexing minute!” I shout. Bartie stops but doesn’t turn; his back is stiff and straight, and his fingers curl into fists again. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Didn’t do anything wrong?” Bartie sneers without turning around. “Tell that to Lil.”

He strides off. The people on the street are silent, watching us. As soon as Bartie turns the corner, they start whispering.

“Lil?” I ask Doc as I gather up the patches from the ground, stuffing them into my pockets. They may be scattered throughout the rest of the ship, but at least I can make sure these don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Doc’s face is creased in a dark frown, but he’s glowering at where Bartie walked off, not at me. “She’s the one Kit found dead.”

I rush up the stairs to Harley’s childhood home. I don’t know what I expect to find there — his mother is already dead. Lil’s trailer is exactly as it was before — messy and slightly smelly. When I enter her bedroom, Lil’s just where Amy and I left her, sprawled on the bed.

Across her forehead are three pale green patches. One word on each patch.

Follow the leader.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” Doc asks. When I don’t answer, he adds, “This was murder. Someone killed Lil. For you.”

“For me?” I can’t take my eyes off her body. It seems to melt into the bed.

“Follow the leader. It’s a warning to others — to those who don’t.”

“But Lil wasn’t rebelling. She wasn’t involved with Bartie’s group, and she never spoke against me—”

“She wasn’t working,” Doc says. He sits beside Lil on the bed, peeling the patches off one by one. They cling to her skin, lifting it up a little and making a schlick sound as they pop off her. “Anyone not working, anyone not fulfilling the needs of the ship… they’re not following you.”

Doc waits until I tear my eyes away from Lil’s body. “She was murdered for you,” he says clearly, slowly, as if to make sure that I understand the weight of her death rests on my shoulders.

I CAN’T KEEP STILL. I MAY HAVE GIVEN UP RUNNING, BUT I can’t think cramped up on the cryo level, with all the locked doors mocking me. I have to move . When I get to the Hospital lobby, though, I’m surrounded by shouting patients, angry nurses, and a crowd that seems to grow by the minute.

“It’s safe!” Doc’s apprentice, Kit, tells a woman loudly. “Just one is fine!”

“How do I know that?” the woman asks. Her voice is thick, like she’s been crying.

“Well, look at yourself,” Kit says, exasperated. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”

“I think so… but…”

Kit growls in frustration and marches off, nearly crashing into me.

“Sorry,” she says.

“No prob. What’s going on?”

“Those frexing med patches. People are worried they’re dying, but if they’d had the overdose, they’d already be dead. Try to convince them of that, though.”

“What med patches?”

Kit reaches into her lab coat and shows me a square green patch. “Doc developed them for the depressed patients. Works, too. If you have only one. Problem is, word’s gotten out that three or more will kill you.”

“What’s in them?”

“Phydus.” She says it matter-of-factly, but she waits for my reaction before continuing.

Phydus. I thought we were through with that.

Part of me is angry. Very, very angry. I thought Elder and I agreed. I thought he had promised . No more Phydus. But another part of me can’t forget the crowd that turned into a mob in the City.

“We’re all going to die!” the woman Kit had been arguing with shouts. She grabs Kit by the lapels of her coat, her knuckles turning white.

Kit wraps one hand around the woman’s wrist, and, surprisingly, the woman easily releases her. Her arms drop to her sides, and her whole body relaxes.

“There, isn’t that better?” Kit asks gently.

The woman doesn’t answer. And then I notice the pale green patch on the back of her hand.

Kit leads the woman to a chair against the wall and deposits her there. She turns back to me with a satisfied look on her face. And — I can’t help but smile back at her. That worked. Maybe if Elder had had some patches in the City yesterday, things wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. And maybe if I had had one in the fiction room when Luthor burst in…

“Can I have some of those patches?” I ask Kit.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Didn’t you hear? They’re not safe. We’re trying to get all the ones that were stolen back. Only Doc, the nurses, and I are supposed to use them.”

Interesting. The patches were stolen.

“Can I just have one, then?” I ask.

Something in Kit melts. I think she thinks I’m depressed about being the only freak on the ship — she’s always been nice to me in the way that some people are super-nice in a suffocating sort of way to people who are handicapped.