Beth Revis - A Million Suns

“It was him,” she says, eyes shut.

I’m afraid of what she means, but I’ve already guessed the truth. I touch her shoulder. Her whole body shifts into me, but she doesn’t let go of her knees, of the way she’s made herself into a tight bundle around her stomach. Because she lets me, I wrap my arms around her.

“It was him,” she says again. Her voice sounds like a faraway echo. “During the Season.”

“Luthor?” I whisper. My voice catches in fear of what she’s saying.

“I didn’t want to,” she says. “He was so violent .” She glances up at me, her eyes wet and red. “He mentioned you. Because he didn’t get you…”

Because he didn’t get me, he went to her.

“I tried to…” Her voice cracks. It doesn’t matter what she tried to do, or didn’t. I understand.

I remember that moment when I gave up. When I waited for it to be over.

For me, though, it stopped.

But not for her.

No wonder she hates me: because I was spared, and she was not.

And now, with her body curled up in protection around her baby, I realize that it’s not stopped, at all, during the past three months.

What lasted for minutes for me is still with her, growing inside of her, a thing she must hate and love all at the same time.

I wrap my arms tighter around Victria and pull her closer to me. “It’s over,” I whisper, even though I know it’s not. It never will be.

I tug at Victria’s left hand until she releases the death grip she has on her knees. She looks at me curiously as I flatten her fingers. Her hand is cold and clammy, but it’s no longer shaking. I wrap my pinkie finger around hers.

“This is a promise,” I tell her, squeezing her pinkie with mine. “A promise that you don’t have to be alone with this secret and pain anymore.”

Her finger lies still in mine — she doesn’t believe me. She stares at Luthor’s immobilized form.

I think we both get the same idea at the same time. Our eyes meet. Luthor can’t move — he’s helpless.

For the first time, we have the ability to take back a little bit of what he took from us, months ago.

So we’re going to.

Victria uncurls from the couch. She’s hesitant at first, but then she gets up slowly, deliberately. She stands over Luthor’s body.

And she kicks him as hard as she can, right in the stomach.

He gives out a sort of breathless Oof! but doesn’t move.

She kicks him again, and again. Water leaks from his eyes, but he doesn’t protest or move to defend himself, even when Victria kicks him in the groin, hard.

She drops to her knees, beating his chest with her fists. “How could you,” she gasps. “I knew you!”

I squat down next to her. “Let it go,” I say, “Come on.” I touch her shoulders to pull her away, but she jerks back — not to hit him, but to bury her face in her arms, sobbing.

I can’t stand to see her break like this. I can’t stand to know that when the patch wears off, he’ll blame her, he may still try to hurt her, or me.

I drop to my knees near his face. His eyes still stare straight up, but I can tell by the way they twitch that he knows I’m here.

“I want you to know something,” I whisper in his ear softly. “I want you to know that I know where I can find a gun. If you don’t know what a gun is, look it up in the Recorder Hall. My father taught me how to hold a gun steady, how to breathe out as I squeeze the trigger, how to group my shots in a target so that even if the first bullet doesn’t stop you, the next will. When I was fourteen, my father took me hunting with him, in Colorado, and I killed an elk. He did this so that I would know what it is to take a life, so that I would not hesitate to do it when I needed to. I am telling you this, now, so that you know I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

Luthor’s eyes dance back and forth; he’s trying to get the power to turn — away from me or toward me, I don’t know.

I lean closer to him, so close I can smell his skin, and when I speak, I can see how the little hairs near his ear move with my breath. “I also want you to know that I won’t kill you right away. But that you’ll wish I had.”

I stand up and offer Victria my hand. She takes it, but as we head to the door, she breaks away from me and delivers one last vicious kick to Luthor’s face.

We leave him, broken and bleeding, on the floor.

THE NEXT MORNING, I WAKE TO A COM.

“Are you up yet?” Amy’s voice is excited.

“I am now,” I say, stretching. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nope,” she says. “Come down to the cryo level.”

“Amy, is this about Orion and his frexing clues?” I ask, pulling on pants. “I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to focus on the engine and keeping the ship going — look at what happened yesterday while I was on the cryo level.”

“Don’t get sassy. Just come down here.”

“Sassy?”

“Come on!” she says. “You’re going to want to see this!”

“Oh, really?”

“Elder, remember the video last night?”

“The vid that got cut off? Amy, either Orion was loons or someone else messed with that video. Either way—”

She cuts me off. “That’s beside the point. There was still enough information for me to figure it out. Remember when Orion said Eldest started to scare him? He said it happened after he got off the ship.”

“Off the ship?” I say, so surprised that I pause on my way to the grav tube.

“Whatever he found, he saw it outside the ship.”

“Which means…” I say, not daring to finish my thought aloud. I start running to the tube entrance.

“That the next locked door must contain spacesuits.”

Amy’s pacing in front of the elevator by the time I reach the cryo level. “What took you so long?” she demands. Before I have a chance to answer her, she grabs my arm and starts dragging me to the hall in the back.

“I read the whole thing last night,” she says, tossing me a slender book.

“What’s this?” I turn it over, reading the title.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets. Keep up. Anyway, I read the whole thing — actually, I had to read it twice — but I finally noticed something very interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Turn to page 87.”

Balancing the book in one hand, I carefully turn the pages. Amy taps her foot impatiently, but I don’t want to risk damaging this treasure from Sol-Earth. I turn over page 85. And—

“Where’s page 87?” I ask. I flip page 85 back and forth — but the book jumps straight to page 89.

“Exactly,” Amy says, a huge grin spreading across her face. “It’s so neatly cut out of the book that you’d never notice that page was gone unless you were looking for it.”

“This is the clue?” I ask, handing the book back to Amy.

“I think the clue was on page 87,” Amy says. “Someone altered whatever clue Orion left in the armory, trying to make us give up and quit looking. Whoever did that also cut the page from the book.”

“How did you find it?” I ask. I’m trying to remember what any of Orion’s videos said that indicated Shakespearean poetry.

“It was in the fiction room,” Amy says. “Anyway,” she continues when I open my mouth to question her further, “the point is — that missing page. It had a sonnet on it.” She turns back to page 85 and shows me the book. “This page has Sonnet 29 on it.” She turns to page 89. “This page has Sonnet 31. Which means that page 87 must have had Sonnet 30 on it.”

Amy tosses the book to the ground and my eyes go wide to see a treasure of Sol-Earth treated so casually. Amy doesn’t notice, though, as she spins around to the largest door at the end of the hall. “Codes have to be at least four digits long,” she says. “So try 0030.” She jerks her head to the door on the right of the hatch.