Kass Morgan - Day 21

But as she turned to look at her mother, Glass knew she had no choice. She couldn’t think about what had happened with Luke, not now. Sonja’s own heart had cracked long ago, but the difference was that she hadn’t bothered to catch the pieces. Glass had done it for her. Without Glass, her mom wouldn’t fight for a spot on the dropship, and Glass wasn’t going to let that happen.

She tightened her hold around her mother’s waist. “Come on. Let’s keep moving. One step at a time.” There was nowhere to move, yet somehow, Glass and Sonja managed to wedge themselves between shoulder blades and around elbows.

Glass gasped but didn’t look down when she stepped on something fleshy. She kept her eyes fixed on the front of the launch deck, and gripped her mother’s hand tightly as they carved a path through the wall of bodies.

They slid alongside a woman whose dress was damp with blood. From the way she clutched her arm, Glass guessed she’d been hit by one of the guards’ bullets. Her face was pale and she was swaying back and forth, although there was no room for her to fall.

Keep moving.

Glass swallowed a cry as she shoved past the woman and felt her bloody sleeve brush against Glass’s bare arm.

Keep moving.

A man was holding a little girl in one arm and a bundle of clothes in the other, rendering him too bulky to navigate through the crowd. Drop the bag , Glass wanted to tell him. But she said nothing. Her only job was getting her mother on the dropship. That was all she could afford to care about.

Keep moving.

A young boy, hardly older than a toddler, sat on the ground, too shocked and scared to do more than whimper and wave his chubby arms in the air. Had he been jostled out of his parent’s grasp? Or had he been abandoned in a moment of panic?

She felt a tug deep inside her chest, a jolt of pain in the empty space behind her heart that never fully healed. Glass tightened her grip on Sonja, and extended her other arm toward the little boy. But right before her fingertips brushed against his outstretched hand, there was another surge, and Glass found herself being swept in the other direction.

She let out a gasp, and scrambled to find her footing. When she turned back to look for the boy, he’d disappeared behind a wave of bodies.

Keep moving.

By the time they made it to the center of the launch deck, the nearest dropship was overflowing with bodies, far more than it was meant to accommodate. People were standing in every centimeter of available space, packed as tightly together as they could fit around the seats. Glass knew that jamming people in like that was extremely dangerous—anyone who wasn’t strapped in would be thrown violently against the walls during the descent. They’d certainly die, and would probably end up killing some of the seated passengers as well. But no one was stopping them, or forcing the extra passengers off the dropship. No one was in charge.

A new sound joined the chorus of wails and shouts. At first, Glass thought she was imagining it, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she spotted the musician from earlier standing at the top of the ramp. He’d tucked the violin under his chin and was drawing the bow across the strings. With nearly one thousand people between him and the nearest dropship, he must’ve realized he wasn’t going to make it. And instead of succumbing to panic, he’d chosen to end his life doing what he loved best.

The man’s eyes were closed, rendering him oblivious to the confused stares and angry jeers of everyone around him. But as the melody dipped and soared, their faces softened. The bittersweet trills swept the pain out of their chests and into the air. The crushing fear became a shared burden, and for a moment, it felt like something they could bear together.

Glass turned from side to side, searching desperately for Luke. Growing up on Walden, he’d never attended a Remembrance Day concert, and she wanted him to hear this music. If he had to die tonight, she needed to know his last moments would be marked by something other than heartache.

A loud beeping suddenly echoed through the room, breaking the spell of the music, as the door on the farthest dropship started to close. The few people who’d been trying to force their way inside began to frantically claw their way forward, desperate to get on the ship before it launched.

“Wait!” a woman screamed, breaking free from the crowd to run toward the door. “My son is in there!”

“Stop her!” another voice bellowed. A few people rushed forward to grab the woman, but it was too late. She slipped into the airlock, but didn’t make it into the ship. When she realized what had happened, she spun around and pounded frantically on the sealed airlock door. There was another, louder beep, then silence.

Behind her, the ship detached from the Colony and started toward the blue-gray orb of Earth. Then a wave of horrified gasps rippled over the crowd.

The woman was floating past the window, her face contorted by a scream none of them could hear. Her arms and legs thrashed wildly, as if she thought she could grab the ship and pull herself back inside. Yet within a few seconds, she stopped moving, and her face turned a deep purple. Glass turned away, but not quickly enough. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a sickening glimpse of an enormous, swollen purple foot before the woman drifted from view.

Another beep sounded as the next dropship began to launch. Now only four remained. The frenzy of the crowd had reached a fever pitch, the launch deck echoing with the sounds of death and grief.

Gritting her teeth, Glass pulled her mother forward just as the sea of bodies swept them even closer to the ramp. The third dropship detached from the ship and launched. A redhead shoved past them, and it was only after she was gone that Glass realized it had been Camille. Did that mean Luke was close by? She started to cry out his name, but the shout died before it even left her throat.

“Glass,” her mother’s voice came from behind her. It felt like an eternity had passed since the last time Sonja had spoken. “We aren’t going to make it. At least, not together. You need to—”

“No!” Glass cried, seeing a break in the crowd and moving toward it. But just as she did, she saw Camille push a skinny boy off the dropship and take his place. His shocked mother’s anguished wails echoed through the deck as the doors closed with a final click.

“ Move aside! ” a harsh voice shouted. Glass spun around and saw a line of guards jogging down the ramp, their boots thudding in perfect unison as they escorted a handful of civilians onto the launch deck. One of them was the Vice Chancellor.

No one heeded the guard’s orders. The mass of bodies continued to push toward the remaining dropships. But the guards continued to surge forward, pushing people aside with the butts of their guns to clear a path. “Move it!”

They shoved right past Glass and Sonja, pulling their charges alongside them. As he was led past, Vice Chancellor Rhodes’s eyes settled on Sonja, and a look Glass couldn’t quite identify came over his face. He stopped, whispered something to a guard, and then motioned toward Glass’s mother.

The crowd parted as three guards stormed toward them. Before Glass had time to react, they’d grabbed her and Sonja and were herding them toward the last dropship.

The angry, violent shouts that followed sounded very far away. Glass could barely register anything but the sound of her own frantic heartbeat and the feel of her mother’s hand holding tight to hers. Were they really going to make it? Had the Vice Chancellor just saved both of their lives?

The guards pushed Glass and Sonja onto the final dropship with the Vice Chancellor. All one hundred seats were full save for three in the front. Rhodes beckoned them forward. Glass moved like someone in a dream as she seated Sonja next to the Vice Chancellor, then sat down in the last seat herself.