Page 4 (1/2)

CHAPTER 1

Wells

No one wanted to stand near the grave Although four of their oere already buried in the makeshift cemetery, the rest of the hundred were still disturbed by the idea of lowering a body into the ground

No one wanted to stand with their backs to the trees either Since the attack, a creaking branch had becoh to make the anxious survivors juathered to say good-bye to Asher stood in a tightly packed seround and the shadows in the forest

The co crackle of the fire was conspicuously absent They’d run out of firewood last night, and no one had been willing to venture out forthe grave No one had volunteered for that job either, except for a tall, quiet Arcadian boy named Eric

“Are we sure he’s really dead?” Molly whispered, edging back froht s her up as well She was only thirteen but looked younger At least, she’d used to Wells re her after the crash, when tears and ash had streaked her round cheeks Now the girl’s face was thin, alaunt, and there was a cut on her forehead that didn’t look like it’d been properly cleaned

Wells’s eyes flashed involuntarily to Asher’s neck, to the ragged wound where the arrow had pierced his throat It’d been two days since Asher died, two days since theeverything the Colonists had ever been told, everything they thought they knew

They had been sent to Earth as living test subjects, the first people to set foot on the planet in three hundred years But they were mistaken

Some people had never left

It had all happened so quickly Wells hadn’t realized anything rong until Asher fell to the ground, gagging as he swiped desperately at the arrow lodged in his throat That’s when Wells spun around—and saw theers looked more like deures to vanish There was no way they were real

But hallucinations didn’t shoot arrows

After his calls for help went unheeded, Wells had carried Asher to the infirmary tent, where they stored the ed froan frantically digging for bandages, Asher was already gone

How could there be people on Earth? It was impossible No one had survived the Cataclysrained in Wells’s rees Celsius, or that planets revolved around the sun And yet, he’d seen them with his own eyes People who certainly hadn’t come down on the dropship from the Colony Earthborns

“He’s dead,” Wells said to Molly as he rose wearily to his feet before realizing that o, their expressions would’ve been full of distrust, if not outright contempt No one believed that the Chancellor’s son had actually been Confined It’d been all too easy for Graham to convince them that Wells had been sent to spy for his father But now, they were looking at him expectantly

In the chaos after the fire, Wells had organized tea permanent structures His interest in Earth architecture, once a source of annoyance to his pragn the three wooden cabins that now stood in the center of the clearing

Wells glanced up at the darkening sky He’d give anything to have the Chancellor see the cabins eventually Not to prove a point—after seeing his father shot on the launch deck, Wells’s resentment had drained faster than the color from the Chancellor’s cheeks Now he only wished his father would soet to call Earth home The rest of the Colony was supposed to join them once conditions on Earth were deemed safe, but twenty-one days had passed without so limmer from the sky

As Wells lowered his eyes back to the ground, his thoughts returned to the task at hand: saying farewell to the boy they were about to send to aplace